KarenJoSeattle

Alert! Alert! T-pin Shortage Ahead

So, I brought two partially finished sweaters, plus one unstarted and the yarn for a lacy shoulder shawl with me to California, but neglected to bring a stash of T-pins for blocking.

Today while in the city/larger town where I took my mom to catch her train, I checked a handy Michael's for more. They had only quilter's T-pins. I don't trust non-knitting-intended pins to handle wet blocking without tarnishing all over my work.

No problem. My small town here actually has a more than decent LYS for its size. I swung in about 30 minutes before closing. Alas, no T-pins in stock. Apparently, they have trouble keeping up with demand between orders.

They did, however, have blocking wires, with a small packet of T-pins included. I know even with the wires, which I definitely need, I won't have as many pins as I like to use. What you see is all of the T-pins I have currently.

What you also see is all I got done of the hemming on my sleeves. Spousal Unit didn't do so well with two days in a row of getting up much earlier than usual combined with a day of getting in and out of the car while we took advantage of the trip to run some errands and get a few presents. I drove both ways and only managed to set up my first hem and get about half a dozen stitches in while waiting for my mother's train to arrive.

Sunday evening the guest bed where I usually block here will hold coats and purses for the guests at my sister's fiftieth birthday party. Do I finish the hemming by tomorrow morning and count on the sweater drying in 24 hours? Or do I get the house cleaning and party prep done first and block the sweater after the party? Right.

Two Sleeves Down, One to Go

Yesterday during an hour's wait for a doctor to see the Spousal Unit at Prompt Care, I finished knitting the first sleeve of my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan. SU injured a rib during our drive to California two weeks ago when he leaned across from the back seat to pick up one of the cats off of the floor at the front of the car. The Dx is a ripped cartilage which will take three months to heal.

The wait made for a forced knitting session after a couple of days of no knitting. I realized I kept putting it off when I felt like I needed to do more figuring to determine if the sleeve would fit the armhole. When I looked at it finally, I decided that this yarn has so much spring the whole thing will fall into the realm of blocking to fit. This fabric has a huge amount of elasticity and, within reason, I can make it almost any size I want without much distortion.

We'll see how much of that is good analysis and how much wishful thinking.

Today I finished up the knitting on sleeve #2 of the Mountain Colors top-down cardigan. Tomorrow SU and I drive my mother a bit over an hour away to catch a train. On my turn to be passenger I'll sew in the last four ends and hem the sleeves. Then this one needs a good blocking to unkink the wonky bits and make all theses hems behave, I hope.

I have yarn for another shoulder shawl and for one more sweater with me here. Plus I brought a couple yarns for large swatches to remember the pattern I designed a couple years ago for a big rectangular basket weave shawl and to try it in a couple other gauges. My mind only wants to think of sweaters right now, though. Luckily the sweater I want to knit will follow an Elizabeth Zimmerman 'pattern,' my first attempt at one of hers, and I want to add cables, a zipper, and a double-knit collar.

I've done none of these things before. Oh, I've done cables,but not on this scale or adding them to a pattern. And I've done collars, but not in double knitting. The zipper I'll hand sew in, but I want some kind of facing covering the edges.

That should keep me busy for a month, easily. I think I'll find myself grateful for a bit of swatching and other small projects once I get going on it.

And if I get desperate, there is a decent LYS in this town now.

Random Filler Thoughts

I haven't yet done any knitting today, so no photos of progress, but I expect to get some done this evening. Tonight's movie/TV fare won't have subtitles, though I enjoyed La Vie en Rose last night and now want to knit berets. My hand feels fine. However, I want to try to get to sleep earlier tonight, as on Thursday and Friday I need to be up by seven. My current schedule of sleeping from 3 or 4 AM until eleven or twelve won't work so well, then. So I have to move my usual posting time up.

I've always been a night owl, but my schedule has become even more random and later over the last few years. Some of this comes from my having better concentration on things such as knitting, reading and blogging late at night and just enjoying them more then. Some is hormonal, or lack thereof.

