Volver and rambling thoughts about sustainability

With all this time spent with my feet up this summer, I got a Netflix subscription. Well worth it, IMO, and I will probably upgrade to 2 at a time next month. Last night, I watched "Volver" while working on the first sleeve of the Alpaca-Silk Shrug and I now understand people who copy movie sweaters. The green cardigan Penelope Cruz is wearing in the last 10 minutes or so is gorgeous (and she is definitely wearing it at least one size too small!). I think it would be eminently knitable (is that a word?) and look very attractive, not at all dowdy... I wish I could get a good picture of the neckline edging as it seems to have a nice wave to it and I am not sure how I would knit that. This is so geeky, isn't it? We'll see if I ever give this a shot. It will need some time devoted to really planning pattern and dimensions that I usually don't have, but it is quite tempting.

I've also been reading a bit of non-fiction lately about the sustainability of the American way of growing and eating food and thinking quite a lot about whether and how I want to change the ways my family consumes those resources and whether we want to apply those ideas to other types of consumer goods: emphasizing locally produced products and goods which give back a decent earning to the people who produced them and do no or minimal damage to the environment. The kids are clearly beginning to be concerned that their dad and I are going to be utterly wacko about it, but I'm sure we won't be as neither of us has the energy at the moment to add many more tasks or complications to our lives. It is interesting to contemplate, and I will probably try to research it at some point, whether it would even be possible to just consume American union-made items and eat only food grown nearby (this latter I am pretty sure we could do as we live only a mile from our CSA and have several other sources very close by for eggs- and free-range meat, if we weren't vegetarians). Localharvest.org is searchable by zip code and really useful, I've found. Anyway, I can highly recommend both books, and despite linking to Amazon for convenience as always, it's probably better to buy them locally or get them out of the library like I did, blah-blah-blah:

The Omnivore's Dilemma

and

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Pictureless Post

My poor finished objects-- how do other people manage to take so many pictures once they have finished their knitted items? I am usually too tired of the darn things to bother! I got a bunch done lately; after some weird weeks where I was starting many, many things all at once, I decided to try to work my way through them one at a time to have some actual finished projects-- woo-hoo.

I finished the casual sweater from Classic Knits. It's possibly a little snug, but I think wearable.
It's difficult to make oneself keep such a warm sweater on long enough in August for more than a cursory glance in the mirror. Unfortunately I still have 5 more balls of Cork yarn to use up somehow. Any ideas? I also finished the Monkey Socks for my SIL. They are very pretty in the pink Koigu. I did only 4 repeats on the leg and like that length. I also liked the look of the twisted rib at the edge but it really doesn't have much stretchiness... And yesterday I finished the mittens from the Raumagarn pattern. I have to say I really do love these and am (almost) looking forward to the cold weather. Right now I am trying to chug away on the ribbed socks for my husband. I did find the ballband and they are from Misty Mountain Farms-- 100% superwash merino. It is very soft and pleasant to work with, although I do wish I liked the colors more. Mea culpa, I know, since I did pick it out myself, in person, no less! The first sock is almost to the tip of the toe, but I ran out of yarn and have to wait until I can scavenge yarn from the other (slightly larger) ball.

In non-knitting news, I am nearly walking! It will be so good for me and the kids to have me mobile again. I will start PT in a week and a half (please let me find someone good!). Maybe soon I will be able to do some normal fun summer activities. What a change that will be. It has been quite the dullest summer ever! Thank goodness I discovered knitting podcasts-- a whole new avenue for the children to make fun of me...

I am feeling pretty bad for the mourning dove we spotted in our yard today. It can't really walk-- it looks like it has something tangled around its feet or parts of its body. Unfortunately, in terms of our ability to catch it, it can still fly away, although not far, poor thing. Hopefully my husband or kids can trap it and we can cut off the offending article and it will be okay. We were able to free one of the birds that got caught in our deer netting around our garden last year. (I don't use that plastic netting any more for that reason.) If we can catch the dove but not get the tangle off, we should be able to bring it to our county wildlife rescue. We brought a gosling there last year that had been mauled by a dog or fox or something and I assume they took good care of it.

My goodness, what a month...

