Oh such a long time.

It's been a ridiculously long time. It's been a ridiculously long year. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was about 18 years this year.

But I'm back (kind of) and working on being more back. My kids are growing, I've got time to knit again, and I've got a job working for a yarn store. What could be better?

I'm coming up on my third blogiversary. I can hardly believe it. It seems so much has happened in just three years. I have so much to say. So much to report. And so little time to do any of it. I don't have any photos of anything wooly, so these pictures of my beasties will have to suffice.

Summer Knitting

Yes, I'm still here! I have precious little time to knit these days, and even less time to update the old blog. But I do have some things to show!

I made myself a sweater. This is the 4th sweater I've made myself this year. And the first one that I'm not frogging. Yet. I still might. It's Rowan All-seasons cotton in a beautiful shade of brown. I love it. I thought I wasn't going to have enough to make a full sweater so I started making a wrap shrug. But I had more yarn. So it grew, and grew, and ended up being a wrap sweater. Which looks like total crap on because it was never designed to be a full sweater. But I do love the lines of the fronts.



Here you see a chair modeling the sweater in wrap position. I'm trying to figure out how to reknit the sweater preserving the lines of the wrap without it looking like total crap on anyone but a ladder backed chair. In the meantime I wear it like this:



which does nothing for the lines of the front but at least it looks like only partial crap on. In the meantime the Divine Miss M needed a sweater for ballet class so I made the wrap for her.



It's not the best thing ever but she loves it. She loves that it's cropped and the sleeves hit above the elbow, which was what she specified. I made matching leg warmers but they're far too baggy. I used a wool-cotton blend from Plumknit and it has less memory than I do, which is really saying something. So I'll reknit those before fall.

In the meantime, I've been obsessively trying to develop the perfect mesh bag. I've got a lot of old cotton ease in a shocking shade of orange and I'm using it up. I use (and love) Chicobags for shopping, but what I need are small mesh bags for carrying wet bathing suits and toys back and forth from the sprinkler park. The first attempt was knitted.



As you can see, I was experimenting with stitch patterns to find the one that I think works best for this application. I wasn't thirilled with any of them so I gave crochet a try.



It ended up a little too narrow and tall for my taste. Also, this version doesn't compress as much as the knitted one so it's not as portable when empty. But I like the drawstring. I prefer the handles on the other one, though.

I've got another knitted one on the needles but it's turning out to be ginormous. So I'm planning to frog it but I'm kind of over the orange mesh bag thing for a bit.

I'm Still Here!

I'm sorry I've been gone for so long. I've missed blogging, and though I've been reading my favorite blogs, I haven't been reading them as often as I'd like. Things have been busy and crazy and I just haven't been knitting much. I have finished a couple of projects, I've frogged a couple of projects, and I'm kind of just feeling the knitting blahs at the moment.

Anyway, I do have some photos to show: I finished a little crochet toy from a pattern by Owlishly, available on Ravelry as a Ravelry download. I modified the Scott pattern to resemble Diego whom my wee Mole adores. Truth be told, he prefers Dora (as evidenced by his calling out "Dora!" whenever he sees some Dora paraphernalia and singing the Dora theme song to himself as he rides along in a stroller or on my back in a baby carrier. However, I was afraid of making Dora's hair, so I attempted Diego first.



I made a crochet loop wig cap and cut the loops. i tried to cut them unevenly to make Diego’s spikey hair but I fear it simply looks uneven. I gave him shorts and modified the stitch count a little to make the short legs wider than the calf. I also added socks and made a little vest and rescue pack.