Speaking of hormones, I may have reached that mythical place on the other side of perimenopause where the excess weight starts to pack up and leave as mysteriously as it arrived. Despite celebrating Thanksgiving twice in the last week and a half and not getting in a workout for longer, I'm within a pound of my lowest weight in the last twelve years.

Correction, I did do a light workout on Sunday, and a longer one today. I started working out regularly, including practicing Pilates, about eight years ago. Life activities just no longer provided enough exercise as they did when I was a hospital nurse and an avid gardener. Knitting builds biceps but can not count as aerobic, no matter how fast you do it.

I'm fitter than ten years ago - also more flexible and have better posture. I have noticed over the same time frame that now when I spend an entire day on the computer or sitting and knitting, I feel  much more stiffness than before. IMO, only part of this relates to my age - 53, for those who want to know. If I don't stretch out my legs after sitting a lot, they'll wake me up at night.

The benefits of a good range of motion and the pleasure of stretching out tight muscles outweigh the annoyance of the need to keep up with it. So I try to incorporate both leg and back stretches as well as my hand stretches into my knitting routine. I do feel less creaky than some knitters I know. Repetitive motion and bad posture catch up with you.

I worked out tonight to a video set near Sedona. I lived in Sedona for a few years back in the late 50s when I was in kindergarten and younger and it was a small town in the middle of nowhere.  In February, the week before The Madrona Winter Retreat, Spousal Unit and I take a trip to Tucson for the  pre-official-show Gem and Mineral show and a couple days in Sedona.

As I was doing my video I thought I should get recommendations on yarn stores in the area. I'd like to get something different from what I can find in Seattle, though I have great access to wonderful stuff. I should get on Ravelry and poke around the Arizona groups; ask for some tips.

The fact that I'll be at Madrona a week later shouldn't have any effect on yarn store visits in Arizona. After all, I don't plan on going to Stitches West the week after Madrona. Except those classes on knitting back backwards and conquering collars still have openings.

I need to spend more time learning the resources on Ravelry. Last night I finally entered an avatar. This is a close up of my Mountain Colors 4/8s wool in Silverbow knit up. The real thing looks a bit bluer - blues just don't cooperate with my point and shoot photography - but the muted grayed tones are right on.

I just get caught up in blogs and don't get to Ravelry. This afternoon I followed a link on Weebug's blog through Rebecca's to a search for Cupcake Royale in Seattle. From there I ended up going through a series of links that led to an order for a vegan cupcake and a vegan baking book. I'm allergic to milk and my sister has an intolerance. Her 50th birthday party is at my place on Sunday, so I hope to find a birthday cake possibility in one of them.

So, there we are; a bunch of random thoughts that seem to prove everything in my life does relate back to knitting.

Not Much

I'm close to done with another sleeve, but on the other sweater. I have to kind of figure this one out as I go along, as my armhole is going to be slightly different than the pattern predicts. And I'm sure all dimensions will be altered by blocking since the twist on this Jaeger yarn is tight making it very stretchy.

So, last night I came close to finishing, but had to unknit some increases that seemed like too much after they were done. Today I needed to rest my hand as the tendons at the base of my right thumb ached. I've had several episodes of tendinitis over the years, so I'm careful with my hands, usually.

Instead, I spent the day putting together a Christmas list for my family and some gift orders. I got the list done. I spent the time I should have been working out deciding which new and motivating exercise videos to put in my shopping cart. The house doesn't need much more post-guest work, so I didn't do any.

Didn't do much at all, today, really. But my hand feels fine.

I Don't Follow Recipes, Either

I have a respiratory allergy to milk, so after I volunteered to make a pumpkin pie for the Thanksgiving dinner for nine happening at my house, I wanted to come up with one that I could eat.

Desserts challenge me and my system, whether I make them or have them at a restaurant. Fortunately, I don't feel I must have dessert on any regular basis. I do like a good pie, though, especially pumpkin.

