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October 24, 2005
Other People's Knitting
This is the beginning of Springtime Shawl by Sharon Miller. It is a swatch knit up by Catherine to test various edgings and pick-up methods. She let me have it to drool over the yarn and gave me permission to post a photo. The yarn is fabby and I purchased a cone of it upon my return to St Louis.
Yes I have been reduced to posting other people's knitting. I tend to think of knitting as cyclic. Not just the summertime knits in summer and the warm woolies in winter. In fact I have a habit of knitting warm woolies mid summer and cool summery pieces in winter. Nor do I mean the vagaries of fashion for classic fine gauge knits vs let the yarn do the talking bulky knits. More like not feeling like knitting. But beyond that. Sometimes in blog land you see people complaining about startitis. I like to think startitis is a disease. It is brought about when we are restless and nothing in our workbasket really appeals to us. Its glorified swatching cause oftentimes as soon as we see how the pattern is developing or the construction is designed we get bored and off to another item. We walk away, hopefully, with a new technique learned or more fully understood so that when we come accross another item with ie a steek or short rows we can grasp what is involved prior to casting on. At least when I started knitting I CO tons of stuff and learned how the fabric was gonna drape and how a certain portion was worked and was happy to move onward to a new thing~ from wool to cotton to alpaca from steeks to lace to faux side seams via purling a few sts vs a different color pattern vs crocheting up every other row. These times serve us well although I feel, and sense others feel, that it is wasteful of resources. Our time, money, yarn.
Lately I find myself CO 6-12" worth of stitches and knitting plain st st. Until the ball runs out or the day is over or a good foot has been knit. Very large swatches. At the end of the evening I dutifully rip them out with a sense of how that particular yarn drapes and reflect light and my personal opinion of ideal st st gauge. These swatches don't even pretend to be sweaters in the making. Something that one day I may return to and finish. Giant swatches that do not fufill the yarns ultimate goal of becoming something useful or beautiful. Now thats a true waste of resources. Still I am beyond spending weeks knitting something that displeases or merely bores me. I find this a strange situation. I am used to taking breaks where I do not knit at all. Or even indulging my need for the habitual knitting by starting something new. This is something new and rather uncomfortable. Am I so boring that I need to knit to feel that I am being productive? Will this funk ever end? Will I ever CO something for me and finish it~ enjoying the process the whole while? Will my critical mind ever stop wondering if I should do something this way vs that way and if the pattern is worthy of the treasured yarn or the yarn worth the pattern or or or.... If you have never suffered from Gaugitis thank your lucky Star titi s
Knit on
Posted by Elka at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
The Booty
As you can imagine 3 yarn shops in 2 days results in serious shopping. They were, after all, not LYS for a quick pick up of some small item but rather destinations demanding IMO a real purchase. Also Catherine and Liz are both very generous women and I walked away with pressies. First the pressies~ The top two photos are gifts from Catherine who loaned me a lace book and gave me several balls of DMC cordonnet since I told her I had never used it. My purveyer of crochet cotton is fond of Anchor cordonnet[called Mez most often and now discontinued anyway} and had bad mouthed DMC so I never had tried any. Catherine only uses DMC and was horrified that I was walking around with this misconception. In addition she bagged up several poofs of cashmere or cashmere blend fibers and umm cormo too. She also allowed me to shop in her yarn stash and wound off several balls of various on cone stuff she had with the cheery 'you know where to get more should you run out' The third picture is my yarn booty from Liz but she did give me some roving and a sweater to complete. On the roving front I had picked up a lb of kid mohair roving, as mentioned earlier in week, to be split in half with her. She wanted the entire ball so I wound off @ 1/4lb and an equal amt of tussah silk to ply with it from her stash of tussah. She has been working on her tussah stash for ten years and offers me some every time I visit. The sweater is one I really want to see finished. A Liz original and I have 3 'swatches" all the size of sweater and 15 pages of charts to wade through and figure out which was correct. I am glad to do this since I think its a beauty. You ready? :
And as if this wasn't enougth fibery goodness I shopped~ Anatolian Knitting Designs, a new needle sizer, and some Rauma Finullgarn from The Mannings, some alpaca and handpainted looking merino from Unique Threads, two hanks of Anne sock yarn and 3 of some rowan and a multicolored mohair at Uniquities. Have you recovered from the giftie viewing? Take a deap breath the multicolored stuff is in full yarn porn mode ;^>
OK I'm tired just looking at it all! Yarny days and knitterly evenings....
