Finally, this sweater is worth showing a picture of!



I really liked the cables on the sleeves and hem of Briar Rose, but my first thought was why not make it a top down raglan? Lately I've had good luck with those. And bad luck with seams.

Alex's current favorite top is a raglan with a wide neckline and 3/4 sleeves, a style which would make my 600some yards of yarn more likely to be enough, so I measured the neck and sleeves and figured out my gauge and cast on.

Neckline #1 was a stupid disaster. I don't know how it took me quite so long to realize that, but I should've noticed a lot sooner than I did.

Neckline #2 was slightly less of a disaster and it took me just as long to see the danger signs. If not longer. I wasn't willing to frog the whole thing again, so I kept going until I had a sleeve done and then tried to wrestle it into submission.

It took me until way past midnight, but the neck just fine now, Instead of a gaping, curling, stockinette monstrosity, there's ribbing that looks exactly like it should.

It won't slide down over her shoulders and drop to the ground! And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have enough yarn to finish the rest of it.

I think I'm in trouble....

I don't even remember what I was Googling for when I stumbled across the Lace Shawl KAL and the Mountain Lace KAL, but from there I found out about the Lacy Lattice Stole and the Seraphim Shawl and the Diamond Fantasy Shawl and got reminded of the Hidcote Garden Shawl and my poor little brain is now overflowing with lace fantasies. Not that it wasn't overflowing before...

Aside from all of the other lace --and quilts and sweaters and everything else -- I've been trying to resist Cookie A's 2007 Sock Collection. I don't need more patterns for socks and shawls. I've got a huge stack of patterns that I'm dying to knit.

But I really want to add those shawls and socks to my list. Almost as much as I'm wanting More Sensational Knitted Socks and Alison Hyde's upcoming book.

I didn't realize until this morning that I forgot to write about the incident that sparked yesterday's little anti-heirloom rant. (And I'm not against heirlooms, I'm against the attitude that everything we make should be treated like a precious treasure destined to be passed down through the ages.)

A friend had asked if I had a picture of my Swallowtail shawl and I responded that I take pictures of all of my FOs before something happens to them. Not two hours later, Heath wore his new sweater to the park and was sloshing around in the stream looking for neat rocks. And throwing mud at his buddies, who of course threw mud back at him. We mommies did quickly put an end to that game, but only because we didn't want the muck in our cars.



And, speaking of things that aren't destined to be heirlooms, my Turkish String Bag is done. I like it well enough, and I might do another one someday, but if I do, I'll use much cheaper yarn. This really shouldn't have been a $20 project. What sounds kind of tempting is to get a cone of Peaches n Cream at WalMart and knit up a bunch of matching ones for the groceries, but I think that's just the part of me that'll jump at absolutely any reason to buy more yarn talking.

Pattern: Turkish String Bag
Yarn: 2 1/2 skeins all hemp HEMP6
Needles: Denise size 13

I think tonight's plan is to work on the new sweater and see if my plan to salvage the neckline will actually work. Wish me luck!

I'm not slaving over future heirlooms here.



There's a lot of advice floating around about how to make sure the handknits will last down to the grandkids -- knit for the older kids so things can be handed down to the littler ones...knit it in a neutral color...knit it in a classic style...and then there's that trick about doing the button bands on a cardigan so the buttons can be switched from the girl side to the boy side.

The quilts are supposed to be wrapped in acid-free tissue, carefully taken out and refolded every few months to prevent creases from weakening the fibers....the needlework is supposed to be kept out of direct light...and appraised in case the house burns down and it's destroyed...

I don't do any of that. I want to knit and quilt and stitch a whole bunch of stuff and if it all lasts forever, sooner or later the house will be full. My heroine is a lady who posted to the knitlist ages ago that she sends her kids out to play in their sweaters so she'll have an excuse to knit more of them.

Were the farm wives who made all of those wonderful feedsack quilts stressing out over how many years the fabric would last? And look at how many of those are still around and in decent shape.

My favorite heirlooms are the accidental ones. The tole painted daisies my mom was getting rid of because she'd done the same painting for herself, her mother, and my father's mother, and they've all come back to her. Which are now at my house because I want at least one example of what she spent so many years doing. The sock monkey Grandma Walters made. The honey jar my Grandma Marr made that sat on her kitchen counter for decades, unused because she accidentally glazed the top to the base.

Hopefully some of my projects do survive longer than I do -- and please let them be good ones, not the ones I keep hoping will get lost or melted in the dryer or eaten by wild animals.

I can imagine the sampler as an heirloom, but not unless I break down and spend the money to have it framed.

It's an H!



The big goal for this sweater was that it be roomy and bulletproof. I think I succeeded on both counts -- especially the bulletproof part. This is the plastic-iest Red Heart Supersaver I've worked with in a while. I had to drag four kids into three different stores to get the color I wanted and by the time I found it, I never even thought to touch the stuff. (The texture really can vary a lot from skein to skein.) By the time I got it home and felt it, I wasn't going back. Hopefully it'll soften up in the wash. If it doesn't, Heath won't care.

And it's just roomy enough. Halfway through the back, I started to really worry that it was going to be too huge. I came so close to making the whole thing a few inches shorter.... And that would have been bad, because my son refuses to admit when he's outgrown any article he likes. And he likes this.

Pattern: It's sort of this. With different yarn, a different gauge, and different construction. I did follow the chart for the H.
Yarn: 3 skeins Red Heart Super Saver -- although looking at my leftovers, I think I only actually used 2 skeins worth. I borrowed the brown from my log cabin blanket. Guess I should put it back before I forget where it came from and it gets mixed in
with something else.

Look what I slogged my way through last night -- two Weasley sweater sleeves, the same length and with matching decreases. And a few more rounds of my Turkish String Bag. And the cast on and first few rows of a Rabbit Proof Scarf. I spent four hours with a couple of DVDs and my knitting spread out across the couch, switching back and forth between projects whenever I felt like it. I didn't plan to work on the sleeves at all, but at one poitn I wanted to keep my eyes on the movie instead of my needles and before I kenw it, there were only ten more rows to go.

Open Water 2 was actually pretty good. The Marsh wasn't worth the dollar I spent to rent it, unless you count the white cables that the heroine kept wearing. I counted at least three different sweaters and a wide scarf thing with a wooden button in the front. I guess it would technically be a stole of a shawl, but it had more of a scarfy feel to it. I want one, but mine won't be white and mine will have prettier cables and less fringe.

Between the movies and the knitting, I had to force myself to finally put the yarn away and go to bed at 2am. Then I laid awake and worried about which sweater to cast on next. Until the baby woke up at 2:15. And again at 5:00.

I did get a little more sleep and woke up later knowing exactly what I want to work on next. But I think I'm too tired to swatch.

Diane made an organic cotton cotton shopping bag, which reminded me of that red hemp I bought a couple of years ago when I was so sure I wanted to knit a stretchy string bag. I'd gotten all excited about a pattern and spent some time tracking down the exact yarn it called for. I don't know why -- I never go out and buy the exact yarn a pattern calls for.

But this time I was determined to have the hemp, and it had to be red. I ordered four skeins so I could make the large size, because bags should be large. The yarn aged in my stash for a while before I cast on and discovered that the stupid pattern wanted me to cast on a whole bunch of stitches and join them so I could knit the whole bag in the round and then sew up the bottom later. I wasn't going to do that. A seam at the bottom of a big stretchy bag sounded like a very bad idea.

So my pretty red hemp sat and aged some more. And then Diane made her bag and I thought about digging it out again, and a string bag knitalong got started, and I read stories about knitters churning them out like they were ballband warshrags or something and the hemp was exactly where I thought it would be and now I'm knitting a bag.

There's a word for what I've been doing for the past few days. I've been slogging -- doesn't that sound nice and productive? Until I found out I was slogging, I thought I was just spending a lot of time getting nowhere.



I signed up for the Mason Dixon Slogalong hoping that it would motivate me to finally make some progress on the Alterknits wrap, but what's got me totally bogged down right now are the sleeves for Heath's Weasley Sweater. I tried twice to pick up the stitches the way the pattern told me to, then decided to work the sleeves separately so I could do them both at the same time and have the decreases and lengths match. Good idea, but it's taking so miserably long to see any progress that I'm rapidly losing my enthusiasm.

The back went quickly because I was anxious to start the front. The front was entertaining, because it had that great big intarsia H to deal with. The tops of the sleeves have the same number of stitches as the body, so it's taking me twice as long to see the same amount of progress.

