Springtime is time for...

taking a close look at what remains of last year's garden. Hosta leaf and Cottoneaster berry.





And the promise of this year's growth: lilac leaf buds

Slow News Day

Did you ever live in a small safe city where they didn't have enough news to fill the 11 (or 10 CST) p.m. broadcast? We used to love to laugh at the news in upstate NY. We had our pick of Syracuse or Binghamton and both gave us many Onion-esque lead stories. Once the Syracuse station had a live reporter interviewing folks at a NY Thruway rest stop and verifying that (GASP!) people were speeding on the Thruway! One great story that baffled us, "Syracuse loses, no riot." The reporter on the scene was in an area adjacent to the University reporting that the streets were empty and there was nothing going on.

That's kind of what it feels like Chez SABLE lately. At least on the knitting front. Ok, there was Last Saturday Knitting this past weekend. And we had a new face.


I finished my mystery project. More about that in a few days.

I'm almost done with my Dad's birthday socks. His birthday was yesterday, and I told him the gift would get mailed in the next few days. We're all pretty casual about timing the arrival of birthday presents in my family. And we called and sang Happy Birthday loudly and off-key.

I did finish reading A Thread of Grace, but not before the book group. I highly recommend this book. In a nutshell, it's about Italian and other Jewish refugees resisting the Nazi occupation in northwestern Italy from 1943 until the end of the war in Europe.

I think I'll be ready to flash some stash on April 1. Certainly, not a comprehensive inventory, but it'll give you all an idea of just how sick I really am.

I should make some rapid progress on a few dormant WIPs in the next couple weeks. I'm also trying to get a quick submission done for a deadline on April 15.

Patience is a virtue.

Preparing to Flash

Today The Little Emperor and I earnestly began photographing stash for this year's Flash Your Stash Along. I know that these photos are more like mug shots than carefully crafted artistic portraits. Let's just say with a stash this out of control, I'm tempted to not even try! I recently listened to Franklin's essay on Cast On about why one should fear one's stash, so I guess now I'm nervous about going down there. Still, nothing bad happened. Yet.

I decided to start assembling a draft of the blog post, so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute on March 31. This year, I am posting pics right in the blog, instead of linking to the album, so be forewarned: April 1 will be a very photo-intense post. Get your internet service upgraded if you don't want to be waiting all day. I'm trying to keep the pictures fairly small, but with enough detail.

In other news
The Mystery Object is nearly done. My dad's socks have been idled while I prioritized the Mystery Object. Stirring up all that yarn stash always leads to lots of fresh knitting ideas. The difficulty is focusing enough on one of them to make it happen, instead of getting lost in the world of possibilities.

My book group is reading Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace. I just started last night, but I expect it to be a fascinating read. Her prose is exquisite! More on that later. I'm a woefully slow reader, so I'll need to give the book a lot of hours this week, and probably will not post much.

Slip stitch

Here's a sample of the newly dyed yarn, in a slip stitch with another recycled yarn. The teal is from a merino sweater that I got at the Goodwill. The yarn is more like 8 or so very thin wool threads used together, but not plied. It makes it a bit prone to splitting, but I think the effect is worth the effort.
Have a closer look:

I'm still not sure what this will be, but I'm thinking a cardigan a la Coco Chanel. I checked out Jean Frost's Jackets book from the library (again) yesterday. I love her work. Of course, it's not like I have anything to dress up for in my life, but maybe that will change?
BTW, the color balance is more accurate in the top picture.

ReKAL Pr0n!

Here's the yarnographic shot of the yarn we dyed last night! Doesn't it look luscious?

BTW, I got a total weight on my yarn: 360 grams, which is probably about 720 meters, give or take a few. Now, how to use it?

Recycled Yarn to Dye For...

Yesterday I had a few hours without my children and went to the Digger's Outlet, a real bottom-feeder kind of thrift shop. This is where St. Vincent's sends all the stuff that didn't sell in the regular stores before giving up on it. From here, the clothes get baled and sent for recycling or possibly overseas. The books get pulped and, as a former used bookseller, I'm telling you that most of them deserve it. Everything is sold by the pound. Clothes are $1 a pound. Books are a quarter a pound. Household stuff, 50 cents/pound. There's often okay furniture there, sometimes better stuff than they put in their stores.

Ostensibly, my mission was to find wicker for our porch. Or rattan. I'm not too particular. But of course, I had to paw through the bins of clothes a bit. I came away with three sweaters to recycle and a pair of shorts for my husband. Total with tax $1.88.
Here is the first sweater:

A bulky knit, very soft wool, 5 stitches/2 inches. Pale seafoam blue-green. It isn't a color I can wear, but the yarn was cuddly. The sweater was a little dingy.
I frogged it last night and today. The yarn was actually two strands of light worsted/DK weight yarn. Here's some of it after a little wash:

I started thinking that I wanted to dye this yarn. I've never used real acid dyes, like the professionals use. I've used Rit and Koolaid and had fun. I wanted to get a nice range of rich greens and blues, but Kool aid doesn't produce that. Then remembered the Wilton's Cake Decorating Food Coloring options. After dinner, I went on a mission and came home with Royal Blue, Juniper Green, and Moss Green.

