I finally finished my cardigan!



It's not photogenic, possibly because it doesn't look good in real life. I love the color. I got gauge and managed to pull off the nifty interlocking twist that the front pieces do. But the bust is too snug, the body is too short, the sleeves are way too loose... A lot of poor knitting choices added up, but since I made most of them while I was heavily medicated to stop pre-term labor (two different round of pre-term labor, by the way!) I'm not going to feel bad about them now.

I will, in the future, look at the schematics and if the sleeves seem huge I'll do something to narrow them down. I'll make sure the body is the length I want and that I'm using a size that will give me a comfy amount of ease. I'll do it in less than two years so I might be the same size when I finish as I was when I started. Or at least a smaller size than I was when I started.

My first "mommy size" sweater is done. And I could wear it if I wanted to.



Mousie's done, too. It was a learning experience, which is what it was meant to be. I was getting better at intarsia by the time I finished, but I think I'll wait a while before tracking down yarn for that chicken sweater.

This is a baby who does not need heart surgery. This afternoon, we went in for more tests and found out that the hole has closed on its own. I must've asked the doctor at least three times if she was absolutely sure, but it's definitely gone, it definitely can't come back, and he won't need any more follow up with the cardiologist. I'm a very happy mommy.

I found some neat things while I was reading blogs this morning...

There's Crossed in Transit, with some of the most tempting cabled sweaters I've ever seen. If the book was in English, or if I could figure out how to order from yesasia.com, I'd probably be ordering a copy tonight. But it's not, and I can't, so I've been able to maintain my self control. For the moment, at least. There's pretty lace in the book, too...

That led me to Dory's Knitted Spiral Counterpane Blanket Oooooooh! Can you believe that gorgeous masterpiece used to be a sweater hanging on the rack at GoodWill?

So what should a mommy do when the thing she was getting ready to make for baby falls into her lap, already made and just as cute as Mommy could have made it herself?



Leify-Doodle's getting more serious about solid foods and I've been thinking about doing up some ball band bibs. I even went up to the sewing room for yarn, but two months of dashing up and doing a quick rummage to find what I need or dashing up and shoving in whatever it is I want out of the house has taken its toll. Somewhere up there are 30some bags of dishcloth cotton, all neatly organized in one bag or box or something that I can't remember.

This morning, I found these cute bibs at happythings and got all inspired to use some of the little scraps of baby prints I've been hoarding in my stash. Two seconds later, I read an email from a local homeschooler who was giving away garage sale leftovers so she wouldn't have to haul it to GoodWill. She mentioned toddler clothes and toys. And craft stuff. What she didn't mention was that she sewed a lot of clothes for her little guys, and did a fantastic job of it. Or that there was yarn.

I brought home a huge load of baby clothes and toys and books for the kids and fabric and buttons and lace and others treasures. And the bibs. I would've made those bibs if I had that gorgeous fabric and knew how to do the really nice snaps. Actually, I might've used the gorgeous berry and veggie fabric in a quilt, but I like to think that I'd have made the bibs.

There's been lots to blog about lately, but I got hit hard by a bug the kids must've brought home from karate. Nothing serious, just a stuffy miserable thing that left me unable to enjoy the yarn I brought home from Oregon Flock and Fiber (after four years of cancelled plans, we finally made it there!) or the new mini-van. Which can find yarn stores on its own.

New eye candy!



I stopped at the library on the way to karate yesterday to pick up a couple of suspense novels I've been waiting for and browsed the knitting section just long enough to find some books to take home and drool over. I needed Creature Comforts to figure out how much yarn that chicken sweater takes....Kids Kids Kids because I've had intarsia on my mind and wanted another look at that Hiawatha sweater...and I just sort of stumbled across Nursery Rhyme Knits -- Hats, Mittens & Scarves with Kids' Favorite Verses...

I'm so totally dazzled by Kids Kids Kids and Nursery Rhyme Knits that I've forgotten everything else on my needles or planned for the future, not to mention the fact that I don't have a baby girl of my own to knit for. Leif is tiny enough I think I can get away with knitting the eyelet sweater in dark blue...I could do the bog jacket for Heath or Alex, depending on the color combination...and there has to be a way to adapt the mittens in Nursery Rhyme Knits to mommy size. Bigger yarn or extra repeats or something. There are three sets in there I'd love for myself. And a bunch for the kids.

I went to search Amazon and make sure both books were still in print, read the reviews for Kids Kids Kids and got really upset with the woman who gave the book a lousy rating because she says you'll feel so bad when your kids get the sweaters dirty.

So I should knit my kids crappy looking sweaters so it'll be okay when they get dirty? What kind of stupid logic is THAT? Not that I'm planning to knit an intarsia masterpiece, put it on my son and send him down to wallow in the creek. If I'm going to knit for the kids, I'm going to at least try to knit nice things. Because when I knit unintentionally crappy looking sweaters, they insist on wearing them out to the Knitting Guild or LYS and telling anyone who will listen who made them those crappy looking sweaters. And sweaters that you know will look crappy aren't as fun to knit as the ones you hope will look nice.

I'd been all set to buy some Softee Chunky and knit raglans for all four kids until I read her review and got all riled up. Now I don't know what I'm gonna make them. But it's going to have cables or lace or something that's intended to look good.

It's supposed to be intarsia.

Intarsia is one of those knitting techniques that I had no desire to ever attempt. I was never ever ever going to knit my kids sweaters with big blocky animals on the fronts. Then I checked out Creature Comforts from the library and saw the cute little chicken sweater and now I've got to make one...

So I'm attempting Mousie Mousie from Handknits for Kids and it seems to be working. I don't really like this technique, but if it gets my baby a cute sweater with a chicken on it, I'll figure it out.

Guess I should've kept casting on new project while I had the urge last week, because after a little flurry of finishes I'm back with the same old WIPs I didn't feel like working on before. And now that I have to start something new, I don't want to. I want to knit, I just don't want to scrounge for the right needles and make sure I'm getting gauge and all of the other un-fun stuff that comes with starting a new project.



