So here's a scenario which has played out numerous times over the last few months at Casa de Golden Purl:
Interior - Chris and I sit side by side at our respective computers.
Chris: (Pauses typing to blow on his hands and rub them briskly together. Glances over at me. Resumes typing.)
Me: (Obliviously, continues blog surfing.)
Chris: (blows on hands.) Are you cold?
Me: Huh? Cold? Nah...I'm comfortable (resumes oblivious blog surfing.)
Chris: Oh, okay. (blows on hands, rubs them briskly together and resumes typing.)
I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure out that the poor man is cold! He's too sweet and thoughtful to turn up the heat because his pregnant wife says she's comfortable.
When I finally did figure it out, I had to hang my head in shame. What kind of knitter am I to sit idly by while my darling husband's hands are cold? Clearly, this matter needed immediate attention. (Well, as immediate as possible after I finally interpreted those oh-so-subtle signals of blowing on hands and rubbing them together. Bonehead, me.)
Enter Men's Fingerless Gloves.
Knit in the dark brown Japanese merino I picked up at this sale over the summer.
He likes them! And can now resume typing in comfort.
Lookit the blur as his fingers fly over that key board!
(Please don't look too closely at the fact that our computers are still on a folding table.)
March 5, 2008
Cold Hands, Warm Heart
February 23, 2008
This Is Still a Knitting Blog
The Hemlock Ring baby blanket came off the needles yesterday and I finished weaving in the ends today. It just needs a really good, severe blocking.
This blanket could have been finished a lot faster but with all the craziness of the move, I didn't get to work on it as often as I normally would have. Also, I had a bit of a situation deciding when to bind off.
I had worked through row 65 of Jared's chart and still had most of my last ball unworked. I didn't know if it was enough yarn to complete the next repeat and the bind off. To be safe, I put in a lifeline before starting the next repeat. Man, that was tedious. The scrap yarn I used was not ideal lifeline material. It was too thick and not smooth enough, but it was the best of the choices that I had easy access to at the time. It was painfully slow both putting in the lifeline and working the row where it was.
Lifeline in place, I got all the way through the next repeat (the last one on the chart) and started the bind off. I was maybe 1/16th of the way through the bind off when I had to admit there simply wasn't enough yarn to finish.
blanket stretched over exercise ball.I contemplated this second option for about a day and a half. On the pro side, a contrasting edge could be really pretty and the blanket would be bigger than if I ripped back. On the con side, I'd have to go buy the new yarn.
Since when is buying yarn a con, you ask? Well, since about November I've been really good about knitting from my stash. I've felt very virtuous and clever every time I've found suitable yarn without having to go buy some. I realized there's lots of wonderful knitting potential sitting right in my stash. I already have the perfect yarn for many of the projects in my queue. To be clear, I have not put myself on a yarn diet. However, limiting myself to stash knitting as much as possible has given me the strength not to buy yarn. I've even passed on some killer yarn sales! It's been a stash-knitting roll and I wasn't sure about breaking it just yet.
This blanket is a gift to Minnie Purl from both her mom and her Grammy. Introducing new yarn to the project, even just on the edge, somehow would've spoiled the purity of that.
And also? All the tedium of inserting that darn lifeline wasn't in vain.
February 21, 2008
Home
One of the greatest blessings in my life is that I had a very happy, secure childhood. My parents were happily married and worked hard to provide a loving, nurturing environment for my brother and me. In my heart and memory that warm, stable environment is inextricably linked to the house we lived in when I was young. I lived in the same house from birth until I left for college. It was my home so completely that I wasn’t even aware of how emotionally significant a home can be until the day, during my senior year of high school, when my father sat us down and explained that we needed to sell the house.
It was the early 90’s. The recession had been dragging on for quite a while. While it was an extraordinarily beautiful house, it was quite large and very old. My father had owned the house outright since before I was born, but the maintenance and taxes on the house were very expensive. Not only that, but I’m the youngest and I was to be leaving for college soon. The house was way more than my about-to-be empty-nester parents would need. In the coming years, my dad’s health would begin to decline rapidly. He didn’t say it (and I didn’t suspect it), but I think he knew that soon he simply wouldn’t be able to manage living in a house of that size and that more money would be needed for medical expenses. On that day he simply laid it out as a sensible, financial decision. He recognized how hard it would be for all of us to leave (he’d been living there for more than 30 years, himself) but explained that it was the wisest thing to do, given the state of the economy.
