KAL

The Fall issue of "Twist Collective" is up. It's probably one of my favorite issues to date. I like this, this and this. Not to mention this. But a knitter has to be reasonable. There are only so many hours in each day, and my children make a good case for needing to be fed. Their case involves a lot of yelling, but there's some precedence to support their argument.
This is my swatch for Hallett's Ledge. I'm using "Imperial Stock Ranch 2ply".


This particular yarn has tried to be knit into sweaters three times. I was a little worried that it might be cursed, but now I believe it was just being picky about a partner.


In an effort to get this project finished quickly I'm bringing in a friend. My friend's name is competitive nature. I've joined a Knit - a - Long. I don't advertise the fact that I like winning. It always seems a little crass to be competitive, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I like to win, and being a liar is way worse than being competitive. I guess I could just not admit to either, but that would make me sneaky. I'll end this train of thought before it goes too far. Oh no, it's gone too far.
I thought I might be able to come in second or maybe third, but was shot down on day two. Let me repeat that. Someone knit an aran weight, long sleeve, cabled sweater with a button band in two days. She must have cut her hands off and replaced them with super mechanized mini knitting machines. That's my theory.
I don't think I could knit this sweater in two days unless I didn't sleep and was cool with wearing a diaper. I'm not cool with that, so I'll have to wait.
I'm really enjoying the community of the KAL. It's wonderful to be able to chat about whether or not to use a P2tog instead of a K2tog. It's thrilling to see other peoples' swatches. It makes me feel less alone in my dorky-ness. Thank you internet. You complete me.

Jazzysocks

These are a pair of custom fit, no nonsense, top down, heel flap socks. I started them back in January, maybe you remember, and then there was a lot of baby having and leg twisting, etc., etc. In the wake of my shawl knitting frenzy I finished them off. Oh, and by the way, I was wretchedly ill when I finished them. This is no exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate. I thought you ought to know.


I was so wretchedly ill that I only managed a couple of hours sleep over a two day period. It was that kind of illness where you're sore deep down in your bones, and your skin feels sticky even when dry. My internal thermostat was going crazy and after some harsh bargaining with the Tylenol it opted not to go above 101F but not to go lower than 99F. My throat, however, was a real shark in the medicinal negotiations. It refused to compromise on anything. It made the homeopathic medicine cry.
I finished the foot of the second sock during the worst of this illness. There was a lot of one row, put the knitting down, stare at the mobile above my baby's bed for an hour, pick the knitting up, knit a row, repeat. My baby is also sick, and there was a lot of staring at mobiles going on. There were some points where we just stared at each other and telecommunicated about how much this bug sucked. He's my buddy.
Four days into this festival of germs, I'm starting to feel like the party's winding down. My throat is allowing for some solid foods and my body has cooled off. I have a throaty wispy voice which by husband describes as sexy, but which I would call contagious sounding. There's a lot of hacking and gasping for air, which I suppose just makes me sexier. The baby is still running a fever, but the doc says it's O.K. so I'll try not to freak out all over him and tell him that 4 days of fever is not O.K. for a mom, let alone a baby.
I'm going to sandwich this blog post about illness with a tiny bit of knitting and hope you'll still consider this a knitting blog. I don't want to have to change the title to "The Wendigo Gets Sick and or Hurt a Whole Lot, Plus There's a Little Knitting Going On". So, on to the socks.


I think that they are hideous. They remind me of modern dance, or free form jazz, or eating too much candy and then going on a violent amusement park ride run by a very young person who seems frighteningly uninvested in their job. They are totally gross. They are jazzysocks. I'm calling them that, because bad jazz is my least favorite thing in the world. Really bad jazz being either the Kenny G. or the crazed squealing horn variety and about 70 percent of the jazz in between. Billy Holiday, you know I love you. I'm not talking about you. You're more blues, and I love blues. Back to the socks, I think they went from Missoni to Methuselah when I knit the second foot. The small stripes circling the first foot are cute. The large sludge colored stripe on the second foot is throwing everything off. It's jazzy.
I'm not going to blame this jazzy quality on the dyer, Farmhouse Yarns. They made a beautiful yarn with colors I love. The creamy white with touches of yellow, pale blue and pink with a dark vegetable green does in fact remind me of "wild flowers" (that's the colorway). I think that in my delirious sickbed knitting I made one foot two stitches smaller than the other one. It's totally my fault.