So I spent an hour tinkering with Frozen Lake and, although I did figure out what I was doing there for a brief moment, I think it's a bigger mess than it was when I started. Of course I didn't put in a lifeline before I started messing with it, because at the time it didn't make sense to put one where I already suspected there might be mistakes. Now it sounds like it would've been a good idea!

Finding a new project shouldn't be a problem. There's gorgeous eye candy at Mason Dixon Knitting. How can that woman keep coming up with newer and more gorgeous ways to play with mitered squares? There's a new issue of Knitty up, with a cabled baby sweater and pretty cabled socks. What really intrigues me, though, is the little glimpse of that sweater at the top of the picture for Intolerable Cruelty.
The new MagKnits has yummy socks -- even a pair inspired by the Lemony Snicket Books.

Maybe I'll just snuggle up and read the September book for WhoDuKnit....

I guess there was something in the air Friday night because a couple of my online knitting friends were having just as much trouble as I did. Whatever it was seems to have cleared and I'm making happy progress on my WIPs again.



I got the ends woven in on Alex's easybreezy. The yarn I used (Red Heat Casual Cotton) isn't nearly as cute as what the designer used. I was starting to wonder what I was thinking when I bought it, but everything turned out just fine. I dread picking up stitches more than sewing up seams, but the effect it creates is neat. I think I want to try sizing this up for myself, and I've even got yarn that might work.

The cast on and bound off edges of my hobo bag are looking much better since I used a smaller needle to pick up the stitches along each edge and added about an inch of garter stitch before binding off again. I'm not sure if I'll fold it under when I sew the purse together or not, but I've got options I can live with, so I'm plodding away on the strap.

I've only got two repeats left on the Dayflower scarf. It's been a fun knit and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for another easy lace project like Branching Out, but I'm ready to be done with it.

And the camouflage sweater is coming along. I'd been warned that the yarn was splitty, but I'm not having any trouble with it.

The rest of the WIPs? I'll get to 'em. Eventually....

The pattern said it would be obvious which stitches to work the increases on in each right side row, that there was no need for stitch markers. The pattern lied.

In case you couldn't guess, my knitting did not go at all well tonight.

I've got another bee in my bonnet. This one is telling me that I absolutely must knit raglan sweaters for all four kids. I did want to knit new sweaters for all of 'em this year (so far Leif has three and no one else has any, unless we get to count Alex's summer tops) and that little cardigan for Leif was so much fun it made perfect sense to try a pullover.



Then I heard about Bernat Camouflage. I can't remember where I heard about it, or what I heard about it, but it seemed like the perfect yarn for a sweater for Heath. Of course none of the stores I go to sell the stuff. I was hoping that Fabric Depot up in Portland might, but no luck there. Knitting Warehouse has it, but their shipping isn't cheap enough to just buy four skeins -- and they're temporarily out of stock. Joann's has it, with free shipping, but not in the color I wanted.

sigh

I thought I was going to have to wait. Then we went for a Sunday drive down through Marcola to Springfield (I really wish I'd been paying better attention to the route we took!) and I commented that we were going past a Ben Franklin Crafts and I didn't think there were any of those left in our neck of the woods. And my wonderful husband turned into the parking lot. Yarn shopping isn't his favorite way to spend his day off, but he stopped without being asked and held half of the kids while I wandered the yarn aisles in a happy daze.

They've got Noro. They've got Cascade Fixation. They've got Brown Sheep. They've got DenimStyle. They've got Sugar-n-Cream in colors I haven't been able to find anywhere but oneline.

And they've got Bernat Camouflage!

I compromised on the color and they did overcharge me so I wound up spending more than I would've if I'd bought it from Knitter's Warehouse and paid the expensive shipping. But that's okay because I've got it here with me now and I've been happily knitting away with it. I'll get some of that other colors I wanted when I can get it cheap.

Once this sweater's done, I'm planning to cast on with either the Denim Style that's been waiting to become a sweater for Heath, or the pink Red Heart Tweed that's been sitting in my stash forever.Or maybe the red TLC Wiggles. For a pattern, I'm using The Incredible, Custom-Fit Raglan. I was going to buy the raglan pattern from Knitting Pure and Simple but was too impatient to wait until I could get to the LYS.

And there are still five or six other projects I want to cast on for Right This Second.

I'm really enjoying my new cable needle.



I bought one when I first learned to do cables, then immediately lost it. Since then, I've made do with dpns or those little plastic seaming pins. The dpns were a bad idea, because I lose those just as easily as I lost the real cable needle. The little plastic pins work okay, are easy to stick in my project between cable rows, and don't traumatize me when I lose one.

But the cable needle makes things easier. It's got that little bend to hold the stitches. I can knit the stitches right off of it instead of slipping them back onto my knitting needle or remembering how to slide them onto the plastic pin the right direction so that I can knit off of that. And it's just less fiddly. I'd buy myself one of the pretty birch cable needles if I wasn't so sure it would vanish into the couch cushions or get carried off in a toddler's grubby little hand.

I'm not even sure where the needle I'm using now came from. It might've been one of the knitting notions I picked up when Joann's was having one of their marked down clearance sales, or I might've found it when I was sorting through stuff in the sewing room. It got into my knitting bag somehow.

The cables are for my Cabled Hobo Bag. I think I mentioned before that I'm using the cheapest of cheap yarn for this project -- fifty cents for a bag of four balls. My wild guess is that I'll have enough yarn to finish, even though there were styrofoam balls hidden inside the yarn, which threw my original wild estimate of the yardage way off. Knitting with thrift store yarn is such an adventure, isn't it?

I just realized yesterday after catching up on digests from a couple of the big knitting lists how grateful I am for the knitters who use inexpensive yarns and share their sometimes downright fantastic results with the rest of us. Because there are too many nasty yarn snobs out there spreading horror stories.

No one is making them knit with acrylic from Walmart. No one is making them shop at Knitpicks. So why are they so damn determined to make the knitters who like knitting with acrylic buy high end yarns?! What's with all the bitterness?