This is why I usually try to do sleeves first. Because sleeves are boring and they have decreases to keep track of and I'd rather get them out of the way while I'm still all excited about a project. And they're usually narrow, so they make good swatches if I knit one at a time.

I'll keep going because I do have hopes of finishing before it gets too hot outside for Heath to wear it. If I manage an inch or two a night, the whole thing will be behind me soon. Except for the seams. I'm not excited about those, either. Seams never excite me.

Caron Simply Soft is one of my favorite cheap box store yarns, so their new Simply Soft Shadows intrigued me. When I was at Michaels and had an extra 40% off coupon, I picked a up a skein. I think I was going to try to knit Calorimetry out of it.

Then I met the hugely pregnant lady who runs the nursery at our new church. How could I not decide to knit something for a mommy-to-be wearing a nametag on her belly?



It's a modified Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono, based on the changes described here. I added a little bit of garter stitch at the cuffs because I didn't like the way the ones on Leif's kimono came out. It only took an evening and a half to knit and when I bound off there was just enough yarn left in the skein to sew up the seams. I still can't believe I didn't run out.

The yarn is a little nicer to the touch than regular Simply Soft, and I love the muted striping effect. But I'm not sure I'd invest in enough skeins for a big project.

I finished the seams in the church parking lot this morning, took a picture of it on the front seat, and handed it to the mommy-to-be shortly before she left for the hospital.

---

This is what 5000 grams of yarn looks like --



It's not the 5000 grams I'll be knitting my dent out of. I had a picture of the acrylic, but then I re-weighed the bag and realized that it was actually sixteen pounds, not twelve. The scale was on the carpet the first time I weighed it. The bag of sock yarn weighed about the right amount, so it's what I took a picture of.

I've been working on the details --

If I knit up at least 500 grams of yarn a month, it'll only take me until the end of next February. I can go through 100 grams of worsted weight in an extremely productive day, or 50 grams in a more reasonable evening. So that makes five or ten days a month of actually using up yarn. And leaves at least twenty days to quilt or play with laceweight or sock yarn. Or not do anything at all. And I'll still manage to finish before the end of time.

I will knit from my stash, but I can buy new yarn or knitting books to celebrate significant FO's or weight loss. Christmas yarn, or yarn bought with Christmas money, doesn't count. Auction yarn, or any other yarn that falls into my lap, does not count. Thrift store sweaters only count if I go actively looking for them. Garage sale yarn -- oh, I don't know! It's not like I'm not gonna cheat.

If my weighing and guessing and calculating is anywhere near accurate, 5000 grams is about 10% of my stash. It'd be equal to 100 skeins of yarn, if I didn't use so much cheap acrylic. Doesn't that sound like a lot? Enough to be considered a huge dent? I'm using grams instead of yards or skeins because it's the most accurate way I can think of to measure how much yarn I'm actually using.

Oh, and if anyone wants to do this with me, I'd love the company!

I've been happily planning how I might actually knit a dent in my stash, coming up with a plan of attack that should work -- besides the obvious "start knitting and don't stop until you're done" approach. I made one last purchase before promising myself not to buy any more yarn for as long as I can stand it....and I'm already in trouble!

Monday night, I placed what was meant to be my last yarn order for at least a couple of months. I got yarn for the Reversible Lace Rib Shrug With Swing Shaping, which I've been intrigued by since they first posted the pattern months ago, yarn for the Pacific Waves Shawl in Rose Garden, which I've been drooling over for a couple weeks, and five skeins of Calista for that version of the Luna Moth Shawl.

Every single time I place a Knitpicks or Elann order and swear I won't order more yarn anytime soon, they immediately come out with yummy stuff that I can barely live without. It's the way the world works, and I was prepared for it. But I wasn't at all happy when I got my yarn order Friday morning and saw the Peruvian Baby Lace Merino that's going to become available on the 8th. Six hundred yards of 50% Baby Alpaca/ 50% Fine Merino for $4.48! If I'd waited just a couple more days, I could've made Gerda in pink

sigh

Why didn't I think to look at the sneak peeks before placing my order?!

I do love the yarn I ordered, especially the Calista, but it would've been so easy to add another $4 skein of yarn or two or three to the total.

It's not the end of the world. I could spend the rest of my birthday money from Mom and Dad (birthday yarn does not by any stretch of the imagination count as cheating against knitting from my stash or knitting a dent, or whatever it is I'm supposedly doing). I could cheat. Or I could wait until I've finished a big project and celebrate with laceweight.

The Pacific Waves Shawl is big...

So, how long do you think it would take to knit a substantial dent in my yarn stash?

As of last night, I'm trying to find out. The plan is to weigh my finished projects on the kitchen scale and keep track of how much yarn I'm actually using and how long it takes me to knit up 5000 grams.

It should be interesting. I'm afraid it might be downright scary to find out how little yarn I use compared to how much I buy.

Last night, I finally got to start the "H" on Heath's Weasley sweater. Those eight inches of solid stockinette I had to get through before I could start playing with two colors of yarn took days and days, but somehow I'm already up to the cross bar. And it looks decent, unlike my only other attempt at intarsia. I wasn't at all excited about trying it again, but it sounded more fun than duplicate stitch, and this time it hasn't been bad at all.

I love the way the colors work together. I really like the bottom edge. There's an actual name for the edging where you do several rows of stockinette, then a few rows of 1x1 ribbing, then switch back to stockinette, but I can't remember what it is. I probably found it in Knitting on the Edge, or Knitting Over the Edge.

I'm sort of using the pattern here, but I'm modifying things as I go because my yarn isn't the same gauge and I didn't trust plain stockinette not to roll right up to the neckline. I'm sure I'll make some other changes by the time I'm done, because that seems to be what I do lately.

I hope I didn't give the wrong impression about my feelings about my yarn stash in yesterday's post -- I really am excited about knitting with most of it. It's the thought of how long it will take me to make even a little itty bitty dent in the exciting stuff (life's too short to worry about the icky yarn) that could start to stress me out. If I let it. And I'm determined not to let it loom over me like a dark raincloud or a scary to-do list.

I've got plans for that yarn! While I was sorting through it yesterday, I dug out some red hemp to use for the shopping bag KAL over at knittingparents and some worsted weight acrylic for a pair of Horcrux socks.

Yarn lies.

At the old house and here, right after we moved in and all of my stuff was still neatly packed away in the corners of the sewing room, I managed to convince myself that I didn't have that much yarn. It was all hiding quietly in its plastic drawers and bins, and in the cupboard under the coffee table, and at the foot of the stairs that lead up to our attic.

I knew where it all was, and I was sure there wasn't too terribly much of it. I went for a pretty long stretch without buying much, then when I got some money that I could justifiably spend on yarn, I did.

I knitted from my stash for the first three months of 2007 with absolutely no cheating and was feeling pretty good about my need for more yarn.

Then I started to clean up the mess in the sewing room. I bought a bunch of those Zip-Lock Big Bags and started sorting yarn into them -- one for sock yarn, one for dishcloth cotton, a really really big one for all of that acrylic I've bought to make sweaters for the kids...

I've got a scary amount of yarn here! And a sneaking suspicion that "What the heck is this and why on earth did I buy it?" isn't the best attitude to have towards my yarn stash. I did figure out why I'd bought a skein of lime green Supersaver and what I'm going to do with it, but for a moment I had myself worried.

Alex's Aqua Acrylic

I didn't expect to have this finished so early in the day yesterday. To be honest, I didn't know for sure if I was going to finish it at all. I've had a horrible attitude toward this project.

Months and months ago, I stumbled across the pattern on the designer's blog and really thought it was cute. I had some stash yarn that would get the right gauge, so I cast on and promptly got myself lost in the increases that were supposedly so easy I wouldn't need to use markers. It sat and sat and sat and I finally got around to frogging and restarting it.

This time, I kept track of myself in the increases, although I would've liked markers. It turned out that I wasn't quite matching my gauge from the previous attempt, so I added increases in hopes that it would still turn out big enough. And I couldn't figure out what the instructions for the front band and ties actually wanted me to do, so I went with my best guess.

Somehow, it all came together in a little cardigan that fits Alex, and that she's been happily wearing ever since I handed it over to her. I'm so glad she liked the color, because I can't stand it!



I do like the idea of a lacy little cardigan with ties, enough to wonder if I could do something bigger for myself with a different lace pattern and prettier yarn...

Since joining the Harry Potter and the Book Seven KAL, I've managed to re-read the first three books and swatch and cast on for a Weasley Sweater for Heath, but I keep going back to this --



The pattern is Tater's Cotton Cardi and the yarn is some Lion Brand Baby Soft I bought a couple of years ago with plans to make a baby bunting. I don't know how I managed to pick aqua for quite so many projects before deciding that I really don't like the color. I'm glad to have finally used most of it up on something, and Alex is happy with the color. So it all works out.

