geekin’ on yarn, parenting, and whatever else comes up.

My Nana — my maternal grandmother and my last remaining grandparent — died late Tuesday night. She would have turned 84 on August 12th of this year.

My Nana is the reason I finally learned to knit. My mother simply didn’t have the patience to teach me, although she tried; I tried several times to pick it up on my own and just hadn’t succeeded, until one day while I was pregnant with Sophie, I asked Nana would she show me? So she sat down, and in five minutes, had taught me everything I most needed to know about knitting — and, arguably, about life — “The stitches are all the same stitch — it just depends on how you look at them and where you put them on your needles.”

Nana was a gardener, first and foremost, and many of my memories of her are tied up in that.

I have always loved and admired Katharine Hepburn, and this image made me start a bit when I was sorting through photographs looking for some to post here — because clearly my Nana is the real-world model for my admiration of Ms. Hepburn. (And I mean beyond just the trousers and tall figure. Nana was very like K.H. in personality, as well, except that Nana got married and stayed that way.)

All the gardens you see behind her among the oak trees were planted entirely by her, over years and years of daily work on the property. She was out there nearly every day the weather allowed.

I love the colors in this image — if I ever try my hand at the dyepot, I may have to attempt a Nana-in-the-Garden colorway.

Nana had a life that could easily be termed tragic, but somehow she never came across as a victim. She lost one of her sisters early in her adult life under horrible circumstances, and then she lost her husband and all three of her children within five years. I can’t think of anyone who could handle all of those things, but somehow she did. It aged her terribly, but she was still Nana, still living her life, muddling through as best she could. I believe she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known.

There was quite a bit of turmoil in my family after my mother died in 2002, culminating in the loss of Nana’s house in Delaware, nearly all the contents of that house, and Nana’s relocation to live near my cousins in Indiana. I haven’t seen her since that time, although I had plans to travel to Indiana in mid-August for her birthday to see her then. Alas, it was not to be. A couple of weeks ago, she took a fall that broke her pelvis; she later contracted septic infection and died on Tuesday night, June 24th.

While to a certain extent having her so far from me in distance was almost like losing her every day for the last years, the reality of it is that I always knew she was *there*. Now that she is truly gone, my heart aches for loss of her.  Isn’t the way the mind works foolish sometimes?

Swift Journey, Nana. I love you. May Heaven have gardening and unlimited chocolate supplies — and tell Mama how much I love and miss her.

If you’re interested, there are some more pictures-of-pictures over on Flickr.

We’ve been all rained-on of late. Gratuitous Happy Hydrangea photo:

I have one more batch of things-I-found-on-Etsy-and-had-to-have to show you, but I interrupt that rediculous blather with some spinning.

I am smitten — SMITTEN, I tell you — with this latest yarn of mine.

I had two braids of merino and silk blend from Cloverleaf Farms, purchased at this most recent MDSW. (You may recall I posted about them in one of the follow-up posts to that event.) One was in a soft yellow, the other in a soft green. When I bought them, there were only the two braids of each color left in the booth, and I thought vaguely at the time that I thought they might be pretty together.

Last weekend, in some of the fastest spinning I’ve ever done, I completed the green and spun three quarters of the yellow bobbin. Both braids kept me totally mesmerized with the very subtle color changes that streaked through the base colors here and there. (It didn’t hurt that the fiber slid right through my fingers in a cloud of pure happiness.)

I am always full of squee when I finish a skein of yarn, but this time I’ve been carrying it around and petting it so much that I haven’t even given it the bath I would normally have done BEFORE taking photos.

When I was getting started with the plying and being giddy over how beautiful it looked as it was plying together, I thought, it looks like sunshine! Like Spring! No, wait, like Cucumber Salad! But finally, seeing it in the afternoon light, all finished and basking on my dining table in the glow — it’s Dappled.

So yes, I have lace progress (hey, look, a blob! A BIGGER blob than before!) and new stitch markers en masse to show you — but this? This totally trumped that plan.

Even more photos (because I love it so much I can’t edit what I took at all) are over on Flickr with some other side notes.