I'm not talking about knitters who point out that knitting with nicer yarn will get you nicer results. Or that people shouldn't go to the LYS expecting help with the cheap supplies they bought someplace else. I'm talking about the people who answer a question about whether it'll work to knit a log cabin blanket with hand-me-down acrylic with the advice to throw it away. I've read warnings that knitting with acrylic will drain the soul out of a knitter. I've read that knitters who can't afford anything better than acrylic should take up plastic canvas instead of knitting.

And I've started to fall for it more than once. Which makes me mad at myself because I should know better than to listen to total strangers without considering that almost every sweater I owned until a few years ago was acrylic and I liked them just fine. But it's easy to forget things like that when you're learning something new and everyone is telling you the same thing.

deep breath

I've let myself get way too cranky up over this. There's plenty to be happy about. Leif's side has finally stopped leaking like one of those plastic drink and wet baby dolls so he won't need more surgery. I've got a yummy pork roast thawing for dinner. And I found a pattern for a knitted trilobite.

I keep casting things on.



This cute little thing (Katja from the Spring 2006 issue of Knitty) found its way onto my needles last night. I couldn't remember where I'd put the pattern or the yarn, but suddenly they were right there and I was happily knitting away. I'm doing the bottom portion in the round because I'd already started it on circulars and it suddenly didn't make any sense at all to keep squishing the stitches back and forth when I could just join them and go round and round and not have a seam to sew up later.

It's taken me maybe four hours to get this far, and I've only got a few rounds to go before it's done. The yarn is TLC Cotton Plus, leftover from the kerchief scarf I knitted last year. And it's cute!

There are a few more things I want to start right this second, but I think I'm out of Denise cables. Gotta order more of those once I've made it through this round of the yarn diet....

I still hate hospitals, although I guess this stay was easier than my last few. Leif's surgery went well and is supposed to have fixed his kidney problems. He slept most of the time and I sat next to him and started three new projects.



The red thing is a top I'm making for Alex out of Red Heart Casual Cotton I picked up on clearance a while back.

The purple lace is a scarf is for my mom's birthday.

And the green cables are going to be a Cabled Hobo Bag, if I have enough yarn. It looked like enough, but then I tried to stick my cable needle into the yarn and realized that someone had wrapped them around styrafoam balls. Why would anyone do that?

This is NOT fair. I've had my fair share of stupid little garbage and big scary garbage to deal with lately. And now my bad luck is eating my YARN!!!

I was moving stuff from my little sewing corner in the dining room up to the real sewing room so that no one will mess with it while I'm gone and went to pick out some sock yarn so that I could cast on for Pomotomous or maybe Baudelaire while I'm up at the hospital. One skein at the top of the sock yarn box had ends sticking out of it like a little tan hedgehog. ACK! I don't know what moth damage looks like, but there's no way this could be anything else. Even if I tried to convince myself that one of the kids had gone after it with a pair of scissors, there are casings.

The rest of the sock yarn looks fine and both boxes went straight into the chest freezer. Dollar wise, that's the most expensive chunk of my stash, so I'm sick to my stomach just thinking that there were moths having a happy little buffet in there. The skein they did get was old thrift store stuff (but it's been in my stash long enough that I know the moths didn't come home with it) But there's my Knitpicks yarn in the colors they don't make anymore, and my few treasured skeins of Opal, and I just feel sick.

The good news is that it was in the sewing room, which is all self-contained so I don't have to worry about chemical warfare in the rest of the house. Bill is supposed to be bringing me home bug bombs -- if not, I'll go to the store myself when he gets back. As much as I hate filling the air with that crap, I'm going to make sure every last living thing in that room is poisoned. It can stay sealed up til I get back, then I'll air it out and see if I can figure out how bad the damage. None of the other skeins looked damaged. If I rewind them and don't find any breaks or casings, can I assume they're okay to knit with?

Except for my sock and laceweight yarn, 90% of what I've got is acrylic and cotton. I still had the gorgeous hand dyed roving my mom bought from a friend of hers in my hands, so it's safely sealed in plastic and back in the dining room.

Take that sick feeling I got in my stomach when the little girl who'd been playing with my babies at karate happily announced that she had lice and multiply it by a really big number.

sigh

Someone please remind me that moths aren't the worst thing that could happen and that my baby's going to be okay.

Three days til Leif's surgery and I'm starting to panic and wonder if we really should have agreed to let them operate on his teeny tiny little kidney to fix a problem that hasn't caused him any health problems so far. I don't want to do this to him. I don't want to wait until he has kidney damage. We've got two opinions. I'm going to do what the doctors say is best for him, but I don't have to like it.

I should have packed my knitting last week when my head was full of projects I wanted to bring. Right now, I can't even manage to find the patterns for the few things I remember were on the list. At least they were internet freebies and I can print new copies.

Leif's little blue cardigan is done...



Isn't it cute? This is by far one of the most successful things I've ever knit. It fits with just enough growing room. It's cute. I had fun knitting it and used up some old stash yarn that was supposed to be a baby sweater for Quinn.

After I finished that one, I started another project, the "Everyone's Doing It" shrug. Here's a link to the picture and pattern I can't get the pattern link from the picture to come up on my computer - hopefully the one I'm using is the same!

Yarn and Fabric Diet Update

It's eight days into my second try at the yarn diet. Round 1 was a miserable failure -- partly because I kept running into yarn and fabric buying opportunities that weren't likely to be repeated and partly because there was so much other garbage going on that I decided to just buy what I really wanted and start over in a couple of weeks. I'm not going to admit how much I spent.

This time, I'm doing a much better job. I did spend $4.33 on a couple of Halloween novelty prints this afternoon, but the cute little skeletons were dancing and playing leap frog and I didn't want to risk waiting until the witch print was gone because I can see the quilt so clearly in my mind.

I've printed up a bunch of patterns that I'm thinking about trying for the Mystery Sock KAL and need to pair them up with yarn before I head to the hospital. They should be fun to play with. And I love the button, but I can't get Blogger to upload any images.


