Square Scramble Sack – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis becomes Crankitis

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see this nice little blanket that the Mother of Cats made for me?

The Mother of Cats was cleaning up the yarn stash and found a little bin with all of these crocheted squares. Here’s the thing: the Mother of Cats had been knitting a chicken out of Noro wool yarn, and I wanted to help her… like a lot!!! I kept climbing into her lap so I could give the yarn a good grooming, and she just WOULDN’T let me help her the way I wanted!!!! I just love, love that wool yarn! The little squares that she found were made with the same type of yarn, so…

She crocheted the squares together one evening to make this blanket!!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting some chickens; she has two finished but not sewn and stuffed yet. Kind of cute colors, right?

These chickens look a little sad, don’t they. Sad, unstuffed chickies.

Why aren’t those chickens stuffed yet? Well… it is because of the knitting machines that the Mother of Cats bought. The new machine is large enough to make a hat.

The Sentro machine is the one that she uses to make the hats. Lots and lots of hats. The machine works when you turn this little crank on the side, and she has been cranking and cranking like crazy during the heat of the day. I hate the heat, so I just sleep on the coffee table next to the machine while she works. Hey, there is a fan blowing on the table! The Mother of Cats just needs to work around me because I am so cute, and I also have claws! Not that I would ever use the claws on the Mother of Cats… Anyway, she is making a couple of these hats every day and they are starting to pile up in the donation boxes. I like the hat machine, even if it gets used on my coffee table, because there is a lot of potential for fun.

It has a string hanging down under it that waggles around while she turns the crank. Yay! Cat toy!!!

This weekend the Mother of Cats pulled out the little knitting machine and spent hours trying to make some wrist warmers. It got a little ugly. She couldn’t get the machine to knit the sock yarn that she wanted to use. She watched lots of YouTube videos. She tried at least four different yarns. She hung weights on the knitted fabric attached to the machine. She forgot to give me my TUNA!!! Finally, today she tried one last yarn and bingo: it worked!!

Success! She needs to sew the stitches from the inside and the outside of the wrister together (she calls it Kitchener Stitch), but she has the lightweight wristers that she was trying to make.

She is pretty sure that she knows how to get the little machine to make more wristers, so the weekend ended up on a high note. That’s a good thing, because there certainly was a lot of cranking… the Mother of Cats has contracted CRANKITIS!!

Well, that’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats

Hannah’s blanket is made from the squares that I made following the pattern for the Square Scramble Sack.
The little knitting machine is an Addi Express Professional machine.
The big machine is a Sentro 48 needle machine. I bought the Sentro after seeing some hats that another Frayed Knots member had made using fingering yarn. Just what I needed! I have so much yarn in the stash that I need to get put to a good use.
The lighter weight yarn that worked in the Addi was Noro Silk Garden sock yarn. It is smooth, one ply yarn that isn’t very elastic. I think that it is about sport weight, but the manufacturer lists it as DK weight.
The Addi machine is more robust than the Sentro, but the Sentro is very easy to work with and quieter than the Addi.
The Addi machine is not knitting the fingering weight yarn yet, but I haven’t given up all hope. The Sentro, however, is knitting the fingering weight yarn with no issues at all. Since the Addi requires a heavier weight yarn, I tried making wristers using (duh) heavier weight yarns. I knitted with a worsted weight yarn, switched to a sportweight silk blend yarn, pulled one end of the tube up through the inside, and then closed the stitches with Kitchener stitch.

Pretty slick, right?

It’s exciting to crank away and get so much yarn that was languishing in the stash put to good use. This is fast, too. I can get a hat done in less than an hour.

Down the Fiber Hole and Other Essential Updates.

If you have been keeping up with the adventures of Casa Hannah and the CoalBear you know that I have been feeling just freaking wonderful for the last two week and getting more done than at any time in the last two years. I’ve been planting lots of new plants and getting all the gardens into order (for the first time in years because… next door pit bull who has now left the scene… yay… adios, pit bull…), and dragging out lots of things to get working on that have been languishing for years. The garden is starting to produce some color with the perennials now which is awesome as I’m seeing hot pinks and purples. Lavender, bougainvillea, and sage. Perfect!

Um… and then the party came crashing to a halt a few days ago as I started weaning myself off prednisone (marvelous stuff, prednisone!) and I got a little dizzy, and I… fell off the stairs. I literally realized I was going to be airborne at the last second and managed to push off enough to twist around and land on my feet in the living room where I pretty much crashed landed into the couch. Sad outcome. Did you realize that you can actually bruise your lungs? Okay, my lungs are less than pristine, but still… my ribs aren’t too happy, either. There was some talk about my liver… I had to stay indoors over the weekend and go back onto daytime oxygen.

That, however, did not stop me from going down the fiber rabbit hole!!

I finished the first silk/yak roving from Greenwood Fiberworks and am ready to start on the second.

I’ve been considering how to attack the variegated roving. Should I separate the colors? Do pencil rovings down the length of the larger piece? Just take it off in strips and let the colors end up however? Still thinking about this one, but I am tending towards pencil rovings.

I made some really good progress on my Salty Air Tee.

I love, love, love the yarn that I am using for this sweater. Isn’t that the perfect color for summertime knitting? This pattern is racing right along and I’m racing to get it finished because… some new patterns dropped on Ravelry and I am dying to knit one of them.

