Yesterday was the Independence Day here in the USA. Fireworks are traditional; my neighborhood goes kind of overboard with the celebrating in that regard. Poor Hannah cowered under the bed and Mateo vanished for the three hours that skyrockets boomed directly overhead and showers of sparks glittered in the night. I finished up all the knitting on the Soldatna Crop, closed the gaps under the sleeves, and then wove in all of the ends. Towards midnight there was a huge thunderstorm that outboomed even the loudest of the skyrockets and I gently misted the sweater and steam blocked it into its final shape.
It is done!!
The Hannah savaged spot is just barely visible, but I am over it.
Do you see it now? The biggest damage is that some of the color has been removed in the fibers that were pulled off in the aggressive grooming Hannah incident. If I move fast, no one will ever notice it and I want to get on with the next knitting project because a new pattern appeared that I want to start right now!! It’s another little sweater by the same designer, Caitlin Hunter, called Alpine Bloom. I downloaded the image of the sweater so you can understand my urgent need: isn’t that the cutest ever? (sweater image is copyright of Caitlin Hunter)
I’m planning right now on doing the colorwork in the hot pink and I may slip in some flower details with the purple. I’ve been looking at other projects online and I actually like the ones that only use one color the best, so I may just stick with the hot pink. Check out the lace at the neckline and the sleeves: cute, cute, cute!! I need to get my needles switched over to this new project right this second, so the Soldotna is now declared done.
In other new, I actually saw a BUNNY in the front yard this week! It is an adult, and it came from across the street to hang out by my tree, but it made me really happy to see it. Stay away from the back yard, little guy!
Finally, how about an update on the roses? They are continuing to flourish and the new blooms are appearing daily. I did a count this week, and I actually have 34 plants right now. Obviously, I need to get another few to take it up to 40, right?
I do have room in the garden because not a single one of the really cute lavender plants that I put out last year came back. A couple of the well established English ones made it, but that was all. I did a little sleuthing on the internet to try to figure out what happened and quickly discovered that the Spanish lavender that I thought was so cute didn’t have a chance.
Yeah, if this plant struggles with temperatures below 10 degrees F, then the -24 degrees F that happened last year absolutely was too cold for it. Actually, it was a problem for most of the garden as I lost the part of the rose plants that were above the ground, but thankfully they all grew back from the roots okay in the spring and it really did help that we had a lot of rain.
It has been kind of a tough week. The weather shifted and suddenly became hot; I struggled with the sudden heat and couldn’t sleep well. I had adventures with online ordering that created a duplicate of an expensive item that finally got returned for me by my son. Mateo caught a baby bunny somehow that he brought into the house; it took two hours to catch it. My ankles/feet have decided that they hate my guts with as much swelling and tendon pain as my wrists did last month. Then the absolute worst: my next-door neighbor poisoned the bunnies and every single baby bunny died along with most of the adults that I have seen. I suddenly understood why bunnies suddenly disappeared last year.
I put the bodies into her trash. Every single one of them, including the rescued baby that I had carefully returned to the yard two days earlier.
Okay, enough of that. You should see what has been happening with the Soldotna Crop sweater:
Look at how cute it is now!!
I’ve been taking the knitting off the needles and steam blocking it to check for length, and I’m so pleased with how the sweater fits and looks now. I finished the ribbing late last night, steam blocked the whole body this morning, and took it out for this picture. Looking good, huh!!
I put the sweater onto blocking mats to finish drying indoors, and then I headed out to take some pictures of the roses. Let me tell you, these roses are really happy with the water earlier this year, and now that it is hot, they are blooming like crazy!
These are the front roses, and they are really looking good this year! Do you see all of those buds? They have never been this lush and prolific before. These roses are called Hot Cocoa.
My Princess Alexandra of Kent roses are enormous!
That rose is over 4 inches across, and for once the plant is sturdy enough to hold all of the blooms upright.
These roses are the little ones that you buy in the grocery store. I planted them outside and they really are blooming their little hearts out now!Do you see what is going on with this plant? I had to put supportive rings around it like you do with peonies because of the weight, and the buds haven’t even opened yet!!
So, the roses are looking pretty darn good. I went back into the house with the pictures and discovered that Hannah had savaged overly-loved the Soldotna while I was out of the house.
She has done this to other items. I think that she is grooming the sweater, but I was not happy…
I pulled the worst of the fluff to the inside of the sweater with a little crochet hook, and then I shaved the remaining fluff off. It isn’t perfect, but it isn’t horrible. I’ve decided to finish the sleeves and will then decide if I should rip back to above the damage and then reknit the bottom of the sweater. I don’t want to reuse the blocked yarn, and it all depends on how much of the dusty pink is left over. I’m pretty sure that I will rip and then reknit. This sweater must be cursed…
Hannah: I couldn’t help myself. I love the sweater soooo much… besides, it was WET WOOL!!!