Day 8 of the stash diet - 21 hours knitted, 79 hours to go, $4.33 spent ...

After yesterday's post and lousy photography attempt, I got a lot more done on Leif's little cardigan. There's not a lot left to do, just knit straight until it's long enough and then add the sleeves. I can do that! And I can even show you what color the thing really is...



Then, because I started thinking about the hospital and got myself too worked up to sleep, I got out of bed at midnight and cast on Tater's Cotton Cardi for Alex. The instructions aren't as clear as Leif's cardigan, but because I did his, I think I know what I'm supposed to be doing on this one. Maybe.

This afternoon, Mom drove down and we started our stained glass window wall quilts.



Heath was fascinated by how we traced the pattern onto fusible web and cut the fabric to the exact shape we needed. I'm not sure WHY he was so impressed by our window tracing and cutting skills, but it sparked a great idea for a wall quilt for him. Picture dinosaur bones lying on the ground. Now why can't I come up with a drawing of that and cut out the bone shapes instead of making windows? Light fabric underneath for the bones...dark fabric on top for the dirt... This could work!

The world is getting weirder. When I drove Alex up to town for her karate lesson on Thursday, everyone was talking about bombs that had gone off around town. There was nothing on the news about local scary stuff (not that explosives in sports drinks aren't scary enough!), so I assumed it was just a bunch of rumors. After the knitting guild meeting yesterday, Sue reminded us that our cars had been parked for a while and we should check underneath them before we got in.

One of the bombs that did go off on Thursday was five blocks from our old house. Have I mentioned how glad I am that we don't live in Salem anymore?

My infatuation for the log cabin blanket came to an abrupt end last night. I don't exactly hate it, but I'm not planning to work on it again any time soon. The random placement of colors is starting to look wrong and I'm worrying about it way too much and it's time to cast on something else. There are some interesting ideas on the Mason Dixon KAL about what to do with the center square that have me plotting more log cabin blankets, but that's in the distant future.

This morning I started the Easy Baby Cardigan, an online freebie from Knitting Pure and Simple. Bonnie on Knitting Mothers just finished one and it's cute as can be. After a brief moment when I realized that my plan to start the collar and measure the stitch gauge from that wouldn't work because the gauge is supposed to be in stockinette and another moment when I started to worry about whether or not I'd be able to figure out all of those markers and increases, it's going great. The Denim Twist Wool-Ease looks great knitted up, and I've got that wonderful sense of contentment that comes when you realize that stash yarn is really going to become something cute instead of just sitting there forever looking like a bad idea. I bought this stuff when Quinn was the size Leif is now and if I'm going to make a sweater to fit one of my own babies, it's now or never.



It looks black in the picture, but it's really this great combination of dark and darker blue. I think it's going to look even nicer in the sweater than it does in the skein, and I really like the way it looks in the skeins.

I've been deliberately ignoring the date, and certain people who seem determined to count down the days, but it finally hit at about midnight last night that Leif's surgery is soon. In an attempt to keep myself from thinking about how we're going to be in the hospital for three days and how freaked out hospitals make me, I'm planning which yarn and patterns to take with me.

I'm definitely going to take some of the wonderful stuff that Denise brought back from the Brown Sheep outlet for me. The purple Cotton Fleece is going to become a lace scarf. The yellow superwash is for my Rapunzel socks. Not sure about the rest, but it's gonna be something good.

I've got this sudden crazy urge to knit afghans. I've actually had it since I started knitting a few years ago, but it's suddenly gotten stronger, fueled by the book I picked up at the library so I'd have something to look at during Alex's karate class. There are six patterns in here I can see myself starting. And then there's the Flying Geese Blanket and the Mitered Square Blanket and the Keepsake Baby Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting. Not to mention the Log Cabin one I'm already working on. I'm fighting the urge to make a Wal Mart run for more acrylic.

I want afghans. Like the one in the top picture, which is crocheted, not knitted, but only a couple of family members would know the difference and that's because Great Grandma didn't knit. At least I don't think she did-- she did everything else, so maybe she did knit and we just don't have any surviving examples of her skill.

That afghan is scratchy. If I wasn't so sure it was acrylic, I'd swear that it was partially felted. But she didn't use wool as far as anyone knows. Can acrylic start to felt after 30some years? Did wool come in that nasty shade of green?



The log cabin is growing quickly. I'm knitting away, trying not to think about things like how easy it would be to whip one up in Softee Chunky as a baby gift. Because even though I've cheated like crazy on my yarn diet, I'm going to start being good and resisting temptation. Wish I'd bought a bunch of Denim Style when Wal Mart had it on clearance, because that stuff would make a wonderful squishy cuddly log cabin....

I've been wanting a huge garter stitch or stockinette thing, a project that's always there waiting for me to pick it up and knit another few rows, no matter how my other projects are going or how loud the kids are or what kind of mood I'm in. No counting, no shaping, just lots and lots of knitting.

The ball band dishcloths are great, but they only take two or three hours and then I've got to pick new colors and cast on a new one. Too much thinking and counting involved, even if it is only 40 stitches at a time.

This is starting to seem like the perfect project:



Sure, there's a lot of binding and off and picking up stitches, but I don't have to count them. I've got a vague plan and a laundry basket full of cheap acrylic in colors that thrill me.

Edited 1/31/13 -- These socks are no longer with me. They went through the laundry in a pair of jeans and they're not the same. The wonderful cables just don't show up now that they've been felted. They were my all-time favorite knit socks, so maybe it's time to think about knitting another pair!

This post is linked to Show us Your Socks at Patchwork Times.



These are neat. They've got a fancy looking cable on the top of the foot. They only took two skeins of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. The pattern is an internet freebie. And because they're worsted weight on size 6 needles, they knit up faster than you'd think a pair of size ten socks possibly could.

