Midnight Knitter

I’m Knitting as Fast as I Can!

I just love this new pattern on Ravelry that was published a few weeks ago. It is just fabulous!! It’s called The Joker and the Thief (by Melanie Berg), and it required 6 yarns that form a color gradient (this would be the Joker…) that is anchored by one color that is the Thief. I immediately went on the hunt for color gradients in my yarn stash, ended up making two trips to my favorite LYS, and moved yarns around and around until I finally settled on TWO color combinations for this shawl. Yeah! They are both fabulous and I have finally decided to make both of the shawls. Why do something if you can’t overdo it? See, this is a motto that all knitters can get behind. 🙂

Joker 1 Yarns — Here’s the yarn for the first Joker shawl (hereafter called Joker 1). The Thief will be the navy blue above the gradient. The Joker yarns (magenta and golds) are all Wonderland Yarns Cheshire Cat. The Navy is Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light (Colorway Ink)

Joker and Thief Yarn — This is the yarn for the second Joker shawl (AKA Joker 2) The Joker is more Wonderland Yarns Cheshire Cat, and the Thief is the gold colored Knitted Wit Fingering Yarn.

MacKenzie and shawl yarn. — As usual my cat MacKenzie is chomping at the bit to get started on the shawls. He was a big help as I was winding the yarns, making the color keys, and kitting them up in plastic snap top (and moth proof!!) boxes.

I’m all ready to get started on the shawls except… I already have three projects going and one of them is on the needles that I need to use to knit the Joker. I thought about going to buy more needles. (No way! Who would do something like that???) I considered taking the shawl-in-progress off the needles so it could hibernate for a few weeks while I knitted the Jokers. Yeah, we all know what would have happened to that shawl. It would have hibernated in a corner somewhere for a few years. Nope! I decided to suck it up and knit like the wind until it was done. This shawl is beautiful, and I will commit to finishing it in a timely manner! Feeling very self-righteous I began working on this shawl (Sidere by Hilary Smith Callis) again.

Marked up pattern. — Self-righteous can take you only so far. This pattern is requiring very close attention to the details which are all written out. I’m marking up the pattern like crazy while I work. This type of attention means that I can only knit when I have a big chunk of time open and sleeping cats.

Knitted Cat — I’m also working on a long-overdue knitted cat for one of my cousins. This one I knit on during news broadcasts. Here’s the pattern for the cats (it’s free!!!) on Ravelry.

So there we are. I’ve got two more projects all lined up and I’m dying to get started on them. I’ve been knitting as fast as I can for over a week, and I still haven’t gotten anything finished. The weather is warming up and I need to start tending to the lawn and gardens outside.

Stay tuned folks! I think that it may rain this weekend, and I’m hopeful to get at least one of these off the needles. 🙂

Jokers, here I come!!

Yarn Fest Report

Last Saturday I went to the Interweave Yarn Fest in Loveland, Colorado with my friend Margie where we met up with other friends (AKA fiber addicts). I’d been looking forward to this outing for weeks, and had organized myself with specific shopping goals. Yeah, whatever. This is one of these deals where it is best to not over think things. Still, here’s what I hoped to accomplish.

Find yarn for some specific patterns. Specifically, I was on the prowl for yarn to make Red Rock Canyon (by Rosemary {Romi} Hill) and The Joker and the Thief (by Melanie Berg).
Hunt for some great gradients or ombre yarns that I could use for shawls.
Buy unique yarns that I probably won’t see in my LYS.
Make arrangements to visit the paco-vicuna Gulliver who is a resident of Jefferson Farms. I have 6 ounces of his ~~very expensive~~ roving that I want to spin up for a lacy shawl. OK, this is one of my New Year resolutions. I’m also terrified to start on this project without some lace spinning lessons. Maybe I can make arrangements for a class while I’m there…
Score some great new patterns.
Run wild with my friends!!

With every intent of exercising some self control I entered the marketplace with Margie and stopped dead at the first booth. OMG! Yak yarn! Dyed by Ms. Babs in a colorway called Red Rock Canyon. The exact colors of the national parks in Moab, Utah. Oh my goodness, I just love Moab, and I really love those colors. Here it is.

Tibetan Dream Yarn. — This is Tibetan Dream yarn (by Bijou Basin Ranch) is 85% Yak Down, 15% Nylon sock yarn. These are the colors of one of the best vacations I’ve ever gone on. To touch this yarn is to be in heaven (dreaming Tibetan dreams of course!) How can I put this on my feet? Say hello to my next little shawl.

