I think I am done

I have sewn everything up and put a little edging around the whole thing. I may yet take the last bit of orangey-brown and crochet more edge, to stop the curling here and there.

I must say that I am not too happy with these squares. I don't mind a bit of unevenness and tend to embrace the crazy in blanket design, but this really doesn't turn my crank. The colours were not all chosen at once, but there are too few of them to mismatch properly, if you know what I mean.

The yarn is superwash, so I will toss it in the washer and see how it all turns out. If those flippy bits don't learn to behave, more action will be taken. Perhaps.

All the squares

Sixteen squares are knitted up and blocked. They are clearly not all the same size, so some garter-stitch bits are being inserted here and there.

It'll be done this week, I figure.  I have only a bit of the yellow, quite a bit of lilac and almost a whole ball of the browny-orange that you see in the closer mitered corner. I might cave and buy another ball of something for the outer edge. We shall see.

I now have a baby to give this to. A colleague of Stephen's just had a baby who had some initial difficulties and scared the pants off all of us, but who seems to be improving now. One forgets just how risky this baby-having lark is. Suddenly, a tiny thing happens that turns out to be incredibly difficult and dangerous.

Anyways, enough about that! I'm sure that a knitted blanket won't help the physical well-being of the baby, but it might give a teeny boost to the parents who have been through such emotional ups and downs. At least, that is what we knitters like to think.

Wild things we found long ago

Once upon a time, in 2002, we faced the choice that so many young(ish) homeowners face. Renovate or move... Our house was built in 1911 and probably had 4 bedrooms as well as a "second parlour." Someone came along in the late 1970s and took all the interior walls out, making a giant master bedroom on the top floor, and a giant bathroom and two sort of bedrooms -- separated by the staircase but with no walls around them -- on the second floor. The people we bought the house from had two small children and a live-in nanny, who slept behind a huge and wonderful curtain -- they obviously had chosen the move option!

We now had two little kids and the prospect of rooms with walls was very appealing. So, we got some guys to come and move stairs, redo the kitchen, make walls, take the roof off and put it back on again, slightly different... It was madness.

But! At one point we took down the wallboard above the living room fireplace. The previous, minimalist owners had built the wall straight up, and we wanted a mantlepiece.

And we found this:

It's clearly the Eiffel Tower and something we call the Empire State Building, but I suppose it is just a generic skyscraper.

 

It is not really wallpaper. The paint is rolled right onto the wall somehow. You can see here the plaster and the image are cracked together.

 

It was very intriguing and we wished we could save it, but there were problems beyond a few cracks:

We covered it up again, and it sits there hidden behind our present wall.

I don't know if this was original to the house. The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889. Early skyscrapers that kind of look like this are the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool; and the Woolworth Building in New York, built in 1913. I would bet, though, that it is from the 20s or 30s.

This past weekend I went to the Toronto Archives and found out that the first person to live in the house was a Mrs Agnes McIvor, in 1911. Much more research can be done in microfilms of assessment rolls and city directories. We found a few names scribbled on hidden walls during the renovation, too, and we'd like to see if we might match up previous owners with those names. It's kind of like genealogy for your house.

One day, if you're lucky, I'll scan an old photo of the wallpaper we found under the kitchen sink in our very first apartment. It had scenes of St Basil's Church in Red Square on it. Maybe there's a trend here and we should look into some modern architectural wallpaper. Here's houses. Here's Paris. Ah, Paris....

The sky thus far

My sky scarf is slowly but steadily growing.

Every day since December 1, 2011 I knit one ridge, choosing two yarns from among bright blue (no sky is ever really that colour, indeed), softer blue (rather grey; no sky is ever that colour, either), white clouds (with pink and yellow) and grey clouds (with occasional brown and green bits). I have also added sparkly yarn on a couple of rows, but I don't think it really shows up here. Those were days when we were teased with a bit of snow.

I know the colours are not really sky-like, but a) it makes a more beauteous scarf, I think and b) I'm working with stash, so I did what I could. 

The eyelet row signifies the first of a new month.

Today is bright and sunny, a double blue row. I must say I like those the best. 

January square

We start the new year off right, with January's square done by the third! Stephen gave me Lynne Barr's Reversible Knitting for Christmas, and this is one of the stitches in it.