Socks knit in this gauge might not be suited for long term wear, but I but they'll be just great for keeping my toes warm when I'm knitting on the couch at 2am. And fun to knit beats practical every time as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to do more of these with different stitch patterns on the tops. There's another free sock pattern at d-made -- Rapunzel Socks, which I'm determined to make as soon as I get my hands on the right shade of yellow wool. I've got two skeins of Highland Wool in a gorgeous blue green heathered color and a book full of stitch patterns...

This could become a whole new obsession if I had more wool and wasn't on that stupid yarn diet, which I've broken too many times to even think about another yarn order anytime soon.



And I discovered the Garterlac Dischloth. It's a fun project -- and a lot easier than I thought it would be -- but it's not a ballband warshrag. I don't think I can knit one of these with kids climbing on me, but I said that about the ballband cloth, and by the second one I could do it without the pattern. Maybe I'll get that way with the Garterlac cloth if I knit enough of 'em. Bet they'll make good hospital knitting...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Better than I thought it would! I fell in love with the pattern for How Does Your Garden Grow? at first sight, then had a hard time getting the pdf file to open on my computer...then had to order special green wool just for it...then got totally mystified by the 9 stitch I cord...

I wound up doing 5 stitch I cord with two strands of wool, but by then I'd lost some of my motivation and the "I've got to have one of these" feeling got replaced by "Did I just waste five bucks on wool?" So it sat in my knitting basket for a couple of months and I started to hate it. You'd think that I could look at the picture and figure out that there were 30some leaves, which would mean 60some ends to weave in, and decide maybe this wasn't something I'd enjoy knitting. But I never do that. I fall in love with a potential project and stress over the details later.

Once I finally pulled it out and started the leaves, it went quickly. Even the ends weren't that bad, because they gave me something more entertaining to focus on than the movie Bill was watching on the Spike Network last night. Some thing about flying Chinese warriors with badly dubbed dialogue. Yuck.

My version has less leaves than the pattern calls for. Because I'm short and thought that a less symmetrical arrangement of leaves would look better on me. And because I was sick of knitting leaves and not at all sure that felting was going to make it look any less hideous. The leaves were all distorted and had holes in them from the yarn over increases. The roses were loosely stitched spirals that couldn't possibly hold together in the washing machine.

I should've taken a picture before felting it, but I really didn't think there'd be enough improvement to justify one. Ten minutes in a pillowcase, sloshing around in hot water with a pair of old jeans and I love it just as much as the one in the picture on the pattern. Yippee!

It was too hot to knit. For me, it turned out to be too hot to function at all and I spent a couple of days sitting on the couch hoping for it to cool down enough that my string of miserable headaches would finally come to an end. That's harder than it sounds when you're holding a small baby and hoping not to puke on him.



But I'm much better now. Better enough that the kids and I met my mom in Albany this afternoon to look for quilts. Someone had sent me an email that they had 150 quilts on display in historic buildings downtown and that's really all the excuse I need to load the kids into the car and take off.

The quilts were incredible. There's a cute little quilt store in town that I'd somehow never heard of -- and they had Australian quilting magazines. I didn't know there was such a thing, or that I'd love them so much if there was, but there is and they're full of chickens and scarecrows and country stuff I've got to make for my house. And the older ones were 50% off, making them much cheaper than the plain old quilting magazines at the grocery store, let alone the Japanese ones I did know I wanted but am too cheap to buy.



And this came in the mail yesterday. Twelve THOUSAND yards of quilting thread. I could do a lot with this...

It's HOT!

It might actually be too hot to knit, but if I'm going to spend the day sitting under the ceiling fans and trying to move as little as possible, I might as well do something constructive.

The mobius vest, which I cast on a few days ago, is done. It could have been a bit bigger, but Heath is happy and was even wearing it for a while. The garter stitch was soothing, which I needed this week. And it used up two of the three skeins of Red Heart Grande that I bought on clearance a while back, which is another plus. Buying that yarn somehow made sense at the time. I'm not sure quite why, because it wasn't even that cheap. I think a matching hat -- or maybe hats for both Heath and Quinn -- will use up the last of it.

I found the Traveler socks, which I hadn't picked up since before we left on vacation, finished the first one last night, and got halfway through the second one this morning. Why were these buried in the bottom of my knitting box? They're cute. They're coming out the right size. And they're working up super fast.

And there's the Mystery Stole, which has totally sucked me in. I'm barely keeping up with one repeat of each clue, even though I'd love to have the whole thing done at the end of the six weeks. Can't blame that on the kids -- it's me and my inability to go that long without switching projects. If I spent all of my knitting time on the stole, I could probably keep up, but I don't have (or maybe I don't want?) that kind of discipline.

Oh, and there's a dropped stitch on about row 10, which I didn't notice until now because the ladders were pretending to be yo's. I'm not ripping out that many rows. I wouldn't rip out that many rows even if the mistake was so blatant that it had flashing neon lights around it. I'm going to tack it in place so it doesn't run down any further, and let it keep on pretending to be a bunch of eyelets.

The Shape of a Mother

I think it's supposed to be good news that the Durango didn't get totalled Sunday when the brakes failed and it went across the highway and into the ditch. (The real good news is that Bill was the only one in it and no other cars happened to be on the highway at that particular moment so it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been.) Now we get to wait three weeks for it it to be fixed so we can trade it in for something that won't try to kill us. While we're waiting, we're down to the 20 year old Honda that won't fit the whole family. So I'll be spending most of my time at home. Hopefully that means I'll have lots of time to knit.

Today's post on Knit and Tonic inspired me to pull out the cute little red top I knitted ages ago and only wore once before I got pregnant. I was thinking I'd wear it when I take Alex to karate this afternoon, then I tried it on and discovered that, while it stretches nicely to accommodate my latest bra size, that makes it a tiny smidge shorter than I'd like.

I was reading through some more knitting blogs, debating whether to use the left over yarn to add some kind of edging, or just shove the top back into the box it came from until my tummy gets flatter, and found The Shape of a Mother. I'll be wearing my top today.

Vintage Puppy Dogs?

