Time for an FO and Another Post, Finally

Over a month ago I finished my second Noro Striped Scarf. And, since I've been so extremely organized, I can't recall the colors I used for this. It is Silk Garden, of course. I started this in June and finished it on Halloween. It will be going soon for a Christmas gift.

Baby Cat Kyra wants to know where I hide the camera, because she likes to have her picture taken.

Noro, Addi, Brittany, and Bling

This is yarn, and it is fun.

In Michigan I hunting for Noro Silk Garden and was greatly successful. This was the biggest score. I got yarn for Noro Striped Scarves and to knit a Lady Eleanor stole someday. You can see the start of the first scarf here. This is my current travel/grab-and-go project.

Another major purchase was several Addi Turbo needles in sizes I couldn't find locally. I like the Addis a lot, but they are a little pricey for the budget. I also saw some Brittany sock needles in the 5" size and got a couple sets. I don't know if I will like the shorter size but I thought it would be worth a try.

On the way to the checkout, I saw Wendy's new sock book and it jumped right into the basket. Outstanding!

Now this is the yarn that came with the scarf kit I purchased. There are several balls of glittery ribbon yarn in there, some sequins, and a very shiny yarn that is quite slick and likes to slip off the Addi Turbo circular. I have added in a lot of odds and ends of yarns that I have around the house to make a garter stitch scarf knit sideways. The scarf is knit on Size 11 needles and I'm using everything from bulky ribbon to sock yarn. It is going to end up much wider than the originally planned scarf; it will be a good stole width. There is a lot of bling in this and I'm really enjoying it, more than I anticipated. I've been picking this up just to relax with, but not as much as I wish these days. Three more days to the wedding!

Knitting and Newport

Yes, I guess it has been a while since I've posted.

My foot is basically all healed up. I'm fully back at work and seldom even think about the foot anymore unless I've been on my feet a lot or I accidentally bump the one sore spot still left. Buddy is doing well, thanks to a lot of rather pricey pills. We're not quite sure what made him sick in the first place -- perhaps a bad infection? -- but he is his usual bouncy hungry self and so I guess we will keep him on the pills for the next couple months like the vet wants. Joe has also been under the weather and I was running him to doctors and the hospital for a few weeks (with the bandaged foot, of course), but we are both pleased that he's doing much better now.

He did well enough that I felt okay taking a week's trip to visit various relatives and attend a couple family celebrations. I also visited a couple yarn shops and behaved very badly in them. The fact that my mom had a 20% off coupon for one of them didn't help, either. And Mom bought herself a scarf kit as well, in addition to using the coupon for my benefit. I also got a scarf kit and am busy working away on it; I took two projects with me and ended up casting on two more while on the trip. Maplewing has taken a back seat, at least for now.

Joe joined me for a few days in RI. We took a trip to Newport to see the mansions and have a seafood dinner. The weather was lovely and all the sailboats were out. We took walks along the water and the cliff walk in Newport.

The cliff roses were blooming and the air was full of their scent.



We took a picnic lunch and after eating I took out some of my new knitting, another Noro striped scarf with some of my new yarn. Almost immediately two of the kids jumped up, grabbed my camera, and took pictures of me knitting. It's getting pretty bad when the family takes your blog pictures without even being asked.

One of these days I will get around to posting pictures of the new acquisitions and the current projects. I'm spending time getting a lot of housecleaning done for company coming soon. We are going to have a wedding!

Lovely Fibers

Qiviut is a lovely fiber. Too bad it's so...pricey. I could easily knit everything, forever, with this fiber. I finished the qivuit cowl on the flight home from New England last week. Too late to wear for the big snowstorm, but it will work out well for the windy Arizona days next winter.

The cowl is a generous size, using the entire ball of qivuit/merino/silk from Windy Valley Musk Ox. This is all that was left when I finished sewing in the ends.

The cowl scrunches up nicely around the neck, although a bit loosely for my taste. I probably should have dropped down a needle size, and if I make any more of these I certainly will.

On the other hand, it's a perfect size to pull up over my head, and I will probably wear it like this more often than just around the neck. This pattern came with the yarn purchase; the designer now has it and other patterns listed on Ravelry. You can also find my pattern notes here.

When I got back from the trip, a special box was waiting for me. A few weeks ago Margene held a contest and I was lucky enough to get picked as a winning comment. I have been reading Margene's blog for a long time and find that she is a great source of inspiration to me, especially to get at my spinning! The box was crammed with goodies. St. Pat's Day candies, which we've saved for today, and a pretty bookmark.

