Fun Things I Found on the Internet

1. Did you know there's a knitted Mona Lisa?

(Photo Credit: Steve Plummer)

It's done in shadow knitting; you can see it here. Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer, two retired math teachers, have launched into a world of "Illusion Knitting" and have lots of fun things on their web site. You can even buy patterns! (Here is the link on Ravelry; they also have very cool mathematical knitted stuff too!

2. A Dalek Doggy suit.

(Photo Credit: Peach Kraft on Ravelry)

Ya gotta love it, even if it does exterminate you. This is a free Ravelry download pattern, so go nuts.

3. Doctor Jayne Hat:

(Photo Credit: holynarf (Lindsay)

It's a Jayne hat in construction, but with the fourth Doctor Who scarf colors. I think it's totally awesome. I hesitate to knit the really loooong Doctor Who scarf, but a hat ... seems like a good compromise. I love that it's the best of two worlds, too. It's just awesome. The pattern is here and on Ravelry (free download). 

That's all for today! You never know what I'll turn up next!

Idle Chat

Cats make a science out of lounging.

They do it together, or in pairs.

They choose the weirdest places and make it look perfectly reasonable to lounge there.

Buddhists strive to reach Nirvana ... I just want to be a well-fed, pampered, loved cat.

 

My Spinning

Just checking in with my spinning ... I have spun exactly half of my roving:

I love the colors. The plied yarn will be very nice, colorwise, I think. Now to spin the other half! 

My spinning still is lumpy, but it's better than it used to be. ::shrug:: I will keep trying until I get it right.

My stash of fiber fits into only ONE tub. (My stash of yarn is significantly more.) Spinning a little every day, about an hour, gets through fiber pretty fast, compared to spinning once every 6 months, as I used to. I was getting better before my stroke; I had a spindle (well, one of several spindles) that I was getting in the habit of spinning a little on every day, and I noticed an increase in my consistency and the speed at which I could get stuff done. Then I had my stroke and started over.

I'm starting to see a difference in my spinning, and I am getting stuff done pretty good now. My spinning still doesn't meet up to what I used to make, but in another year or so, maybe I will see the difference. The yarn I am making is *almost* worthy of being knittable. Maybe it's better than I think, I dunno. It might be fine.

I'm gonna stop blathering now and go knit.

New Yarn

Look what I got on Saturday:

Sock yarn from Lisa Souza! That's Appaloosa on the left, signed  by both Lisa and Lorrie; Water Gardens in the middle; and Orion Nebula on the right. Her Sock! is 450 yards of fingering weight lusciousness made up of 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, and dyed in colors that will make you weep for joy, weep, I tell you. Appaloosa is gorgeous. I never would have ordered a brown color, but now that it is my hands, it is so pretty! 

Ahhhh, now to let it marinate in my stash for a bit. I have a couple or three shawls to do first. But right now, I'm ruffling along, or maybe I should say flouncing along. 

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! 

Thinking Out Loud (Ignore at Will)

I think I'm going to make another A Little Bit Bohemian scarf out of my red and black handspun. I counted the yarn as it hung on its peg, multiplied by the number of inches around my swift, divided by 36, and I think I have 264 yards of it, more than enough for a Bohemian scarf. The yarn is kind of wonky in places, but that will just make it that much more Bohemian. 

      

The fact that it's wonky in some places is why I don't think it's smart to make socks out of it. It's more a scarf kind of yarn. I hope my next batch of yarn, and the plying of it, will be better. I must remember to go slow, and not rush through as fast as I can. I think it will turn out to be better than the red and black yarn, but still not sock worthy. 

It's pretty hard to go from spinning like this:

     

.... to spinning the wonky crap I've been spinning. It's like an artist losing his right arm (assuming he's right-handed). I have to learn the whole damn thing all over again. Actually, it's harder; try drafting the fiber with only one hand ... you'll end up using your mouth and really, that's not the kind of fiber you should be swallowing. 

I miss spinning the way it used to be, and I miss my circular needles, and I know my knitting and spinning are great and most people can't believe how good it is, but to me, it's never going to be good enough.

I know. Must change attitude. Be positive. Believe. I'm trying...