Brownsville was having its annual city-wide garage sale today, which the kids and I stumbled across by accident. I got a big stack of unused math and reading workbooks, clothes for the babies, some really nice magnets for the fridge...and yarn.



Fifty cents for seven skeins of baby yarn and a pattern book from 1947.



This cute little guy was sitting in a shallow cardboard box under a table in a woman's garage. She was talking to someone else about how she knew some of the things she was selling were worth money, but she had no idea how to price any of it. There were more dogs underneath the top one that hadn't been appliqued to the background squares yet.

They've got to be old. I haven't come across anything like them at any of the estate sales I've been searching. I was trying to figure out how much would be too much, sure they were worth more than I wanted to pay, when she asked if I'd pay a quarter. I thought garage sale deals like that were a thing of the past!



The dog has twelve little buddies and also came with the cardboard template the original quilter had made. There are some other little bits I can't figure out - petals, maybe? I wish I'd asked the lady if she knew who started this project so I could add her name to the quilt label if I ever am able to assemble them into a finished quilt. She might even have been able to guess at their age.

I was determined to finish Clue 1 of the Mystery Stole by tonight at the very latest so I could get started on Clue 2. I thought that if I didn't spend any time writing blog entries, I might get it done. Then my head got all stuffy and I didn't trust myself to count right. And this happened:



Mom came over and we experimented with freezer paper applique and I figured out how to put the right foot on my sewing machine for free motion quilting. This piece of fabric is going to be a tote bag. I bought the pattern and fabric after seeing the bag at the monthly Craft Warehouse quilting thing. Another one of those projects that was a huge splurge at the time. And I was doing really well until the directions told me to quilt it. I probably could've managed straight lines, but I wanted undulating curves around the houses and trees and was scared to death that I'd ruin my wonderful fabric if I tried it by machine and knew that hand quilting it would take forever -- not that I knew how to do that either.

Do you see those wonderful undulating curves? I really hope the rest of the fabric and the pattern that tells me how to finish this thing are where I think they are.

Needless to say, I didn't get Clue #1 finished in time.

I've got this need to knit, felt, quilt, embroider, take a bleach-pen to, freezer paper stencil, or whatever else I've just seen on a blog or the dangerous DIY network, absolutely EVERYTHING! I'm in love with my mystery stole (suspicious that my gauge is gonna make it way too small, but loving that undulating lace pattern), finally getting something done on How Does Your Garden Grow?, went out yesterday to dig through the bins at the Goodwill outlet for t-shirts to cut up so I can knot the loops together and knit a rug like they did in Mason Dixon knitting, just printed a bunch of stuff I found on Knitting Pattern Central...

How could I not want to knit a Cabled Hobo Bag, or the Gratuitous Cables Shrug -- cabling as though there's no tomorrow! -- or the Lace Wings Fixation Socks. I've even got a single skein of blue Fixation. And the two skeins of Wool-Ease that shrug calls for.

The kids are asleep, there's good stuff on TV tonight, and I'm going to go see what I can get done before they start waking up again!

Knitting With Sunshine

What seems like a long time ago, I ordered a bunch of yarn from Elann with plans to make myself some cute little summer tops. The red yarn got knitted up, but I never had much of a chance to wear the top before I got pregnant again. The yellow yarn and the pink multicolored stuff, along with the rest of the red yarn, have been sitting in my stash and bugging me ever since.

Now that I'm finally done being pregnant for the second time since buying the yarn, I've got a problem. I can't make those tops. I've gained a couple of inches in the bust and don't measured right in the first place *and* I can't remember what magazine the patterns were in or what they were called or looked like... And I can't just go out and buy new yarn for different tops because I'd feel bad about splurging on the old yarn.

So I made a lacy little top for Alex. That yarn was like knitting with sunshine. Too bad I can't order more of it to make something for myself!

Staying Home

I can't remember the last time I got to spend a whole day at home with no place I had to go and nothing much I had to worry about getting done. The kids are fed, the house is mostly picked up, and I know what I'm going to cook for dinner. The big two have been watching a Harry Potter DVD and I've been up in the sewing room with the babies working on this:

The bookcase was mine when I was little. Yup, I seem to be emotionally attached to everything these days. When Mom and Dad got their new place it was headed for the garage sale and I snagged it for the future playroom -- more because it was a free bookcase than because it had been mine. It even sat in there for more than a month before I decided it would be more useful in the sewing room than a dark empty space that, face it, might never become anything at all. When we do finish the playroom, I'll buy 'em a new book case. Or relocate the one that's in Heath's room.

I got the furniture wrestled into place last week. Today, it was time to refold and stack the fabric. This is probably 2/3 of what I own, if you don't count weirdly shaped scraps or stuff that's destined for specific projects. I swing between being surprised at how much cotton I've actually got and being elated that there's still so much empty space on those shelves. And there's a huge empty space behind it, perfect for storing the boxes of stuff that belongs in the sewing room but I don't really feel like dealing with anytime soon.

Lately, I've been reading back issues of American Patchwork and Quilting from the library and reading the profiles of different quilters in each issue and seeing their rooms full of fabric and finished quilts has me anxious to finally get my own room looking the way I want it to.

The noisy yarn is enjoying it's new life as a felted box (pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting.) I used two strands and I'm so pleased with the way it looks now that I may leave it unfelted. I'd like to make it just a bit sturdier, but I don't want the felting to destroy the things I like about it. So I'm felting another swatch to help me make up my mind.

And to top it all off, there's a new issue of Knitty with at least half a dozen projects I'm dying to cast on. Yippee!

It's a Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono! And a heartbreakingly cute little baby who doesn't want to wear it! But if he can insist on being wide awake at 1am, I can insist on taking his picture. I used 2 skeins of Bernat Softee Chunky and between the larger gauge and just a couple of minor length adjustments, it fits Leif perfectly. The underarm seams could be a LOT better, but it was 1am and it's a quicky baby sweater, not an heirloom.

