Tour de France Knitalong 2009

Today tastes like brie, foie gras, and sweaty chamois. But I made it, I made it, I made it!!!

I rode in the Tour de France Knitalong for the first time this year, and I actually finished my project in time!!!



What is the TdF KAL? Well, every year during the Tour, a Ravelry group forms up to watch the race and knit a project. The projects and knitters and teams vary from year to year--sometimes the moderators ask that there be a French/bicycle racing connection, other times it's a free-for-all. Knitters choose thier own projects (i.e., we're not all working the same thing at the same time) and then cast on on the first day of the Tour (July 4 this year), dance on the needles, and try to complete their chosen task by the end of the Tour (July 26 this year).

There are traditionally categories to play in--a yellow jersey for a full challenging project, a polka-dotted jersey for multiple small projects, a white jersey for a new participant or someone providing moral support.

I went for the yellow with a lace stole knitted in an accent foreign to me--the Faux Russian stole from Gathering of Lace.



I'd never worked a stole this way before--you cast on for the edging at the bottom, knit ten repeats, then pick up and knit the stitches at the head and sides, working the edging as you go. I'm familiar with an edging knit on after the body is complete, but turning the corners bumfuzzled me each time I read the directions. Plus the chart is huge and complex--81 stitches and 96 rows per repeat. And did I mention that Gathering is infamous for its errors?

But really, I should have tried this ages ago. Except for a couple of occasions where I misread the chart and had to tink back (and back and back--ten rows at one point) it was smooth knitting.

This was the shawl that inspired this story and post. Its final destination will be over the shoulders of the Lady of Lyhr 2010.

Wedding Gift, Nine Years Later

Today tastes like honeysuckle, asphalt, and monsoons.

Nine years ago this March (the 4th, to be exact) two dear friends of ours got married in our backyard. The yard was turned into a small medieval faire for a weekend, with folks in costume and folks in mundanery milling about. The neighbors still mention this when they see us on the street.

The bride plays in the Society for Creative Anachronism, with a relatively late period persona. Think "encrusted" with lace and frippery dripping from every seam. With this in mind, I pledged her a wedding gift of ten yards of lace edgings, either knitted or crocheted. I explained that she could make up the dress (or what have you) then I could work up the edging to fit and tack it on. The lace could then be removed and sewn to another garment at a later date. A gift that could keep on giving--ten yards is a LOT of collars and cuffs, or one amazing court garb hem trim.

And so, eight years and nine months later, at the New Year's Not a Party, Caladasia wandered over to admire the lace shawl I was draped in. This one, to be exact.

She kept wandering over throughout the evening, petting my arm or shoulder, pulling the wing away from my body for a closer look, asking questions. And finally, at the end of the night, she said softly, from just behind me, "I don't suppose . . . you would do soemthing like that for me?" I turned to face her, and she hurriedly added, "Oh, nothing that big, or even that intricate maybe, but . . . I'd really like a shawl." In the smallest meekest voice.

Honey, you only have to ask.




I had a pattern kicking around for a while that I'd wanted to play with: Liz Lovick's "Orkney Pi" pattern. I loved the swirling diamonds and the border, so decided to modify these old Orkney motifs into a modern Shetland square. Does this then make the shawl Orkney Cornbread?¹



I had some amber beads I wanted to add for flash and sparkle. I intended to go much further with the edging, but by the time I reached the last round of cat's paws, I had hit five and one-half feet across. Much bigger, and I'd have another seven-foot monstrosity on my hands.



It's next to impossible to get good shots of beads--they're more visible as flashes of color and sparkle in motion. I keep trying.

Thorax, at least, is a much more forgiving subject. For certain values of forgiving. She wanted to go travelling for this shot, again. I told her we were not going to Santa Fe just to shoot this finished object. She pouted, whined, and dragged her feet.

She very nearly won. Until i reminded her of how long a drive it is, and then she was happy with this choice of location much closer to home.



And after all, bougainvillas don't grow in the Cit Dif.




1. Because, as Churchy reminds us, "Cornbread are square. Pie are round."

The pi shawl gets its name from the shaping ratio. You double the number of stitches when you double the number of rows. Cast on 8, knit one round, double. Knit 16 rounds, double. Knit 32 rounds, double. This lets you insert lace patterns into the round between your doubling rounds without having to fiddle with half-patterns.