When I was in college in the late 70s (I've been in college more than once) I got on a pumpkin-pie-making jag for several months. I sometimes made two or three a week. I haven't made one for years, though. Plus right now I'm somewhere where I can't buy the kind of shortening I'd actually eat.

I found this recipe for a graham cracker crust. In my version the yogurt became lemon soy yogurt, the graham crackers had ginger in them, and the cocoa powder went away. It needed ten minutes of baking.

Then I looked at ratios of ingredients for the filling in a few recipes to decide on my own. In place of the milk I added an extra egg and used maple syrup for much of the sweetener for flavor and moisture. I used cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves as I like my pumpkin pie spicy.

As you can see, I got a pretty good result, despite a bit of extra browning on the crust edges.

I also finished one sleeve of my top-down Mountain Colors cardigan after everyone else went to bed last night. I'd done some knitting during the evening, so I only needed about an hour of quiet knitting and blog reading to complete it.

Today, before all the guests took off, I showed one of my SILs an on-line source for the Jaeger yarn in my Biscuit cardigan and showed her how to knit back backwards.

She was knitting a turquoise Drops yarn she bought on a business trip to Sweden into a cardigan from an old Bernat pattern she'd seen in a magazine years ago and then tracked down on Ebay.

After everyone left, we gathered up stray glasses and straightened cushions, I washed guest sheets and towels and remade beds, and DH vacuumed floors and carpets. We have more cleaning to do but the place feels back to normal. I enjoy the arrival and I enjoy the leaving of guests.

This afternoon I made a dent in my backlog of blog posts to read and determined that my target number of stitches at the top of the semi-drop-shouldered sleeves on the Biscuit cardigan will match the size of the armholes on the already knit fronts and back.

A good family visit, a successful recipe invention, and a couple of knitting progress points achieved make for a very nice holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving

I grew up on a turkey ranch just a few miles from where I sit right now. Back then there were quite a few in this part of California; the foothills of the Sierras pretty much due east of and 150 miles from San Francisco. My family's ranch (which was leased) may have been one of the last as I remember them disappearing one by one when the needed services all consolidated in the Central Valley and it became too expensive and impractical to raise the birds here.

But a while after we quit ranching Diestel moved their operation to this area. At first they grew only special order big toms on their ranch. They'd been growing turkeys for quite a while, but I don't know where before here. They've expanded a lot over the years into all manner of natural and/or organic turkey products and some chicken stuff, too.

Most of the turkey's aren't grown on the ranch here, though they do still have a few big toms wandering around at this time of the year. A lot of the processing still happens here.

Here as in a mile down the road. A mile down a road that currently is drifted in places with shed white feathers from trucks trucking turkeys in to be processed. Oddly, I rarely encounter the trucks; or maybe not so oddly, given my non-morning-person schedule. I wasn't an especially good farm girl.

So right now on ice in a cooler I have a Diestel turkey that got picked up at the company store this morning and some packages of organic turkey burgers in the freezer. Very handy to have the store so close, though we do need to pay attention to their hours.

And it's a good thing the company store lies so close since Diestel turkey products are considered too exotic for this small town, apparently, and you can't buy them in any of the grocery stores. But I did find soy yogurt in stock at the grocery store today, and in more than one flavor. I couldn't buy that locally in the recent past.

Today I did no knitting - the sweater won't be done - but did some cleaning, two hours of grocery shopping, and baked a couple dozen muffins. Thus the lack of knitting talk and the turkey talk instead. Tomorrow I should have just enough time to finish the critical cleaning and bake a pumpkin pie with a graham cracker crust before my guests start to arrive for a couple days' stay. I may not knit tomorrow, either.

I will knit while we visit over the next couple of days. Both SILs have knit and one still does, so it won't be an issue. I have some nice mindless lower sleeves without even any decreases to knit in the round - good holiday knitting.

So, happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. May your turkey, or lasagna or millet loaf, brown nicely and your guests all be knitting-tolerant.

So Very Close

Today we needed to take a trip to the nearest larger town for some things we needed and couldn't get here. Things we really needed such as a Tivo box because the schedule here is enough different to throw us off and we only have VCRs and also more champagne glasses for my sister's 50th birthday party.