Posted by Elka at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
Spam
I have turned off comments on almost all of my entries. I plan on leaving commenting open for each given weeks entries closing them only on Monday morning. I hate doing this because I love comments. In fact I was really pleased Saturday to see over 100 new comments. Of course all of them were spam. The pace hadn't slowed after I banned the commentators so this is what needs to be done. As usual I can be contacted via email at elka underscore knits at hotmail dot com
On the knitting front I did fiinish and send off the sweater for K1C2 and am currently working on another sweater for hire. I decided just recently to not show these suckers in progress and as FO's. Except for yarn pornish shots when appropriate. I thought the shading on the K1C2 yarn was interesting which is why I showed it a few weeks ago. Gonna be even more bloring blog round here from now on. Still I am hoping this will help me to knit more non work stuff so that I have stuff to talk about. Since I did start the blog to keep track of for me/others/work stuff and try to reach a balance maybe this latest tactic will force me to achieve a better balance... BTW I am really jazzed about the thing I am working on and I might give a teaser pic Monday. Tomorrow my box from VA is due to arrive so the haul will be revealed...
Til then yarny day and knitterly evening ;^>
Posted by Elka at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig part 3
ugh I forgot entirely about my trip to Uniquities or some such which is Liz's LYS where I purchased some Rowan yarns and Schaeffer Anne sock yarn. I think thats all I got. Anyway I left you with mouth agape, drool, and lollying about head in snoresville. Everybody there kindly denies I did any of these things but my husband rolled his eyes at the concept that I don't snore and drool and oi you get the picture. I slept LATE. 10:30 am Sunday morning in fact. Which was about the time I was due at Catherine's. Cat and I flipped through several books and she offered up her lace pattern collection which I chose not to look through. Telling you exhausted me is very rude and bitchy and I am probably banned from every east coaster's house. I did however shop in her stash. After our visit she dropped me off at the airport. Now I had left all of my purchases, extra wheel parts, books, and WIPs at Cat's for later mailing. I really will show it all to you when I get it. Last time I was at IAD my bra set off the alarm system so I figured my wheel would have me thrown in some holding camp overseas where they believe in torture. I picked up my ticket and was told that I needed to not dawdle since boarding began at 5:30 pm. It was 4pm at the moment. At 5:30pm I was still in line and my shoulder was killing me! But the handy board with arriving and departing flights was right in front of my face when it changed from 6pm departure to 7 pm departure. Hurray I would make it to gate before the plane did. At 6 I got through the whole what is this icepick for routine and looked at board: 7:30 flight time. Went to gate and my flight time was now 7:35. I collapsed in a chair and waited for all the missing their connecting flight people to finish complaining. My shoulder hurt. I was hungry. Worst of all I really really really needed to potty. I could see the restroom. The door was right accross the lobby in fact. But if I left my wheel it would be subject to seizure. If I carried it I wasn't sure I could actually stand. I got on the phone and called Catherine to tell her I had made it to my gate and she asked me why I wasn't on the plane yet since I was supposed to be airborne. I gave her the whole story and, exhausted me has no shame, told her about the potty plight. I secretly hoped for a voice of reason assuring me I could actually carry my wheel another 20 steps but instead was greated with laughter. Guess you had to be there....
Posted by Elka at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig part 2
Ah so the real reason I packed light was because I was not going to a fiber fest. I did expect a token yarn purchase wherever but had no real intentions to shop. Foolish I know. So Thursday I finish packing my case and hold up the security lines with my wheel. Apparently the metal rods that hold my bobbins in place on both the mommies and the kate seemed to be icepicks. Rather fat and blunt ice picks IMO but who am I to argue with men carrying guns? I worked on my sock during the plane ride and was picked up by Ms. Liz who took me out to meet Catherine and we had a delightful dinner at a Peruvian restaurant. I think the dish I had was called Lomos Saltado but I asked Cat to double check and get back to me on the subject. I must find a doable by me recipe for whatever it is because it contains the two ingredients that guarentee a fine meal: rice and potatoes. French fries no less. In the same dish! I then went to Liz's place and looked through her WIPs and gigantimous sock yarn stash. I shoulda known the weekend was gonna result in some serious stash enhancement when she handed me yarn for 4 pairs of socks.
