Uncategorized – Page 4 – Yarn, Books & Roses

Update from Hell: Still Knitting

A couple of weeks ago the bottom fell out from under the Midnight Knitter family: health emergencies, rushes to the emergency room, surgery, a life altering diagnosis of colon cancer for my older son, and the death of a beloved dog. A terrible 10 days.

A week after returning home from the hospital my older son developed complications and once again ended up in the emergency room. Blood clots! Holy smokes, this is not something that I would wish on anyone! Once again we took turns at the hospital and knitted through the wee hours of the morning. It was days before he could go home again.

Buttons on sweater — I finished knitting the drijfhout sweater before I got sick. What do you think of these buttons? I still haven’t attached them or done the finishing work. Soon. Very soon. Then there will be a picture for sure. Project notes are here.

Then the next shoe dropped: even before my older son was out of the hospital again I came down with the plague. Seriously, it had to be plague. It couldn’t have been flu, since I had that shot earlier this year. <snark> Whatever, I got sick. Really sick. Too sick to knit. Ugh. It was bound to happen since I was burning the candle at both ends for days on end and taking chances walking into hospitals with a seriously drugged up immune system, but still … I think that we are due a break here!! After a week in bed I dragged myself up to my younger son’s place and have been recovering with him since then. Now it’s a whole week later and I’m still struggling to get around with a dizzy head and shaky legs, but I am definitely starting to feel more like myself, and I am back to knitting every evening.

Shawl — I’m knitting like crazy on my Find Your Fade shawl. Look!! I’m four colors in and have three to go. I’m still obsessing about making some color changes…. My project notes on Ravelry are here

Tomorrow I will head on home again. Poor MacKenzie! He and Yellow Boy were pretty much abandoned this whole week with only a couple of checks to make sure they had food and water. I know I will be getting an earful from them once I’m back.

Annoyed cat — MacKenzie: What? An earful you say? Just because you ABANDONED us for an ENTIRE week?

Tomorrow my oldest son starts chemo.

I think of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s quote from Knitting Without Tears a lot in times like these. “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crisis.”

Knit on indeed.

MacKenzie Speaks: drijfhout Days

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

Cat with knitting. — I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats every evening with the knitting.

The Mother of Cats and I have been knitting up a beautiful new sweater for her to wear when she goes out into the snow. It really is nice and light weight knitting; perfect for me to snuggle under while she works. Look at this yarn that she bought.

Yarn — This yarn goes perfectly with my coat; I especially like the red color. If she would make me a little cat sweater I could go outside with her on the snowy days. Does the Mother of Cats ever think of things like this? No, not so much. Humans can be so self-absorbed…

Sweater design. — She especially liked the red color and wanted to use it to highlight parts of the sweater. She is such a silly human she had to print pages of the cover picture to color with different ideas until she made her decisions. She should have just asked me! This is what she finally decided to knit. It’s OK, but I would have opted for more red on the upper parts of the sleeves.

Sweater — and this is what the sweater looks like with the first red stripe in it. Nice, huh.

Knitting detail. — Look at how great these yarns are knitted together. The envy of every cat, let me tell you.

Cat on sweater — Now we’re working on the sleeves. Hey, this sweater is exactly the right size to make me a cat bed… That would be even better than a cat sweater!!

We have been knitting this sweater for over two weeks. It’s a little boring if I have to be honest. As soon as she get going nicely she has to switch colors which means twisting the balls around each other. I try to ~~yarn chomp~~ help her with the color changes, but she seems determined to thwart my every need. Still, we are making good progress and it should be done in plenty of time for the next big snow storm.

When she isn’t wearing it I’m pretty sure that I can sneak in some cat naps on it.

I’m such a good boy!

Can I have some cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

This pattern is drijfhout by Isabelle Kraemer. The proect notes of gukineru were especially inspiring and my sweater is basically based on hers. The yarn that I am using is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, which is a woolen spun yarn that creates an exceptionally warm but lightweight fabric, which probably explains why I can’t keep the cats away from it while I’m knitting. As soon as MacKenzie leaves the other cat moves in.

My Ravelry project notes are here.

Out of Love and Back Again: Say Hello to my Little Jujuy!

At the end of August I cast on my Jujuy shawl (by Joji Locatelli) with excitement and anticipation for a beautiful final object. I couldn’t wait! Cooler weather was on the way and I was positive that I would be needing this fabulous light wrap before the leaves started changing. September! Falling leaves and the first frosty morning had to be on the way.

Right. We had a couple of days in the 60’s, but the month was loaded with days in the 80’s. It was darn right toasty here almost all of September. The trees began to flash a little red and yellow, but all things considered it felt a lot more like summer than fall. The shawl languished.