A Perfect Storm of Meh

Today tastes like dry cleaning bags, glass, and sand.

Not every knitting project is successful. Sometimes the lessons learned are useful but not necessarily the ones I wanted to learn.

F'r instance, lessons learned from the following project: always have your batteries charged so you aren't stuck with a cell phone camera, and you'll generally do better to scatter colors in a scrapghan.



I was liking this project a lot until I seamed it all together. The idea was great--pastel colors and a simple lace, with a variegated earthy color at the changes to break it up some and define the chevrons.

Spike, darlin', you would have done better to alternate colors more frequently. Make stripes of 10-15 repeats (even a Fibonnaci sequence if you didn't want a perfectly even striping sequence) rather than pulling one ball and going till the yarn ran out.

Yup. Scrambled, not fried. This binkie is most definitely fried--yolk HERE, white THERE. Blap blap blap, no blending at all. Ah, well, it will keep someone warm and give someone something soft to hang on to during a hard time.

Trying something new with the next big binkie--using the knit 1 in the row below technique in variegated pink/gray/green with shades of deep purple offsetting bias lace text. I like it so far, but again, the proof will be in the final article post-seaming.

I is for . . .

Today tastes like illusion, illutation¹, icicles, and ichor.

Thorax says I is for Illustration. Who am I to argue with such a learned and worthy sage? For that, I give you a picture of Nuala's Wings.



When she first saw the finished shawl, Thorax hugged it to her bosom and proclaimed that we simply had to fly to England right now so she could be photographed twirling through a field of wildflowers. "it would be so, so Rowan, so very Heathcliffe and Catherine," she sighed.



We compromised.

I love this shawl for the details. Check the center neckline:



and the transition from the body to the border:



and the edging:



By way of Illustration, I would add that I is also for Inspiration. This shawl has been in my head for years, ever since I saw a picture of Anne Hanson's glorious Wings o' the Moth.

I loved the way the diamonds gave way to the leaves, and the way the undulating leaves led to the eyespots of the Corona. However, I wanted a Faroese shape . . . but with a different texture down the back panel.

I convinced myself that it would be "too hard" to follow all those patterns at once. And how to reconcile the leaves with the eyespots? There's no easy lowest common denominator between the stitch patterns. The leaves simply had to line up with the eyespots--so there's another stitch pattern to work with.

Do you see the capering gremlin, Ikant? Of course you don't. Now.

I gave her swatches and an abacus and told her to prove to me that this was impossible. That there was no way at all to make this complex thing work itself out. That we couldn't bend string and make it go the way we wanted.

Yes, it helped a lot when I flipped the Spade Lace pattern. Like taking a deep breath and walking across a child's wading pool before taking on the Sea of Galilee.

About a third of the way through the knitting, I took a long look at the color, and realized it wasn't so much insectile as fey, and the name dropped into place. Nuala's Wings.

Neil Gaiman is an author I admire very much, and not because our short story voices sound very similar. (I was reading a collection of his shorts, Fragile Things and found a section that delighted me so much I began reading it aloud to DH Gareth, who was in the kitchen. When I finished the pages, Gareth poked his head around the door, frowning quizzically, and asked, "Which of your stories was that from? Is that a new one?")

Long and long ago, Gaiman was writing for a comic book, Sandman. There was a minor character, Nuala, a fairy. Of course she was drawn long and lean and lovely because you can do things on the page that would be grotesque in real life. Well, Nuala and her brother were forced to give up their glamour. (Why? Don't recall in full, and what there is would take forever to line up. This was back in the day where comics were actively working to be serialized graphic novels, rather than a quick self-contained story each month.) Her brother didn't change at all, but Nuala became a drab, brown, skinny little thing with tiny eyes and big pointed ears.

I like to thnk, in my own Jasper Fford way, that perhaps off-page Nuala was able to get at least a little of her former self back. Her wings, perhaps, and a chance to fly in the gardens.




Perhaps.










1. Mud bath

F Sub 1 is for . . . Footnote, Fotos, Finally, & Finished

Today tastes like frittatas, flan, and farandine.¹

In re: the previous "F is for . . ." post, one Tonstant Weader weighed in with a real life comment that she was going to post a note that my plan sounded, in the words of her esteemed father, "Fine as froghair!" but she doubted anyone would get the reference. Would the rest of you please weigh in on the comments if you do indeed "get it?" Thank you.²

With all that clarified, on to the current blog post:

Thorax has been sitting in the corner, sighing loudly and clearing her throat to let me know She Is Not Amused. Or Pleased. (Divas! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.)