I am a VERY novice hooker and the Scott pattern is extremely easy to follow. My only problems with this are due to my inexperience - I’m tense, it’s tight, and hard to poke the hook through the holes. Also, the yarns are two different materials - cotton and wool - and thus have different amounts of give. They are also slightly different weights, and I don’t know enough about crochet gauge to adjust properly with hook/stitch count so i just barreled on through with the same hook size (except for the back pack which was a significantly thinner yarn and didn’t need to join with the other yarns so i downsized.)
I made this as a “test” before i plunged into another Owlishly pattern, Seth, which is the one I really want to make. I thought starting smaller would be a good first attempt but really I think the larger doll will be easier. I had trouble with the tiny little arms. they’re kind of a mess and i just sort of winged them in the end because i couldn’t find the actual stitches a lot of the time.

I used safety eyes and embroidered a small mouth but if my kid doesn’t accept it as Diego I might cut more accurate pieces from flannel and stitch them on, as I did with Dora's backpack.

I Can't Win!

So I have been wanting to try to crochet some amigurumi animals. I knit a lot of toys, but I feel that the texture of the crochet would lend a totally different spin to things. So I bought the "Tikki Tiger" pattern from Simple Arts Planet and got to work. I decided if I had any hopes of the Squid liking this toy (unlike every toy I've knit for her) it had to be pink. So I set out to make a pink cat.



If I were to do it all over again (and I will!) I would not use the plastic nose. I would embroider it. It's just too much plastic on such a small face, I think. Well, my girl came home, picked it up, smiled and said "Pink's not my favorite color any more."

And seriously? I am so happy to end this year-long reign of pink that I was thrilled and thought nothing of the cat. Or the nearly complete Surprise Jacket.



The new favorite color is "light light light light light light light light light green." Which is fine, because I have yarn just that color, with matching alien in a UFO button. All set to become a Bog Jacket. Take that, favorite color change! You can't defeat my stash!

The Good News is that the Mole adores the little pink kitty. Whew.

In other news, I have an ongoing parade of UFOs myself. The aforementioned Surprise Jacket, of course, and two pairs of unphotographed socks. I also have an unphotographed baby sweater for a baby already born. Just needs sleeves and a button band.

I've been working on Stephanie Japel's Alexandra. Since the last sweater I made for myself ended up being enormous, I'm knitting this one small. I've changed the gauge and the yarn and I'm knitting the front in stockinette instead of garter. It fits, ahem, snugly, right now. So snugly that I'm skipping the shaping.



I really like it. I like the yarn, Henry's Attic Alpine Cotton. I knit and blocked a swatch so I'm thinking I know what's going to happen to the sizing of this sweater. but you know. I worry anyway.



I've also got the crown of a Matilda on the needles for a friend. Too bad it's spring already. The color is still springy, though, so if I get cracking it might not be useless until next year. My how I love that Peace Fleece. I just adore everything about it. I keep dreaming about how many things I'm going to make for myself next winter from Peace Fleece.

Sunday in the Park with Friends

Making great progress on the Surprise Jacket. This is the end of one skein of yarn, plus 2 stripes of a matching near-solid. I have assembled the jacket "inside out" for this photo, because I am trying to decide which side I like best. the "right side" can be seen in the back of the jacket - the stripes of the near-solid are clearly delineated. The "wrong side" is shown on the sleeves and front, in the garter stitch it makes a more gentle transition from the variegated to the near-solid. I'm leaning towards that, but I'm not sure. Luckily I have all the time in the world to decide. What do you think?

Ok. Thus endeth the knitting content. Following is a mess of photos from our day in Bryant Park with friends. Just warning you.

The Divine Miss M was beside herself with glee at the prospect of going to Bryant Park. We've been there a bunch with tourist-friends, but never Just Because, and she thought that was an amazing prospect. She breathlessly begged to ride the carousel, then proceeded to slowly and deliberately spin in circles while marching up and down, in her imitation of a carousel pony.



The Mole was less than impressed by the carousel and preferred to sit back and chomp down some Veggie Booty while watching his crazy sister and her crazy friends ride around and around. The Divine One showed a moment of barely-bridled glee as the carousel started up.