My Knitting

Mouse 23:

I'd like, on the one hand, to start stuffing them, but I kinda like leaving them unstuffed, too, because I am not sure what I would do if they were stuffed and the cats discovered them! They're so sneaky ...

I put a little more on my afghan and used up the rest of the lime green:

Then I started my Bohemian scarf ... I was a little worried I wouldn't like the pattern. I shouldn't have been; the pattern was wonderful! Every now and then you find the exact right pattern and the perfect yarn for it, and it is good; this was one of those times. 

      

     

It was a quick knit; it only took 2 days. I added a little more to my afghan:

The Heart Cookie mitts that I blocked this week also took only 2 days.

But now I am knitting something that is taking a couple weeks to knit. I am using this:

 

Wonderful, sparkly skein of purple yummimess ... to make the flounced scarf of Drops design (Drops 129-28). I saw the woman at Have A Yarn in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia knitting it in pale gray, and it looked so nice. I chose a ball of the purple, and got the pattern from her, and set it aside. Now I finally am getting around to it!

It is knit on size 3 needles ... if I had really thought about it, I might not have done that. I could probably have gone up a size or two ... or three or four ... but I didn't. I just blindly followed the pattern, like some demented sheep. It's coming along nicely, but it seems slow after the last two projects!

 

I can knit about 6" a day, on a good day. Maybe I'll be done by next week! I keep telling myself that the ball is only 229 yards long ...

 

All in a Good Cause

I ordered a Cardioid Shawl kit last week, and it came recently. It's going right to the top of my queue!

It contains the pattern, a skein of Sock-aholic Serene in Blueberry Pie, and a charming little stitch marker with a heart motif. This is going to be cool, and it's a great cause, too.

Speaking of causes, Lisa Souza has a thing on her blog about the Grace Foundation. She's donating the proceeds from sales of her "Appaloosa" colorway until June 30 to the Grace Foundation, which is having trouble due to the Susanville 70 -- a group of horses that have been rescued, and have been tied up in a legal battle ever since, and now the pregnant horses have had foals, and the months of eating sand and debris has had long term liver problems for the horses, and medical bills for the Grace Foundation. I've made my purchase to help! Those poor horses...

What A Difference A Day Makes

Here's my lilac bush day before yesterday:

There's little buds there! I was excited to see them opening so early. Then yesterday, I looked out my window to see this:

They are much bigger. It was so rainy here, I guess I just figured that the lilacs would take a day off, but no, they are the postmasters of the world, never taking a day off despite the rainy weather, always trudging forward through the rain or hail or sleet or snow to make their appointed rounds. Once they start blooming, there's no stopping them, like nature everywhere. 

 

I am constantly amazed by things at this time every year. Everything grows so fast! It is wonderful.

Nicky is amazed too.

 

The Boisterous Bird Bungle

A couple days ago I was sitting in the kitchen with the back door open, and I heard a strange yowl. It started far away and quickly got louder, until it was right in the kitchen with me -- Nora had a bird in her mouth, and she was trying to say, "I have a bird for you, Daddy! Look, a bird! I caught a bird!" Her mouth was full of bird, though, so it sounded funny.

She went past me into the living rom and dropped said bird, which was still alive and more or less unharmed.

Hilarity ensued. Daddy tried really, really hard to catch the poor little chirping bird, which had mental powers of its own, and flouted his efforts at every turn. It went from living room to bathroom to kitchen, Nora and Daddy chasing it every step of the way. Finally it landed under the bathtub where no one could get to it. Daddy put Nora outside and shut the door. 

After a little while, the bird came out, and we held the front door open (Nora was too intent on getting her bird at the back door to notice) and chased it out of the house, where it flew to safety in the forsythia bush. I certainly hope it is too smart to let the Evil Kitty sneak up on it again!

"All yer birdies are belong to me!"

Why I Write

‎"Write with your eyes like painters, your ears like musicians, your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself. Don’t let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark, or their gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on the paper.” - Gloria Anzaldúa

 

I ran across this quote awhile ago, thought it was neat, so I saved it. Some days this is the writer I want to be, some days it isn't. But, this is the writer-hero that I like to feel is there somewhere. Even on the days when I stare blankly at the screen, wondering What To Write, I like to feel like the hero's in there, cheering me on. 