I like both sides, and now can't even remember which is her side A and which is B.

I think I like the top picture better, for a garment. For a blanket, this is not actually a very good choice of stitch -- people's fingers and toes will get caught in the drop stitch floats.

As usual, the whole melange on the floor. 

Looking at my yarn supply, I could make this blanket 20 squares instead of 16, I think. Or I could put sashes between the squares, instead of just sewing them together. Of course, we have to see how they all block out, and how much fiddling will be needed to get them together!

Just for good measure, I also darned two socks for Arthur this morning. I took care of another pair by deciding I have to take the toes completely off and reknit them. Not a chore I look forward to, but then, nor is darning. There are still several socks in the darning pile!

A new year with new plans

Oh ho, what shall I do in 2012?

I seem to have joined some of those groups on Ravelry, like 12 in 2012, and the more dangerous Stash knit down group, where I have pledged to knit 12 things for charity in 2012, plus I may have said some things in the thread where people are doing 12 12s.

My list from that group in fact is:

1. 12 socks (six pairs)
2. 12 dishcloths
3. 12 afghan squares
4. 12 gifts
5. 12 things for charity
6. 12 hats (some baby, some adult)
7. 12 projects from books I haven’t used. I have so many patterns I look at but don’t knit!

I think the items from #3, #6 and #7 will overlap quite a bit with #5, and #2 and #4 might well be almost identical! Of course, that's only 7 times 12. The trick will be keeping track -- and I might well just knit away as usual and not bother with the keeping track. Bad to be so casual about it already, on the first day of the year!

Other plans:

1. Finish Botticelli
2. Finish Sunday Best, abandoned in the summer, I think
3. Make something with my Rowan 4 ply -- maybe just a ton of hats, maybe a blanket, maybe I can get Elaine to choose some pattern.

Generally, I think I will tend towards smaller things, rather than sweaters.

Someday soon I will count up my 2011 knitting!

It snowed

Elaine and I started making this wreath a while ago, and we finalized it some time before Christmas.

Today we have a bit of snow on the ground. Mainly a dusting of snow over top of a layer of bumpy ice. Pretty horrible!

I'll try to have a few computer-free days here, and see you in 2012! Best wishes!

New art for the walls

Once upon a time, like 1986, my friend went to a meeting on the U of T campus and met a woman who was a bucket of fun, and we all became pals and had wild mid-university-career parties. Actually, I don't remember it clearly at all, except that we ate lunch together and it was generally good.

Then, once upon a time in this past autumn, I saw something on Pinterest that I liked (but now I can't find it) and I clicked through and found a picture of a nice room that had a) the same rug my daughter has in her room and b) a silkscreen print by Alanna Cavanagh. And I said, Huh, I used to eat lunch and go to parties with Alanna Cavanagh! So I pinged and tweeted and whatever, and got in touch with her.

Of course, we checked out her portfolio, because it is kinda exciting to find that the person who used to trudge around after class asking shops to sell her notecards has become an actual artiste who gets her stuff in magazines! Ooh, la. I guess a lot can happen in 25 years.

She had a sale a few weeks ago and I bought two silk-screen prints. Now they are all framed and lovely in our house.

We have the Island of Dr Moreau Penguin book cover, slightly tea-stained.

It shares the wall with some of Stephen's mom's watercolours.

I never bought the deck chairs, or a mug.  I don't mail out, or paper my room with, the postcards, and I still have not knitted the mittens, though indeed I mean to. But I am very happy to have a funkified Penguin cover on my wall! I looked on our bookshelves, and though we have a ton of the black Penguin Classics, we don't have any in this style.

We also got the Alphabet Legs and hung it in the front hall, with Stork on the Moon, by Arthur, age 7 or so, and the "check your hair on the way out the door" mirror.

I really like the red dots, and of course, the letters. And the shoes. 

After all this I don't expect Santa will have much more for Stephen or me!

I hope everyone has a jolly happy Christmas. Things might be a bit slow around the ol' blog, but I'll try to do a post or two before 2012!

Still here

Oh, my, I guess we have been a bit busy!