What wonderful, soft yarn. This is yarn that a person can fall asleep while clutching in happy exhaustion at the end of the day (true story). Out came the credit card and this yarn was mine!

In a booth nearby I met Chris Switzer and learned that she was teaching a class on how to spin camelid fibers this July. I had to wait until Monday to sign up for the class, but I did. The class is July 18th, so I still have time to make sure my spinning wheel (which was sadly dropped last year) is in working order again.

Other yarn acquisitions included:

Ombre yarn. — The cutest sparkly ombre yarn was obtained from Wolly Wonka.

After hours of gabbing, playing with fiber and catching up with friends we called it a day. I didn’t get much more yarn, but there were some other great finds. These included:

I met the owner of Jefferson Farms, which is the home of Gulliver, the paco-vicuna that I have fiber from. She is happy for me to visit him and to facilitate our meeting she is transporting him up to the Denver farm this week. Look forward to a post about paco-vicunas and Gulliver!
I never did find a great yarn gradient, but boy did I find a great pattern to use color gradients with. The pattern is called Beyond the Pale, and it is from Wolly Wonka. I saw it knitted in three different color combinations, and it is stunning. I already have it in the Ravelry shopping cart, and I’ll be buying it tomorrow.
I love to knit cables. Really, I do! There was a booth with the most wonderful patterns with Celtic cable work from Black Water Abbey, which is located in (gasp) Aurora, Colorado not far from my house. I bought several patterns. The most wonderfully soft tweed yarn (Brooklyn Tweed) that I have ever handled was in another booth. I’ll be buying some of that down the road to knit the patterns that I bought from Black Water Abbey.

You know, I did meet all of my goals for the trip. I didn’t get as much yarn as I wanted, but I made lots of connections and am inspired to get going on on many, many different projects. How fun it was to be in a place where everyone was wearing a hand knit or woven shawl/scarf and carrying a knitting project. It was great! I was with my peeps!!

I can’t wait to go back to this event next year!! Continue reading “Yarn Fest Report”

FO: The April 2015 Socks are Done!

What a weekend I had! I spent all day Saturday hanging out at the Interweave Yarn Fest in Loveland, Colorado (only a 90 minute drive for me, so of course I went!) with some of my best knitting/spinning buddies. Wow! What a great time that was, but I have so much to talk about I think it needs to be its own post. Exhausted, I arrived at my younger son’s apartment for dinner and ended up spending the night there (OK, I fell asleep clutching some of the unbelievable yarn that I scored…). Yesterday we hung out, made lasagna, and I watched him play the video game of the month (it is still Destiny!). Last night I came home to my house and the cats, crawled dizzy and still exhausted into bed (with my bag of goodies from Yarn Fest) and remembered that I do have a chronic condition as the cats feel asleep on top of my aching legs. Whatever, it was totally a great weekend. 🙂

This morning I discovered that the Pulitzer Prizes winners had been announced. Wow! All the Light We Cannot See won the prize for fiction. I loved this book! I was consumed by the story and thought about it for days after finishing it. I finally wrote a post about it. I am so happy that it won!!

I was a happy knitter as I settled in to finish the April 2015 socks. Some mistakes were made (OK, I forgot to change to smaller needles when I made the second sock’s toe. This is a mistake that I can live with. If it wears out too soon I’ll cut the toe off and knit a new one with the correct needles. Fearless knitting goes a long way!), but I’m happy with how they look. Here they are.

Sock pattern and yarns. — Here’s the yarn that I used and the pattern. This is the Spot Check Sock pattern from the book ***Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn*** by Carol J. Sulcoski. Here is the project page on Ravelry for the socks if you want more details.

Tomorrow I am going to starting winding all of my new yarn and it will be time to cast on for the next project. Woohoo! Knitting paradise here I come!

Sock Mending Day

This morning I work up on fire! I cleaned out the stash room, sorted all the knitted socks, mitts, and shawls into moth-proof bins, and organized the yarn for a few potential projects. While I was still feeling positive (and knitting powerful: call me Wool Wonder Woman!) I set aside three pairs of socks that needed mending and then headed downstairs to watch the weather forecast with the noon news while I worked.

Box of sock yarn leftovers. — I really am a scrap hound when it comes to the leftovers from knitting projects. Somewhere in this box is the yarn that I need to mend my socks.

Two pairs of socks had simple little holes that were fast and easy to darn. There, done! Back into the sock bin you two. The last sock, however, was a mending job of another order. This was going to take a little courage and ingenuity to get done.

