A pre-holiday account

Books for the airplane? Check. (Yay, I got my new VK the other day!)

Beach towels and sunscreen? Check.

Pirate flag? Check.

Knitting projects for airplane, car, rainy days and general hanging around...? Uh...


I have been knitting the hexagonal Basalt Tank, but it requires paying attention and carrying around a big book and a page of errata. I could write out simplified instructions and ditch the book, but I think I'll just put it aside till I get back.

I have a sock on the go, and another sock of the same yarn which I will have to frog en route. Small, portable, easy... and I should get the wooden needles on the airplane, don't you think?


But just in case, I'll take another ball of sock yarn and some plastic needles. I'll be frogging that lone pinkish sock, too and making some socks that fit...

So, that's two socks, which would certainly occupy my time, but could get dull. So, I'll take along this new Mission Falls cotton which will turn into Jack, a Rowan kids' pullover, for Arthur (scroll down a bit). The yarn is not quite the right gauge, but what the heck, it's a rectangle with sleeves.


We'll be back in a couple of weeks -- at least one of which will be internet-free! So, see you in September, or close enough!

Arrr!

Arrr, matey!

We're getting ready to meet relatives with a boat. So, we must supply a pirate flag. I hope they have their own plank for walking....

We started out meaning to pierce the heart with the dagger, but this seemed better. Not so fierce, but with no drippy bits, either.

My sewing is not elegant. Finishing ends of knitting is not fun, but it is much more fun than finishing ends of teeny weeny thread! And there are no stupid bobbins in knitting, unless the knitter chooses to use them, which I don't, because anything called a bobbin is just a big frustration to me! Throw 'em overboard, I say! And where's the rum?

Saturday sky, and a deck update

Here's a sky for you, complete with blimp! No idea why it's there...


The deck is progressing. It's too hot to work up there a lot, and also so hot we wouldn't really want to be sitting up there anyways. We'll get the rest of the walls up before the end of the week, I imagine. And the whole thing will be ready for coffee in the morning by .... September, October?


While working on the deck this morning, Stephen found this little guy. A cicada, our very noisy summer bug.

And that's all for now!

Things for Afghanistan & the fate of the Rockpool

Thanks to these folks, I can drop off items at a LYS and they will get picked up and delivered to afghans for Afghans. Deadline is next week, so I'm working on that.

I will send them my two Baby Surprise Jackets (darn, one still needs buttons!) and several angora hats, wee size. I am working on another green one, which might end up with a red stripe, depending on how the yarn lasts. The white one might just go to a baby I know here. (Next time I'll brush the crumbs off the couch before taking pictures!)

These hats are soooo cute. Tiny, because that's what's wanted, and so warm! Put your hand in an angora hat, and you'll know it's going to keep a wee baby's head warm because your hand starts to sweat!

I tried this Adrienne Vittadini pattern with the Rockpool yarn, and got frustrated early on by a little one-stitch twist up the side of the cable. It was an organisational problem more than anything else: you have to zig on the left and zag on the right, but instead of giving you two charts, they just say, "Start at row 1 here and row 5 there," and before you know it you are .... messing up! I also might just have realised that I don't really want to knit a big thing! Hmm, perhaps another baby hat would be the way to go....


Right now I'm trying this yarn on a hexagon from the Basalt tank in Knitting Nature. (Thank heaven for errata!) As you can see, I'm not very far along. I'm not sure such a top would look okay on me, but it is so cool! I've seen a lot with half-hexagons at the side, but I would do the whole hexagons. We shall see. I'll finish my first piece and .... what, hold it up to my body? Dunno, but it's fun so far.

And now I just have to wait patiently for my new VK to arrive. I've seen it in the grocery store already, but my sub copy has not come yet.

A treat in the mail

A while ago, I won a contest at Alison's blog! Imagine!


So, yesterday a package arrived in the mail, containing this lovely pinky, purply, bluey sock yarn!


The colours are really rich and intense. You know there's sort of a green cast to most of my knitting and yarn purchasing, so this is a bit of a departure. Not sure if I want to make socks, to get stepped on and worn down, and of course a lacy scarf comes to mind! I'll just watch it for a bit and see what happens.

