WIP wrestling

Well I had far to many works in progress at one point a few months ago and that was making me uncomfortable so I started finishing things. Then I got to where I just really didn't have enough, so I started new things (ha!) I think I feel comfortable somewhere around 7-10 projects. When I get down to 5, the chances are they're all lace and cables and I need to start new public knitting immediately.

Right now I'm down to 1 pair of socks, these, from Sock Summit over a year ago.

They're a lot further done than that picture. The first sock is done and the second is about half way. They are toe up which is not my favorite sock structure, and there's a chart for the ankle, and I had lots of other socks, and then it was hot.

There's a fair amount of pressure over these, since that is the most expensive sock in the history of the world. They are made with Dream in Color Starry ($$$) and Socks that Rock (which I bought in Canada at a bad exchange rate). But I had to use them. The sock pattern is called Orion. How could I not use Starry? And the Socks that Rock is Tina's yarn and I bought it at Lettuce Knit in Toronto (Stephanie's LYS). It was like the universe was telling me to make a $60+ pair of socks.

Unfortunately because they're toe up, the first one is too long. I'll have to rip out the toe and reknit it when I'm done with the second one. And the universe doesn't seem to be telling me to finish them.

I also started this blob of lace around that time last year.

It's a feathery looking shawl I'm calling Fawkes. But I got to the beaded part and fell out of love with it so I buried in the corner and found something else to love. (Possibly that purple shawl I posted last week).

This is what's become of the rainbow hand spun. I still love it and it's still moving along, but slowly. I pick it up and do a few rows here and there. If I churned on it I could have it finished quick. I will, eventually.

Here's my Cuff to Cuff. The light does not do justice to this yarn in this picture.

I did pretty much what I expected with it, I ran right through the plain knitting and the intarsia in the round really fast after Knitting Camp. First bit of stranded work too, but it was summer and it was hot and so I grew weary of it. But I have a great head start and now that it's getting cold I expect I'll decide to finish it in the next few months. Hopefully.


This here was club yarn that I fell in love with and had to knit right away:

It's Lichen on Big Feet, which is a yummy squishy 4 ply DK merino, and the pattern is Evenstar. They seemed like a perfect match.

I started them planning on following the pattern but of course I didn't. There was substantial ripping back and reknitting on the first one, but I am happy and want to get the second one done pretty soon. I just need to knit the thumb on this one. (A gusseted thumb instead of the afterthought thumb it is written for). I'll post all the mods when it's done, and with better pictures.

Caitie has been complaining that she doesn't have a sweater (the last one I made her was several years ago, so she's not wrong). She picked out a pinwheel jacket in Kauni:

That's only about a week of knitting and it's probably half-ish way done (circles are deceiving, though). But she's kind of in the dog house so I am abandoning it for an Adult Surprise Jacket I have wanted to make, maybe for NaKniSweMo

But MOSTLY, I've been working on these:

which have been coming to my house full of these:

which in a fit of insanity I volunteered to crochet around and sew together into a blanket. It will be for Patience Ann, who's husband died suddenly. There are well over 200 squares so far and more are coming.

I'm losing this crochet the squares battle. I get help on Sunday. (If you live in central Indiana and want to help we're meeting at Strange Brew, Toni Carr's coffee shop in Greenwood.)

Doctor Who

Over the summer the kids and I fell in love with The Doctor.

We started with Eleven when the new season started



Who is adorable and charming. I really like him a lot. I have memories of watching Tom Baker after school as a kid but I knew a lot of people who watched the new series and I hadn't caught it yet.

It turned out to be literally the ONLY show that my entire family would watch for a whole hour. So naturally we had to grab all the episodes BBCA plays once a day on the DVR and got through all of Ten



(yeah we watched them all out of order). David Tennant is perfect barmy/nerdy Doctor Who.

We eventually got the DVD from the library of Season 1 of the new series. No one in our family likes Nine quite as much as the others. I was just starting to like him at the end of his season, but never as much as 10 or 11.

So my kids started saying I HAD to make Doctor Who yarn. Which sounded great to me until I started thinking about how everying is black or grey or olive drab. Not quite everything, but a lot. And I don't like doing solid colors, so I wasn't going to do skittles Daleks or Tardis blue.

Eventually we came up with these colors.