My assistant and I soaked the yarn in vinegar and water. I put a little water in my big thrift shop enamel pot and set it on the stove to heat. We put two of the large hanks, half the total yarn, in a glass pan to contain the mess. I had squeezed out excess water/vinegar. Then, we made a solution of water and Royal blue coloring and poured that over the yarn in stripes. Then, we did the same with the Juniper Green. An interesting thing happened! The Juniper green separated as it sat on the yarn and we got a muddy reddish color from it in places.
Here's some yarn before steaming to set:

Then I used some tongs and put the damp and striped yarn into the steaming pot and simmered gently while we colored the other two big hanks, sort of the same.

I spun out the excess water in my washing machine and here's the yarn drying on the line in the basement:


Tomorrow, I hope to get some nice artistic shots in natural light. But I'm pretty happy with the results. What my assistant and I found particularly interesting was the range of colors we got from just those two food colors. There's a vivid purple, a bright turquoise, some muddy browns, nice blues and greens. Who would have thought?

This one's for Zib...

Yarn Pr0n!!!
These are all poor abandoned yarns that I found at my local thrift shops, and saved from a life of neglect and sorrow.




This is the tag on this hank. I think it's someone's handspun and one of the fibers is Alpaca.




Here's a little yarn menage a trois: truly yarnographic!

F is for...

Ferns and flowers. These are some pictures I took last summer, when I was just getting to know my camera. I hope to get some new fern pics this year, but it's a little too early right now.




(Ali, make sure you let me know if you want the full size images for your collection!)

What a mess!!!

I dumped my knitting bags out for a little look. It had been a while since I straightened things up, untangled my projects, took stock. Yikes. I think I need to buy a box of ziplocks! Rest assured, when I put it all back, things were in better order than they started out. In the full size version of this photo (which you don't get to see), one can pick out several dormant projects, which will be back on active status, once the priorities are dealt with.


Here are some current sock projects. The green Wildfoote ones are for me. Nearly done, but on hold while other projects take priority. Then there is one grey sock from the Regia Silk. Have I mentioned how much I love this yarn? These socks will be for my dad's birthday later this month. Next, a little teeny bit of a sock from some KnitPicks cotton sock yarn that Terby destashed on me a couple months ago. She said she just wasn't happy with it, no matter what she tried. Maybe I'll have better luck?


This is a sample of the Mystery Project for release around April 1. Tune in for more details later.

What do I have to show for myself?

What have I been doing with my time lately?

Knitting socks for Dad's birthday later this month. Knitting a surprise for a free pattern, a designer trio from Wendy, Wendy, and me. And sketching and planning. Precious little blog-worthy knitting. If only I could knit in my sleep: think of the progress I would make. I could do all the long, repetetive boring parts in my sleep, freeing up my waking hours for the exciting stuff.

Today, I registered The Little Emperor for kindergarten! Wow. This was fairly painless for me, in terms of time and form-filling, because he was already in the school system computers. He was in a speech therapy preschool classroom last year and at the beginning of this year, so I had already done all the stuff with verifying birthdate, social security number, immunization records, etc. All I really needed to do was tell the school secretary his name and sign up for two appointments. Piece of cake. I'm very excited about fall. The last time I finally had a kid starting kindergarten, I went and got pregnant right away. Believe me, that's not happening this time.

Gifted!

My very kind friend Wendy B and I were chatting the other night and I mentioned that I want to make my Dad some socks for his birthday, which is in late March. He's had some hard stuff happening in the last week, and he's not a very emotionally open kind of person. Wendy said she had the perfect yarn and put it in a box to send for me to use. She packed a few other goodies in there, too. A handy little case for small items and some lollipops for the kids.


This yarn will be perfect for my Dad's socks. I'm so touched that she did that! Thanks Wendy.

Now, hum along:
Here's the mail, it never fails,
it makes me want to wag my tail....
When it comes I want to wail
Maiil!

For those of you who want to know more about Steve and his life since Blues Clues, see Steve's Web Site. Listen to his music. Watch the video. It's actually interesting stuff.

Olympics afterthought

I did not participate in the Knitting Olympics. I guess I'm not a joiner. But my maternal grandfather was an Olympic athlete in his youth. And he had a Michelle Kwan moment about 82 years ago. Read all about it here

Weekend Update

Minor change in the template: I made a little sidebar group of Madison knitters' blogs. I hope to add to list as I stumble onto them. Sometimes when I'm following one of the webrings I realize I've found another Madison knitter. Next time that happens, I'll add the link to the sidebar right away. I hope. I think. I'll try.

