And so it begins...

Because there's no such thing as too much yarn, I decided it was about time to start making some of my own...



It's overspun, uneven and lumpy, and I love every single inch of it. Because it has something that no other yarn in the world has: I made it.

Why yes, I can convince myself of anything

Thanks to everyone for their get well wishes. I’m doing well, back at work and all, and finally wearing regular pants with an actual waistband which is super exciting.

The main lingering side effect seems to be a scorching case of startitis. I’m pretty sure they didn’t mention that in any of the many consent forms I signed, so I’m guessing those forms were not written by knitters.

So, what have I started? Well, a sock…



Standard sock recipe, in Meilenweit Megaboots Stretch Ultra, 72 stitch cast-on, size 2 needles. Lovely. Still totally charmed by the Megaboots’ subtle color shifts, just as I was the last two times I used this yarn.

And a sweater…



The Sienna Cardigan in Berroco Ultra Alpaca, in the smashing Oceanic Mix colorway. I’m knitting the 48” size for my 38” self, to accommodate using yarn with a wildly different gauge than the pattern calls for. Loving it so much.

Besides their obvious inherent charms, why, you may ask, am I working on these instead of one of my (many) existing WIPs, which have many charms of their own?

You see, I’m naturally prone to startitis. The first few inches of a project are almost always pure joy. New yarn is so exciting! Lookit the pretty colors! Wow this is the best pattern EVER!

Then the first flush of infatuation wears off... And I start looking longingly at my Ravelry queue…Lookit! Colorwork! I love colorwork! Maybe some nice colorwork mittens! And oo, what a pretty shawl! And I coud really use a basic stockinette sock to carry around in my bag! And I’ve never made a cabled sweater! And, gosh, I’ve always meant to learn how to embroider tea towels! And…! And…! And…!

You get the picture. It takes enormous self-control not to be knitting the first two or three inches of approximately eleventy million projects simultaneously. I do tend to have at least two or three “active” projects at a time. Which may explain why I rarely actually finish anything. Ahem. Anyway…

Despite this natural (and, I like to think, charming) tendency to abandon projects mid-way, I’ve been plodding along fairly faithfully on my two main projects. But both of them have pissed me off recently. I screwed up the Callisto shawl (again) and need to either frog a few rows or execute some sort of daring lunatic fix in which I drop stitches and fix several rows involving poorly executed YO-SSK combinations. This seems unlikely to turn out well.

Simultaneously, mom’s first sock has been reknit, sans heel and toe (I heart you afterthought heel and the way you don’t break up the color repeats), but I have definitively run out of yarn before knitting either a heel or a toe. So annoyed. More yarn is on the way, but I’m in a fight with this sock right now.

Fiddly shawl fixes and ill-behaved yarn-greedy socks are so not what you need when you’re recuperating, right? What you really need is to cast on a new blue sock with the new wool your awesome coworkers sent you. IMMEDIATELY.

Also, someone that really wanted to relax and get into the spirt of convalescence would probably also start knitting, um, a cardigan. Yeah, that’s it!

Yes indeed. I’m starting new projects For My Health.

So that's what vestigial means

It started Sunday with a wretched stomachache. By Tuesday night, I was wearing an assless robe and a surgical intern who looked about 19 was prodding my belly while the reassuringly older attending surgeon informed me that an appendectomy is a "chip shot" as far as surgeries go. I don't know what a chip shot is, but I decided it had to mean "so easy the 19 year old could perform it one-handed, after a night of tequila shots and keg stands".

In between, I spent many hours waiting for assorted tests, and have never in my entire life been so grateful that I happened to have a good book and my knitting on hand. Also, that thing about always wearing clean underwear is totally true. Because you never know when you might be having an emergency appendectomy.

The knitting in particular entertained both this librarian-in-training and the kindergartener sitting next to me, who was spending her sixth birthday in the hospital, waiting for her mom's CT.

Now, I'm not exactly fond of kids, but she won me over almost immediately by being completely and utterly entranced by the knitting. So entranced was she that I finally just taught her to knit, using the heel flap of my mom's sock. Any knitter knows that using size 2 DPNs in the round, with inflexible splitty bamboo-cotton yarn is not the easiest way to learn how to knit. But learn she did, executing perfect knit stitches almost instantaneously after I showed her the basics a few times. I was seriously impressed. Who knew kids were that smart?

I've never had surgery before, and chip shot or no, being in the hospital pretty much blows. Recovery, on the other hand, has been a pleasure (except for the pain and exhaustion part - that part sucks). Megan of the dainty feet picked my newly-appendix-free self up at the hospital and stayed over for a few nights to fetch me food and juice and happy pills, and to yell at me when I tried to overexert myself. And as a totally unexpected bonus, BFF Quinn was in New York for a conference and offered to take the bus down to Boston to share in convalescent duty. They were the best caretakers one could possibly imagine.

Plus, my coworkers sent fabulous food, flowers and wool, and a knitty get well card (gotta love working for a cookbook publisher that's crawling with knitters). My boss was nothing but nice about my unexpected absence. Many of my SNB ladies called and emailed to make sure I was ok and to wish me a speedy recovery. I've been completely amazed by the thoughtfulness of everyone around me. And very, very thankful.

Knitting content returning soon. I've got some pretty new wool to show off, after all.

All better now

The Gore Place Sheepshearing Festival was just what I needed - lovely weather, excellent company, sweet fuzzy livestock and (of course) yarn.

There were knitters...



...And of course, the main event...sheep getting the livestock equivalent of a Brazilian wax (though we were assured that the process is actually painless for the sheep)...