I'm contemplating a couple of things: ripping Rockpool and making it into an Adrienne Vittadini pullover from Vogue Knitting 1994; and making a denim jacket for a baby, but much smaller than the one I made last year, since I'm down to 3 or 4 balls of the yarn. Got some socks on the go, the big sweater, stuff like that.... Oh, to be organised.....

PS! Vogue Knitting has got together their 25th anniversary issue, and are offering some free patterns on their website. Some, ick, but some -- Wow!

Tendrils, tendrils, tendrils

Busy around here these days....


But not too busy to notice all the passersby gawking at our tendrils!


Well, they can't miss the leaves, either!


Oh, yeah, I have done some knitting, but it's so much more fun to photograph a plant than a bit of knitting! (Click to embiggen the pictures!)

Stumped at the yoke

Ah, stumped. Yes, thanks, OfTroy (pleased to meet you!), but this is not a "how do I do this" stumped... This is an Artistic Crisis.

I've got the bits joined together, and I can knit a few rows, but then I have to decide the Big Question: Do I put the inspiration first, or do I just try to make a beautiful sweater, that may or may not actually represent the thing that made me want to make it in the first place? I don't want it to be such an "in-joke" that only the recipient and I will know why on earth the sweater looks like that! But somehow I have to get that one clue across...

And the horror is, I can't show you the inspiration, because then the person connected with it could see, and the surprise would be gone. But I think it might look funny if I went too literal, you know what I mean? No....

And, it's hard to take pictures of tendrils!

Let's review, shall we?

What about those summer knitting goals?

1. Finish the Rockpool cardi. By the end of September! yeah, yeah
   
2. Finish the pink blotch socks... Well, there's a bit of a problem here. I knit one sock, it didn't fit Arthur, so I knit a somewhat modified Broad Ripple, and that didn't fit either, so I'm pausing for breath. I think the new goal should be "finish a pair of socks!"
   
3. Grey lacy gloves for me. I won't be wearing these for months, but I'll finish them! Uh, yeah, I'll get on that.
   
4. Use my red and black Stretchwool for a few charity hats. What? Oh, okay....
5. Here's another thing... I started a pink cotton garter stitch square one day when I went out with some non-knitters and needed something mindless. Now I seem to have made it into a log-cabin-esqe baby blanket, although I know no babies right now.
   

I finished this! It's about stroller sized. Still not sure about the recipient. I'd send it to Afghans for Afghans, but it's cotton, and they want warm wool, and it's a tad small.

6. Perhaps there's a Kiri in the future, but maybe I'd better finish those 5 things and then check in again! (That link is to a regular blog post with pictures and all; the pdf of the pattern is can be found in the sidebar here.) Ah, not yet!

But I have been busy. Let's see.... I made two baby surprise jackets and actually got the buttons sewn on one of them!

And I worked quite a bit on the big Lopi job, got the second sleeve done. Now I'm stumped at the yoke, so don't hold your breath.

Lucky these were summer goals, which can be kind of vague!

And I'll leave you with a picture of my garden. Last fall we got some little ornamental gourds, which were delightful for a while, but eventually got little rotten spots in them, at which point we tossed them out the front door for squirrel amusement. The squirrels amazed us by chewing them immediately into nothingness... But, this spring, all sorts of cute little green things sprouted in the yard, and we, perhaps foolishly, decided to see what happened....


Obviously, a few seeds escaped the squirrels, and now our front yard is covered in greenitude. Love those tendrils!

Psst....

I've finished the book.
If anyone wants to whisper secretly to me about it, my e-mail is in the sidebar.
Shhhh....

Saturday activities

Well, here's what we all wanted to be doing today. Elaine even got ahead of me at one point! But I'll catch up after her bedtime...

Deck progress. The boys got a new saw today, so things'll be just zipping along. And yes, some cooling liquids are consumed, after the sawing has been done!

I had a Saturday sky picture for you, but the dang camera battery seems to have given up the ghost and I can't get the pictures off the camera!