Thanks to Danielle and Laura for relieving the Comments Desert that has sustained for the last month or few — you may not know what it means to me to hear from you, so I’m telling you — it fills my wee heart right up and makes me grin like a fiend. So even if it’s just a hello or a mundane comment having nothing to do with the post at hand — speak up, eh?

Who can keep track when in the grip of illnesses like these?

Handspun Nereid mitts were begun.

Then I made of the mistake of going to the local-to-my-office yarn shop, Stitch D.C., to pick up some lace Addi needles. (A need sparked, as I said in the last post, because the other US 3 and 4 needles I have are currently lost in the abyss of my disorganization at home. Also I think they’re too short anyway. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.) While there, after discovering they did not have the needles I needed, I had a wee accident with the card and ended up with some amazingly soft yarn:

Lacey Lamb 100% lambswool yarn. Rub-against-the-cheeks soft.

Then I ended up in a bookstore — never good for the wallet but nearly always a necessity for my sometimes-fragile ability to cope with the world — and came home with A Gathering of Lace and Lace Style books. I’d been seeking a project to knit for my best friend’s impending Samhain wedding. She’s a very tall, willowy, utterly gorgeous red head. (A pause, so you can all hate her guts with me…okay, moving on.) Anyway, I figured, she’s getting married on Halloween, and the bridesmaid’s dresses are all burgundy. Sorry — Cabernet. Therefore, despite having purchased the above burg — I mean, Cabernet-colored yarn, I went stash diving for some lace yarn I got from eBay waaaaaay back when I first started knitting again in earnest.

Found it!

This is how much knitting happens from cast on to present when one spends all weekend doing very little other than knitting whilst being immersed in Blue Planet DVDs:

Okay, so that doesn’t show you the whole thing, because the whole thing? Is just a variegated red blob. But that is a circular shawl, knitted from the center out, through the Shetland Fern chart, and one repeat of the Horseshoe lace chart. For me? This is lightning fast knitting. This is the Shetland Tea Shawl from the book A Gathering of Lace, and I am L O V I N G the knitting of it. (Dear Jared, sorry for stealing your letter-spacing thing, but I love how it looks! Also you are intensely cool and I am a fangirl. Forgive me? Love, Liz)

A couple of shaky pics of the lace repeats are over on Flickr — they were slightly blurry because holding the lace out so you can see it with one hand and taking photos with the other hand is not so very conducive to sharp photography.

And then, (NOANDTHEN! Name that movie reference…) The Sainted Husband required wee circle thingies from Michael’s for his gaming group, whereas Youngest Rat required a new job, and Michael’s is hiring. So Youngest Rat, my daughter, and I all piled into my car and trundled ourselves to Michael’s to obtain wee circle thingies and a job application for Youngest Rat. (My two teenaged stepsons are collectively “The Ratz” — Youngest and Eldest. I can’t remember if I have explained this before. No, I do not trundle large rodents to and fro during my errands. :)) (Also? Oxford comma, baybee. Stoopid AP Stylebook. Hate.)

Upon walking into Michael’s, I beheld there upon the shelves Something I Had To Have.

And yea, the fluorescent lights shone down in benediction upon the Wee Skully Lunchbox of Awesome, and verily didst The Knitter squee unashamed before all and sundry; and spaketh She to those gathered therein, “This. Is. AWESOME. And I must have it.” Thus did The Box Of Awesome appear in the Holy Shopping Cart of Antioch, and lo, The Knitter Was Pleased, and It Was Good. Here endeth the tale.

And finally, because I don’t have ENOUGH going on the needles, I got the perfect honey-colored lace for a gorgeous honeybee-themed stole from KnitSpot.

Now I want to get some lovely beads to knit into this, and maybe some honeybee beads. I’m thinking I want lampworked glass bees to dangle somewhere from the stole, but I haven’t solidified that idea in my head yet. (Which is just as well, given that I have so many things in progress floating around that the likelihood of my getting to this anytime soon is slim.)

Did I chase everybody away with my inconsistencies? My stats page says there are people reading, but still all my comments read ~NIL~. Therefore, if you’ve a moment, tell me — is there anything you’d like to see here that you’re not seeing? It looks as though most folks read on the weekends, so is it better for you if there’s a regular schedule of Friday posts? I seem to have finally regained my Mojo (Interestingly corresponding with losing a fair percentage of my bank account), so I’d really like to know your thoughts. (Also? Me = Comment Ho. NICE.)

