Rising Night

Recent knits

2007-03-29T10:28:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted! I've been knitting up a storm, and here's some proof:

This is Ian in his chullo, knitted with Mission Falls 1824 wool.

Ian in his Viking sweater, knitted in Elsebeth Lavold silky wool (pattern by Elsebeth Lavold).

Spring/summer socks for me, knitted in Schaefer Yarns "Lola".

"Inishmaan" sweater for me, from Alice Starmore's _Fisherman Sweaters_, knitted in Rowan Yorkshire Aran Tweed. This is the back; the front is about 2/3 finished; and the sleeves exist only in my imagination. My current UFO: 'cause who can knit heavy winter sweaters in this weather?!

Sheepy love

2006-08-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

I finished my first Estonian sock puppet! The pattern can be found in the latest issue of Spin-Off. Although the pattern called for about 1 oz of each color, I ended up using almost 2 oz - this because no matter how hard I tried (and I did, I really really did), the Shetland I spun on my Cascabeles and Emily spindles just did not come out at 15 wpi. More like 12 wpi. But I went ahead & knitted the sheep puppet on size 1s anyway - I figure with a kid like mine, this puppet better be bombproof, and it's so tightly knitted that it probably is.

I was going to put the puppet away until Christmas (this was ostensibly a Christmas gift for my son), but dh convinced me to give it to Ian right away. I was glad I did, for his face lit up when he saw it, he cried "sheep puppet!" and he had to immediately try it on, as the following pix show.

Here is Ian doing his best to make sure the sheep makes it into the picture.

In this one, Ian and dh are playing with the puppet.

And here Ian is giving his puppet a kiss. What a cutie!

Now that I've finished the puppet, it's time to start knitting two-end mittens from Homespun Handknit for my mil for Christmas, using more of this lovely Shetland.

Woohoo! I'm combing!

2006-07-12T22:16:00.000-05:00

Now that the dissertation is finished (revisions notwithstanding), I finally have time to use the Alvin Ramer super mini combs I bought from Janet (thanks, Janet!) and the Shetland fleece I got in a swap with Shell.

Here is a pic of the fleece:

Here is the combed fleece, waiting to be pulled through the diz:

Here is my roving:

Here is the singles on my Emily spindle:

And here is the two-ply, ready to be knit:

75 yards down, another few hundred to go...for this color...man oh man do I need a wheel.

Believe it or not...

2006-07-01T20:55:00.000-05:00

I *have* been knitting. Kind of a lot, in fact. But with the long, drawn-out move and the placing of all our belongings (including my beloved stash!) into long-term storage, there's been no way for me to post. So now here I am breaking the silence, to announce that...drumroll...I still don't know where the connector cable is for our digital camera, so I can't post any pix of what I've been doing. :( Sigh. But hey, we're *almost* completely unpacked now...

Anyway, I'm simultaneously finishing my pair of log cabin socks, knit in luscious Jaeger Chamonix (why oh why did they discontinue this yarn?!) and working on Dave's river forest gansey, in a yarn I've grown quite fond of, from Blackwater Abbey. And I've been spinning a lot too - some yummy hand-dyed yearling from Fun With Yarn.

Pix to follow.

Yay me.

2006-02-22T21:55:00.000-05:00

I did it! Ian's "river forest gansey" is finished! And it looks terrific on him, too. :)

I can't believe...

2006-02-21T20:54:00.000-05:00

...that I've almost finished Ian's gansey. It has been quite a saga, but I don't feel like going into it right now. Later, maybe. For now, here's a pic:

Yippee!

2006-02-12T18:01:00.000-05:00

The back is finished! And it only took me all weekend to do. My poor son is turning into a wool orphan. So I am officially done knitting for the day - or at least until he's down for the night. ;)

Wow (knitting olympics sweater)

2006-02-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

The river forest gansey from Handknit Holidays is harder than I had thought. Turns out I'm not nearly as good at reading a chart as I had thought I was. Darn WS rows - if it weren't for them, I'd have a lot more knitted right now (I figure I've frogged almost as much yarn as I've knitted at this point). Still, I have made quite a bit of progress. Here's the proof:

As you can see, I've almost reached the neck shaping. I figure I'll be there in about another 2-3 rows. The tree pattern at the top of the sweater is where the charts really got me in trouble.

So would this be considered aran knitting? Or is aran knitting only when you're knitting cables? Regardless, and despite the challenges & frustrations of this pattern, knitting this sweater is fun!

Objects, finished and unfinished

2006-02-09T20:53:00.000-05:00

This is the scarf I made for my mom for Christmas. It is 12 repeats of a double leaf pattern taken from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I spun the yarn on my Bossies, plying a singles of chocolate brown alpaca and a singles of silk in the "black forest" colorway from . It turned out pretty well, I think.

