Blue-Dyed Hands

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T09:35:00.000-08:00

Well, we finally got our visas two days ago after five months of living with my parents. This is truly a season to rejoice. We'll be leaving for Rio on December 31. I'm not sure how often I'll be updating this blog in the future, but you can see what I'm up to on Ravelry. Merry Christmas.

New project., new yarn

2007-10-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

I've started a new project, of my own design, using Colourmart DK weight coned silk. I'm having to double-strand it, because there is no way that this is a true DK weight. More fingering, I'd say. That's Colourmart. Their laceweight is cobweb, and their four-ply is lace-weight, etc. Gorgeous yarn, though. The color I have is "Camel," a nice neutral. I'm making a top-down raglan lace blouse, meant to evoke 1930s England.

I'm almost down to where I can put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn.

I did a bit of stash enhancement over the weekend. Because I'm just sitting here, waiting to go to Brazil, I'm going through the yarn at a faster rate than usual. I ordered some Elann Pegasus in Sky Blue and some Elann Ramie/Cotton. The Pegasus will be combined with some Connemara I bought last year to become this, and the Ramie/Cotton will become this. I love the look of Berocco's Bling Bling, but I couldn't justify $140 for a short-sleeved sweater. $16 from Elann suits me just fine. I am, however, considering at-home means of getting gold onto the yarn. Fabric paint? Jones Tones foil?

Tangled Yoke Pictures

2007-10-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

Buttons and everything!

Ravelry!

2007-10-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten on to Ravelry! My screen name is Lobolita. (My little brother's nickname for me.) Come find me!

Tangled Yoke Finished!

2007-10-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finished the last button band on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. Here it lies in its blocked-but-not-dry state:

Pattern: Tangled Yoke Cardigan by Eunny Jang in the Fall '07 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Jaeger Trinity from Webs
Needles: #6 Inox circular, #4 Susan Bates circular, #0 aluminum crochet hook
Start-to-finish: About a month
Modifications: Not many. Other than using a completely different yarn, I only made two significant mods. Obviously, the first was making it short-sleeved. For the sleeves, I cast on the final number of sleeve stitches indicated in the pattern and worked 6 rows of garter rib before joining to the body. Secondly, instead of picking up stitches for the purl bumps on the collar and doing a three-needle bind-off with the collar stitches, I slip stitched the live collar stitches down to the purl bumps using a small croched hook. I decided to do this after seeing Sil's collar travails.

The pattern was extremely well-written. Even the complicated cable was quite easy, as long as I followed the directions. I'll post a modeled shot as soon as it's dry and I sew on the buttons.

Bad News

2007-09-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

First off, we're not in Brazil. Things have been...delayed. The Brazilian government doesn't particularly like American volunteers, apparently, so it's really hard to get our visas through. So we're waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Did I mention we're living with my parents while we wait?

Right now, we're waiting in Long Beach, WA, which is kind of fun. We went to see Mt. St. Helens, too, which was awesome.

That was a pretty big boom when it went off. The National Park area around the mountain is incredibly desolate still, but Weyerhauser has done great job of replanting its lost forest.

It's pretty amazing what one little volcanic eruption can do to a landscape.

I've also had time for a great deal of knitting. I finished the Roundabout Tank, a shell of my own design, my Hedera socks, and am currently 5 inches into the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. With nothing else to do, I've discovered I can really fly through the yarn. I'm also forcing myself to practice some project monogamy, or at least bigamy, by having only one large project and one pair of socks on the needles at the time. That way, I actually finish things. Imagine that.

Very bad pictures of my Hedera Socks, featuring Abbey:

Pattern: Hedera, from Knitty
Yarn: Panda Cotton, in Red Cinnamon
Needles: Socks knitted one at a time on two #1 Inox 16-inch circulars.
Comments: I like the pattern, and I like the yarn, but Panda Cotton is a bit too splitty to knit lace comfortably. I'd pick a different yarn for this pattern if I were to knit it again.

I did it!!!!

2007-07-30T12:18:00.001-07:00

This morning I got a message from my college adviser that my final project was approved!!!!!!! My M.Ed. is done!!!!!!! Two years of sheer torture are complete!!!!!!! For the record, this is a Master of Education degree from the University of Washington, Bothell. My hood, when I get it, will have a purple and gold lining and a light blue velvet band, representing the field of education. This makes me want to knit something celebratory. Perhaps in light blue, with purple and gold accents? Hmmmm...I'm thinking fair isle....