It seems that I have not one, not three, but FOUR finished objects, and no pictures of the Divine Ms. T showing them off. This, according to Thorax, is simply unforgivable.

So a picture-heavy post today. Here's the shoot:

Swan Lake from Pink Lemon Twist Patterns. Beads and assymmetry, what's not to love? This goes with a knitted mask to this year's Lyhr Masked Ball. Pictures of that to come much later.


Thorax wanted a strutting-down the runway shot, so I obliged her. Unfortunately, the color of the shawl rather matches her complexion (like the eastern socialite with the beige dress, beige hair, beige skin, and beige teeth) so some of the detail is lost.

Here's a better picture:

The beads do not show up well, in part because they ultimately rely on movement by the wearer and shifting light to twinkle and catch the eye. Thorax is a wonderful model, very patient even as one fiddle with lighting and position. Unfortunately, she is . . . lacking in animation, to a certain extent. She'll need to work on that if she wants to make it in the big leagues.

Next up is Wabenschal from Knitting Delight. I added the beads when the lace looked a little plain. This is destined to be a Christmas gift to a dear friend; I believe in getting gift knitting done early.



Thorax found it amusing that it was a camel blend and camel colored. I don't get her sense of humor sometimes. It was hard to get her to stop giggling and making faces for this shot. I almost made her stand in the fountain. Almost.



Another scarf, the Triinu from Nancy Bush's latest, Knitted Lace of Estonia. Another goodie for another friend. I was busting stash when I made this, I had no idea how much of this yarn I had.


Honestly, I thought I'd kill most of it in this scarf, but I had a bunch left, so I made this for me:


Bad Cat Designs's Autumn In New York shawl. I even had enough yarn to make it a generous, expanded size. In fact, I had to order MORE beads a little less than halfway through. Simple lace, lots of beads . . . siiiiiiigh. Is there anything better? I think not.

And now Thorax has had another installment of her fifteen minutes of fame, so she'll probably let me finish knitting a pair of *whispers* fingerless gloves *returnes to normal volume* for a friend who plans a long chilly hike up the Inca Trail. I'll try to sneak pics past Thorax.

Jealous models, and all that.

1. Silk and wool cloth.

2. Yes, I suspect this is whoring for comments. Feel free to weigh in on that aspect as well, if you like.

Bye Bye Blackbird

Today tastes like ribeye rubbed with chile, garlic, and . . . sand. It was all working so well until the finish, which left a lot to be desired.

I have finished the Irtfa'a, and only just barely avoided adding a "FINALLY!" to that sentence. This project was not the best match for where my head is at right now.

It's a moderately complex knit, a Faroese shape with multiple lace patterns. The designer has you working two long lace patterns simultaneously, and the repeat lengths match up only on the very first iteration (row 1 of pattern A and pattern B). When you come to the end of that section, you are on row 16 of pattern A (out of 24 total rows) and row 28 of pattern B (out of 30 total rows) and ready to start pattern C's transition row over pattern B and if your head is swimming, well, so was mine.

I love how the pattern transitions between B and C. It's a lovely detail. I like how she starts the shawl. There's a lot of thought in this pattern, and it's very well written and explained. It was just not a great match for me right now.

I hated working the edging. Words cannot describe just how much I hated working that edging. Part of it was that I misread how many repeats of that blasted edging there were. I read 38 when the instructions said 58. Those "extra" (they felt like "extra") 20 repeats just about made my head explode. I figured I could work 3-4 repeats at lunch and be finished by October 1. Yeah, not so very much, thanks. Grrr . . .

The edging is perfect for the shawl. I really can't see anything else that reads so much like feathers on the edge. It's also d--d fiddly. I had to start four times to get the first edge going. Grrr . . .

Finally, the designer prefers to keep her lace small and modern. I prefer to swaddle myself in yards of the stuff. Call me old-fashioned. My shawls tend to be bigger than I am to allow for draping and folding, and my other Faroese comes almost to my knees. With something swoopy like this, I'd like it to be below my hips, mebbe halfway down my thighs.

