Oink.

Guess whose school is canceled because of possible swine flu?


We're supposed to be continuing to "teach" our classes over the internet, but who are we kidding? I'm taking full advantage of the serendipitous free time to knit a swatch with the lovely birthday BFL. Even winding it on my new ball winder has been a treat!


This stuff is even prettier knitted up than in the skein! The color's called "harvest," and it really does remind me of beautiful, warm wheatfields.


I've got an idea in mind for a cardigan with a stripe of Barbara Walker's "Swiss Fan" lace down either side of the button band. I'm trying to decide whether to make it empire-ish waisted with a peplum, or just straight.


Opinions, anyone? I was all for the peplum, but now when I look at these sketches, I wonder if simplicity is better and will show off the lace pattern better.

Other recent activities have included tearing up my windowsill planters and laboriously spraying and washing each plant; I've been dealing with an infestation of mealybugs.


Now each plant is quarantined in its own little pot while I wait and see if the mealybugs come back. So far I've had to throw out about half of them. Poor plants! Stupid mealybugs!


Anyone have any suggestions? Everything I read online makes it sound like this is a really futile effort, but I am loath to throw these guys out because they've been my chance to prove that I'm not a total black thumb. I was seriously considering getting a box of ladybugs to eat the mealybugs, but then my plants are covered with ladybugs, and is that really any better?

Birthday treats

What a lovely boyfriend I have. Witness the delectable birthday fiber present.


By "lovely," I also mean "learning." He's been quite curious about the knitting obsession recently, asking a lot of questions. Though I am of course aware of the fascination knitting should hold for every human, I suspect that some of the curiosity was reconnaissance work for a birthday present. But, as he related a few days before the event, he walked into a yarn store to buy me a present and was totally intimidated and overwhelmed by the array of choices. Apparently he had no idea that both yarn and needles come in so many varieties. So after making a foolhardy attempt to appear suavely as if he belonged there, he made an embarrassed exit.


So, attempting to help him out, I said, "Well, if you are ever in that position again, I think that a few skeins of some really luxurious or unusual yarn that I wouldn't buy myself would be a nice gift. For example, I have been wanting to try some Bluefaced Leicester yarn for a while." Ah, he said, this was very helpful. He would have to remember that name.


Later, we were walking by a yarn shop, and he said, "what was that breed of sheep again? Blue something?"

So that night I decided I'd help him out again. I sent him a link to an online yarn store and wrote, "Here's an example of that kind of yarn I was talking about today. Isn't it pretty? I particularly like that amber color."


Obvious, right?

Later he told me that he read the email and thought, "hm." Then, later the next day, he thought, "Oh! Maybe I could buy her some of THAT yarn!" Then a few hours later, he realized, "Oh! She WANTS me to buy her that yarn!" What a cutie. Just goes to show that hinting around to dudes about what you want or what you are thinking is bootless. You gotta just tell 'em. But it's okay, because they'll probably think it was their idea.


The present arrived today, and it is glorious. Three skeins of Fleece Artist BFL 2/8 in "Harvest," "Twilight," and "Victoria" from coloursong. Each 250 grams and 1000 meters, so easily enough to make three sweaters in my size (though possibly with 3/4 sleeves). And sooo lovely and soft and saturated with jewel-like color! They came with this cute project bag:


Happy Birthday to me! And thanks, sweetie!

conclusions, beginnings, and a yarn bribe.

Things have been in a shameful state recently here chez Looking Glass. One semester ended, a new one began, and ALL kinds of work did not get done. That Chaucer paper about which I jauntily wrote a few weeks ago is still incomplete, and I've got a big stack of papers to grade that are so late that my students have started joking around about their status as historical documents. I've been whiny and neurotic and just generally a loser, and I'm downright peeved at myself.

Ergo, very little knitting to speak of. I have only knit about 2 more pattern repeats on my mitten, mostly during the episodes of Lost I've taken time out to watch. These will be awesome mittens if I can ever finish them before winter ends! Just trying them on for size, they are very warm.