Kiri Gifted

2007-07-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Kiri shawl I finished over a year ago has been given to my grandmother. I made it out of Icelandic laceweight she gave me, which my uncle had sent her while he was stationed in Iceland, so it seemed fitting that she be the recipient of the shawl. She loved it.

And here's the back, with Grandma doing her best snobby dress mannequin pose.

My grandmother is 82 and a character. She has 64 direct, living descendants, including 24 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. When you add in all the spouses of these descendants, there are over 100 people at most family gatherings. Grandma taught me to crochet when I was six or seven years old, and has always fostered my crafting habit. Unlike most of my cousins, I grew up next door to her, so I've been fortunate enough to have maximum Grandma-exposure. Her own mother lived to be 98, so we expect to see a good deal of Grandma yet.

The Roundabout Tank continues, sadly. It's not sad because of the tank, which is great fun, but it's sad because it means our Visas for Brazil haven't come. If they had, we would be in the air right now.

I'm making the second size, but I joined at 37" instead of 40", because I wanted a bit of negative ease. I'm three balls into my nine balls of Pegasus, and I'm hoping the yarn holds out until the end.

Pegasus

2007-07-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

I've succumbed to the siren song of Flickr. One of the big reasons I haven't blogged as much as I should is that uploading photos to our private server was so fiddly and time-consuming. (I know. Wah. Millions of people do it every day.) So I've switched to Flickr, which is much easier, and, quite frankly, cooler. I present to you, Pegasus:

And the much-desired appropriate edging stitches for the Roundabout Leaf Tank (The photo is flipped, lest you think I knit left-handed):

And finally, here's some of the Brazil stash:

Surprisingly non-blue. What you see are orange Jaeger Trinity, celery Elann Camila, three colors of Crystal Palace Panda Cotton and Panda Wool, camel silk from Colourmart, red KnitPicks CotLin, moss Misti Alpaca laceweight, and lime Lacey Lamb from Jade Sapphire.

Packed away already are a couple of cakes of Zephyr Wool-Silk, some Brown Sheep Cotton Fine, another color of Jaeger Trinity, and some sapphire blue Elann Luna. And the Pegasus, of course. I've got projects planned for about half of it already, and the rest will probably be my own designs.

Roundabout Leaf Tank

2007-07-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Elann Pegasus arrived in the mail this afternoon, so I immediately swatched it to see if it would work better than the Katia Jet. It's a lovely yarn, very squashy, with a good "crunch" and incredible shine from the rayon content. It is much lighter and drapier than the Katia, so I'm pleased. I'll upload pictures as soon as my camera batteries decide they're done recharging.

Unfortunately, beautiful though the yarn is, I'm getting 20 stitches to the inch on #7 needles rather than the pattern's called-for 18. I went up to #8 needles, and got the same gauge. Since the fabric is already pretty loose on #7s, I decided to go with it, and just add two stitches to the width of the strip as it winds around and around.

Speaking of the strip, I cast on immediately after finishing my gauge calculations, and discovered a rather glaring error in the instructions. This is in addition to the errors already revealed in the errata on the knitalong blog.

You see, in the picture, the knitted strip appears to be a field of stockinette bordered by two lines of faggoting and a couple of edge stitches. The problem is that the directions listed do not produce that at all. The holes on the left side of the strip line up in classic faggoting, but the ones on the right side just make two wonky lines of holes with a zig-zag stitch in between. To make the knitted strip appear as it does in the photo of the finished garment, the pattern should read like this for both the border and the regular strip sections:

Row 1 (RS) K3, yo, ssk, k15, yo, ssk, k2.

This should make the holes line up in the correct manner. I haven't gotten any further than this in the knitting, and I probably won't do any more on it until we're headed to Brazil, but I'll keep track of any more errors I spot along the way. I really wish that the patterns in this book had been test-knit. It's such a beautiful book, and the patterns are so unique, that it seems a great shame that there are so many errors. Everywhere I go on the web, it seems, the first comment I read about the book is that it is riddled with problems.

We are not amused

2007-07-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Katia Jet came in the mail today, and I decided to swatch it before packing it away, and I am very glad that I did. The color is lovely, and the yarn is very nice, but the fabric it makes is waaaaaay too firm for the Roundabout Leaf Tank, which, to all indications, should be slinky and drapey. (By the way, here's be best one I've found on the internet so far.)