I got the first turn as passenger and got this close to finishing the sewing of my cardigan neckband in the hour and a half drive. Yes, we are out in the country here and it's a long way to anywhere. But the countryside here is beautiful.

The band is now finished and sits pretty nicely for a first neckband on a cardigan.

And I have one more decrease on one sleeve and none on the other, plus the length on each to reach my wrist and a hem. I'm so close to finishing this sweater. I've sewn in ends already so when I finish the knitting I'll have just a couple more to deal with and buttons to sew on before I block it.

By Thanksgiving?

No Knitting, Therefore No Photos

I haven't knit at all for two days now. It feels weird and a bit disorienting. Luckily, I've been busy.

Yesterday we went to my family's Thanksgiving dinner. I'm the oldest of five kids. Several years ago my mother decided to hold Thanksgiving on the Saturday before in an attempt to get everyone there at the same time. It worked. I can't remember the last time all five of us, plus most of our auxiliary people, didn't make it.

So, yesterday nineteen people sat down to dinner at my mom's place. Besides me, my mom, and the Spousal-Unit, the group included four siblings, three sibling-in-laws, four nephews, a niece, two friends of my mother, and two friends of nephews. One of the nephews and his friend were surprise attendees who had spent three days doing all the class work, papers, and tests plus extra assignments for missing classes next week so they could drive home from college in time for this dinner rather than the smaller Thursday one at his parents' house.

I could have knit for a couple of hours while I watched the rousing intergenerational game of Apples to Apples after dinner. I usually just watch when the number of players gets too large and eleven players made for too large. I did advise an uninitiated friend of a nephew on the rules and strategies of the game, but could easily have also knit. I'd left my knitting at home.

Today those of us still here met at my sister's place for turkey sandwich lunch. I brought my knitting and never got it out of the bag.

Part of the issue is that what I want to get done next is to sew down the hemmed neck band on my Mountain Colors cardigan. I want to get it done next, but I don't want to do it. The sewing down is fiddly and takes attention even on a straight hem and this one curves at the front.

I did get a lot of sleeve knitting done on the trip down, but nothing looks different or exciting enough for new photos. Before I can finish the sleeves on this top-down cardigan, I need to finish the neck band so I can get the sleeve length right. I'm at the end of the decreases on both sleeves and had mentally set that as my limit before having the band in place.

I may still get this cardigan done by Thanksgiving, but maybe not as I have guests from my in-law side of the family showing up on Wednesday for a couple days over the holiday.

We're Here

We seem to have developed an inadvertent and unwanted tradition. If the trip to or from  our place in California comes off easily, the arrival will not.

Last May we knew to expect hassle and work when we arrived. Since our previous visit, my sister and nephew had dealt with a water leak that could have caused way more damage if not luckily caught very early. We spent a few days cleaning the edges of the carpet a few feet into every room near the hall providing the conduit. Some day we'll need to replace the laminate floor in that hall, plus in the kitchen and dining room. Things could have been much worse. A cracked connector for the refrigerator ice maker caused the flood.

This trip over the pass we had 55 degrees and sun; about the same as May. So my sister called while we were still en route to say we had a new and unexplained icicle in the freezer.

It appears the ice maker just broke this time. But the freezer continued to try to freeze non-existent ice. Instead, it froze the entire panel of coils and a few inches of ice on the cover panel, then decided that our opening doors to put away the groceries we bought was too much. It decided to heat the ice, and everything else in the frig and freezer. Apparently it's been much too spoiled by a mere five years of infrequent use by the absent inhabitants.

Luckily, we had still frozen ice packs, a 40 degree night, and a couple of coolers we immediately threw all the viable food into. Also, a hair dryer I rarely use on my hair but which has earned its keep more than once with home maintenance.

This may not be the best way to clean out the refrigerator and freezer of old stuff without second-guessing the age and status of each item. Especially not at 11PM after two long days on the road. We had it defrosted and freezing again by noon today.

