Snowed In

So basically, I haven’t left my house since I got home from the gym on Friday.

  This is the part of our deck that is under the roof.
Since then, I’d estimate we’ve gotten at least six inches of snow. We took some time out this morning to shovel the driveway, but because there were plenty of reports of just how terrible the roads were, we decided to just not go anywhere.


A friend of mine went to church this morning with her family. Roughly a mile away from their house. It took them almost an hour to get home, so I think we made the right choice! Since I stayed indoors, I did a few small things in my weaving room that I’d been meaning to do for a while. The first was that I took the screen off of a side window in my weaving room and put up two pieces of stained glass that I got in Ireland last year.


I also got out my hammer, and hung a piece of art that came from my mom’s sewing room. It’s titled “She Works With Quills,” and the joke that the last word was “Quilts.” Mom was a quilter, which is what made me start. And I liked it, so I re-homed it.


And then, I got a warp under tension and started to weave.


It’s rep weave, so it’s weaving off very quickly. Which is great, because I have several more warps just waiting to jump on the loom. And since we’re looking to have more snow followed by Polar Vortex temperatures, more weaving is just what Old Man Winter ordered. I love it!

WiP Thursday

So I kind of missed yesterday. It was a busy SpaceCadet day. I took this pile

  That’s a black-and-white photo, folks. I can’t spoil the surprise!
Matched everything up with a “shiny” and dyers notes and got rid of this mountain.


The Yarn Alliance is on its way today!

Yes, this was Polar Vortex Week here in the East. The Hubster was out of town for the first half of the week, so I took a pic of our indoor/outdoor thermometer for him on Tuesday night. Just FYI, the clock is set to Daylight Time, and since it sits right next to a correctly-set clock that’s easier to see, I never bother to change it.


And, in other news, I was in a hurry yesterday, but I did snap a picture of my Leftie-in-Progress:


The color from last week is actually true. The above pic is way too blue. But you can see how much progress I’ve made! My main skein is looking a little thin, so we’ll just see where this thing ends up.

Lintilla

I’m not much for pastel colors. But then a funny thing happened at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival way back in March.

I was working the SpaceCadet booth on Friday, and I needed something to wear during the show. So I grabbed something out of the sample pile. It was Peacethrufiber’s Lintilla shawl.


I’ve never gotten so many compliments on a knitted item in my life.

So I decided pretty quickly that I needed to make one for myself. Fortunately, I know the dyer of the yarn, and she was willing to dye two skeins of Lucina (our sparkly base) in Usui for me to use for this shawlette.


She even through in a tiny bit more color than normal, including a little extra purple. Yay! The yarn landed at my house for my birthday, and I started it shortly after I got home from Oklahoma in mid-June.

My summer was full of lots of things that weren’t necessarily knitting-friendly, but I had a deadline. I needed a finished SpaceCadet knitted thing in time for Indie Knit & Spin in November. Especially since Peacethrufiber has moved to Hong Kong and taken her Lintilla with her!


I knit the increase pattern to 30 ruffles, if I remember correctly, then started the endless short rows. I had plenty of yarn, but because of how the shawl is shaped, it was gonna get really funny-looking if I kept going before I started to decrease.


All in all, I’m pleased with the project. I love knitting garter stitch, and this was no exception. Yay having a work-appropriate “thing” to wear at shows!

    Lintilla    Pattern: Lintilla by Martina Behm  Size: Shawl-sized  Yarn: SpaceCadet Creations Lucina  Color: Usui  Amount: Roughly 1.3 skeins  Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm)  Started: 10 June 2013  Finished: 29 October 2013  Mods: None, other than freestyling the number of ruffles before I started decreasing.

Jazz Reprise

I knit my first Shawl That Jazz a couple years ago, and it was both a really fun knit and a shawl I use fairly regularly. Win!


So, when I stumbled across two skeins of Blue Moon Twisted at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival back in May, I decided to jump back in again. (and I kind of enabled two friends along the way. Oops?)


Once again, the pattern knit up really quickly, and I like the finished shawl.

Thanks much to my friend Stephanie for putting a fresh eye behind my camera. And provided the mannequin. Yay! 

The Twisted is extremely squishy and makes a nice garter stitch fabric. Picking up the wraps to create the ruffle is the only mildly complex part of the process. All in all, I wouldn’t be surprised if yet another one of these winds up on my needles eventually!

Shawl That Jazz, Volume II 

Pattern: Shawl That Jazz by Samantha Roshak 

Size: Shawl-sized 

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted 

Color: Pussy Broadway 

Amount: 2 skeins 

Needles: US 10.5 (6.5mm) 

Started: 10 May 2013 

Finished: 26 May 2013 

Mods: Knit the ruffle until I ran out of yarn/had barely enough to bind off. Yay, scales!