Only two things are providing hope: my darling, funny boyfriend and a shipment of new Knitpicks Felici I bought myself as a yarn bribe. What gorgeous, jewel-like colors! But I can't knit it until that paper is in.


Now, Jennifer K., get your act together and finish your $@&%ing paper!!

100th post!

That's right, today's post is a mini-milestone. And to celebrate, here's a lovely rainbow of yarn that just came in the mail. I've had so much fun arranging it all to take photos!


I'm planning to use this Knitpicks Telemark yarn to make Floral Fair Isle Gloves for my... sister? Mom? Aunt? ... unclear... for Christmas. Which purchase puts me in a bit of a gray area as far as my newly pledged membership to Ravelry's Selfish Knitters group is concerned. Because while I am knitting for others, I bought yarn that I know will pill (as Knitpicks yarn always does), because it was cheap, and if I were to knit myself fair isle gloves I'd pick something pricier and better quality.

Man, it sure is pretty, though...


And at least when the gloves are actually given, they will not be pilly. A selfish gift indeed! I will get all the glory of beautiful handmade gloves, then not be around when they stop looking as nice after a few wears.

Meanwhile, here are not one but two Radcliffe Cardigan yokes in progress -- one for my mom and one for me (selfish knitting again!). Both in a color that is impossible to photograph accurately:
I'm glad that I'm knitting them both at the same time, because it's been a real lesson in yarn qualities and gauge. The big one is in Reynolds Candide, a hairy, hard-finished, two-ply (?) woolen-spun wool that's knitting on size 7 needles at a gauge of 4.125 stitches an inch (after a bad sweater-growth episode I have been gauge swatching and measuring assiduously); and the little one is in Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000, a soft, springy multi-ply merino that's knitting on size 3 needles at a gauge of 5.8 stitches per inch. I am finding myself preferring the way the Candide looks in this particular pattern, though, as I said in the last post, it's been rough on my wrists. This is a kind of vintagey sweater style, and the fuzzy finish and larger gauge of the Candide are a nice compliment. The seed stitch, however, in the Cool Wool is just so crisp and nubbly and neat. I hate working seed stitch, as it takes twice as long as stockinette, but I do so love the look of it. And while my mom doesn't mind itchy wool, I do, and like to wear camisoles under my sweaters instead of turtlenecks, so Cool Wool it is for me. I'm just hoping it holds up better than the last Radcliffe Cardigan I knit for myself!

Projects completed and imagined

After learning that a college friend just had a baby girl, I finally got it together and finished what I'm calling my Faux-bruary Baby Sweater, because I didn't have the pattern and made it up as I went along, therefore not realizing that I was supposed to majorly increase in the armpits for both body and arms. However, I think that the sweater looks pretty much like the original:


Sorry about those dark window sash shadows. I didn't bother putting in buttonholes, and instead used snaps, reinforced on the inside with cheap buttons and concealed on the outside by some vintage buttons I bought last summer at an antique show. To complete the whole vintage-y ensemble, I made a really easy bonnet.


When I say easy, I mean easy. I just did a square of nine repeats of the gull stitch pattern framed by 4 garter stitches on the sides and 4 garter ridges on the bottom, putting an eyelet 2 stitches in from the edges after the first 2 garter ridges and every second lace repeat thereafter. After 4 inches, I did some unnecessarily fancy decreasing in something approximating the lace pattern (but next time I think I'll just switch to garter at that point, then switched to garter and decreased 7 stitches every other row until the thing was like 8 stitches, then ran the yarn through the stitches and knotted it. I wove a ribbon through the eyelets to make a tie. As usual, I have no idea how big a baby's head is, so I eyeballed it -- the kid might be wearing the two parts of this outfit at two totally different times in her life ...