It was one of those life events when your perspective changes in an instant. The house represented all the stability and security I had had in my life so far. I realize how lucky I am to have been 18 and seeing for the first time that up until then I had had the luxury of taking that stability and security for granted. But at the time all I could feel was the loss. The idea of selling the house made me feel adrift, confused and very sad. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I felt emotionally homeless.
Over the next 10 years, I lived in a series of dorm rooms and rentals. I had roommates, my own apartment and then the apartments I shared with Chris before we were married. I visited my parents in their new house, sometimes staying for months at a time. All those places were perfectly nice, but none of them encompassed that feeling of Home the way the old house had. I was the right age to be leaving home, which helped me make peace with the sale of the old house. But I never lost my fondness for that house and what it represented. And I never forgot how I’d felt like everything I had ever relied upon might slip away if that house was no longer my family homestead.
Two months after we were married, Chris and I moved into the house we have just sold. (We actually made the winning offer on the house on an evening we were having a meeting with our wedding planner and DJ, but that’s another story.) We have lived there for the past four years. Somewhere along the way, I regained that feeling of Home and it was wonderful.
The process of selling that house and moving into a new one has made a lot of old feelings resurface. This time, though, I’m not a naïve teenager. Instead, I’m a reasonably well adjusted adult who knows that while a house can be a big part of one’s identity and is the place one might call “home,” it’s the bigger principles of love, security, peacefulness and family that really define Home.
Two days before the close of escrow, Chris and I had our final walk-through at our old house. It was completely empty, save for the alarmingly huge dust bunnies and the mysterious bottle of Miller Light that was there when we moved in. (Leaving it there just seemed like the right thing to do.) I allowed myself to cry and mourn leaving the place where I had once again felt so loved and secure that I could truly feel at Home.
We left there for the last time and came to our new house. We still have many unpacked boxes, there are still areas of the house under construction, the furniture for our bedroom and the nursery has not yet arrived, but this house is shaping up very nicely. I’ve been having a blast picking paint colors, light fixtures, window treatments, etc. We’re putting our own personal stamp on this house and it feels fantastic. I love that everywhere I look, I see my life with my husband. And when I think about bringing our baby daughter home from the hospital to this house, I feel overjoyed. This house is the beginning of our next series of adventures as our family expands. We are filling this house with love and making it a Home.
When we were standing in our old house on that final day, Chris and I talked about the things I’ve said here. We let ourselves feel the sadness of leaving that house and then we hugged and reminded each other of a certain part of our wedding vows. It was the thing that made it easy for me to wipe away my tears. It’s the thing that has made this transition one of joy. On our wedding day, we said to each other, “May my heart be your shelter and my arms be your home.”
January 25, 2008
Haikus for You
I still wear it often, though.
It sure is cozy.
Hemlock Ring Blanket,
Bigger on the circulars,
Looks like a white blob.
Rain is pouring down.
Futile or optimistic
To blow dry my hair?
We move in one week!
Too busy for a "real" post.
Be back soon, I hope.
January 16, 2008
Update-o-rama
My Oblique is all done except for buttons! Even without the buttons, I love it and wear it all the time. As soon as I make a run to my favorite button place and get those suckers attached, I'll take and post pictures.
In the meantime, I've started a Hemlock Ring Blanket in some white Cashsoft DK to use as a baby blanket for Minnie Purl.
The white is Cashmerino Aran and the peachy pink is Classic Elite Lush.
It really is a very fast, fun knit. It would have been faster, too, had I not ripped and re-knit various parts of it. I ripped not because I made any mistakes. I was doing everything the pattern told me. I was simply doing it very badly. Things improved on the second pass.
I am going to make one of these for Minnie. But next time, I'm going to omit the garter stitch selvage. If having a garter selvage helps you sew seams or pick up stitches, then by all means do it. But I'm more accustomed to sewing seams and picking up stitches in stockinette, so I found the garter slowed me down.
Finally, I have some very good news to share. We have buyers for our house and we're in escrow! We've actually been in escrow since before Christmas, but I didn't want to say anything until the contingencies had been removed. After haggling over credits, we've come to an agreement and everything is going forward. PHEW! It is a buyer's market, so we didn't get the price we really wanted, but we did get more than our "rock-bottom" price, so we're happy. And it's such a relief to have it sold. We move into the new house in just a few weeks!
