That’s what my husband always says when I am blocking wool.
Back on March 1, 2003, I started on a shawl in Plum Harrisville Shetland Style. I finished it in February of 2004, and I have been sitting on it for 2 years! Well, I finally got it out while I was on vacation last week, and actually blocked the damn thing.
First, since I knew the sides would be longer than any of my blocking wires, I ran a cotton yarn through each of the points of the edge.

Here’s a closeup of points strung for blocking.

I made a bin of warm water, added some Dr. Bronner’s Lavender Castile soap, and set it to soak for an hour, to remove the wax or spinning oil or whatever it is in the Harrisville Shetland Style. I knitted it off the cone, rather than skeins(which I think come already washed.) I poured off the water, and filled the bin again with the same temperature water I just drained off. I don’t want a big felted thing after all this time!
I did something I have wanted to try for a while, but hadn’t done yet. I have a front loader, and even on the hand wash or wool setting, it sends a blast of hot water at the end of the cycle which always scared me off using it on my woolens. There’s a cycle called “Drain and Spin” so I decided to try that. I put my shawl in, started the cycle and locked it in. Eeee! It was supposed to be an 11 minute cycle, but I chickened out after the first pause. It sort of wings around, stops, and starts up again. So after the first wind down I took it out, and it was almost dry! Why have I been such a chicken?!


Here’s the arty shot.


Here it is, blocked out to six feet!!! on a side. I have four 2’x 4′ Styrofoam insulation blocks, with one 2′ x 2′ piece in the middle keeping them all connected. I started with the corners and then pulled the centers out, and kept going around until I reached the edge of the foam boards. I probably could have stretched it even more if I had more room.


Here’s some closeups of the lace patterns.

Strike a pose!


I doubt I could wear it without folding it.
I can’t believe I didn’t just block this thing 2 years ago. As I was stretching it out, I thought of all the times I’ve moved it from box to drawer to shelf, moving it out of the way of other things, when I could have been wearing it! All the things that have happened in my life since I started this shawl … What a dork. I love it, and I think I’ll make another shawl with some yarn I bought while on vacation. But that’s a post for another day.

I am working on some remodelling, so things may look odd. Should be back to normal soon. 🙂

Knitting of course!
I thought I’d get my xmas knitting done early and get started while on the plane or whilst being the passenger as we drove around New England and Canada, and I did get quite a bit done.
There’s a back:


And some fronts:


And some … oops again! I knit the sleeves together on one needle from the same ball of yarn and naturally, I ran out just before beginning the decreases. See how they are joined there in the middle? Yeah.


I thought I was being so clever, I had a pattern, from Debbie Bliss, who never provides a schematic (which is very annoying, by the way) and some yarn at a completely different gauge.
So I printed some knitters graph paper using the extremely useful page at The ABCs of Knitting. Scroll down the left side menu to Actual Size Graph Paper, and it will allow you to generate PDF files of whatever gauge you need. I love this site and will be so bummed if it ever goes away! Anyway, I made a sheet of the pattern’s gauge, and one for the gauge I got from my swatch. I then followed the pattern and drew out the size I wanted on the pattern gauge page (this is a baby sweater, not adult, so it didn’t take too long). Now, using this drawing, I was able to transfer to the gauge I will be using, and have the measurements at the critical parts of the pattern.
See? But what my pattern didn’t tell me was how much yarn I would need, and I somehow blanked that idea right out of my mind before going on my trip and only brought the one skein of yarn that I had in this color. None of my LYS have it either. I don’t even know where I got it. So, I will be starting over in a blue color instead, of which I have two skeins. I’m glad I actually like the knitting part of knitting, not just the end products.


BTW, whenever there is a thumbnail in my pages, you can click for a larger photo. I never did figure out how to make nice frames around my photos that make it look like they are click-able.
So, while I was waiting for the yarn fairy, I started on the other xmas gift, which is this little cutie:


Do you see it? It’s an Ernie sweater! Although I will be trying a few things to get the sleeves right when I get to them, see how they are along the length of the sleeve instead of around? Anyway, I think it’s cute, and hope the recipient will like it, or at least his mom will like it.

