oh baby what a week

If you're the kind of person who procastinates by perusing Friends' Activity on Ravelry (um, not I can be found doing that, like daily, or anything) , you might also be the person who makes up little stories based on what's faved & queued.  And if you are that person, and you're my Friend, you might be thinking "what's up with the  spike in  queuing baby knits?!"

 

An Aviatrix Hat for a neighbor last week. I LOVE this pattern. It's a 3 hour knit.

Baby sweaters&baby booties &little hats & blankets ? Me with the 18 and 21 yr old sons? What's the deal?

 

Meet Zoe Valentina, born last Saturday 1-21-12, my....wait for it...granddaughter ! To answer the questions possibly crossing your mind: yes, she is amazing. yes, I am very young to be a granny. The older one.  With us.  Nope, they get up, not us.  Have I knit a mountain of adorable tiny things for her? um..wellll.... 

Not exactly. I finished this hat. The adorable coordinating booties came out  sized for a 1 year old. While they (the parents, not the too-big-booties) were in labor, I knit a newborn size booty but not yet its mate. There are 2 partially finished blankets, and plans for much much more. I don't know what happened-partly too many other knitting commitments, partly not as much knitting time as usual, partly superstition.

 

Fortunately her great grandma, my mom, came through with beautiful knits: sweaters and hats and this fabulous and already much used cocoon. It is going to become my go-to baby gift knit, it's just so useful and sweet.

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Pretty sure this is the pattern she used, and though I was with her when she bought the yarn, I can't remember anything except we were at Kitschy Stiches and it's superwash.  The matching hat is too big....but she'll get there.

 

 Late night with uncle and slightly sulking American Bulldog.

looking into 2012

Have I ever mentioned that I like to look back over the past year to see if any themes emerged, and set an intention for the new one?

 

 2011's was Embrace the Unexpected. On New Year's eve 12 months ago,  I thought I was downing a tumbler or two of organic cranberry juice but it turned out to be evenly mixed with tequila. whooooeeee! The year followed, rolling out in unexpected and often delightful ways, though sometimes with a slightly painful hangover.
(Awkward segue warning)  F'rinstance I didn't plan to get into a blogging groove and then suddenly drop it.  I'm jumping back in with a Wednesday Wip. On Thursday. Because, guess what? I finished That Reindeer Hat.  And in Tangerine Tango, the color of the year, no less.*

 

About the Fornicating Reindeer pattern:  first, it's a chart. BYOP(attern).** I went with a generic 96 stitch hat, 2x2 ribbing over the ears ,  squared off top, so there'd be some slouch. I improvised  a checked bottom section and diagonals on the crown. The rest was the chart. It's been ages since I knit colorwork. I totally enjoyed it. Note to self: move Sleight of Hands mittens and Muckle Mitts up the queue.

 

Second thing is Reindeer can't Fornicate ***. On the bright side, your reindeer can be randy, screwing, mating, making whoopy, f*cking ... whatever the verb, you'll want to block the hat so the graphics look nice, and not puckery off the needles.

 

It turns out Leo wanted a closer fitting hat, and put it on his head like this. I offered to redo the top  and make it shorter.

 

But he said he's happy as is.

This is one of those zen moments of being a knitter and a parent.  He'd just said 'I really like how the yarn going across looks".  Of course I wanted to grab it and say " you can't wear it with stranding peeking out like that."  But I replied "yay glad you like it". 

I mean, here is a loved one appreciating a handknit, and it's got reindeer doing it, is anyone going to notice how it's folded up?

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* Isn't this aggressive  selling us  a color of the year ridiculous? Google the color and Pantone's flacking it all over the intertubes. What a weird consumer world we live in. (still, it's a shade of orange and I do like orange)

**If you too want to knit a version of this hat, I belatedly found a very nice (and undoubtedly warm)  pattern to go with the chart.  It's  reversible , so you can flash the reindeer or keep them close to your brain while revealing a SFW handknit. I can only imagine its usefulness in a dating situation.

***Thanks Kay for catching the ignorant use of the word. I had no idea it had legal connotations. I was sorely tempted to thank you for being my friend who knows a thing or two about fornication but that just seems tacky. Um, kinda like the hat.....

Check here for more WIP WEDNESDAY

that reindeer hat

Is it still wip it Wednesday somewhere? Mid Pacific?  I'm posting this one  anyway.  Last month I was flapping my mouth offering to make handknits for family members .  Poking around on Ravely, as one does, I came across a hat , and was sitting there chortling when I saw that it had over 1000 versions. That drew my son's attention. He looked. He said he needed one.

 

Not want. Need. In orange and white.  

And so, I am knitting the Fornicating Reindeer Hat. (That a Ravelry link. Here's a particularly nice one on a blog. )It is mind boggling that there are 1028 different versions of this hat prancing around the world. Go look.  I know, it's a little tacky but it's also funny.  He may have been 5 years old and waiting for a sweater with penguins (who were not fornicating) the last time he was this excited about something I was knitting. Plus, I am enjoying the colorwork.

 

The yarn? it's from  Plymouth , superwash merino. Because I know my customers. . •••••••••••••• 

Need a new wip yourself?  I just saw this hat pattern, Empire. Cute. Fast. Not boring.

More WIP Wednesday posts listed here.

goods & curiousities

Around here, darkness is landing with a cold thud mid-afternoon. Even if you don't celebrate the major holiday happenings in all their green and red and santa clausness, it's pretty easy to be charmed by twinkly Essex CT. (Did I mention pubs?)

along Main Street Essex

 Even for someone like me, a reluctant shopper. So, this week's photo heavy Monday: a visit to the Goods & Curiousities Store at The Griswold Inn.

