Ahoy, intrepid summer sailors!

Yarr! Here at moving central, we be swabbing the decks.

(There has been literal swabbing of the carpets. Blame the cat for that one.)

We also be running out of yarn, spun from the finest wool from the colonies. We won't be producing any more until we unpack ye olde spinning wheel.

(More on this shawl later; the poor quality picture is entirely on purpose. (for once))

Some monstrous creature be eatin' me blocked swatches, so my new sweater must wait until laundry day be come and gone again'. Jaunty new socks may console my peg leg, though, for a time.

(I swear there must be a land of misfit swatches right next door to the land of misfit pens. I'm offering a reward to anyone who patches the wormhole in my apartment.)

An' if ye black-hearted scalliwags mutiny, it's down to the watery depths with ye!

(Kitty is actually taking a bath, if you look closely. I think he's defective. Aren't cats supposed to hate water?)

How kitty beats the heat

Shaved legs!

Sorry for the delay. I had to take kitty in to the kitty dentist (you can see how thrilled he was in the above picture), then ran off to Seattle for a bit, and now we're finishing the packing. We're doing a scorched-earth move: everything that doesn't fit into a box gets sold, donated, or thrown out. Anyone in the Boston area want a perfectly nice couch with included very nice soft green machine-washable cover (protects from kitty!)? How about some end tables (beat up but matching coffee table included) or bedside tables (IKEA)?

Kitty doesn't have enough fuzz

Kitty has been shedding rather abundantly, and I believe he misses all that fur. Why would I think such a silly thing? He's either trying to be a cat in sheep's clothing or a cat filled with sheep's clothing.

He's sitting on my entire fiber stash right there. Sandra D, I need some help to catch up to you! (Actually, what I really need is some help in spinning this stuff into actual yarn. Does anyone know of a good book?)

Then he decided to eat the coned yarn I was skiening... this one earned him a time out locked in my husband's office to stand on his keyboard for a while.

Not all my fibery pursuits have been taken over by kitty, though. Here's a close up of the (former) raglan yoke of Phrog.

Instead of decreasing on the raglan lines, I'm decreasing up the center of the chest. While I like the overall effect, the cable join in that picture is just not helping. (Nor is the fact that the kitting is all scrunched up, but that's easily fixed!) True to its name, Phrog has been partially frogged again. I'm happy to say that the Silky Wool is holding up well to the knit/frog cycle. There is some grass to pick out, but that's a reasonable exchange for the nice feel of the yarn. (I'm told that processing the yarn enough to get out that last bit of VM is what makes some yarn feel odd.) I'm also thrilled with the yardage; I am going to finish the entire body in three skiens or just over! At about $7/skien, this is going to be a wonderfully soft, cozy, wonderful sweater at an impressively low price.

Lystessa, I'm so thrilled you like Phrog, and I'd be happy to write you out a pattern for your measurements. Phrog is actually a reasonably simple pattern, especially if you don't need a bust dart or a lot of waist shaping. I'm actually happy to write out a copy of whatever I've knitted for people, if they want it, just in exchange for asking nicely. (Bribery never goes over badly, either.)

Yarny reprieve

Do you know that feeling you get, as you move towards the end of a project, that you're going to run out of yarn? WEBS came through for me. I wasn't running out of yarn for my current pair of socks; I was running out of yarn for any more pairs of socks. (Cascade 220 superwash just doesn't cut it for socks, in my opinion.) Artyarns Supermerino to the rescue!

Kitty brought his passion for sitting on things to this new and challenging project. Unfortunately, even after I rescued the yarn from his fuzzy little clutches, I can't decide what to knit with next. Any opinions? (Colourways visible at Artyarns.)

• 101 Purple, Gold, Navy, Brown, Olive, with Turquoise highlights (it looks pretty yellow to me)
  
• 123 Sea blues and greens, with periwinkle (much more saturated in person than on their website, even when largely hidden under the cat)
  
• 141 Salmony pinks, red, brown, tan (more salmon in person)
  

Quarantine

Poor, poor stash!