Well, sorry for the enormous time-lapse. The surgery went well (I guess), but the recovery has been a bear. I hope I can comfortably update the blog now with my foot elevated up on the desk next to the computer monitor. It's a shame I haven't bought a comfy desk chair instead of a zillion skeins of yarn this past month-- most of it has been purchased in the dead of night with the sole intention of trying to make myself feel a little better through yarn shopping. (Webs, Purl, and the Loopy Ewe-- yikes.) I suppose you all know how that ends-- hiding it away in old yarn stash, feeling queasy at the prospect of ever chugging through all those new yarn miles, vowing to go on a yarn diet till 1/2 the stash is knitted...

All this time sitting however has made for a lot of knitting time (even with a whole week in which I did none at all-- I absolutely hated the very thought of it that week and made my husband and eldest child cart all the yarn and books right back upstairs!). My mojo is back now, thankfully.

Here is the Noro Iro garter stitch scarf (exactly 2 skeins which worked out to have a lovely symmetry with one another when worked from opposite ends of the skeins) and, with a 3rd skein, an adult-sized adaptation of the "sweet baby hat". I plan on making more of these someday. It covers the ears perfectly and more snugly than any earflap hat I have knit in the past. The Iro was also enjoyable to knit and I'd like to get some more someday.

I also finished knitting the child's placket neck sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I mentioned it in my last post. The end result bears only a modest relationship to the published pattern. It is knitted in Debbie Bliss Merino dk. I did go back and undo the seed-stitch edge which was turning up like mad and put in a ribbed edge which is behaving nicely. I modified the raglan shaping somewhat and then was exasperated to discover that the reason the buttons on the placket neck look so small in the picture in the book is that they are beads and there are no buttonholes in the pattern. Anyway, I went ahead and added four buttonholes and hope I can find some turquoise football buttons or something similar once I can walk again.

I knit this scarf with some Wool in the Woods rayon I had in stash. I had 2 different colorways and held them together to make it a quicker knit. This was probably my 3rd attempt at making something with this yarn, so I'm pleased to be done with it.


That's it for actual finished projects, however. Mostly I ended up being quite aimless and started things and lost interest quite quickly. Here is the sorry state of affairs on that front:

The silk shrug and the casual sweater from Erika Knight's "Classic Knits". The brown shrug is in Blue Sky Alpaca Silk and I plan on making long sleeves instead of the short ones in the pattern. The casual sweater is in some long-discontinued Rowan Cork which has been in my stash quite a long time and it will be nice to use up a bunch of it.



I've also begun an as-yet-undecided knitted object (poncho, shawl, triangular scarf, afghan?) for one or more of my daughters. It is yarn from another twin-loss email friend who is moving overseas and it seems quite fitting to fashion it into something for my surviving twin. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Biarritz and it is unlike the yarns I usually purchase myself, but the girls gasped at its beauty when it came in the mail (thanks, N!).


I've also been occasionally working on some quite lovely mittens. The pattern is from the white Raumagarn pattern book found here. I am using more of the Harrisville yarn that I used for other mittens this spring. (Scroll down to the yarn variety pack.)

And, quite unsurprisingly, I have started some socks. Also, probably quite unsurprisingly given the current condition of my foot and my not wanting to think about feet, I have not finished them. The yellowish ribbed socks are for my husband with yarn from Maryland Sheep and Wool (I will try to find the ballband later). The pink is the start of a "Monkey" sock in Koigu from stash for my SIL who likes to sleep in socks and is owed a birthday present.



I am too ashamed to take pictures of all my new yarn, but I will show you the books I got from YesAsia. The Fair Isle book is full of beautiful sweaters with not a pattern among them (and many motifs may not be charted, either, as far as I could tell from a cursory look), but they should be inspiring to me someday. The Nordic Knitting book is an odd hodge-podge of techniques and I didn't really need that, but I am actually glad to have it just for the "Crown" pattern which meshes well with my "Waldorfian" side and I will certainly have a go on it soon.

Return of the stash-busting afghan

In normal knitting news, I got the latest pair of men's socks done last night. Just in time for the end of father's day but of course he is not allowed to wear them yet. (I will try to get a picture soon.) So, not knowing what to work on, I plowed through the various projects on the needles, most of which I have been utterly uninspired to work on for months:

There is the child's placket neck pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts-- dull, dull, dull, and the seed stitch hem is rolling like crazy. I have begun one sleeve after getting up to the armpits of the sweater body. I don't know if I am going to frog it or not.

There is a drop stitch scarf out of Schaefer Anne, which was worked on steadily for 2 days or so after I planned the pattern back in February, and, while it is pretty, I have to force myself to even get a row or two done, so that may end up being frogged as well. I think the problem with that project mostly lies in the fact that it had been in a previous incarnation a basically complete lace shawl when it had a terrible accident far beyond my one and only pathetic little life line! Perhaps it is really destined to be socks.

