A good day for knitting (Adriana)

I woke up this morning filled with plans for the day... until I looked out the window.

When you can barely see the building across the courtyard, you know it's a good day for knitting!

I have been a busy knitter lately. I finished my Manos hat! I got rid of the Cotton Fleece lining which was uncomfortable and I knit an additional 4 inches of the Manos to give it a nice brim.


I also finished my gauntlets:

The pattern is from The Purl Stitch and the yarn is my own handdyed.


Here is my gauntlet in action petting Cleo. She seems to be enjoying it :)

I also made a little headway with Granny's birthday socks:

I measured her calves and I'll have to do some increases as I go up to ensure that they fit properly. For a 89.5 year old woman, she has shapely legs.

Remember my disaster with the Trekking socks? Heather, being the brilliant lady that she is, suggested that instead of ripping back the heel and redoing it, I should just rip out the toe. I did it and now the sock actually fits! Plus I was able to fiddle with the colours making my sock less green than before.

This is Trekking XXl 100. Isn't it strange how different the two socks look from each other? That's part of the fun of Trekking.




These are such photogenic socks!

Remember how I said that Katy was going to be my next project?

I lied!
Meet Audrey, from Rowan 35, knit in Rowan Calmer, the Calmer colourway. I picked up this yarn on sale and had been intending to knit it after Katy since it is more of a summer sweater. I wanted to have it done in time for Granny's big party in May. After swatching (and even washing the swatch) for Katy, I found that all I could think of was Audrey. A little encouragement from my mom and I was off in a new direction. This sweater for me represents my family, both because I want to wear it to a family gathering and because it shares its name with my cousin. I've been homesick lately and I think that knitting this will help.

Lately I have been choosing my knitting projects for emotional reasons. Knitting Birch was a cathartic experience to help me work through something personal, and now I chose Audrey to feel closer to my family. Has anyone else picked knitting projects for this reason?

Best Laid Plans (Heather)

So. Nothing seems to inspire project monogamy like explicitly stating that I plan on making it a long term work-in-progress.

The yarn supply seems to be holding up very well. I have enough kureyon from the second ball to do the centre of the next square. That means that I can get more than a square a ball... and since I have ten balls total, I might even be able to eke out another row of squares. But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

Two squares down, seven to go. I am starting to think that I should do something really interesting for the centre square. Any suggestions?

In non-knitting and possibly gross news, I whacked myself royally on the edge of my car door while brushing off the car and have the most monstrous and painful bruise about the size of my fist on my arm... I am attending a career workshop in an incredibly hot and stuffy room and now I can't wear short sleeves. I am just going to have to sweat it out, because what can I say about the bruise? I ran into a door?

Studies in Odessa no. 6

Six Ways to See Odessa... the hat, not the city.

You all know those patterns a mile away. The ones that are sweeping the knitting world. The difference between a Clapotis and an Odessa is that you can whip out three Odessae in the time it takes you to get to that first dropped stitch. Is it any wonder that these spirally hats are virtually piling up over here??

Gen (aka Azura) started the trend last fall. She had only knit a couple of projects but she courageously dove into this pattern which was more complicated than anything she had done before. We're not really sure what happened but the result was not Odessa. Don't get me wrong, we all think it's beautiful and wish we knew what she did so it could be recreated on purpose. This hat has been christened the "Corinna" for it's recipient. (It's RYC Cashsoft DK in white)



Gen decided to have another go at this pattern for her sister in Cashsoft DK cream (huge difference there). After a few setbacks, she finished a true Odessa!



Needless to say after all this drama Gen needs a break from the pattern but she had already bought the yarn to make herself one. She would love to hear any suggestions for similar but different hat patterns.

Heather was the next to jump on the bandwagon. She made Odessa for her sister's Christmas present in a lovely olive green, here posed with photogenic kitty Molly (she wasn't posed, she actually jumped up there herself).



Despite her issues with hats intended for herself, Heather bowed to peer pressure and was convinced to knit herself an Odessa out of Manos.



After a few length issues, there is a slight problem with the top having a bit of a nipply effect, a common hat related issue attested to by other knitters. As long as Heather doesn't mind walking around looking like a Hershey Kiss, it will work out just fine.

With all this Odessa-making going on Adriana wasn't going to be left out. Since everyone else was making hats for their sisters, she decided to make one for the person most likely to become her sister, her brother's girlfriend Courtney. After deep discussions at Romni with Heather, she caved and used the same olive-y colour of Cashsoft DK but decided to make things a little more complicated for herself and use beads. The amber beads seem to go perfectly with the olive green.



Adriana also decided to make a one for herself, unconsciously copying Grumperina's original by choosing Cashsoft in Belladonna and going with pearly beads. Unfortunately she got a little impatient and decreased too soon so this hat does not properly cover her ears. It will be fixed soon before it gets too warm out to need hats.



Same pattern, six very different finished objects. It is nice to see that even with the pattern du jour, creativity can still be expressed! Now, how about all those calorimetries out there...

Birch (Adriana)

Birch is done! And I may have gotten a little carried away with the pictures (dial-up users beware!).