I looked around yesterday and found that not only were there unfinished knitting projects all over the place, there were unfinished rows... I stop in the middle of a row to deal with some crisis, and then get distracted forever. One of my projects that will be lying around for an age is the Sky Scarf: 

The blue rows represent sunny days and the mixed up rows are the cloudy days. Some are a bit blue and a bit cloudy, but as you can see, we've had more cloud than sun this month. Luckily, I only have to knit one ridge a day on this... lucky because I often find that I forgot to carry the unused yarns up the side and so I rip back and reknit a few days worth again! I'm not sure my yarn will hold out for a year-long scarf, and I am also not sure I want a 10-foot scarf! This is 3 weeks of December, and it is about 8 inches long, so that means.... yeah, I could easily have a 10-foot scarf at the end of 52 weeks. I'll just keep plugging along and see what happens.

Another project I found abandoned mid-row is a dishcloth I carry around with me. I started it when I had to take Arthur to the fracture clinic for ankle x-rays. Silly boy jumped/landed incorrectly and managed to take a tiny chip out his bone, but mainly damage his ligament. So he has the air-boot cast thing and a pair of crutches and has to do some exercises and it's a nuisance! But, hanging around the clinic, I did get a good start on a red dishrag which I will not trouble to take a picture of right now.

I was knitting it on the bus yesterday and had a brief conversation with a young man who had also knit dishcloths. He was sitting across from me and had a big white fluffball of a dog with him, to whom he would talk reassuringly. "This is going to be a long ride, but it'll be okay." And when the bus driver was shouting at another driver, the guy tells the dog, "Don't worry, he's not yelling at you." The dog was totally placid and unconcerned through all this, and was wearing a bib that said, "Autism Support Dog," so I realised the dog was just there to listen, really. What a great thing -- it's like having a sleeping baby in a stroller who acts as an excuse for harried mothers in the supermarket who have to talk through their shopping choices.

I hope to have more delights for you in the next couple of days... I still have a few chores to do, of course. We are having company for the big Christmas dinner: a Buddhist and a Jew, in fact. So we are serving pork roast. Go figure. Must buy the Brussels sprouts shortly -- one year there was a shortage and we had to have cauliflower or some such thing!

And now, with no dog and no baby, I just run around muttering about this to myself!

Year-end stash flashing

We'll start with a sort of overview of the whole bed. Note the large empty space! Compare with January's pictures.

Please note that I got rid of those three off-white Lamb's Pride skeins, and the dark grey Cascade. Never going to use it! Unlike all those tiny bits at the bottom which I ... can't think what to do with, but kept anyways! They were in a bag with a spool knitter.

Below, sock yarn in the top right corner. Really, 2012 will be the year of socks, just as soon as I finish the two sweaters on the needles and a few other things! And there's that nice Rowan cotton, top left. And and and....

My latest

I call this Symphony in Oddments.

The silly song of the season

Last year, I showed you the Silent Monks, and before that was the Partridge in the Pear Tree, and this year, it's Jingle Baas
 

"Making of" here.

And I made a martini glass dishcloth:

Ginger Lemon cookies

I tried out some slightly fancy cookies yesterday. Ginger-lemon pinwheels! You make two doughs, one with brown sugar and molasses and spices and an egg yolk, and one with white sugar and lemon zest and the egg white.

You have to chill the doughs, roll them out flat, chill them again, somehow get one layer on top of the other, roll them up together and freeze them for a bit, till the whole log is firm enough to slice into these cool swirly cookies.

Tips from our test kitchen: Do actually try to get your dough rolled out to a rectangle, and do try to get your rectangles sort of even! That way your cookies will all have the same number of swirls! Also, we used margarine because that was easy, but next time it will be butter, because the soft margarine doesn't harden in the fridge (duh) and I think the dough would have been easier to handle in all that chill/roll/slice business if it had had butter in.

Very tasty and good, but I'm not sure these will be our cookie exchange cookies. Must keep doing research!

And now December's square, and a project for 2012

In a flurry of activity, I knitted up a square for December. It is a pretty simple 3x2 basketweave, which was a nice break. Six rows to the pattern: four are pretty much the same, one is knit and one is purl!

We have here three pictures taken after dark. You have the flash picture of what is meant to be the back of the pattern,

the slightly adjusted no-flash picture of the "front" of the pattern,

and the no-flash, stand-on-a-chair picture of the whole lot. I still need one more row of four to make it a decent size, but I will worry about that next year! Must get more yellow in!