There is also a striped men's sweater (good idea or folly?) done almost to the arm-shaping, so it awaits decisions-- how to stripe the arms, raglan or set-in sleeves-- before I can continue. And, again, it's been sitting around for ages while I don't make the decisions and don't feel like working on it. Yet it would be nice to get it done-- that would be a good quantity of stash used up and Mr. BooBoo (sorry, hon) does always wear his hand-knit sweaters without complaint, so it would be nice for him to have another before fall.

However, in the bottom of the tote, I pulled out my scrapghan pieces and decided to sew them together and then decide what to do next. You can see it is pretty wonky. I saw the pictures of Mason-Dixon's log cabin afghans back in September and gathered up lots of dribs and drabs and didn't worry about dimensions or stitch counts. It may indeed, as is mentioned in the book somewhere, just become an "interesting textile". Anyhoo, for whatever reason, I've started another piece to add to it. Even if it just hides away in the dress-up bucket when all is said and done, it's a good bit of brainless, no pressure knitting, which looks to be just what I need at the moment.

Good week

It's been a good week here. I'd been worried about the big family excursion to the dentist, given how awful that had been for my youngest daughter last time, but we've been doing lots of reading of every "going to the dentist" book the library had (I bet her dad knows them by heart) and lots of playing dentist during the day for about a month now, and she ended up doing phenomenally well. The hygienist polished and gave her a fluoride treatment and the dentist double-checked everything as well. Yay, little G! It all looked so appealing to her little brother that he clambered right up on top of both of us for his turn!


We were also treated to a homemade apple pie by my eldest daughter. I didn't manage to get a picture of it till afterwards, but it was delicious. I was actually a bit jealous of her ability to make and roll out such a good pie crust-- her first solo time, no less-- when I am always having to piece it together in the bottom of the pan. She also baked some more cupcakes and decorated them with the help of her next younger sister. Yum-- we have been quite spoiled by all these home-baked goods since the kitchen remodel was finished.

I am about 3/4 done, I would say, with the latest pair of men's socks. They are a modification of "gentlemen's fancy dress socks" from Knitting Vintage Socks out of Online in one of the Sierra colorways. This is my second pair of these. They are a slightly boring knit, but look very nice once on, and I am told are comfortable as well. I would really like to finish them up this weekend but am not sure if I will be able to.

the pressure, the pressure

Well, it is certainly surprising me just how much time this takes. My teenage son is pressuring me to add updates to keep this from being boring, so I, of course, need to point out that it is a knitting blog and thus by it's very nature going to be boring to him no matter how often I update...

I did have a bit of knitting needle mishap yesterday. I had stuffed the 5th of one of my double points in a ball of yarn and I guess it got stepped on at a weekend concert or recital or something, because it was mangled right in the middle and quite some trouble to get it out of the yarn without causing lots of damage to the yarn as well. This was my first broken bamboo needle, though, so pretty lucky, I guess. I don't know how come so many people use those birch dpn's because I can break those just while knitting. It is unfortunate that neither of my LYS's carries the Crystal Palace dpn's. I ended up shopping from Webs today to replace the broken needle and get a second set of 2.25 mm. dpn's while I was at it. I'm trying out the Pony Pearls. And, since I was paying for shipping anyway, I bought enough Noro Iro to make an easy scarf this summer-- planning ahead for some simple post-surgery knitting, so really there was no choice but to buy it!

We did have a nice visit from first cousins Sunday night into Monday on their way back from Connecticut. Small cousin F is chubby as ever and very nearly walking. His big sister E was a bit belligerent but still pretty cute-- she told me that the plastic kid's kitchen beans were "roast and tender".

I should get back to my knitting. Maybe next time I will start to figure out how to manage the side bars. Oy.

Socks ad nauseum

I finished yet another pair in the socks for husband campaign. Here they are modeled on his feet, but they will soon be washed and tucked away in the bag. I imagine he thinks he is getting them for Father's Day... I personally am just glad they didn't get puked on by the toddler last night in what seems to be a pretty virulent but short-lived flu-like illness going through the family during our big concert and recital week.

Details:

yarn: Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Smoky Topaz colorway
pattern: ribbed lace from Sensational Knitted Socks
modifications: toe-up, garter stitch short row heel
needles: Crystal Palace 2.25 mm dpns
start to finish: June 1- June 10, 2007