And a belated Saturday sky, with deck posts!

Back to an old project

Once, long long ago, I started what became known as The Sweater That Makes Me Sneeze, not seen since last November. It's two strands of Lite Lopi and/or Kureyon held together, so the sneezy wool fibers are over the place. But, it is lovely, and it needs to get done, and the weather is such that it's not too crazy to sit outside and make a wool sleeve.

So, although this looks like a very misshapen hat, here's about half of sleeve number 2:


Does it make you think of rocks, trees and water? That's the secret plan, anyways!


One day it'll all get joined on a yoke, and I guess get buttons or a zipper. One thing at a time....

Trouble with socks, and some almost finished knitting

This is why I've been having trouble getting socks to fit Arthur lately.


On your left, Arthur's friend's legs, perhaps average 10-year-old legs. And on your right, Arthur's legs. Must discard the kid socks book, move back to the adult socks book!

Whoo hoo, I have done all the knitting on two Baby Surprise Jackets. They used up seven 50g balls of Peer Gynt wool. Buttons and seams to come...

Number 1, all green and gold and regal looking! I am the groovinest baby around, it says.


Number 2, all desert mutedness. Please don't bother me, I'm meditating, this one says. The purple was once cream coloured with a bit of a gold fleck, but thanks to grape Kool Aid, it's now just the right sort of greyish-purple, rocks-in-the-distant-sunset colour.


And Stephen wants me to tell you that he is building a deck. There was once a deck here, but it became unsafely rotten, about 10 years ago, and was dismantled. One day soon, we shall have a new one, and a hammock, if all goes according to plan!

Cloudy Saturday Sky

We went out to Ontario Place today, and this is the sky, with CN Tower in the distance, and a big climbing thing for kids. The parents are all looking up to see their kids crawl across in the tube! We had a blast; it wasn't too crowded or too hot; but soon those clouds became too grey and rainy, and we fled the scene.

Big happenings around here

Toronto is quite a green city. Some, like those of us from the west coast, take a while to appreciate this, because Vancouver and Victoria are so much greener! But, along our streets we have lots of deciduous trees, and we are all thrilled when they put on their leaves in the (late!) spring to provide us with colour and shade. Our street has had a series of trees through the ages, and the largest ones we have now are 70- or 80-year-old Manitoba maples. (I love this sentence: "Although its weak wood, irregular form, and prolific seeding might make it seem like a poor choice for a landscape tree, A. negundo is one of the most common maples in cultivation...") These trees are quite plentiful around our neighbourhood, and they are getting very old -- if there's a big wind, it's these that crash their big branches down!


A few years ago, one dropped a huge limb on a family's van.


Luckily no one was hurt!




That was when Arthur looked like this:


This summer we have been sitting on our stoop looking at the one across the street. Sparse leaves, lots of spindly little empty branches. We would wonder if it could hit our house if it fell... Well, the city guys with chain saws got there before we had to find out, and spent the morning making it into not much more than a big trunk.

Beginning

Middle

End

Will they come back later to finish it off, or are they done?

Aboard the Titanic, and a few surprises

It's summer, the time for expeditions! The whole fan-damily went to the Ontario Science Centre yesterday. We'd got an advertising blurb mailed specially to us about the Titanic exhibition and so we just had to go check it out. The blurb, unfortunately for us, didn't tell us that it would cost almost $100 for a family of four to see it! However, since we'd already invested quite a bit of time to get there -- why oh why did anyone think that such a thing should be built miles from the centre of town? -- we forked over the cash and enjoyed our day.

This fish was also at the Science Centre, but not with the Titanic...

When you go into the exhibit, you get a ticket with a real passenger's name on it, and at the end is the list of all passengers and crew, divided by class, and you can see if you lived or died! Elaine and I were both first class ladies, and we both made it, Elaine with her child, but Stephen and Arthur were both in third class, and though Arthur's wife and child survived, both men were, as they say, "lost." You can read all about the ship and the iceberg and the lifeboats and the band playing on, here. The exhibit was really good, but the rest of the Science Centre was so crowded and noisy that who could tell what was what. Rule #1: Go late in the day, when all the day camps have gone home!

