If you are a KCRW member, here’s a good one:
Suss Design is offering 15% off yarns, knitwear, baby layette and knitting classes.
Doesn’t say whether or not you have to go in or if you can do it online. I haven’t been to the store myself, but this gives me motivation! You may have seen the book Hollywood Knits which had some ok stuff in it.
Author Archives: admin
The devil wind
Today, my husband and I got to take the day off from working on the house because we had men there putting the final coat of polyurethane on the newly finished floors. They look really nice and I am really getting excited about moving in. All we really need to do now is clean up and get the handyman in to fix a few little things. Then we can move in!
The whole day was so weird. When I woke, the entire sky was brown, and the sun was an orange ball. We had gone to sleep with the windows open because it was nice and cool Friday night. We got up and closed the windows because there was ash falling and the smell of smoke was in the air. We went outside after noon and I thought it was going to be hot, but it was actually really cool, in the 60’s maybe. It was eerie.
We went to Borders and picked up some books and maps of Paris so that we can come up with an itinerary for our vacation that we are planning for next fall. This will be our first vacation aside from our honeymoon. After Borders, we went to Costco and the market, and the temperature was still quite cool. By the time we got home, I could feel the car being pulled by the wind. The air looked more clear, but the smell of smoke was much stronger and there was ash everywhere.
The devil wind has arrived.
On the news, they mentioned all the fires going on but the news here is so LA-centric that we never figured out which fire was blowing our way. I feel so sad for the 100s of people that have lost their homes. When one person loses their home to a fire, it’s terrible, but someone can offer shelter to them. When 200 homes are destroyed, who can offer shelter to that many people?
More New
I started working on the Bearlyknits cardigan this week. So far, I am really enjoying it. I have never done corrugated ribbing before, and was really having a hard time at first, because I was trying to purl with my right hand and knit with my left. I really don’t know how to purl “American” style, and just couldn’t get it. Finally, in a ‘duh!’ type moment, I switched the colors to the other hand and started flying. I finished the corrugated ribbing and started the body. I am using the Shelridge Farms fingering weight yarn, and size 1 (US) needles. I didn’t go smaller for the ribbing, just because my 0’s are still busy in my car knitting project – the sock. I don’t think the bear will mind.
And the bear is so cute! I can’t wait to finish and get him all dressed up. After finishing the bottom band, I tried the sweater on him, and it fit perfectly, so I think that using the smaller needles wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. I may have to block it out to fit once it’s all done. It’s not a problem though, I knew it would come out smaller since the yarn is fingering weight, rather than the larger yarn usually used for a Fair Isle. I was wondering today, to whom should I give the bear? My hub and I are moving to a new city, so maybe I will go to the police department and see if they have one of those programs where they give bears to kids at accident scenes, or other calls to distract them from things that kids shouldn’t have to worry about. I just have to see if my new city has such a program.
McGuyvered me a swift!
IKEA has this magnet board thingy that I originally bought to use with lace charts to make it easier to follow what I am working on. I have found another use for it though… I have attached my ball winder to it, and have wrapped the yarn around two of the corners and it’s just enough tension to hold the yarn as I slip off a few rounds at a time and wind it up into a nice cake. Here’s a sketch, til I take a picture, for those of you playing along at home: 
This is my solution to not having a swift to wind the lovely yarn I bought from Shelridge Farms back in March.
I finally have half of it wound and will be using it for the KBTH Bear sweater, whichever one I choose to make. I’m thinking the greens and purples, but haven’t quite got that figured out yet.
Housecleaning
I cleaned up my blogrolling links to cull the dead blogs (of which I was one for a while there) and fixed dead URI’s that moved or whatever. And got rid of the ones that I don’t really read anymore.
Like a car crash, ya gotta look…
It’s the Celebrity Scarves auction!
Um. It’s for charity, ok. But most of this stuff looks like they couldn’t be bothered! 2.5″ wide? what’s that, like 3 stiches with the chunky yarns they are using? If your time is so precious, maybe try learning to purl, the scarf will get longer faster! The only one that I liked was Lauren Ambrose’s, and thats just because she looks like she thought about it a bit. But 2.5″ wide? ah well. Who am I to judge, I haven’t seen many FO’s around here either.