Time Vortex (which goes more with the the opening sequence for Nine and Ten)


Screwdriver (because this could be more sonic)


Gallifrey (the planet of the Time Lords, with silver leaves and a burnt orange sky)


Bigger on the Inside (inspired by the colors of the inside of the Tardis)


and Adipose (obvious, right?)

They make me stupidly happy because I am a total geek. I especially love the labels.
In case you're that kind of geek too, they can be found here. And if there is a color I'm out of or a base you don't see listed I'll gladly dye any of them for you (that's true of pretty much any of my colors, as long as I have the base available).

Actual Knitting Content

So now that I caught up with summer I thought I'd post actual pictures of some things I've knit.

There have been lots of socks but these are my favorite:



Just plain knitting, but hand spun yarn, 2 ply, Merino bamboo from Funky Carolina that I got from a Ravelry swap. I love everything about these socks, the way they fit, the yarn, how they feel on my feet. Yum.


I knit this tank up in a last attempt at extending summer. I got to wear it a few times before it got cold.

I saw it in a catalog 6 months ago or so but the pattern wasn't downloadable so I stuck it in my queue and thought I'd probably have to backwards engineer it if I couldn't find the pattern. Then one day I was in one of my LYS's and found the booklet on clearance. WIN!

Pattern: Empire Tunic (ravelry link). It apparently is downloadable now.

Yarn: Knit Picks Shine. I like it well enough, it's not the most glamorous yarn I've ever used but it's nice.

Modifications: Worked in the round. I cast on 1/8 more stitches and worked 5 k stitches in the rib lace instead of 4, then decreased the extra stitches out before the first cable. That gave me more room in the bottom. Also added short rows to the bust.


And I also recently finished Traveling Woman.



I actually finished it a while ago but after blocking was really unhappy with the bind off. It didn't seem tight but when I tried to wear it it was tighter than the shawl so it curled up oddly. And it was warm by then so I didn't need it so it got stuffed in the basket to do later.



Which I think is actually a great plan because then as soon as the weather turns you just have to finish it there it is! I ended up just taking out the bind off and doing it VERY loosely and now it's great.

Yarn: Briar Rose Grandma's Blessing. Love love LOVE this yarn. Love the color, love the way it knits and wearing it around my neck. I have about half the ball left so something else will come out of it I'm sure.

Modifications: Only 1. The pattern calls for an odd number of lace repeats, and I worked an extra one. I just prefer how the center eyelets run into the lace pattern, and how the center has a point.



This is one of my new favorite things. It became the new header of my blog (in case you're reading in a blog reader, check it out, I've got a new layout).

Lia

So I had this idea for a sweater one day last spring. It was still cold so I was thinking about warm things. It was probably the first time I've ever had the complete design in my head from the beginning rather than it evolving from something else.

It sat in the back of my head for a few months and before I knew it the Deep Fall Knitty deadline was looming a few weeks away. I ordered some Chunky Malabrigo in a gorgeous warm handpainted grey. We went on that vacation to Chattanooga and I took the knitting with me, but it's not good camping knitting so I didn't even start a sleeve until the car ride back. But I had almost a full sleeve done by the time we got home. Instant gratification is wonderful.

The hardest part of knitting it was having thick wool on my lap in July. I tried it on a few times as I went and I could not throw it off fast enough. It is WARM.

I finished the pattern and the sweater, and Ashley stepped in as a last minute model for me as my original model had a hair perm incident which apparently made her unfit for photographs.

Ashley was a great sport and managed to not look like she was wearing a superthick wool sweater when it was 95 degrees.

I got it done just in time to send it in and go to Knitting Camp. While I was there I talked to Amy (Detjen) a lot about fitting a range of sizes. I believe Amy told me there was a 1 inch difference in the shoulder to shoulder width between her and Joyce (go look at the picture of the 2 of them). Standard sizing tells designers that there is a much bigger difference in shoulder width.

Armed with this new information, I made some changes to the fit of the pattern for my friend Nancy who test knit it for me, and when Amy (Singer - Knitty's editor) emailed that I was accepted into Knitty we made those changes which I think made it even better.

The pattern can be found on Knitty now here. There are some other great patterns in this issue, I feel honored to be among such great company.

Ashley is a bit smaller than I am by the way, she cold probably have worn a smaller size. Here's what it looks like on me:

And it has been cool enough lately to actually wear it and not melt.

OK I admit it

I suck at blogging.

I used to blog more, but then Ravelry happened, and I am just not as good at it. I don't want my blog to become a business newsletter, so I avoid blogging "look at this new thing I have for sale", and then I put off the hobby blogging because I haven't got pictures yet.

