La Sirena

Still Alive

 

Actually finished and sent off my hat over a week ago.  My "victim" already "killed" her victim so my hat no longer has deadly weapon potential, which is just as well really.  Just noticed a special notice about how not wrapping floats every row is a clear "misfire," which means that since I haven't received my hat yet, my victim could decide to send mine back to me to reknit and by official rules I would have to do it.  I'm hoping she is not that cruel, since she is safe and I think it is otherwise a perfectly fine hat.  You'll note I still ended up substituting yarn since my LYS doesn't carry SWT co. yarns.   I found myself gravitating towards more muted non-colors to emphasize the almost tweedy-woven texture in the pattern rather than the bright colors the original yarn comes in but there you have it.  Time to move on to other projects.

      

I told you so

This is what my smarter inner knitter has been telling me all week.  You see, I impulsively signed up for Hat Attack 2, in which knitters all over the world register to receivea hat pattern released via the Internet at a predetermined time, which we will then try and madly knit, complete and mail to our assigned victim, thereby killing them before we receive one of the hats from another knitter in the chain.  The practically minded knitter in me said this was utter foolishness, I would be dead before I knew it, had no business adding new items to my knitting queue (especially new items for people I do not know) and had I forgotten that I'm supposed to be on a yarn-diet?  Not to mention the required gauge: 6.5 stitches per inch in worsted weight yarn.  No way.

But I didn't listen. I would work with yarn from my stash, I reasoned.  A hat would only take a couple days at most.  It would be fun.  I would simply use smaller needles.  Well, as it turns out the wool I had intended to use didn't work at all, in fact I didn't have anything suitable to achieve gauge. The closest I could come was with some dishcloth cotton and leftover Shine cotton from knitpicks.  Felt a little bit guilty about using cotton when the recommended yarn had silk and Jade in it (yes, like the stone, how cool is that?)  but persisted.  I didn't really like the pattern.  Not very pretty in my eyes and kind of a pain to work.  Not hard, but you do have to pay attention.  Still I slogged on.  Completed a repeat a day. 

By the third day, I kind of wished I were dead (I mean, that my assassin had finished and sent me my hat already so I could send it on to someone else to finish) but it didn't seem quite right to foist it off on someone else so I slogged along.  It then became clear that I was going to run out of yarn before finishing.  What to do?  Order more?  I'm supposed to be destashing not ordering more yarn!  Besides the fact that despite my attempts to convince myself otherwise, my gauge is still off: 6 st per inch instead of 6.5 and I've made a mistake about 20 rows down; I added an extra round of color "B".  So it's clearly a misfire anyway.  I check the mail again.  Maybe I should just order the fancy silk/jade yarn and have it sent directly to my assassin's house to start fresh with.  No luck.  I'm still not dead and tomorrow's Sunday so there will definitely be no mail. 

So what do do?  In my mind I can either:

 A.) order more of the knitpicks stuff, and continue merrily on hoping no one will notice the gauge is off and the stripe mistake. 

B) order more knitpicks stuff, rip the whole thing out and start again with size 4(?!) needles.

C.) acknowledgedge that this could make a lovely dishrag or burp cloth if cut in half, (or even leave as a tube for double thickness)find some new more suitable yarn and see how much I can accomplish before being killed. 

And the winner is:  c) it will make a most lovely dishrag/washcloth/potholder/burp cloth indeed.

In which I pretend to be Afghan Youth...

...about a as succesfully as my mother imagined she was the Indian in the poncho... However, I did ascertain that the sweater fits human proportions, a bit snug on an adult female, but should be quite ample on an Afghani 8-10 year old as per the pattern specs.  I had a skein and a bit to spare at the end and thought I might be able to squeeze a pair of mittens out of them (resisting the great temptation to make felted pumpkins).       

But came up a little short and had to dip into the stash and try pull something together.   

Note:  The color in the sweater photo is all wrong, the mitten photo is much more accurate. 

Sweaters

This was supposed to be the year of the sock, but the truth is.. it's all about sweaters this year.

    

Finished "Hey Teach!", (okay, hasn't been blocked yet)

Started afghan's for Afghan's youth campaign sweater.  The yarn was kindly donated by someone and is scrumptious wool/alpaca blend by Blue Sky Yarns.  The great thing about the bulky yarn is that this is only a movie's worth of work! I'm knitting in the round and am using EZ's "Hurry up" Sweater pattern. 