So, back to Elann the yarn goes. This time, I'm going to order their house-brand Pegasus, and hope that the rayon content provides the necessary drape.

I've decided on the color "natural," because I don't really like the pale blue offered, Tim doesn't like pink, and none of the other colors really speak to me. Hopefully, this order will work out.

Love! Love! Love!

2007-07-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

I just checked out Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature from the library. I am in love. I know that this book made the blog rounds some time ago, but at the time, I didn't truly realize just how wonderful the patterns in it are. Right now, I am obsessing over two, the Roundabout Leaf Tank (like everybody else) and the Shell Tank. Both will be great for Brazil.

For the Shell Tank, I already have appropriate stash yarn, Elann Sonata in Tapestry Blue

For the Roundabout Leaf Tank, I had to order some yarn, since there wasn't any aran weight summer yarn in my stash. Once again, I went with Elann (I'm so close to the $50 free yarn!) for Katia Jet, which I hope will work well for this. I know, cotton's not slinky like the Berroco Denim Silk the pattern calls for, but I'm hoping the chainette construction will help with this. My husband chose the color Aqua, and I think he made a pretty good choice:

There will, of course, be no knitting on these projects until I get to Brazil. We leave on the 30th of July! Nothing but packing and panic for the next two weeks.

It tells you they didn't have a lot else to celebrate

2007-07-04T20:58:00.000-07:00

Lithuania has money with people spinning on it. Awesome.

Oh, and happy Fourth of July. God bless America and our soldiers.

The Stash for Brazil

2007-07-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Lookee in the sidebar--a new shop widget! I am excited. Please, buy my yarn. I don't have anywhere to put it.

What I do have is lots of cotton and linen and silk to take with me to Brazil. I have spent the last three or four months building the Brazil stash, because Claudia told me to bring my yarn with me. Apparently, most of the yarn available in Brazil is acrylic, despite the fact that many of our natural fiber yarns in the States are manufactured there.

At last count, here's what's going to Brazil with us:

Elann Camila, Sage, 7 balls
Jaeger Trinity, Dull Pink, 5 balls
Jaeger Trinity, Flamenco, 5 balls
KnitPicks CotLin, Red, 7 balls
Elann Sonata, Blue, 8 balls
Queensland Cotolino, White, 10 balls
Elann Esprit, Brazil, 6 balls
Elann Connemara, Blue, 6 balls
Colourmart Silk, Camel, 2 cones

Not to mention the lace and sock yarn. So, you can see that I will be prepared.

By the way, Rosemary mentioned that I hadn't said anything about our new blog. You can find out about our Brazil adventures at TimAndLorraine.com, and I've also put a permanent link in the sidebar.

I think that I will keep this blog up, just for knitting-related blogging. Now that school's out, and the masters-degree-of-death is nearly complete, I should be able to get to this more often. I hope. No promises, though, if the last six months are any indication.

Gagh! Still here!

2007-03-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

Sorry, blog-friends. I have been remonstrated by the husband of a regular reader (you know who you are) for not posting more often. All I can say is mea culpa.

And what's more, this is going to be a lame, picture-less post. Sorry.

So, Brazil. Yes, we are moving to Rio de Janiero this summer. We'll be teaching History and Science at a school in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, commonly known as Barra. (I've read that the "rr" in "Barra" is pronounced like the "tt" in "butter." This makes no sense to me, but I'll go with it. My husband has chosen an elaborate tongue roll instead. I think I'll go with the path of least resistance.)

In response to my last post's comments, yes, if you know us and want to visit us, you'll be very welcome. We have no idea what our living arrangements will be like but we'll figure something out.

Rio is a very beautiful city known for its beaches, bikinis, Carnival celebrations, cocaine syndicates, and crushingly poor favelas. It also has a tropical climate and about 11 million people, both of which will take some getting used to for two people from Western Washington.

We'll be gone for two years, during which I intend to

Learn Portuguese
Learn to cook Brazilian food
Knit a lot of cotton
Not get tan (I realize I'm asking for the moon here, but I'd like to put off the wrinkles as long as possible. That and the skin cancer.)

Since this is a knitting blog, I'll be doing in-depth coverage of the knitting scene in Rio, which looks pretty sparse, to say the least.

Speaking of knitting, I've got a couple of super-secret gift projects going, which severly limits the blog fodder. I do have some socks to show you, though, which I will do soon. Soon, I promise!