This is the Lace & Fade Boxy by Joji Locatelli, and that first picture is swiped off the Ravelry page and has her copyright. I have four skeins of a dark grey fingering yarn with smoky/woody tones that I am dying to use for this sweater. My first idea is to knit the entire sweater in the main color (lace and all… ignore the fade, we don’t need no stinking fade because I have four skeins of this color…) and then go back and knit I-cord trim at the neck, bottom, and wrists in that really cool multi yarn. That will look awesome, right? On the other hand, if there is enough yarn, I can do the lace in a fade with the pink yarns. I only have just over 100 yards of each color, so that may not work, but it might look pretty cool. I really am tending towards doing the whole sweater in the solid fingering. I have knitted two boxy sweaters in the past (the Vneck version) and I know them to be comfy layering workhorses in cold weather.

Then there is the crocheting. I haven’t crocheted in years because of my dodgy wrists, but I loved this bag (Square Scramble Sack) on Ravelry so much I bought the Noro yarn a week ago. Like I need more yarn, right? I had to order the crochet hooks from Amazon and then I was off to YouTube to learn how to make the puff stitch… that first little square has too many puffs in it, but I felt pretty successful and I’m now making a few squares every day that I don’t fall off the stairs.

There are two more sweaters that I want to knit, but I’ve got them on the back burner at the moment because I’m so far down the fiber hole at the moment I am just focusing on working steadily on each project for a few hours each day. Or maybe every other day so I don’t wear out my hip (spinning) or wrists (crochet). So far I’m making progress and I’m recovering from the fall okay at the same time so all is good. Except… the days of prednisone wonder are coming to an end as I feel the energy and the good times fading away. I start the lowest dose tomorrow and after a week it will be over.

Still, if you look at all those pictures that I put into this post, the days of color continue. Yay! My gardens have been returned to some semblance of order, I am making good progress on a number of projects, and I also got some chores done.

Hannah: I was put into the carrier and then put into the car and then taken to the vet and then I got cat-handled and there were some shots and would you believe that the vet said that I was slightly pudgy…

Hannah: Now I have to eat Indoor Cat food and the Mother of Cats has cut back on my cookies. Ugh.

That was my week. 🙂

You all watch out for those stairs!!!

Six Months Update and Days of Color

Okay, this is an update on my progress on my goals for the year, but it is also a celebration of how well I feel at the moment and my launch into several projects that are rocking the color right now. Seriously, I am so drawn to colors at the moment that I’m pretty much doing some silly impulse shopping. Who cares. I’m having a good time!!

You want to see the silly impulse shopping and/or pink things first?

I could not leave the local garden center without that pink flamingo for my garden! Hello, it glows in the dark with an LED body. 🙂 What do you think about my Knitting Goddess fabric? Yep. That was a late-night Etsy impulse purchase. I’m thinking that it will make a fabulous project bag. What do you think about that Noro yarn? That will become a crocheted tote bag… I also needed to buy some brightly colored hooks to make the bag, and there may have been another big ball of beautiful yarn that fell into the shopping crate before I checked out, but I’ll never talk about it. My feet are hurting because of the spinning I’m doing, so I had to get those wicked compression socks!!! Yep, I am a total sucker for pink. Well, raspberry pink to be specific, but I will settle for hot pink. Finally, Hannah kept trying to drag off my knitted finger protectors, so I made her and Mateo some little tube-like cat thingies to play with. They like them!

Speaking of color, look at my progress on the spinning for Tour de Fleece.

Can you see that I am making progress? The bobbin on the right is where I am today. I’m almost through the crocus-colored roving (50/50 yak/silk from Greenwood Fiberworks), then I get to start on the variegated roving. I’ve been watching episodes of Vera on BritBox while I spin so I’m actually coming to think of this Tour de Fleece as the Tour de Northumbia… I am happy with the spinning as I think that my drafting is getting easier and the thread that I’m spinning is getting smoother. It may also be slightly larger, but I can live with that!

I started reading this book this week because… look at that cover!!!

I don’t want to talk about this book yet because it really is remarkable, and I am changing my opinion about it as I go. It’s like entering a dream world and just experiencing the adventure without worrying too much about what’s going on. In time, I’m sure, I’ll understand what is happening. Maybe. I don’t care. I’m so entranced at the moment I’m reading a couple of hours a day during the heat of the day.

There is color in the garden, too. Look at this:

There is more color in the garden to replace the fading roses. My veronica is finally blooming, and I went back to the garden center to buy more lavender plants. I now have 11 lavenders in the garden… don’t you think that I should get another, so it is an even dozen? The pink yarrow is hard at work. Oh, yeah, there was also a garter snake in the garden today. Not a lot of color, but a ton of fun to see.

So, how much progress has occurred over the last 6 months?

I finished 30 hats and 28 PICC line covers in the first 6 months. I was hoping to get 50 of each done this year, so I am on track.
I have removed 76 skeins of yarn (100g of yarn = a skein) from the stash through knitting and donations. I hope to get 100 skeins out before the end of the year, so I am on track. I did just have a 6-skein slip, but I’m not worried.

The other knitting accomplishments are two sweaters and two pairs of socks.
I finished a quilt and got it hung up on the wall!

I learned how to double knit. Actually, I’m really stoked about how fun it was and I am looking forward to doing some cute projects. (I found that chart online and watched videos to figure out how to do this. Piece of cake, as it turns out!)

I have finished 32 books.

Well, that’s the progress report. My son helped me get my table loom set up for me to use and I’m dreaming of warping the floor loom before the end of the year. (Mateo: that sounds like fun!!) I’m wondering if I can weave something with the yarn that I am spinning now, and I’ve pulled out another quilt kit that has been languishing forever in a cupboard so that I can work on that in my sewing room. I’m entering the last few days on the full dose of prednisone; the dose will be tapered off and stopped over the next two weeks. While I was on prednisone my rheumatologist gradually stepped up my immunosuppressant to a final dose that is double what I was on previously. I feel really good right now and I have huge plans for the rest of the year.

Scleroderma, behave yourself!!