Knitting on Impulse

Fudged For the Win!

Not fudged exactly, because I was actually on precisely the right track, I just forgot.  (It's the way my brain rolls these days - the subconscious doggedly getting on with things, while the conscious bit bumps around fretfully, wondering if this interminable headache will ever subside long enough to pursue a coherent train of thought.) After some consideration, I opted to add a completely new design feature all around the edge of the hat... and I think it looks great and fits exactly as I had hoped.

 
One great possibility of earflap hats is the ability to create a sort of cocoon around the head and cheeks without relying on elastic tension across the ears and forehead (the source of so many complaints of "itch") to keep it in place.  This is best accomplished by having zero to slightly positive ease in the initial iteration of the brim, then reducing the number of stitches a bit when knitting the all-around border. 

It could have used a bit of blocking to straighten out the garter stitch cross on the crown, but the necessary work surface was covered in gingerbread cookies and pots of icing, so it will have to wait.

I did take careful notes as I knit, except for the border, which I was rather winging as I went along, but since the girl child has ordered an identical hat in pink, I'll take notes on the border next time with an eye to publishing the design.

Yarn: Merino /Cashmere / Nylon in worsted weight - most of a 110 gm skein in Blueberry Skies. Every bit as lovely as you'd expect, and coming to the webstore as soon as I get the new category page sorted and a little more selection dyed up.

No update this week

There's loads of great yarn... not quite dry.  There's a ton of sampler kits.... half skeined up.  Time to admit defeat and regroup.  On the plus side, next week's update will be awesome!

I do want to acknowledge and thank you for all the words of support and concern over the last week - they are hugely appreciated, and as soon as I feel my feet on solid ground again, I'll do a better job of replying. I'm getting there.

Aren't mini-skeins just the cutest thing ever?

Work in Progress

This is what happens when you spill your guts (no traumatic allusions, I just thought it looked cool):

And this is what happens when someone's big sister gets gloves:

Except, instead of mindless stockinette, he wanted the motif to be "just like my sweater" (yes, the Little Knight pattern I've been promising for over a year and am working on a little bit every day.) Which meant I had to use my brain and doodle up a chart.  I think I can improve it a bit on the other hand - I'm thinking of these as swatches with fingers.
 

Coneflower Gloves

Knit to my daughter's exacting specifications and pronounced (by her) to be "way better than I ever imagined," these are basic knit-to-fit stockinette gloves garnished with a smidge of inexpert embroidery and two all-important pom poms.

 
"Knit-to-fit" in this case, incurred a certain degree of whinging about the four zillion fittings required to get the fingers of the first glove exactly right.

I don't think I'll win any prizes for embroidery, but you can make out a general petal-ish impression, right?

Not entirely unlike a Coneflower?

The recipient is thrilled, which in the end, is what really matters.

 
The yarn was a tragically knot-containing skein of Blissful Sock in Echinacea.  (There were actually two more, each with a single knot, that I kept back - I suppose if anyone is so inclined, I could knock off a buck or so for the knot and let them go....) I have to say, I really loved working with this sock yarn - the superwash treatment has done nothing at all to diminish the sheen and wooly softness characteristic of BFL.  Sheer pleasure to knit up.

Sampler

I've been tossing around variations of this idea for ages, but I got a sudden impulse to just work up a sample (so to speak) over the weekend. I thought it would be nice for customers to be able to play around with the different yarns I dye before committing to larger projects, but at the same time, I couldn't resist the possiblity of doing a little more with it.

Here we have 10 yards of each of my wools and wool blends (I left off the super-luxury silk yarns for the time being) - merino in lace, fingering, sport, worsted, and aran; BFL in fingering, sport, and worsted, the three sock yarns (merino, BFL, cashmere-merino), merino-silk, Merino Whisper, and Cruiser:

I think I'd probably do 15 yds of each for the actual sample pack - a little more manageable, and would work out to a little over 100 gms of yarn in total.  Enough to swatch, fondle, play with, or.....

Make something.

 
What do you think?  Is there interest in something like this?  I think I'd price it around $25.  I could do mini skeins or mini balls (all labelled of course), though I think the mini balls are actually easier to handle on the receiving end. Although the concept of a feather and fan cowl is hardly original, the stitch does a fabulous job of mixing up varying colours and gauges, and I could include a wee pattern for this cowl version. Comments and/or further ideas would be gratefully received!

Winter-ish Ramblings

The thermometer hasn't changed by more than a degree or two, but overnight the air has transformed from crisp to bitter. 

Snow flurries swirl before a biting wind, stripping the trees of their autumn glory and leaving their winter skeletons in fading rags and tatters.  "Very Hallowe'en-y," my daughter cheerfully noted en route to the bus.

The puppy was shivering a little even with her woolly sweater, and the children reminded me for the hundredth time that new mittens are inexcusably overdue. I may have to stop noodling around on a new cowl and get to work.

After I get the latest stack of orders bundled off to the post office, that is - I haven't had a moment to work on them since the flurry of orders late Friday, (and the post office has been closed the whole time, in any case) but they haunt me with their Not Mailed-ness. I have a fraction of the anxiety I used to endure in the old life, but if anything will wake me up at 2 AM in a cold sweat of fretting it's the feeling of failing a customer committment. (That and the usual nightmares about something happening to one of the kids...)  Nevertheless, neither sleet nor flurries nor nasty winds will stop me from sending the hubby out the door with an armload of packages. 

