KnitMe

Kitty Knits Blog Tour - Welcome Donna Druchunas

KnitMe is proud to have Donna Druchunas stopping by today to talk to us about her new book, Kitty Knits! Welcome, Donna!

We are quite fond of cats here at KnitMe and frequently have kitty pictures. Here are photos of Donna with her two cats, Uno and Deedee.

Donna: Hi Prudence, thanks for hosting a stop on the Kitty Knits blog tour! It's very exciting to be here.

KnitMe: This book is a slight change of emphasis from your previous books that highlighted ethnic knitting traditions. Did you set out to do a kitty book? or did you suddenly find yourself with a pile of designs for items with/for cats, and think they should be a book?

Donna: This book came about because I was jokingly complaining to a publisher about how there were so many books of knitting for dogs, but not one of knitting for cats! The editor I was speaking to asked, "But cats wouldn't wear sweaters, would they?" I had to laugh, and then I proceeded to list about 20 projects that could be made for cat owners who knit. And the answer was, "Let's make this into a book!" So I started making sketches and swatches, and working up a whole book proposal.

KnitMe: I am making the carpet bag - but I don't needlefelt. What might I be able to do to pick out the crisp edges of the cat as nicely as in the book photo?

Donna: Needle felting is incredibly easy and the tools are inexpensive, so you might want to try it. You just lay a piece of wool yarn or fleece on top of the felted bag, and stab it over and over again with the felting needle, until it's all stuck down. To speed things up, you can buy a felting needle tool that has four or five needles all together in a holder. Of course, the needles are very sharp and can be dangerous if you have small children in your home. Other options: you can embroider stem stitch around the edge of the cat, or glue down a few strands of yarn to outline the design after the bag has been felted.

KnitMe: Do either of your cats have a "wool problem"? do you ever face this sort of thing?

Donna: Uno, the big gray cat in my author photo, likes to attack balls of yarn. He's especially attracted to the center-pull skeins and when he was a kitten, he was able to find yarn no matter where I hid it. Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and find yarn in the middle of the living room floor, and when I picked up the skein, I'd wonder where it came from because I didn't even remember having that brand or color. The two things they can't resist are smelly raw sheep fleeces and any kind of angora. I have to keep those locked away securely in a closet. But for the most part, my cats leave my knitting alone, which makes me very happy. I'd hate to have to worry about them chewing up a lace shawl that I'd been working on for a year!

KnitMe: Do you have a personal favorite design from the book, or a single one of the designs that sort of kick-started the whole idea of the book?

Donna: The projects are all so different, it's hard to pick one favorite, but I am partial to lace, the Peruvian Cat Lace Scarf is one I like a lot. I'm especially fond of it because Dorothy Reade created the chart for the Peruvian cat motif, and she was involved in helping get the Oomingmak knitter's co-op in Alaska off the ground in the 1960s, so that ties together two of my books that otherwise would seem to have nothing in common. That's why I also included the Peruvian colorwork chullo, to show a more traditional project made with a design from the same region.

KnitMe: I was happy to see that you have items done at a variety of gauges and using yarns that are not luxury-priced or hard to find. Did you have any guiding set of ideas that drove your choice of yarns?

Donna: I wanted to make it easy on myself, so I worked exclusively with Plymouth on this book. They have a great variety of yarns, from wool and acrylic basics, to novelty yarns, and luscious fibers like alpaca and cashmere. Other than that, I just wanted to make a variety of projects that would appeal to all different knitters. Instead of just making what I like, I tried to think about what other knitters might like, too. In my design work, I've learned that I don't have to love one of my designs for it to be successful. Sometimes editors and readers absolutely love a design that I almost didn't submit because I thought it was so-so, and once (only once so far!) my favorite design in a batch of submissions was the one that the editor absolutely hated. So you never know!

KnitMe: What are you working on now - and I mean that in two ways, what are you knitting and also what might be coming along for future book projects?

Donna: Right now I am knitting a lace stole using Black Bunny Fibers laceweight merino. Carol Sulcoski is the genius behind Black Bunny Fibers, and she is also one of the authors of a book called Knit So Fine that is coming out from Interweave in a few months. I tech edited the book, and fell in love with several of the projects. They're all made from fingering and laceweight yarns, so it's a nice break from all the chunky knitting books that have come out over the past few years.

