The Drought

We've been suffering from a serious drought this summer. It's rained twice in as many months. Our lawn is ecru. The leaves on our trees are curling with the heat. I've been watering, and watering, and pleading with the weather reports. It looks like we're going to keep on watering, because there's no rain in sight. Even the forest is going brown. I might just take the mower out for a spin to see if I can do a large scale scrimshaw illustration on our front lawn.
The knitting photos I have, are a little uninspiring, so I'll mix it up with some pictures of my dahlias. They're the only things keeping me sane while I water the day away.


Don't be fooled by the green in the photos. That's the only part of the garden that's getting enough water. If you look carefully, you can see the white lawn in the background.


To help with the dry mood, I'm knitting something green. This is "Ali", by Kim Hargreaves. I'm really enjoying the knitting, but my enthusiasm is tempered by the the fact that I'm going to have to call a yarn store in Florence. I did not buy enough yarn, and I did not check the yardage before I cast on. Now I will pay for my lazy/cheap nature by having to make an arse of myself in Italian. That seems fair.
Next up, "Ishbel".


I don't believe that time is linear. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe that 2 + 2 always equals 4. These three things are helping me to cope with the knitting equivalent of a parallel universe.


I made a few mistakes in the body of the shawl, which didn't show up until I counted all of the stitches, in preparation for the lace portion of the shawl. I ripped back, almost to the beginning, and re-knit the body. I counted twice, just to be sure, and then started the lace charts. I am five rows in, and something is horribly wrong. The lace pattern looks right. It matches the chart. There is no errata. Rows 1-4 went smoothly. There were no extra stitches, and everything was lining up. I am missing two stitches on either side of the center line. I have looked, and counted and stared at the chart with an opened mouthed fish expression. Nothing is making sense. Logic does not apply. Logic tells me that I must have omitted two increases on the previous row. I did not. Logic tells me I must have two extra decreases somewhere. I do not. I am in a Mexican standoff with a shawlette. Neither of us has budged. I'm going to bring out the big guns on knit night. This shawlette is not going to best me.

Feckity

This week's knitting has been feckity. Feckity knitting is knitting that causes me to swear a lot. I'm trying not to use "real" swear words around my babbling sponge boy. So, "feckity feck" is the swear du jour. This is the swear producing knitting du jour.



The yarn is pure cashmere in a creamy shade of burnt orange, from Handmaiden Fine Yarns. No problem there. The pattern is "Ishbel" from Ysolda Teague's "Whimsical Little Knits" e-book. No problem there. The knitting is by me, and that seems to be my problem. I was enjoying this too much. It was causing me to snuggle into my favorite chair and sigh. This is always a bad sign. Knitting is like the sea. You should never turn your back on it. You should never allow you mind to wander too far, or it will swallow you up. There are many, many versions of "Ishbel" on Ravelry. Everyone was Oooing and Ahhhing about this pattern. It's easy, and quick, and wearable and well written. I threw myself into the water without my bathing suit on. The water felt great, so great in fact, that I was knitting with my eyes half shut, and a Mona Lisa smile. Now I'm drowning, and all I can think to say is "feck". Somewhere along the right hand side of the triangle, I missed a couple of yarn overs. It's almost invisible. It took me a good ten minutes to find them. I'm underwater, staring at 176 sts, wondering what to do. I'm going to have to force this cashmere to do unspeakable things. I'm going to have to compromise my knitting ethics, in order to save myself.
Earlier this week, I was also forced to fudge my way out of a corner. These may look like an innocent pair of baby booties, but they hide a dark secret. It's hidden in their soles (pun intended). I found an extra stitch at the end of a row of kitchnering, and I just tucked it into the seam. Upon knitting the second booty, I realized that I'd have to make the same mistake in order for the soles to match. Despite this slack handed approach, they're darn cute. The pattern is "Tiny Shoes", and is also from Ysolda Teague's new book "Whimsical Little Knits".


I really love the little buttons I found for them. I'll certainly be making more of them, with leftover sock yarn.



Now they need to make their way to the post office, and then to the mommy to be. They probably won't travel very far after they make it onto the feet of the baby, but these will be very well traveled booties. The yarn is from Canada, it came to me via Virginia, it was knit in France, and will be mailed off to Minnesota. All of that flying makes my green side cringe, but at least I was able to get two projects out of the yarn, and the labor was my own.....justification.....complete.
This last photo, is of a swatch for a new sweater. This is knit with yarn form our vacation. It's "Monet", 30% cashmere/70% Merino, by Ixia. I think the ratio of cashmere to wool is perfect. It still has that lovely halo, and feather light feel, but the wool will make it harder wearing. Also, I won't bust into tears if my little boy decides to smear some yogurt on the shoulder. There is no doubt in my mind that he will decide to do this.