This feels more like a shoulderette/shrug. It isn't, not really, but feelings is feelings. If I make it again, I need to remember to put in a repeat or three of the first border. (Yes, yes, and find an edging I can live with.)



But at least Thorax is finally happy that she gets to model a garment.

She insisted that a fine lace shawl deserved a fine setting. Who am I to argue? So off we went to Scottsdale, where DH Gareth oblingingly posed as her escort in front of one of our favorite restaurants, Tapino. If one holds with the "three times is tradition" rule, then this is where we traditionally have New Years' Eve dinner (a wine paired tasting menu, different every year) before heading out to celebrate the turning of the calendar year with our friends.



Thorax suggested we shoot out in the Red and White Lounge--the restaurant was fairly crowded. She sat down on the couch to ponder the menu while we arranged everything, so I snapped this candid shot.



Then she thought she saw Dave Mustaine (Thorax is a huge Megadeth fan) and dropped the shawl on the couch as she ran screaming after him.



Embarassingly enough, she had mistaken ex-Governor Rose Mofford for the heavy metal star. I guess one big head of hair looks much like the next. Fortunately, Rose was very gracious about the mistake, although she declined to have her picture taken with Thorax.

Currently on the needles? Two sweaters, two lace shawls, and two lace scarves for two dear friends for Christmas 2009. And one lonely Linus binkie.

Shooting Star Binkie

Today tastes like flax oil balsamic vinagrette, heirloom tomatoes still warm from the sun, basil, mozzerella, and Thorax.

She's been moping because I don't do progress pics, so there hasn't been any work for her lately. "Have you finished Irtfa'a yet?"

"No, not yet."

"What about those sweaters you added to the Plans for World Domination?"

"Nope, haven't even started those yet."

"Bertha at Knitting Daily sure gets a lot of exposure." [heavy meaningful sigh]

"Bertha has dozens of knitters submitting garments and features every quarter. You have . . . me, babe. And right now, I'm trying to finish off all the ends on the Star Binkie for Project Linus."

"Can I be in the shoot?"

[ blink, blink ] "It's a blanket, Thorax. Not much to see here . . ."

"But I could do something to give it that thing you can only say in French. A little fun, a touch of ironic naughtiness, some sex appeal. A Jane Fonda on the bearskin, Miley Cyrus in the white sheets kind of moment."

So that's how we got this . . .



Yes, it is indeed a moment. And possibly something you can only say in French.

Another One Bites the Dust . . .

Today tastes like capers, yellowfin tuna sashimi,and plum wine. Salty bitter sour, buttery, and sweet. The flavors of a minor victory.

So . . . If you read the last post, you've found out that I am giving up consumption for a while. (Consumption be done about dis?) I feel up to my earlobes in things that never get an honest chance to be used because there's too danged many of them. Like having too many projects on the needles--you knit and knit and knit, but never get anywhere.

A good chunk of the charity stash is in fine weight acrylic on cones. Apparantly I'm not the only knitter with eyes bigger than her needles, because one day, while I was working at a Project Linus Blanket Bee, a donation came in. It seems that they'd finally had to put Aunt Suzie the crazy machine knitter away, so they'd cleaned out Aunt Suzie's attic and found she'd been insulating with yarn; could we use it?

No kidding, there was a pile of yarn about the size of a VW Bug sitting there on the floor. You could swim in the stuff like Scrooge McDuck.

The hoards rushed in and scooped up the worsted, but there was a bunch of acylic laceweight cones left that no one wanted. I was trying to be good, but when our Project Coordinator asked me to take a look and see if any of it could be used . . . well, I only have so much self-control. Prolly take a particle physicist to find it--it's very very small, and has an enormously brief half-life.

So I ended up with cones and cones and cones of laceweight acrylic. To go with the skeins and skeins and skeins of babyweight acrylic I already had . . . but my secret plan was to twine several skeins/cones together to make worsted weight. And I have a pattern I like for this, and you don't have to twine it all before you knit, and . . .

And you can see the same little devil on Crazy Aunt Suzy's shoulder whispering that, hey, after all, she knit with MACHINES, so it was so much FASTER, she'd blow through her stash in NO TIME, so she ought to buy some MORE . . .

So . . . I've been nibbling away at the cones, just like I nibble away at the big skeins, and just as I nibble away at the tiny leftovers until it's all gone into a blanket, buh-bye. But dang, there's a lot of yards on a cone.