I opened a bag with the pieces of my alpaca wrappy sweater and a worm fell out on me! Two cones of yarn are freezing whatever insect larvae may or may not be in them... the rest of the stash is freezing in the garage, mixed in with some freaky moth-killing objects that smell like urinal cakes (or so my husband claims). I'm not sure what a "urinal cake" is, but if it smells anything like those moth-objects, I'm not getting it anywhere near my mouth.

Kitty will attack birds on the screen, so perhaps he'll take care of whatever moths we have around here. (Watch The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill with your cat today!)

I haven't actually seen any moths and my stash was all bagged, so this may not end up being a major issue.

There are only a few things out for knitting. I finished some socks, which ran me right out of worsted-weight sock yarn. I just had to order more Artyarns supermerino and a little bit of something new to try.

Pattern: Toe up socks using magic cast-on and short-row heel on 48 stitches
Yarn: 1 skien of Artyarn Supermerino per sock, a truly super boot sock yarn in colour 125
Needles: Size 3 Crystal Palace DPNs

After a truly dangerous bout of second-thumb syndrome, I finished up a pair of mittens for my SIL. To make them extra snuggly, I added a ktbl lining to the cuff (one mitten is turned back so you can see the dark blue lining).

Frankly, I'm not sure I'd use this yarn for mittens again. Sure, it's soft (though processed-feeling). Unfortunately, it doesn't stick together like the Finullgarn in my beloved Frostrosen mittens, so I don't believe these will end up being really warm. Since the entire point of mittens is to be warm, I'm going to send these off to my SIL with an offer to knit her something else as well. I love the pattern, and the mittens are cool... unfortunately, the mittens may well be too cool for Canadian winters.

Pattern: Latvian Mittens chart 69 with extra ktbl cuff liner
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull

Long time no... type

I'm sorry about the long hiatus since the last real post. It's been an interesting few weeks. First, my friend and his girlfriend came to visit. More importantly for kitty, their luggage came to visit.

Then I went to the doctor a few times. I'm doing fine, but the cardiologist did find a few heart defects. If they're the kind of defects that take over 25 years to find, then they're not really the important kind. This did, however, coincide with an attack of the intestinal flu that's been going around Boston (either that or a lot of us have been eating the same tainted food, since I just thought I had food poisoning) and then the death cold that put me down for the last week. If I passed either on to anyone else, I apologize profusely. I haven't been knitting in favour of lying down and groaning occasionally, but I did finish up a few things for my inlaws.

Ah, blocking lace. I just love this Prime Alpaca. Frankly, I think everyone loves the Prime Alpaca. I'd never knitted anything in "feather and fan" so I made this little scrap of lace for my MIL.

I swear, blocking lace has got to be the most fun finishing technique of all time, bar sewing mattress stitch seams.

There it is: a soft little warm hug for my MIL. I really hope she likes it.

Yarn: Prime Alpaca in Mist Grey
Needles: Size 6 Denise
Pattern: Two repeats of feather and fan. Repeat until scarf-sized.

I also made a (much bigger) scarf for my FIL. I hope this will successfully replace his worn out golfing scarf! He likes bright colours, so what could be nicer than Noro in entrelac? (If someone knows of something he'd like better, perhaps I could him something else... knitting for other people is a bit of a shot in the dark for me.)


Yarn: 4 skiens of Noro Kureyon in colour 164
Needles: Size 8 Denise

So fly off, my little scarfies. I hope they'll be loved. Otherwise I think I might go kidnap them back (and replace them with something the recipients like better), because I certainly like them.

New scarf and renewed desire

I finished a scarf! It's just in time for the freaking wind of the arctic that's decended on Boston. My husband says it's not so cold. My husband's been working from home and not walking to work at 8:30am. My husband is full of it.

I wandered into Poor Little Rich Girl today while killing time after work. This vintage/consignment clothing store has an interesting (in a nice way) selection, including this lovely suit for $40 in my late grandmother's favorite colour.

