Spring Celebration Wrap

This was a long time in the making but now that it's done, I think it was worth the effort.  I bought the yarn, and I think the pattern as well, on my last birthday.  August 11.  I worked away at this until sometime in October when one of my dogs gave the yarn a good shake and the yarn cake exploded.

This was a mental setback more than anything as I couldn't bear the thought of having to untangle 350 meters of lace weight yarn.  So it was packed up and put into a bag where I could forget about it and focus on the Christmas knitting where I turned out three more scarves, a cowl and two pairs of socks.

Then on a long break over Christmas I decided to get this out and see how much damage the dog did.  It took just over an hour to wind everything back up and get it all sorted again.  I worked away on this for a while and got to the point where I thought "OK, just one and a half more repeats (60 rows) and you'll be done".  Except it was two and a half repeats.  100 rows.  I don't really know why, but that was crushing.  I stopped again and knit another scarf, learning how to add beads while I was at it, and two more pairs of socks.  It was about this time that I dubbed the scarf "the Never-Ending Stole" and it was about five minutes after that that I realized that if I never worked on it, of course it would never be done.

So I got it out again and plodded along but found it hard to focus - not a good thing when knitting lace.  Frequent breaks were necessary but I'd find myself cruising through Ravelry to see what else I wanted.  My company's new office space is considerably cooler than the last location so I wanted fingerless mitts.  I went stash diving and found some lovely worsted weight wool that would be perfect and found a pattern that I thought would work well with the yarn.

But that wasn't getting the stole done.

I've never really lost the drive to finish something and I don't really know what the problem was here.  It isn't a boring pattern, but neither is it difficult.  You do need to pay attention but it's easy enough that you can watch TV without making mistakes. I plodded on with it.

And then, on the second day of spring, it was done.  I put it aside until the weekend when I could have good light to do the grafting.

In celebration of the arrival of Spring, I'm called this Spring Celebration Wrap.

Happy Spring.

So Close I Can Taste It

Holy cats - I didn't think this day was ever going to come!  I'm within spitting distance of finishing the Never-Ending Shawl!  I have eight, yes eight more rows to go and then the knitting portion of this adventure will be done.  After that, the two halves will need to be grafted and then blocked and I will finally have my birthday present to me.  My birthday was in August but that isn't important right now.

So I'll have to come up with a better name for it now since it will obviously soon be finished.  This is a Knit Spot design and Anne Hansen called it Autumn Arbor Stole.  I'm thinking Spring Celebration Wrap.

Anyway - no time to chat.  I have some knitting to finish.  Pictures will follow soon.

Hope Springs Eternal

It's true.  Hope does eternally spring up and it can take many forms.

Like my dog who wants nothing more than to just lie out in the sun.  He's been dancing at the door all day asking to go out.   But it's -12C with a fierce windchill and he's a skinny hound with a very thin coat so he'll stick with a sunny spot on the carpet.

I've started work on the Autumn Arbor Stole again.  This has been hibernating for a few months now since the dog pictured above gave the yarn cake a shake.  It is now about 3/4 finished and sadly, I'm getting a little bored with it.  I have about 140 rows to go and then have to graft the two pieces together.  The good news is the first half is done.

I got this in the mail the other day.  The colours are really "in your face" bright and there is some silver thread woven through it so it sparkles.  Kinda like Unicorn puke.  Totally not my thing but I keep picking it up and looking at it and wondering what I could do with it.  Socks is definitely a possibility but I'm going to keep looking.  Then again, I have a niece who might just adore a cowl made from it.

Now this Fleece Artist BFL sock yarn is more my style. I cast on for socks last week at Mount Pakenham and didn't touch this all week.  I did this yesterday and am totally enthralled by this.  My husband keeps eyeing it as well so I may lose it.

And to prove that hope really does spring eternal, I got out my book on companion planting, re-did the garden plan (you can see the new one here) and ordered my seeds today.   This is my garden as of right now.  You can sort of see the rectangular area that is a little rougher than what is around it.

Yeah, it's pretty cold today but the sun is shining, the birds are mobbing the feeders we have out and the sun is in the sky longer and longer everyday.  Hope springs eternal.

Loose Ends

It was -24C/-11F last night when I came home from the movies (I saw The Hobbit if you were wondering. Great show.) Today it has 'warmed up', if you can call it that, to -14C/7F. The water lines to the two sinks and toilet in my downstairs bath are frozen because the pipes are on the exterior wall. I'm not sure what Einstein thought that was a good idea when the bathroom was being built and truthfully I didn't make the connection when we were looking at the house, but now that Chuck isn't working, it's going to change.

In the meantime, the pellet stove is blazing away, and the dogs have lost all interest in going outside.