I have to admit, I’ve been way too emotionally involved in this little sweater, the Soldotna Crop by Caitlin Hunter. I shopped and shopped the stash for some yarn. I dithered about whether to knit this little charmer in the DK weight that the pattern was written for, or to go rogue and to try it out in fingering weight. Needle size became an issue. I decided to go up a pattern size, because… fingering… even though my gauge was close. Then there were the colors… I was pretty torn about how to handle the four colors as they are displayed in the final sweater. I wanted a speckled or variegated yarn to break up the pattern a little, but that creates its own issues… Finally, finally I arrived at a final decision and got through more than half of the colorwork chart. Here’s the post about all the false starts, tinking and whatnot that went on…
This is the final color order (left to right) that I settled on for my Soldotna Crop.
I’m happy to report that things are now working out! I knitted steadily last week and got past the split between the arms and the body of the sweater last Friday. By late afternoon yesterday I was a couple of inches below the split and becoming a little concerned about how this baby would fit. I took the work off the needles, did some fast steam blocking, and then tried it on for fit.
Houston, we have a sweater!!!
This is a huge, huge relief! I took it outside for some fast pics and this afternoon I’m putting it back onto the needles and will continue on. Yay!
Full view: I’m really liking how the colors are showing in the body; that’s why I wanted to use a variegated yarn so that there would be subtle differences.Here’s a close-up of the fabric.
I’m really happy with how things are going now. This sweater sure had a rough start, but I’m rocking along now.
The weather has been just crazy here. In the mornings the air is cool, the sky is bright blue, bees rule in the garden, and birdsong echoes through the backyard. The cats and I head outside to the catio where I enjoy my current book and morning latte while the cats chase the occasional miller moth and stalk bunnies from their side of the wire. When my latte is finished, I get a little gardening done while the flowerbeds are in the shade and the cats doze on the deck.
See how cool it is out in the yard? That huge mushroom just appeared under one of my trees. Several plantings are now starting to bloom, and the roses are covered with buds. Mornings outdoors are really cool!! By noon clouds are gathering, gloom begins to gather in the house, and ominous rumbles start to sound to the west. The afternoon thunderstorms are piling up and moving east; sometime soon there will be rain, lightening, thunder, hail and hopefully no tornado alert…
This week’s hailstorm… seriously, the weather has been something this year. I don’t know when I’ve seen so much rain before.
Trapped indoors, I spend the gloomy afternoons tinking back on my current knitting project, the Soldotna Crop.
What is going on? Well, there have been an endless run of knitting misadventures with the sweater. First of all, I started knitting this sweater while wearing braces on both wrists. Yeah. The tension was a little funky. I frogged the sweater after a couple of days and started over. I transitioned to compression wrist braces and managed to get a couple of inches into the sweater. Um… the short row turns left holes in the fabric of the sweater, so I frogged back and reknitted that evening using German short rows. Great. I finally got to the colors and started knitting the chart.
I started knitting using this order of yarns, starting with the dusty orchid and moving right.
Yeah. I didn’t like the way the third color, the turquoise multi, looked. I wanted the gold next to the dark plum. I tinked back and dug around in the yarn stash.
I decided to knit the color chart in these colors, the alternative selection.
I really liked the gold yarn in the #3 slot, but the light silver was too light, literally. The weight of the yarn made it seem flimsy in the knitting, so… I tinked it back out. Back to the stash.
That darker grey is a heavier yarn that played well with the others. Yay! I made a lot of progress, but after taking the knitting outside I decided that the new grey was a bad decision. I knitted a swatch with the original turquoise multi and laid it on the sweater.Doesn’t this look a lot happier?
There was more tinking. I don’t want to talk about it. Two days ago, I knit back with the newest color order and this what I got.
I like it!
I think that I’m done tinking for now; the plan is to just keep knitting and let the color chips fall where they may. My hands are feeling so much better that I can knit pain-free again, but I am still wearing the compression wrist braces for now. I’m almost halfway through the color chart and my gauge is spot on. I’m feeling pretty good about the knitting and there is only one last concern hanging over me… I sure hope that this thing fits!!
Have you wondered how the Scrunch socks that I started while struggling with tendonitis are doing?
I’m hoping to get the socks done over the weekend. 🙂
So, that was the week. Beautiful mornings, lots of rain, and adventures in knitting every afternoon and evening.
