Friday, January 28, 2005

I went snowshoeing



I bought snowshoes on Tuesday, when I was in Concord and found a sale at Eatern Mountain Sports. Yesterday was very sunny and about 17degrees F. It was hot in the sun and much cooler in the shade. I have never been snowshoeing, but it seemed like a very practical idea. I took my binoculars, my camera, and my cell phone (so my mother wouldn't worry. She also provided the very warm-flannel-lined jeans I was wearing.)I hoped I would get to skitter along the top of the snow like a water-strider, but this was not to be, at least not on this very fluffy snow. Asterix tried bravely to accompany me, but he sank in up to his kitty shoulders even in my trail, so he went home. On snowshoes, I found I was sinking in to about the same depth as the local turkeys;



in fact, I followed their trails and found that they picked quite a good path, slightly prepacked. Since the ones in my driveway walked where I had broken the snow I figured they wouldn't mind if I reinforced their trails. The exertion going up the hill in back of the house was enough to keep me warm. It was lovely. The light was spectacularly clear and pure.

Branches of one of the three bigs oaks:


Nice weird drift:

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Tvåändsstickning



So I am coming farther on the twined knitting mittens. The best book on the subject is out of print and selling for $99.99 on Abebooks, ifyou can find it. I don't think I will be getting a copy anytime soon. Schoolhouse Press (or Elann) have the recent equivalent,Two End Knitting. There is also a fine article in the 'Sweden'issue of Stranded, and a discussion in Bagateller's old blog.
I am hoping to finish these mittens sometime soon and then try the technique with variegated yarn.


My mother's socks were hiding under the bed. Where I had looked. Several times. I finished them I think the dust kitties under the bed are getting very convincing.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

It's beginning to look a lot more like I expected.


This doesn't show the sun as well as it might - it stopped snowing around 10 am -- but it also doesn't show the wind, which howls very effectively.

This is a close-up of the cuff on the twined knitting mitten:

I have put it on holders and hope to make a second, similar one before Tuesday, when the class meets again, as I have little confidence in my actually finishing a second one without pressure. I am in a tizzy because I have been unable to find my mom's sock for the past week, since I started the ribbing for the second cuff: in fact, I have about 20 minutes to go to finish the pair and I am whimpering. Prayers, DPN-waving, small magicks welcomed.

Last night I had the poor Commissioner of the NH Dep't of Historical Resources going around feeling the scarves of strange women. The annual SCRAP (see link in sidebar) party took place despite the forecast, and he had the chance to meet qiviut, alpaca/Border Leicester, and several others. I wish I had been wearing more wool; the State Library was cold.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Snow at last

It's beginning to look a lot more like I expected.


This doesn't show the sun as well as it might - it stopped snowing around 10 am -- but it also doesn't show the wind, which howls very effectively.

This is a close-up of the cuff on the twined knitting mitten:

I have put it on holders and hope to make a second, similar one before Tuesday, when the class meets again, as I has little confidence in my actually finishing a second one without pressure. I am in a tizzy because I have been unable to find my mom's sock for the past week, since I started the ribbing for the second cuff: in fact, I have about 20 minutes to go to finish the pair and I am whimpering. Prayers, DPN-waving, small magicks welcomed.

Last night I had the poor Commissioner of the NH Dep't of Historical Resources going around feeling the scarves of strange women. The annual SCRAP (see link in sidebar) party took place despite the forecast, and he had the chance to meet qiviut, alpaca/Border Leicester, and several others. I wish I had been wearing more wool; the State Library was cold.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Twined Knitting

I started a 3-Tuesday night class at the Elegant Ewe last night, in Twined Knitting. This is a fairly old (all right, I knew I was a snob, but I can't call a technique whose earliest extant piece is from, like, 1640, _really_ old) Scandinavian techique for making thick and elastic fabric, for mittens or maybe socks or gloves.