I hope to have enough knitting of note to post photos tomorrow, but my family Thanksgiving happens then. I may poop out once we get home.

Heading Off to Sleeve Island

...by way of the Row Marker  Highway.

I reached the sleeve stage on both of my cardigans. Still, they don't feel the same to knit on. And they don't have the same amount of work left to do.

The top-down sleeves work from the shoulder down, of course, in the round. I need to stitch down the hem of the neck band, knit one third of one sleeve and half of the other. When I finish knitting I'll just need to sew the hems of the sleeves and sew on the buttons. There will be no seams to sew. I'll do a light blocking to get things to relax. It will be done.

The Jaeger cardigan gets knit in pieces. I've finished the back and both fronts. I need to knit the button bands, sew the shoulder seams, knit the neck band, knit one and three quarters sleeves, block the pieces, sew all the seams, reblock the finished piece a bit, sew on buttons, and whip stitch around the button holes to neaten them up. It sounds like so much. But this sweater still might get all knit before I finish the other one. The individual pieces are easier and more portable to work on than the entire sweater hanging from the sleeve I'm knitting.

Tomorrow morning we head out on a two day car trip. I think I'm packed, but we go off for the entire holiday season, so I always find something I wish I'd brought.

The two sets of sleeves will make up my car and hotel room knitting for the next couple of days. I'd really like to finish one of them.

Wow, I Think I Lucked Out

The registration for Madrona did not go smoothly this morning. A glitch in the system made classes incorrectly appear full. They shut the process down for repairs.

I happened to be on line when the e-mail went out to re-register or try to register again. The first time I had managed to actually get registered after several circuits through the process, but in only two classes when I wanted five. On second try I got my five classes, including a tips class with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee I hadn't counted on getting. In addition, I registered for two technique classes and two on yarns. Yee haw.

My Jaeger Biscuit sweater now has a back and two fronts. The yarn has lots of twist and I knit it slightly tighter than normal, so the pieces are a bit uptight.

Today I got them to relax enough to let me pick up and knit my bands with less of a fight to get to the stitches. I blocked the three pieces lightly while I headed out to spend the afternoon with a friend.

I think the light blocking made just enough difference. At some point this fabric will need a fairly severe blocking to get it to drape the way a semi-drop shoulder cardigan should. I'll probably block again before I sew it together and do a serious job then. After it's in one piece I'll try a lighter block, but may decide I need more.

Most of that will actually happen in another state. On Wednesday we leave for our annual trip to California to do a series of holiday celebrations with our families over the next few weeks.

I'm Ready

At 8AM tomorrow registration for the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat opens. The last three years I missed the sign-ups until all the classes had filled.

This year I finally figured out how to sign-up for the e-mail notifications and reminders.

And I printed out a spread sheet of my desired classes and second choices.

I'm ready. As long as I don't over sleep, I'm ready. As a night owl, I rarely get up by 8 AM . Tomorrow, I need to not only get up, but be coherent and coordinated on the keyboard.

Really, after three years of disappointment, I'd take just about any class they have available. They really haven't scheduled any I wouldn't find interesting - though some I wouldn't have the right experience for.

And, then, I'd get to spend four days in a hotel full of avid knitters.

We Have Liftoff

I passed 10,000 page views on my blog stats today. Such a nice round sound that number has.

On June 14th, not quite two months after I started my blog, I posted on my 1,00th page view. Now, five months later I have ten times as many.

That's a lot of eyes, electronic or organic, on my stuff.

Another big event happened yesterday. I received my first check for selling copies of my first pattern to a store.

The pattern is a revision of my little shawl to be knit from one skein of Handmaiden's Silken. It includes instructions for the crochet cast-on and for doing a beaded version by applying beads with a crochet hook.

I'm so excited.

She Lives

Just a fly-by post here to say I'm still alive. Not quite completely recovered but no longer questioning my longevity. Though I'd stopped throwing up by Sunday morning, the bad stuff continued to move through my system before it completed vacated. Thanks everyone for the sympathy and good wishes.