Sure, I just write a knitting blog ... and knitting ain't rocket science. Still, it's writing, it's steady, day after day writing (Wellllll Wordless Wednesdays is a bit of a gaff, I should really write something from now on, we'll see) and I can pat myself on the back for not having missed a day. Who knows where it will end? My first real job after the stroke? When I start having manuscripts accepted, if I write any? Heck, when I start writing for publication? I don't know. I'm going to keep on writing, in any case, even if nobody reads it (and I know some of you do, thank you!). It's just nice to know I have a knitting hero inside me when I need it.

Gloria Anzaldúa was an inspirational womn, a little bit wacky, and deeply spiritual. Here is one more quote from her, which sums up why I write, since my stroke:

"Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.” 

 

Geoffrey Chaucer, I'm Sorry

I got to wondering why Chaucer never wrote about knitting. I mean, it seems like the obvious thing to do on a journey, as in The Canterbury Tales. I was building up steam about how our literary history is male based, and therefore men in charge of literature would never think that knitting would be important enough to be in anything they wrote about, when I discovered that knitting didn't really catch on in Europe until the 15th century ... and Geoffrey Chaucer died in the year 1400. He was about 100 years too early. Otherwise he would have started his Tales with

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
Wettens the lambe and laves the woole,
The spinerre makes suche lettil threed
To hie to kniterres evaerywher..."

My Knitting

It's been another busy week. My mouse got finished:

She is Modest Moude 22 -- she has a yellow polka dot bikini on.

Following that, I went on to my Five Year socks and completed them, too:

   

That's socks before and after blocking. I made the effort to make them match exactly on the stripes; in this yarn, it makes a difference. 

Then I went on and finally knit Mary Jane Mucklestone's Heart Cookie mitts. I have been wanting to knit them for so long!

Wednesday night

Mitts in progress, Thursday morning.

All done :) Thursday afternoon.

It took me 3 months to get around to them, but I knit them in two days. They're a really fast knit. The top two pictures are more accurate as far as the colors go; the sun streams in my window in the afternoon and messes up my colors. 

My new project is A Little Bit Bohemian, a scarf, by Rebecca Carmichael-Stromgren. It's a free pattern on Ravelry. It's a simple knit, and should go fast, but I might change my mind. Sometimes I am just sure that a pattern will work with the yarn, and sometimes I just don't know. Right now I just don't know. I love the yarn I am using, and it's very special yarn, and  I want it to be something wonderful. I am not sure yet that they'll play well together or not.

The yarn was bought in St. John, New Brunswick in a great open air market. I ran across a stall run by a very nice woman (I forget her name, but Sharon knows her) who spins and knits, and sells her yarn and knitted things all over. It's handspun yarn that looks to have a lot of mohair in it, a little silk, and some wool, maybe merino. It's a 2-ply yarn, with one ply of a spring green, and the other ply a brilliant cobalt blue. It's so pretty! The skein has a nice halo to it, so I have good hopes for a dressy scarf. It looks sport weight, but the halo also tells me that it probably knits up thicker. I'll try it on size 8 needles and go up from there. It's fun to play with!

I Love Kale

We had dinner at someone's house the other night, and we brought one of our favorite vegetable dishes -- steamed kale. I know, you are probably thinking, Yuck! but it was actually very good. I would eat this kale with every meal if I could, even for breakfast! Here's the recipe we use:

 

Coconut Peanut Kale

• 1/2 pound of chopped kale
• 1/2 can of coconut milk (about 3/4 cup)
• 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (or add it to taste; you might want to start with 1/4 teaspoon and go up from there)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of peanuts (we throw in a handful)

In a big saucepan or stock pot mix the coconut milk, cayenne pepper, and peanuts. Then throw in the kale. You might need to put the kale in in two batches; let the kale cook down a little before throwing in the rest). Cook on low heat, simmering, for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. This makes enough for two people. Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

My Spinning

I finished my red yarn, and here it is hanging after I set the twist:

It's still lumpy bumpy, yarn with character. It broke a few times while I was plying it because I had spun it to thin. However, it is getting better. It's still way better then my first attempt. I think I will make a hat out of it.