Friday came wicked too early. I hadn't slept on Tues and Weds night in my excitement over the trip and I couldn't sleep on Thurs because of the planned road trip to The Mannings. Liz couldn't sleep either and decided she couldn't go because she needed the rest or would suffer the consequences {she has immune problems} so Catherine and I set off on our own. About 2 hours later we hit what proved to be an excellent yarn store. There are wheels and looms in addition to a fine notions wall. A humongous library of books and patterns where we both picked up the oop Anatolian Knitting Designs by Betsy Harrell, fleece and prepared rovings/tops, dyes, and of course yarns ranging from laceweight to polar weight fluff with everything in between. We both picked up some notios and yarns. Then we went off to lunch which was wonderful but I cannot recall the name of the place. Off to Uncommon Threads which is co-owned by the owner of America's Alpacas unless I misunderstood the lady. BTW American's Alpacas has changed names and I am wicked too lazy to look it up. Anyway there I charted a store model of a cap~ no pattern available~, purchased way too much yarn and found some lovely kid mohair roving. Locally grown and prepped for them. Beautiful stuff. We set off for Liz's and got home very late but it was well worth the driving so if your in the area.....
Saturday followed another mainly sleepless night. Gah I need to learn how to sleep when I am excited. Why the excitement? A spin in silly. Prudence, Robin and her daughter with Liz. I snagged a picture of Liz and Pru spinning:
About half an hour after I took this picture Robin arrived. Elka hearts Robin. Elka summoned up the energy to run out the door and pounce upon Robin before she was even out of her car, escorted the fabulous Robin inside and sat her down right next to Elka's seat. And then.... Elka, knowing her trip was a complete and utter success, fell fast asleep. Yep Pru was kind enough to not post a picture of Elka with her mouth gaping open, spittle dribbling down her chin, snores bellowing out of her nose and head lollying about.
Tomorrows post will bring you tales of a rested Elka relaxing with Catherine and her absurd trip home. Til then yarny days and knitterly evenings
Posted by Elka at 09:36 AM | Comments (1)
October 17, 2005
Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig
Ah home, sweet home. I enjoyed myself tremendously during my visit to Virginia and I will slowly but surely tell you all about it. First installment is:
On Packing LIght.
Having been to fiber fests before I pulled out a rather large bag and edited my clothing options to pants being worn, an extra pair of pants, a twinset made up of sleeveless shell and cardigan, and turtleneck, 3 changes of panties and socks cause you know I am not totally* gross. Looking at the case I knew I had more than enough room to cover any possible purchase given my budget. I also wanted to take my Lendrum collapsable wheel so that I could get help with my spinning from the expert Liz and her friend Robin on my wheel not one of their wheels. But Wait! The airlines only allow one carry on and I now had two. Should I check the bag? No way was I checking the wheel... What to do, what to do? I decided to empty the bag and take a larger 'purse'
Into the purse went 2, two, count em 2 stoles both just in the beginning stages, a work sweater needing ends sewing in and seaming, and a pair of socks plus my cosmetics, allergy meds, lotion, gum for plane, wallet, camara, cell phone etc. Why I thought I would finish any of this knitting *and spin* I don't know. Into the carrying case for my wheel went the wheel with 4 bobbins, lace flyer, regular flyer, plying flyer, lazy kate, 8 oz of fiber, two mommies[mothers or some such in spinning terms which I don't bother knowing], my clothing, my shawl that needed blocking, and 3 books. For three days! Yes yours truelly carried 100 lbs of fiber related goods for a three day trip and 1 pair of extra pants, one extra top, and three panties/socks. She did not take toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, deoderant or any other nicety which is why she said she is not totally gross but admits may be partially gross.