It will give me excellent habits for two-color knitting, which it somewhat resembles: you have two threads and you knit the thread from the stitch-before-last taking it OVER the other thread. If you were being good about twisting the second color in, you might be so diligent and get similarly close results. This is done in one color, however, so you get a solid result. It is less difficult to figure which thread to knit next than I would have expected.

What is interesting to me is that when I learned it, last night, I thought this was a technique I would just have to give up and knit with the working yarn in my right hand (English style) as opposed to my usual left-handed Continental approach. This morning I picked it up and began working left-handed as usual. Apparently my brain (proving its existence!),allowed the new stuff to settle in and figured out how to cope while I was asleep. It's only a little more fiddly than normal knitting, and will give me a wonderful feeling of breath-of-fresh-air when I continue the socks in my life (mostly stockinette right now).

The teacher brought two books to look at: one is in print from Schoolhouse Press, Two-End Knitting, but I was more attracted to the out-of-print Twined Knitting, so I have a bid in on EBay.

No picture yet, though I will say I am using a soft spring green Tiur, which is part mohair and makes me think of sprouting daffodils. At 11 am, it's 6 degrees F here. Which is nine degrees more than it was when I woke up. Twilly, stop eating my needle, please.

Monday, January 17, 2005

January Blues

A winter's day... in a bleak and dark January. A need to cheer up the housemate. An indigo kit from Mirage Alpacas (http://www.miragealpacas.com/), some lye, some dedicated spoons and a pot...

Sarah did most of the work; I fussed and found my copy of Wild Color. I spun up some of my Bottomless Box o'Roving (a relic of several years' happy fleece buying, coupled with panic when I was moving, happily assuaged by sending most of them to Stonehedge (http://www.stonehedgefibermill.com/))while we waited for the solution to reduce. This is True North Icelandic and as soft as anything you like.



I may have figured out of what I'll be making my own felted slippers.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Duckies

My baby daughter is very fond of duckies. She is accomodating to real adult ducks, and of course to real ducklings, but her personal totem is the yellow, rubber-style ducky. She wore out her commercially made ducky slippers her first semester of college and told me this three days before Christmas, not that I would have been able to find new ones on such short notice (Concord is not ducky-enhanced). But she allowed me to have a go and has pronounced these 'cute,' even though I needed to redo the eyes of one of them. It was looking at her in a marked manner. She considered naming it Mad-Eye Moody. Anyway, I am pleased; I got them finished before she had to go back to college (tomorrow), and proved the 'large-sock' theory of felted slippers.

Sewing a garter-stitch felted sole to the sockfoot was considerable work even with a sharp needle. The slippers are warm and soft. I would like to add some puff paint anti-skid devices, and if there is a crafts store on the way to Northampton I will do it tomorrow.

My mother's socks are coming along nicely and if Abbey had cooperated I would have a had a picture of her savaging them.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

stuff I should be doing

Don't even start.

I have been having too much fun reading other people's blogs to do anything on my own. I am so excited to be able to read French knitblogs, not that there's anything wrong with a steady diet of Harry Potter (_et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban_, at the moment). They use Elann and Ebay just like we do. Remarkable. My impression is that more interesting yarns are available in Europe now than there were a couple of years ago, as I recall from what the lovely English SheepThrillers wrote.

On Saturday, Sawadu2.blogspot.com and I rescued a 48" loom. It had been moved three times and never used. The owner did not succeed in advertising that she would sell it for $100 and portage away before the sale on the house closed. She called Sarah's place of work and offered to donate it. They collect looms. Sarah's blog tells it best ), but it involved a certain amount of heavy lifting, a LOT of snow, and driving something around a hundred miles (Henniker, Concord, Salisbury (get truck),Concord (get rest of loom), Canterbury (drop off loom), Salisbury (return truck, cup of tea. At LONG last), back to Henniker. I

