Cat Boxing

I didn't touch the needles or the wheel today. The entire kitchen has been reorganized, and my back has gone out for the evening. I hope it doesn't drag itself in around ten tomorrow morning. I've got too much work to do. While I was abusing my back, I discovered this sweet sweater.


This sweater was mine when I was a little girl. My mother passed it on to me when I was pregnant with our son. I think it was knit by my grandmother. She was a wonderful knitter, until her hands became too arthritic. I have many baby sweaters that she made for me, but this is the only one that will work for my little boy. It must have been an early effort on her part. Normally, her sweaters are almost machine like in their perfection. This sweater has a lovely way about it. There's a funny bit of crochet between the sleeves and the body. The sleeves are extra long. The little cat is wearing a sleeveless jumper with mittens. I like to think of it as a boxing cat, but I'm pretty sure those are mittens. Who would wear mittens with a sleeveless jumper? A cat on a sweater, that's who. The kitty is all done in duplicate stitch. It's an impressive amount of embroidery, and she managed to convey a real sense of movement. I think that cat looks ready to take on a dog.





All of these silly little knitterly things combine to create an utterly charming piece of knitting. It makes me think about my own knitting foibles. I love for my finished pieces to have a polished look. They rarely do, but it's what I'm striving for.
The first sweater that I ever made was a gift for my grandmother. It was a very boxy jacket/cardigan thing, with a monstrous looking shawl collar, all in garter stitch. I knit it out of a bulky weight Noro yarn, in a lagoon like palette. The yarn was all wrong for the sweater, it might have been wrong for any sweater. The sweater was huge, with no way of closing the front. I think there must have been miles of fabric in the arm pits. It was the usual first sweater disaster. About a week ago my aunt wrote me to tell me that my grandmother wears that sweater every time she goes out for lunch. What love she must have for me. She's knit dozens of sweaters. She knows a bad sweater when she sees one. She's always been a very stylish woman...and yet she wears my sweater. And now, my son will wear her sweater. It's round two for the boxing kitty.

The Tricky Sweater Has a Trick

I'm sorry I missed posting yesterday. I was going to try to post every day for the first month of my blog, but I had to choose between finishing the tricky sweater, or blogging. I told you that that sweater is tricky. It always wins. 6 rows short of finishing, it dealt me a crushing blow. This is my first crew neck. I followed the pattern carefully. Well, at least as carefully as I am capable of following a pattern. Truth be told, the first go I had at the collar, was a wing job. But lets ignore that, and focus on my second, more earnest attempt. As I was saying, I followed the pattern carefully, but the collar is, how do I put this? The collar is limp. It looks like my husband got into a fourth grade style scrap and the other kid did a lot of collar pulling. Here's a picture of the gaping collar.





Sad, isn't it. I'm still considering my options. I could switch to smaller needles half way through the collar ribbing. I could......well really, that's my only idea. Lets hope that the third time's the charm.

On the UFO front, I'm rallying the troops for a run on "The Vest of Shame". I've knit the front, and the back, to the armpits. I did so much fussing and ripping out during the first couple of inches into the decreases for the arm pits, that I decided to knit the back all the way up to the arm pits, as a way of tricking myself into finishing. It was a very crafty move on my part, but somehow this vest has remained a UFO for (cough, cough) several years. I'm not going to let that get me down. Dad's birthday is just around the corner, and this bad boy is going to feel the sting of my needles.
The other project which may get a little attention is this wrappy vest type thingy, named "Petersburg".



I love this photo. She looks like a sexy Swedish Hippo.



It's only a short day of knitting away from making the UFO to FO transition. I'm going to ignore the differences in yarn/gauge, and press on. I'll wear this around the house, when nobody is home, and it's dark, and I've hidden the mirrors, and the dogs are asleep. It'll be grand. If it weren't for my crazy spinning, I would have breezed through this one. It's a pleasure to knit, because the cables are very intuitive, and the shaping is minimal. The wool is an oatmeal colored Blue Faced Leicester. It's amazingly soft stuff, just the sort of thing I'll want to wear in the dark, alone, with no mirrors, when the dogs are sleeping. I'm only willing to overlook this projects glaring flaws, because it's the first sweater I've knit with my own handspun. It's a little like a first car. I may not want other people to see me wearing it, but I'm darned proud of the thing.

UFO No Mercy

My favorite knitting podcast is "Stash and Burn". There's a "Stash and Burn Groupies" board on Ravelry. It's a great place to go for a little knitting momentum. Yesterday I noticed a thread titled "March to the Finish 2009". The idea behind this thread is that we all pull out a couple of UFOs to complete during the month of March. I quickly checked to see how many UFO's I have. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 13. That sounds bad, but actually it's only sort of bad.

Three of my UFOs have come to a halt due to some sort of yarn problem.


I spun the yarn for this, and as I spun the yarn got thicker and thicker. Consequently, the gauge is different for each piece of the sweater. Not exactly a good look, but I think I can salvage this one.



I need two more balls to finish this, and when I ordered them, I was sent the wrong color. That sort of killed the poor bear's chances of making it out of the UFO pile. I've got a couple of ideas about how to get this guy finished. I think it might involve some knitted bloomers. Knitted bloomers are always a good idea.



This is waiting for me to find a missing ball of Manos. I need to do this before my boy grows too big for the jacket. I may just throw caution to the wind and finish the sleeve with the brown yarn I have on hand. Babies don't really care about dye lots, do they?

Three of them are more than 70% finished.


Oh, Vest of Shame, why do you taunt me every March when my Father's birthday rolls around? This March I am going to finish you, stuff you in a box and weep.



These Socks are waiting for a quiet afternoon. This will probably never happen. I'm just going to have to finish them to the sounds of my baby destroying my kitchen.