Lest you think he has the worst of it, I should point out that our present experiment in electrical austerity has our indoors a little on the chilly side, too.  Not sure how long that's going to last (kids aren't buying the "put on a sweater" line) but in the meantime, it's a perfect excuse to appreciate the warming attributes of my lovely new mug:

I rarely ever buy this sort of thing for myself - we have no money, no space (we gave away two thirds of our mug collection when we moved here) and no good practical reason to indulge so.  But it came about that the potters are an older French couple, and we were next to them a couple of markets ago and had a lovely day of conversation and reminiscence about France (I was born in Nice, she in Paris). They engaged our children with the sort of gracious dignity and delight that is rare and lovely and makes me endlessly wistful for more people of that sort in the world. I loved her work, and it embodied for me a whisper of lovely things half remembered from a childhood in Provence, and... I splurged. Just a bit, but it makes my hands, my heart and my eyes very happy.

Thanksgiving

It was Canadian Thanksgiving today, and even though I said I'd be spending the day relaxing and goofing off after hell weekend, what I really deep down meant is that I'd be sleeping in a little and then trying to sneak in a full day's work while pretending to Just Hang Out. Until the phone rang this morning, and my SIL asked if they could pop up from Vancouver for a few hours. Since we like them a whole bunch, we said "Yes! (but the house is trashed and we aren't going to go nuts putting it right, so you have to love us as is.)"

We went to our favorite pub for lunch, wandered about the Village, and the cousins (as they always do) had a blast together.  We made a concerted attempt at group photos, with mixed results:

They all get along well, but the two eldest are hampered at times by their competitive and dominant instincts:

Whereas the two youngest just "get" each other, you know?

 

So anyway, I got NO work of any kind done, and it felt great. (I'm choosing to defer the aaaaggghhhh feeling of behind-ness until tomorrow morning.)

PS. Want a closer look at the pink hat?  I whipped it up this morning from a skein of Woolly Moguls that was a few yards short and consequently wound up in the seconds bin. She loves it.

 
As for the sweater, well, yes it's The New Sweater and I'm being sort of coy about a super detailed view because I haven't made up my mind yet whether to publish it. 

So That's Where They Go

You know, I'm truly pleased, and even grateful that Rob does a goodly portion of the vacuuming, but.....

 
He didn't even notice it going in, which says something about the power of our new vacuum. (Handknit, Trekking XXL, if you were wondering.)

Saddled

I keep meaning to blog daily, and then the day kind of plows over me like a runaway steamroller and when I pause for breathe... it's bedtime - too dark to take a photo, too tired to say anything coherent.  I'm going to try adding it to my list of things to do First Thing In The Morning. (Does it still count as First Thing if there's a half a morning's worth of stuff on the list?)

Despite my angst this summer about sweaters and shoulders and fit, I have actually made some garments over the last year that I quite like, but never got around to showing off as FO's.  Here's one - I think I blogged it in progress but never on completion:

It is a basic bottom-up sweater with a bit of waist shaping and Elizabeth Zimmerman's seamless saddle shoulders formula.  It definitely fits, and I've gotten plenty of compliments when I've worn it.  (Yarn is merino worsted in Dark Water - with a bit of Enchanted Forest for contrast).  I don't know that I'd want to use saddle shoulders exclusively - they do perhaps overemphasize the width, but it does seem to be a viable option for my frame.

Work in Progress

Really - I do knit! I've been toying with the idea of periodically photographing what's on my needles, but never actually doing it - so here goes:

The chart and spreadsheet prepwork for this design-in-progress has taken up much of the last 24 hours (I wanted something small as a break from grading the Little Knight pattern... ha.) Still, I think this is going to be a much more efficient and effective way to design than knitting by the seat of my pants and belatedly figuring out what the heck I did in the event it turns out well.

Another Hot Chilly Hat - this one for the gifting pile, I think.

My daughter's sweater, which I have been procrastinating about finishing for weeks now (there's maybe 10 rounds of neckline left to do), mostly because I originally wanted to publish the design, but I now think I might want to change it significantly before I do, which would entail reknitting.  In my twisted subconscious, not finishing this version will make the whole issue magically go away. Except it is getting really cold in the mornings and her current sweater doesn't even cover her wrists, so maternal guilt is going to override avoidance any day now.

Moving along from the RED theme, I've got a new yarn base I've been playing around with:

It's a soft, rustic, single ply merino in a heavy worsted weight, and it is utterly luscious.  I've only got a few trial skeins dyed up, but an order proper is on its way.

And last, but not least, a completely makeshift but eminently practical WIP:

I have accumulated a few thrifted sweaters with the vague notion of reassembling them into a glorious and artsy creation, but puppy's need was greater. Mornings are cold enough now that she gets pretty shivery standing around at the bus stop, but she still has a lot of growing to do.  She never even wore the first sweater I made her, and I am loathe to spend hours on another short-lived creation. I pulled this out of the pile at the last minute the other morning, and put it on her - she was warm, but less than impressed with the sleeves, so I did a little scissors job today and she seems to like it. I'll further modify and tidy it up as she gets bigger, but I think this will work nicely in the interim.

Yarn update tomorrow; today just.... wasn't going to happen.  (Plus I have a drop dead gorgeous new colourway I don't want to put off to next week and it's not quite perfectly dry.) Rob is heavily committed to Olympic volunteering at the Sliding Centre from now until the end of February, which means I'll be picking up a lot of the work and school roles he normally fills.  I'm still planning on weekly updates, but there'll be a bit more variability.