And I want a new sweater and am increasing interested in some fingerless mitts. Thing is, I have way too many projects on the go as it is. Granted, except for one, they're all small but don't think I can justify starting a sweater until I've finished a few of the current works in progress.  So, in no particular order, there is:

a. A pair of mittens.  These were started in the summer with the intention of being a gift.  Without going into too much detail, the intended recipient is no longer around so I stopped work on them.  But they're still great mittens made of Alpaca.  They fit me.  And it's -14 outside.  I should really finish them.

b. Socks.  I started these just for something to do with my hands one night in early December and someone commented on them.  I thought I might give them as a gift to the commenter, but I ended up with something far better for that person.  And truthfully, I really liked the yarn so wasn't keen on giving it away (Tardis/Indigodragonfly).  In the end, I've decided to keep them.

c. Socks.  While the socks in point b were being knit, I realized that I didn't know how big the potential recipients feet were so I stopped after I knit the first sock and didn't graft the toe.  I was considering wrapping just one and having her try it on to see if they fit.  As mentioned, I decided to keep them but while waiting for Christmas, I started another pair for me.  I have the first one completed.  These are 20,000 Lawyers Under the Sea by Indigodragonfly.

d. Stole.  This was going well  until sometime in October, or possibly early November, when my lovely dog expressed his approval of the yarn by 'playing' with it.  The ball exploded everywhere and I've only just recently re-wound it.  It's ready to be worked on again.  At the rate I'm going, this will be ready in the spring which honestly is about the time I'd like to have it.  The pattern is Autumn Arbor Stole by Anne Hanson knit in Amethyst Marrakesh by HandMaiden

e. Shawl.  I demonstrated an inability to count to four consistently so the first half of this is longer than the second half.  No big deal, except I don't have enough yarn for the second half.  I really like the pattern and yarn combination so I'll do it again.  But I'll be a little more conscientious about counting to four.  This is also 20,000 Lawyers Under the Sea by Indigodragonfly in a Merino Silk blend.  Before anyone asks, it's different enough from the sock yarn that I can't make up the difference using that.

Tell me again why I have dogs?

I should have seen this coming.

When we chose our newest dog Runner from the Lanark Animal Welfare Society, we saw right away that he liked playing with stuffed animals; stuffies the staff at the shelter called them.  There was a grotty little stuffed bunny in the dog run and it looked like his most favourite thing in the whole world the way he carried it around with him.  I almost asked if we could have it.  I was prepared to add a few bucks to the bill to make him feel more comfortable.

You see, I don't give my dogs stuffies.  They have rope bones and balls, rawhides, pigs ears and all the sticks they can carry, but no stuffed animals simply because there is no glamour in cleaning up puked up stuffing.

What does this have to do with knitting you ask?  Well, I left my knitting unattended one day in October when Runner was obviously missing his stuffed bunny.  It was laceweight yarn, neatly wound into a cake.  I got up one morning and it looked like this:

Actually, it didn't look this good; I couldn't find the ends.  I don't think the bill for the dog had cleared the Visa yet so I wasn't prepared to throttle him but truthfully, it was my fault.  I did leave it unattended.

So I packed it up into a bag and put it away.  Today, I had calmed down enough that I was prepared to take it out and have a look at it.  I did obviously find the wound up end this time; and believe it or not, it only took me 80 minutes to wind this mess back into a ball.  There were two breaks in the yarn.  All things considered, I got off lucky.

Needless to say, I'm now absolutely militant about putting my knitting away when I'm done.

A Sudden Moment of Quiet

It's been wild around here lately.  For many people the summer is when things get really busy with everyone moving in different directions, but for us that happens in the Fall.  I haven't done much knitting - I haven't even been able to make it out to my regular Saturday afternoon knit group, but I've certainly been busy.  I've got most of the garden put to bed and lots of food in the cold room.  We've had people come for a visit, a new wood stove was installed, Chuck and I attended the 30th birthday for the Canadian Forces Intelligence Branch Association in Ottawa (he's the VP, I had to go), closed the cottage and celebrated Thanksgiving #1.  #2 is going to happen tomorrow.

Thanksgiving #1 was a riot of a celebration this year.  Friends who live in Perth Australia were in the US visiting friends in Washington so we invited them up to spend some time with us if they could work it into their itinerary.  As it happens, they were here for Thanksgiving!  So we spent the entire weekend playing the "Do you remember when...." game.  A weekend wasn't nearly long enough with them so I think we need to start planning a return trip in earnest.

I mentioned a while ago that I had made Chuck some socks for hunting.  So today while he's off golfing in a kilt at the inaugural Kilted Classic in Pembroke, I'm able to get a picture.  The socks were a huge success; he really likes them, says they're really warm and wears them all the time.  I think I'll need to make more.

My big knitting project now is Autumn Arbor Stole by Anne Hansen.  Mine doesn't look exactly like the one on her website because I'm making the smaller version.  I'm  now 10 rows away from having the first half complete.  Lace was described to me once as having the look of a "dirty tissue" until it's been washed and blocked.  I have to agree.  This looks like a total mess here, but I think it's going to be stunning when it's finally done.

Chuck is getting ready for a few weeks of hunting.  He's been out for ducks and geese already.  So far there's only one duck in the freezer but I'm sure there will be more.  He's going moose hunting this week and deer hunting in early November.  A deer or a moose will mean we need to get a new freezer but it will also mean I won't need to buy much red meat this winter.  

Speaking of deer, I hit one coming home from work the other day.  It was dark and raining and all of a sudden I had a very different hood ornament.  Lucky for both of us, I didn't hit it very hard so didn't kill it, and there's only minor damage to my car.

Even the headlights still work.  Still, I was lucky.  It was a small deer and I wasn't going really fast - it could have been much worse.