There was also beautifully scented soap from Blessed Juno, but I didn't take a picture of it at the time and now it's in use every day! There was also this colorful sock yarn from Brooklyn Handspun; Margene really knows the colors I love! This yarn is very soft; I'm thinking of knitting it up in a simple sock pattern to show off the amazing colors.

Finally, there were two packs of fiber for spinning, yak and baby camel!! As I told Margene, the family is just getting used to me knitting with musk ox, and now there is more exotic fiber in the house. Well, they'll just have to deal with it; I think it's fantastic that a body can get to play with such non-traditional fibers. Thank you, Margene, for being so inspirational and generous!

Catching Up

Since coming back from New England on Monday, I've been trying to catch up with just about everything in life. Amazing how being gone for nine days can screw up the home situation. The lack of groceries, the overabundance of laundry, the dust bunnies, the dog hair, the mountain of mail, etc. Not to mention catching up at work on all the changes while I was gone. But there was much productive knitting and three projects were finished in the course of the trip.

The Twisted Cables Pullover was finished and was a major success. It fit the younger granddaughter perfectly and she didn't want to take it off. And hasn't taken it off. I was very pleased with the pattern and the Patternworks Bretton Heathers yarn. Hopefully it will hold up well with the use it's going to get. All the details are on my Ravelry page.

Altogether there were six sweaters and vests that made the trip and stayed behind. The little ones, of course, are for the new grandchild on the way, and the others are for wearing now.

The Glacier Scarf was also finished. How appropriate that I should finish it and wear it for the remains of the big east coast snowstorm! The Pink Carrots yarn is extremely soft on my neck and this is definitely going to be a favorite scarf. Again, details are on my Ravelry page.

There was much snowball throwing and snow hiking. There was also a first knitting lesson, using the Glacier scarf! There are more than a few three year old's first stitches in it, making the scarf an extra special treasure.

Another finished project and more lovelies next time.

Got My Wish

Things did slow down at work last week, finally, and I did get some work done on the Glacier Scarf. It's long enough now to set comfortably in my lap while I work on it. I'm hoping the work load stays this way for a while. I would like to get more projects done; not running so hard at work means I'm not as tired when I get home, and more knitting gets done in the evening then!

Case in point; the second granddaughter sweater is finished and put aside until we fly out there next month. Details on my Ravelry page.

So the third and last of the granddaughter sweaters is on the needles. This is the Twisted Cables Pullover, once again from "Kid's Knitted Sweaters and More". (All links are to Ravelry.) It's a top down raglan that I'm knitting from Patternworks Bretton yarn. It's a very soft superwash wool/nylon/alpaca blend and I'm very happy with it so far. The cable yoke pattern was easy to memorize and it's a very pleasant knit, at least at this point.

Hopefully the little girls will enjoy wearing these as much as I've enjoyed knitting them!

Oh, I love the blue!

It was a good week. I didn't get as much knitting in as I had hoped to, and that's usually the way these things go. I spent a few extra hours napping -- hey, if you can't have the luxury of a nap while on vacation, what's the point? And there were a lot of activities not really condusive to knitting. (Sorry, I don't knit in the jacuzzi, although I'm sure it's been done.)

I worked on the qiviut for most of the plane ride and associated airport waiting. It's not too far from Tucson to Houston, but I did get several repeats of the pattern done. This knitting worked well for the cramped quarters of an airplane seat.

The next day we were shuttled out to Galveston to board our ship. It was still dismaying to see so much destruction still evident in Galveston. Broken boats still littered the side of the roads and damage to homes and buildings was very obvious. But on the whole it didn't look too bad. Nothing like it must have looked right after the hurricane.

Once we got on the ship, the qiviut cowl was abandoned. The blue of all the Caribbean water was overwhelming, and for a little while I worked on the Glacier scarf. The yarn was melding itself into all the shades of blue surrounding the ship.

But the scarf didn't hold my attention for long. I spent most of my knitting time with Icarus and the Malabrigo lace. The yarn feels warm and yummy and I couldn't stay away from it. I knit on this all the flight back home. The blue lace reflected itself in the waters as well. I'm so glad I started this project and took it with me. It was nothing but sheer pleasure to work on.

Trip pictures and adventures aplenty, so stay tuned if you enjoy that sort of posting.

I've Been Soooo Good!

