mamacate

Let's Talk About the Weather

There hasn't been really good porn weather lately.  Motley the Marvelous Montadale has yet to have his day in the sun.  But I brought my camera and a couple of goodies to work today, and my coworker kindly pitched in to take pictures in the 5 minutes of hazy sunshine we seem to be allotted today.  I have a lovely garden right outside my office door.

Ugh, now that I'm looking at it, that point looks like it's giving me a wedgie.  Trust me, no thongs were involved in the taking of this photograph.  This porn is strictly fiber-related.

I also felt the need to take gratuitous images of the shawl in repose on a lovely stone bench.  Just so you can see and appreciate the Indigo Moon fiber.  I think of it as the shawl freely expressing itself.

So, now that I've finished and even blocked (with the help of two three-year-olds, no lie) the shawl, I'm on to something completely different.  A shawl!

I cast on for Birch last night while putting the kids to bed.  It's good knitting time, at least when they're not trying to kill each other.

So, I get it now.  Why everyone keeps comparing KSH to a controlled substance.  It's just...just...oh my god.  What can I say?

Applying Myself, Idiotically

Knitting as metaphor for life, huh?  Sigh.

I have realized that suddenly, I am shockingly indecisive.  I swear to you that a few years back, I was quite capable of making good decisions quickly, without second-guessing myself.  Now, I need a poll, and still I dither.

Four out of five of you thought I should just pack it in and start Birch.  And of course you were right.  But very good points were made by Helen and Norma, among others, that a little more length might make me happier.  I also realized that part of my problem was not wanting to waste one little smidge of handspun yarn.  I had a small skein (and I do mean small, like 50 yards, plus some more in the ball I was working with), and there's something about having a whole skein, even though it's a piddling amount of yarn.  So I decided, in my dithering way, to knit HALF a repeat.  You see, basically two repeats of the pattern are charted, because of the way the diamonds grow, but I realized it wouldn't make a difference for the edging.  So I did that, the points, I applied the i-cord (that's idiot-cord for my non-knitting friends who are kind enough to read this blog anyway, hence the title, get it?), and here it is, unblocked.  I'll be really interested to see how it grows when I block it.

But remember how I didn't want to let my yarn go to waste?  Remember?  Check it out.  Swear to GAWD, this is how much yarn I had left over.

I haven't measured it, but it's less than a yard.  So for once I feel pretty confident that I did the right thing.  The stars aligned.  Thanks for all the good advice.

In addition to knitting obsessively on the shawl, I had a very busy, very knit bloggerly weekend.  On Friday night I had a wonderful and rare night out with Katy, during which I drank beer and knitted lace, and she, intelligent woman that she is, drank cranberry juice and knitted seed stitch. (No, I have not yet gone back to see what I need to rip out.  It didn't help that my damn Balene II circs kept breaking at the join.  Bryspun circs on order...)  I had a wonderful time swapping juggling-mama stories and woes, and came away feeling like I'd found another person paddling the same boat.  Thanks, Katy!

Saturday we braved the heat to see Dan Zanes at the Eric Carle Museum, and had a lovely meetup with Julia and her handsome young man, and with Amy and the little Cate and even littler Alex, as well as Amy's handsome grown-up man.  There was much kid-chasing, and I felt like I was a little melty and not my perky self (STOP LAUGHING), but it was a great way to spend the morning and give Rhys some mama-time.  The kids slept well that night.  Next time I meet those mamas, though, I hope we're spinning and/or knitting.  It just feels wrong to not be knitting when you meet up with knitbloggers, you know? 

The other thing I've been doing, since I don't have enough projects in progress, is spinning the Copper Moth tussah Stephanie forced me to suggested I buy in New Hampshire.

I'm done with about 3 out of 4 ounces now.  I'm thinking a small lacy scarf.  Maybe Branching Out, but maybe that would be too open for 100% silk and hmmm, it just isn't quite right.  I noticed this Little Leaf Scarf, a free pattern by the same designer (Sivia Harding) as the diamond shawl, and I'm leaning toward that.  We'll see how much I have.

Will it take precedence over Birch?  Will I finish my FBS now that I have the yarn?  Will I actually start pulling my weight in the laundry department?  Will the house ever get clean?

Maybe I need another poll...

In Which The Internet Tells Me What to Do

So, did I mention I have a few projects on the needles?  Yeah, I'd rather not talk about it too much.  But here's the thing.  Triangle shawls?  Unless you're knitting straight from the top down, you have OPTIONS.  This is why I prefer the tip-to-top or center-out methods of construction, but, um, you might have noticed that I'm not doing so well with OPTIONS right now.

So I've finished the number of repeats in the diamond shawl that are specified for the "scarf" version.  Here it is, still on the needles but draped with marginal verisimilitude around my shoulders (it will of course grow when blocked, plus the top is kind of bunched up).

So, it's not teeny, by any means, but I'm thinking I might want to knit a few more repeats.  Here are the pros and cons.

Reasons why I should keep knitting:

1. It's a nice warm, soft fabric.  It's not really a summer shawl; it will be much better as a snuggly winter garment, and as such it should be big enough to actually facilitate warmth and snuggling.  Right now I'd say it's a better size for a light accessory that is more about style than warmth.