You know, some of the best lessons in life are ones that you didn’t see coming. Years ago, I was a member of a 6th grade instructional team that taught integrated units. The kids were learning about Canada in social studies at that time, and the language arts teacher had them reading Julie of the Wolves. I read the book too even though I was the social studies/science teacher, and one of the lessons really stuck with me. It was advice from Julie’s father to her: if what you are doing doesn’t work, change what you are doing. I am not one to quit easily, but sometimes that isn’t the right attitude.
I’ve been struggling with my treatment plan for months and I finally decided that we needed to do something different. My pulmonologist stopped the medication (Ofev) that I was taking to treat my lung disease (interstitial lung disease) because of side effects and started me on two inhaled medications instead. In the aftermath of this change, every single one of my tendons has decided that it hates my guts. Everything, everything hurts, and my arms are back in braces. I have two canes going so I am never far from one when I walk, and the walker is back out for use in the house. Feeling sorry for myself, I was slow to realize that Hannah had a rash on her tummy, and she was just miserable, licking and cleaning herself so much all the hair was gone and she had open sores.
After eliminating everything that I could think of, I have concluded that Hannah is allergic to the blanket that I’m knitting!
That yarn that makes up the Nectar blanket is made of recycled fibers, and it includes raw silk. If you don’t know raw silk, it has a slight smell because the proteins from the silkworm cocoon are present. I kind of think that the silk is the problem, so I have packed the blanket away for now because Hannah LOVES TO LAY ON IT!!! Hannah got a bath with soothing anti-itch shampoo and the rash is gone and her fur is growing back. Bad yarn, bad!!
It hurt my hands too much to knit on it anyway. The lace is hard to work, and the purl rows are misery. Goodbye, blankie. You are going into time out for now.
I also packed away the yarns for the La Prairie sweater that I wanted (really badly) to knit because it is a cardigan and is knit back and forth (instead of in the round); all those purl rows on the wrong side will kill me. The yarn is now keeping company with the Nectar blanket in time out.
Obviously, I needed to find something that I can knit. What I’ve been knitting (and want to knit) isn’t working, but by golly, there must be something that I can knit on. Something that is only in the round, almost all knit stitches, and easy to pick up and put down again without losing my place.
These socks were a free pattern on Ravelry, and they are just what I needed. There is no ribbing at the top: just stockinette that curls around to form a rolled edge. The purl row is every 9 rounds, so I can manage that. The heel is made with all knit stitches! I’m able to knit with size 1 cable needles because I push them with the back of my hands without using my wrists.
and these socks are… scrunchy!
The socks are slightly oversized so they are easy for me to pull on. I’m slowly making progress and my wrists have improved so much that I’ve transitioned from the hard braces to compression braces on my wrists while I work. I knit outside most mornings with the cats enjoying the birdsong and fresh air, dreaming about the colors to knit a Soldotna Crop sweater in fingering weight yarn.
The cats hang out under my swinging seat while I knit. I think that they are dreaming about catching bunnies…
Soldotna is written to be knit in DK weight yarn, but I think that is too heavy for me to use as a light topper over long-sleeved shirts. I have been messing around looking at other sweaters by this designer that I’ve made that were written for fingering weight, and I think that if I go up a size in the pattern, I can substitute fingering for the DK. Also, fingering is easier to work with while my hands are totally acting like assholes, and stranded knitting is slower knitting and hopefully easier on my hands than my usual speedy pace. Did I mention that there are no purls in this pattern once I’m through the first rows of ribbing?
As usual I am fussing about the colors and the order in which they will be knit. I had completely decided on the first combination (with Mateo in the background) when I decided to play around with a combination that is more colorful by adding in the turquoise multi. Everything depends on the order of the colors in the design; I’m pretty happy with the combination on the right, and I’ve decided that if I don’t like it, I’ll just shop the stash and start over with some other colors. You know, if what you’re doing doesn’t work… The other factor that is causing me to lean towards the more colorful set is that the yarn is a little heavy for fingering, so I have a better chance that it will work in the pattern.
Have I wound the yarn for the sweater yet? Nope. It still seems too exhausting right now, but it is hopefully set out by the umbrella swift in my dining room. Soon, Soldotna, someday soon my wrists and hands will decide to behave themselves and it will be your turn.
Take that scleroderma. You’ve been messing with the wrong knitter!
Notes:
Julie of the Wolves is one of the books that gets banned from time to time, but it certainly made an impact with me and my students loved it.
My pulmonologist says that there are two other drugs in the pipeline that I may be able to take when they are approved. Yay, science!
Hannah was the best girl ever with her bath. She didn’t struggle or even meow while I was washing her tummy and then she let me blow dry her with absolutely no fuss. How about that!
The color of the yarn that I am knitting the socks with is… Perfect Miracle. How cool is that? Just the color that I need right now.
Yarn, Books & Roses 