Not much in the knitting news right now. I have a few stealth projects in the works. Some dormant UFOs. Nothing worth taking a picture of today.

My big accomplishment today was washing my kitchen floor. And back hall and half-bath. It's all one stretch of flooring. It was really disgusting. I can't remember the last time I washed it all. Isn't that awful? What's worse, I think that when I was a college student, living in the Party Apartment with my degenerate guy housemates, we washed the floor more often than mine gets washed these days. Ick. It was very rewarding, especially the really awful zone around the downstairs toilet. A house with three males… need I say more? I've learned in life that I can face almost anything if I can wear rubber gloves. I could have made a Spic'nSpan commercial with the before and after, except that my floor is not all that attractive when it is at its best. The vinyl was already old when we bought the house in '97 and the years of neglect haven't helped. I haven't bothered replacing it because in a few more years, come hell or high water, I plan to gut our kitchen and the back hall area and do a massive remodel, involving removing a pointless chimney, and when that happens, I'm going to get a very nice ceramic tile floor. So we live with the dinged and stained vinyl for now. But at least it's clean today!

E is for echinacea

This is the dried seed cone from the coneflowers the swallowtails were working in my B is for Butterfly post. What a difference a few months makes...

I bet you all thought I'd do E is for Elizabeth. And I almost thought I would have to do that, but out in the yard with the camera, I had an AHA moment.

My second attempt at the Alishar hat is back to yarn status. It was coming out way too big. Not sure why, but my gauge was very different from the first effort that ended up too small. Scott suggested that I felt it, and I almost went with that idea. In fact, from the moment of suspecting trouble, I continued knitting for another couple inches. And I almost thought, well, a bag could be any size... but frogged anyway.

The Garter Belt Newsletter now up!

Thanks all, for nice comments on the hat.

Sign up here for The Garter Belt newsletters. Download February newsletter here. Keep up with the latest and read Wendy B's tips on Knitting For Kids.

Alishar Hat on the way

Just a little teaser of the next upcoming pattern. This first sample came out way too small, but I've started another. I'll be keeping the effect on top, though, because I think it's pretty cool.

Not a lot of other news to report. It's cold cold cold here. I awoke to a pleasant surprise: temperature at +10 F at 7 a.m. That's about 28 degrees warmer than it was two days ago at the same time of day.

We all seem to be recovering from our tummy bugs. Thank goodness!

Not much else to report right now. Some boring socks are almost done. They're so routine, they don't even count. Time to bring some projects out of hibernation.

Later
Just found this little bit of fun:Make your own tartan
This is my first effort. Give it a whirl!

Happy Valentines Day

And Happy Birthday to Owen, my funny Valentine, now 11 years old. The picture at the right was taken last summer on Madeline Island. Owen is at his happiest digging in sand near water.

I don't know what I've been doing the last several days, but it sure isn't knitting. Owen was in the city spelling bee on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I ended up sleeping as much as I felt I could get away with. And still slept well Saturday night. I've been fighting a cold and over the weekend I felt like I easily could have spent an extra eight hours in bed if only mommies were allowed that privilege. We had Owen's birthday party on Sunday, so I had to muster the energy to clear the dining room table. This is a job I dare not delegate! The trouble with our table is that everything ends up there: junk mail, important mail, checks we got for our birthdays in November, any paper that comes home from school with either child, bills (new and old). You get the idea. Also, many forms of arts and crafts and the necessary supplies. Nope, no knitting stuff in the dining room, but everything else: kid art, kid crafts, beads big and small, paint (kid friendly and not), many kinds of glue (kid friendly and not), model boat parts, model train parts, little snips of paper, and more pens and pencils than we will use in the next decade. Toss in a few old newspapers and you have the idea. The cleaner must be careful to actually sort the detritus, stash the bills, file the financial statements, pocket the checks and spare change, put every art and craft in its proper place, purge the junk mail, and stay attentive to detail through the whole job. I was able to tackle the table through my head-cold and anti-histamine fog and get mostly down to bare wood. The children were reasonably well-mannered. Dr. Science took them all to see Wallace and Gromit at the cheap seats. No sooner did they return from the movie and the parents began to arrrive to pick them up.

Last night I was to bake a cheesecake for Birthday Boy to bring to school, but I did manage to delegate that. I had Owen find a recipe online and I bought the supplies. The rest was up to Owen and Scott. They did a good job of it, too. I was supposed to bake the cake for the family party tonight. Also buy lobster for the birthday dinner. If you look in the sidebar, you'll notice that my place of residence is Wisconsin. This is a long way from where lobsters live. Still, I obliged. It was not cheap. I didn't make the family cake: bought a little frozen Pepperidge Farm cake. We had homemade ice cream, so that kind of makes up for it. Through all this, I'm still slogging along with the head cold. I'm down to wanting an extra 2 hours of sleep, not 4 or 5, so that's better.