There were goats (including one camera-shy fellow who spent the entire afternoon tucked away in this cubby going LA LA LA LA you can't SEE ME)...



And (aaaaw) lambs....



I was also privileged to witness a special moment in the life of any knitter - the first time a non-stasher buys yarn, not because they have a specific project in mind, but because it's too beautiful to pass up.



Welcome to the dark side! May your stash continue to grow and give you as much joy as that cashmere does.

I myself resisted the considerable temptations of the Bartlett yarns booth...



Though the Daft Crafter got up-close and personal with some of their yarn (you can just see her green t-shirt and quite smashing green cowl peeking out)...



The man of my dreams was working the yarn tent as well. Admittedly, he was probably 60, but he was also Scottish (maybe Irish) and brogued hotly and knowledgeably about wool and dyeing and shearing and spinning.

Between sexy wool brogue guy and the epic quantity of reasonably priced tweed, my resistance was worn down by the time we stopped in at Lucy's Mind's Eye booth.

So unsurprisingly, some of her always lovely yarn followed me home. Merino-tencel hand-dyed sock yarn, in the Ashes of Roses colorway. So ladylike, isn't it? Like dainty Victorian underpants.



Some Araucania Ranco multy might have fallen into my bag at the same time...



I love both these yarns so much that I wanted to yank my current sock off the needles so I could start knitting with them on the car ride home. The logistical difficulty of balling yarn in a car fortunately intervened, so I'm still making good progress on (re)knitting my mom's sock.

As for yesterday's bitterness? All gone. I'm entirely charmed by knitting again.

The definition of insanity

You know how they say the definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over, and each time expecting different results? Well, by that standard I am clearly batshit nuts.

Remember my mom’s sock?



I did everything right on this sock, I really did. I knit a full size swatch, most of a sock leg really, which I then dutifully washed and blocked. The size seemed perfect. Just the wee-est bit snug on me, which I assumed would fit my mom’s narrower feet perfectly. I then cast on the same number of stitches, on the same needles, and proceeded to knit an entire sock down to the toe decreases.

At which point, I pretty much ran out of the first ball of yarn.



But that’s a different problem entirely.

The real problem with this sock is that it’s (surprise!) too small. I had one of my knittahs try it on after I washed and blocked it on the needles. And she could scarcely yank the traitorous thing onto her size 8 foot. My mom does not have a size 8 foot.

So mom’s almost-finished sock looks like this now:



And now that gauge swatching has proven itself to be an utter waste of time yet another opportunity for gauge to taunt me with false hope less helpful than I would like, what do you suppose I’m doing now?


Yup. Swatching! For the Sienna cardigan.

This is really two swatches, knit on size 7 and size 8 needles. So I’m looking forward to being twice as disappointed when the final item bears no resemblance to either gauge swatch. What, me, bitter?

Thankfully, I’m off to the Gore Place Sheepshearing Festival with a mess of knitters today.

Nothing some fiber love and greasy festival food won’t cure.

Friends don't let friends drink and knit

Or even knit near drinking. My friend Kelley and I had precisely one beer each Saturday afternoon, and yet...

I somehow got the hem edge of my Callisto shawl looped onto the needle, as if it was a working stitch. In the middle of a 300+ stitch row. Easily rectified with some cursing of triangular shawl construction and slipping 150 stitches to get back to the bone-headed mistake. But still.


And, almost simultaneously, Kelley did this to her heel flap...providing an excellent opportunity to teach her how to reverse a purl stitch to a knit stitch, sans crochet hook. Also, a pleasant opportunity to point at each other's crap knitting and laugh.


Truly, not our finest knitting day.

I've been one of the knitters lobbying to relocate our weekly SNB to a bar, but I may have to seriously rethink that stance.

After all, I'm entirely capable of screwing up my knitting stone sober under good lighting. So why risk it?

I'm so behind that...

...I've had this post written for ages and haven't posted it...but, through the magic of replacing "last weekend" with "a few weeks ago", I can still tell you about my recent(ish) dyeing adventure.

The Bitchin Stitcher and I had the pleasure of attending a hand-dyeing workshop a few weeks ago, run by the super-talented Lucy of Minds-Eye Yarns.

Lucy’s merino-tencel blend hand-dyed sock yarn comes in the most extraordinary colors, so we were eager to learn from the master. Not only is Lucy a dyeing genius, she’s exceptionally charming and funny. It’s an irresistible combination.

Under her tutelage, I dyed up a skein of laceweight merino and two superwash DK-weight skeins. All Knitpicks.

Barbie's Dream Lace



In Like a Lion



Twilight Time



I’ve mostly done immersion dyeing with Kool-aid and food coloring, but these were handpainted. Little squirt bottles are key here. They allow you to direct the dye onto a small portion of the yarn. Or they would, if I could aim, instead of shooting dye across the table and nowhere near my own yarn. Thankfully, every surface was covered with a layer of plastic and newspaper. This seemed excessive at first, but turned out to be entirely necessary, given my aim.

I tried to use very small blobs of each color, hoping to avoid my nemesis, pooling. We’ll see.

And speaking of pooling, you all were right. My mom was totally down with the socks. Bonus – she preferred the fabric knit up in the Charade pattern (pdf), so I finally have a chance to knit it. Really fun, addictively easy pattern.



As for my newly dyed laceweight, I’ve never used laceweight before and yet in the past month I’ve acquired FOUR monster skeins of the stuff. All in pink/purple colorways.

I smell shawls in my future. Lots and lots of pink shawls.

So does anyone have a shawl pattern they’ve particularly enjoyed?

I’m thinking of either the Swallowtail or the Flower Basket Shawl from Interweave, or Laminaria from the new Knitty.

Thoughts?