Shawl Detail — Okay, I got stuck in the sections with the grey and pink. The shawl kept getting bigger and bigger and was getting bunched up on the needles. There was all this light grey, and the pink looked pretty darn washed out. Even when I got to the mesh section that was all pink it looked too much like an item for a “Pretty Princess Dress-up” party. Ugh. Did I mention that I turned 65 in September? It seemed like the shawl was mocking me.

I became discouraged and put the shawl aside. I knitted several other projects that had been moping around the knitting chair and freed up some knitting needles. October arrived and I had only this shawl and a winter sweater left in the UFO pile. I ignored the sweater (nothing personal little guy. It’s still pretty hot outside even though it is now October…) and slugged my way through the ~~awful, washed out~~ pink mesh section of the pattern. I was so unhappy with the look. The mesh was the worst, and the look of the doubled lace weight pink yarn made me want to ball the whole thing up and stuff it into the back of the stash. This is serious. Anything stuffed into the back of my stash could easily never be seen again. I gritted my teeth, got another cold drink and kept going. Finally, finally I made my way down to the edging with the third darker color.

Wing of shawl — I especially like the wing of the shawl where to the pink and blue are joined.

This week the weather turned cold, I had to drag in potted plants from outside so they wouldn’t be killed in our first frost of the season, and the leaves of the tree out back turned a blazing red. Fall has finally arrived here in Colorado.

As it turns out, I had planned the knitting exactly right after all.

You can find my Ravelry notes here.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Bring it on Rio!

Last night was the start of the Olympics in Rio, and I cast on the start of my first in a set of seven happy shawls. Think I can get this done before the end of the Olympics? Let the race begin!

Happy 4th of July

Alpaca — What did you expect, a picture of fireworks? That’s not until after dark!

I hope everyone had a great weekend and a good day today. 🙂

Finished Objects: Dishtowels!!!

This has been going on for weeks. I warped the loom almost a month ago and since then I’ve been working on a set of dishtowels off and on. I’ve been posting pictures of the weaving on the loom, but they all kind of look the same and I hated to keep boring all of you with the pics. The work has been disrupted by snow, doctor’s appointments and knitting ~~emergencies~~ deadlines, but this week I finally got to the end of the warp; the weaving was done.

Yesterday I pulled out my best sewing shears, gritted my teeth and cut the warp. I mean, I’ve been so careful to not injure any of the warp threads for days and days, and now I have to cut them?! Yikes! But as soon as I’d pulled the cloth out it was totally worth it,. Look, look!!

Cloth — Here’s the cloth handing over my stair rail showing two different sections of the 5 yard length of weaving. The cloth on the left required me to change color bobbins every twenty threads and the right section of cloth was made using natural colored cotton weft. If you are a weaver and interested, these towels are turned twill, 20 tpi, made on my 8 shaft Schacht Baby Wolf loom. I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton thread.

Cutting towels apart — There were five towels in the length of cloth; each towel is about 30″ long. Today I cut them apart (I wove in a tiny white strip to give me a cutting line…)

Ironing Towels — Pressed a folded hem on each side of the towels…

Finished towels. — and my towels are done. I have three of the white weft check towels and two of the plaid check towels. My kitchen is going to be very, very happy with these. I’m now trying to think of how to make curtains in these colors for the kitchen window.

I folded up the loom this afternoon and rolled it back into the office to its usual hibernating location. As I wedged it back into the closet I do believe that the spinning wheel shivered his treadles at me. He’s right. It is about time that he got to come out to play.

Next week it will be spinning time! Woohoo!!

And thus the Christmas knitting was done…

Say Hello to my Little Joker…

Actually this is the second The Joker and the Thief shawl by Melanie Berg that I’ve knitted. When I picked the yarn to make the shawl I struggled with the color choices and ended up putting together two color combinations. The first shawl was navy with a bright fushia/gold gradient (that one is mine, mine, mine and has already seen a lot of wear…), and the second one was interesting but probably not the right colors for me. That’s cool. It is Christmas time and I know exactly who I am going to gift this shawl to. I knitted on it like crazy over the last week and tomorrow it will begin winging its way to its new home.

Cat on shawl — What! This Joker wasn’t made for me??

To give MacKenzie credit it was kind of easy for him to get confused about ownership concerning this shawl since he spent most of the time I was knitting it lying on my legs with it draped over him. Such a sweet boy… (Actually not. He gets pretty grumpy if he doesn’t get his way so I mostly go along with his requests. Mostly. Did I mention that he is a big cat?)

Gathered shawl — This is what the shawl fabric looked like before blocking. Yikes! Gathers and cat fur…

Shawl close up — After blocking the fabric opened up and the criss-cross stitch became more showy.

I used a Frabjous Fibers Cheshire Cat gradient pack for the jewel tone colors and added the burgundy color from the stash. It was a little intense settling on the colors by I am happy with the end product. Here all the details on Ravelry.