Heel-less sock. — Poor little heel-less sock. There is too much fabric gone for this to be the normal darning job.

Picking up stitches. — I started this repair job by picking up a row of stitches in the heel flap a couple of rows above the worn spot. I picked up a total of 34 stitches across the flap.

New heel on sock. — I knitted eight rows of the heel flap pattern and then turned the heel just like I would have with the original sock. You can see the new turned heel at the bottom of the picture. I ended with 20 stitches on the needle when the heel turn was done. I then picked up 20 stitches on the foot of the sock at the location where the new heel matched up (upper needle).

Joining new heel to bottom of the sock. — I used the tail of the yarn from the heel construction to join it to the bottom of the sock with Kitchener stitch. The join is to the right of the stitches still on the needles. The tattered remnants of the original heel is now hidden inside the sock.

Finished heel. — Here is the finished heel: the fixed sock is the one on the right; you can see the line where I picked up stitches to start the new heel. I decided to just leave the tattered remains of the old heel (with the worst of the ends trimmed off) inside the sock as it felt fine once it was on my foot.

Finished socks. — Here they are! I have a favorite pair of socks returned to service after an hour of knitting braveness.

I just love these socks, and am very happy to have them back. I think that they are about 5 years old, and with the repaired heel I hope to have a few more years of wearing them.

Sock pattern: Lotus by Andrienne Fong. The pattern is one in the book The Joy of Sox by Linda Kopp.

Wednesday Update: Shawl, Sock, and a Rant

What a beautiful morning! My backyard filled with birdsong early and the cats began clamoring to be let out, so I got up, made a latte, and joined everyone in the early sunshine. It’s too soon for flowers (except dandelions which are now in full bloom!), but the promise of summer is there for the taking. My trees are blooming and there are little buds where the leaves are getting ready to burst out. It’s hard to not get a little excited.

I took advantage of the light to get knitting pictures. I finished a shawl over the weekend. Here it is:

Close up of shawl. — Here’s a close-up of the tip. There was a lot of color in the yarn!

Shawl on denim. — Here’s the shawl on denim. The colors look great combined with several things in my wardrobe. Yeah!!

Amazing yarn. — The original skein of yarn. It was a little intimidating with that “becoming art” label, but I’m happy with the product.

Now that I have one of the two shawls that I am working on finished I felt that it was OK to cast on the April 2015 sock. Here she is!

It was a really great week for me knitting-wise. I even coated myself with the best sunscreen on the market (SPF 60!!) and went out and planted my new roses. There were a lot of positives for the week except for… my scleroderma decided to kick my butt. My leg muscles now hurt, my knees have become swollen, red and warm to the touch, and I’m dizzy in the mornings. I have edema in my arms and legs. What is up with that!! My rheumatologist gave me some drug information to read (I get to pick which drug I prefer of two possibilities. This sounds pretty good, but during the week I realized that these are chemo drugs that I will be taking at a lower dose than cancer patients get. Bummer!) Still, I was having a happy week and being positive until one of my neighbors stopped by to talk to me while I was planting the roses, and he mentioned that if I would get out more often to exercise and get sunshine I would “get well”.

He meant to be encouraging. He’s really not all that bright; he doesn’t get “chronic”. I was polite, but once I got back into the house I was ready to rant. Don’t tell chronically ill people that they can “get well” if they just change their diet, get more exercise, meditate, get off gluten, take vitamins, or whatever else occurs to you. It’s almost like suggesting that it is their fault that they are sick. I know that while it is human nature to want people to “get well”; it is insensitive to suggest that this is within the power of the person who is dealing with a disabling, progressive and incurable disease.

On the other hand, I need to pick a drug. Once I calmed down I e-mailed the doctor to let him know that CellCept sounded pretty good. Some scleroderma patients in forums are claiming to be in remission. That sounds pretty good to me. The downside? No more sunshine for me until I’m off again.

Midnight gardening? I can do it!!

Resolution Roses

On New Year’s Eve I made some resolutions. I’ve been keeping up with most of them, but there were a few that were one time deals that had to wait for the right time of the year. Now that spring is here it is time for me to address one of the big ones. The roses at the front of my house are just awful. They were really nice roses for several years, and then they got a dose of bleach when my house was painted, and the extreme rainfall of the last two years was too much for them to handle. They struggled and what did manage to grow was munched by every passing insect. Ugh!

Sad rose garden. — Ugh! This is what the rose garden looks like now. Sure, I can weed it and put in some bedding plants, but the roses just aren’t doing well anymore. Time for them to go!