I started what might turn out to be a TGV, a _Tricot de Grande Vitesse_, which is to say one you make in a hurry. I had several balls of what I think is Cascade in nice diminished-ego green, cheery gray, black, and red. I am double-stranding it and I hope 176 stitches around is enough. I made about 2" from the bottom and will go a bit farther and tape-measure it. It's cold here at night.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, so clear it was almost painful and so beautiful it was a cliché. There was frosting on the pine trees and brilliant light from dawn till about 2pm, when it clouded over. Sarah and I needed our morale raised, so we took a hint from TheWoolenRabbit.com and went to the sale at Patternworks. Center Harbor is about an hour and 15 minutes from Henniker. It is a very pretty touristy town on Lake Winnipesaukee. It has white buildings, white tarped-over sailboats, and these days also white snow-covered lawns and lake. The Patternworks knitting store and the Keepsake Quilting store (both owned by the same company) are right across the road from the lake in a decently designed little mall -- Patternworks is actually in an old house that they moved when the strip mall was built. Lots of colors. Keepsake is the best quilting store I have ever seen, even more cloth, I believe, than Fabric Place in Woburn. I behaved fairly well, since I gave up quilting a couple of years ago and gave away my stash. But, like, artistic flamingoes on a black background? Perfect for Grace and Dahlia. Kokopelli on dark blue? That tea cosy I have been going to make Bruce and Sue. A batik duckie for my daughter...

I actually behaved better in Patternworks, though I did get the Priscilla Gobson-Roberts sock book in paperback and some needles. Hardly any yarn. Really.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Rearranging the furniture

My beloved daughter and technological hierarch (she's supposed to be lower on the totem pole than I am because of her youth and inexperience, but this is not the case in HTML) has suggested I relocate and here I am.


This is my birdfeeder, not long after sunrise this morning. There is a downy woodpecker on the non-tube feeder, although you will have to imagine the details.

The ducky slippers are waiting for more Orange You Glad to come into the Elegant Ewe. I have now bought one skein of Mountain Colors (I think it's called Moose) to start a pair of socks for my size 13-footed father. I had to make sure the color was still in production before I started, since I fear he will need a lot more than 100 grams for a pair of socks. I have the beginnings of a small tea cozy in itchy handspun of which I thought Sarah had given me a lot. Turns out there is just one ball, but more roving if I care to find it. Double-knitting is fun, although I am still unventing the increases.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

earlier blogitas



Monday, 3 January 2005
Welcoming SARAH, the amazing knit-crazed housemate

I have a little black kitten, momentarily not channeling Kali-Ma, under the blanket on my knees. This means I can't [pee] do several increasingly urgent errands, or take pictures of my beautiful hat. Sarah the housemate knits fast, accurately, ambitiously, and persistently. I still like her, even though if I post her creations my own indolence shows up more clearly. The world's most enabling exBF (all right, I did introduce him to spinning, he has some revenge to get) gave us both gift certificates to the Elegant Ewe, and part of my choice was Elsbeth Lavold's _Viking Knits, Inspiration and Patterns_ (the Amazon url won't wrap. Use 'search.')
We thought possibly Sarah would use it while making me a sweater (which should account for all my Christmas presents for about the next three years, I think). Sarah grabbed the book and before it had been in the house even 8 hours, she made me this hat.
(Asterix wanted to show how well it goes with him.)

She has been spinning Mary Pratt's feathersoft gray Romney for several months for the sweater and used some of that. It looks like weathered limestone. My archaeologist's heart is kvelling. And someday, a sweater. I am trying to learn to read the graphs. They are not for beginners.

I am in the process of making felted duckie slippers for the daughter. Since I ran out of orange with less than half a beak to go (about five yards) I HAVE to go to the Elegant Ewe again, damn. My mom's socks are coming along, too.







Twilly, let go of my foot RIGHT NOW.