I almost bought it, until I rememberd that I could knit my own with bust darts and waist shaping. I am way too excited about this. Given how badly hemp turned out for my poor fingers, I think some Euroflax is in my future.

Our houseguests are amusing kitty to keep him off my yarn, since he was all annoyed that we cleaned the house. Yes, we took the crap off of the floor and put it in... containers on the floor. It's a good thing kitty hasn't figured out the door handles, or he might try to smother us in our sleep. Instead he'll watch and wait...

I don't know about you, but I'm scared.

Yarn: Fleece Artist Baby Alpaca, a wonderful gift from my parents-in-law, in a burgundy colourway
Needles: Denise in #8 or #9
Pattern: Garter stitch on the bias, slipped stitch edging

Unseasonable photographs of handknits

Apparently it was unseasonably warm yesterday. Every time I say to a Bostonian that the weather seems unseasonable, they rush to assure me that it's normal for Boston. It doesn't matter what the weather is; I think they'd claim this if it were literally raining cats and dogs. My coworkers are starting to admit that highs of up to 70 degrees are perhaps a trifle unusual in January, given that we are not, in fact, in California.

My husband and I missed the lovely weather entirely, though, as we're both sick. He has a cold. I seem to have picked up a bit of food poisoning (or rather, I have no other explanation for the force and duration of my symptoms). Probably because I'm a vegetarian, I haven't had food poisoning since... well, over 10 years ago, when I wasn't a vegetarian. I think I'll stick to the "no food poisoning" plan in future. Kitty's not allowed outside, but he got as close as feline-ly possible when we opened the windows.

I traded off moaning and staring at my abdomen to see if some alien was making an appearance with knitting various things, so I finally finished my RFC-making socks. Here's the best shot I got of kitty modelling them.

I've given up on that for the time being, as kitty doesn't seem to be as pliable as Krista's dog, so here's a shot of my new socks investigating their new home. If you're looking for manly sock patterns and colours, my husband thoroughly approves of these. I think this means something coming from him, considering that he owns no non-black socks.

Yes, my ankles are small, but part of the giant boot effect is the fact that these are several sizes too big and require giant socks. (My new Bearfoot socks, while thicker than Lorna's Laces, are not thick enough for these boots.) Now I just need to figure out what makes good, thick socks. The Artyarns Supermerino I've used for thick socks in the past is great stuff, but not quite as thick as I need, even knitted on size 3 needles. I can wear any colour socks, since they sit inside my boots, but I really could use some more thick wool socks.

Pattern: Ringwood stitch pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks applied to one of my stock sock "patterns"
Yarn: Mountain Colours Bearfoot in the Red Tailed Hawk colourway
Needles: Size 1 Comfort Zone bendy plastic DPNs

An honest-to-goodness finished object

Kitty and I have been lazing around all day

but I did get a bit of knitting done.

Here's my husband modeling his new string market bag filled with cans and other tasty food items.

Pattern: Market bag with the following mods: picked up radically different number of stitches for top of bag, then did trim and strap in stockinette instead of garter stitch.
Yarn: Valley Yarns Winsor
Needles: Denise transformer robots-in-disguise tree trunks (#15) and tree branches (#10)

My row and stitch gauge turned out radically different from those (not) specified in the pattern. I put the bag together anyway, to see how it'll work out. (I'm sure it can still carry OJ, which is what my husband goes out nearly every night to buy.) I'm not sure the stitch pattern is sufficiently dense to keep things from falling out. I'm not sure it is sufficiently structured to do much carrying of heavy objects. It's certainly worth a try, at least, but I won't be using the pattern in this form again.

As for the yarn, it's great for this project, since I don't care about it being knocked around/pulled on/stained, but it's probably too randomly tuft-y and rough for me to choose to use it in an actual garment. I like the texture, but there are spots where it just breaks down and becomes a big poof.

Happy new year to all and sundry. I think kitty and I will be asleep before then!