I've been to the LYS twice this month and haven't bought any new yarn! However, I have to admit that nothing I saw really grabbed me by the neck, if you know what I mean. I ran there to get some needles and other notions for the current projects. There were no new books in stock either, so on the whole I got out easy.



We are getting ready for our winter vacation. Neither of us is able to take any time off at Christmas or New Year's. Well, I could take some time off, but it's an unwritten rule in our little group that none of us takes off at the holidays. If it's your regular day off, then you have the holiday off. If it's your regular work day, and Christmas falls on it, sorry. Your turn will come again in a couple years. It was the fairest solution we could all come up with. And yes, my work days were Christmas and New Year's this time. And it's a very busy several weeks for Joe; the rest of the staff gets the time off but he can't. He actually is pretty indispensible at times, at least as far as church duties go. So come January he has to take the time off that he couldn't over the holidays. And he gets to pick where we go and what we do. Someplace very warm...



The suitcases are out in the spare room and we are tossing in clothes and all those other odd items that one takes on vacation (backpacks, water shoes, toothpaste). Of course the knitting was among the first things selected. Sometimes I think the project choices are harder to make than the clothes choices. Projects need to be relatively simple, but some detail is necessary. They must be small enough to transport easily. Not all scarves, not all lace. Excuse me. I think I'm taking all lace.

The lacy qiviut neck cowl has been waiting for such a moment as this. It will be the first project of choice on the airplane. Small and not too complicated, it should help the time pass.

The second choice is this scarf, Tiennie's Old Shale scarf pattern. The yarn is Pink Carrot sock yarn in blues and grays. (In fact, this very skein of mine is used for Ravelry's feature photo.) I'm calling this my Glacier Scarf. Can you see why?



This is a close up of Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. The scarf makes me think of the beautiful colors in the ice - without the dirt and grit, of course. And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to identify Alaska with any of my other Alaska-purchased yarns after I finished the Monkey socks! Silly me.

The Glacier Scarf has been my at-work knitting, and given how busy we have been it's not surprising that so little has been done on it. I hope to get a good part of this done during our trip. At home I've been knitting on another toddler sweater. This is Sam's Delight from Kid's Knitted Sweaters and More. It is knit from the top down (duh) and will be knit in the round once the yoke is finished. The yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash, and it's a much truer red than the camera shows. It's a very easy knit and good for evenings watching NCIS. And House.

Then, in case I get tired of knitting neckwear, I've started up again on Icarus. This time I'm using my Malabrigo laceweight. I love the softness of this yarn! I've gotten the shawl started so that I don't have to fiddle with the cast on while on the trip.

I'm anxious to spend more time with this, but I'm still trying to get the Christmas decorations put away before we leave on Friday. Okay, I'd like to at least get the stuff all gathered up and out to the garage before we go. But I'm very proud of myself -- I'm not stressing over it and I'm making a point to not get so tied up in housework that I'm neglecting to walk each day and fix some healthy meals. So I'm doing pretty well on the New Year's resolutions, except that I still haven't started spinning again yet. At this point it won't happen until after we return, but I am still determined to get going on that again. I have such lovely fiber in the house and I really want to knit something out of yarn I've spun myself.



Before I forget, I have to publicly thank Kathy for the yarn she sent me in return for a knit hat I sent her for her charity drive. Pink lace weight, no doubt to become little girl lace scarves someday. Thank you, Kathy! And thank you to all my regular readers for starting out another year with me!

Talk to you when we get back.

The Last FO of the Year

Or at least it's the likely last FO. Not even a knit. On Sunday I finished up the first cross stitch project I've done in several years. I'd stopped cross stitching because my near vision was getting worse and it was no longer comfortable. (Knitting, on the other hand, rarely required any close up work.) Back in October I did finally go to the eye doctor and complained about it. Now that I have new glasses and a new, stronger prescription, working on 14 count cloth goes very nicely. But I still need sunlight in order for my eyes not to strain.

Here is the fourth Alaska project. I started this one while on the trip as well.

I'm trying to finish up the Monkeys in Alaska socks before the new year, but I'm only semi-optimistic at this point. Not enough time today and then working all day tomorrow. I am taking the time to wind up the yarn for my first cast on project of 2009. This is the Pink Carrot sock yarn I bought in Ketchikan (Ravelry link). There are over 460 yards in this skein and I decided that I did not want another pair of socks. I love my knit socks, I love them when it is cold, but it's just not that cold that often here. So this is going to be a scarf (I love scarves!) and I'm going to use Tiennie's Old Shale pattern for sock yarn. It should make for lovely, relaxing knitting. And I love the intense blue in this yarn.