These are the log cabin socks which I knitted for my mil from Rowan Cork in the "vapor" color. Imagine that there is a finished pair of socks in this picture. Why do you have to imagine the socks? B/c my mil will not give them up for even a minute to be photographed, which is rather flattering, really. Note to self: next time, finish knitting, take picture, then give gift.

And here is my lone log cabin sock - the one who will be mateless until I finish dh's 2nd sock. Sigh. I've started wearing it with my mateless spindle sock, also mentioned in the previous post, at least within the confines of my house. They might not match, at all, but they sure are comfy.

View 1 of the Duncan pullover from Jamieson's Shetland Knitting 1. Stranded knitting is fun! Takes forever, though, especially when you have multiple projects going on at once. You can see the pattern in this pic.

View 2 of the Duncan pullover. As you can see, I follow Kaffe Fassett's method of knitting with multiple color strands - just let them all hang down, tease out the strand you need at any given point, and occasionally comb your fingers through them to keep them from getting tangled. It was scary at first, but now I love this method.

Here are two shots of Ian in his new sweater. I knitted it with Elsebeth Lavold silky tweed and finished it with handmade ceramic buttons. Think I could've done a better job sewing the seams...

And now for something completely different...

2006-02-06T21:39:00.000-05:00

No more kvetching about the whole going home/not going home/damn them fiasco. Back to what truly matters in life: KNITTING! I'm getting ready for the 2006 knitting olympics. My yarn is bought (well, um, mostly...), my swatch is knitted, my gauge is gotten, let the ceremonies begin! Except that before the torch is lit on, geez, Friday? I need to finish a few things (imagine pix inserted here - I'm too lazy to find the camera & upload the pix):

- dh's 2nd work sock. Yes, that one. The one from the pair I was knitting him for Christmas. Christmas 2005. Oops. In my defense, I would have made it if
a) I had not decided at the last minute that my mil needed PF legwarmers before Christmas
b) I had not waited until Thanksgiving to choose to knit almost everything on my list from my handspun - handspun, naturally, that was still for the most part roving, and in a couple particularly bad cases, theoretical roving (as in, I hadn't chosen & purchased it yet).
- my 2nd log cabin sock from _HH_. Having promised dh I would finish his sock first, I cannot possibly justify knitting this one, even though it's loads more fun than his sock, and way faster to knit too (bulky weight yarn on 6s vs. fingering weight on 1s - oy!) And since I'm a medievalist, my word is my bond, etc. etc. So no more cabled merino/angora yumminess for me until the drudgery is over. :(
- my 2nd energized singles handspun and knitted directly from the spindle sock, using some gorgeous "leaf peepers" merino/tencel roving. Nope, not sss - for the reason this sock is mateless, see above re the lcs.
- a pair of longies for my ds. Or possibly 2. See, I went to the lys to buy some yarn with which to knit a pair of longies to match the sweater I recently finished for Ian (using some yummy Elsebeth Lavold silky tweed yarn). I choose a skein of Cascade Ecological in a nice milk chocolate color, got home, unskeined it, put it on my swift, wound about an ounce of it onto my noste - and then happened to glance over at my sock yarn stash, where a skein of Lorna's Laces shepherd sock yarn in the "safari" colorway was making eyes at me. So I abandoned the Cascade for the LL and wound it into a ball, then knit a gauge swatch. I decided I liked the way it knits up in reverse stockinette better than stockinette, and got as far in this project as printing out the ww perfection pants pattern and doing the math for the gauge, when the _Second Treasury of Magical Knitting_ book that I purchased at the same time as the Cascade lured me away from my knitting and forced me to practice the moebius cast-on. And then to knit a test round. And then to knit myself a short moebius scarf using some yummy Mountain Colors weaver's quarters in the "redtail hawk" colorway. But I actually finished this scarf, so it's not a UFO. Yay!
- and then, of course, there's the stranded-colorwork sweater for myself which I cast on weeks ago, and am working on a row or two at a time, and which, with any luck, I'll have finished in time for next winter. Or the winter after that.

Pix of everything to come when I have the time/have found the camera/am not having to contend with a feral toddler who believes everything should either be fed to the cat, or poured on top of the cat/feel like it.

It's over.

2006-01-31T18:54:00.000-05:00

They strung us along for almost 2 weeks, then hired someone local. We're not going home. What else is there to say?

Crap. Crap. Crap.