Hence, it a little celebration when I finally eat that last bite and leave only a tail to finish in. One of the purtiest sights there is, a nekkid cone.



I wrapped it in part of the binkie it gave its yarn for. One down . . . eleventeen to go. I'm looking forward to the day when I finally finish off the cone of white the SIZE OF MY HIPS. Seriously, that cone has gone into at least two three by five foot blankets, and is still rolling along.

Meet Thorax

Today tastes like lavendar, candied violets, and nasturtiums. With balsamic vinagrette and prosecco. It is indeed the height of summer.

The problem with knitting shawls is displaying your finished objects for the eye candy. Wearing them is no problem at all--the stores and movie theaters and malls--pretty much any public gathering place--keep the air conditioner turned down to 72 F. Which is basically late fall/early winter here. It feels good for a few minutes after stpping in from a high over 100 (109 today, down from 113 yesterday). A shawl functions like a horse blanket, easing the artificial transition between seasons.

But blog display, that's another matter entirely. Blocking shots are good if you use a white/neutral light sheet to block on. My blocking shots tend to show all the various colored towels I use, even the stripes on some. A bit jarring--and that's coming from me!

If I ask DH Gareth to shoot me from behind, he tends to focus on his favorite bits, which are . . . not my favorites. Even if they were, it's the SHAWL I want emphasised. And while Gareth worships the needles I knit with, and is willing to do anything to help, he doesn't wear shawls well. He always looks so stiff and uncomfortable. Maybe it's the shoes.

So I put an ad in the paper, looking to hire a model. I wasn't going to be able to pay a lot, mind, I'm doing this for fun. But perhaps someone who was looking to build a little portfolio might work for pictures, right? Or someone who wasn't built for the runway, but entertained some Snoopyesque fantasies ("Here's the world-famous model getting ready to slink down the runway in Milan, when suddenly, diving out of the sun--O, CURSE YOU RED BARON!!!")(ahem)--entertained some fantasies about modeling might be willing to play along.

I was delighted to get a response directly, and we set up a time and date to meet and do a dry run with Veil of Isis, the shawl I'd just finished knitting.

The doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find . . .



Thorax. No, just Thorax, thank you. Like Madonna, or Cher.

Uhm. Won't you come in, Thorax?

So we sat down in my studio (Thorax said she'd prefer to stand, it had been a long drive) and discussed what we each wanted out of this project. Thorax was happy to work for photos for her portfolio, so off we went to the site, fresh batteries in the camera.

I wanted something sylvan . . .



But Thorax was thinking something edgy. "Urban decay," she said, twirling on the swing. "Very deconstructed, post-apocalypse, chaos creeping in contrast to the grandmotherly order and sweetness associated with lace and knitting. Rust to play off the beads."



"It's all about the existential loneliness of the millenium," she called down from the treehouse. "We buy and consume to fill the void that gnaws us from within. These pictures should reflect that essential emptiness at the core of it all."



I'm not sure how that's going to play for Vogue, but it's nice to meet a model with a good head on her shoulders.

We compromised.



Once she loosened up, we had a good time with it. "Pout for me, Thorax!"



"Give me haughty! Enigmatic!"



"Now the money shot . . ."



"Can you look over your shoulder for me? That's IT!!!"



That Thorax. So expressive, with hands like a Thai temple dancer's. She's going to go far.

TGIM

Today tastes like green chile pork stew where the onions were left on the heat too long and carmelized/burned. With a side of coconut cotton candy. Not quite what I had expected, but workable.

It's been one of those weekends where you'd think I'd be delighted with everything that got done. I think I had eight arms, and every hand full of something.

See, I finished the Neverending Binkie of Modular Doom:




Then this:



became this:



became this:



and this:



became these:




More about the beading and the dyeing in later posts. Promise. Right now, I'm just so glad to be back at work where I can rest and recuperate from the weekend.

Fourth Review

In February, I made the following Groundhog's Day Resolutions:

1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list.

2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year.

3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal.

And as before, I'm hanging on to 1 and 3 by the skin of my teeth.

I finished a pair of complex socks for Gareth, then a blanket for Project Linus, and a shawl for me.

Now another binkie:



On top of that, I'm keeping up with the exchanges that are near and dear to my heart--the Hideous Fairy, and soon a Beaded Bag. Somehow I forgot to take into account my love of exchanges with strangers when I set up my goals.