January 8, 2008
Oblique Home Stretch
All major Oblique pieces have been blocked.
I picked up and knit the button bands for the fronts before blocking the pieces.
I modified the sleeves to omit the folded back cuff. Instead I just did the twisted ribbing for the same length as the hems. It looks like this:
I had two big reasons for changing the cuff this way. The first was that I don't particularly want the extra bulk of a folded back cuff. The second, and really more significant reason, was that as I started the sleeves, I was very worried I was going to run out of yarn. The twisted ribbing seems to have a voracious yarn appetite, so mostly I was trying to economize the remaining yarn supply.
Leaving off the folded back cuff caused a ripple effect of minor modifications. The first was that I figured I could work the ribbing on 4 fewer stitches. If the cuff isn't going to fold back, it doesn't need to be wide enough to do so. Again, I was also thinking about yarn economy. Plus I have small wrists and knew I could get away with it.
But starting with fewer stitches meant I needed to work 2 extra increase rows to get the sleeves wide enough by the time I got to the top. I did this by starting the increase rows earlier and maintaining the recommended rate of increases for my size (every 10th row). It worked out just great.
Except that I did run out of yarn before finishing the sleeves. ACK!
I had been optimistic that I could finish the sleeves with the yarn I had. I figured if I needed to introduce a new dye lot, it wouldn't be so very horrible if the new color was isolated to the collar and button bands.
As I crept up the sleeves, I could see I wasn't going to make it. I bought this yarn about a year ago so I was pretty freaked that I'd have no chance of finding more of the same dye lot anywhere. I don't know why, but the clouds parted, light shone down and the yarniverse smiled upon me. I found exactly the dye lot I needed on Ebay. Big shout out to Yarnbow for having the right dye lot, returning my email super promptly and shipping the yarn with lightning speed. Thank you!!
More yarn in hand, I pressed on. I have now seamed up the raglan lines. (Mattress stitching raglans is cool.)
I'm now ready to pick up and knit the collar. However, I'll need to make an LYS run because I don't have long enough circs.
But look how close I am to being done. I mean, it's even starting to look like a real sweater.
January 3, 2008
FO: Presto Changos
Over the summer, I became quite enchanted with Valerie's wonderful Presto Chango pattern. I went on something of a jag, actually.
The top left one was knit in Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton in Nut. The middle right one was knit in Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in Stone. The bottom left one was knit in Suss Bomull in Raisin.I made an alternate front panel for both the Stone colored one and the Raisin one. However, I only seem to have a picture of the Raisin one, where I used a fish scale lace pattern.
The extra panel for the Stone one was an interlocking, diamond chain, lace pattern. You'll just have to take my word for it that it came out very well. Actually, I liked it even better than the fish scale lace.I fully intended to make another panel for the Nut colored one, but I got slammed with morning sickness and never got around to it. I never even gave the sweater as a gift. Now, judging by the picture of the baby on the family's Christmas card, he'll be too big for it. Whoops!
Since I still have that one, the originally planned recipient's loss will someday be the gain of another baby. Maybe even my own Minnie Purl, though probably not. I say probably not, because I plan to make her a Presto Chango out of some Teal colored Suss Bomull and really cute silverish buttons with little cutout hearts.
The Suss Bomull was an excellent yarn substitution, by the way. It's not as soft as the Blue Sky yarn, but it seems super durable and has a very crisp look with great stitch definition. I think that's because it's 4 ply compared to Blue Sky's 2 ply. The spinners out there who are much wiser on this stuff than I, can confirm or correct me on this point.
All three of these were made in the smallest size. The only modification I made, was on the Raisin one. When it came time to cast on stitches for the sleeves, I used a provisional cast on. Later, instead of binding off the sleeve stitches, I put them on waste yarn. This meant I was able to graft the stitches together for a seamless sleeve. I really liked the way it came out and will use that modification again in the future.
This is a wonderful pattern. It's a very fun, satisfying knit. And it impressed the hell out of the other guests at the baby showers. In addition to the always-fun-to-hear "you made that?!?", people were blown away by the cleverness and practicality of the design. Interchangeable front panels -- a genius way to deal with baby spit up down the front of a sweater. Well done, Valerie. Thank you for the spectacular pattern.