Almost ready for Christmas. Woohoo! Bring it on, Santa!

The Start of August: Garden Swing, Socks, Butterfly

My exceptionally annoying rib pain has improved (love those pain killers!) and I have gotten a lot of knitting done this week. The July socks are finished!

Finished Socks — The Lacy Cable socks (by Veronik Avery) fit well and the MJ Yarns Opulent Fingering is soft and cushy. The pattern was a little hard for me to memorize, but by the second sock I was doing much better and knitting faster.

The other progress that I’ve been making is with the new seat for the garden swing. I got the crocheting finished last week and headed right outside to get it sewn onto the frame of the garden chair.

Seat on Garden Swing — I’m just tying the crocheted seat to the frame right now to kind of stretch it into place. I’m working out an idea for a permanent crocheted attachment to the side frames. I also need to sew the tube that covers the bar at the bottom of the chair back.

Cat on swing. — MacKenzie is not waiting for me to finish. He’s ready to sleep in his swing again now. Yep. I need to get that bottom stretched tighter, huh.

It is a little smaller than I wanted it to be but it is growing in size as I get it stretched to the frame. I’m still thinking about how to attached it to the sides; in my mind I have an idea of how to crochet the attachment. I have a few more days to think about this because my ribs are still too sore to take on the task right now.

Butterfly — I do need to get the chair done soon. Look at what I’m missing by not being able to read outside in the garden.

August is starting out right. Woohoo, August!

FO Tee, a Garden Swing, and an Excited Spinning Wheel.

I know that I have been a little whiny lately. I started methotrexate a little over a month ago and the adjustment to the new medication has been challenging to say the least. This week was better. Much better. So sorry for the whining. I ~~promise~~ hope that I won’t be doing that again for a long time. Check out all the things that were accomplished this week.

Knitted Tee — I got the Clove HItch Tee finished! Here are the project notes on Ravelry.

Tee Sleeve. — Look at how cute the lace detail is on the sleeve. This yarn is a linen blend and will be cool to wear even though it is a worsted weight knit.

The whole time I was knitting this tee I worried about how big the neck opening was. As soon as it was cast off the needles I tried it on, and yep, too big. I ran a drawstring around the neckline on the inside to draw it up a little and to prevent more stretching. Neckline problem totally fixed: it fits great! The top is loose and a comfy layering piece. I’m thinking that I would like to make a second one with long sleeves using a winter yarn that will be lighter in weight. Maybe in navy blue. I plan to keep that garter stitch band on the sleeve and will continue the sleeves in stockinette below the band.

Crocheted lawn seat. — I have now crocheted the entire back of the lawn swing and am continuing on to make the seat. I draped this over the back of the swing; it’s longer than it looks in the picture.

The lawn seat is coming right along. The fabric will stretch when I sew it into place so it will be more open looking when it is done. I haven’t completely decided how to attach it to the side pieces of the frame. I’m afraid that the attachment solution won’t be very elegant, but hopefully it will be functional.

Wednesday I went out to visit a friend’s alpaca ranch (she has sheep too!!). I am consumed with jealousy. Such cool animals wearing fabulously cool fiber; she has a whole dyeing and processing operation going. I didn’t take any pictures because next week there will be a summer camp there and I get to teach kids how to spin! Ha! Stay tuned for the summer camp report. 🙂

Today I took the car to get its oil changed and battery replaced. I know that this sounds like a small thing, but I am rocking my good week and getting a lot of things done. After I got home I cleaned out the garage and packed my spinning wheel into the car because tomorrow we go to a class to learn how to spin camelid fibers.

Spinning Wheel — Look! The wheel is already strapped into the car and ready to go. It is so excited! This is its first trip out in almost a year; no more sulking in the corner for this little guy.

That’s right. I still have a bag of paco-vicuna that I am nervous about spinning. The spinning class is taught by Chris Switzer who has quite a reputation as a master spinner of these fibers in this part of the world. I am taking the paco-vicuna bag and a chunk of my alpaca fleece with me to the class to get feedback on spinning techniques for the yarn that I dream of creating. Not that I’m intimidated, but the class registration says to bring some things that I’ve made from my homespun yarn with me. I have spent an hour finding things that I’ve made; I’ve decided to only take ~~two~~ three things. Maybe three is too many? If I take two substandard items she might think it’s a fluke. If I have three, it’s pretty sure that’s the type of spinner I am. Whatever. It’s best to not overthink this. I’ll take three that I like and that will be that. I’m taking the class with a friend who likes to spin crazy lace weight yarn and it is going to be wonderful!!

I finished reading all of the bee books this week too. I feel another post coming on. Some of the books were a little bit of a chore to finish, others were just amazing. Hmmm….