Utterly remiss in my geographic duties*

2007-01-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since I last posted.

For my birthday, I got a skein of Handmaiden Sea Silk in the "Ocean" colorway, which I promptly turned into a "Stole in Spider Pattern," from Victorian Lace Today. The book was a Christmas gift from my brother-in-law, who showed his true superiority of mind by being the only person to get me knitting paraphernalia for Christmas.

And here is the lovely result:

The Sea Silk is everything everyone says it is. It is shiny, and slinky, and crunchy, and all around good. Oh, and it has about 10,000 white nupps that have to be picked out of the yarn as you knit, resulting in strange little nupp piles on the arm of the couch. But I'm not bitter. My skein didn't smell of the sea when dry, but did smell faintly salty when wet.

I wanted to take pictures of the knitting and blocking, but we suffered an acute battery shortage around the house over the Christmas season, and it's only in the last week that I've been able to unite the technology and power supply necessary to take pictures.

Another reason I haven't posted in a while is that there's been something else taking up a bit of time.

You see, we've decided to move to Brazil.

Not permanently, just for two years. We're going to teach at a mission school there. So now I get to try to learn enough Portuguese to find out how to obtain yarn in Rio de Janeiro. But that's a topic for another post.

* The title is taken from a CD I dearly loved as a child, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, as sung by Rockapella. In a particular song about state capitals, they forget Pierre, South Dakota, so the mayor comes on the song and tells them they have been "remiss in their geographic duties."

Can anyone explain this?

2006-12-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

In my monthly newsletter from Christian Book Distributors, I came across this:

What I want to know is this: exactly what theological concept is this meant to express?

On the knitting front, I am feverishly into my gift knitting, so no peeks here. I'll post the FO's nearer to Christmas.

One Finished Object

2006-10-21T22:13:00.000-07:00

I give you Sienna:

Obviously, with some mods. The big one is the yarn, which is not the Blue Sky Alpaca called for in the pattern, but Malabrigo handspun in the Thistle colorway. Nice yarn, okay pattern. My other mod was to make it 3/4 length sleeves rather than full length, since I tend to push my sleeves up at work all the time.

This is a comfy cardigan. A bit too boxy, in my opinion. It adds pounds I don't need to add. I think if I made it again in the future, which is unlikely, I'd add significant waist shaping. The yarn is lovely and soft, and I like the color.

The other major project I'm working now is top secret, so I can't show it here, but hopefully you'll see the pattern somewhere else someday.

P.S. I was interested to note the three new yarns on the KnitPicks website. This looks like an Elann-style short run, or perhaps they're market-testing some new lines. I ordered up a vest-worth of Wakashan in "Wild Cherry Quinault." Worsted-weight baby alpaca. Yum.

Time-waster

2006-10-13T06:39:00.000-07:00

Four things that keep me from knitting:

1. Work
2. Night school for my masters
3. Worship team practice at church
4. Yarn-hungry kittens

She is tiny, she is affectionate, and she loves to chew on yarn. Her name is Elf.

Stealth project

2006-09-13T22:45:00.000-07:00

I often forget to blog about what I'm knitting. I realize this defeats the purpose of having a knitting blog, but it's just so hard to lay down the needles sometimes in order to type up a post. No excuse, I know.

But I have been working on a project for a couple of weeks now, and since I've gotten to the blocking stage, I figured it was high time to post a picture. I'm making the Sienna Cardigan, from the Fall '06 Interweave, in Handpaintedyarn.com bulky handspun wool, in the "thistle" colorway. This is obviously not the yarn called for in the pattern, but I got gague, and I think it's turned out pretty well:

Don't be alarmed by the oddly disparate sizes of the sleeves. It's a camera illusion. I measured them several times, and they are actually the same width. 14" at the armscye, 10" at the cuff.

I cannot begin to describe how much I love this yarn. It is soooooo soft, and the color variegation and thick-and-thin texture were enough to keep me interested all the way up the stockinette back and sleeves. And so far I've only used 5 skeins! Talk about a bargain. I'll probably make it through skein #6 doing the collar and button bands, but even so, that's pretty inexpensive for a cardigan. I am doing 3/4 length sleeves, because I'll be wearing this to work, and I tend to push my sleeves up while I'm typing, so I'd rather not have to.

Now I've just got to wait for this to dry, and then I get to mattress stitch!