My bags are now unpacked and I have no goodies to show you since they got mailed home. In fact half of what I took got mailed home since the weight of the wheel alone was too much for the 2 hr standing in line to get x-rayed fiasco. Instead I leave you with a picture of the open carrying case:
The mommies, flyers, and lazy kate got mailed as did the fiber and the books and knitting projects. Just imagine them crammed into this small space alongside my undies and change of clothes.
Happy Knitting ~ if you are dying to get a preview of tomorrows what I did post check out Lady Pru's site. There are actually pictures of me on it!
Posted by Elka at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
A quiz and a Link
linkage first~ do you have a boy in your life? You know the kinda guy that likes comics. Not Archie and Veronica but rather those edgy line drawings. Not the nekkid girls ones either. I have picked up a few thingies from Tiny Showcase in the past. Small high quality limited edition prints. Lately they have been doing what I would call cartoon things so if you have a guy in your life that digs such things and you are wondering what in the world you are gonna get him for X-mas.... The new ones come out every Tuesday night{they say Tues or Weds but if I check Weds noon they are usually all sold out} FYI I picked up Amy Ross' Bird Shroom #5 and S. Finch's Blue Mussel. For a list of what is currently available hit Print Gallery and then in teeny tiny letters it will say 'Display only artwork that is available for sale'
You are 'Latin'. Even among obsolete skills, the
tongue of the ancient Romans is a real
anachronism. With its profusion of different
cases and conjugations, Latin is more than a
language; it is a whole different way of
thinking about things.
You are very classy, meaning that you value the
classics. You value old things, good things
which have stood the test of time. You value
things which have been proven worthy and
valuable, even if no one else these days sees
them that way. Your life is touched by a
certain 'pietas', or piety; perhaps you are
even a Stoic. Nonetheless, you have a certain
fascination with the grotesque and the profane.
Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad
transplant. Your problem is that Latin has
been obsolete for a long time.
What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Posted by Elka at 09:53 PM
Entry
Entry lost by MT the gist~ found my Cashmere 100 in Canada. Trade negotiations completed. Gossip, gossip, gossip. Yarny day and knitterly evenings. Oh there was a picture in the middle of the gossip:
I'll leave you to wonder what I had to say about that....
Posted by Elka at 03:27 PM | Comments (1)
October 05, 2005
SOS 911 SOS 911
Several years ago Elann offered up a beautiful laceweight put out by Filatura di Crosa called Cashmere 100 2/28 is also on the label but that is the weight not the name {I think}. I snagged a single hank of the stuff which is bad bad bad. Most 2/28 weights come in 100 gm hanks of 1500 ish yards~ more than enough for a shawl. This stuff came in 50 gm 770yd hanks. So.... Did you buy any? Know anybody who has? Feel up to alerting the masses that Elka needs some and will pay for it with either cash or yarn? Yarn from stash or store I don't care which. I just need 1 hank of this yarn in color #500 a creamy ecru/natural shade dye lot 2790. I have already alerted the Elann swap center. Here is a beautiful picture of the yarn to help you identify the odd hank sitting in your stash as the hank that you are desperate to send to moi:
Thanks all!
Posted by Elka at 07:46 PM | Comments (1)
October 04, 2005
Belated Weekend Report
OK so I did quite a bit this past weekend. I finished the body of my sweater and decided to pause before doing the math for sleeves. During the pause I restarted the Celtic Dreams Pullover in Black Water Abbey yarns previously refered to as RS:
I decided, in the interest of making this a nice relaxing and relatively speedy knit, to not mirror image all the cables. Here we have a closeup of one of the saddles with the non-mirror imaged twists flanking center braid:
Wow what a craptastic picture! Actually some might question my sanity with the knitting of cables in dark heathered yarn. I personally feel that if you are close enough to put money into my panties then you get rewarded with beautiful knit views. Apologies for bastardising whoever it is that says something like: if your close enough to see the mistakes you better be putting money into my panties.
I plan on taking this with me when I go to visit Liz so that I can set up the body cables without children distracting me. Or maybe I will do the set up rows and just knit on it while I am there. Who knows.