Now I'm spinning another bunch of roving that I hand dyed, with spots of aqua, green, and purple. I saw this technique in Twisted Sisters Sock Book a few year ago, and thought I would like to try it.

It looks pretty bad, right? There's a LOT of white left in it. I started spinning it anyway, because hey, I need the practice.

Ooooh, pretty. This could be good, I thought. Those Twisted Sisters knew what they were talking about.

So this is how far I have gotten. Somehow that mostly white roving turns into beautiful pastel shades, just right for spring and summer! I like how it is more consistent, too. It will be interesting when I ply it, but that is a long way in the future. The roving I showed you is half of the whole bunch, and while I'm spinning about an hour every day, it is still taking me a long time because of the pre-drafting taking me so long. I have to pre-draft the roving just so, to get the yarn to be a consistent circumference when I spin it. Consequently, I'm pre-drafting more than I'm spinning, but I have to do it, so that's ok. As Mary Englebreit said, 'If you don't like something, change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. '

Gadgets

Just thought I should show you a picture of my knitting rig:

One end slides under my leg, to hold it. The mechanism basically just holds the needles, as you can see in this picture. The white conical shaped piece is the collet that holds the needle in place. There is a different sized collet for each size needle; I have a collet for sizes 0, 1, 2, 3 , 4, 5, and 6. I'd like to get more collets for sizes 7, 8, 9, 10, and 10 1/2, but I can't really afford them right now. It is highly adjustable, too: you can raise and lower it, and adjust the exact position of the arm and the angle of the collet. The device is entirely hand made by my occupational therapist's husband. I think it's a pretty clever way to knit with four needles!

Homespun Handknit

I looked at my steadily-accumulating handspun yarn and thought, I should knit that into something. But what? I don't know how many yards I have of any of it. A little bird whispered in my ear, "You've got to get creative!"

I started by pulling out my old copy of Homespun, Handknit, edited by Linda Ligon. I love this book. I had it practically memorized back in the late 80's. Today I rediscovered it and it was love all over again. 

It was published in 1987. Back in the 80's and early 90's, there was no internet to speak of. I got my first AOL account back in 1992, and the World Wide Web was unveiled about a year after that. I had forgotten how much the world  -- my world -- depended on books back then. There were hats of all types, mittens and gloves, simple knitting and fancy. There were a few socks; socks hadn't really caught on yet as the Monster of Knitting that they are now. Looking back at that book, I was amazed at the complexity of knitting and the basic, easy knitting that was represented so effortlessly. 

There's a new version, called All New Homespun Handknit, edited by Amy Clarke Moore. It's got lots of pretty pictures and some very cool designers. It's on my wish list, and I'd like to have it, but it can never match my old love. 

Anyhow, I didn't figure out what to do with my handspun yarn yet. I'm still thinking. I'd love to hear what your favorite thing to do with handspun yarn is!

My Knitting

Mouse 21 is having fun in the sun, finally:

Yesterday I finished my Itchy Scratchy sweater. I know, I only had one sleeve started last week, but it's been rainy, and I was close to being done, and I wanted to finish it. I knit the sleeves:

Then I sewed it together:

Actually, I crocheted the pieces together. My husband helped pin it for me. Here it is, ready for blocking:

It looks pretty funny here. Moss rib really pulls in a lot, but I was encouraged when I stretched the sleeves out to sew them into place. I blocked it by washing in the machine (cold water, with Eucalan), spinning as much water out of it as possible, and putting it on the wooly board for final blocking:

It looks good, doesn't it? I like it; it doesn't feel so itchy anymore. The fabric really opened up with blocking, and it's a nice, comfortable weight. I think he will wear it a lot ... next year!