After that cabled pink sweater I made Alex, I know I said I'd never use this stuff again, but she kept insisting on wearing it and after being washed and dried repeatedly the uneven stitches that made me hate it all started to behave and it softened up and developed this wonderful drapy quality. And it's dirt cheap at WalMart.

And here are the warshrags, the first seven of what I'm sure will be an insane number. The ones on the left match my kitchen, the ones in the middle are nice and Springy, the ones on the right are really really bright

A Mobius Autopsy

After a careful examination of this miserably felted swatch, it's been determined that the mobius cast on was entirely successful. The lack of felting may be the fault of the loud yarn which still thinks it wants to be a birdhouse, or of too-large needles resulting in a ridiculously loose stitch gauge. The blue gunk can be entirely blamed on the stupid pair of K-mart clearance jeans that fit for a whole half a day after I bought them.

The jeans have been banned from all future felting attempts and the yarn is being given a second chance as a felted box because it just might behave if I used two strands and worked at a tighter gauge and ran it through the wash with a different pair of jeans.

This Yarn is Loud

I started to unravel the sweater Monday, thinking I'd use the yarn for one of the nifty felted boxes from Mason Dixon Knitting. Then it started to whisper that what it wants to be when it's all done is a felted birdhouse. That's one of the yarn diet rules, you know. The yarn you're trying to use immediately starts whining that what it really would work best as is the thing you'd have to go out and buy a pattern for.

I'm not buying a new pattern to make a scratchy thrift store sweater happy, even if it does seem to be handspun. It's just going to have to shut up and be a box. Or a mobius bowl, because A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting finally came in at the library after months and months of waiting and I can't get over how fantastic those baskets and bags are!

A Hundred Hours

I got out of bed before 6am to work on this and watch a zombie movie. I wasn't sure about the stitch pattern or the movie at first, not until I figured out that it would look neater if I crossed over one stitch at a time and the zombies turned up. Now I'm hoping the movie has a commentary so I can watch it again at naptime and get some more done on the Dream Swatch.

I've got this plan. Before I buy any more yarn or fabric or whatever, I'm going to spend a hundred hours working with what's already in my stash. The plan was inspired by UseWhat I Have and Finish What You Have and a question one on of the lists about what you'd knit if you had to knit EVERYTHING in your stash before buying everything new.

That last one was just scary. I know it was just a question, not a serious suggestion, but it still sent a chill through me. Once I calmed down again, I started thinking it might be fun to go through my stash and make a list of what I could do with all of that yarn. I will do that, once I get some time up in the sewing room.

Right now, though, I'm giving myself a chance to use some of my yarn and fabric to make some of the stuff I've had planned since two pregnancies ago. Or some new stuff -- as long as I'm using existing stash, printing patterns off of the internet or checking out books from the library is okay.

I figure it'll take a couple of months to do that much knitting/sewing/whatever. I don't know if I'll wind up doing a bunch of little projects or a couple of big ones -- whatever I feel like doing with what I've got counts. I'm still working out the rules. Unravelling the sweaters I bought to recycle counts. Preshrinking and ironing quilt fabric counts. Going through Mom's two bins of scraps and cutting out squares for the I Spy counts. Winding yarn from skeins into balls counts. Reorganizing my binders of knitting patterns or searching for a specific pattern I can't find doesn't.

5 hours done, 95 to go...

What was I doing?

It's our fourth full day at home and I still haven't had a chance to settle in with one of my projects. I've tried to do two major grocery shopping trips and both times had to rush through the store with screaming babies and forgotten half the stuff I meant to buy. I've also been out twice to buy yarn -- isn't it convenient when you can get yarn and groceries under the same roof? And strawberry picking with the kids and to a quilt show and to the library and to Kaiser to get another ultrasound of Leif's kidney... I'm really ready for a chance to sit down!

Until I checked the list of WIPs on my sidebar, I couldn't even remember what I was working on before we left. The quilts, which aren't on the list. A summer top for Alex...the traveler socks...the feather and fan shawl, which I've decided was just a swatch so I won't feel guilty about unravelling it and using the yarn for something else...the Regia Jubilee socks...How Does Your Garden Grow? which is still just a long piece of green I-cord...

And the warshrags, which deserve a post of their very own.

I've been travelling with my husband and the kids -- and my socks. Wow! After one miserable attempt last year that involved a poorly maintained road and a cranky skein of Euroflax, I hadn't tried knitting in a moving car. I expected to maybe knit a few rounds on my sock when we stopped for gas, if none of the kids needed me to take them in to the bathrooms or change a diaper. But I pulled it out on a boring stretch of I-5 and the next thing I knew, it was an inch long and I was ready to do the heel, mostly with my eyes on the road. (And because there are other knitters out there who love to jump to the worst possible conclusion, I'll add that I was in the passenger seat, NOT driving, and I've heard all of the nasty speculation about what would happen if the airbags went off while I was holding sharp pointy things.)

There were some nervous moments when I had to ladder up a dropped stitch and figure out what to do with an accidental YO a few rows after the fact, but they were worth it because those boring stretches flew by. I'm not sure how just keeping my hands moving could possibly make such a difference, but it did.



We found a shoe tree! It doesn't show up well in the picture (you can click on it for the bigger version), but there are hundreds of shoes wedged up in the branches and hanging in big clumps. Bill doesn't think the multi-colored lump lying there on the dashboard looks anything like a sock, but I know that another knitter would be able to tell.

We kept driving and the sock kept growing. I wasn't to excited about the leg, because the broken rib pattern I originally had in mind would have meant counting, then I remembered what Bonnie posted to Knitting Mothers about alternating random bands of stockinette and garter and ribbing and suddenly I was having all sorts of fun.

I added three color repeats to my latest Mason Dixon warshrag while sitting in a Motel 6 parking lot at midnight with a really fussy baby on my lap, wondering why I was out there because no one in the place could possibly be sleeping through that thunderstorm, especially when one crack set off every car alarm in the parking lot. I got lucky and was only out there an hour before he finally fell asleep.