Meanwhile, a shipment from Knitpicks just came in, with four colors of their new "Imagination" sock yarn. I really have enough projects in the hopper already, but I just had to get some of this yarn when I saw that one of the colorways was named Looking Glass! And then, of course, I had to get a few more colorways while I was at it...


From left to right, these are Wicked Stepmother, Seven Dwarves, Frog Prince, and Looking Glass. As usual with Knitpicks, the colors look significantly different in person and on the website. The worst offenders in this instance are Wicked Stepmother and Seven Dwarves, which looked sort of muted and sweet on the computer screen but are in fact quite bright and blaring. The other two look pretty much the same as on the website. In fact, though I was worried that Looking Glass would not actually be a color I'd like, it turns out to be the nicest in the bunch, I think. I'm planning to pair these babies up and make some more chevron berets for Christmas presents, since I so enjoyed making the first one. I'm banking on the mixing of the colors doing wonders for the brightness of the two bright ones -- after my first beret I was surprised how different the yarn looked in the skein and knitted up.

But that will all have to wait until I clear out some of my other unfinished objects...

ahh... summer reading and knitting

The papers are all officially finished, graded, and taken care of! And I've dutifully started in on the reward yarn! (actually, to be totally honest, I may have started in on the reward yarn before I finished that last paper...) I'm happilly knitting away, while listening to The Age of Innocence on CD -- the first installment in the summer Comps-prep reading.


Though a chevron scarf is in the offing, I decided to start with a La Parisienne beret first, so that I could just knit until the yarn was through for the scarf. The two have very similar chevron designs. It's been a bit of a humbling experience for me, since I always think I know a better way to do something; I started out by using my go-to increase instead of the kf&b increase the pattern specified, because I thought it would look nicer. It is true that this kind of increase creates a clean, etched-looking line of stitches that matches very nicely the line created by the double decreases. However, all of that knitting into the row below was basically creating a line of EZ-style fake seams of slipped stitches that were much less vertically stretchy than the increases, and I had to rip out and start over again, following the directions as written.

It's also been a lesson in color theory. I chose these two colors because they looked good together in the skeins; they are pretty much the same value. Knitted up, the fact that they are the same value makes for a somewhat bright color combination, just on the edge of what I'd call garish, and not at all what I was expecting:

I think I like it though (and if not I'll gift it). The yarn I'm using -- Claudia handpainted and Koigu (the Gems sportweight was too big) -- doesn't stand up particularly well to frogging, which leads me to suspect that the finished product will not be very hard-wearing. I'm hoping that a scarf and a hat are not particularly hard-worn items.

The next knitting project in the hopper is to pop this baby on the swift:


That's one of a bag of Reynolds Candide, which I am going to use to knit my mom a Radcliffe Cardigan. It will be fun to follow my own directions like any other knitter, and see where they could be clearer. Candide is totally not the yarn I'd choose for my own sweater -- it's pretty darn scratchy -- but it promises to be very hard-wearing, and my mom is not bothered by itch. It is disappointing when your lovely hand-knit item starts to pill and stretch, as in fact happened to my own prototype Radcliffe (Swish DK? Not such a great yarn for adult sweaters). I am hoping that this Candide one lasts longer.

Hurray! Here's to summer knitting, finally here!

Incentive.

I'm so close to finishing this blasted paper. Yesterday I bought myself this beautiful yarn:


Three skeins of Claudia handpainted merino sock yarn in the colorway "John B." It's going to sit there, eying me flirtatiously, while I finish this last paper (which, by all rights, was supposed to be done yesterday). I am going to use it to make a Chevron scarf by Domesticat -- I know, like everyone else in the knitting world. I was inspired by this gorgeous little number by Debby on Ravelry (here's her Rav profile):


It's a thing of beauty, but also beautifully photographed! Her colors are a little more muted than mine, in a colorway of Socks that Rock that no longer exists, unfortunately. I'm going to use my beautiful jewel-toned yarn with this leftover ball of Louet Gems sport in Sage:


But I can't. start. knitting. until. I. finish. this. paper.