Now, then, knitting.


Once upon a time, I made this totally adorable and warm green angora hat. It will go to the Knit Cafe and then to Afghanistan to keep some little head warm. It is so tiny, but they need them for newborns.

I also made this totally adorable sock-yarn hat, which is called an Orbiter, from this old book, for a baby who is meant to be born sometime around Halloween. Unfortunately, it won't fit for another year or two.... But I have some white angora and might just make another wee hat out of that. In fact, I've been eying all my white and whitish wool lately, thinking of popping it in a pot of KoolAid to see what happens. So, we'll ... see what happens with that!

Right now, though, I am engrossed in the pattern du jour, the Baby Surprise Jacket! Since all the cool kids are doing it, I must do it too.


It'll be done in no time, since I can't wait to see how it all works out! I think I'll stick to two colours for this one, but with that KoolAid dye business in mind, we might see something crazier later this summer.

Knit on!

A nice wool hat

Here is Arthur, kindly wearing a snug wool hat outside on a warm June day! (It is no longer in the 30s, but a mild 21 degrees right now.) I just finished this Odessa, in leftover not-very-soft wool which we dyed last week in KoolAid.








We used a few too many colours, I think, and things got a bit muddy, but it's a nice muddy pink. (The flash picture below is way too pink!) The 50 grams was not quite enough for the whole hat, so we have a few green stripes towards the top, which just serve to show off the coolility of the pattern. Very clever, that Grumperina!


Look how those stripes twirl and zig and zag! I must make more of these!

Not much knitting this weekend

I'm pooped after that weekend and might just need a rest!

Saturday night we were invited to a neighbour's 50th birthday party at a local church hall. The theme was 70s prom night! There was a glitter ball, a giant cake, and an i-pod connected to big speakers, putting out all sorts of music that could only lead to punk after a few years. Honestly, who could live through that decade.... Well, I did, but I still don't like a lot of the music, though I recognized it all. And blue eye-shadow... Oy.

Elaine had a blast dancing! Arthur wore his glittery disco shirt, and Stephen wore a marvellous jacket he's had for decades, blue lame, double breasted, a bit tight these days, but quite lovely. Me, I still have the dress I wore to my high school grad, but it *ahem* has shrunk somehow.... But I have no pictures to show you. It was dark, you know.

Sunday morning Stephen went off to his last conference of the month, and the kids and I decided to head out to Centreville. We called on KT and James, and headed out on the ferry.

After picking the wrong line to get tickets -- that is, the one that went slowest -- we finally got to ride the giant swans. And the log ride and the ferris wheel and the skyride and the little train... Ate pizza, rode little motor boats, went to the candy store.

There is a little farm out there with a couple of retired police horses, two pigs the size of the QEII, and some wee chicks only 3 days old.

I did get a bit of knitting done! I've finished the pinkish baby blanket -- it's the size to go in the stroller or something, not crib size. I'll give you some gory details another day. And I started on a little hat for Afghans for Afghans and carried that around with me yesterday. It'll be a quick project that'll give me that boost from finishing something, and then I can get back to my list of unfinished business....

And now, we just have 3 more days of school to get through!

Say something stupid!

Now, this post is not called "say something, stupid," because that would be rude. It is an invitation to you to say something stupid! But not here, because we don't do stupid here...

My pal Dave, aka The Moth Man, who doesn't know how to knit but knows what he likes, has a blog and is giving away a "special treat" for the most stupid comment. I admit, I was stumped, but I'll come up with something. He is in the middle of moth season (I think it's the middle of moth season) and will show you many many beautiful creatures, like this one. I was present at some discussion of this business, and I suspect that the special treat may combine knitting and moths in some clever way, but we'll leave that up to him....

And you get a free picture of a bug, not a moth, on a flower.

Something to do over the summer

I read this on a knitting list, and thought I would pass it on to other Toronto knitters.