If found, please mail to startitis.cure at yarngeek dot com.

This weekend, I:

• Saw Kung Fu Panda with my husband, four year old, and eighteen year old. Score on all counts — wonderful movie, definitely one we will want to own as soon as it’s available.
• Enhanced the stash by one skein of Penthouse Silk laceweight [<--Ravelry Link] by Neighborhood Fiber Company in golden honey tones. (I believe the colorway is called Lincoln Park. For the circle in D.C., not the band.) Oh, and two more long-cord Addi laceweight needles in sizes 3 and 4 because I can’t find any of the multitudes of the same in my hugely disorganized house. Purchase location: Knit Happens.
• Enhanced the stash by two skeins of laceweight baby lambswool yarn in a deep burgundy. Purchase location: Stitch D.C.
• Enhanced the stash/pattern library by two books and three patterns.
  • Pam Allen and Ann Budd’s Lace Style (I thought I already owned this, but can’t find THAT, either.)
  • Meg Swansen’s A Gathering of Lace
  • Three patterns from KnitSpot’s Anne Hanson:
    • The Honeybee Stole (see above re: Lincoln Park silk laceweight yarn in golden honeyed tones…)
    • Bee Fields Shawl (likewise in the running for said honey-toned yarn)
    • Cluaranach Stole, which I had to have on general principle, what with the thistles, ‘n all.
• Cast on and knit obsessively on a shawl for my best friend to wear on her wedding day, the Shetland Tea Shawl from Gathering of Lace. (Link to the book is above; Ravelry link for the pattern is here.)
• Went grocery shopping (but only because we’d all have had nothing for dinner yesterday or today had we not gone)

Things I neglected in order to purchase and fiddle with all the above:

• Everything else.

Stay tuned to see how much lace knitting can be done from Friday to Sunday when one does nothing other than what is necessary, and puts every disc of the Blue Planet DVD series into the DVD changer on “play all”.

I spent the majority of last weekend doing a whole lot of…not much. Which was exactly what I needed after at least a month of being overbooked. I’ve had a run of really cool stuff to do, but it was all back-to-back activity, and my Myers-Briggs Introverted self was only too pleased to spend the weekend without agenda.

I did manage, however, in the midst of planned inactivity, to spin up some yarn by request. My dance teacher and friend, Asharah, likes to have shadowy colors, and she has asked for a pair of handspun, handknit arm warmers/fingerless mitts to wear when she dances. I found the fiber while at Maryland Sheep and Wool, at the booth for The Drafting Zone. (I don’t know if they have a website, but their phone number is 301-464-5738.)

The producers of this fiber call it “Pewter”, but to me, it looked like moonlight dappling in shadow, so that’s what it’s become in my head — and it was clear to me that Asharah would like the colors. For myself, I loved that it has 30% silk and 70% merino.

Yarn-in-progress — roving in the foreground, bobbin of singles in the mid-ground. (el-cheapo basket that looks like an arse in the background.)

I am completely in love with the sheen of silk. While this fiber shed EVERYWHERE as I was pre-drafting and spinning, while spinning it slid through my hands like…well, silk. And when I was done plying, I had approximately 180 yards of wool/silk blend yarn, roughly sportweight.

If this turns out, post-swatching, to not be enough, I have another 4 ounces of the same fiber to spin up. My hope, though, is that this will be enough for the short fingerless mitts she wants, so that I can use the remaining 4 ounces to make her some thick-and-thin yarn that she can use on a belt or some other belly-dance type accoutrement.

More images of this same yarn are over on Flickr; but for now, I leave you with my favourite model, Brutus, who is debating whether he will allow me to dump out some more of my stash and submit his image to StuffOnMyCat.com. (I’m betting…not.)

I have more things to share from this year’s Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. First of all, Sophie would like you to meet Jacob:

Jacob was sitting inside a tiny wee felted barnyard with some others of his kind, and I must have squee’d when I saw him. There was no question that the little guy needed to come home with me, particularly since I’d purchased three bumps of natural colored jacob wool that day, as well.