These will be the socks I wear when I just don't care what other people think, which is most of the time.

Fini, All Done, No More

That's what my two year old son says when he's finished with something.


This is "Haruni" in Blue Sky Alpacas "alpaca silk", colorway "ivory". It took me about a half an hour just to pin it out for blocking. I'm so very proud of this. I know my friend will love it.


It's such a relief to be done with it. My hands were so busy knitting this thing that they couldn't stop, and I've almost finished a pair of socks in the last two days. It's like knitting in the wake of a big shawl boat. Now, if the promises of our mail services are to be believed, it should get there just in time for her wedding reception.

Soldiering On

One week after I gave birth I fell into a small stone watering hole while trying to count the salamanders. I am aware of how impossible that sounds. Yes, it is true. One leg stayed on shore, while the other one went in. I pulled a bunch of calf muscles and was pretty handicapped for about a month. During our June knit night there was a small fire. This was due to too much talking and not enough paying attention to the candles. I burned myself while trying to put the fire out and lost a good bit of skin on the back of my hand. Thanks to some good witch doctoring by a fellow knitter (mother of 8, lives in a yurt) my hand healed in about two weeks. I had one week with a good right hand and then I sliced the back of that same hand open on an exploded champagne bottle. I know, all of my accidents are fun related. Try not to be jealous of how much fun I'm having.
It took four stitches to close up the cut. I thought that would be the end of things, but since then I've had an allergic reaction to the tetanus vaccine, then an allergic reaction to the stitches which in turn caused the cut not to heal properly. Then my husband had a run in with a wood chisel and had to have three stitches. That's seven stitches in one week. Today my cut is starting to look like it's healing up but.......it seems like I might be coming down with some sort of sore throat thing.
This is the point at which I am admitting defeat. I am not going to pretend that any of this is O.K. It's insane. I know it's not life threatening, or terminal and things could be a heck of a lot worse, but right now I'm feeling pretty put upon.
That's why this......(please ignore the mess on my desk)


should be making me strap on the ole' straight jacket. This is "Haruni". Well it's almost "Haruni". It's "Haruni" minus one row of knitting. I ran out of yarn one row short.

Do you see the pretty scalloped edging? That's the row I'm missing. It's not a row I can skip. This is a gift for my best friend's wedding, so it's got to be finished within the week.
The extra skein has been ordered. In my professional opinion, the other yarn that I ordered along with that one skein was a medical necessity. It's a small soft cushion between my psyche and the proverbial wall.

Rough Draft

This needs blocking. It also needs hooks and eyes sewn on, but I just couldn't resist wearing it around for a day. It's the "Ambrosia Cardigan" by Katya Frankel, from the most recent issue of "Interweave Knits". The yarn is "Classic Silk" from Classic Elite Yarns. I like it. It's very soft and has a nice hand. It's a blend of cotton, silk and nylon and has a slightly slubby texture. It's a very good around the house cardigan. I think it brings out the beer wench in me.


Now....... I've got to finish the shawl. This time it's for real. There's a cast on ban in place. I've got no where else to go. The shawl is all I've got. No more Mrs. nice pink cardigan. It's on, baby.

The Worst Word I Know is

Procrastination.


This sweater is a soft pink pile of procrastination.


I was planning to finish the Haruni shawl for my best friends wedding, but the baby came a week early, and another work deadline was moved up by two weeks, and somewhere around the Monday before a Sunday wedding I realized that the shawl would not make it. I spoke to my friend about the shawl's state of borderless-ness and she gave me the go ahead to not go ahead. She wasn't planning on wearing at the ceremony, so I didn't feel too bad.... yeah, I still felt like a jerk. Thankfully she's having a reception toward the end of July, and so I have a chance between now and then to finish what I started. This whole finishing what you start thing is very important. My mother told me so.