KnitMe: Thanks for visiting us here at KnitMe! Next week I will have a completed kitty carpet bag, and also a start on another kitty project!

Donna: Thanks again for inviting me to stop by your blog as part of the Kitty Knits blog book tour!

Tomorrow's stop on the Kitty Knits blog tour: Pearl the Diabetic Cat.

* * *

Wasn't that fun? Kitty Knits can be found wherever knitting books are sold!

Stay tuned....Kitty Knits on Thursday!

A few things got finished this week, and a few more things are pending.

I finished the red wine and sugarplums socks.

They appear to fit perfectly, and the handspindled yarn is pretty cushy. Bluefaced leicester, yum.

I also finished plying my bazillion yards of camel and silk. This photo just doesn't do justice to the shine!

The skein on the left is 4.7 ounces, about 660 yards. The skein on the right is about 360 yards, I forget exactly what it weighs. This is seriously thin yarn. I have no idea what to do with it - it will have fabulous drape, but no body to speak of. I have another skein someplace that I spindled, I think the grist on it is a bit heavier. I am resisting washing this because I just don't want to spoil that shine!

I have to say, this was the most beautifully blended top. There was never a moment when I saw globs of camel go by, as can often happen with blends. It was a hostess gift from Melanie a couple of years ago from silkyarn.com.

I did manage to get that grey yarn back to balls of one strand, but it was agonizing and as I was doing it, I kept thinking, "Don't I hate this yarn? Why am I going to all this trouble??"

I tried Vicki's suggestion from last week's comments. The yarn would not cooperate. I tried just pulling it apart as the ball sat on the ball winder. The yarn would not cooperate. I finally wound the ball from the outside back onto the ball winder as the only way I could think of to remove twist. The problem (Outsmarting Myself, episode 6,330) was that the part of the ball that was on the center of the winder was the fold where I had twisted together opposite ends of the same skein. Can you envision that? Sorry if you can't... Anyway I needed a way to wind the two strands into balls while simultaneously taking out twist. Here is the mechanism I ended up with:

This is how it went: back up across the room for 6 feet or so. Twirl niddynoddy until twist is out. Wind each strand onto the niddynoddy.

This went very well until one of the balls started dropping off the niddynoddy...

Anyway, after significant headaches and wasted hours I have the yarn back. Whoopdie doo. Was it worth it? Don't know...

I have all the pieces of the kitty carpet bag put together. Here they are before felting.

The red square was made from the leftovers of my socks. After it's felted, you cut the shape of a butterfly out of it and stick it onto the bag for the cat to chase.

After felting, I'm ambivalent about the grey handspun. I thought shetland felted like mad but the grey didn't felt as well as I'd have liked. I'm thinking of lining this bag. Pictures of the finished product on Thursday, when

TA-DA

Donna Druchunas will be dropping by KnitMe to make a stop on her blog tour and talk about her Kitty Knits book, where you can find this carpet bag pattern and other knits for or about kitties. Please come back Thursday and see what Donna has to say about cats and knitting!

Meanwhile, the socks and bag were the only things on my needles, and they were both done! So I cast on TWO new projects last night! You'll have to wait till next Monday to see those...

Autumn Rose

is finished!

It fits pretty well, too - the sleeves are a little narrower than I'd like, but with this Knitpicks Palette yarn being smoother to the touch than Shetland, I can wear it with just a camisole underneath. I'm happy with the depth of the neckline too. If I were to do it again I would knit one more round with black before setting the neck steek, as I think it looks slightly odd to have the gold blend up into the neckband like that - it needs the extra row of black to finish off the horizontal band there.

I agree with whoever on Ravelry said they had a slight problem with pooching in front where the raglan seams meet the neckline - I think it is the nature of the way the pattern is put together, and it's not very noticeable when being worn.

I did two fewer rows of ribbing on the neckband because I was down to the last couple of yards of Garnet Heather and I was not about to order another ball! If you want to make ANY size other than 35 inch you will need two balls of Palette in that color. This is all I had left:

I had a ton left of all the other colors, though.

I wore it last week with black pants and it was pretty classy. I have plenty of huge, floppy sweaters that are pleasant to wear but it's nice to have a couple of things that have a little shape.