Three shades of Jacob wool, probably likely to become the yoke of something. Maybe an EPS.

I braved the bright, hot sun and unholy lines of the schwag department to get this shirt:

Please pardon the chaos of my bathroom, and the eight thousand me that appear due to the odd placement of mirrors across from one another in the same room. I have no idea why our landlords did that. It certainly makes for frequent brutal assessments of one’s appearance post-shower every morning. Oh, and I got the hairsticks I’m wearing in that picture at Sheep and Wool, also.

My trip to California went very well — so well, in fact, that I got nothing other than a couple of camera phone images of the ground from the plane. I got most of another Lizard Ridge block completed on the trip, which I’m sitting here finishing as soon as this post goes live, and I’ve started to jones for some lace knitting.

I have another thing or two from MDSW to share with you, and my dance teacher has commissioned me to spin yarn for and knit her some arm warmers from the wool silk I got in shadowy colors, so I hope to post progress on those, as well.

Anybody still out there?

I went into this year’s trip to Sheep and Wool with very little planning. I had some things I knew I wanted — spinning fibers, to include some silk — and beyond that I figured I would let serendipity reign.

I’ve already  showed you one set of silk caps that I got from Robin Russo, who also showed me how to draft them out and chatted with me about how they’re spun; the yellow “practice” cap she gifted me I already spun into a cobweb-weight yarn, which I washed and balled up and cast on yesterday for a lacy scarf. If it works, I’ll show it to you.

But I also got silk caps from The Good Shepherd, purely because the colors were so stunning I was unable to walk away:

I haven’t decided yet how I want to spin these — I got three caps of this dyelot, and they’re all fairly fat caps. The yellow cap I spun for practice was much lighter, and that yielded a little over 200 yards of cobweb weight, so I may try plying this with something for a laceweight or dk yarn, and make some kind of adornment from that. I know with those colors that I want it to be something that is worn purely because it’s pretty — not because it has any specific purpose.

I also picked up a serious haul from Cloverleaf Farms. The autumnal/harvest colored merino/silk blend I got from them last year has remained one of my most favorite handspun yarns to date, so I got one braid of the merino/silk, and two of the straight merino:

That’s the blend on the top, and the two wool braids on the lower part of the photo. These, combined with the handspun I have from last year’s Cloverleaf Farm haul, I think will become the hexagon portion of Norah Gaughan’s Hex Coat from Knitting Nature:

Photo from Norah’s Flickr via Ravelry, and looks to have been scanned in from the book. The suggested yarn is Reynolds Lite Lopi, and I have an entire fleece from a Navajo Churro lamb in a warm brown that I think will become the body of this sweater, and thus I hope this garment will become my first item ever made entirely from my own  handspun yarn.

I have more to show you, so come see me again soon.

And also the beginning of block trois.

I have got to get better about documenting what I’m doing — I think I may have knit the first block on size 9 needles instead of 8s, which is what these are — I had to dip into a new ball to complete the last three rows of the six repeats of the second block, there, and am hoping that won’t be a trend for the rest of the blanket. I had a bunch left over from the first ball, but it may just be differences in yardage from skein to skein.

Also, I’m way behind on my projected/intended two-blocks-per-month to be done in a year (theoretically), so I need to catch up. 2 down, 3rd begun, 7 to go before the end of May. My trip to CA should give me the knitting time I need for the catching up, though. The question remains whether my fortitude to knit only on Lizard Ridge will last the trip.

I am so loving the color changes, though. I’m wondering how some of the subtler colorways will knit up, and whether I’ll want to do some mega-contrasty alternating skeins or not.

I spent last evening’s stolen spinning time playing with a bright yellow dyed silk cap, given to me Saturday at MDSW by Robin Russo at The Spinning Studio. (Where the drool-inducing inlaid Vermont spinning wheels lived, and don’t think I didn’t have a moment where I wanted to drop everything I was carrying and beg them to let me take home the mother of pearl one…)

Robin was perfectly lovely to me, when I asked how one prepares a silk cap for spinning — I’ve never spun with 100% silk before, and when I asked, she said, hand me that yellow cap out of the bin and I’ll show you. She promptly DID show me, and then gave me the yellow cap as a gift, saying that it doesn’t sell well as a color. (Admittedly I’d just purchased that stack of caps from her in blues and greens, but still. I was very touched.)