Yes I'm sure I had food poisoning. No, I didn't see my doctor. Though I haven't worked at it for over a dozen years, I'm a nurse and she wouldn't have told me anything I didn't know, including not to interfere too much with my body's efforts to get rid of the bad stuff.

Before I sign off and go get some more sleep, I want to show off my new toy - a snazzy table to make blogging and blog reading comfortable and convenient while knitting and providing kitty laps simulataneously. The maker's Herman Miller; the source Levenger.

Ugh and Double Ugh

Just a quick post - no photos even - to say I'm still alive. Yesterday I had times I wondered if I could say that today.

Friday I started the Left Front of my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan. When I reached my one decrease stitch of side shaping I did it on the left side. Left front - left side decrease - right? Except I did it on the left side as it faced me, which means the right side as worn. So now I'm working on the Right Front of my sweater.

I'd planned to redo the neck band on my Mountain Colors cardigan Friday night, but that afternoon Spousal-Unit told me we had tickets to see the Dave Grisman Quintet at Jazz Alley that night. We'd talked about dates for this, but I hadn't gotten the confirmation.

They gave a great, though short show. The two seating/dinner club style tends to result in shorter sets. He had a new guitarist, though one he's worked with before, and no violinist this tour. One lone Dead Head dance in the corner in front of the emergency exit and circuited the club for the last piece. The crowd was good, but not sold out if you want to check for tickets for tonight.

We had wine and appetizers. The food there is not worth getting a full dinner in our opinion. We may skip appetizers in the future now. Overly spiced hummus and roasted red peppers are not something you want to revisit a few hours later.

About 3 AM I woke up with a hard and painful abdomen. About the point where I considered waking the S-U to take me to the ER, I got sick. I wish I could say that took care of it. Unfortunately I felt like a shaky death warmed over all through the first day of the three-day Design workshop I enrolled in. Last night I was sick in the night again.

Today, I know I'll live. I've slept for 14 hours and the banana and ginger tea I had for breakfast settled just fine. I still feel like I just went through an illness, but have that 'it feels so good not to feel so bad' sensation.

I may even get to enjoy today's workshop sessions. Photos later.

Darn

I spent all two hours of yesterday's knitting circle picking up stitches for the neckband of my Mountain Colors cardigan.

The notes from the Sally Melville workshop didn't help in this case. This cardigan runs top down. Her tips work for bottom up. I will use them when I get to the neckband for my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan. Stay tuned for that in the next month.

Yesterday at circle a bit of a reunion happened. One of my knitting friends who I hadn't seen for months showed up at the tail end. She'd planned to come for the whole thing, but the carpet cleaners showed up late in their predicted time slot.

That meant that all of the small group who used to show up every week for circle all sat at the table at once for the first time in maybe six months. We plan to do it again next week.

Back to neck bands. I kept looking at the picked-up stitches as I went, pulling out and redoing when things didn't look right. On Karen's advice, I picked up 3 for 4 all the way around, whether on rows or stitches, to prevent flop. The picot edge will make the band top heavy.

Because the gauge of my picked-up stitches on my front bands varied a bit, with some noticeably loose if you looked closely, I tightened up the stitches on the front edges before I started to knit them. After some experimentation and some fighting too much tightened stitches, what I found worked well was to use the cable of my US 6/4mm needle on which I was knitting the band and a US 0/2mm needle held together to size the stitches as I pulled excess yarn through the loops from the shoulder to the edge on each side.

When I started to knit, the left side looked like it would turn out lumpy after a couple rows. I decided to keep on for a few more rows and reassess.

Once I got further from the picked-up edge and it could relax a bit, everything smoothed out nicely. My tightened pick-up stitches looked even and not noticeably larger than my first knit row.

I sailed along and bound off, thinking I just had time to stitch it down and type up a quick post before bed. Before I pulled the end through and cut it, as is my habit since some frustrations early in my knitting practice, I took one more look.

Tomorrow I'll rip back and add that missing button hole on the back side of the hemmed band.