Hyde Park Pullover Pattern

The Hyde Park Pullover is an easy fitting turtleneck. It is knit top-down in one piece with raglan sleeves and a simple knit and purl texture from worsted weight yarn.

Written for 7 sizes, from 32-57 inches finished chest measurement.

Available for immediate pdf download $5 US

A day at the playground...

I get the feeling a day at the playground with me is a bit different than it is for other moms and kids.







To see what this image looked like before I messed with it, click here.

Alishar Hat

The Alishar Hat is a great introduction to stranded color work.

Worked in light worsted weight yarn with simple motifs, the knitting is fun and quick.

Beret styling suits many face shapes.


Immediate pdf download $4 US

A Little Bragging...

Go look at Knitaly/Cristiana's blog post for today!

She finished a beautiful version of Sloane and used some unknown stash yarn in the process.

Great work!

Mothers' Work?

I've never been too impressed with Mothers Day. I'm enough of a cynic that I mostly think it's a big marketing gimmick designed to extract money from the pockets of those who feel guilty about their relationships with their mothers.

The Sandy's Palette BFL

Friday night I finished plying the BFL from Sandy's Palette.



I ended up with about 765 yards and 240 grams of yarn. I don't have a clue what it'll become. Right now, it's just pretty yarn.

In Other News

Yesterday Mr. SABLE and I were able to do a little long-deferred work in our yard. I tackled the job of removing all the compost from the patio. We didn't plan to make compost on our patio, but that's what you get if you don't remove leaves and stuff for a couple of years! Along the left side of the patio, as seen in the picture, there's an area that's a bit brighter. That's the part that was covered. Including the timber that runs along the edge there. It took about 5 wheelbarrow loads to cart it all down to the compost pile (the real one). Every time I look out the kitchen window and catch a glimpse of it, I pat myself on the back one more time. It just looks so much better now!

Garden pics

These are just about being pretty, not particularly interesting.

Tulip


Crabapple


Bleeding Hearts

Updates

More of the same


The Blue Faced Leicester from Sandy's Palette continues. I'm really really really loving the results I'm getting. Two 70 gram skeins so far, the first has about 205 yards; the second, about 220. This makes a nice sport weight kind of yarn. I'm a bit over half way through the batch.

More of the same, again


The basic garter stitch scarf from early handspun. It's about 45 inches long at this point. I think I'll be able to make a smallish hat out of the same yarn when the scarf is a good length. Either that, or keep on with the scarf until ridiculous proportions, a là Tom Baker/Dr. Who. Well, not quite. Getting a 20 ft scarf out of 7 ounces of fingering weight yarn would be a feat worthy of the TARDIS, which I don't possess.

A Problem

I'm cruising along last night, thinking I'm making such great progress. And I count stitches on one half of the front, to see how many more neckline decreases until the shoulder.

Hmm, seems a bit off.

Count the other side.

Uh Oh! I have a couple extra repeats of the design on one side than the other. Which means I've placed one of the steeks for the armholes in the wrong place.

Having pondered the Fix-It options, I know I have to frog.

I think I'll just let that project be for a few days. The weather is nice. The weeds are over-taking all the flowerbeds. The lawn is getting long. More baby buckthorns are springing up under shrubs. (I do like the thrill of pulling the small ones. It's nice knowing that's one less pain-in-the-butt weed tree in the world.)

And my family needs me to go to the supermarket today.

Here are two recent pictures of my cats enjoying the spring!

By George, I Think She's Got It!

Blue-face Leicester from Sandy's Palette

I spun it fine and Navajo-plied.




I'm excited because this is my first real effort at Navajo-plying. While spinning the singles for this, I knew I wanted to keep the color areas separate for long runs, rather than barber pole them in a two- or three-ply. One previous attempt at Navajo plying resulted in a tangled mess. Then I did a small test run a few months back with some fiber I didn't really care if I messed up, just to get the hang of it.

And now, I've managed to make the yarn I want from the fiber, actually planning how I would get what I want.

I think I'm a spinner now.

So, for Molly Bee's benefit, I'll offer up what I learned.
1. It helps to grow an extra hand or two.
2. Try to keep everything under a bit of tension. I did get a few little blips when I relaxed my tension on the singles coming off the bobbin. I call them dingleberries, which I know is something really yucky, but whatever. (Those ugly little tags where the singles want to take a detour and ply with themselves, instead of merging with their intended mate(s).)
3. Don't try to take the biggest loop you can at first.
4. Use a nice slow ratio and treadle slowly, to give yourself a lot of time before it gets too much twist.

I'm very pleased with how this is looking. This is about a third of the fiber I bought in this batch. I'll get more specifics when I've washed, hung dry, etc. Oh, and spun the rest of the batch.