Sunday, 26 December 2004
The Feast of Stephen

Stephen was the first martyr recognized by what would eventually become the Christian community. Unfortunately for him, he was stoned to death. And to this day, Western Europeans have thought this was a way to handle the day after Christmas... no. What I did was try to get my blog onto The Sheep Thrills Webring and overreached myself to the point that I hope my daughter will come and fix my broken blog. (One will try to join the webring when I have someone fluent in HTML here.) Asterix has come down with the kitty cold. I hope he will not get it as badly as Twilly had it, but he sneezed all through dawn this morning. I also still have one Cool Mittlet to make for Sarah. She does NOT have two right hands. It would probably help if I had not tried to put a cable on it. One must forge on. Later: One did. One doesn't quite get gussets, but it works. She is pleased. Perhaps I shall make one more and have a pair of Cool Mittlets for myself. Onto my mom's birthday socks!



Updated: Sunday, 26 December 2004 7:18 PM EST


So, FOUR felted bags (two sent off, one retained as not quite up to standard), THREE pairs of mittlets (look for the third pair in vain, but they are black with red trim), TWO felted slippers (well, one is felted, and the other I did today, and stuffed it inside the felted one for An Amusing Presentation), ONE very glossy scarf... and I went to the Elegant Ewe and didn't buy anything today. Because I still have my mother's socks, because I have the mitten fixings I got the other day as pre-emptive retail therapy (and both deserved and helpful it was, I must say) and because I still hope to make another pair of Mittlets for Sarah. It could happen. She has this stash of 12 skeins of Olive (nice murky green) Lamb's Pride, which I have been making her slippers out of, and I need her to come home and give me another to make mitts out of.

Meanwhile, we had snow, and 23 turkeys. I am very lucky, because many of the turkeys in my life manifest themselves as turkeys, instead of allegedly human beings, and so I know where I am. They walk like a Bangles song.

Twilly the kitten is still sneezing, but she is well enough to think she should get what she wants, like lying on the computer keys (they are nice and warm). I just had an inauthentic but very tasty Mexican meal with the ex-boyfriend, which was good for the ego and has left me stuffed and slightly lit. I may start a Latvian mitten despite the fog. And it's 19 outside, _such_ an improvement from last night, when it was -4.


Updated: Sunday, 26 December 2004 6:35 PM EST




These are Abbey,a raver who is about seven weeks old, and Twilly, a sweetie pie of perhaps ten weeks, last Tuesday. They are not helping anyone get any work done.

I have, in progress:

part of one sock of two, due Jan 28 (for my mommy, who has mentioned several times how much she likes the socks I made her last year).

Two completed knitted felt bags (for my ex, for my aunt), and one (for my aunt's housemate) that I hope to machine wash for the first time this evening.

One hat (for my ex-boyfriend). Mittens for him would not be bad. Nor would finding the hat, which is not where I thought I put it.

most of one "cool mittlet" (for my son's girlfriend, who has TWO hands, yes) - I need to make three more (for my daughter. No, she doesn't have three hands)

One gigantic knit-to-felt slipper, for my normally legged housemate. Meaning I need another. I have washed Slipper the First three times and now it's only big enough for my father. It was looking Michael Jordan-sized and I still have some hope it will get small enough. It is hard to have enough faith that it will get really human-sized. (one more wash later, it's a little small for my father but still might hold a change of clothes....)

A scarf would be nice to match the ex's bag. I have bought the yarn for it several times (a warping disaster helped persuade me to learn to weave _after_ Christmas). I am planning to send the bags for my aunt and her housemate to Texas with useful things like Henniker refrigerator magnets and maple sugar lollipops.

The Yarn Harlot (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/)makes me want to spin some really fine yarn and dye and make amazing mittens. I have most of two ounces of incredibly well-prepared quiviut roving that want me to make something special out of them, at one time for my mother but now, possibly for me. Even though she Gave Me Life. I have some very purple yarn my daughter wanted me to make her something out of; I think maybe thrummed mittens? I have a great deal of alpaca roving that is even unpacked; most of my books and all of the dye and most of the yarn and roving are still packed up, waiting for Paul the carpenter to finish the rebuild of the room that needed, the inspectors assured me, "maybe $4K of sill work." We think $17 K is closer. It will be a much nicer room than it would have been. Better be.