My next project is some Five Year socks. In October of 2007, I took my ill-fated trip to Bar Harbor, where I went to Bee's and got some stuff:

You can read how the yarn exploded in Helen's Restaurant here. Anyone know what yarn the sock yarn is? I didn't take a close enough picture to identify what yarn it is, and I foolishly didn't write it in the blog post anywhere. Anyway, I knit the beginning on Sand Beach:

And that's the last time I posted about it. Fast-forward to 2012, when I found the sad little sock lying forlornly in one of my bins while I was inventorying my yarn stash. I had actually knit as far as this, when I broke a needle and stopped:

I since had found size 0 needles, which were in it, so I can start right up again. I'm glad I found it! 

Now on to a glass of Nicky wine to celebrate:

I Want To Make This

This is the Cardioid Shawl that Wendy Gaal just knit:

It is so beautiful. I love it. She's offering it through Knitters Brewing, as part of a fund-raiser, the 2012 Fundraising Design for the Susan G Komen Foundation. You get the kit and knit it during the summer, and there is a drawing of finished shawls at the end of the months of May, June, July, and August for a prize! You can knit a shawl each month if you want to! I contacted Wendy to see if she thought I could cram all the stitches at the widest part of the shawl on a 14" needle, since I can't use circular needles anymore, and she thought I could. So now I'm just waiting to buy the yarn!

I could use one of two skeins of Sock-aholic (I have a skein of blue and a skein of orange, naturally), but in this case, because it's a fundraiser, you have to buy a skein of yarn to get the pattern and the commemorative  stitch holder. I want to try a skein of Sock-aholic Serene in the color Kale. Sock-aholic Serene is a blend of 50% FS Alpaca, 30% Fine Merino, and 20% Tencel in a light fingering weight, 470 yards per skein. It sounds lovely. The "FS" stands for super fine; it is used for alpaca that is 20 - 23 microns in diameter. Since the merino is only 22.5 microns too, it is a very soft feeling yarn. 

She named the shawl "Cardioid" (from the Greek καρδία "heart") because of a mathematical equation. A cardioid is a plane curve traced by a point on the perimeter of a circle that is rolling around a fixed circle of the same radius. You can go here for an illustration. (I never knew having a Spirograph would be so much fun.) 

Pretty cool!  

Wordless Wednesday

Orange

I discovered something about myself that I didn't know -- I appear to be consumed with a lust for the color orange. Looking over my yarn inventory, I see that it occurs about twenty times, in lace yarn, in baby yarn, sock yarn, roving for spinning, DK and worsted, it's everywhere. I can knit three full size shawls in orange, I can make three pair of orange socks, I can outfit a baby in peachy orange outfits, I can spin a nice supply of orange. 

I don't really wear much orange, but maybe I should. My yarn persona seems to like it. 

Something to think about.

Acupuncture Update

It's been five weeks now that I've been seeing Jackie, my acupuncturist. I've been going once a week. I think the results are very slow in coming, as she said would be the case. It must be hard to be an acupuncturist; because her clientele are American, and impatient, they may just give it a couple tries and then quit. Chinese people are far more patient. They can wait forever to see a little change. 

I am most definitely happy with Jackie's treatments. I would keep going to see her even if I didn't see or feel that anything was happening. She is so good to be around! She is like a little happy spot and I like her. Modern medicine is so damn hurried, everything is going a little faster than it should and there are too few nurses and paperwork is always messed up. They feed you pills like it will answer everything. I would tell you about my experience with modern medicine, excluding my time in Boston, which was mostly wonderful, but I would feel like I am just ranting and whining and pouting. It is far better to talk about my steady recovery and Jackie.

Acupuncturre is always kinda the same, but kinda different. I go in and relax on the bed while we talk about my health over the past week. She then puts magnets on my feet, hands, and forehead, and an increasing larger number of needles around my head - I think we're up to five? -- so I look like the Statue of Liberty, if I could see myself. Then she lights some incense and sets soft music to playing (meditation music, like Tibetan singing bowls) while she leaves the room for about 10 minutes and I can relax totally. After a while she comes back in, takes the magnets off and gives me an infrared treatment on my arms and legs, especially on my right arm. She takes the needles from my head. I feel wonderful when she is done!