Except it's gotten REALLY boring. The lace section is just the same row over and over and over and I'd really like to be doing something else. There's other stuff waiting to be done, but I keep picking this thing up. The last time I measured, I only needed three more inches. So it will be done soon. I should keep going.



Rachel asked about the geese. I don't think they have a real purpose. Bill went to the feed store to see if the baby ducks were in and came home with these two guys in a cardboard box. I've heard that once they get big geese make good watch-dogs and will raise a racket if someone comes onto the property. That sounds pretty useful to me.

We took them outside for the first time this afternoon and they followed us around and nibbled at the weeds. Geese are way cuter than chicks!

What would you do if you had fifteen minutes of free time? I read that question in a magazine last week and didn't agree with any of the ideas they suggested. I wouldn't take a bubble bath, or write a letter, or sleep in.... I get those things done with the time I've already got.

It finally hit me that if I had fifteen minutes when I could do absolutely anything, I'd do something about the sewing room. All of those mad dashes in to rummage for this or that have taken their toll. I started plotting to dump the kids on their dad and head up there for a while, but it's been a busy week and he just got a new lawn tractor.

Then we got the geese. The kids want to look at the geese. The geese are penned up just outside my sewing room door. This works! While the kids were watching Sponge Bob and Loco Moco, I dealt with the boxes that Bill shoved into my sewing room to make room for the geese. I can't complain too much -- most of it was mine and really did belong in the sewing room. But I still think I should be the only one who gets to dump stuff in there!

The big kids watched the geese, Leif watched the big kids through the door, and I got to work. The yarn that was on the bed and floor is sorted into those new monster size zipper bags. I hauled the vacuum cleaner out there and sucked up all of the little dead bugs that were all over the windowsill and the bits of broken leaves that I've tracked in over the past year and a half. I made the bed with the chenille spread I've been meaning to put on it. I've got plans to hack it up and make things with it, but for now it's covering the bed. I found a new blade for my rotary cutter and the walking foot for my sewing machine. And some fabric I'll hopefully post about soon.

I'm still plotting how to get those fifteen minutes, but now I'll get to spend it enjoying my little haven.

little distractions

There were thoughts in my head when I went to bed last night, and thoughts when I got up this morning and turned on the computer and then three kids came in and jumped on me and the creative bloggy thoughts all went away. Do everyone else's kids do this to them, or is it just me?

When Alex was a newborn, my entire brain would shut down if she started to cry. Which wasn't much of a problem, because she only cried when she actually needed a meal or a diaper or a cuddle. Heath cried for reasons no one was ever able to figure out -- I still think it must've had something to do with the alignment of the planets because no one could yell that long or that loud without some cause. So I learned to function with a little person screaming at me. For a while.

Now, all it takes is a poorly timed "Mom?" and I totally lose track of which two fabrics I'd just decided would be perfect for the quilt I'm planning. Or what I was going to type, or what I'd walked into the room to find.... I'm starting to worry that the house could be on fire, someone would ask me a question, and I'd forget that we were supposed to leave. But it's probably not that bad yet.

I did have plans to go out this morning, but after hauling the kids all over creation last night and Friday and I don't know how many days in a row before that, I couldn't face even a couple of hours out in the world. So we stayed home and the kids watched a couple of DVDs while I worked on my quilt.




It'll look cuter once the five little monkeys are appliqued on it. I hope.

This quilt does not want to exist. I've cut the fabric wrong -- seven or eight times so far. I've sewed pieces together backwards and then not realized it until I trimmed the seams and it was too late to fix accurately. I've cut the fabric exactly the way the directions told me to and then had it not match up with the other pieces of fabric. But I'm going to finish this thing and I'm not going to go back for more fabric to do it with. If that means extra seams running across the edge of a couple of blocks so I could make the fabric I cut too narrow wide enough to cut those blocks from, I'm fine with it.

I've got four more of the monkey wrench blocks to make, and I think I've got just enough bits of the blue and red to make them work. Not sure what colors I'm going to use for the corners, but I'll find something. It needs some black.

This whole thing has me feeling all happy and productive, especially since I've got an entire evening stretched out in front of me. I could finish those four blocks, or work on the boring part of Alex's cardian, or cast on for something new because I've suddenly got a second set of Denise needles!

Friday Mom and I (and the kids, because they're always where I am) went up to Portland to spend my birthday money and stopped at the little quilt shop that belongs to the same company who runs Knitpicks. There were a few neat odds and ends of yarn for $1 a skein and sitting right there on the shelf was a set of Denise needles with a $15 price sticker on the front. I seriously expected it to be just an empty case, but there was a complete set of needles inside.

I'm still trying to figure out what it was doing there for that price. Obviously it was lost and unwanted and needed to come home with me.

Elann has a new shawl. I want it, despite the fact that I've got yarn for about a dozen other pretty shawls I'm not currently knitting and despite the fact that it would be way too huge for me and I'd have to figure out the math to size it down and would wind up with extra yarn I didn't know what to do with.

But aren't those colors pretty? Wouldn't it be great to snuggle up in on the couch or long car trips? Please, someone enable me and tell me it's a great idea!

I got myself through the past month by promising to treat myself with some new yarn as a reward for going in and getting the nasty dental work done instead of cancelling the appointment and seeing how long I could pretend I didn't notice that hole in my tooth where my filling had fallen out. I spent two and a half hours in the chair. My mouth still aches three days later -- and since it didn't hurt before I went in I am not a happy camper. I absolutely deserve some yarn right now, and if I still love it this much tomorrow, I think I'll go ahead and order it.

I made it through the first three months of knitting from my stash without cheating, then I bought a cheap quilting kit and a skein of yarn and now I'm rethinking the whole thing because I know I'm never going to make it through another six months.

My original reason for knitting from my stash turned out not to be true, so I'm going back to the diet-yarn-diet. After our trip up to Fabric Depot and Knitten Kitten tomorrow!

There's something in the air and I think it's wool.

Yesterday, I met a wonderful lady named Terry who gave me eight pounds of raw fleece (I found her through a Freecycle listing) and then offered to teach me how to use my wheel.

Today, while I was loading the kids into the van after getting their picture taken with the Easter bunny, a member of the knitting guild who we haven't seen in ages came up and we had a brief but fun conversation about what we'd been up to and what we were knitting. I had came SO close to wearing Ester to the Ester egg hunt but didn't put it on. Now I'm kicking myself, because it would've been so much fun to show it off.



I've got the first sleeve done on the fast stockinette cardigan, then one more sleeve to go and it won't be quick stockinette anymore since the body is done in a pattern stitch. At least it's an easy pattern.

What I'm thinking I really want to knit is a Weasley Sweatter for Heath. Because he named the stuffed penguin he got for his birthday Ron Weasley. I talked myself out of knitting a sweater for the penguin.

This stay at home mommy stuff is physically demanding! I feel like I've been run over by one of those log trucks that's always speeding by the house, and all I did was lug around my toddlers. Not even both at the same time -- I've finally learned my lesson and stopped doing that unless it's a real emergency. Something in my elbow is not happy with me right now.

This'd better not mess with my knitting tonight -- I've got stitches to divide onto waste yarn and sleeves to start! I'd forgotten how fast stockinette can be, even with sport weight yarn, and I'm enjoying the instant gratification.



Ester is done. Actually, it's been done for a couple of days, but it didn't seem worth posting about until I could actually show it to you. I'm not in love with it, but it's growing on me. I am in love with the fact that I made it from half of a forty-nine cent thrift store sweater.

more and more shawls to knit

Even before I finished my Swallowtail Shawl, I wanted to do more shawls like it. I knew about Kiri, and the Sun Ray Shawl, and thought Shetland Triangle from Scarf Style would work until I got the book from the library again and found out that I'd have to start by casting on a zillion stitches. I still have hopes to do that one eventually, but right now I'm in love with the technique these other shawls use.

Last week, I was browsing Elann and found the Moonlight Sonata Shawl. It took a lot of willpower not to order the yarn from Elann then and there -- or to head over to Knitpicks and buy some dark blue Gloss. And this morning I was having yarn buying urges and checked out the Elann site to see if there was anything new to fuel them and found the Lunca Moth Shawl

I've even found yarn in my stash that'll probably work for both of them, but I still want that Gloss.

I love Flash Your Stash time! It's so much fun to look at what other people are hoarding, even if it is getting a bit harder to find knitters with more yarn than I've got. I know they're out there -- maybe they're knitting with their yarn and not taking pictures of it.