Actually, I Don’t Love It …

It was Thanksgiving Day 2012 when I got a text from my dear friend Sara saying that her knitting pattern, Love Actually is All Around had been accepted to Knitty.

There are many reasons I decided to knit this cowl.

Support my friend Sara by knitting her pattern.

Support another friend by using SpaceCadet Yarn.

Have a clue what was happening with the KAL that SpaceCadet hosted on our Ravelry group, since I’m a mod over there.

Learn a new technique (that’s always a good idea!)

 I had taken Sara’s pictures for her submission to Knitty, and I’ll admit that those are much better than the two I snapped of my finished cowl before it went off to live in the SpaceCadet samples bin.


Double knitting is a cool technique. It yields a two-sided tube that is identical on both sides in the way a negative is identical to the photographic print it creates (Yep. I’m old. I used to develop/print my own pictures!) I had a few hiccups on the “inside” of the cowl. Once I figured it out and had hit the halfway point of the project, I was ready to be done. But I persevered, and finished it anyway.

Yay, learning a new technique! I doubt I’ll run to double knitting any time soon, but hey, now I know how to do it!

Love Actually Cowl 

Pattern: Love Actually is All Around by Sara Bench 

Size: Cowl-sized 

Yarn: SpaceCadet Creations Astrid 

Colors: Heartbeat and Torment (both were Poor Plutos, having small flaws) 

Amount: One skein of each 

Needles: US 8 

Started: 15 February 2013 

Finished: 9 May 2013 

Mods: HAHAHAHAhahahaha … No mods. Just mistakes!

Last Year’s Projects

I’m going to tackle these unblogged finished projects in the order in which they were completed. I figure I may as well pick an order that makes sense!

The oldest finished project on my list (nine projects. This is going to take a little while!) is a Christmas gift that just went out to its new home a little over a week ago.


I’ve been working with Jeff, my personal trainer, at my gym for several years now. Not only does he help me keep this aging body in one piece and in good working order, he’s become a damn good friend.


Jeff is a Penn State grad, and was on the Pirates bandwagon earlier than anyone else I know (we’re talking 4-5 years ago. When that was just nuts.). When he and Kate got married a few years ago, I wove a blanket for them, and of course I ordered extra yarn to make sure I wouldn’t run out.

The navy in the blanket bled like it had never been set. So my good friend Stephanie offered to set the color on two of the leftover skeins of Cascade 220 so I could knit a scarf for Jeff. She couldn’t believe how much they bled either!


From there, it was off to the races. My usual 70 stitches in the round, 20-row stripes, cut the fringe before I start, and knit until I run out of the end-color. Zoom. Jeff and Kate both liked the gift. Probably because it means they can dress like the Nittany Lion for football games now.

Nittany Scarf 

Pattern: House Scarves, Year 1-2, from Charmed Knits 

Size: Scarf-sized 

Yarn: Cascade 220 

Colors: Navy, White 

Amount: 2 skeins of each color 

Needles: US 8, 16” from my KA Switch set 

Started: 16 January 2013 

Finished: 24 March 2013 

Mods: I don’t count stripes, just knit until I’m out of yarn. Is that a mod? Probably not.

A New Year

So it’s January 1, and it’s been radio silence on the blog for quite a while.

I’d at least like to wrap up the projects that I finished in 2013, and then I’ll hopefully be back in the blogging groove! That’s a long list, and I’m chipping away at getting those posts in the bank.

But meanwhile, today is Wednesday. So let’s start off the year right, with a WiP Wednesday post!

My Swirl is still languishing in a corner. If I sat down and actually, y’know, worked on it, I’m pretty sure it could be finished in short order.

Instead, I’ve been working on a Leftie shawl, knit with a SpaceCadet Creations Leftie kit.


It had a false start when I decided that even though I was two leafs into a 1-5, 1-5 repeat (light to dark every time), it would be better if I went light-to-dark-to-light.

A Twitter-encouraged frogging of about two inches and a re-ordering of leaf colors, and I’m off to the races.


I wasted a perfectly good warp-the-loom day on Saturday, so I’m officially committing to my next weaving project. This really narrow warp will go on at my next opportunity, and will hopefully weave quickly.


It had better weave quickly. I have two tencel warps ready to roll waiting in line behind it!

WiP Wednesday

I am a complete failure as a hermit. Seriously. I‘d pay to just hide in my weaving room and ignore the world, but I couldn’t do it guilt-free.