Is it working? I feel like a Zen master if I tell you, you're asking the wrong question if you have to know if it works. But, yes, I feel that it is. The circulation in my right leg is getting stronger. My right arm hurts far less than it used to. It's working. But it's like the difference between being a process knitter and a product knitter; acupuncture is all about the process, not the product. The harder you try to pin-point what it does for you, the farther you are from having it work. Does that sound too Asian for you? Maybe. But I have nothing to lose.

Time

I found this Thurday on my page-a-day calendar:

It seemed appropriate. Ever forward, but slowly, that's me. I'm just like time. Ever forward, but slowly.

Like growng things, too. I looked out my window to find little teeny-weeny lilac buds, like miniature upside-down clusters of grapes:

They're cute when they're small, no? And beautiful and fragrant when full-grown.

I have to remind myself, when I have this wonderful world around me, that I am only here to open the door for the cats.

It's Been an Exciting Week

Despite it being rainy all week, Mouse 20 loved it and went naked all the time:

And here's his bottom, to show you he has no tan lines:

Silly mouse.

The Crosswired Socks are done:

I loved knitting these! It's addictive, keeping on knitting those teeny stripes, and crossing the cables as you go. It's like a little Hanne Falkenburg for socks, except it's Wendy Gaal of Knitters Brewing Company, and she's fabulous.

The Itchy Scratchy sweater is coming along nicely. I got the front done (finally), knit both the front neck and the back neck, and joined the shoulders. Then I sewed the neck pieces together and weaved (wove?) in the ends.

The neck was pretty damn fiddly, but it was better to knit it on the two body parts separately than to try and wrestle with it in my lap trying to knit it in the round on six double-pointed needles. No matter how many needles I had in it, they were gonna fall out. So, I set it aside in my mind, knowing how much I preferred a neck that's all one piece, and knit it in pieces with two little seams. We must make compromises, that's what people who are one-handed do. And really, my husband will never know the difference.

Joining the shoulders was also fiddly, but I got better at it with practice.  I figured out the rest of the pattern for the sleeves, how many to cast on, how many increases to do and how many rows between them. It's all downhill from here! I started the first sleeve. and I'm loving it. This sweater is going to be yummy-scrummy!

The body looks too small and the ribbing is doing a weird  curl-up thing, but that's because I am using moss rib for the main body pattern, which pulls in monstrously until it's blocked. When it's blocked, it will look better. I hope.

 

Ah, Morning

I awaken each morning lately to the dulcet tones of my husband swearing at Grace, who has left a present for him. A very personal present. She tries to hide it in unexpected places: on the kitchen floor, in the living room, just around the corner, on the stairs. She is trying to impress him. It isn't working. 

I don't know why she's doing it, and I'm a little worried that maybe it's a sign that there's something wrong with her. My husband does not. He is convinced that she is doing it to drive him crazy. I think Grace is convinced that it's a pretty fun way to experience breakfast outside on the back deck, flying through the air on the way out. 

I just wish it could be done without waking me up.

Wordless Wednesday

Photo: J. Kevin White Photography

Spinning Progress

I've been making slow progress on my spinning. I have spun a little almost every day, about an hour or so. Getting the roving properly drafted with one hand is what takes the time. I have to draft it out really fine to get the fine yarn that I want. Unfortunately the wispy little roving then wants to stick to everything, including me, and I end up looking like a red fuzzy snowman. Yikes! There's red fuzz all over the house now. 

Here's what I have left to pre-draft:

I've spun more than half of it. Here's my pre-drafted roving, before I actually draft it:

I don't have any pictures of the actually pre-drafted roving, sorry. But I do have a picture of my spinning:

One bobbin is full of half my roving, and I'm working on the rest. It's actually pretty good. I am spinning nice and fine, and it is fairly consistent. I think I had trouble with patience and finger strength before. I wasn't patient enough to pre-draft the roving finely enough to spin the thickness I wanted it to be, and my finger strength just wasn't ready. I guess I forgot that aside from spinning one-handed, I was also learning to spin left handed, not right handed. My left hand got stronger with use and time, so now it's able to spin the nice, fine yarn that I had imagined.

This will take time. When I ply my singles together, part will still be lumpy bumpy, and part will be nice, fine, even yarn. It will be good though. I am learning. My next spinning attempt will be even better.