This is the third year in a row I've done this -- even if I am late this time, and it is only a partial stash flash. I'd planned to get all of my yarn organized and take nicer pictures than I managed in 2005 and 2006.

That didn't happen. The first of April snuck up on me and I didn't think I was going to get pictures at all this year, then I got an unexpected sliver of time, got the kids set up watching Eragon, and ran up to the sewing room to do another quick sort and pile and photograph. Something is better than nothing, right? And if some awful catastrophe does strike, my Flash Your Stash pictures would prove that I actually did own such a ridiculous amount of yarn.

Yes, I'm still traumatized by that break in we had a year ago while I was in the hospital trying to delay having Leif. No yarn was taken, but that's only because it was the first thing I moved into the new house, along with the baby pictures and my wedding dress. I had a nightmare last week about coming home and finding that the shop and sewing room were totally empty -- not just empty, but like something from a burned out horror movie set -- and the sick feeling stayed with me for a couple of days.

But on to happier things -- here's the yarn!

I've got sock yarn --



The last time I counted, there was enough actual sock yarn (not counting regular fingering weight yarn or worsted weight yarn that I plan to make socks out of) for forty-some pairs of socks. I've bought more since then. I like sock yarn.

I've got acrylic coming out of my ears --



My definition of good acrylic is yarn I bought new at Walmart, or yard sale yarn that's nice enough to make a sweater out of. The rest is in bins or plastic bags or heaven only knows where. Trust me, there's plenty of it! Most of this is meant to make sweaters for the kids.

And I've got lacweight --



I seem to be missing almost half of my laceweight, but the fact that there's so much gone is reassuring. I must've put it somewhere safe.

And I've got a bunch of yarn that wouldn't pose nicely for photos here if you really want to see most of the rest. Lately, I only go up to the sewing room long enough to rummage around for whatever I think I need, so it's a mess. But it's my mess and I love having a spot where I can spread out my yarn and know that no one will tie it around the table legs using the method Alton Brown just explained for tying up a cut of meat.

I don't have anything to show off.



My parents just got back from their winter down south and it sounds like Mom's finished at least half a dozen quilt tops. We're getting together tomorrow for show and tell -- but I don't feel like I have anything exciting to show. pout Alex has all of her projects, Leif has his brand new walking skills, Quinn has a whole bunch of brand new words he could say if he felt like it, Heath can suddenly read...

What have I managed to get done since the beginning of the year?

The only wonderful thing I have is my Swallowtail, which I've been wearing everywhere and Leif has been chewing on, so it's looking a little less beautiful than it was when it was freshly blocked. The endpaper mitts are nice, but I'm not quite sure where they've run off to. The dishcloths are dishcloths, and the baby poncho isn't worth hauling across town. I should take those pieced dresden plates that I still need to applique to the backgrounds squares.

I haven't been feeling at all productive lately. It's a combination of having less time to spend on projects and then spending that time on projects that take forever and a day to finish. I wanted to tackle more ambitious stuff this year, I just didn't realize that it was going to make me feel like I wasn't doing anything.

I blocked Frozen Lake and that scarf that I keep wanting to frog this afternoon so that I'd have something to show on the blog, and figured out what I really like about blocking. It's not forever. If I do a crummy job, I can do better next time. Once I learn how to actually do a good job of it, I can reblock all of my shawls and scarves and whatevers and make them all look the way they should.

I also figured out that I need blocking wires or another good substitute. But I'm too cheap to spend the money on something like that right now.

Oh -- and baby's appointment with the neurologist went well. He doesn't have any symptoms of anything. I could've told them that!

We went up to Woodland Woolworks and I got birthday yarn! There's a skein of laceweight merino waiting to become Gerda, a little cone of laceweight Paris linen waiting to become one of the scarves from Victorian Lace Today, and a skein of Tofutsies waiting to become that sock pattern with the diagonal lines of yarn-overs that go across the top of the foot, as soon as I can either find the copy I printed out or remember the name so I can Google it again! And I got Stahman's Shawls & Scarves, which I've checked out from the library over and over and over again.



There were a couple of other things I really wanted, but I was distracted by the headache that's been trying to eat through my skull since Friday nigt, a small child who kept darting right between me and the yarn I was trying to look at, and another small child who wanted to discuss the price of lacweight merino and whether she should spend her birthday money on a skein of it and wasn't paying any attention to my answers. So I didn't get the Regia Bamboo or the gorgeous mustardy-yellow Zephyr because I wasn't together enough to figure out how to get it into my arms along with the baby and the other stuff. How pathetic is that?

I absolutely love the yarn that did make it home with us and there's a chance that I'll be able to "fix" my mistake tomorrow if things go well. Was I allowed to buy myself birthday yarn, or does that break the Knit from Your Stash rules? I could count is as yarn that Bill would've bought me if my hands weren't full...

After almost three months of not buying any yarn/fabric/goodies, I'm not going to stress too much about the details!

Look what's finally off the needles -- Frozen Lake! I won't start calling it a finished object until it's blocked (otherwise it'd nevet get blocked), but I'm just about giddy to have made it this far. Between this project and my Swallowtail, I've conquered my fear of triangular shawls! Which, in case you didn't know, was caused by this shawl.



I am so happy!

Now it's back to Ester, which I'm anxious to finish but not to work on. At the rate I'm going now that I've ditched the cable needle, it'll probably take another twelve hours or so.

When I was working on Besotted, a friend helpfully tried to show me how to cable without a cable needle. It didn't work. The cable did cross, but it was going the wrong direction, and I couldn't handle the idea of knitting the fourth and fifth stitches on my left needle and then somehow knitting the first and second ones. I still can't handle that idea. Maybe someday, but it's going to take something really special to motivate me. I made it through Besotted and a lot of other projects just fine using cable needles and dpns and seaming pins.

But the patterns kept warning me that I really should learn to do it without a needle. And I'd ignore the warning or give up the idea of knitting that particular pattern.

Ester sort of snuck up on me. I got the narrow portion of the back done before it really sunk in how many cable crossings there are actually going to be in it. And then the rows got a lot longer and I decided it was time to take drastic measures.

Did you know that there's more than one way to cable without a cable needle? I think I came across three methods before finding one that didn't make me whimper in fear. I did a little experimenting, a lot of tinking, and quite a few rows later, I'm convinced that it was time to learn this particular bit of knitting magic.



I can't even tell where I switched methods.

Those new knitting books I reserved at the library are starting to slowly trickle in. There seem to be a couple to pick up every time we drive into town.

One Skein Wonders -- After all of the waiting and longing, this book was a total letdown. I'd leafed through it at the bookstore long enough to decide that I wanted my own copy, but once I actually sat down and read it I changed my mind. There's not one thing in it that made me want to grab my yarn and needles. How's that even possible in a book with 101 patterns? (My ten year old, on the other hand, has already finished one project, started another, and decided to save up for a copy.)

Knitorama -- Lots and lots and lots of patterns for knitted food. I did get the urge to knit a duck for my husband, who collected duck stuff when we first got married, but couldn't figure out the wings.

Knitting With Balls -- I'm obviously not the target audience for this one, and I should know by now that I'm not going to find anything my honey would wear in a book that expects him to knit it himself.

I also didn't find anything I wanted to knit in Yarnplay, Dominitrix (that one was fun to read through and had some good technical information), or The Northampton Wools knitting book....have I mentioned that someone in our library system must really like knitting a lot?



The big surprise was Knit 2 Together. I had no expectations for this book. But I had a few minutes this afternoon before we had to leave for playgroup and sat down to leaf through it. I'll try to recreate the experience --

The Baby Baseball Tee is cute, but it's got neck buttons....Alex might like the flowered version of First Hat...I have got to make Grownup Bonnet for myself, maybe with that really soft wool that's in the cupboard under the coffee table, maybe I can cast on for it after playgroup...

And, although I know the odds of my knitting a bath mat in this life aren't real high, that Muriwai Bath Mat is even neater than the ones in Mason Dixon Knitting.

The Lacy Hug-Me-Tight is nice...so is the Pimlico Shrug...

But what I Really Must Have for my house is the table skirt. There's an old round bedside table in the barn, if what I remember seeing is the whole thing and not just the base. Bill is not going to understand why I want him to dig it out from under everything else...and there's no good place for it in the house, but I'm sure the sewing room could use little table that will be cute once I knit it a lacy cover...

Hey -- that antique plant stand thingie next to the fireplace has a great base and a scuffed up top. I'm sure it could use a skirt!