Besides all this, I was up late finishing a book I'm reading. I'm not sure yet what I think of it. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. It's a dystopian future kind of book, with global warming, economic collapse and environmental devastation, and all the attendant anarchy. For this kind of fiction, I think Margaret Atwood sets the standard with The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. Still, this wasn't a bad read, and was hard to put down after the half-way point. And it does seem to cry out for a sequel or two: it reads like Part 1 of a trilogy.

So, not much knitting from me these days. I did make an Alishar Hat. I need to darn in ends and block before I show the world. And make a bigger one. I got the skeleton of the pattern written. Need to make some charts and explain the tricky stuff a little better.

The big news in my little knitting orbit is that Wendy Bernard of Knit and Tonic has joined The Garter Belt! She'll be a wonderful asset to our little store and we're happy to have her on board.

This is a picture of the face a mother in her forties makes when a child is approaching with something in his extended hand, heading right for the sweet spot, about 4 inches out from said mother's nose. Yeah, my husband really knows how to capture his wife at her best.

D is for Dandelion

I took this photo last summer when I was playing with the macro feature on my camera. I call it Georgia O'Keefe Moment.

In other news, I'm most of the way through a hat to go with the Alishar sweater. I think it's coming out really well. I've got a cold and I'm feeling kind of low. I actually spent a large part of the afternoon dozing in bed, waking a bit here and there to feel guilty, but going back to sleep anyway. I'm happy I've been able to get a little knitting in this evening: I was feeling like such a cotton-head all day I didn't know if I would. I'll have to find a model with a normal size head when it's done. When I make hats in my size, they are huge for everyone else. Kind of affects my baseline perception of normal.

Owen's City Spelling Bee was today. He did make it through one round before getting knocked out. There were kids up through middle school (8th grade) age, so it was some tough competition. Nearly all the kids looked terribly nervous. I noticed that as the girls got into the teens, they seemed more insecure, whereas the boys got more indifferent. Owen's mood has been all over the map today: he woke up at 5 something, too worked up to go back to sleep. When I got up, he was watching Star Wars. After the spelling bee, he was grumpy, touchy, tired, and demanding. So, it was a bad day for mom to be having a sick day. Tomorrow is his birthday party, so we have more anxiety and anticipation about that. Yikes. Then the actual birthday on Tuesday.

Owen would like me to post a link to his first Flash movie. He's really determined to learn all he can about computer generated animation. It's one of the few things he persues for hours on end and sticks with in spite of frustrations and set backs. Most things at school are easy for him, so he hasn't had to learn how to work through frustration with that. I'm glad there's one area of his life where he goes for the challenge.

A Sunny Day in February

I've been writing the Hyde Park Pullover pattern for the last several days, getting scant knitting time in. The job is nearly done: I need to do another proofread and make a few corrections that I already know about and then, get decent photos. The sun is finally shining in Wisconsin today, but, wouldn't you know, now it's too bright. The pictures we took in the yard today resulted in a nice exposure on the sweater, but a blinding glare from my hands and face. I need a nice dark hat with a wide brim to cast a shadow on my face and maybe that will work!

I've sized the pattern in 7 sizes from XS to 3XL. It gave me the incentive to create an Excel template to spit out some rough numbers for every size. Using the Craft Yarn Councils Standards, and extrapolating with some help from the tables in the back of Maggie Righetti's Sweater Design in Plain English, I created a template that can take any gauge and spit out stitch and row counts for 9 sizes at most crucial fitting points. As it turns out, I didn't use the two largest sizes for this pattern, but if any 4XL or 5XL women out there want it in that size, I'll do it. Just let me know.

Later the same day
I think I may have inadvertently set my camera to overexpose everything when I was trying to do self-portraits last week. I've been having exposure frustrations since then, and had the idea at the time that I'd done something wrong. The trouble is, the full owner's manual came as a 289 page pdf. How stupid! How often do you have your computer with you when you need to look up something? I've tried sitting at the computer with the camera reading, but then I'm out somewhere and can't quite remember what I read. There are some adjustments I make often enough to have learned, but others just don't come up too often. I've begun printing out the relevant pages as I need them and assembling them in a binder so that I can have the manual with me when and where I need it. Meanwhile, I figured out how to reset all factory settings, did that, and hope I've cured the problem!

Another internet quiz...

The Librarian You scored 71 erudition!

Congratulations! You're well above average when it comes to your knowledge of English grammar, history, and literature. You may have missed a few questions, but if you keep your studies up and stay away from genre fiction, we'll have you ready for Stanford in no time! Who knows, we just might be reading your columns in Talk of the Town a few years from now.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 30% on erudition

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test written by okellelala on Ok Cupid,