I know I've re-thought this ad nauseam, but really, it's the process that matters. If it ain't fun it don't get done, and all that. Now I'm wondering if I can quantify the process of what I do to make it possible to set goals.

I've planned out how I want to play the remainder of the knitting year--I plan to work on this month's binkie as a travel project, and work on Veil of Isis as the home project till July 5, when I hop onto the Tour de France KAL¹ (virtually). Then the all-consuming nature of a closed ended KAL will have me carrying the Irtfa'a everywhere with me, knitting away every moment of my waking hours to strive for completion.

Then in August is the Knitting Olympics, and another shawl--PinkLemonKnits' Swan Lake with a similar level of commitment.

Once that fun is over, then I'm planning a Low-Sew version of the Psychedelic Squares and to complete just one more binkie for Linus (which is, yes, on the needles).

The good part is that this will clear my needles of everything that was started at the beginning of the year. Incomplete projects give me hives, so I try not to start too many things.

On the other hand, I'm a polyandrous knitter. I love cables, I love lace, I love simple texture stitches that let me play with color. I love stranded knitting, I love modular knitting, I love bizarre shaping. I love complex projects that tie me to charts, I love easy projects that can be memorized in a moment.

Nine in a year seems to be a reasonably good match for appetite and time. Now if I can only find my happy place with respect to the visual journal.

Four in a year? Perhaps.


1. See, every sporting event on TV is fodder for a knitalong. You start when the
event begins, and shoot for completing the project by the time the event ends. And it gives you something to watch while you knit. The Tour de France begins July 5 and ends July 27.

This ensures that you get to start lots of projects, promise yourself a deadline date for completion, and then start more stuff even if you haven't finished the first. Great for we obsessive types.

My Feet Hurt . . .

Today tastes like fake cherry, pseudo-grape, and paste. I have zero motivation. Everything is in the long drawn-out middle doldrums, past the thrill of the beginning, but before the excitement of the final push.

But then I think about it, and it sounds a lot like this . . .



Yup, my feet hurt. But I'm getting out there and play some ball nonetheless.

And it looks like this:

Passionfruit Fall

Today tastes of chile verde, pork, fresh pumpkin, and woodsmoke. We're back to the wonderful paradisical sheerly amazing weather we get in fall and spring. Both seasons are bittersweet--spring because you know that the valley will soon become Ye Anvil of Ghod, fall because the light is fading and dying.

Enjoy it while you can.

Soon enough you'll be getting up in the dark, working under fluorescent lights that make everyone look half-dead, and going home in the dark with only the memories of summer to hold on to until fickle spring returns once more.

So seize the now to take pictures of pretty FO's during the magic hours, because so very very soon you won't see the sun again for days at a time.



I never before really appreciated/apprehended just how hard it is to get good pictures of lace. You can get the colors and the general shape of the piece and some of its surround pretty well--



. . . or you can get a great shot of its structure. I love the light on the shawl, this one ray peeking through the vegetation to linger on the lace, caress its cheek before receeding into the west with its fellows.

Nothing of Substance

Today tastes like goat cheese and honey, like strawberry-flavored cotton candy, like verjus. Subtle and fleeting, here and gone.

And gone.

It's a delightful relief from the grandma's sawdust meatloaf and mashed potatoes you could use for caulking; from the food you could live on for weeks. Like a loaf of Tolkien's lembas bread (how many did you eat, Pip?); like the Challenge Sundae at the ice cream parlor where if you can eat the whole thing, you don't have to pay for it.

Perhaps this is the amuse-bouche post, the spoonful of sherbet to cleanse your mental palate and give you renewed appitite for the heavy mentation that is coming after Samhain this year.

I'm not breaking my routines for Hallowthankmas this year. None of 'em. I'm laying plans for goals I want to meet next year, and I intend to hit them running at the break of the new year, not pick my bloated psyche up off the couch and start shuffling off to the closet to stare mournfully into the depths and try to remember what my goal-meeting clothes look like.

But right now, there's not much to share. So here:



And gone.

And gone.

Meet Eufamia

One of the online groups I play in is having a sock critters swap at the end of October. It's been sooooo hot and muggy here that it's been hard for me to get inspired (fingers keep wanting to type "insipid"--Freudian slip??) so before I signed up, I decided I needed to have the critter in hand before adding my name to the list.



