Tag: The Uncommon Thread

The Saturday Update: Week 2

So, I am a little late with the weekly update. Since it is only the second week of the year it doesn’t really look at that good, does it. I mean, I should start out the way that I mean to go if I am going to stick to this posting practice. In my defense I an only say…

I tried to write the post up at my son’s place while dinner was cooking and the kitten had other ideas. He decided that my arm was a kick toy and that the computer was almost as much fun. In the face of such determined kitten wildness I retreated from the battlefield and watched a movie.

I really had a busy week, but it was sort of a nonproductive one as I spent most of my time fussing around, swatching, making phone calls and struggling to make decisions.

Knitting

I want to make another knitted cat that looks like MacKenzie, but he is a hard combination of colors and patterns. I spent part of the week shopping the stash (which I did clean out and reorganize while I was at it!), going to the local yarn store, and hunting online. Then I made swatches of various combinations of yarn as I made decisions. Finally, finally, on Friday I cast on and started to knit. I did blog about this project and you can find it here.

I also have some mohair that I bought in December that I just love. Look at this:

This was a totally serendipitous discovery while I was hunting for the yarns to knit cats. My favorite color ever!!  

I want to make a sweater with this yarn by stranding is with a fingering. I have struggled with the decisions: I need the perfect pattern and a fingering that will work with the pattern and make this color shine true. Not as easy as it seems.

I first focused on the color. There was NO pink yarn at my local yarn store that would work with this mohair. I wanted pink with a little bit of speckle. Nope, nope, nope. There was baby pink, hot pink, brownish-pink, bright pink, but not the pink that I wanted. I want to keep the dusty greyish undertone in this yarn! I tried to swatch with various grey yarns hoping that the mohair halo would dominate. NOPE! I tried to swatch with a muted variegated yarn hoping that I would like it as an alternative. NOPE! Actually, that was a huge nope. I want that dusty pink!!

Forget the color. Maybe I should make a decision about the sweater first. I was torn between knitting The Daydreamer and Iskald. I own both patterns so I read through them and made the decision: Daydreamer it is! That sweater has lots of detail work: honeycomb, moving stitches, and bobbles. I needed a smooth yarn that would show off the details through the mohair. I went back online for the umpteenth time hunting for the right color with the correct yarn properties. It has to be a smooth yarn, maybe something not quite pink, something that would add some depth but maintain the dusty hue… with the new focus I looked at yarns I hadn’t considered earlier. Bingo! There was the yarn at the Loopy Ewe.

A single ply yarn in the shade Into Dust by the Uncommon Thread jumped out at me. The color is kind of a light orchid with grey undertones. 

Yay! After all the agonizing I had made my decision. I immediately tried to order the yarn from the Loopy Ewe instead of driving up to Fort Collins, Colorado, to see the yarn in person with my mohair in hand.

And I failed. The website refused to let me log in or to register me as a customer as someone else had my email address. Right, you dumb ass computer, that person is me!! Get with the program here!! I have bought yarn in person at this store in the past and now I want to buy online. Nope, nope, nope said the computer.

<Why is this the week of NOPE!! I asked myself?>

I called the store and suddenly the week did a complete turnaround. The wonderful woman at the store verified my identity, reset the password in a workaround at her end, pulled my yarn for me to check the color consistancy, and sold it to me on the phone. Yay!! The yarn arrived by express mail the next morning and I just gasped in joy when I saw it. Loopy Ewe, you are the best ever!!!

See what I mean?
Now we’re talking. I went with the more detailed sweater design as I knew I was going to end up with a monochromatic yarn. This is going to be the perfect color and texture for my Daydreamer sweater. I am in business people!!

I spent almost the entire week making knitting decisions, but I did get a little knitting done too.

I made a pair of fingerless mitts to gift to a fellow scleroderma patient. Here is my pattern if you want it. 🙂
I also finished another pair of wristers. Should I write up this pattern too?
Garden
My sister sent me two amaryllis bulbs for Christmas. They are close to blooming!!
My African volet plant continues to put up new blooms. Good plant!
A cyclamen plant came to live with me this week. Hey, it was at Sam’s Club and it just followed me home. 

The orchids continue to do well and another plant has buds that look ready to burst open. I think this plant will be purple. Yay. Can’t wait. It has been a good week for plants, and a bad one for the white flies. I think that the Neem oil did them in. Bye white flies. Don’t come back!!