 

Excuses

It's been a long time since my last post, and I'm not eactly sure why...a secret knitting project (still unblogable I'm afraid), a visit from my sister, busy work schedule, 100+ degree heat, the mysterious disapearance of our photo editing program...

So here's the month in a nutshell:

There was the launch of a new accesory line:   bold earrings and ethereal beaded rainbow veils

I knit the uterus in a lovely pink variegated Koigu (you'll have to take my word for it, I gave it away before photographing).

Crocheted a bag for my sister (needs to be lined and photograhed).

Indulged in the fabulous summer books sales at Interweave and Knitpicks and added the following books to my shelves: Knitting America by Susan M. Strawn, a wonderfully illustrated history; Selbuvotter  by Terri Shea filled with gorgeous historic glove and mitten patterns; Elizabeth Zimmerman's The Knitters Almanac, my first EZ book and just the thing to push me into the free shipping bracket, and Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia. So you can imagine the lovely time I've had mentally journeying through time and space through the knitter's eye. 

And cast on for a funky, colorful version of  "Hey Teach!" from the Summer Issue of Knitty.  Both sleeves and back are nearly complete. 

Como me late el Aguacate

 Some new things I've learned about one of my favorite fruits (yep, it's a fruit, a berry no less!): 

1. Avocado skins produce a lovely shade of brown yarn dye.

 

2. Spanish conquistadors discovered that the seed contains a milky liquid that becomes red when exposed to the air and made use of the reddish brown or blackish indelible ink for writing documents (Stradley, 2004). 

Note to self: remember to save the avocado pits for the next round of experimental dyeing.

3. Aguacate comes from the Nahuatl word Ahuacatl meaning "testicle" and was considered a fertility fruit and sexual stimulant. 

4.. Avocado leaves can make a tasty ingredient when cooking and also have medicinal properties.  For more info and recipes click here.

5. Avocados won't be soften until after they've fallen or been plucked from the tree.

6. All Hass avocados (the only avocado that can be produced  year round) grown in the United States come from plants that can be traced back to one mother tree planted by Rudolph Hass in his front yard in 1926 and patented in 1935.  Sadly, the mother tree died in 2002, the family installed a commemorative placket in its place and made jewelery from the wood from the tree. 

See Lisa Stradley's informative article "All About Avocados"at What's Cooking America for a more complete avocado history and time line.

Give A Kid a Camera

And you could get a lovely portrait of two furry friends showing off their twin summer gowns (a previously undocumented project from earlier this year)

or some intersting self-portraits:

Ribbed Lace Bolero

 

Been highly skeptical of the idea of "sleeves" (also known as boleros and shrugs) as their own independent garment for years.  After all, if you need/want sleeves, isn't it quite likely that you need/want to cover the rest of your upper body as well?

I always thought so.  Until I moved to Texas and took a job with a dress code and air conditioning.  Suddenly this bolero pattern(a small holey rectangle stitched up at the ends to form armholes) seemed like the answer to my current fashion dilemma of how to gracefully transition from hot to cool/office to ROW (rest of world). 

I immediately cast on using only yarn from stash, hence the two toned pachuko cotton.  Sleeves do have a function!  That said, I haven't worn mine outside the house yet.  I still haven't fully stilled the voice in my head shouting that the emperor has no clothes: "That cardigan is missing a front and lower half!"

 

Mini Birthday Cupcake

There may be many reasons for knitting female anatomy but I suspect that the reasons for knitting food all ultimately fall under the "because we can" category.  Needless to say knitters and crocheters love to show off what they can do and knit and crochet food is very popular.  There are whole directories dedicated to knit and crochet food patterns.  Though I've observed patterns for knit beets and crocheted coffee with interest, there was something about the sweet simplicty of crocheted cupcake that drew me in. 

 

 

Bigger One-Piece Kimono

 

Guess, I can't call this the baby Kimono anymore.  I followed the same Mason-Dixon principals as for the baby kimonos eyeballing the measurements as I went along to make a big-girl version. Some of the details that took this from baby to big-girl include: stockinette, understated crochet trim, straight 3/4 sleeves and seed stitch gores at the sides for a little extra ease and swing.