Every time I get too close to this scarf, I'm tempted to frog it and use the yarn for something else. It's not that I don't like the scarf -- I just really really love that yarn, which was an estate sale find, and of course I didn't save the ball bands, so I don't even know what it was, just that it's a wool/something blend and absolutely yummy.

The thing took me 20some hours to knit, which is the only thing that's saved it for this long. I should at least block it and see what it really looks like before I do anything drastic. But it may not come to that.

I realized this afternoon that the yarn feels an awful lot like Knitpicks Gloss. I can get more of that...someday....when this whole Knit From Your Stash thing is behind me. If expensive things quit happening.

But I think I'm headed for trouble again. That blue cotton sweater I'm tearing apart is made up of some really pretty yarn. I can think of at least three summer tops I could try with it. I've been dying to make all three and not had suitable yarn for any of them. Now I've got to settle on one. (There probably is enough yarn for two, but what would be the point to making two summer tops in identical colors one right after the other?)

Guess I'll think about it while I work on Ester tonight.

It wasn't yarn when I brought it home from the thrift store yesterday, but it's yarn now! For the first time ever, I actually managed to unzip the seams instead of picking them apart a stitch at a time. How did that take me so long to figure out? There's still a lot of trial and error, but now I know that it's worth it to hang in there until I find the right bit of yarn.

I measured a stockinette chunk of the sweater -- 4 stitches an inch! -- and swatched, and cast on for Ester earlier this evening.

Yippee!

Does this count as a yarn purchase?

When this knit from your stash thing got started, someone asked if thrift store sweaters counted as yarn. My immediate response was absolutely not. If I couldn't buy any yarn forever and ever, and if other people got to claim that sock yarn didn't count, I was going to let myself paw through the GoodWill bins now and then!

It has been two months, one week, and five days since I bought any yarn or fabric. So whether it's technically cheating or not (and I vote for not), I am not going to feel guilty over the three sweaters I bought for forty-nine cents each this afternoon.

It's not like I went looking for them. With a couple of hours to kill between my emergency trip to the dentist and Alex's karate class, we went into the store hoping to find some of the books I need to fill in the homeschooling curriculum we just bought for the kids. And found two of them in perfect condition for a buck a piece. The kids actually picked out the sweaters -- which are nicer than what I've found in the past.

One is a light green wool/cotton blend and if things go really well, I think the yarn might be the right gauge to knit Ester from the new Knitty. If things go a little less well, it'd be good for a shawl I've been coveting and much nicer than the acrylic that was the best choice from my stash yarn. And if it doesn't work out at all, I only wasted fifty cents.

There are quite a few patterns in the new Knitty that I hope to make, if I ever work up the motivation to start something new.

Maybe tomorrow.

For the past few days, there's been a weird smell in the house, especially on the babies. Something like freshly cut wood, but more chemically than that. It's was starting to drive me nuts that I couldn't figure out what it was, especially since it was on my kids!

This morning, I threw in a load of laundry and realized that it's the HE detergent Bill bought for our new washer. I've got another sixty loads worth to use up before I try to convince him to never ever ever buy Gain again. And he was trying to help me out, because the only stuff I could find was Tide which I've refused to go near since I had a bloody allergic reaction to it years ago. And I can't use the stuff I do like because the new washer is finicky.

It's been one of those mornings. I woke up with the same headache I went ot bed with, then the medicine for my head made me want to puke, the carbon monoxide detector started chirping because it wants a new battery. And my knee's been throbbing because my buddy and I didn't walk this week. So I found the tire pump, got the double jog stroller set up for the first time since Heath was a baby (the tires are constantly going flat and I don't do tire pumps) and the kids and I headed up the hill.

There was a furry black and white animal chewing on something in the field by the side of the road. I thought it was a cat I hadn't seen before, but it didn't look right. So I told the kids to stay put and got close enough to see the stripes. Told the kids to be very very quiet or I would murder them and then to come over one at a time to look at the skunk.

So they're all excited about the wildlife and I'm wondering if it wasn't just pointed out to me that my kids and their clothes could smell a whole lot worse.

Chest Freezer Diving

DH said we should start using up the stuff in the chest freezer. It was so full I had to weight down the top to keep it closed a couple of times, but that's what happens when both of us go to Costco on the same day and come home with a bunch of the same stuff. So for the past couple of weeks I've been rummaging around in there and hauling stuff into the kitchen freezer (kind of like what I do with the yarn and fabric stashes) and now it's only half full.

Last night, I was digging down to the very bottom because I knew there was a turkey breast down there. It turned out to be under two big paper bags of yarn. One I remember putting in there, but was sure I'd taken out. The other one I'm not so sure about. But it has to be mine, right? Now that all of the yarn is out, there's lots of room for groceries.

And there's a good explanation for a freezer full of yarn I don't remember. Grandma goes to the auction to buy furniture for her antique shop and find cheap yarn. Some of it's very nice cheap yarn, some is usable cheap yarn, and some is crappy cheap yarn that I try to foist off on the kids. Because I don't know where's it's been, it all goes straight into the freezer for a couple of days, just in case.

Last week, she brought over a box with seven or eight skeins of white and pale blue worsted weight wool. It looks nice enough, but I couldn't think of a thing to do with it. That little moment of absolute stupidity has passed and as soon as I can figure out how to keep the kids occupied, I'm going to break out the food coloring and plastic wrap. I see colorful diaper soakers in Leif's future.

Even though I'm not making a whole lot of progess on anything but Frozen Lake, I found something else to think about knitting -- scroll down about half way to see the Argosy baby blanket. I want one, and Kay says there's a free pattern coming. There's already a dishcloth version, so I printed it out to see if I really do like the design enough to do something big. And the Wedgie Scarf looks like it could be fun, too.

I've lost track -- this is either my 3rd or 4th attempt at Frozen Lake, and I finally get it!!! My rows of yo's and decreases line up just the way they should. If someone talks to me and I lose count, I can look at the stitches and figure out if I'm supposed to be decreasing or yarn-overing or just knitting.



Why was this so impossible a couple of months ago?

Look at my swallowtail!

Blocking is absolute magic. I've heard that countless times in books and on blogs and on lists, and I've seen bunches of before and after photos, but I still wasn't prepared for this --



I am seriously in love with this shawl and its little pointy scallops. The only problem is, now that it's done I've got this weird sense of loss because I won't have it to play with anymore.

The details, in case anyone wants them -- I used 2 skeins of burgundy Knitpicks Gloss and an ancient nylon circular that I grabbed out of the knitting bag because it looked like it was a good size.

I love, love, love this yarn and will be buying more of it as soon as I possibly can. (Still 217 more days of knitting from my stash, but I'd be willing to cheat for this yummy stuff!) I do wish it came in more colors, because I have a feeling I'm going to knit a ton of projects with it.

Does anyone know how long it takes a virus to work its way through a six person household? Since Leif came down with his fever on the 12th there have been fevers, and chills, and coughing, and sleepless nights. There was a child who work up from her nap wearing a new outfit inside out over the clothes she'd gone to sleep in and insisted that someone came in and put it on her while she was sleeping. And the mommy who woke up at 3am really ticked off that someone had unravelled her arms and reknit them in scratchy green wool. Kinda scary -- especially since the fevers we did have weren't particularly high ones. And Quinn didn't even start to show any symptoms until yesterday, so there's no end in sight.

I am so ready for us to be healthy again!

During a lull in our symptoms, we did dart into the library to pick up the books I've had reserved, so I've got One Skein Wonders, the 2nd Barbara Walker Treasury (for that string of purls stitch), Knitorama, Knitting With Balls, The Knitting Way, Just Wraps, Simply Baby, and the March Whoduknit book to play with while we finish recuperating.

I'm weakening. First it was the idea that I should get some pretty lace for Valentine's Day, which of course means pretty stuff to knit pretty lace with. I'd hoped that Bill would volunteer to buy me some, but of course that didn't happen. He did get me something really neat that I wasn't expecting, but no yarn. And I can't blame him because he doesn't know that I'm not buying myself yarn now and probably assumes that if I want something that desperately I'll buy it myself.

I spent drooled over the Knitpicks catalog, but had enough restraint and self control not to order anything right now. Birthday yarn is allowed, so if I wait another month and a half, I can get my yarn without breaking the rules.

And now Joann's has Keepsake Calico on sale. I'd really like to go out and buy some pretty new fabric, especially since I've got a stack of quilting books from the library full of quilts I want to make. But I've got pretty fabric upstairs and I actually found quite a few yards of absolutely fantastic stuff I had never laid eyes on before when I was picking out colors for the Dresden Plates (it was in a box from a garage sale that I thought was full of scraps but actually had quite a few big cuts of actual quilt shop stuff. I can make quilts with what I've got.