 

 

It's full of cool stuff. These things for example? They look like little sculpted/carved paperweights (what do we need to weigh down, anyway?) but they're made of graphite. You draw with them.

 

That's sister Lulu on the right, by day she's the Director of Retail operations at The Gris.*  And on the left, Ann Weaver of Weaverknits, indie designer and knitter, on day 3 of an intense east coast book tour. Which might be why she looks slightly crazed. She's really not. You can see my Craft Activism presence to the left.

 

Ann & I had a showroom upstairs from the shop for the day.She brought knit kits,and handknits, I brought photos and cards. We both had books, samples ,and a lot to say.

  

I know you want a closer look at these pieces from the shop. 

Made from vintage newspapers.

 

Nice way to pass a December Sunday. Plus, I got some knitting on a gift done. If you wish you hadn't missed us, Ann's knit kits (with indie yarns and patterns) and both our books remain at the shop, in a corner with some other woolly items, like fleece lined slipper boots from recycled wool clothes, and hats.

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* Consider that full disclosure, nepotism and all. But I wouldn't bother to blog about the joint if I truly didn't think it was special, and worth a look. I'm not that kind of blog.

another wednesday, another wip

Does it seem like I keep on showing new projects, but you never see anything finished? This month I have an excuse: gift knitting.  So this week for wip it Wednesday, a loop scarf, in green, as requested by my niece. (I don't think she reads here but just in case: Ariana? Look away!)

  

I'm making the pattern up, inspired by  scarves I've seen knit in changing stitches and weights so that when they're wrapped around your neck, it looks like you have two scarves on, with lots of texture. Kind of like this one. But mine's bulkier, and handknit.

 

Here's a less cluttered view. I started with a skein of Peruvia Quick .  I knit it up in Mistake Rib, an old favorite,  over 23 stitches on size US13 needles. It yielded about 30" of nice cushy warmth. Quick, just like it says on the label.

 

I continued with a skein of Peruvia,  a worsted weight single in the same color, over the same 23 stitches. But now in an  open  Lattice stitch (um, maybe its Reversing Lattice? Or maybe I have been calling it by the wrong name? I can't find it online to link to. It's easy though. ), on size 10 1/2 US needles.

 

Better view of the lacy work section, which is still cushy and squooshy but much less dense than the first section. The plan is to knit 30" of this and then close the loop. Whatd'you think? Will it work? I'm counting on it having lots of .....presence ..when it's done. 

Many more wips linked here for wip Wednesday.

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Speaking of presents and handmade: do you love this piece? I saw it at Goods & Curiousities Shop  at The Griswold Inn in Essex CT.  I'll be there this weekend for a special event showcasing handmade, Sunday December 11th, 11-4, in a showroom with knitwear designer Ann Weaver of WeaverKnits. I'll be chatting about Craft Activism at 11 and 3, and we'll both have all kinds of goodies to show & tell and sell. Stop by! More info on the Craft Activism blog.

you win some..etc

Ok, I am exhausted just reading the 136 descriptions of what you all are handmaking this season from my coffee giveaway comments. Exhausted! I random generated a winner, and she's been notified.  Thanks for entering. 

 

at the Fremont Fair in Seattle

No one mentioned that they have an art car they need to complete as a holiday gift. I adore art cars, don't you?  It'd take me a lot of coffee to get through this kind of brilliant crafting.

Joan & I originally had art cars and the art car community in Craft Activism, but we had to drop it due to space limitations and logistics. I'm still crazy about them, though.

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And because this is the perfect place  to kvetch, may I take a moment to acknowledge mercury in retrograde and its (predictable) effects in my personal orbit? As of noon today, the machines that have ceased working recently include: our clothes washer, the coffeemaker, the electronic throttle adjustment system in my car and the hard drive on my laptop. While I take the attitude that they're all, after all, just things not people, still.....ugh.

this is the sweater that never ends...

* 4 days left to enter  my coffee giveaway. 

That's 4 bags of coffee and a mug, what are you waiting for???!! *

At this rate I will permanently have this sweater for Wip It Wednesday. Even if I finish the 3 gajillion other wips around this joint. This one'll just keep turning up.

 

You last heard about me finishing off the sleeves so I'd have a nice new Cadence sweater to wear while booksigning and working on a photo shoot in wintery, snowy Minnesota. Done the first night there. I slipped it on. It fit !  Like a glove. 

 

 Cascade Eco Wool.: a desert island yarn if I ever I had one.

Problem #1 : I do not want a wooly sweater that fits like a second skin. Not hardly. I was aiming for an inch or so of positive ease. A live-in-this sweater with room to layer. I'd measured and swatched and got gauge and how could this have happened? (also how could I have not tried on a topdown raglan? ). Consider that I spent most of my trip with the wonderful knitters from The Yarnery, a group that surely has the wherewithall to stop me from this kind of crazy.  They offered aggressive blocking.  oh, never mind....I tore it out back up to the armpits. 

 

And acquired some new needles, the square sided ones.why not?

Problem # 2: I was surprised to find that though I'd gotten gauge on US 9 needles, I had somehow managed to knit the whole sweater on size 8's. 

And so, once again, in progress.

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Here's a  future wip : My nephew said he'd like  "one of those hats with very long earflaps attached.  So long that they have pockets for hands."

My nephew is about 6 feet tall, so I guess we're talking truly long earflaps. Maybe this would work, with pockets.  More WIP WEDNESDAY posts linked here.