I have changed my landscaping around the house and had new rain gutter installed. It is now time for me to rip these roses out and to replant them with some others that are hardy, full of blooms and resistant to insects.

Off to my favorite nursery I went to look at roses. Here’s what I was looking for.

Decoration on house. — My house is pointed a creamy white with gold trim. I have rust colored gingerbread trim and this happy sun above my kitchen window. I decided I wanted floribunda roses that were deep rusty orange.

Rose in the ground. — Here’s one of the new plants in the ground after a good soaking. The graft point on the bushes are about 3 inches below the ground to help the plants survive our winters.

The weather here in Colorado will be warm all week except for a couple of day of rain. These guys should have a nice week to make a good start. Welcome to your new home little guys!

And don’t play nice with the grasshoppers!!

Sockapalooza: Finding the April 2015 Sock

I have been completely focused on knitting shawls for the last couple of weeks. Suddenly April arrived yesterday and I remembered that I need to locate the yarn and pattern for my April sock (hey, I’m taking this New Year’s resolution seriously!) so I could get started knitting on it during breaks from the shawls.

Sock knitting books — Here is my lifetime collection of sock books.

Well, I do have some sock books to look through. I counted them a couple of years ago, and I had 22 books that were just about socks. That is just embarrassing, but I’m still ~~buying~~ collecting books when they have a couple of patterns that I really like. I spent the morning going through the books, putting in slips of paper to mark the sock patterns that I liked, and basically developed a headache and made no decisions. It was pretty darn overwhelming, frankly.

Sock yarns that I found when I went stash diving. What happy colors!

My yarn stash is stored in plastic drawers and bins in the walk-in closet of my spare bedroom. OK, I actually bought the house because of this closet attached to the small bedroom/craft room. When I go stash diving I have the fun of tossing the yarns that I like back out the door of the closet onto the floor of the craft room. (Please don’t visualize a dog burying a bone. It’s not that bad. Really.) Wow! There were sock yarns in there that I loved when I ~~bought~~ collected them years ago and I had completely forgotten about them. I gathered all the yarn up and carried it down to the family room with the books.

One of the yarns that really jumped out at me was a wild pink Frolicking Feet handpainted skein. Oh, boy, This baby will need to be tamed when knitted into a sock. Because of the way it is handpainted I’m pretty sure that pooling will be a problem, too. I turned to one of my books, Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn by Carol J. Sulcoski, for help. This book is one that I like as the patterns indicate what types of handpainted yarns can be used (from “nearly solid” yarns to ones that are called “wild multi”). My hot pink problem child is what I would call “wild multi” for sure!

Bingo! Exactly what I need. Say hello to the April 2015 sock. I am ready to go.

Except for this. A funny thing happened while I was sitting there with the book and the bin of yarns. Suddenly the exact right yarn for several of the patterns in this one book jumped out at me. I now have made three more matches and am ready to knit through the spring and into the summer. Here they are:

Yarn and sock pattern — This is the Copper Penny sock pattern. This purple/brown/gold yarn will be perfect in the lace sock pattern by Nancy Bush.

Sock yarn — This Madelinetosh sock yarn in the colorway Grenadine will be perfect in the sweet lace sock (it has a little ruffle on the cuff!) called Switcheroo Socks later this spring.

Hey, that was easy! It so pays off to go stashing diving sometimes. I am really fired up to get started on the April socks now, and I have so many projects waiting that it may be hard to not knit more than one sock this month.

I still have all those marked socks in the books I went through this morning. It’s looking like this will be the year of socks. Midnight knitting at its best!

Wednesday Update: Shawls!

I am definitely in a shawl knitting phase. I just finished Edith’s Secret, and now I am cranking out two more shawls using bright yarns. This is fun! Here is what I’m working on:

That’s it. There has been a lot of midnight knitting going on with these babies. 🙂 I need to get them out of the way so that I can get going on the next sock of the month (since it is April 1st and all…) I’m really having trouble deciding on one sock as I found a lot of cool yarn when I went stash diving earlier this week. Then there were the patterns in one of my sock books. How to pick just one?

Isn’t it great to have a stash!!

FO: Edith’s Secret done at last!

I have been knitting all week on my Edith’s Secret shawl by Kristin Ashbaugh-Helmreich. Finally, at 2am on Wednesday night (I’m the Midnight Knitter, remember…) I was approaching the end of the bind-off when I paused to look back at all of my fabulous knitting and saw <gasp!> a double picot where there should only be one. NNNOOOOOOO!!! That was that. I stuffed Edith into her project bag and went to bed.

