Gypsy Knitting

I started a sweater back in August of 2010 while on a road trip - something fun and mindless, and an opportunity to work out some ideas I had in my head. My Ravelry project page is here.  I have since picked it up again (I'm multi - knitting lately, out of character for me).  I'm at the yoke, and it looks like a great opportunity for some colorwork, something I have not done since I was in college (I think I lopied myself out). 

I did some quick dyeing last week, as I knew we would be away in the camper for the weekend.  I wound off some yarn that was around the house, most of it leftovers and hand-me-downs (my guilds are fantastic resources for hand-me-down yarn).  I placed it in Mason jars with some acid dyes and steamed it in my electric turkey cooker, eleven jars at once.  The colors are unmistakably Summer Vacation.

I had the Fair Isle charting all figured out, and then I saw Audrey's version of Kate Davies Paper Dolls sweater.  Suddenly the vine seemed too tame.  Now I need a motif with this clever sense of humor - maybe pickles, maybe peanuts, not sure.

Potential

This is an all cotton sweater I bought at a thrift store for $2.99.  But wait!  Since it was Half Off Wednesday, $1.49!  I liked the condition of the knit, the plain color, and it's smooth hand. 

See how there are two strands of yarn running parallel?  Each is a fine two ply twist.  As I unknit the sweater, I separated the two strands and wound them into hanks on my skein winder.  Have you seen my skein winder?  Here's an old clip of it in action (sorry, the audio of me is not very clear, but you get the idea).

Here's the resulting yarn, which makes me crave Ramen noodles.  It's soft like a pile of milkweed.

Pick a color ... top row is MX (for cellulose), bottom row is acid (for wool).

Dye.  This time in my washtub, but there are tons of ways to dye with MX dyes.  I'm teaching a day-long Fiber Reactive Dye workshop at Fiber College in September - join me!

And swatch.  This was knit on my old Singer 360 knitting machine, which I am trying to relearn.  I believe there's enough yarn to make a dress ... a strappy and lacey tank dress that can be worn over another dress ... maybe some beads or embellishment.  I'll get on a drawing - been a while since I've made a drawing.   But it could also be a lovely lace shawl, or a gossamer tee, ... what do you see?

Progress Report, Summer Session

The Salvation Army in Portland Maine holds an annual sale of donated goods for knitters/sewers/crafters every spring.  This year I picked up a stack of fabric and books, all for about twenty dollars.  I only had one yard of this calico, and I managed to squeeze my favorite pattern onto it by shortening the sleeves and adjusting the placket.  My pattern is an awful lot like Great-Great GrandPa's hammer:  we've replaced the head twice and the handle three times.  I started with Butterick 4064 years ago (which I purchased for 25 cents), but all that remains of that pattern is the bust dart and the armscye. 

Of the six million buttons I own, only these green buttons would do, and they came as a foursome.  I think I'll add more holes and change the buttons - I have a new foot for my machine for securing buttons, I should use it.

McCall's 3341 is a clean and classic A-line skirt that I love.  I've added some pockets on this version, and belt carriers too. I'd show you the back, but somewhere along the line my caboose started looking like a pillowcase full of kittens.  I either need more supportive foundation garments, or more supportive skin. Or a personal trainer.  My head is cropped so that we can all focus on the clothing, not my lack of head maintenance today.  (Don't be fooled, I clean up pretty nice, and this ole body has served me really well).

Here's the best part : my first etsy purchase, a belt and buckle by bmused buckles by Arete.   I've been coveting these buckles for a long time now, and it was high time to pull the trigger.  I am so in love with this.  And it came beautifully packaged, a special gift to me.  Go, get one for yourself!

'Tis the Season

It's that time of year, my unofficial start of the summer, Motorcycle Week.  The drone of hawgs tooling down the highway.  Sun burned two wheeled tourists.  Ice cream on the bay, watching the parade of customized bikes and middle-aged riders pretending they don't have a care in the world.  

Dreaming of our upcoming visit to the track, camping with some of my favorite people.  Saturdays in the stands, eating shelled peanuts, homemade sandwiches, and pickles.  Drinking beer, wearing hats we wouldn't wear anywhere else.  Sundays in the stands are spent remembering we're not as young as we used to be.

Knitting and sewing are compatriots lately.  There's been lots of progress, little documentation.  Photos needed.  I've been inspired by a trip to the Squam Art Fair - met some lovely folks and soaked up some lovely work.

My boys are working hard at the garden center, their boss sending home gorgeous bouquets for me.  My 17 year-old is tending his vegetable garden, and an old pro with his granddad's backhoe. And they're fishing, bringing home delicious dinner (sometimes).

Summer brings our anniversary, and fried clams at Sandy Point.  We've been together longer than apart. 

This summer we'll need passports so we can drive to MacAusland's Woollen Mill on Prince Edward Island to pick up our wool, and visit colleges while we're at it.

And it's the season for everything to break, including my electric dryer.  No matter.

Star Date: 510.11

I drove to Blacksburg, Virginia Tuesday last week to move my daughter back home for the summer.  One thousand six hundred two miles round trip, and the invisible company of knit podcasters.  Luckily, I was bringing home a tired girl and some dirty laundry, not an entire fuselage.

Arrived home Thursday night and performed some mad sewing skills for the prom.  My son's (darling) date donated the stole/scarf that came with her gown, and I turned it into a coordinating vest on Friday before and after driving to Logan Airport to retrieve The Big Guy from a long business trip.  Also went to Ikea when My Guy's travel plans were delayed.  

I remarked to my husband on Saturday night that I hadn't had a moment to get all giddy about New Hampshire Sheep and Wool. Carded some wool to spin for the NH Spinners and Dyers Guild Demo.