And now time for a rant

Frakking TSA!! I bought brand new locks for our trip, with the special TSA approved locks so that they can use a key to open our bags and rummage to their hearts delight, and the assholes didn’t bother to open the locks, they just broke the zipper on a $600 TUMI suitcase instead. And they left a nice note saying basically, “fuck you” to add insult to injury. And then they did it again on the trip home. And that’s $600 1990 dollars, so to buy a new one, looking at the TUMI website, is about $1000. This bag has been back and forth to France several times, all across the country when my huz was travelling internationally and in the US on business, and never had a scratch on it. I blame those paranoid NYC assholes. I’ll bet, since we went through JFK, that they did it there. And on my bag, they broke the lock, even though it has a keyhole that THEY REQUIRE, but they just decided not to use!! And on my bag, they didn’t even leave a note. How nice, I feel so safe now.
And if I complain, who knows, maybe I’ll become one of the disappeared, a new status of citizen made legal last week by our beloved leader.
And on a less serious note, Jeffrey?? WTF??? I caught the last two eps of Project Runway on the plane, and thought Uli got robbed. I mean, Laura’s clothes were nice and wearable, but she was a bit of a sore loser, so she didn’t deserve to win, but Uli actually made clothes that women would wear. I mean, do you ever see women dressed in Betsey Johnson’s clothes? Jefferey is bad Betsey Johnson meets bad 80’s SoCal punk (which was already over when it started). I’ve never seen such irrelevant clothing. Whatever!

Saturday was a day of oops for me. I made this great mix of music for walking, in the range of 120-130 BPM so I can keep a good pace. I went for a walk with my huz and we were walking at a good clip and suddenly my iPod starts stuttering and gets stuck. I tried to turn it off, but no go. Then suddenly it worked again, about an hour later! As I am walking back to the car, I feel it starting to drop, and discover this. The strap had become unstitched from the case I was using. I’m glad I felt it dropping, or I would have been really bummed!
So when I got home, I started looking on line for a new case, maybe a sturdier one or an armband one. But my iPod is a Gen 3, so it’s pretty heavy and old, so there aren’t many choices left out there. I think it might be too heavy for an arm band. So I decided to knit one for myself. I cast on, and after a while I decided I didn’t like what I started with, and went to pull the needle out so I could frog and look what happened! This is a KnitPicks Options needle and the cable came right out of the coupling. I am going to email them and see if they will replace it, since I’ve only had it for a month. Luckily, I could switch out the other cable and so I was able to continue.
So here’s what I came up with. It started with about a mile of I-cord, which I then used to pick up stitches and knit the body in the round while the I-cord wraps around the whole thing. I picked up a stitch of I-cord in each of the four “corners” of the bag and knit it together (k2tog or ssk, as appropriate) until the bag was long enough to hold my iPod. No, I didn’t knit all that I-cord myself. I used my handy-dandy Embellish-Knit! which works great with yarns DK or smaller. Once you read the directions. ;/
When it was all done, I thought it was too loosey-goosey, so before binding off, I got my handy seed stitcher tool (for machine knitters) and dropped whole columns of stitches, changing it to a mostly k2p2 rib all around. I tried it on again and liked it much better. I bound off one side and began knitting the flap back and forth, with an I-cord edging on each side. The flap was a little narrow, so I cast on 5 stitches in the middle of the row, creating a hole that my remote cord or headphones would fit through.
I toyed with double knitting the pocket on the flap, but decided that I didn’t want to try doing that for the first time with a single, solid color yarn. It would be too easy to mess it up. Instead, I knitted down the flap, decreased a few stitches to give it a little curve, then did a row of purls as a turning ridge. Then I knitted the pocket side of the flap, with an inch of k1p1 ribbing at the last inch, and bound off.
The I-cord edging on the flap had a nice 2 st purl dip which was perfect for sewing up the edges of the pocket to the flap, which were the only seams for the whole thing! I wove in my ends, and here is the result. What do you think? I made it long enough to fit over my neck and under my arm so it will be out of the way when walking. Since it’s knit, it will have a little stretch to it and the weight of the iPod will hold it down while I walk. When it’s not being used, the pocket will hold the remote and headphones. When it’s being used, the pocket could hold my car key.
It’s knit with under one skein of Louet Sales Opal Gems Merino on a size 3.5mm needle. Took about 4 hours to knit, frog, knit some more, frog some more, and finally finish.