There's a whole list of reasons I could use to justify buying myself some goodies, but if I start to cheat now, I'll keep cheating. And I'm very proud of myself for sticking with the Knit from Your Stash thing this long. It's been One Month, Two Weeks, and Four Days since I bought ANY Yarn or Fabric!!!! I've got a countdown on my computer and the number of days left until I can buy yarn and fabric is steadily shrinking. I can almost see myself making it the whole way through!

I did three more rows on my Swallowtail Shawl last night. The lily of the valley border isn't nearly as complicated as I thought it would be, but I have to concentrate more than I did on the budding lace section. So no knitting when the kids are in the room. That's going to slow down my progress quite a bit.



This is SO fun! I'm already making mental lists of the triangular shawl patterns I own and matching them up with yarn. But I can't forget all of those glorious rectangles in Victorian Lace Today.... Now do you see why I've got such a need to order more laceweight?

I also have a sudden, overwhelming need to learn how to do hairpin lace. This is incredible. I think I might actually have one of the frame thingies that belonged to my Great Grandma Walters. If I don't, Mom or Grandma must. And there's a free tutorial. So I could learn to do the hairpin lace, lose some more weight, and be all ready to buy the pattern and some yarn in September.

Well, darn!

Today was supposed to start off a three day flurry of activity that I didn't look forward to. Karate for Alex today....a new play group for the littlest ones tomorrow....science fair on Saturday...and grocery shopping and trips to the post office and I don't know what all else. It wasn't going to leave any time for me to work on my Swallowtail Shawl until I don't know when.

I would've jumped at any dumb excuse to stay home, but then I got an email notification from the library that, after a month of waiting very impatiently for them to finish processing it (whatever that means), One Skein Wonders is finally waiting on the reserve shelf for me. Not ten minutes later, Alex complained that she felt weird. Not sick, just weird. So I stuck the thermometer in her mouth -- 101.something.

We're not going to karate today. Or playgroup tomorrow. And I don't feel like making sure they finish their science fair stuff just in case no one has a fever and we can actually go. And now I'm cranky about being stuck at home because I really want to get a look at that book.

I reserved One Skein Wonders on one of the kids' library cards, just in case I don't get there before they put it back into circulation. Someone has dibs on it before I'll get a second try, but that's the best damage control I can do. I'm supposed to have two weeks to get there and pick it up, so it should all work out fine. But sometimes they pull the books early.

I reserved Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasure of Stitches, because it's got the String of Purls stitch that Norma is doing so many fantastic things with. I love the log cabin square, enough to consider frogging my own log cabin and doing something like this instead. The hat's cute too.

Actually finding all of my WIPs started to seem like a good idea, so I've pulled out the pink lace scarf, untangled the Alterknits wrap from the Victorian Lace Today Scarf, which was hiding under the Central Park Hoodie, and tried to figure out exactly what I was doing with it all before it got set aside.

• The Central Park Hoodie needs to be frogged and restarted due to my ominous fears about the gauge.
• The Alterknits Wrap had lost couple of stitches at the hands of my darling baby, but is okay now.
• The pink lace scarf is just fine. I even managed a couple of repeats on it while supervising my kids at gym day yesterday.
• Frozen Lake is on top of the computer monitor, waiting for me to frog and restart it for the third time because I've totally lost my place.
• The Log Cabin Blanket is still hiding in its laundry basket, waiting for its fate to be decided.
• I have no clue where the mystery stole is, but since I do know where the pattern and my notes are, I'm not panicked yet.
• The Honeymoon Cami hasn't surfaced yet, but I'm pretty sure it's in my knitting basket, along with the flowered lace socks.

And, best of all, the beginnings of a Victorian Lace Today scarf has been happily transformed into the beginnings of a Swallowtail Shawl. I actually think I can do this! I was worried about whether or not two skeins of Knitpicks Gloss would be enough, but I did a Google search and the first blog entry I found was about one that a woman had knit in the same color I'm using, with two skeins. So it can be done. And if I do run out, buying another skein won't kill me. It won't even break my Knit From Your Stash rules.

Thanks for the compliments on my Dresden Plates. I'm starting to have delusions about making a whole bunch for a bed size quilt, but I'd better make sure I can applique the ones I've got down onto the background fabric first.

And I'll post an update on Leif when I know what's going on.

I have been Alisoned. There was a padded envelope in my mailbox yesterday, with an alpaca scarf in it. I had it out of the envelope and around my neck before I even got a glimpse of the stitch pattern, and it kept me going for the rest of the day. I don't even know how to start to describe how good that scarf is still making me feel. I've suddenly got a security blanket. Which is good, because I'm starting to get scared.

I had my fingers buried in the edge of it while I took the phone call from the nurse who told me they'd found some abnormalities in Leif's bloodwork and I'd have to wait for the letter from the doctor to find out what they were. If I hadn't have been driving, I might've been able to demand more details, but I don't talk and drive and was honestly too horrfied to come up with any decent questions. I don't even know what they were testing for, except lead. He doesn't have any of that.

The littlest ones settled down early tonight, so I've had more time than usual to play.

I used to love sewing, but haven't done much of it in recent years. My old sewing machine was stuck where I couldn't get at it and now that I've got a fancy new machine, I'm scared to death of it. We aren't the best of friends, not yet at least. Something went badly wrong with it before the holidays and I had to take it in for a checkup. It's been back since shortly before Christmas, but I didn't have the time or nerve to play with it before today. I only plugged it in today because the warranty period on the repairs (that wasn't really a repair because they couldn't find anything wrong) is running out fast.

It works just fine!



Alex and I got a bag of fabric scraps for Christmas and I'd pulled together a bunch of colors that I thought would work for this little Dresden Plate quilt. I thought I'd cut and stitch a few of the 80 little wedges, but I wound up making all four of the plates and only stopped then because the muslin I need for the background is out in the sewing room and I've already braved the dark and cold once tonight.

I'm loving this project. I got sick of using the rotary cutter to do such little strips and decided to trace around my little cardboard template with a ball point pen instead. Some of the fabric I used (most of it, probably) isn't the greatest quality, but I'm trying to make a car seat quilt, not an heirloom. Mostly what I'm doing is playing around and enjoying myself.

Pattern: Lion Brand Hooded Baby Poncho
Yarn: 1 1/2 skeins Caron Simply Soft, Embroidery Print
Needles: size 8 bamboo circulars

I definitely like it better now that it's done. I left off the pocket -- partly because I don't think it'd show up against the wild colors and partly because I was ready to be done. The hood could be a bit deeper, but you know I'd rather knit another one from start to finish than rip out and fix this one.

As I was weaving in the ends, I remembered two different yarns in my stash that I could've used instead. Oh well, the embroidery print is mostly gone, and it was supposed to be baby stuff. I can make a bigger poncho for Quinn with the goldish-brown cotton if I really want to. Maybe I should swatch and see if that yarn can handle cables well.

Still working on the baby poncho, thinking it really would look better in a solid color, but I've got better plans for my solids and the yarn I want isn't even available locally. So even if I wasn't doing the knit from your stash thing, I wouldn't be able to get any without paying postage.

I'm just being fickle, the way I am with a lot of my knitting projects. It doesn't matter what the project or yarn is, I'll keep thinking that maybe I should've used different yarn, or maybe this yarn really should be something else. I've even been tempted to rip out some very successful finished projects so I can use the yarn for something else.

If all goes well and the kids and camera cooperate, I think I'll be able to finish the poncho tonight and post some pictures tomorrow.

I took a picture of the baby poncho's completed front, but it looked even uglier on my screen than it does in real life, so I'm not going to show it off until I can put it on the baby. If it fits the baby. I made a few changes to the pattern and I've got my fingers crossed that the neck opening will actually stretch enough to fit over his head.... if not, I maybe I can find someone littler to give it to.

While I'm knitting away on this poncho, I'm mentally planning the baby poncho I really want to knit. It's brown or maybe green, It's got cables along the bottom, and a hood with cables along the edge, and probably not a pocket because I don't think it'll need one with the cables. And I never would've thought of it if I wasn't working on this one and picking apart all of the things I wish were different.

That huge percentage of knitters they say insist on using the exact yarn and color the pattern calls for... I'm obviously not one of them!

