Yarn, Glorious Yarn!

Guess what I found on my favorite chair this morning? Four skeins of yarn, glorious yarn, hand-dyed by my daughter Angie. She bought a one pound cone of machine washable Blue Face Leicester at our local LYS which is going out of business (again and a saga in itself) and did her magic. The photo does not do justice to the dye job, but it's the best I could get. The colors are darker and richer than the photo shows. So here's the unveiling of Angie's newest project:

What a talented daughter I've got. Does that mean I need to knit a pair of socks?

"Knit On!"

Thief

There is a thief in this house, and he must be identified. So hear ye all, Sam I Am, aka Sammir, aka Sammy, aka Sam is a thief. His fetish is stealing pony tail elastic bands from anywhere his owners lay them down and then stashing them in his food dish. Today was the last straw. He stole it right off my night stand. This must stop! Therefore, I am posting an APB for this thief.

You have been found out. Your rap sheet is quite lengthy. Turn yourself in. Your owners.

Dem-Fischer-sin-Fru (The Fisherman's Wife)

We had a nice weekend. My middle daughter and her husband ventured out yesterday and came from the Detroit area to the west side of the State to visit with John's Dad and us. We gathered at my daughter's father-in-law. I brought Johnny Marzetti (known in Michigan as Goulash) and a Salad. (Johnny Marzetti is basically Macaroni mixed with browned hamburger in a tomato sauce with Oregano and salt and pepper, baked with American Cheese slices on top.) Heide brought the garlic bread and one of John's sisters brought desert. We exchanged Christmas gifts. It was a nice and relaxing afternoon although I lost my Clapotis right from around my neck. Heide looked at it, and said "Oh that's really nice." What is a mother to do but to say, "here, you may have it." I suppose, I'll have to knit myself another one. In case you don't remember what it looked like and want a second peak, my August 20, 2007 post contains a picture of the Clapotis.

I have started swatching for the new German KAL, dem-fischer-sin-fru (the fisherman's wife). The yarn is from Knit Picks and contains 70% Alpaca and 30% silk. It is the usual weight of 880 yards (ca. 805 meters) to 100 grams. The yarn is a little thicker than the yarn recommended by the designer, Monica Eckert, which is 870 meters per 100 grams. But I think it will be OK. I changed needles from the recommended 3.5 mm to 2.0 mm which gives me the appropriate width of the swatch at 11 cm.

The photo does not show the pattern too well. (I think I fiddled with editing a little bit too much.) The left swatch was knit with 3 mm needles and came out at 13 cm wide and 15 cm long. I used 2.0 mm needles on the right swatch and that swatch came out to about 11 cm by 13 cm which is what the pattern calls for. So unless, I keep seeking a different yarn, I'll have to knit the shawl with 2.0 mm needles instead of 3.5 mm ones. The variegation of the yarn will be diminished somewhat by the width of the shawl; the light blue won't pool quite as much. All I have to do now is wait until Friday for the first part of the pattern to be published.

"Knit on!"

Queen Anne's Lace Shawl finished!

It's finished! the Queen Ann Lace Shawl designed by MMario. It was a fun and easy knit, and the first time I used larger needles for a lace project. I started out the first few rows with double pointed needles of about 3.5 mm needles and then went to the smallest 5mm (US8) needles and finally went up to a 5.5mm (US9) needle. The change in size of needles was purely out of necessity rather than design. The 5mm circular needle got too small and I was too cheap to spend the money for another Addi.

Amazingly, there is no discernible difference in the knitting between different-sized needles. The cast off used in the design was the Norwegian cast-off which consists of: k1, put back on left needle, knit same stitch again and return to left needle, k2tog. That's quite a bit of knitting when you have 700+ stitches on the needle.

I used Knitpicks lace yarn at 440 yds per 50 grams. The yarn was hand dyed by a friend, the owner of a nearby LYS. Since she decided not to carry this particular dye job any longer, she gave them to me free of charge. Thanks Jane, but you're not getting the shawl despite your generosity.

Blocking of the shawl has to wait until I devise a way of being able to block at a height comfortable for me since I'm presently having difficulty bending over.

"Knit on!"

No further words needed

Since, I was tired of casting off the Queen Ann's Lace shawl, I started goofing around on the internet and found this photo on Yahoo's most viewed photos page:

Now that I've had my fun back to casting off. Only 300 stitches or so to go.

"Knit On!"

Another tale of eggs, and some yarn

I just stomped through the snow to feed the chickens and found another tiny egg. So I decided it was once again time to tell a couple of egg or chicken stories from my childhood.

It was early Spring or Winter and my aunt Agnes with whom we lived for a time during WWII had not been to the chicken/geese coop in a couple of days. I can't remember whether it was due to the weather or due to too much fighting around us, but there was snow on the ground. When she finally was able to go to the chicken coop again, I played shadow and trundled along behind her. ( I was probably between four and five years old.) Well, the chickens and the geese had had it with being cooped up and had invaded each others territory so that by the time we opened the door they quickly flew the coop, so to speak. When it came time to lock them up again, my aunt was walking behind her chickens, trying to shoo them into the coop, while I, with my hair braids bobbing in the air and my arms waving wildly, tried to be a big girl and help my aunt. Of course, the opposite was accomplished, I managed to scatter all the chickens again.

The second story is from after the war. My mother and I walked several miles to the next village to visit a farming family she knew. Of course, now I realize that such visits were always timed perfectly with some farm activity that would gain us food. My mother had a sixth sense for such occasions. This time the farmer's wife also gave my mother an egg which she laid carefully on the top of whatever else she had gleaned. On the way home, I must have gotten too warm and took off my cardigan which my mother laid neatly on top of the egg in her shopping bag. Well, I think you can guess the end result. When we got home, I grabbed my cardigan from her bag and with it came flying out the egg which, of course, broke as it landed on the wooden floor. Disaster had struck! But we ate the egg anyways; it was carefully scraped off the floor and mother used it in some dish or another.

Now that I've told a couple of yarns about my childhood, comes some real yarn. I bought the roving at SOAR which was held this past Fall in Michigan and my daughter, Angie, spun it up for me. It is a silk/merino mix and spun up into a kind of light grayish, purplish blue blend. It will make a beautiful shawl, I think.

Knit on!

Christmas Beauty

I have been amiss in posting photos of my Christmas goodies from Angie. I got some really nice hand spun and hand dyed yarn and one of those small tote bags in which one can carry a knitting project such as socks. But I think, if I try real hard I can stuff a shawl project into it too. And I am really racking my brain to come up with an appropriate project for the yarn. It'll come one of these days. So here without further ado, provided Flickr will cooperate, are the pics.

As you can see some of the yarn is a Wool/Alpaca mixture. The beginning of a felting project is starting to percolate in my mind.

Oh, winter also has returned. After a couple of days of warm weather and just about every snow flake having melted, we got dumped on, albeit only a smallish dump. The sun is even peaking through the clouds, an oddity on the Western side of the State due to Lake Michigan being near. So for those who are not familiar with Michigan weather here are a couple of obligatory photos of snow around the property.

See, how heavy the snow is?

And here comes the sun! Yeah!

Knitting is continuing at my house. I am about 2/3 done with the Queen Ann's Lace shawl. I'm trying real hard not to start another project because the last Friday of January the new KAL dem-fischer-un-sin-frau (the fisherman and his wife) will begin. By the way the name of the shawl is in a northern German dialect.

So, let us all "Knit on!"; some of us will get into less trouble that way.