This one has more pictures than the last one, so be patient while they load.

Unmolded Jello Soap
After chilling the mold most of the day, I’ve turned it out onto the cutting board. Now, you’ll see why I wanted it cold.

Shred Shred Shred
I push it down the chute of my food processor using the shredding blade. If the soap was at room temperature, it will cause the food processor to jam. As it is, I just give it a gentle pressure to keep it moving, never forcing it. When the bowl is full, I dump it out and shred some more. I have to empty the bowl three times for the 1/2 pound of soap.

A full bowl
Here it is all dumped into the mixing bowl.

Stuffing the molds
I stuff the molds with the shredded soap. I want it to be loose enough for the white soap base to fill in the spaces, so I don’t pack it in too tight.

Chopping the White Soap Base
Using the bench scraper, I chop up a pound of the white soap base.

Ready to melt some more
I also throw in the heel of the soap that didn’t get shredded, and pop it in the microwave on 60% power for 5 min.

Adding the dyes
I want the white base to be slightly green tinted, so I add a bit of blue and yellow dye. I’ve also done this soap with pale orange, to go with the Ginger-Lime scent. I also add the scent now.

It’s so hot, the coconut oil is melted
Now you know why I put the soap in the fridge, eh? We are having a bit of a heatwave here. I should have put the coconut oil in the fridge too! Anyway, I add a tablespoon to the bowl.

Waiting for the Shea Butter to melt
I also add a tablespoon of Shea Butter. If you add too many/too much oils to the soap, you will get a nice soap but not a satisfying creamy foamy lather. Yeah, I figured that out by experience. ;/ This seems about the right balance for me.

Filling the molds
I pour the white base in the molds to fill in the spaces between the green shreddies. You can see the way it fills in on the clear container.

Turning out the molds
After letting the soaps cool for a few hours (it doesn’t take that long to cool, I just didn’t get to it sooner) I pop them out onto the cutting board to trim them up and make them into soap bars.

Did you see that? Whoops
There was an area that was either too densely packed, or I poured to slowly for the soap to fill in the blanks. Either way, it won’t make a good bar of soap, so I will cut that piece out.

Trimming up the bars
The other loaf looks great. I trim off the stuff that stuck to the sides of the mold and make some nice chunky soap bars.

Saving up the scraps
Those scraps can be put in a small mold, or this rice bowl, to make one final bar of soap. Just heat it up in the microwave for a few minutes at 60% power but keep an eye on it, since it’s much smaller than the larger quantities melted earlier. In the end, after cutting the smaller loaf into bars, I decided that it really wasn’t structurally sound, there were too many places that had air pockets. In the shower, a bar of soap like that would just fall apart. So, I ended up melting the whole loaf in the mold and let it set. It made a nice creamy green bar.

The final blocks
Here are the final products with the cool shreddy green colors in the center. Smells great, it’s husband approved ;/ and feels great on the skin.
I hope you’ll give it a try some time, even if you don’t do the shreddy bits. It really is a superior product to the supermarket soaps, even if you chop it out of the container it comes in and use it straight without the additives.
Enjoy!