So in practice I spun up the yellow cap last night, all except the last layer, which I pre-drafted and is sitting at home waiting for me as I type. I initially was thinking disparate small skeins of silk laceweight, but now I am wondering if I will spin it all up as one skein with long color blocks. There is only the one yellow cap, and then I have two each of the green and the two blue colorways, so I must ponder. Anybody want to weigh in with suggestions?

I have some more progress on the Noni tapestry bag than what’s shown here, but while I was taking photos of this project for you guys, I inadvertently got the following image:

Six years ago on May 4th, I was in Millwood, Virginia at Long Branch Estate, where I married my (now known as The) Sainted Husband. I am grateful every day to have found someone who is a true partner for me, and who makes me feel beautiful even when I’m otherwise feeling icky. He gave me my beautiful baby girl, and takes care of both she and me very, very well.

(The diamond in my ring was my mother’s — I had actually asked for a sapphire, both because I prefer them and because we couldn’t have afforded a diamond then or now, but who can argue with a gift like that? Mama passed away four months before we got married, so it now is even more valuable to me. Our rings were made by http://www.raru.com, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.)

So what I was trying to show you when the above picture occurred was some progress on the tapestry bag:

That’s the  bottom of the bag plus a few rows of the body knitted around. I tried to show you some of the patterning, there.

Most of this progress was made at Alexandria Hospital while my husband dealt with a truly ugly first-time bout with a kidney stone. It took a few weeks and some direct intervention to get the stone out of his system, which is partly why I’ve been quiet the last couple weeks.

Today was Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, so I’ve got some loot to share with you in the days ahead! It was, as always, a total madhouse, but this year’s theme seemed to be silk for me. Lots of silk and and silk blends brought home to spin.

I leave on the 13th of May for Sebastapol, California, where I’m attending a tribal belly dance festival/event for a week or so, so it’s just busy-busy-busy around here for a while. I’ve also got some progress on Lizard Ridge to show you. What are you up to lately?

Holy cow, y’all. Seriously. What a month this has been. First of all, I show you the important stuff.

Finished Object(s)!

Nutkin socks for The Sainted Husband.

I knit these two at the same time on magic loop with Addi lace needles in an effort to avoid second sock syndrome.

This was one of those yarns that called out to be purchased with no project in mind. It’s Fleece Artist Cherry Tree Hill in a colorway that just had to be my husband’s — Java, it’s called. Anyway, it had to do with coffee, and if TSH could mainline that stuff, he totally would. Therefore, it was a no-brainer that he had to have something made from this colorway of yarn.

I absolutely loved knitting with this colorway. The tiny splotches of burgundy, and the continually shifting greys, browns, greens, blues, and shadings were soothing and yet stimulating at the same time. I was very surprised to be so engaged with colors so subtle, but now that I know I may have to try some other similar colors.

Toe detail; very cool method of short row toes and heels is documented in the pattern. I found the pattern via the wonder that is Ravelry, and it’s published by the folks at Knitzi. (see link below)

• Pattern: Nutkin Sock (Ravelry link) or Nutkin Socks (actual pattern download link from Knitzi - and if I ever knit with DPNs again, I want one of their DPN project savers!)
• Yarn: Fleece Artist merino sock, Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, in Java
• Needles: 32″ Addi Turbo Lace Circulars, US 3? 2?
• Notes: For whatever reason, the first time I sat down to knit the heels on these socks, reading the instructions I was totally baffled. Ultimately I put them down and restarted with a short row heel that I already knew. Then, when it came time to knit the toes, you repeat the same process as outlined for the heels, and suddenly it was very clear to me and I couldn’t figure out why I’d been so stymied the first round through. Just goes to show you how differently the brain can operate (or not, as the case may be) on any given day.

Later this week I’ll show you some progress on my Noni Medallion Travel Bag, and explain why these Nutkin socks were knitted largely in Alexandria Hospital. (everybody’s fine, so don’t worry. It’s just been, as I say, quite an adventure.)