Shop news
I've put up four new sock yarns in the shop and one new roving. I really love the tourmaline colorway. Pretty, pretty.

Of Harlots and Shawls

2006-09-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Guess who I saw tonight?

And guess who else was there?

About 500 knitters. Maybe more. It was crazy. Stephanie was, as ever, amusing. This was the first stop on her latest tour, so she was charmingly frazzled, and sticking pretty close to her notes. She was wearing her Icarus, which she blocked on her living room floor last night, and I was wearing my Icarus, which I blocked on my sewing room floor last week before I became deathly ill. Want a finished pic?

Here's the blocked shot:

Pretty, pretty eyelets running into pretty, pretty scallops:

Running into a pretty, fluted edge:

I've put some new yarn up in the shop tonight, and have 5 more skeins to post later in the week. It's great to be back in America, back on my feet, and ready to get back to work on Tuesday. My classroom is almost ready, and I am only a little bit behind it. September, here I come!

Interesting

2006-08-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

I always pictured myself as more the Vizzini type. Though after the results of my first quiz, I went back and played around with the answers and kept getting Count Rugen, which is a little disturbing.

The reason I haven't posted a picture of my blocked Icarus is that as soon as I got home from Korea I was laid low by a soul-sucking virus. Possibly bird flu. Probably not. Anyway, I was truly bedridden. But now I am better, I start work tomorrow, and I will try to get a picture of Icarus up this afternoon.

Korea Knits

2006-08-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

I finished it!!!!!!!

Icarus:

Unblocked, of course. That will have to wait until I get home. Which will be soon, as you can see from the bag being packed in the background. We fly out tomorrow. A detail shot of the bottom point:

The yarn is Little Lovely Pure Wool laceweight from Handpaintedyarn.com, aka Malabrigo. It's nice and "crispy," just the way I like my lace yarn. It will hold its blocking nicely.

And here is the first finished Opal Petticoat sock and its newly-started companion.

I intend to finish the second on the 11-hour plane ride home tomorrow, assuming I can get on the plane at Incheon with my knitting needles, given the new travel restrictions. We shall see.

Breakfast

2006-08-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here is what the school served for breakfast this morning:

I am 5 rows from the end of Icarus. I will post pictures as soon as it is done. Don't worry, Yarn Harlot, mine looks the same as yours.

Seoul II: Seouled Out

2006-08-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we went on a tour of the sights of Seoul in a real live tour bus with a real live tour guide. In the morning, we went to the largest church in the world, Yoido Full Gospel Church, which has 800,000 members. It was...large. Otherwise unimpressive. I prefer smaller churches, I must say. Though the enormous, well-trained choir was awfully cool.

Then we went to lunch, and I had my first experience with Bimimbop in a stone bowl. They heat up these stone bowls and then put in raw vegetables, rice, and a raw egg. The heat of the bowl cooks it as you stir it around with your chopsticks. It was easily the best thing I have tasted in Korea.

The dark green shiny stuff on top is dried seaweed. I picked most of that out before I started mixing.

After lunch we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace, the largest of the royal palaces of the old Korean monarchy. It was disgustingly hot and humid, but the palace is truly amazing, at least as impressive as the castles of Europe. Here is the main castle enclosure:

And a detail of the painting and fretwork that lines every roof:

A pedastal within was topped with this adorable stone horse:

The guide told us that that particular courtyard was the site of mass suicides in the old days, when the nobility wanted to get the king to change his mind about something. There is also an ornamental lake surrounding another outbuilding:

It is an amazing piece of history, especially when you consider that most of it was built in the 1300s, when European kings were still living in unsanitary stone battle-fortresses, for the most part. Gyeongbokgung has central heating and reasonably sanitary bathrooms.

After the palace, we went to the blessedly air-conditioned National Museum. The most impressive things there were the medieval crowns, all finely stamped gold:

Every one of the individual pailettes on this headdress is hinged, so that they shudder and shine with the slightest movement:

For my husband, here's a medieval Korean soldier's armor:

And some early medieval swords:

This was a great tour, but exhausting. We only had an hour in the museum, so I did two floors at a dead run, pausing to photograph what I thought might be useful in my classroom. Luckily, all of the descriptions were in Korean, so it wasn't like I needed to pause and read any of them.

Knitting progress: I'm on Chart 2 of Icarus, and finished my water bottle cover. Pictures coming up soon!