To be perfectly honest, she actually spent more time laughing with her friend as they hid from the camera every time they passed me. Those two join forces to become a menace to society. Or at least a menace to me. I fear the teenage years. The girls have been friends since they were less than a year old. And it shows.



Liv's mom, Rosie, is the world's finest children's movement teacher. Seriously. Here she proudly sports a bonnet her kid made for her.



Also joining us for some carousel fun was our friend Issa. Issa has what may be the most beautiful singing voice of all time. On top of that, she happens to be one of the most gentle people I think I have ever met. And, she's got this very cool idea when it comes to selling her music: self-determined pricing, to "ensure that money (or lack of it) never comes between the artist and someone who might be lifted by their offering." I find that to be pretty amazing, and I would love to follow in her footsteps. I'll be working on converting my pattern sales to follow this model as soon as I have a minute to sit down and update the store.



In the meantime, you should definitely go to Issa's store where you can buy her music, become a patron and support her as she records new music, and buy songs from some similarly minded artists (as well as songs Issa recorded under her former name, Jane Siberry).

The kids (including Issa's incredibly cool, confident, and kind niece who was here visiting from Canada) then played that old heart-stopper hide and seek.



This is where my urban parenting gets challenged. I want the kids to run and feel free to be and play however they want to, but HIDE? and SEEK? in Bryant Park? gulp. Luckily we had plenty of adults and we all just took a kid and kept our eyes glued to the kid. And luckily for the kids, they didn't catch on that if they just looked where the adults were looking they'd find their hiding friends.

The Mole didn't quite get the whole "hiding" part but sure did love flinging himself all over the ground like the big kids.



Oh hey, see those pants? Despite their current filth-covered state, those pants are in pristine condition. I made them for Miss Squid almost 4 years ago. I had to peel them off of her this year to pass them on. Last year she wore them with legwarmers to cover her ankles. She loved those pants. And you would never know it looking at them. They are in perfect condition. not a pill, worn spot, or sag. I made them from Peace Fleece and looking at them now, I don't think I will never buy a different yarn for kids' clothing. It gets so soft (picky Squid girl wears them as PANTS, fergodnesssakes) and looks great with zero maintenance.

See? I managed to end on a knitting note after all.

Happier Now.

Ripped out the hem of my grey sweater (for the 4th time) and added a couple of inches. still hated it, so i dropped a bunch of stitches and picked them up again with my trusty crochet hook, so the sweater is now ribbed from the bust to the bottom. it fits a whole bunch better. Still ginormous, but not tent-like.

Discovered the problem. I read the pattern and then cast on for it while I was not looking at it. I remembered the gauge as 16 stitches/4 inches but it's actually written to be 17. So my already-intended-to-be-roomy sweater became a whole bunch roomier.

Whatever. It's fine now. Cozy, comfy, and not an embarrassment.

Spring is for Sweaters

I was running late for school this weekend and hadn't prepared a school-friendly project. So I grabbed 2 skeins of yarn (Berocco Comfort) and decided to wing a springy cardi for wee Mole. However, I forgot to bring a tape measure with me, so I guessed on the numbers, and it's coming out more like a 2T than the 12 mos. size the wee one needs. So I'm sticking it on hold for the moment and moving on to more pressing things, that will fit now, when they're needed.


Which means, it's time for a new Elizabeth Zimmermann Surprise Jacket. This time for the Squid, following the Adult pattern found in The Opinionated Knitter so I can make up my own size. Lately I'm really nervous about sizing. I've had some bad luck with my powers of estimating and I'm concerned.

The Knit Along is, hopefully, going to help my trepidation.

The yarn is nice and thick (Montana Targhee dyed by Mosaic Moon in the "Malayan Orchid" colorway with a skein of the same yarn dyed by Mountain Colors in the "Rosehip" colorway. I have a skein undyed for emergencies.) and I'm thinking to make a hood or a foldover collar or something to make it more jackety.