We are just about out of soap around here, so it’s time to make more. I am not so daring as to actually make the soap, since I have the tiniest of kitchens, the vent fan doesn’t work, and I don’t have a hazmat suit.
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For a great soap recipe, that I will eventually try myself when the circumstances are different and I have the equipment, please see this and this great post on Kathy’s site. She also has some great links on that second post that give more information about soap making.
What I do is make melt and pour soaps, which means I am starting with a soap base and then adding what I want to it. I use nice ingredients that I can control for the most part, and I know that the soap is soap and not detergent, which is what most commercial bar soaps that you buy in the supermarket are made of. I mean, would you ever consider using a bar of Zest to wash your hair? No, me either, but this stuff is wonderful and will make a great shampoo in a pinch.
Now I know there’s the whole “Real Soap” vs. “M&P” debate out there, which is about as useful as the Knitting vs. Crochet argument. All have their place.
I thought I would share what I do, since this was all shared with me about a year ago from a work colleague and friend who gave a group of us a work a lesson and shared her knowledge and supplies with us. She taught us several techniques that she uses, including adding all kinds of crazy things like this amazing soap she makes with coffee grounds that smells like a sweet cappuccino!
I split 2 cases of soap with a friend shortly after we learned how easy it is to make soaps. I’m still working on that first case of soap, but am almost ready to either try actually making soap, or buy some more M&P. I’ll decide after I finish up the last batch. I’ve experimented a little. My last batch used lavender buds from my garden (supplemented by some from the whole foods market) and lavender essential oil. It made a great soap for hand washing, but not for the shower, because the little buds would come off the soap and stick to the skin, which isn’t really pleasant when you aren’t awake yet. But you learn what works and what doesn’t.
Here I’ll make my favorite soap of the ones I’ve invented – sort of a citrus soap that ends up looking like a jello salad. You know the one with the coconut and lime jello and cool whip or something? I’ve made it before with Grapefruit scent and red soap too, and it looks good enough to eat.
So here’s how I do it.

Gather your supplies: Fragrances, dyes, a mold to hold the finished product. I usually mold my soaps in household objects, such as a Rubbermaid drawer organizer, or some containers I picked up at the Marukai 98 Cents Superstore. (The Japanese have a container for just about everything, so that’s a great place to look!) I’ve put links below to the vendor where I bought the fragrances and dyes, and the soap bases.

More Supplies: Shea Butter, Coconut Oil, a bench scraper and cutting board.

More Supplies: A microwave safe mixing bowl and rubber scraper.

I’ll be using half clear soap base, and half white. Use the bench scraper to chop the clear soap into chunks. This helps it melt easier in the microwave. Melt on about 60% power for about 3-4 minutes, depending on your microwave. You don’t want to see steam pouring off the top, you just want it melted so there are no solid chunks left.

Here it is all melted. I’ve added two drops of yellow dye and one of blue. Mix slowly and adjust the color if needed.

am going for a lime jello color, and this works for me. It’s all mixed up. Depending on what you are going to do with the soap, you may wish to add a fragrance or additives now. In this case, I added a fragrance “Ginger Lime” to the soap, but no additives. They will come later. When I am making a bigger batch, I won’t add the fragrance to the clear soap base, so that I can add it to other soaps that do have a fragrance.

Pour your soap into a mold while it’s still warm (not hot!). Let it cool for a bit, till it becomes solid. At this point, I am done for the night because I am tired. I will let this mold set overnight, sitting on the counter. In the morning, I’ll throw it in the refrigerator so it will be cool when I get home from work tomorrow, and can continue with the project.
Some sources for supplies:

• Wholesale Supplies Plus

You’ll find fragrances and dyes here, along with the actual soap. This is the only vendor I have used, and I have had great service from them, but I am sure there are others out there that offer the same types of products.

• White Soap Base
• Clear Soap Base

Finally, I have attached the buttons and she’s all done. Here’s a closeup of the sleeve and front. This was taken inside with the flash, but looks pretty true-to-life.


A pose on the blocking board. I am going to do one more blocking – I still haven’t blocked the front bands and that yarn hasn’t been washed so I’m sure a blocking is needed.