YOU KNIT, WE SHIP

Calling all Toronto knitters! How about dedicating some of your stash to an outstanding summer project? The Knit Café and the Toronto community are teaming up for this worthy cause.

afghans for Afghans is a humanitarian and educational people-to-people project that sends hand-knit and crocheted blankets and sweaters, vests, hats, mittens, and socks to the children of Afghanistan.

Helpful hints
· Wool and animal fibres offer the most warmth and perform best in rugged conditions. Please avoid synthetic yarns – they cannot be shipped.
· Knit or crochet your favorite patterns or try something new. For sample patterns see the AFA website. [Click on Guidelines & Address]
· Please do not use representational images (e.g. faces or animal designs) or religious or national symbols.
· Avoid white or very light colors. Feel free to mix a bright and cheery palate from your yarn collection!
· Please assume standard garment sizes. You are knitting for a Canadian climate. Hats need to cover ears, sleeves need to go the wrist and torsos need to be long.
· No used items or scarves please.

Drop off and Deadlines
You can drop off your projects at the Knit Café, 1050 Queen Street West. The dead-line for the next shipment is September 25th, 2007.

Web-site
For more information, check out the web-site: http://www.afghansforafghans.org

A hat that you knit will be well-loved and passed down through several families of Afghan children. Make this your summer project!

Too bad they don't want lone squares, or scarves! I'll try some little socks, perhaps, and some hats. Once I get my pile of WIPs down a bit!

Edited to add: They have a blog!

KFYS, PS, WIP Wipeout

You know, I thought I would be so focused and organised. I'd knit from my stash; I 'd follow Project Spectrum for colour inspiration; I'd get that pile of works-in-progress down to a manageable level. Well, now it's June, half-way through the year, and more than half-way through the PS and KFYS periods, and how's it going?

I have paid no real attention to the Project Spectrum plan. I think it's because we're given too much leeway! "Work with black! or red! or metallics!! And no hurry, you have two months!" Nope, can't do it.... Other things get in the way, and PS just gets left out.

Knitting from stash has been fine, except that (ahem) I have once or twice bought yarn, just like in the old days (just a bit, here and there, and on sale, and if I think, "I'll make a scarf," then I put it back down) and have put it in the closet and not got around to using it.

And I've seen stuff in the stash that I'd like to use, so I start another project, like this baby blanket for no baby! This adds to the WIP pile! So I may just have more active knitting projects now than when I started this plan!

The blanket will have used up 4 balls of Paton's Cotton Chunky, which was discontinued about the time Arthur was born! One ball for the middle, a bit of leftover blue log-cabinned around that, another ball of pink for the next round of log-cabin, and yes, it's a bit assymmetrical, because I just finished off each ball on the last band of the round. Then I had a ball left and didn't want another plain pink round. So I'm picking up the stitches as if to log-cabin, knitting a row, and then am attaching the garter zig-zag border as I go. As you see, I have some way to go, and we can all be nervous about the amount of yarn that will be needed.

I did finish a pink blotch sock.

It's plain stocking stitch, which is why it was done relatively quickly... and it's a bit tight. It might work, but before I graft the toe and make another one, I thought I would try a Broad Ripple, but with more stitches and smaller needles.

I can't imagine a sock on 3.25 mm needles holding up very well, so I'm doing it on 2.5s, and I added 2 stitches to each pattern, so I have 64 instead of 56.

The pink ones are 64 stitches, but this pattern, with the eyelets, should have more give. It's all trial and error with growing feet around here. (Right....) This is some of the yarn I bought recently, Regia Nation, 5388, half-price. I also got some green and white, 5389, at the same time. Just big stripes! Stay tuned for more sock news....

And we shall have even more lovely yarn in a week or two... In the pile I got last week, there were a couple of skeins of whitish wool. They would make a hat or mitts, but are not too exciting in their present state. And as school is ending and we are all at loose ends for a bit, I figured we could amuse ourselves with a bit of Kool-Aid dyeing! I'm buying every flavour I can see, so we should be able to make a fine mess. The kids are keen to do the "handpainted" option, rather than just put it all in a pot with one colour. Oh, boy!

And a clematis for your viewing pleasure...