Needles & Hooks

I’m back from Michigan. I knit all the way north, I knit in the ICU waiting room, I knit all the way south. Here’s me knitting as we cross the Mackinac Bridge:

Yes, that was early in the life of my grandmother’s shawl. I had cast on 633 stitches and needless to say, I’m still working on it. I also had to buy more yarn.

Here’s what it looks like now:

And a close up of the drops in the center so far:

Because I’m decreasing 4-8 stitches on each row, it’s starting to pick up speed. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I would make this a pattern to share, and I’ve got a few ideas. Ones that will still give it the same look, but be far less burdensome to knit. I’ve also considered writing it up with levels of difficulty, such that easy would be only one step beyond Clapotis (and without cables) and more challenging would include the cables and a few other details.

My grandfather is doing fairly well. They shocked his heart and got it beating normally again, they cauterized some bleeding in his stomach, and they gave him lots of blood. Grandma got a break too because she got the flu that was going around the hospital and was quarantined for several days. He was released and then had a relapse, but they couldn’t readmit him to the hospital because Medicare won’t let you go back in unless you’ve been out for a certain number of days! He and my grandmother are staying with my uncle and making their way back to southern Michigan to fly home to Florida. His mental state is far less good. I’m not sure he really recognized me at all. He knew there was a familiar face, and he was happy to have guests who didn’t keep trying to stick needles in him (he kept pulling out his IVs), but he asked me if I knew who my grandmother was, so he’s really not all there.

I came home to lots of work and fatigue. This weekend is The Weekend of Amy and I’m not doing anything that doesn’t make me happy, so I slept in, and I took a walk, and I sat in the sun and read, and I finally opened my July Project Colorswap package from Amanda:

Filled with purply Cascade 200, tea, and lots of lavender bath products. And also, some pretty amethyst stitch markers:

Thanks, Amanda!

I’ve been in Project: Colorswap for several months. And for various reasons, June was the hardest for me to send out. Fortunately, Lynne paired me up with someone who has been as challenged as I have. We both sent our packages out over the weekend and on Monday, my package from Julie arrived.

In the box was this lovely bag:

And in the bag was all this stuff:

Highlights include chocolate, tea, sunprint paper (when is that gonna come in colors?!), penguin ice cube trays, candles, an issue of Simply Knitting, and these things….

A cheeky pencil and eraser set:

Yarny goodness (Patons Divine and Classic Elite Skye Tweed in denim colors):

And the best part of all, a blue dragon with a light-up mouth:

Julie got my package as well. She was the recipient of the candy striped sock yarn I dyed a while back. I also included some lace weight yarn, which she’s going to make into this shawl. And when I went to visit that site, I found a vest pattern that is screaming my name. And I’ll get to try steaks! Whee!

And as if I didn’t have enough projects already, something spurned me on to look at the Mason-Dixon KAL. I’m seeing dishcloths and bibs all over the place. And I’m not motivated to knit them. Really, I’m not. And I’m not all that tempted by a log cabin either. But I looked at the KAL and saw this. That I must make. A blanket and matching pillows. Probably in a lightweight wool. I can’t wait until I can buy the pattern.

However, also on Monday, a purple July package arrived from Amanda. So I’ve decided that it will sit until I can send out hers. Fortunately, due to my compulsive purple purchasing, I already have most of what I plan to send. I just have to finish a couple of little things, and off it goes.

Finally, in Ballet Cami news, last night I was up to 9.25″ inches and feeling proud. But then Bron posted this morning that she’s at 13″ inches. Damn!

After my yarn dried out, I had this lovely mess to wind into a skein:

It wasn’t as bad as it seems. I did a good job binding the subskeins and keeping them sorted. And I marked the “top” end so I was able to lay it all out and rewind it with a minimum of fuss. First I wound it into a ball because my ball winder made for convenient storage as I sorted out small bits of yarn vomit. Then I used a PVC niddy noddy to make it into this:

And a close-up:

I mailed it off to my swap buddy yesterday morning. I’m guessing she’ll get it tomorrow. It does stripe, and I believe that I wound it without errors, but the proof’s in the knitting. For those who don’t want to wait to see what it might look like, you can see the prototype I based my calculations on by clicking here.

The only thing I didn’t count on with all my copious planning was to see how the yarn would change after it was dyed. I bought fingering weight yarn to dye, but it bloomed quite a bit and almost looked worsted weight. On the one hand, I didn’t expect this, because I haven’t seen any change with the Knit Picks yarn I used to practice with. On the other hand, I’ve made and washed plenty of gauge swatches. I just didn’t even think about it.

So, I have one other skein to dye up for something else. It’s been sitting in a ziplock of water waiting for me to get a few free moments. But I worked 13.5 hours today, so all I could do when I got home was eat and watch some TV. I knit a few rows on Mermaid, but now I’m overcompensating and my gauge is really loose. I’ll have to knit a few more rows and see how it sits with me.

I spent the weekend cleaning up around the house. The last few weeks have had some travel and some stress and things were piling up. And I needed the house to be functional.

One of the things I unearthed was my May Project: Colorswap package from Jen of MonkeyKnits.

Here’s what I saw when I opened the box:

And inside was a pile of goodies. Mini planters of Parsley and Thyme; a Feng Shui candle; two gorgeous colors of Malabrigo; a green Chibi; a pretty journal; some great little flower magnets (Jen, did you make these?); some fruity ice cubes; a pair of fuzzy socks; and some fab stitch markers (Jen, did you make these?!):

Some close ups under the Ott-Lite:
Rainforest Malabrigo (green and purple!):

Olive Malabrigo:

The stitch markers (is that jasper?):

Thank you, Jen!

This photo might tell you what I did with the rest of my weekend:

Yep, I played with my Jacquard acid dyes. I dyed up a pile of ~20 ft sample skeins in all my colors to play around with. This post is already kind of long, so I’ll describe my colors and process in more detail tomorrow. But why did I dye such long skeins? So I could do this:

Using a piece of perforated paper (commonly used in cross-stitch), I carefully trimmed the sides to expose a set of holes. Then, after winding all my samples into small butterflies, I wound colors around the paper to try out different striping patterns. I used one strand of yarn to represent one row of a knitted stripe and used the perforation notches at the sides to hold each strand in place. Obviously, this pattern is rather simple, and won’t be one getting sent off to my swap partner, but I wanted to show you how it worked. After I eat a bit, I’m going to spent most of tonight trying out different stripes.

Also, about yesterday’s post. From Chris’ comment, I can tell she figured it out, but Mari put words to it. My gauge on Mermaid got tighter as I knit it. So the left front is shorter (and denser) than the right front. Given my above activities (and a lack of good will toward Mermaid at the moment), I haven’t looked closely to figure out how far back I need to rip it to make things right. At least back to the second armhole. Expect to see another post like this soon.