This is so close it's actually been worn twice. I need to undo the cast off, and do a sewn cast off instead, to give the finished edge more elasticity. Then I can wash it, and give it away to someone who doesn't look like a gorilla when she wears it. I think the fact that I'm going ot give this away is actually what's been keeping me from finishing it.

Two are laying about due to pattern mishaps.


Dumb mistake.
Dumber mistake.

Then there are the hangers on.
These projects are the ones I can't seem to shake. These are the UFOs that haunt my stash. They are unfroggable, unforgiving meanies.





There's one more. This one's a hard one.



I started this when my grandfather was first diagnosed with cancer. Everytime I tried to knit it, I cried. Then my grandfather passed away. Then a really dear friend was going through chemo, so I picked it back up. Every time I tried to knit it, I cried. Then, our dear friend died. I think this hat might never be finished. Some things aren't meant to make it out of the UFO bin.

I'm going to pull up my pants, pull out the needles, and attack this pile without mercy. I'm turning 30 this March, and I'm not going to enter my third decade on earth with UFOs in my basket.

The White Linen Lie

I follow several knitting and sewing blogs religiously. Every morning, after I'm done with the baby grooming, I pour myself a cup of tea and sit down with the blogs. I love perusing photos of socks in the snow, and quilts draped over tree branches, with little girls in handmade sundresses prancing in the foreground. I know it's all make believe, but I don't care. If they can make a hand knit that glamorous, then more power to them. I like to think that someone, somewhere is living in a gingham and dahlia dream house, with pavlovas on milk glass cake stands and cold glasses of homemade ginger lemonade always at the ready. Sometimes, I like to make people think that I live in the gingham and dahlia dream house. Most of the time this is not an option, because they either know me too well, or they're dropping off a package, and my child has just smeared peas all over my shoulder.
During the photo shoot of my completed Primrose Cozy, I was sweeping the reality under the rug. I was trying to take a photo that would trick the viewer into believing that my house was a perfect balance of stylish and cozy, a place where the loaves of bread practically bake themselves, and the tablecloths don't need ironing. I don't think I was able to achieve this. I was only able to push the pile of mail so far to the left, and I couldn't seem to avoid the wrinkles/crumbs on the tablecloth. Here are my pictures of the finished Primrose Cozy.









This is what my dining table actually looks like.



Because this is a knitting blog, and I'm on an honestly kick, here's a shot of the inside of the cozy. Don't expect this level of transparency from me in the future. I'm not sure I can bare the inside of my knitting, on the internet, more than once.

Intermission with an Incomplete Boar

Right now, I'm deep in translation. I've been pouring over the sock section in my new/old book of needle work. It's pretty thick stuff. I'm not sure how long it's going to take me, but I'm pretty determined to translate the whole section. This is going to mean a bit of a break from the usual posting. In the interim, I'll post a picture of Yo-yo the three legged boar, and her cute little babies. Why am I posting this? Because, I'm pretty sure you haven't seen a picture of a three legged boar and her babies. And.... I'm hoping to distract you from the fact that I haven't finished the translations or done any knitting.



Distraction complete.

The Owling

Ravelry has been hit hard with a case of owl fever. Awhile back, I knit a pair of "Give a Hoot" mittens. It's a free pattern, and I loved the mirrored decreases on the palm of each mitten.




These were the first owl cables I'd ever knit. Not long after I'd finished the mittens, I came across an owl sweater. This sweater stopped me in my tracks. It's wearable. It's a quick knit. It's feminine. It's knit in the round with no seaming, and best of all it's reminiscent of childhood, without being childish. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who had a knit at first sight moment. "Owls" is currently topping the "most popular pattern" chart with 344 projects. I'm not usually one to grab a torch and jump in with the mob, but this sweater is calling to me. I'm fantasizing about all of the yarns I could use. I've got two hanks of Eco wool in my stash that would work perfectly. Although, I'm not totally convinced about the color.



There's another reason that this owl cable mania has such a hold on me. When I was pregnant with our baby, we had a family of owls nesting near by. Every night for several weeks, we would turn off our lights so that we could watch two adult owls teaching their baby owl how to hunt. It was beautiful and comforting. Every time I see an owl, I think of those evenings we spent holding hands, peering into the night sky, thinking of our baby. I think I must knit this sweater. I really don't have a choice.

Treasure

Today my husband wanted to go to an antiques show in a neighboring town, so we packed up the wee one and headed out early. I wasn't really in the mood to buy anything, until I saw a box of mother of pearl buttons. There was already one lady pawing through it, and I had to do that polite, pretending to be interested in ye olde baby bonnet, antiques show dance while I waited. There were no prices, and I was a little wary. Nice buttons aren't cheap. I've spent enough hours scrubbing barn dirt off of old buttons to know this. Once in a while, you get lucky. Today was my day. She was practically giving them away.


I really had a hard time being practical in the face of so many beautiful buttons. There are these beauties.


I have a whole card of these little guys. They look like miniature planets, and are much more colorful in person ( I've got to get this color thing straightened out ).



The button lady also had a copy of this book, "Encyclopedie des Ouvrages de Dames".



This book is a treasure. If the world suddenly became a crochetless, fancy napkinless wasteland, I would be more than prepared. There is, of course, a section on knitting. Brace yourself, this book is about to blow your mind.



This woman is casting on with FOUR strands, say what? I need to know why she's doing this. But wait, there's more.




This is another crazy cast on, and this next one...... well I've got no idea what this is for, but you can bet your socks I'm going to try it.



Speaking of socks, there's even a section just for the sock knitters, but that will have to wait for another post. I'll leave you with a photo of the almost vanquished posie cozy. The fight isn't over yet, but I'm feeling confident.



I win you, posie cozy.