There was another flurry of activity, which has thus far resulted in this:

It is my Sky scarf, which I am making with stash sock yarns. I was all set to go off to the yarn shop, but some little voice suggested I see what I had on hand.

The grey/brown/green is for dark, thundery skies, and the yellow/blue/pink is the light, fluffy cloud colour. Then we have bright blue (though I have never seen a sky that colour, actually) and the paler blue, and twinkly, which I had originally thought would be for when I checked the sky at night, but maybe I will use it for snow or tornadoes or other lively stuff!

I am using a big and a smaller needle, because I think it will be a better looking scarf, but I also think that 365 garter ridges on such big needles will result in a 3-meter-long scarf. Let's just see how the yarn holds out, and how crazy this project gets! It might end next November 30, or it might end when I run out of yarn, or it might just end when I decide to end it.

Onward. Tomorrow I have to prepare for a dinner party, go to an artist's open house, get Elaine to a slumber party, come home and have the dinner party. And knit a ridge on the Sky scarf!

That was easy

What do you know, I had just a few rows to do on the November square, and all I had to do was sit down and knit them.

Now, one more square this year, four more in January to April, sew it up and edge it in May, and Bob's your uncle.

Eleven down, five to go.

Or I could just barrel on and make the squares faster than that. Quick, someone have a baby!

Last post of the month

And now, snow.

It may or may not stick around, but it sort of disrupts one's day, especially if plans included walking to the liquor store and bringing home a quantity of holiday-friendly bottles.

I think plans might now include finishing that November square before November is gone forever.

I may not post for a while, unless something thrilling happens, like I finish the square! NaBloPoMo is over for another year. Next year, who knows, I might try the "knit a sweater in a month" version!

Plans for December

My Botticelli is so close to being finished that I will just plug along with it. I need to do another boring sleeve and then I get to sew it all up and do the marvellous edging. I have knit this whole thing in order to get to the edging. I hope I don't tire of it too quickly -- I likely have to knit about 6 or 7 feet of it. You can see it here.

I do need to finish up that November square, and do another square for December.

Stephen has been lamenting the miserable state of our dishcloths, so I might whip up a couple of shiny new ones just for him! If I do succeed in this, he will likely find them under the tree on Christmas morning. But that would be my only Christmas knitting.

So, mainly, make a sweater for me, and, I hope, a few square things, wool and cotton.

I couldn't stop myself

I got to the end of the ball of brown and just somehow started in on green. Plans are made for the other sleeve to be ... not quite the same.

One day I will knit a big piece of plain coloured stocking stitch, but right now, I ... didn't.

In cabbage news, it still looks mostly like this:

 

But the leaves that have fallen off and are lying in the pot look like this:

 

Someone needs to dye a yarn like that -- old red cabbage leaves, the new colour for fall!

Missed chance

I occasionally look at Ebay, though my first burst of enthusiasm has certainly passed. The other day I saw this, a cardigan knit of Rowan Denim. Not something I would have knit myself, but from a quick search at Ravelry I found that it is called Favour and probably has more than 20 balls of yarn in it!

The auction had a thrilling finale. Only one other person wanted it, and they put in a bid with about 3 minutes to go. I raised my bid, but balked at going really high, so they still got it for less than the yarn would cost new.

But think of the fun I would have had unravelling it, letting the yarn stew for ever in my closet, wondering what I had got so worked up about. 'Tis better this way, perhaps!

Big day for some of us

Once upon a time Elaine went to an open house for a nice, private, middle school with an excellent reputation. It seemed it would be a fine thing to go there.

Admission requirements, however, include writing the SSAT test, so she is, at this very moment, in the middle of a three-hour exam.

Poor wee thing!

I'm sure she'll do fine, as she is very good at the things they ask for, but still, it's an intense thing to do.

In my day, you know, we just went to the local school, but things (and location) have changed. We spent all last year looking for a high school for Arthur. We haven't even looked at other middle schools for next year, so it will be months before we make any sort of decision. Agony for one and all, really!

Edited to add: She's now home, and has fallen asleep over an Asterix book on the couch!