The Color Affection for Sairy’s Mommy has been finished and sent on its way, and I’ve chipped away at my Swirl a little bit, but there’s no real progress, so no new picture.

 I’ve been doing a little bit of knitting. I volunteered to knit two cowls for a group on Ravelry. I started (and finished) the first one over the weekend.


It’s a Sherbrooke Cowl, which I’ve made once before. It needs a soak and some end-weaving, then it’ll get the full finished project treatment. Cowl #2 was started last night.


It’s a Darkside Cowl, and I’m one repeat in.

Stash yarn for both of these, which is awesome. And they’re quick. Yay!

The weaving is for a Christmas gift, so no pictures. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to work!

WiP Wednesday

Yeah, WiP Wednesday is a good place for me to get back into the habit of blogging, right? I have two projects currently on the needles right now. One is my Swirl, which is sooooo close to done


I’ve bound off for the center-neck and am still chugging along at full sleeve width. Should be zooming along soon, except my travel knitting has been getting the lion’s share of work


It’s a Color Affection I’m knitting for my friend Sairy. She knit one for herself a while ago and her mom loved it. Sairy has no interest in knitting another CA so I said I’d do it. She dyed the yarn and sent it to me ages ago. I finally started on Saturday night, and I’m moving right along!

Finally, I have some placemats on the loom that are close to finished, but I forgot to take a picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

A Thank-You Blanket

Lots of friends make fun of me because pretty much anywhere I go within the United States, I know somebody who lives there.

Nearly 15 years ago, I moved to the west coast. I was extremely fortunate that one of my Dad’s sisters has lived in Pasadena since before I was born, so I had family in the area as I started my Dream Job at UCLA.

We saw Janet and her family for Thanksgiving each of the eight years we were in Los Angeles, and dropped in occasionally at other times of the year. But since the Hubster and I moved back to Pittsburgh in 2007, it has been truly wonderful to have family in Pasadena.

Three of those week-long lines on the calendar in my previous post were trips to Southern California. Being able to stay with Janet on those trips allows me to take those trips and not spend every penny I make on hotels. This requires a Grade A level of thank-you. I offered a few handmade options. Janet chose a blanket.


We talked about some color options and I showed her some blanket options. Then I came home, placed an order for Harrisville Highland and got weaving.


I have come to love doubleweave (double-width) blankets, and this was my best effort so far. I should have made one small change in the warp thread order (should have broken up the green and gray), but otherwise? I did pretty great. You can’t see my fold at all!


The blanket reads blue, but looks great on the green couch where it will spend its life. It fits right in!

I didn’t take great notes on this project while I was making them, but I essentially followed the yarn requirements and warp thread counts from my first blanket, the one I did in class two summers ago.


I’m a little thin on finished project pictures for this blanket. The timeline from start to finish was a little tight. The blanket was barely dry before it was jammed in a backpack to be delivered to Janet on my April trip to California.

Here’s hoping it has a long and happy life in its new home, and that Uncle Ab and Aunt Janet appreciate this blanket half as much as I appreciate them!

Davis Doubleweave 

Thread: Harrisville Highland 

Colors (# of cones): #31 Cobalt (4 … warp and weft), #53 Silver Mist (1+), 

#33 Midnight Blue (1+), #60 Kiwi (1+) 

Width on Loom: 33” (unfolded to 66”) 

EPI: 8 (528 ends) 

Started: 16 March 2013 (first day of winding warp) 

Finished: 8 April 2013 (when it came off the loom) 

I swear I have notes for before/after wet finishing sizes, but I have no idea where they went. If I can find them, I will edit them in!

Finish Line

I know I’ve been gone from the blog for ages. Here’s why:


Every colored line on that calendar? (which, by the way, shows November 2012-October 2013) Represents an out-of-town trip. Or, if it’s a red line, an event I was working in town that took me away from home for entire days.

It’s ridiculous. In the last 12 months, I’ve been out of town for 107 days. Yes, a lot of that travel was a lot of fun (Florida! Cathedral City! UCLA! Women’s College World Series! The Mannings! The Lake! Ireland! Norway! Rhinebeck! Maryland Sheep & Wool! DePauw! Northwestern!), but seriously. I’ve been out of town for 107 of 365 days beginning November 1 of last year. That’s almost 30% of the year.

I am exhausted.

I have lots of finished knitting/weaving projects to show you.

Lots of fun experiences. Lots of time with people I love, both friends and family.

Tons of photos to edit and upload.

I’m going to do my best to hit the highlights and get back into the swing of things.

Assuming I have any readers left. Let me know if you’re reading. Maybe that will help me get back in the groove.