First the details:
Pattern: Birch by Sharon Miller from Rowan 34
Yarn: Rowanspun 4ply in Midnight from Cucumberpatch on ebay (yarn held doubled)
Needles: 5mm
Modifications: Because of the heavier yarn I eliminated two repeats of the pattern, casting on 279 instead of 299 stitches
Date started: February 5, 2007
Date finished: February 19, 2007
Thoughts: this was a really fun pattern to knit. It was easy to memorize and easy to read so you can put it down and pick it up whenever you want. It's fun to start with the super long rows since they keep getting shorter and shorter. The last 10 repeats flew by. I was terrified of running out of yarn but I made it with about 4m to spare. I would definitely recommend this project to anyone and I will probably make several more.

Now for the pictures!

Birch unblocked (note the small amount of yarn left)


Blocking on my bed
This was a challenge because I didn't have much time to do it before I had to rush off to work. I had managed to get it stretched and pinned but then I realized that it was actually lopsided. Before I could fix it the fire alarm went off. Luckily it isn't noticeable when worn.


I call this picture "Birch Road" because I feel like I'm staring down a road made of Birch as the pattern becomes more and more obscure. Plus I really like the name.

While I was waiting for the boyfriend to come home so he could take pictures of me modelling my new shawl, I decided to venture into the courtyard of my apartment building to get some pictures of Birch amid the greenery. I had a vague idea of posing it on a Birch tree but I quickly realized that we don't actually have any Birch trees in the courtyard. (I was so relieved that I could remember what a Birch tree looks like. My dad has a degree in forestry so I really don't have an excuse to get that wrong.) I decided to post the shawl on other trees but I may have picked a bad day for this photographic experiment. The winds were gusting around 60km/h which made things very very challenging.


Birch on the snow (just when I would get it to lie flat the wind would toss it around again)


Birch on a bush


Birch in the wind


Birch in the tree (my favourite picture)

After this I went inside to thaw my poor fingers and wait for the arrival of my photographer.


A shawl this large is very hard to take a proper picture of without also seeing lots of furniture. As you can see, this shawl is HUGE! It's longer than my wingspan and the point goes down to the back of my knees. But it is so warm!


Birch in motion (this is what happens when you go to answer a knock on door during a photographing session)


Finally, a happy knitter with her shawl

Thanks for looking! Now I'm off to finish a couple of projects to clear up some space on the sidebar.

Past Square One (Heather)

Yesterday I really got my knit on and finished the first square of my long-term log cabin quilt (a la Mason-Dixon Knitting).



It is about 14 inches square, unblocked. This will make for a roughly 45" square quilt if I do nine blocks. I will definitely have enough yarn for 9 blocks because I almost made it through this square using one ball of Noro, and since half the blocks will take less Noro, it should all work out nicely. Not sure I would have enough left over for three more blocks, but anything is possible. Let's see how I am feeling when I get that far. There is certainly enough Selkirk to do another three blocks and even a border. So I'm cruising!

It seems this project might be the answer to my knitting slump: even socks require some thought, but all I have to worry about in knitting these squares is how many garter ridges I've knitted. Even the picking up of stitches is a breeze. And I am (easily amused as it makes me) constantly charmed by the emerging colours of the Kureyon:




Both yarns are about equally rough on the hands, but since I am not intending monogamy to this project, that will be fine with me.

I finished Odessa, and it has a certain papal quality to it. The hat curse lives on! Pictures and a team post to come.

Thar be Snow! (Heather)

I have not seen snow like this in Toronto before, that's for certain. After Mike went to work, I was startled by a peal of thunder, upon which I discovered that the skies had opened up in a fairly brief but very energetic snowstorm. The flakes were HUGE! Easily the size of a loonie. I used the sports setting on our camera to try and catch the size and multitude of the snow:




These pictures were taken at 8:30, by ten the tree was snowless yet again. I left these pictures quite large, so just click to see them full-size.

Apparently it is not only new Torontonians who find this freak snowfall surprising!

I actually picked up the knitting last night, perhaps this bout of ennui is slowly coming to an end, along with February?

ETA: just a public service announcement to add that Grey's Anatomy is airing at 7:00pm tonight, not 8:00pm. I find it really odd that they would mess with an episode like this one to accommodate American Idol on Canadian TV...

Next in line (Adriana)

Birch is done!! I finished late last night which means that this project took me exactly two weeks. And I didn't run out of yarn! Pictures will follow in a few days. It's going to take awhile to block since it's huge!

I decided that my next big project will be a sweater around the time I fell in love with Katy from Debbie Bliss' Cotton Angora book. I've had some red and black Mission Falls languishing in my stash and I think this is their destiny.


I have a problem though. The pattern calls for 13 balls of Cotton Angora which is 78m per ball, the same yardage as Mission Falls. I have 13 balls of Mission Falls but 10 are red and 3 are black.



Here's what I was thinking: I want to make the v-neck in black so I was going to make the cuffs and the hem black too. But I have no idea if this will leave me with enough red to make the body. I figure that I have some options. I could eliminate some of the cables from the back or the sleeves, but I'm worried that would ruin the look of the sweater. I guess I could always buy more yarn, which would probably be the intelligent thing to do. Any comments, concerns or encouragement would be appreciated :)