Forecast: Rain.  Sunday packed up my wheel and my knitting and a waterproof pair of green wellies.  Demonstrated what good fun spinning can be, even if you're a noob like me.

Met Gwen's llamas.

(note to self: don't forget dentist's appointment on Wednesday)

Scored some Green Mountain pumpkin wool - I love the depth of color they achieve by using a grey twist as a base.

Picked up Stitchy's book (headache-hilarious) and was able to visit with her briefly.  Stitchy picked up a (heavy) knitting machine.

More sparkle from Leslie Wind, a twist-on fastening scarf pin.  It's for when I need to be spectacular. (note: my Mom made the scarf.   I know, right?).  I was so tempted by Leslie's silver darning needles (featured in Vogue Knitting!), but I do very little seaming in my knits. 

This is Mad Color's Indulgence in Pharaoh's gold.  The label says superwash merino, but I doubt it.  I think it's made of butter.  And a trampoline.  Mad Color used to be known as Serenknity.  I think we can all see that a name change was in order (especially if you've seen the booth).  This will be a hat, possibly a cowl, but more likely a hat.


Photo heisted without permission from Tammy. 
Tammy who carries a Star Trek notebook
 and inspired the theme of this post. 
Tammy who is so very charming. 

 Had a lovely visit with Misa, who wore orange wellies.  We hit almost every puddle, ate delicious Egyptian food, and petted all yarns orange and yellow/green. Ball and Skein had a consistently busy booth, but they somehow always find time to make me feel special. 

Today I could not get out of my own way.  Tomorrow will have more bounce.

No Good Deed (or bad) Goes Unpunished

I keep my ipod loaded with knitting podcasts.  There are several I enjoy, including WEBS' Ready, Set, Knit!, KnitPicks, and Let's Knit2gether.  I look forward to long drives where I can listen to several in a row, or ten hours' worth. I also dig some seventies tunes, like Electric Light Orchestra, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Last Saturday my family participated in our local Adopt-a-Highway Festival.  That means we park at the side of the highway and pick up all the garbage that folks leave at the road's edge.  Here are some things we found: a camera, fishing lures, a skeleton of a four legged type, diapers (dirty and swollen), the entire grille of a Range Rover, an enema,  a can of brake cleaner, overdue bills, mini-me vodka bottles, poop, Gatorade bottles, a tire, and a Christmas tree.  And ticks, scads of them.  And when I arrived back at my truck some local children had left little mud pies on my bumper.  :o)

How are these two things related? 

When we got home my son went to get his cell phone out of the truck, and it was missing.  We searched high and low, took everything out, no phone.  And then we discovered my ipod was also missing.  And then I put two and three together, and considered maybe the mud pie makers were also little thieves.  :o(

I quickly stopped service to the phone, and my son and I combed the highway to make sure we had not simultaneously dropped our electronics from the vehicle.  We went by the police station to report our situation.  My son's connection to the outside world was missing.  My knitting podcasts were gone.  There was a tick-picking party at our house and we were missing it. It's all in the police report.

Quick page-flip forward to the happy ending:  through daily visits to the homes of the Mud Pie Thieves, by Wednesday our story's hero, Officer Small Town, managed to wrangle our electronics from their muddy little paws and deliver them to our door.

I delight in the notion that they plugged into my ipod to find not Eminem, not Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, but Kathy and Steve Elkin's radio show all about yarn.  To a pair of thrill-seeking sixth graders, it was probably about as interesting as a radio show about rice. 

I'll be taking all my knit-podcasting friends to Virginia with me in a few days, a fourteen hour trip, listening to "Happy Feeling" by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Back to the Drawing Board

Our thirteen year old son recently made a pair of speakers out of some pine and some new naked speakers (you know, just the circular part that makes noise).  He toiled over the assembly for days, and really created some beautiful work.  But it wasn't quite right to him, and so he took them back out to the garage and tweaked some more.  After several hours and the sounds of lots of power tools, he came in with unusually long arms and face, and asked if we could go purchase store-made speaker assemblies.  My husband assured him that when he was thirteen, he kept his family warm for an entire heating season (or was it two?) with all of his failed projects.  It was too early to give up, and off they went to Home Depot for more pine.

In February I brought home five skeins of Ball and Skein's Providence yarn, a lovely light worsted merino.  I always have a library of designs in my head and on paper, but none of them was quite right for this yarn.  It has very crisp definition : I needed interesting stitchwork, but not a sweater full.  The silhouette needed to feel familiar : retro in a comforting way.  I had to use pleats - I don't know why.  My husband recollected ladies with hankies tucked in their sleeves (a large chunk of my knitter's block broke off with that detail).  So I designed this, Fannie Fouche :

and I did all the swatching and the grading and I was halfway done with the math for the raglans which looks like this:

and I made the charts too

and then I said to myself, "Self, I think this yarn is better suited to a set-in sleeve".  So I went on a quest to learn set-in sleeve construction, from the top down, knit simultaneously with the yoke of the sweater.  Tuulia Salmela has a fantastic downloadable pdf book and excel spreadsheet, The Tailored Sweater, that took me step by step through the construction.  In order to fully understand it I had to knit a sample:

I haven't admitted to anyone yet that most of a sweater was knit in the middle of knitting my Fannie Fouche.  Frankly, I think I'm a little embarrassed.  It is now on the back burner.  I wanted to change up the sleeve cap shape and the shoulder technique, so I made these knee warmers:

Then Quince and Co came out with a lovely cowl pattern that was so similar to the stitch pattern I had planned to feature, that I felt the need to change gears. More swatching:

More drawing:

A major rewrite:

 One false start:

And now I feel like a I'm riding a unicycle and juggling, watch me go:

And here are the new speakers:

Can you hear them?  I can.