They're supposed to be the Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang, but I couldn't figure out how to do the tubular cast on and cut a few other corners along the way. They're a bit too snug, a bit too scratchy, and the colors don't contrast well enough, but I'm still proud of them. They're my first real attempt at color work, so please pretend you didn't notice the glitch where I knit the wrong rows in the wrong place. The kids moved my magnetic strip and I thought I'd found the right spot in the chart.

Yarn and fabric buying apparently does not cause bad luck. I'd been starting to wonder after one too many shopping trips was cancelled because the check engine light came on for no reason, or I spiked an unexplained fever, or I went into pre-term labor (yes, that really did happen more than once!), or other stupid things.

But I haven't bought any yarn or fabric at all for 35 days, and the washing machine died, the baby got sick and we spent a couple of hours at the HMO making sure it was just a cold and not a kidney infection, the rest of us got sick, the washing machine died again three loads after we spent $82 having it fixed, the computer got a virus, I've had headaches just about every day, the baby suddenly needs to see a pediatric neurologist, and I got into an accident in the new car yesterday.

At least the knitting slump I've been in seems to be turning around. I picked up my Endpaper Mitts last night, hoping to get a few rounds done, and wound up knitting until 2am, anxious to see if I had enough blue yarn to finish the ribbing without looking for the second skein. I did (although I didn't actually get them finished until a couple of minutes ago), and they fit, and I'll take pictures tomorrow when I have someone else to hold the camera.

And I finally started that hooded baby poncho I was so excited about a while back. I'm not sure my yarn is the perfect color, but it's from my stash and was originally supposed to be a hooded baby sweater.

I went scrap booking on Friday night --- left the house at five and didn't get back until midnight -- and it was so much fun! I've gotta get out and do that again soon.



Oh, and that is a handknit sweater on the chicken in the picture! Have I mentioned that my daughter is creative?

This one is Yvonne's Double Flower Cloth. I just totally horrified Alex by using it to wipe banana apple yogurt off of Leif's face. If I'm going to use the thing, is there a better way to use it? A bit of baby food will wash out easily enough. And it's not like it was hard to make. I thought it was going to be hard, but once I got started "* yo, (k1, p1) 5 times, k1, yo, k2tog, k1 * [8 times]" was no problem. The most difficult part was getting started with 8 stitches on my dpns.

Last week, I printed up a bunch of dishcloth patterns that I wanted to try once I got something bigger done. But the big projects aren't getting done because they're so big and I couldn't wait to give the 4 Corners Cloth a try....and the first yarn I cast on with was this blue stuff, which didn't have enough contrast between the color changes, but I thought might work great for a lace cloth...and then I had to see how the blue yarn looked knit up into the lace.... and now that I've done two, I might as well do more.

I had some deadlines I wanted to meet, but none of them are that serious and I seem to have done something to my wrist. I'm guessing it's a baby-lugging thing and not a knitting thing. It doesn't bug me at all when I knit, but I'm a little worried about trying to knit too much for too many days in a row. So I knit two dishcloths and a repeat of the Alterknits wrap yesterday...yeah, that makes sense...

It's a 4 Corners Dishcloth, the first of what I'm sure will be several. I really like this pattern. It looked long and complicated on paper, but it only took me a few rows to figure out what was actually going on and I'm sure I'll be able to do the next one from memory.

I'm not sure what I've been doing lately really counts as knitting from my stash. I'm just working one on huge project, the Alterknits lace-up wrap/shawl/stole thing. I can't find links to anyone else who's made this, probably because it has such a stupid name that no one is going to type the whole thing out when she's blogging about it. I really think it's going to be more of an afghan than a wrap, even though I'm shortening it by almost 20", but that's fine because I wanted to it to use for snuggling up in the car on long road trips. The best thing about this project right now (besides the fact that it's gorgeous) is that it's EASY! So I can knit a repeat or two at night while watching TV with Bill, or during the day while the kids are tearing apart my house. The end is in sight. If I do at least one pattern repeat a day, I'll be finished by the Fall Cables KAL contest deadline.

I haven't finished anything so far in 2007...still haven't cat on those Socktopia socks...haven't worked on the Endpaper Mitts in far too long. Someone little took all of the magnets off my chart keeper, so I'm hoping I can find my place again when I do want to work on them. And not wanting to work on them because what if I can't find my place?

Working on one project for long stretches of time is supposed to be a good thing, right? I might feel better about it if there weren't so many other things I'm dying to start.

I have a hard time changing yarn plans, but this seems just *too* cool not to try. I don't have "Owl", but I do have a similarly striped brown sock yarn (it's that cotton Regia that Elann had cheap a while back) that was going to be my Eagle's Flight socks. Eagle's flight will look nice in blue, won't it? Because Heath really truly needs a pair of rattlesnake socks. I joined the Six Sox Knitalong and just printed out the pattern.

I should make snake socks, shouldn't I?

I've found far, far too many neat new patterns already today -- seen the 4 corners dishcloth? Or this a very pretty cabled wristwarmer pattern. In my defense, they were all on the same page of the same blog, and I've also done school and gone grocery shopping.

If I was allowing myself to buy yarn today, I'd order three skeins of Mister Joe Montepulciano in Night Sky
to make myself a Reversible Lace Rib Shrug With Swing Shaping. I'd add enough Peruvian Highland Wool to make a Felted Birdhouse Handbag (in nice, gardeny shades of brown and green) to the order, and maybe four skeins of Lisa Lashes to make the Bulky Pinwheel Jacket because it's silly to pay postage for just three skeins of yarn. But I'm still being good, so I've printed the pattern and I'll ransack my stash for Rib Shrug yarn when it warms up a bit. With yarn requirements that vague, there's got to be something out there that'll work.

There's nothing out there suitable for felted birdhouses, but I might be able to pull together enough worsted weight acrylic to make a pinwheel jacket for one of my boy babies. That would be a lot more sensible than an eyelash version, no matter how cute the picture looks, because I don't have a girl baby to put one on.

I've been knitting away on my Alterknits wrap, making faster progress than I expected. I should actually be able to finish it before the Fall Cable Knitalong is over! If I don't get sucked into a new project.

I should also at least get started on my January Socktopia socks. I can think of at least three possibilities for the "Blue Monday" theme...

Scarves are deceptive. I know I've heard somewhere that they're quick and easy knitting projects, and maybe if you're using novelty yarn and size fifteen needles they are.

The scarves I wind up knitting aren't. There was the blue Madeira Lace scarf I sat in an empty room and worked on when they laid the new carpet. It took twenty hours and more concentration than I thought I had. There was How Does Your Garden Grow with its miles of I-cord and oodles of little leaves. There was the Dream Swatch.



So I shouldn't be at all surprised that the pink lace scarf is taking me so long. It's a scarf. And it's got that tricky "knit three, then pull the first stitch over the other two stitches and let it drop" maneuver, which would probably be easier with smoother yarn, or yarn that had some stretch to it, or pointier needles.

The whole thing makes my hands hurt after a few repeats, but it's pretty and soft and scrunches up nicely and I'm convinced I'm going to love it and wear it when it's done. (Keep in mind that I haven't worn any of the scarves I've knitted so far, and that this is probably another pretty-yarn-induced delusion.)

It's hangs out on the arm of the couch and I knit a few repeats at night while we're watching television or in the afternoon while I'm watching the babies. Except for that little bit of knitting, I've been puttering around the house and enjoying the running water and the wonderful fluffy bath towels Bill bought me for Christmas.

I made banana bread from scratch this morning, but something went wrong. Banana bread is not supposed to look like this. I don't know if it was the bananas, which were far past their prime, or the flour Bill made in the Vitamix last night, or the recipe I printed off the internet because I couldn't find the one I wanted to use.



In case anyone but me cares, I'm still knitting from my stash -- fifteen days since I bought yarn or fabric!

If I switched to scarf knitting, my stash would probably last forever...

Apparently, I can have the pattern, yarn, and needles for the project I'm anxious to start laid out right beside me and still wind up casting on for something totally different! How does that happen?



I'm suddenly knitting a scarf that I had only the vaguest intention of making, with yarn that I had almost no intention of using. But I'm enjoying myself. And, unlike the Squirrel and Oak Mittens, I can work on this one while I'm supervising the babies because it's such a simple lace pattern.

There's something satisfying about finding a good use for yarn that I thought might sit in my stash forever. I didn't need to find a use for this yarn, which is a salmony-pink thick and thin mystery skein -- I'm guessing it's cotton -- from a bag that Grandma bought us at the thrift store. But I'm happy to be doing something with it. I pulled out this skein and a black skein of the same stuff, and a partial ball of pretty varigated something (hey, that might work for Calorimetry!) and Alex got the rest. It's a fairly good system, with yarn. The big bag of quilting cottons we got for Christmas to share is going to be harder to divvy up.