We made it to Utah and the sock sat neglected in my purse while we dug trilobites and hiked a bit and took the kids to every cheap or free museum we could find and drove a bit. Posion Spider Mesa was never a possibility because we don't have the axles or gear ratio or whatever else we need to tackle something like that. The stupid Durango kept overheating anyway, so we barely left the pavement at all. The one year I'm finally not pregnant and can handle some rough roads!



By far the best knitting on the trip was in the campground right before dawn when I finished another warshrag while watching the sun come up over the rocks. I was going to try to get up early again the next morning (hopefully without the raging migraine that woke me up the first time), but the hiking turned my legs to jelly and it was too much work to crawl out of my sleeping bag.

It was a great trip, but I'm glad to be home!

Knitting Helps

I have been moody lately. I have been cranky lately. I haven't been knitting lately. Wonder why it took me so long to make the connection...

Knitting is calming and soothing and makes me feel better. Even when it's a baby hat that lasts all of fifteen minutes before I realize that the cute little I-cord top knot is going to be on the inside because I did something wrong. Or a worsted weight acrylic shawl that I'm not sure I'm doing right because mine looks nothing like the picture. I may keep going to see how it looks after a few more repeats or post a question to the list I found it on. Or frog it and make the baby blanket I was going to use that yarn for.

The important thing is that knitting made me feel better.



And last night, I cast on new socks. These are working. These are going to get finished. I'm going to protect them so they don't meet the same sad fate as the Pretty Comfy socks or the Opal socks and get their needles ripped out by a small person who doesn't realize how mean to his mommy he's being. I should probably put in a safety line to protect them from me.

The pattern is Traveller Socks. I'm using dpns instead of the Magic Loop and my usual toe instead of the one in the pattern. I've added to the stitch count so it'll fit my feet. I guess about the only thing I am using is the suggested yarn weight and the cable. I really really like this cable. There's stuff twisting and shifting every other row and I've never done anything that has me purling from the cable needle. It's fun.

I can't wait until the kids are in bed so I can play with it some more. That's at least ten hours from now. Unless I can get them to nap.

If I loved my sewing room before, I can't come up with the words to describe how I feel about it now. Ever since my parents brought over the steamer trunk and doll house and cedar chest last week, I've been fighting the urge to jump up and down screaming "it's mine mine mine mine mine!" I thought it would be bursting at the seams once I finally got everything in there, but there's room to spare and I've still got the bed, which I need for nursing the baby and blocking stuff on.



I've been waiting twenty years to get the steamer trunk. It's been mine since I was in junior high, but it's been in Mom and Dad's attic the whole time. The only reason I've finally got it now is because they sold the house and had to move it. It's probably close to a hundred years old, and it's been in the family since it was new, which makes it even more of a treasure. I think I'm going to keep lace weight and sock yarn in the drawers, which aren't very sturdy.



Grandpa made the doll house for me when I was three. Now it's full of yarn. The cedar chest belonged to my other set of grandparents and was on its way to Good Will or a garage sale. It's kind of ugly, but I wasn't about to turn down a free cedar chest.

At 5am this morning, I was curled up on the couch in the front room (my oldest woke me up at 4:30 because she had a tummy ache, so I was up anyway) trying to figure out how to do buttonhole stitch. By the time I got to the second teacup, it was starting to look fairly presentable.



I got all three teacups outlined before the rest of the family needed me to do much of anything. And, while the babies were napping this afternoon, I took apart my sewing machine and cleaned it, which solved the nasty tension problems I've been having. That's a huge weight off my shoulders because even though I knew I could take it in to the sewing machine store, I still had the awful looming dread that it would never work right again and I'd have to use my nine year old's machine.

Now I've just got the three teapots to outline, and a whole lot of little tiny squares to piece together.

It's a Start

Now I've got to find some black embroidery floss to outline the applique with and finish cutting the 210 little bitty squares to make the borders.

It's been a productive two days!



I finally finished the pineapple hat, which felt like a lot more work than a baby hat should be. Those 200+ purl 3 togethers just about did me in. But the color and texture are great. I'd make the leaves shorter if I did it again, which I don't really want to, but Alex would wear one and I've got enough yellow yarn left over. Wonder how many purl 3 togethers there'd be if I sized it up for a 9 year old...

I put the new baby swing together last night, which ate up most of my knitting time and was an even worse pain than the pineapple. But is totally worth it because the little baby boy who must be held by mommy at all times LIKES it!!!! I got rid of the old swing when we were moving so I could justify buying one of the nice new ones they've got now, then somehow forgot that there was such a thing. I am SO excited about this swing and the possibility that I'll have enough time to pee or make lunch without him crying.



And, as of about 12:45am, Chaos is done and came out a lot better than I thought it would. I cast on earlier this year, when I was finally out of the hospital and could get my hands on the color yarn I wanted and some dice. The random cables kept me entertained and happy until I realized that the front and back weren't the length they needed to make the button band at the shoulder. (A row gauge problem?) I'm not a fan of buttons on baby sweaters anyway, and I was so sure I couldn't make it work that I shoved it into a drawer and have been ignoring it ever since. Tonight, I undid the neck shaping, knit four more rows of the cable pattern, and turned it into a sort of boatneck thing. Maybe not the best choice for a baby who can squirm out of his cute little sleepers like Houdini, but an impractical sweater's more useful than an unfinished one.

At the Bird Feeder

We're getting used to lots of cute little fellas snacking at our bird feeders, but Heath was surprised when he got up this morning and found this one! I think his new name is Airforce.

The pattern is "Birdie" from Handknits for Kids by Lucinda Guy. I used leftover Caron Simply Soft for the main color and some ancient Caron Wintuk for the belly and beak. I started him because I thought he'd give me a chance to practice my finishing skills, but by the time I got the last little bird piece done, I gave in to bad lighting and impatience and the difficulty of seeing backstitching on dark blue yarn and he's probably the worst finishing I've ever done. But the kids like him. And did I mention that he's done?

Now on to the pineapple hat....