Shameful
This whole thing is shameful.
TheBostonChannel.com – MLB – Boston Red Sox – ‘Base-Brawl’ Mars Yankees-Sox Game
But, I am still hoping for a Cubs/Sox series. I just think that’d be real cool.
Almost there!
Whoohoo, I am done with the center of the shawl and now can start on the edge, which is knitted on sideways, I guess is the best way to describe it.
I am excited to see that the end is near. And, I am looking to the next project. I was going to do Elisabeth I, but since that is a little more complicated a design to resize, I am thinking I may do Maidenhair, from Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting. I mentioned the swatch, and don’t like it, so am on a yarn quest. I may post to the KBTH crew for suggestions for up-sizing the yarn so I don’t have to do as much math. I get the straight lines ok, but get nervous with the curves. My sewing experience is limited to… you guessed it… straight lines, and I don’t really have anyone local to ask for advice on how stuff works.
I think I will do the BairIsle or Bearly Knits sweater first though, if I can McGuyver a swift. The yarn is a bit sticky for the ‘wrap it around your knees’ method, even if it would fit. I balled up the Cascade using my feet part of the way, but even that got a bit tangly. I can’t imagine my LYS would let me bring in a bunch of yarn to wind, even if I paid for the use of the machine, she doesn’t seem like she would go for such a thing.
Some knitting content
I got bored of the shawl and so needed a distraction, and started on a pair of Wendy’s Toe Up socks.
A great, easy pattern that looks real sharp when done. I have finished the first sock and just finished the toe of the second one, and will probably use this pattern again if they feel good on my tootsies.
I used Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, in Purple Club. I really like the colors in this yarn, and didn’t have a sock in mind for it when I bought it. I had thought about doing Achim’s Sock, from the Knitting Curmudgeon’s blog, but since that ended badly, I didn’t want to walk around with socks named after a guy that disappeared because maybe I will lose the socks!
So, I decided to just give Wendy’s sock a try, with a simple 4×4 rib. I really hate all that switching back and forth from knit to purl, but do need the practice, so I decided to tough it out.
Speaking of switching from k to p, I started a Moss Stitch swatch in Cascade 220, to see if I can get a slightly larger than gauge swatch for Maidenhair. I really need a new cardigan because my favorite Land’s End one is on it’s last legs. I think I will do this as my next project, after the shawl is finished, which should be done by Halloween if my progress lately is to be believed.
But, I really need to work on my technique for k/p switching in a single row, because it makes my upper arms ache. I have been trying to purl from the front (going forward, I already do it all the time going backward and love it) but I can’t really get it going as well as I like. I may just throw in some rows of purls in the swatch so I can practice, I can tell I am way off gauge with this yarn anyway, so I may just do that instead of wasting the swatch.
Give me something to blog about!
Ok and now I have a mishmash of Jesus Christ Superstar and the Buffy musical “Once More With Feeling” going on in my head. Those who get it will get it.
Today we had scheduled the installation of our Tivo/DirecTV receiver for the early morning slot, 8-12. So we got up before the sun and drove the 45 min to our house to be there in time for the installer to arrive at 8. You know what’s coming next…. He showed up at 11:50.
Worst of all, he didn’t seem to be planning to do any work! He kept hemming and hawing and sighing like it wasn’t his job to get a little dirty!. Then he wanted to drill a hole in my bedroom ceiling instead of putting on his jumpsuit and going into the crawlspace. By this time I was getting pretty annoyed, it’s not like it was the mailman I was asking to go down there, it’s the guy’s job to run cables and get under the house.
Then he wanted to drill a hole in my living room floor. I conceded, as long as it was close to the wall, but then he broke his drill bit, and wanted to drill farther from the wall. Finally I suggested drilling through to the closet behind the wall and drilling through the floor of the closet instead. He seemed happier to do this, thank gord.
So, by 2:30 he was finally done and we now can pause episodes of Angel or whatever we like. Angel was on when I started playing with the box. Now to actually move in and stuff.