If Leif will stay asleep and Quinn will go to sleep, I'm going to try to start these tonight. The Endpaper Mitts still aren't done, but if I can't buy yarn for nine months, I'm going to cast on as many projects as makes me happy. I can't buy new needles, though, so I may have to get creative. There'll be plenty of time later to worry about how many projects I have going and decide which ones should be finished when. And nothing says I can't just frog a few if that's what I feel like. There's no rule against just playing with the yarn for a while.

I've looked every place that issue of Knit It! with the Nanncy McPhee sweaters could be, and it's not in any of them. I googled and found pictures of three sweaters from the article, none of them the electric blue one that I fell in love with. And a post by another knitter who's just as excited about the blue one as I am. I guess it's a gansey. I've got gansey patterns in that set of needlework books up in the sewing room, so once I can buy blue yarn, I'm all set. I would like to find the magazine, though, because I've got yarn for the little blue toddler vest. And a toddler!

I pulled out the Cotton-Ease and looked at my patterns, and it looks like it's going to be Trellis after all. The size poncho I want to make only takes two skeins and I've got this thing about making the largest size possible with the yarn I've got. There's enough for the largest size Trellis, which would give me time to knit it. And I think I've maybe got a better idea for poncho yarn.

I was going to add a picture of the running water, which will be hot running water as soon as the hot water heater works its magic, but the camera wouldn't turn back on. Please please please let that be the low batteries and not a new thing to stress about.

A whole lot of temptation arrived with the afternoon mail today. There was the new Joann's flyer (50% off Keepsakes Calico, 50% off clearance fabric, $1.50 balls of Sugar N Cream....) and the new Lion Brand Catalog (organic cotton and pretty new colors of Cotton-Ease) and the new issue of Vogue (strangely, nothing in there that makes me want to rush out and buy yarn or resubscribe.)

I really like the Lion Brand catalog. Lot of pretty ideas, and lots of the projects are available as free downloads from the website. I've been printing patterns for little hooded baby ponchos since Quinn was born, but haven't come up with the right combination of pattern and yarn this might be the one. I just have to decide whether to use the skeins of Cotton Ease I've got in my stash that I bought to make Trellis with, or find something else to substitute.

I have a hard time using yarn I bought for one project to make something else. Even though I know it's not special yarn, I can't get over the feeling that I'm giving up that first project forever. Even yarn that doesn't have a specific project gets me into trouble because if I use it to make this, then I can't make that...

Trellis is going to be a substantial amount of time and effort, and it would be much...can't say prettier, because it's for a little boy, but it'll be much more something in one of the new Cotton Ease colors. Which I can buy nine months from now. Because I'm going to stay good and resist all of this fun temptation.

I like the Sweater Bag, but it's a lot of knitting and I never even wind up using the bags I do knit for myself. But I printed it out so I can add it to the binders. Maybe one of these days I'll have exactly the right yarn and the urge to knit it. Or not.

What I do have the urge to do is figure out where I put my copy of Knit It! We were watching Nanny McPhee on DVD the other night and I was drawn to the boy's bright blue sweater and trying to figure out what it was that made me like it so much. There are textured stripes, but are they rows of garter stitch or something else? Then it got to the scene where they're flying kites on the gravelly beach and I remembered the Nanny Mcphee inspired sweaters in Knit It! But not if there was a sweater like the blue one.

on my walls

Dawn showed off the gorgeous framed puzzles she's decorating her new house with and asked what the rest of us have on our walls. There's not much on mine yet, even though we bought the house a year and half ago.

I do have nice looking walls, though. The woman who owned the house before us must've had a crafty streak because she cut individual little leaves from the wallpaper border to make these vines that go down the walls and around the windows. I don't think I really like the wallpaper pattern that much, but the vines are fabulous and aren't going anywhere, ever.



She wallpapered and paneled just about every room, including the pantry and mudroom. We repainted the kitchen in a radioactive shade of green I let myself get bullied into. Someday, it's going to be a garden-y green. With vines.

This is the one picture I've managed to hang --



I love this still life. Doesn't it look like it belongs on that wall? The picture doesn't show the lacy swagged border just below the ceiling molding, or the light oak chair rail, but it looks even better when you can see the whole room. It's one of my signs that we belong in this house, because I bought the picture long before we ever saw this place.

It used to hang in our old living room, against light pink paneling sprinkled with butterflies. I'm probably going to wonder for the rest of my life why someone would deliberately put paneling that looked like it belonged in an old rusty singlewide trailer up in what could have been a cute house. And why I lived with it for eight years.

The picture itself is one of my best ever thrift store finds ($7.95 from Red White & Blue, a place up in Portland where it seems like a bunch of crafty bloggers are always finding neat vintage stuff.) I saw it from across the store just as a guy took it down from the wall and started in that direction, whispering under my breath for him to put it down. He did, and I grabbed it, and it's been on my walls ever since.

I brought all of our framed stuff down in the back of the Durango so it didn't get banged up during the move and there was a nail on the dining room wall in just the right spot. It was meant to be there.

Just like I think we're meant to be here, despite what other people are saying and despite the current water situation.

Rachel asked in the comments what was going on. To make a long, whiny story short, our old well suddenly has no water. Two weeks and $10,000 later, our new one isn't hooked up yet. And I'm dying for a long shower that'll turn my skin red and peel the wallpaper off the bathroom walls.

crazy talk

I wonder if any of the other knitters who decided to knit from their stashes in 2007 worry about running out of yarn? There's no way I could knit all of my stash -- but what if I use up all of the laceweight? What if I use the blackberry Super Kydd to knit my Print O the Wave stole, and the Zephyr that I bought for the Print O the Wave Stole to knit a Gerda Stole and the Knitpicks Shadow for something from Victorian Lace Today and then wanted to make another big shawl?

It's crazy talk. I know it's crazy talk. I'm as likely to run out of laceweight as I am to run out of sock yarn. If somehow I do wind up knitting three big shawls one after the other, at the speed of light, and still want to knit more lace, I've got single skeins and I can do scarves.

But fourteen days without running water is enough to make anyone start talking crazy.

The border between what I want to knit and what I dread knitting faded again last night, and look -- it'a a finished Endpaper Mitt! I still have my doubts about the yarn and color combination, but it fits! Sort of. When I make my "real" pair, I'll use softer wool and make sure there's more contrast between the colors. And go up a needle size so they're easier to slip on and off.



I was up finishing the thumb ribbing early this morning and while I'm not sure I'm excited about knitting the next one, at least I know I can do it and that I'll like the results. Alex (who took my first pair of Target Wave Mittens) wants a pair, which gives me motivation to finish these and then make a second pair. This time, though, I'm going to keep the pair that fits until I've got another pair for myself.

Unfortunately, the rest of my life isn't going nearly as well at the mitts. We're on day eleven without running water, the well is twice as deep as they thought it would need to be -- and they're still out there drilling. sigh

I'm going to bury myself in knitting and try to forget how long it's been since I had a real shower.

What I might be knitting in 2007

This is not a schedule or plan of any kind! Instead, it's a list of projects that I'm excited about knitting and have the yarn for. Along with the eight projects already on my needles, there's more than enough here to get me through nine months of knitting from my stash.

According to the rough math I did last year, at the rate I was knitting then I've got enough yarn to last 10 years or so. But things would be getting pretty ugly by the end!

So here's what I'm excited about. Remind me what they were in a few weeks when I'm sulking because I can't have pretty new yarn...

sweaters and tops for Me -- Cinxia, Spring Fling, Calla, Soleil, Crest O' The Wave top, Sonata Print Lace Up Tank

sweaters for the big two -- hooded pullover with front pocket, blue denim style hoodie, Down Under bulky cabled sweater, purple raglan, Tater's Cotton Cardi

sweaters for the babies -- Intarsia Chicken Sweater, mint and brown sweater, wiggles raglan, Cozy in Cables

other stuff -- Rabit Proof Fence Scarf, soy silk scarf, Cabled Aran Mittens, Pirate Mittens, Pirate Hat, Dayflower Hat, Swallowtail Shawl, cabled Christmas stocking, Print O' the Wave stole, Mobius Cowl from Knitty Gritty, Mermaid Tail, Lace Wings Fixation socks, Eagle's Flight socks, Penny Socks, Bayerische Socks, Snicket Socks, Baudelaire Socks, Pomotomus Socks

Oh, and there's just about everything from Victorian Lace Today. I'm not listing those because I haven't matched up yarn with the patterns and I'm not sure which ones I'll be able to do.