The problem is my Dad and Mom sent me some yarn. I wasn't expecting it, it just arrived looking all soft and smelling of a real American yarn shop. I put it up in the stash with every intention of waiting until after I'd finished the shawl, but with the new baby around I needed something easy to knit on. Evening after evening passed with no knitting. That was unacceptable, but I knew that I couldn't pick up that complicated lace knitting without a good solid block of time. If this sounds like a real B.S. excuse then you've got a good sniffer. I, however, was not savvy enough to see through my own thin excuses. I ran upstairs and grabbed a ball for swatching. "Yeah, I'll just swatch a little. A little swatching never hurt anybody. Besides, I'm not actually going to cast on for anything." This is a slippery slope, my friends. You see, that same day I had received the summer issue of "Interweave Knits". I was clearly lying to myself at this point. If there were a court of law that had an interest in whether or not unfinished handknits were being held hostage in my closet I would be in cuffs right now. The rest of that evening is sort of a blur. I know at some point I was tearing my desk apart looking for a ruler to check gauge. I think I started cruising Ravelry for pattern suggestions. I don't think the word "cruising" has been used to describe a good behavior since the 1950's. Everything spun out of control when I realized that my favorite sweater from the new IK was knit in one piece from the top down. That tidbit of info was what sunk my battleship of good intentions. I mean, top down sweaters pretty much knit themselves. Am I right?
Flash forward a week and I've got a nearly complete sweater in my lap. The shawl is languishing in a basket. I need to start bailing out the battleship right now. My friend's reception is coming up fast. Time to suck it up and start doubling the number of stitches on my needles in preparation for the border. Oh sweet baby Hitler that sounds like a lot of stitches. Sigh.

The Best Excuse

I have the best excuse possible for not keeping up with my blogging. It starts with a "B" and ends with a lot of diapers. Meet Miles.


When I had my first child we were unprepared. Oh, we had about four stylish baby carrying devices, endless booties and piles of freshly laundered diapers, but we were very, very, very unprepared. My first baby was what a nicer person would call challenging. I used many bad words to describe the situation. I'm going to have to preface this next part with a disclaimer. I love both of my sons and I don't think being a "hard" baby says anything about what kind of person the baby will mature into. My first son is a sweet, charming, thoughtful little boy.That said, my first boy was a disaster of a baby. He would probably have been diagnosed with colic if we'd ever been brave enough to get in a car with him for more than 10 minutes at a time. If he wasn't nursing, or asleep, or being carried by someone who was walking, he was crying. It made me feel like I didn't know what the heck I was doing.
I considered trying to convince a doctor to make me deaf. I fantasized about those sci-fi pods that put people into stasis for crazy long periods of time while they zip around the universe. Why don't we have those yet? Our first baby hated all of the baby carriers save for the Baby Bjorn. He wouldn't lay on his back. He never slept. He always wanted to be in motion so, that year, my husband bought me a rocking chair for Mother's Day. The instant my butt hit the seat the baby started crying. I was woken up 5 to 7 times a night until he was 8 months old, and he didn't actually start sleeping through the night until he was two. I thought all babies were that hard.
That's why I prepared for this baby as if we were all about to go on a four month trip to one of Dante's layers of hell. I stocked the freezer with about a month's worth of pre-made meals. I cleaned the whole house as if it were not going to be cleaned for a month. I taught the dogs not to scratch at the door. I organized all of our paper work. I was prepared to do nothing but nurse and pace the house. This is, I'm sure, why I now have one of the least demanding babies possible. It's like I gave birth to a house plant. He needs food, a clean diaper, an occasional burp and some cuddling. That's all. He makes me feel like a super mom. All I have to do is pat him on the tummy lightly and he starts cooing at me. I think this is nature's way of trying to trick me into having more. I just have to find the part of the form where I can check the box for the "easy baby".