For some reason I thought it would be nice to take along my Lendrum and spin a bit as well. When I purchased my Lendrum it was marketed in part as a good traveling wheel which met the carry on standards of most airlines. I no longer see this claim when looking at it on various websites but I will still try to take it with me. With a wheel one needs some fiber and I came accross this beautiful 50% Merino/50% Tencel handpaint no longer available from artist. Believe me I called and asked for more just today. Oh wait no picture of fiber itself rather a picture of a bit of spindle spun fiber~ isn't it beautiful?
The brown strand over the purpley bit is Jaggerspun zephyr for comparisons sake. Yep I managed to spindle spin a wee bit finer than the most common non kid mohair aka crack lace weight around. This is what my yarn looks like knit up in a semi gauzey fabric with 3mm needles:
See why I wanted more? I thought of maybe spinning up my bit on my wheel with Liz assisting me on technique so that I might be able to do a sweaters worth in less than a lifetime. Alas, as mentioned, no longer available but I am eying various other handpaints in the same fiber blend such as Blue Moon Fiber Arts offerings. Either that or trying my hand at dying some natural colored 50/50 Merino/Tencel blend. Lori Lawson, the dyer of the original roving, tells me it is an Ashland Bay fiber that she no longer works with but so far I haven't found any place that offers it online. Plus my dying experiments to date have not been very promising....
Ok I also started on a sock for airplane knitting. I recall getting quite a bit done on a pair of socks last time I flew to and from Maryland. Hopefully I can get one sock done so that the other requires the counting of pins instead of measuring with tape. Here she is in all her glory:
Now that I am fully set up for vacation knitting I can sit down with pencil and paper for sleeve math. Oh and bad news. After 2 full months of nonsmokedom I purchased a pack last Friday. I get to go through withdrawel hell again starting in the morning. I hope it doesn't mess with my gauge.
Happy knitting
Posted by Elka at 10:06 PM | Comments (2)
October 03, 2005
No No Manolo
Everybody loves Le Manolo. And why not? The No Poncho Pledge. The love of shoes. The eye for the pretty and not so pretty. But Elka does not love le Manolo. Manolo does not love Elka. Its mutual. Why does Elka not love Manolo? Because Manolo does not seem to realize that some women sit at home almost all the time and have no reason for 'the forceful business striding [which] would best be done in the highest of heels, so that you may tower Godzilla-like over your pitiable coworkers, who will quail before your awsome majesty' Nor does Manolo seem to realize that some of these women have size 7WWW feet and couldn't wear the highest or prettiest of feminine shoes even should they have occasion for forceful striding. Now Elka has worn, for 20 years now, Birkenstocks. The self same Birkenstocks which are housed in the Gallery of Horrors Elka was also very pleased with herself when she discovered Earth shoes which somehow, despite being half the width of Birkenstocks, fit her feet and look a 100 times more streamlined and thus 100 times more feminine. But alas Le Manolo has relegated these shoes to the Gallery. So Elka has gone shoe shopping. She picked out some cute Haflinger shoes which had to come home with her simply because they had sheep on them. She also picked up some Haflinger shoes not on their website that are ballerina flats embellished with a strap made of felted flowers. Elka feels these they are very cute and need only a Felted Tweed and Kid Silk Haze Elfin cardigan to look ooo la la. Elka sits back and awaits her choices being sent to the Gallery again. Elka, still on a quest for cute shoes, picked out some Born Hickory shoes despite Elka's mother stating that they looked as if one needed to muck out the stables while wearing said shoes. Elka's mother, at the tender age of 60, is often seen in rediculously hidious shoes such as the platform mule. Elka votes her mother a nonsensical person who has no business stating what another should place on her feet. Still Elka admits Hickory is not the most feminine of shoes and eyes the cutie Born Torus or maybe she should channel her inner Jon Cryer with Think! Shoes Cookie #81080-42 Why Jon instead of Molly? The Earth shoes were Molly and those were Horrors. A little gender bending might save Elka from Manolo. Or maybe she just needs to shell out for some Beautifeels......
Posted by Elka at 10:08 PM | Comments (3)