Books

I’m reading three books at once this week, I have to get another one done by Tuesday evening for my book club, and I’ve finished nothing. Stay tuned. I’m sure to get something finished soon.

So that was the week. Lots of indecision and swatch making. I also spent way too much time on the phone and computer trying to set up an appointment with my doctor during the week, but by the end of the week everything was in place for an appointment and testing next week to track down the source of my extremely annoying new symptoms. <Yep. This was more of the NOPE! theme of the week. Would I like to see another doctor? NOPE!! These new docs tend to go crazy when they get their hands on rare disease me. Would I like to go to Urgent Care? Umm… in the height of a major flu outbreak? NOPE!! See, I can do nope too!> Hopefully there will be some answers on the medical scene soon and I can write a post about that. 🙂

Have a great week everyone.

Dreaming and Fading…

I’ve been just cranking on my What the Fade?! shawl for the last week or so since I last wrote about it. Once I had bid the brioche section at the top of the shawl goodbye it was garter time… lots of garter. This is really easy knitting even with the fun of the fading, and MacKenzie and I have just settled in to binge watch Netflix and crank out the rows of changing colors.

Knitting
The shawl is now so big that I can’t get it open for a picture, but you can still get an idea of how it looks. I just finished fading in that light blue speckle, and there are two more colors to go before I’m done. My project notes on Ravelry are here.

Here’s the thing… I’m doing a lot of dreaming about yarn colors and projects while I’m knitting. It makes things worse that I still have the fabulous Western Sky Knits yarns that I bought at the Interweave Yarn Fest last month still out on display to encourage my dreaming. I already blogged about this yarn: check this out if you want to see my fabulous dream-inducing colors! I’ve been reorganizing the yarn stash and going through my patterns between bouts of knitting, and then I kind of slip into a garter stitch, color-induced waking dream state where I match color/yarn ideas with patterns to decide on projects.

So, with no further ado, let me introduce you to the line-up of May and June projects:

Yarn for sweater
The blue tonal Posh Fingering yarn from the Uncommon Thread has been hanging out in my stash for about a year waiting for the right project. I just love this golden brown from WSK, and it also is 10% cashmere. Perfect match! I’m going to make a Zweig sweater from them, and the golden brown will be the lace yoke in the sweater. I can’t wait to get going on this, and every time I think of how cool this sweater will be the garter stitch pace in my Fade shawl picks up.
Yarn and pattern.
I absolutely love this skein of painted cashmere blend yarn from WSK. Don’t you think that it will look great with the Zweig sweater? I love the look of this little shawl, and I’m thinking that I should transform some of the handpainted Christmas yarn in my stash into scarfs like these for gifts. But not now. Now I have to knit all of this fabulous yarn that is calling to me.
Yarn.
These two yarns are my absolute favorites. I want to make a shawl that shows the two off really well, but not too crazy in the pattern. I’m not completely committed to it yet, but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make Albuquerque Sunset by Casapinka with this yarn. Did I mention that I just bought a light pink summer top? Perfect!
Yarn and pattern.
Last but not least, how about a simple summer tee that will use up some of the cotton yarn in the stash and show off the colors of the shawls? Yep! I’m hoping that these Throwback Tees will just fly off of my needles, because I’m going to need them to go with these shawls!

See why I’m knitting so fast? Look at these fabulous yarns and great patterns! Actually there is a lot more where this came from. I just checked, and I have 25 items in my knitting Queue on Raverly, 1,122 patterns in my library, another 159 patterns in my Ravelry shopping basket, and a world class yarn stash. This is all kind of overwhelming if you think about it too much, which is why it is hard to finalize decisions. The last couple of days things just fell into place and I made a list of knitting decisions and kitted up the yarn with the appropriate pattern.

Then I went back to knitting my fade and dreaming of what to do with the colors I have left over. Dreaming of yarn and the beautiful, useful objects that I can make from them.

What can be better than that?

In case you’re wondering… I am still in the middle of testing to clarify the cause of my worsening scleroderma-related symptoms. This week I head in to see another doctor and will get my echocardiogram done; after my heart is sorted out I can get the pulmonary testing that I need. Right now the discussion is mostly about my heart, but they are still gathering data so no definitive diagnosis yet. Through all of this I’m just rocking my knitting and refusing to worry about what I can’t change. Tomorrow I’m planting more flowers in my garden! Peace on, everyone!