Updates and Acquisitions

Alpaca Fest Loot!


Some times you find an amazing bargain!
L&L Trail's End Alpacas, Richland Center, WI
I bought two 4 ounce bags at $10 each!!!



Sometimes it's not necessarily a great bargain, but a nice find never-the-less. 4 oz of lovely charcoal grey alpaca roving.


It's not even always alpaca!
This is Blue-Face Leicester from Sandy's Palette, Mineral Point WI. I got 8+ ounces of this roving. I know these colors won't do it for most of you blue-lovers out there. But I like the warm autumn palette. I'm curious to see how they mellow out when spun. Last night, I finished the last of the Mossy Merino/Yak and, of course, launched right into some of the new stuff. When I opened one bundle of this roving I was bit anxious about the spinnability of it. At first I was afraid it was just this side of felted. But with a bit of coaxing, it loosened up nicely.


Also from Sandy's Palette, about 4 oz of Merino/Tencel blend in a colorway that is sure to be a crowd pleaser. I almost think this is too pretty for my taste, but I'm perverse that way.

In other news


Here's the last skein of the Mossy Merino batch. It's still a bit damp, but I'm impatient.


Here's the bunch of it all together. I didn't count yardage, but I think the weight is about 250 grams fingering weight 2 ply. Overall, I'm pleased with how this turned out. Now, to pick a project for it... hmmm.

Knitting

The Knit-What-You-Spin challenge project, a basic garter stitch scarf. I made much progress on this at Last Saturday Knitting on Saturday. I get embarrassed when people want to look too closely, because I can see now what a crap job I did plying this yarn. But, it's a lovely bunch of colors and the garter stitch hides the flaws pretty well.


The Kauni Cardigan hasn't seen much action lately. I'm in the Pay Attention Zone now. Decreasing for both neckline and arm hole and at two different rates, and the neckline one is alternating between every third and every fourth round, you know, just to make things more complicated than they have to be. I need more alone time at home for that.

Last Saturday Knitting was a hoot, as usual. What a great group we've got! There was one young woman across the coffee shop, looking studiously at her laptop, who kept turning around and giving us the evil eye when we laughed uproariously. What, she doesn't think dog poop is funny? Or maybe she thought she was in the library. Whatever. The coffee shop people seem happy to have us.

Finally
I noticed this nest in the yard while out taking pics of loot.

I think it's new this year. Trouble is, it's in a buckthorn tree. Buckthorns are a nasty invasive species, brought to the US as an ornamental shrub. I spent many long hot sweaty days reclaiming our yard from buckthorns when we first bought this house. This one is growing on the fence line, just into our backyard abutter's yard. As soon as I think the nest is empty, I'm going to do what I can from my side of the fence to take down this cluster of buckthorns. Do you know how much I hate those trees? Don't get me started.

The Professor Vest

Dressed up or dressed down, this men's buttoned vest with a simple texture is a wardrobe staple.

Heavy-worsted weight wool, US size 5 & 7 needles.

Pattern written in 4 inch increments for 36-52 inch finished measurement.

Immediate download $5 US

Endings

A very photo heavy post
And just kind of heavy, too.
Many of these get bigger if you click them.






I made my last trip down to Quincy Illinois yesterday, to retrieve stuff from my grandmother's house.

My grandmother was not an easy woman to love.

This house was built for my great grandfather, who was a prominent merchant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Quincy. It was a thriving Mississippi River city then. By the time I came to know Quincy, it was a small city with a dying downtown and strangely disproportionate number of old people living on trust funds. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My grandmother was born in this house and she died in it, too. In the intervening 96 years, she lived in some glamorous and interesting places, partied with great exuberance, and made life miserable for the people closest to her. She never stayed away from Quincy for long.






These stairs were the most amazing thing to me when I was a child. They're still pretty spectacular.


Some rusting metal lawn chairs in the back yard.


So much of the family drama played out in this room. It was built on during my great-grandfather's declining years, when he could no longer handle stairs. He died in it. For many years it was the preferred socializing space, less formal than the living room. My grandfather died in it in 1999, at age 96. My grandmother died in it at age 96, in 2007. A tradition that will not continue. The house will sell as soon as my parents finish emptying it.




The attic.


The river and the bridge to Missouri.

And while I was away, picking out some of her paintings and refusing many offers of vintage table linens, I found that The Garter Belt site has vanished. This was not unexpected. Just a strange juxtaposition on the day when I say farewell to things and places that are receding into the past.

Going forward, look for more of my patterns to appear here on the blog. And I guess I'd better get my butt in gear on that website, too.