And for the nosey people – an inside shot showing the totally woven in ends, even on the little squares. I haven’t woven them all in, just the ones at the front edges which might show if the sweater is left open.
This is the Knitting Bag Jacket from Sally Melville‘s book The Knitting Experience: Color. Knit in Jamieson’s DK Shetland wool. I forget what size needle. Whoops, so much for paying attention.
I like it. It’s cropped, which I didn’t think about before starting. If I had, I would have done a few more pattern repeats before starting the sleeves. All in all, I think it will be a great sweater for winter, and with all the tees I picked up at Target in the spring and last winter that are almost the same colors as the sweater.

I’m so close, but still not done. I have moved on to socks and thoughts of other knitty goodness. But I did finally find buttons that I like enough to commit to. I went to several places and bought several sets of buttons that were wrong wrong wrong, but now I have the ones I want to attach. What do you think?

I just want to do one final steam block of the button band before attaching the buttons. I bought them at a strange place in Orange County that a fellow SnB chicky mentioned. The place was full of dust and I was so itchy when I left I had to use some of those silly wet wipes to wipe down my arms where they were breaking out in welts from the dust. I guess I have an allergy to strange dust, because there is no dusting going on around this place and I don’t break out at home. Huh. Anyway, it was some Russian or Ukrainian woman running the place and she kept telling me about this great yarn she had and the great prices. I’m game, so I go digging through her very strange yarn room and come up with a few gems. She tells me the price and I don’t think I want to pay that much for (nice!) yarn, but not as nice a price as she led me to believe. So I haggle a bit and walk away with only the buttons. I mean, I didn’t go there for yarn, so no skin off my back, but if the price was right I would have bought the yarn.
Anyway. So I am moving on to some socks. These are from Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and I love this yarn. I started about 2 weeks ago on these socks, toe up using Wendy Johnson’s great pattern as a starting place. I got halfway up the foot and decided I didn’t like it and ripped it all the way out and started again. And I don’t like the short row heel, so I thought I would improvise a flap n’ gusset heel, but from the bottom up. While I was contemplating this, the new Knitty came out and there was a pattern with the same heel I was contemplating, so I read up. That pattern was using much thicker yarn than I, so I did some math and started on the heel. When it seemed done, I tried it on and I hated it!
So I ripped it out again and this time started on size 1 needles and at the cuff end. After about 2 inches, I switched to Crystal Palace 2.0mm (US 0) dpn and worked my way down the cuff. I tried a new heel, that my SnB pal Monika uses and got halfway down the gusset when yay! My package from Knitpicks arrived containing some new 2.0mm 24″ circulars and the set of interchangeables. I haven’t tried the set yet, but I did unpack it all and put it together. I knitted onto the new 2.0mm needles and have been working on the rest of my sock and I love the needles. The cable is so flexible that I can use just one for the sock, unlike my Addi’s or my Aeros. The join is just great, the needles are sharp enough for tight sock yarn knitting and I am getting a sore fingertip but I’ll train myself to stop pushing the tip of my finger onto the needle to move the fabric along. Only my Aeros are that sharp. One other thing… the length of the needle is just right for me. A lot of the smaller needle sizes seem to have shorter needle shafts, which tend to make my hand cramp. Not these, I have been using them since Saturday and no cramps for me! I would recommend these to anyone who asks, and will probably buy the other sizes that aren’t part of the kit, since I do tend to use small needles the most.

Oh, and by the way, that’s not magic loop sock knitting you see there. That’s knitting on a needle that’s longer than your fabric is wide. Nothing magic, nothing you need to buy a book to learn, you can figure it out for free if you are the tiniest bit clever, or like me, frugal with the knitting tools til I figured out if this hobby was going to stick. I can’t believe what people will pay good money for. (uh, no looking in my toybox, though, mkay?)
Later in the week I will try and use the kit needles with some silk I was playing with in the IK lace pattern in the summer issue. I don’t really like the fuzzy fluffy of alpaca, so I thought I’d try silk, but have hated all my needles so far, because they are either too sticky or not pointy enough for thin yarn. We’ll see.