Eufamia only eats foods that begin with the letter "A"--apples, artichokes, asparagus, arsenic. She likes long hops on the beach, and holding flippers at high noon. As you can see, she's into extreme body piercings and tribal tattoos, but smokers are a turn-off.

Fleeting Progress Post

Not quite too busy to take a quiz, but still . . . How is it that whenever you get three-four days where you don't have to report to work that LESS gets done than when you squeeze it in around a ten-hour chunk devoted to someone else's agenda?

We are in the big finishing stretch here, completing things that have been trudging along for months. Gareth's Big Gray Binkie is done. Six feet by seven feet of charcoal goodness--which is why there's no photo. It was impossible for me with my limited studio to make the project exciting through sheer volume (c'mon, SIX feet wide by SEVEN feet long, all handknit? Whoof. Put that in your patience pipe and smoke it.)

Adenydd--Wings-- is complete, and one of the things I wanted to do was to post the pithy directions and charts. Of course, that means I need to find out how, read the directions, and perform the operation. I know where the cursed how is, just haven't rolled up the sleeves and gotten to it. But look:



Yum. Again, I'd love to have two lovely assistants to help out here and stretch this shawl out to take an artsy shot of the article and its shadows. It's nearly seven feet square, and I could probably get it to seven and a half if I blocked a little more severely. I didn't intend for it to get this big, but swatches LIE.



The castle blanket for Project Linus is nearly through. Due to the edges being temporarily held on string, there's no way to get a nice photo that doesn't look like a pile of yarn barf. (Ok, some would argue that my color sensibilities and choices make ALL my PL binkies look like piles of yarn barf. Those People of Beige Persuasion know who they are, and where they may go. Posthaste.)

So what's new on the needles??? I've started a Kiri in the Knittery's silk-merino yarn in their passionfruit colorway. Oh my YUM.

The yarn is a sensual delight, so soft and delicious in the hands. It's like really good chocolate, the kind you get from a friend overseas, or at a chocolatier, that you experience once and then can never find quite the same stuff again. And the colors. Mostly plum purple with shots of grey and hints of funny jelly green and some pinky-brown.

The shape of the shawl will show more than the stitches of the shawl, I think, though the proof is in the blocking. That's okay, though--the knitting is dead simple. Simple enough to keep me awake and knitting, unlike garter stitch, but not teeth-gnashingly complicated. It's a good balance.

Socks for me, of course. I think I bought just about every variation of self-striping sock yarn over the last few years. Each time I added to the stash, I castigated myself for investing in one-trick ponies. SSS yarn comes in pretty colors, but the only thing it does well is knit small tubes in the round. And not too small tubes--the stripes get awfully wide in glove fingers. Tubes about the size of your ankle or wrist.

There's no simple way to manipulate the order of the stripes, or change colors at strategic locations--that's why you bought yarn that would do this for you, after all. You didn't want the work involved in stranded color patterns. One trick ponies, just like eyelash yarn.

But they had so many pretty colors . . . And I love socks for brainless knitting. I have two blue box patterns, one for plain yarns, one for self-striping yarns. I have two big bags FULL of SSS yarn, and a shoeholder full of various kinds of sock yarn.

My stashing self has been vindicated--the faux Fair Isle SSS yarn has gone away. You can still find the usual suspects (cough Opal cough Regia cough) but the heyday of every stockist/manufacturer putting out SSS yarn has passed by, and the FFI SSS yarn has slid away almost entirely. Glad I grabbed when I could. I have brainless socks for a long time to come.

It's not that I don't like patterned socks. I'm a huge fan of
Cookie A and have even laid out buckage for some of her designs. I just like to have options--to knit two at once on two circs is a joy, just as following a chart and doing one sock at a time on DPN is pleasing. But hey, they're just socks. We've seen them before, so don't expect photos unless there's something intrinsically cool about the sock--shaping choices, or pattern choices, or handdyed yarn.

I'm doing some knitted felted bowls (yes, Mildred, the technical term for an object that is knitted, crocheted, or woven that is then agitated in water to make the cloth firmer and ravel-proof is "Fulling." They all knew what I meant by felting though, so shoo!) for a friend who wants to sell "stuff and things" at Ren Faire and such. Those are easy and like potato chips. I hope to have the whole series done next week during commute time.

I'm actually in compliance with my "no more than four" rule. Pretty amazing.