And, if you are still here, and still reading, thanks. I appreciate it!

WiP Wednesday

Oh yeah. The Blog. Right.

 I feel like the old Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere” rather accurately describes my 2013 to this point. But now I can stay in one place for a little while. I have multiple finished projects to show you, but it’s Wednesday, so for now I shall show you my WiPs.

As has become custom, I started a pair of socks while at the Women’s College World Series.


I started it the first day I was in Oklahoma. And that was pretty much the last “normal” thing about the 2013 WCWS. What a strange week it was.

Once I got home, I started on a project I’d been wanting to take on since the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival in March. I worked in the SpaceCadet Creations booth, and wore one of the shop samples while working in the booth. I got so many compliments on that Lintilla that I decided to make my own!


Yes, I still love garter stitch. I’ll be garter stitching right along for quite a while, and yes! I’m happy about that!

WiP Wednesday

It was a busy day, but it’s still Wednesday, so you get a WiP post!

Last Friday, I needed a knitting project to take with me to my Friday night group. The “last in first out” policy was suggested, and since the last yarn I bought in Maryland was this…


I decided that Shawl That Jazz would be a good next project. I was off to the races! Most of my Sunday was spent knitting and watching sports, so I got a really good chunk of knitting done. And, believe it or not, I finished the entire 540-yard first skein last night.

One thing I learned the last time I knit this is that there’s no good way to get a good WiP shot of this shawl. So you get a picture of a big blob.


I’ll join the second skein as soon as I’m done typing at you (and posting), and I’ll be back off to the races.

Because of the high yardage of these skeins, I’ve been using my Strauch winder. It makes a more vertical cake, and I loved how the core looked on the Twisted. So I threw it in the light box and took a few pictures.


See? Very cool!

Maryland Sheep & Wool 2013

Well, hello there.

My epic gauntlet of travel has been completed, and I have no reason to leave Allegheny County again until I go to Oklahoma City at the end of the month. It’s WiP Wednesday, but I actually do not have any WiPs to show you, since I finished my Love Actually cowl last night!

So, in order to feed the blog for the first time in way too long, I shall show you my Maryland Sheep and Wool purchases from last weekend.


From left to right, this photo includes: Three flavors of honey from The Bee Folks (Queen Anne, Bamboo and Radish), my 40th Anniversary Festival mug, a Melissa Jean hair pin, a pair of US 5/stiletto/33” Signature circs, a 2014 Sheep Incognito calendar, a new drive band for my Schacht ball winder hanging off the calendar, two skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in Pussy Broadway, three necklaces and two small beads from my latest addiction: Kris Schaible Glass Studio, a Miss Babs Color Affection kit, two skeins of Into the Whirled sock yarn, a new belt, and a Lion Potter mug.

 Not much yarn, but I do feel like I got a lot of stuff. Now for show-and-tell with the non-fiber stuff.


In the last couple months, I’ve gotten to know the wonderful and talented Melissa Jean thanks to my work with SpaceCadet and a pair of shows. I was intrigued by this cool hair pin, and it came home with me.

And now, for the largest rabbit-hole of the entire weekend. One of my running buddies, CelticQueen, was headed for the Noni tent to get a zipper for an upcoming project. I wandered around the upper tent farm in the opposite direction and stumbled upon a completely dangerous vendor. To the tune of three purchases in two days.


Kris Schaible makes some amazing beads. Throw them on a cable or a cord, and you have a beautiful necklace.


This purple bead was my first purchase. Then I dragged CQ and my friend Dianne to the booth later in the afternoon. And this one caught my eye.


I felt like this one looked best with a ribbon instead of a cable.


And then we stopped by again on Sunday and this happened.


Oops.

Of course Kris’ husband had discovered her “junk drawer” overnight and threw a bunch of those beads into a bowl. And I found two that Kris turned into pendants for me. (for scale, they’re propped up against the Twisted in the top picture. They’re pretty small, but very pretty)


Yeah. I love her stuff. A lot.

The other stuff is pretty self-explanatory. I adore the two Lion Potter mugs I already had, so getting the green mug (far right in top picture) was a no-brainer. It’s so hard to find good belts that buying one from the vendor at MDSW was also a simple decision. Drive bands and calendars are boring but helpful. I also got two Festival t-shirts, but I didn’t throw them into the picture. Oops.

It was a great weekend with good friends, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Tying Knots

After my trip to Florida back in January, I remembered why I used to travel with a backpack as my carry-on bag. I did some shopping around and tried out a company I’d heard a bunch about: Tom Bihn bags.

I selected the Brain Bag as my new carry-on bag. And thanks to this post in the Tom Bihn forums, I decided before the bag even arrived that I’d put 550 paracord zipper pulls on the bag.