We’ve got some duplicate stitched dots:

A collar and button band:

And some buttonholes:

One sleeve is on, and I am working on the second. I love how blocking makes everything snap into place, I wish I had discovered it sooner. I still have to seam up the body and sleeves and that’s it! It will be easy to do the mattress stitch, since the two-row alternating stripes line up perfectly. It was a piece of cake inserting the sleeve for the same reason.
I am not sure how I feel about the collar. I think it should have gone on after the button band. What do you think? I’m not going to take it out, but I would have done it differently if I had thought about it first.
The buttonholes are strange – there are 5 on each side of the loops, and then opposite one side’s loops are holes in the band, I am guessing to pass the other side’s loops through when buttoning. Now I really need to find some buttons. I should have the other sleeve on in a few days, so maybe I can find some buttons on line and have them by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, I have been working on a sock as my passenger in the carpool knitting. It’s Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and I love the color. It’s the same yarn I used for my Clapotis, and I bought 2 skeins so I can make a pair of gloves this summer, to take on my Vermont vacation in October. To go with the Clapotis that I am sure I will need in Vermont in October. Since we are only going to see the leaves change (and hope that they will after the crazy weather they are having) we are just going to be driving around. We will be stopping in Harrisville and Green Mountain Spinnery, along the routes we’ll take.

Start with one backyard that has been baking under black plastic for 11 weeks.

Add 1 big truck that may or may not fit in your driveway after moving your own cars and your neighbors deciding they should move their cars too.

Add 1 cu yd of seed cover, still steaming!

Add 7 cu yd of soil/compost mix.

I said SEVEN.

Boggle at how you and one other person are going to move that huge frakkin’ pile o’ dirt onto your lawn. Get out the shovels. Discover just how bad it is to be so sedentary. Trade off shovelling with husband who is shovelling and dumping the wheelbarrow.

Enjoy the drink of the day, plenty of water with some cranberry juice to give it some flavor. Oh yeah, it’s only 9 am, and it’s 97F degrees in the shade. Drink more water.

Decide you can’t shovel anymore and start moving bags of bark mulch to their intended positions around the perimeter. Get bark mulch crumbs all over you, including in your bra! Stop working at noon, because you both are completely exhausted and it’s over 100F.

Get up at 7 am the next day and open up those bags of bark mulch. Finish the pile, which is even harder now because you burned all your muscles yesterday lifting shovels-full of heavy dirt. Stop at 10 am when the temp is in the high 90Fs.

Look at what you still have ahead of you, and decide to wait until the backyard is in shade before breaking down the wheelbarrow piles. Work until 10 pm, in the dark to keep the bugs from being attracted to the light. Spread out all the piles and try to make a flat lawn. Decide to be McGuyver and lay several cinder blocks on a tarp and drag them all around to compress the soil. Give up and collapse exhausted into bed and set the alarm for 6am, when Home Depot opens.

Arrive at 7 am at Home Depot to rent one of those thingies that you fill with water and roll over the soil to compact it. Attempt to install borders around the bark mulch edging, give up in frustration at the soil you started with which is like concrete. Spread fertilizer and seed. Cover with seed cover, using your expensive Tupperware Mix n’ Stor and 1 gal Pitcher to scoop out the steaming pile and shake it onto the ground. Get dizzy and stop sweating even though you feel like your face is on fire, while your husband continues to cover the seed and then rolls over it with the Home Depot thingy. Go inside and sit down and drink, drink, drink more water to see if you can get your body to sweat or pee or something. Forget to take pictures on the third day until it’s all over. Finally start sweating again, just as your husband is finishing up and is ready to collapse himself. Admire the hard work you have done, and hope that some grass will actually sprout instead of dying in the heat. Turn on the sprinkler.