Cat on shawl. — Once again my cat MacKenzie closely supervised all of my work. Here he is on the wet shawl while I was blocking it. I had to cover it with a towel overnight to keep it safe: MacKenzie slept on the towel on the floor all night.

Yesterday in the sunshine I frogged back through the binding, reknitted it with the correct number of picots (one at the tip of each leaf detail in the final lace section) and cut the yarn at last. Blocking happened overnight (with my cat MacKenzie sleeping on top of the towel-covered shawl all night…) and here Edith is in all her glory.

Shawl in tree. — Edith on the arms of my usual shawl model: the ash tree. The tree is starting to develop leaf buds so I will have to leave it alone soon. These models are so fussy…

Lace on shawl. — Here’s a close-up of the lace sections with the beads. My hands got a little sore pulling all the beads onto the yarn with the crochet hook, but the final effect is nice. See the little picot detail at the tip of the leaves? I messed up by putting two on one leaf.

Here it is on a chair which shows the drape a little better then the tree did. A little dark, but you get the idea. :-) — Here she is on a chair which shows the drape a little better then the tree did. A little dark, but you get the idea. 🙂

Here’s my project notes on Ravelry in case you would like more details.

I am so glad that Edith is done, but now I am in a slump for sure. I even did my taxes today as I wasn’t quite sure what project to start knitting next.

Cat on desk. — This is my cat Morgan helping me get my income tax filing in order. He’s not really into knitting supervision, but put a piece of paper on a table, boot up the computer, and there he is. I hope that my tax lady likes cat fur…

I’ve placed the likely yarn candidates on the dining room table, and each time I head upstairs I kind of pat different skeins of yarn and consider the projects that they might be used for. So hard to make these decisions… Such beautiful color, and half of the skeins contain cashmere and silk too. I may have to start several projects all at once.

Happy knitting everyone and have a good weekend.

Bead Story

I have been knitting the Edith’s Secret shawl (without any side trips into other projects!!!) all week. I am through the stripes and the totally new to me Diamond Tweed stitch, and finally the time has come for lace. Lace means beads. Yeah, beads!!! I have been looking forward to this since I got the shawl started. I went to the bead store Tuesday to pick up a nice selection of beads to play with as I wasn’t sure what I would want when I got down that far on the shawl.

Cat — As usual my cat MacKenzie has moved in to supervise my knitting (and to deposit some more cat hair just in case there wasn’t enough in the knitting…) Doesn’t he look irritated with me? I had just admonished him to leave that ball of yarn alone!

After asking around I narrowed the bead contenders down to a purple matte finish bead and a shiny light amethyst bead. Gee, everyone at my knitting group felt that the darker purple bead would be best, but I wasn’t sure if I would like that much contrast. Also, I kind of like the pink in the yarn and would like to highlight it if I can. To further complicate things the shawl pattern directions include a chart of the lace with the sweet note that “beads are appropriate in this section” with no notation of where to put them. Yep, a little knitted sampler was in order.

That’s how I ended up knitting at the table with MacKenzie. This lace is English Mesh, and the pattern is pretty simple. It is little tear-drops surrounded by yarn-overs and it seemed to me that it would be good to put the bead at the top of the double decrease in the pattern, or perhaps in the middle of two yarn-overs.

Lace with beads. — Here’s the sampler with the purple beads placed in a couple of different places: at the bottom of the swatch the beads are right above the double decrease, and in the middle they are between the yarn-overs. The amethyst beads (the lighter ones at the top of the swatch) are placed just above the double decrease.

This is what the beads look like next to the shawl.

Purple beads and lace. — Purple beads with lace next to the shawl. They don’t stand out as much as I thought they would. The strip of knitting right above the needle is the infamous Diamond Tweed stitch which I had to frog twice while knitting. It is pretty, isn’t it. Worth every “ribbit”.

Beads and Lace. — Amethyst beads with the lace against the shawl. See how the pink in the yarn is more noticeable?

Well, after all of that it was easy for me to make my decision. If I am going to do all of the work to put these beads into the lace I will be using the beads that have a little flash to them: the amethyst beads win! I have also decided to place the beads right above the double decrease (sl 1, k2tog, psso) in the lace pattern. That means that the bead is placed onto the stitch in question on the following purl row using a little crochet hook right before I purl that stitch. Here’s a video tutorial showing how to do that if you’ve never tried it before.

Yeah! Time to start knitting this on the actual shawl. Edith, here I come!!