The pattern I'm swatching for is "Ali" from Kim Hargreaves new book "Breeze". Truth be told, this is not the first Hargreaves pattern I've attempted. I've got two projects that never really made it past the first four inches. This one shows more promise. It's less complicated, and has a lot of basketweave, which I find addictive. The swatch is beautiful. The fabric is light. It's a perfect weight for a cardigan, and there's enough room between the stitches for the cashmere to bloom a little, after washing. FYI, you should always knit cashmere a little bit looser to allow for the bloom. It gets softer with each hand wash. I'm going to keep the swatch near to me, like a carrot on a stick. I'm determined to finish a sweater for myself before the cold weather sets in. Before I go, I wanted to add that I'm not just being artsy with my photography. Greens tend to get really weird when I post them to the blog. I thought I might try and trick my camera into giving me a more accurate green, by including a contrasting green in the photo. I'm pleased to report that my sneaky tricks have worked. Note to self, be more sneaky with the electronics.

The Pasta and Sock Machine

I have been a pasta and sock machine these last couple of days. Yesterday I made orecchiette, and a day later I made some tagliatelle.




These were ridiculously fun to make. This would be an excellent project for kids. The dough is just water, semolina and salt. I found the recipe in one of my old "Gourmet" magazines. It's very easy to make the little "ears". It's not quick, but it's easy. The end result was well worth the effort, just like, (enter the segue) these socks.


These are "Sam" from "Sock Innovation" by Cookie A. This pattern is not for a novice knitter, but it's not enhanced interrogation. I had the pattern memorized by the third repeat. They are very slow going. I feel like I'm knitting under water. I'm not the kind of knitter who can devote herself to one project. The pace of this was making me feel like I should look into retirement communities, and so I cast on a baby booty. Nothing knits up faster than a booty, and it has the added benefit of being something that goes on a foot. So, it's not making me feel like I'm cheating on the sock. The pattern is from "Whimsical Little Knits", by Ysolda Teague.



I'm already looking forward to the second booty. Booty, booty, booty.

Newsprint Madonnas

While I did manage one post on our trip, I couldn't seem to justify spending our precious vacation time searching out an Internet connection. I was too busy searching out yarn, and paintings of breastfeeding women in Catholic churches. The last one is a little odd. I'll cop to that. I was a wee bit obsessed with all of these breastfeeding virgin mothers, and their chubby-fisted counterparts. You almost never see women in France breastfeeding in public. I don't remember seeing many women in America doing it, and I only saw one mother in Italy doing it. Inside the churches is a different story. There are portraits of suckling Jeesi everywhere. Almost every other church we went into had at least one.


I'm still breastfeeding our son, and he's taken to letting me know he wants a feed, by cramming his hand down my shirt, giving me the worlds meanest titty twister, and then trying to yank the tit up and over my collar. There's nothing like walking around the Vatican with a baby's hand making one of your breasts look like it's hatching out of your clothes. I was a little embarrassed by the situation until I found this painting.


I love the look on her face, one part amused, one part annoyed and a lot of love. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who's been felt up by a toddler in a church.

The yarn search was equally comforting, comforting and soft. I found five different shops. Some of them I knew about before hand, and some of them were discoveries. There was Mirko Filati in Florence, Sheep Shop in Pisa, Lovilane and Filo et Filo in Lucca, and a shop I can't remember the name of in Massa Maritima. I bought a lot of cashmere, some cotton, some wool and a little bit of linen. There was even some mystery yarn. I'll post pictures of the newest additions to the stash soon, but for now, I'll finish up with a little bit of swatching.


This is a pure cotton yarn that I found at Filo et Filo. The lovely lady who owns the store is having a fire sale, and going into retirement. Or at least, that's what my limited grasp of Italian led me to believe. She was selling yarn at shockingly good prices, and I scooped up every ball of this stuff. I don't normally go in for worsted weight variegated yarns. I don't like heavy weight cottons, or tape yarns, but this yarn is a glorious exception. It's very Issey Miyake. It's stiff and soft at the same time. The yarn is knitted out of many very fine strands, and then pressed into a tape. The dye is painted on, and reminds me of newsprint.


It's nice to knit with and despite the fact that it looks like it would be a splitty nightmare, it's relatively hard to catch a needle on it. Because of the construction it doesn't have that chalky dead weight sort of feel that most other thick cottons have. I'm stalled on what pattern to choose. Right now it's between two patterns in Norah Gaughan vol. 2. There are several other contenders, but these both seem appropriate for the yarn. I'm leaning towards "Mobius", that's the one on the left.


Variegated yarns are tricky, and the last thing I want is something that looks like wet newsprint wrapped around my shoulders. I'm looking for something that will bring out the Issey Miyake in me. There's a fine line between origami and a fish and chips wrapper.