I started this on December 6th, and blocked it on February 11th.

Kitty Knits

I want to repeat the announcement I made last Thursday, that KnitMe is going to be a stop on Donna Druchunas's blog tour for her new book Kitty Knits. We will be having a conversation with Donna here on Thursday February 28th about the book, the yarn, and her cats, among other things. Please join us.

Outsmarting myself, episode 6,329

In preparation for Donna's visit I started a quick project from the book, the Felted Carpet Bag. One great thing about it is that it is using up yarn from my stash, and lots of it.

I actually had stash of one of the colors of Galway called for, the sky blue, and I have a huge batch of anonymous cream worsted that seems to me to be almost the same as Galway. I substituted a different shade of Galway for the green grass section, and some grey handspun shetland for the cat itself. Yes it's intarsia. I don't mind intarsia if I know I'm going to felt the finished piece to hide all the weaknesses...

The outsmarting-self part has to do with the grey. I couldn't handle any more balls of yarn - 6 was about enough to manage - so I figured I would wind the required grey yarn into balls that were two strands held together. It made the knitting really easy, but it leaves me with a huge amount of yarn left that is balled together double-stranded that I don't need. Sigh. I guess I will enlist Emily's help and we will try to wind two separate balls out of each one center pull ball.

Sorry for the technical difficulties that have essentially prevented anyone from commenting since last week sometime (although I'm sure the spammers had no trouble)., We think it's all resolved now.

KITTY KNITS! and other news of the week

Tune in next week for the completed Autumn Rose! Ta-da! By the way, if you liked my colors, you might need to be aware that Knitpicks is discontinuing 4 of them: sunlight, lemon, peach, and twig.

ALSO - tune in on February 28th when Donna Druchunas stops by KnitMe on her blog tour to talk about her new book Kitty Knits. We are so excited to have a visit with her! Don't miss it!

Out of scope

In my profession we spend large percentages of our time working on things about a project that came up late in the process and just HAVE to be taken care of. Much as we try to declare such unexpected additions "out of scope," we can't always pull that off, whether because something is so important that it breaks the entire thing, or because my management decides to be generous.

This week I spent most of my waking non-working hours on something "out of scope:" trying to get the two laptops in our house to connect wirelessly to the wireless router I set up last weekend. Eight days later, we appear to have total connectivity, but boy did that consume a lot of time.

When I did actually get to knit, I made some progress on Autumn Rose, even though one entire knitting session was spent knitting 3 rows, then realizing I'd knit them with one of the colors wrong and laboriously tinking them and re-knitting them with the right color.

I decided it was worth it to rip out the 6 rows of crosshatch pattern that I had completed last weekend, and reknit them with the row 'jog' at the left back raglan line. This gave a perfect smooth appearance in front and I like it much better. When I finished the crosshatch band and was ready to set the neck steek, I broke the yarns and resumed in the center front by creating the steek. Much better.

The rows are getting shorter, and I am closing in on the top of this. I can't wait to see what it looks like when done. The longer I work on it, the happier I am with the colors.

I blocked the Seville jacket firmly, and it seems to have become quite wearable.

I threw it on one day in the house when a whole sweater would have been too much, and over a long-sleeved turtleneck it gave just the right amount of warmth. I guess I don't have to give it away...

I used about 7 hanks of Brown Sheep Prairie Silk in 'peseta purple' which is a lovely shimmering deep lavender. I made the smallest size, but I lengthened the body about an inch under the arms because I am long-waisted and hate things that don't come down as far as they should. It turned out about right.

I felt a need this week for another pair of worsted-weight socks, so I started some with two slightly related bits of handspun bluefaced leicester that I have lying around. I had 30 grams of a color called "Red Wine" and 110 grams of a color called "Sugar Plums" so these are going to be my "red wine and sugarplum" socks. I hope the size works out!

I'm using a pattern I found online someplace called the 'Ocean Socks' that seemed to have the right stitch count and was a little more interesting than just stockinette without being complex enough to eat up yarn.

I'm resisting the urge to start anything right now, and I'm sticking to Autumn Rose until it's finished. I have two different sweaters I'd like to start next, and if I wait until I finish Autumn Rose I will feel free to start both...