Last time I blogged I was going to talk about Knitting Camp next, and I think I just do not have the words to describe the experience (and also, I totally forgot to take pictures most of the time I was there). This is the camp in Wisconsin started by Elizabeth Zimmerman and now led by her daughter Meg Swansen. I took one of Meg's classes at Sock Summit and immediately knew I needed more of her in my life.

Amy Detjen is hilarious and brilliant and I had a great time hanging out with and getting to know her. She swiped my Summit shawl and walked around with it, which made my day



Also, she is more obsessed with purple than I am, which I didn't know was possible.

I don't know how long they've been doing it this way, but they have this fantastic video setup so you can see everything Meg (or Amy) knits from the knitter's perspective.



(Meg knits almost exactly the way I do, and I feel only a teeny tiny bit smug about that.)

We talked about all kinds of knitting minutia for 3 days, and it was fantastic. I'd love to just live there all the time.

I made the trip with my good friend Janet, shown here looking totally punch drunk by all the knitting, and wearing the spiral yoke sweater (and possibly actually drunk from the box of margaritas, I'm not really sure when this was taken).

See all that stuff behind her? That's about 1/4 of all the knits that were there. Original, Elizabeth and Meg knits. We tried lots of them on, found shopping lists in the pockets. Tried not to drool. I got a little weepy looking at the February baby sweater and longies (and damn if I didn't FORGET TO TAKE A PICTURE of those, too).

I fell in love with this sweater


and bought the yarn and cast on for it before we left. Mine is purple, of course. That is intarsia in the round there, by the way. Fantastic.

I feel certain that some of what I learned that weekend has already fallen out of my head, and the only solution is to go back again several more times. We barely slept, the food was mediocre, but there was more than enough beer, margaritas, and knitting to make up for it.

Some other random things:

Across the street we found this place:

Which surprisingly had pretty good beer.

And down the street we found Janet's own yarn and craft store:

Which amused me greatly.


Amy Meg and Joyce were just a joy to be around, and I want to soak up all that collective knowledge and experience some more.

Finally...

School started today!



Sean was very excited (check out the flame Chucks). Molly was too but she did NOT want to take a picture. And Caitie is too cool to have her mom wait at the bus stop with her.

What this hopefully means is that I'll have more time to blog. I have so many pictures.

One thing I've been doing a ton of this summer is spinning.


Spunky Eclectic Wool Blend in Rosy Fingered Dawn. 2 ply, about fingering weight. No idea what to make from it yet. Goes to proving my theory that everything from Amy is wonderful.


Tiger Club shipment from last month. I've been in this club for a few months now and I've not regretted it a bit. Everything is pretty, and it's expanding my horizons. This is Wensleydale (LONG staple length) and it was lovely to spin.




Remember this from the vacation pictures? Well it turned out like this:



I love everything about it. It's merino fiber, it came in a bag of strips, which I split in half and spun sequentially. I am amazed at how well they matched when I plied it (I actually wanted a little more overlap than I ended up with.

Here's what's on my wheel right now, waiting for me to have time to finish the second half:

Most recent Tiger Club shipment. 100% bamboo rayon fiber. I never would have bought this, and I was a little afraid to spin it but it is absolutely wonderful to spin. It's slippery, so I have to go a little slow, but I kind of like that about it. And also, it's GORGEOUS. And such a great tactile experience. I really wish I had time to finish it.

I haven't had time because I've been dyeing this:


That's yarn club for August. I'm happy to get it out early this cycle. With only 2 or 3 exceptions, it all left my house on Monday, thank god. That was a shitload of grey yarn, I tell you. You can't tell because the pink is all on top, but it was mostly grey that people picked. 58 skeins of grey. Really sick of grey.

Today I got lots of dyeing done for Stitches Midwest (which is very very soon and stressing me out!) This:

is the most recent colorway called Gallifrey. Part of a new Doctor series I'm working on.

This one is called Time Vortex and I think I might be keeping it all for me. (no not really).
There's a couple more I haven't got pictures of yet. In case you can't tell, the kids and I spent the summer watching all the Doctor Who episodes of the new series. They are a bit obsessed with the Doctor. Molly walks around with her hand out and says EXTERMINATE! EXTERRRRRMIIIIINNNAAAAATE! It's pretty hilarious.

Next up- Knitting Camp!