Seems to me that all I'm lacking now is a Z post to wind up the year. Anybody got a spare Z?

Walking in the Silk Garden

The first of the Alaskan projects is finished. The Noro Striped Scarf by Jared Flood was my airplane knitting, as well as balcony knitting throughout the trip.

The scarf was finished on Sunday. I used a full four skeins of Noro Silk Garden.

255 and 258 were multicolor skeins. I picked two similar skeins to complement each other.

I used two skeins of 267, which were varying values of the same brown/gray color. This made an excellent base for the two multicolor skeins.

I did not find this in the least boring. I love the finished scarf and of course love the Noro. Nothing I've ever seen can compare to the way the Silk Garden slips so easily from one shade into the next. So much depth and uniqueness to these scarves!

I doubt that this will be the only one I knit.

ReEntry

It's always such a bummer, isn't it?



Our trip was totally beyond fantastic. The weather was so-so part of the time, but most of it was good. I think I took about 900 pictures or so and a bunch of videos. Don't worry, I'm not about to post all of them. Only some of the best, and even at that I will be spreading it out over the next few weeks. I've got a whole bunch of ABCalong posts ready to go.



But this post is about the yarn. Of course the first thing I packed, along with the camera and guide book (and the cruise tickets!), was a project for airplane knitting. I took the Noro Striped Scarf, which I cast on with my cheap needles in case I lost them at the TSA check point. Not such a bad idea. We flew to Vancouver on 9-11, and security at the airport was really strict. Joe's binoculars and my camera, his carryon, and he himself got thoroughly checked out. The knitting needles? No problem. After we arrived in Vancouver I did change over to the Crystal Palace bamboos that I prefer. The Silk Garden colors I'm using are 267 ( 2 skeins of various brown shades), and 1 skein each of 258 and 255. I did get some work done on this when relaxing in the cabin or on the balcony.

Our first port of call was Victoria in British Columbia. This is a beautiful city, and we were there on a perfect, sunny day. There will be pictures later on, especially of the flowers that were blooming everywhere.

I had already searched the Internet and had found a shop for cross stitching and yarn. I have been feeling an interest lately in starting to do some cross stitch and embroidery again. So I made a visit to The Button and Needlework Boutique, a fabulous shop that I nearly went insanely crazy in. I felt that I'd died and gone to needlework heaven. There were more fantastic designs and materials than a person could even take in. It would involve a few hours to really do justice to the many patterns, books, and kits in the store. And to top it off, I had the world's greatest enabler helping me out. Joe saw several cross stitch kits and patterns that he liked and added them to my basket. I ended up getting three kits and two patterns there. (The church kit I got later in Sitka.)

Two of the kits are of totem poles, a fitting Alaska souvenir. I started one while on the cruise. I need some bright sunlight to really enjoy the counted cross stitch, and we had plenty of during the second week of the cruise.





While at the boutique I also looked at the yarn, junkie that I am, although I really hadn't gone in here for the wool. I did grab some Baby Cashmerino for a couple baby knits.

I also found this yummy hank of Yummy yarn. (Ravelry link.) The colors made me immediately think of Alaska, and the shop owners were very kind to wind it up for me. I had packed my sock needles for just such a situation as this, and later that afternoon I did cast on for a pair of socks that I'm calling "Monkeys in Alaska".

The Monkey pattern is perfect for this yarn. Look at those wonderful colors!

Later in the trip we stopped in Ketchikan. I had already looked up the two yarn shops there, and once we were done with our morning tour, Joe took off to explore on his own, leaving me to the temptations of the wool and silk. How many beautiful yarns to choose from!

I bought two hanks of Pink Carrot sock yarn. Again, these colors made me think Alaska, sea colors and earth colors.

I also fell hard for the Hand Maiden. Three hanks of Sea Silk and two hanks of Casbah. There will be shawls in the future.

When it was time to come home, I packed the yarn and kits first. In my carryon. I refused to trust my precious and not exactly inexpensive treasures to the baggage handlers of America. Who cares what happens to my clothes? I'm hanging on to the yarn. Joe didn't seem to understand. But I know that you do.

And not without reason. Joe's suitcase went AWOL in California and didn't come home until 24 hours after the rest of us. Not so dumb after all, am I.