2006-01-27T18:26:00.000-05:00

Prescience? Or just my usual pessimistic attitude being held out by cold hard facts? Looks like we're not going home at all. Still no contract letter for Dave - the letter, btw, which he was first supposed to have on Monday, and then by end of workday today. No reply from his contact, either - so not a good sign. So it looks like we're going to have to cancel our trip home & the showings of houses we're interested in. We won't be listing our house fs either - this after a backbreaking, nervewracking, exhausting week for me of replacing ceiling tiles, fixing holes in walls, chipping off cracked paint, spackling, priming, painting, cleaning, straightening, freecycling everything we can't use...dammit dammit dammit. Motherfuckers, as Jane would say. The disappointment is huge. Oh, and now I'll have no income this semester, and for no reason, since I'm going to be an official nonresident of Hopkins - which means I won't even be able to use the library. Not a problem if we would have been in Columbus - OSU's library is better - but now I'll be left only with the resources (hah!) that Harrisburg has to offer (negligible might be understating the case). See previous comment re dammit. I just want to cry, but that would make Dave feel bad, and I'm sure he's feeling bad enough already, he really wanted this damn job. This really really sucks.

As promised

2006-01-21T22:41:00.000-05:00

Here is a pic of Dave in his Jayne hat. Ian's hat was knitted from the same pattern. Both were knitted with Jamieson's DK, which I really really love. Definitely my new favorite yarn. Aren't they cute? (The guys, I mean, not the hats.)

Click your heels together...

2006-01-20T19:03:00.000-05:00

and say "I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home."

Yep. Looks like we're finally going home. Why do I not sound ecstatic? B/c the contract for Dave's theoretical new job hasn't been signed yet, which means this could still fall through - and that would be a major disappointment. So I'm trying not to get too excited. Never mind that since Dave's first interview I've been trolling realtor pages, making lists of things to keep & things to get rid of, and planning out all that needs to be done to move from one state to another. Nope, no pressure, Dave. Really. None at all.

Random thoughts

2006-01-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

Wow, been a looooong time since I posted on blogger. Guess I don't really need 2 blogs. Especially since I haven't been posting on the other one either. Sigh. If only I could go without sleep, I could get so much more done. (How many working moms have said that over the years?) Anyway, my knitting progresses. What knitting, you might ask. Well, since I last posted here, I have become both a knitter *and* spinner. In other words, I've found the perfect method of procrastination re the writing of my dissertation (which, incidentally, needs to be completed - COMPLETED - and defended - in, oh, two months. Back to the whole non-sleeping idea...) But who needs a PhD when you can knit your own darn socks & sweaters?? (yeah, yeah, those who want to actually get a JOB after more years in college than a sane person would admit to).

Anyway...I've finished Dave's Jayne hat (I'll post pix later when I find the darn camera) and Ian's super-cute earflap cap & mittens (see previous comment re pix). And I broke down & bought a Debbie Bliss baby patterns book (don't know why I have this prejudice against Debbie Bliss, I just do) - just for one pattern, a super-cute double-breasted jacket, which I plan on knitting for Ian in yarn that coordinates with his hat (2 colors of Jamieson's Shetland DK) and mittens. Then I'll need to knit him a striped scarf using both colors, and a pair of pants using the contrast color for the jacket (aka the main color for the hat) - and then he'll have an entire ensemble! Nope, got no time to waste writing a dissertation, no siree bob. There's knitting that needs to be done. Oh, and I need to finish my mil's log cabin sock (yeah, yeah, and knit the second one) - and I'd love to start working on my Duncan pullover from Jamieson's Shetland Knitting 1. Why the hell didn't I start knitting years ago????!!! Question: is spending time imagining all the things one *could* have knitted if one had begun earlier (e.g. Kaffe Fassett designs using the original Rowan yarns - whimper, sob, moan) a sign of obsessive behavior, or merely a sane and logical reaction to time wasted on education, work, socializing, sleep, and other unnecessary activities? Discuss.

2005-06-23T07:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I dyed my first mandala - on a birdseye flat. It turned out pretty nice, though I found out afterward that I didn't do it properly. I think I'm going to try again on my last playsilk. What I learned from this one: I really need to get syringes to inject the dye b/c it's too hard to control the rate of flow with squirt bottles.

2005-06-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I learned a couple of things these past few days.

1) I need to either modify my diaper pattern to change the snap placement (either by offsetting the snaps, or by removing one of the thigh snaps on each side) or I need to give up on the idea of hidden snaps. It just leads to too many serging mistakes that are completely avoidable. No wonder so many WAHMs have exposed snaps.

2) When dyeing prefolds using LWI, no matter how many layers of fabric there are, greatly reduce the amount of dye you're using if you don't want deep, dark colors.

2005-06-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

Hopefully no-one is going to read these pages, b/c they're just for me - a kind of ongoing notepad of sewing, dyeing, and knitting experiments, successes, failures, and adjustments. So if you're not me, stop reading - this will probably not interest you. 'Nuff said.