Mid Week Check In

Wednesday's are for works in progress and there is a little bit that I can show you...

TOB has been plugging away knitting rabbits, camels, fingerless mitts and a pair of socks for the people he knows.  But today, tragedy struck and the only pair of size 1 needles that he owns broke!

Actually it has been the week of breaking things.

A little while ago I noticed that my photos were getting blurry.  Tried all the usual things (like using a tripod in case it was "she with the micro tremors" holding a camera results in not holding it still, cleaning the lens, using  a newer memory card...) but to no avail.  When the monster man arrived and had adjusted to being on East Coast instead of West Coast time we had him look at it.  Nothing that he adjusted did anything to help.

(Little secret here..any time that there is something in my life that isn't the way I want it, for some reason TMM seems to feel that he has to fix it for me, which for some things is easy and ok, and others it is harder and/or shouldn't be fixed for me but rather by me...but I digress...)

So he helped by throwing money at the problem and this showed up on my doorstep!












Pretty huh?





It is certainly an added bonus that he also played around with a few other things that weren't working the way they should!






Next up will be chairs because we managed to break some of those too!





So, not a lot of knitting content today from me...what's on your needles?

~M

Minimal Progress is Still Progress

I promised you yesterday that we would check in with my Colourmart Fall Contest piece....

It is progressing about as well as I would expect a piece of knitting that I haven't touched in days to progress - slowly! (And yes, that little voice in my head is still murmuring that she thinks it is bigger than I intend it to be, to which I have to whisper back - hush, trust the swatch.)

It isn't that I don't like it, I am still in love with my stripey chevrons and the yarn itself is a dream to work with, I've just had other things that needed my attention as well.

I have promised her that she will be my parking lot knitting for the rest of the week.

After all, my car has a handy cone holder for when I am knitting straight from the cone!

One year ago today I finished the shawl I knit for last years contest....Notice anything about the yarn?

I am nothing if not consistent.

~M

WIP-ing in the Wind

Not that it is windy here right now, but it is October in Central Ohio, so anything could happen!

Wednesday's make a good day for taking stock of where I am, what I am working on and what I need to do to finish the week out in a good place. (In all aspects of my life, not just the knitting side.)  It is also "garbage day" around here, which means I am already in the mindset for throwing things out, so if something isn't working that mindset can carry over and I can re-think, revise and re-work the plan.

So where am I?

The Colourmart Contest Piece (I have to give this poor gal a name at some point, but I'm not there yet!) is in the long dragging "middles".  Actually, yesterday I put the section I was working on in a holding pattern and started from the other end. 

I want to match those pretty little curves and stripes, and as the yarn I have is all there is. (Unless Sue at Colourmart could find more in what we refer to as her "magic hat") I need to make sure I don't go over on my yardage estimates.

I did start a pair of socks in honor of Socktober. 
A friend had asked me to come up with a pattern, on the quick, that wasn't too difficult, had a contrasting heel and toe and maybe some new techniques.

I gave her the pattern, untested, but decided that as I had gone to the effort of writing it, I might as well knit it as well and bang out a pair of Christmas Socks for one of the boys. It wouldn't be Christmas without socks in a stocking or three!






In between those two projects there was a little swatching and charting, but mostly I have been trying to teach myself how to draw schematics and after taking stock today of where I am, taking better pictures!

So while there is a little light left, I think I am going to go practice!

What's on your needles?

~M

That Little Voice In My Head

Wednesday can only mean one thing, well actually here it means two because it is also the night we put the garbage can out but that isn't what you want to hear about!

Wednesday's are for Works In Progress, or WIPS.

I have a few on my needles this week.  Two of which I am sharing.  :)

First up we have the completion of the dyeing from TDQ's trial run of dyeing a gradient yarn.

If you remember first she got a knitting machine.

(It is a Quick Knit from Michael's and we give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars, look for a 40 or 50% coupon either in their ad or by signing up for their text messages!)  Then she borrowed 2 skeins of Knit Picks Highland Wool Special Reserve, put some food colors and vinegar in a pot and dip dyed two blanks.