Oh, yeah. I worked the Frozen Four in Pittsburgh last week. It was fun! 

In the few bits of down time I had during the Frozen Four, I started playing around with knots. I started on the front of the bag with the three small pockets. And since the blog has been quiet for so long, I figured I’d blog about the knots I used (and document the resources I used to find the knots I selected!


On the sides, for the bright green pulls, I chose a Snake Knot, six layers long.


For the top-center, which is perfect for my keys and sunglasses, I found the Pupa Pull Tie. In a day-glo orange.


The most difficult knot to select was the Oysterman’s Stopper Knot, used on the center-back pocket in yellow. I tried many, many different knots to find one that I liked, and this is where I finally landed. (the pictures in the arena showed the yellow paracord with simple overhand knots, which I used until I had time today to figure out something I really liked.)


And finally, my favorite of all the knots that I used, the rainbow paracord on the large center pocket is a Two-Strand Diamond Knot.


If I hadn’t really wanted variety in the knots as well as the colors of paracord, I would have used the Diamond Knot on all of the zipper pulls. Once I found the video I linked above, the knot was totally simple and it looks fabulous!


Now that I have my zipper pulls figured out, I just need to make friends with my bag. I’ve carried it for four days now, just not for its intended purpose. Hopefully, by the time I get back from next week’s adventure (to UCLA for the women’s gymnastics championship!) I’ll have made friends with both this bag and my new work bag.

 Oh, and here’s hoping there will be a fiber-related post at some point this week. I need a couple more pictures and some time to write the post.

WiP Thursday

As usual these days, I’m a day late and a dollar short.

There hasn’t been a ton of free time, but here’s where it has gone:


My Love Actually cowl is marching right along. Got about four rows into the third set of hearts. I’m so ready for this to be finished!


I got my doubleweave blanket sleyed into the reed. Next step is threading heddles. If I’m lucky, I’ll get that done on Sunday.

And, because that cowl is starting to make me twitch, I’ve swatched for my Dublin Tee. Oops.

Festival!

Last weekend was the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival, and I spent Friday and Saturday working at the SpaceCadet Creations booth. Of course, a few additional items had to come home with me.

On Friday, I went and checked out the Knitting Notions booth, and as always, I found a bowl that I loved.


It’s fairly large, and I’m quite certain it will find a place to live somewhere in my house. It’s handmade and beautiful. I love it!

I also snuck across the aisle and brought home a self-striping skein of DK-weight yarn from Fibernymph. I’m gonna have stripey feet to keep warm next winter!


Saturday was spent elsewhere, and I really had no plans to buy anything else. But on a bathroom trip, I walked past the Knitting Notions booth. And the runner-up bowl from my difficult decision-making on Friday? Still there. Oops.


This one is much smaller, and is already in use as a catch-all next to where my phone plugs in overnight. I love it too! For scale:


Working the festival added two items to the top of my queue. A Lintilla (long story, I’ll probably be knitting it this summer!) and a Dublin Tee. I had intended to be very patient and get some SpaceCadet yarn (Lyra!) for this project, but then I spied the precise color that I wanted in the Knitting Notions booth. And it came home with me.


Here’s hoping I can get started on my awesome summer sweater very, very soon!

WiP Wednesday

Ahh, another super-busy stretch with the part-time job. My regular job has re-started too, so there has been very little free time. Zoom!

But, between all of the crazy, there has been a little crafting here and there. I’ve gotten a little bit done on my Love Actually cowl. It’s a little hard to tell, but I’m into the third row of hearts!


The Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival was last weekend, and my cowl got to hang out at the SpaceCadet Creations booth while I was hanging out with the Hubster for his birthday on Saturday. So I busted out my Nittany Lions scarf and did some work on it. I’d say I’m awfully close to halfway through the second skein of each color.


In other news, I’ve been preparing a warp for the loom. I’m lucky to have lots of great extended family, but my Aunt and Uncle in Pasadena, Calif., have been fantastic about letting me crash at their house whenever I visit the left coast. So I’m making them a doubleweave blanket!


A little over a week ago, I caught a destash of a warping mill at a really great price, and I’ve used this project to make friends with it.


The warp is wound, and when I have a little time I can get it on the loom and start weaving. There are two chains, here’s the blue/green chain…


And all four colors together…


If you remember my blog post from my Doubleweave Blanket Class two years ago, this blanket is going to be very similar to the tweedy-looking blanket that Hedy made in class. The cobalt (royal blue) color is going to be the weft. I hope I can get it done quickly and it’s a big hit!