20 minutes of machine knitting

After they dried I cast on for a test knit for a cowl that a friend of mine wrote up when she wanted to knit her very first homespun yarn.

That little voice in my head asked :What made you think those markers would work here?

Knitting straight from the blank has certainly added to the rustic look of the wool, (I did have to cake the second blank as I wanted to start with the yellow, but it is still pretty kinky yarn*) it will be interesting to see what happens when I wash and block it.

I am nearly done with the knitting now, so this will probably show up as a Finished Object on Friday and I will need one because.....

This one certainly won't be!

The Colourmart Lover's Group Fall Contest/KAL is in full swing.  I cast on a couple of days late, having done my "pre-work" of swatching, washing, drying, measuring and calculating to come up with a pattern for a light weight yet very cozy, merino-cashmere piece.  As it is entered in the Large Neck category (go ahead and laugh, we all did at one point...who decides if you have a large neck or not?) I have a minimum number of square inches, and this will far exceed that. 

With Colourmart Yarns you have to be careful.  You cannot just knit straight from the cone and see if you got gauge, because the yarn changes in magical and wonderful ways when you do what to the average hand knitter would be the unthinkable!  Put it in the hottest water you can bear, loaded up with dish-washing soap.  (For those worried about felting, in order to felt you have to have a couple of things, hot water is one, in many cases soap is another but the third thing that you have to have in order to felt an object is agitation.  You have to rub those fibers together to get them to bind and when washing Colourmart Yarns that is one thing you do not do!  No agitation, no felting.)  For my swatch it took 3 soapy water baths and a couple of rinses to get the oils off the yarn so that it could bloom, and with the bloom comes a change in gauge.  In this case, a decent amount of change, so my swatch has a gauge of 24 stitches to 3.5 inches (that is my pattern repeat so those are the numbers I worked with)  My unwashed piece has a gauge of 24 stitches to 4 inches.

LVIMH: Looks Big

I told you the piece is going to be in the Large Neck category, and in this case, large is pretty big, to get the width I want I needed to cast on close to 300 stitches. (I'll tell you a trick for doing that right the first time another day.)  All those extra half inches are making the piece look very big right now, but contrary to what the little voice in my head says each time I spread my knitting out, I have to Trust the Swatch.  And anyhow, if it ends up a little bigger, no problem...who is going to complain at a slightly oversized merino/cashmere piece?

Until Friday, when I should have that Cowl all knitted, washed and blocked...keep knitting!

~M
* I wonder how many new visitors I will get for using the word "kinky" in this post.  It cracks me up sometimes seeing what key words bring people here!

Sunday's are for Silence

And So It Begins, Again

Each year, in the fall, which just happened to arrive yesterday, my mind starts to wander to home baked apple pies from apples we pick up at a Farm Market, and autumn colors starting to show in the leaves of the trees.  Cool morning walks, and finally being able to keep the windows open all day without someone complaining that it is too hot, or too humid....

But mostly, my mind turns to the group affectionately known as Enabler's R Us, or Colourmart Lovers on Ravelry and the Fall KAL/Contest.  It is a cut throat affair (not at all!) with people from all over the world who I have now knit with  for years and consider friends (truly!) egging each other on to stretch just that little bit further, and knit just one more row, or even set out bowls of milk to encourage brownies to come and do the cooking and cleaning so we can knit more (if you are signed into Ravelry, click here.) It is one of those competitive events where everyone who plays wins...you get your finished object...but you might get more than that because the wonderful people at Colourmart put up prizes. (Mostly the prizes are random drawings from everyone who finishes, with an extra drawing for those that didn't.)

It is a lot of fun and I play along just about every year.  Last year the Fall Contest resulted in this shawl. 

And the Spring Contest resulted in four shawls, three of which became patterns over the summer.

 Officially the contest started yesterday, at 10:21 am my time, but I needed to clear something off my needles first, but this evening, I finally did that...

And so I did this....

Not sure anyone (other than me!) will want to knit something in a light fingering weight yarn that starts with casting on eleventy billion stitches so it may or not be a pattern, we will see what kind of encouraging noises come my way as things progress.

As I have eleventy billion rows to go with those eleventy billion stitches, I am off to knit!

~M