2. I have more yarn.  Not definitely enough for another repeat plus finishing, but possibly, plus I have an entire additional batt of this fiber to spin.  I'm not dying to spin more for this shawl--I had some other ideas for that fiber--but I *do* have enough to keep going for a long time.  If I don't use the yarn I have already spun, I'll probably waste about 100 yards (maybe a little less), since my plan was to navajo ply the other batt. 

*Edited to add--thanks Kristen--that the other batt is almost 9 oz., the same size as the one that made the above plus about 100 yards.  So there's enough for another project, though obviously not two large shawls.  The rest of the fiber would still be useful for something (a scarf, or perhaps a coordinating hat & gloves to go with the shawl, I don't know yet).  The nice thing about spinning, as long as you're not spinning for a specific sweater pattern, is that you can spin fine if you're short on fiber or spin thick if you've got plenty.  So the fiber supply isn't the main issue.  Though I am not DYING to spin more of this stuff right now.  Since I'm kind of over this.  Did I mention that?

3. All the other shawls I'm making right now are about this size, and a larger shawl would give me some variety.

In the stop now category, we have the following rationales:

1.  I can't start Birch until I've finished this.

2. I'm a little over this shawl.  I'm not completely wild about the tweedy way the randomly-spun and plied multicolored batt came out, the diamond pattern is cool but doesn't completely rock my world, and you know, I'm just kind of ready to be done.

3. I would kind of rather not spin the second batt randomly, see 2 above.

4. I don't want it to be TOO big.  I'd like to be able to wear it to work, and I don't want it hanging down to my knees or anything.  Would a big shawl like that look too much like a Lithuanian peasant?  Or don't we care?

5. This is kind of 1 and 2 again, but there are a lot of other projects on the docket that do rock my world, and I'd kind of rather be working on those.  But I don't want to sell this project short just because I have the attention span of a flea.  Okay, a flea with ADD.  In a tree. For free.  (Somebody stop me.)  (Oh no, that rhymed too.)  (Okay, all better now.)

So, kindly save me from my indecisive self, and respond to this poll.  Your opinions are very important to us. Your responses are confidential, and will never be associated with your name.  We will use your comments to improve the quality of knitting offered to blogreaders like yourself.

WAIT!  That's the job.  Sorry.  I mean, hey, click a button.  Thanks.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

I've been knitting, with confidence, hope, you know.

It's all about the shawls.  And, of course, the spokesmodels.

I finished up all the Indigo Moon handspun for the Diamond shawl, but there's more knitting to go.  Here's what I got out of the first 350 yards or so.

And here's what I spun up for another repeat or so.  I had to go to bed last night, but I probably have a hundred yards or so left to ply so that will be for the i-cord edging along the top, I suppose.  That will be a full batt--about 8 oz.

And, sans spokesmodels since these balene circs (which I love when they work) have an awful tendency to break apart, and I figured it would be safest on the grass, the current status of Hyrna Hergorbar, the icelandic shawl from the icelandic shawl book.

I also spun another skein for this one, and I'm anticipating maybe needing one more skein before I'm done.  The pattern is actually really easy to memorize.  The double yarn-overs are a little fiddly, but overall it has not been terribly difficult and with the translation and the chart it's pretty much cake.  I was going to rechart the whole thing with familiar symbols, but it hasn't been necessary so far.

Right now I'm kind of splitting my energies (sound familiar?  Ha!) between these two.  I'll get back to other projects when I finish one of them (the diamonds is obviously the front-runner for finishing first), but for now I'm really enjoying knitting with handspun, especially when I don't have to worry about fit.  Will I ever make another sweater?  Will I ever finish another sweater?

Showing the Shawl a Good Time

In a shameless crib off an hommage to Stephanie, I decided that even if I had to work on my trip to California, I should do my best to show the shawl a good time. (By the way, for anyone who might be wondering--JO--the presentations actually went quite well and the conference was a bit of a revelation: hey, I'm actually doing kind of interesting work! I'm not so bad at this after all! Who knew?  More on that later.)

So in between and after gripping discussions of student retention, college ranking schemes, and data warehousing, I made sure the shawl had a chance to see the sights.

The shawl soaked up the sunshine by the marina in the early evening on Monday.

After successfully delivering two presentations on Tuesday, the shawl celebrated wtih a trip to the beach.

And a margarita, sipped next to a window box full of flowering jasmine.

The shawl earned its per-diem by attending a few of the last conference sessions in the morning on Wednesday, but at checkout time, it was thrilled to meet up with fellow blogger and online friend Heidi.

Realizing, as it did, that those Californians know how to make a margarita, the shawl would not be denied, especially with a red-eye transcontinental flight ahead of it.

The shawl bid a reluctant goodbye to its new real-life friend poolside at the hotel.

The flight was long and crowded, but luckily the shawl managed to snag an exit row seat (in the middle of the row, but hey, legroom) and its knitter did a little more napping than knitting overnight.

Finally home, the shawl stayed packed for most of the day while its knitter slept, and has just now peeked out into the New England sunshine, though it does wonder if such a phrase is not a contradiction in terms.

The shawl hopes that it is not completely forgotten by its spinning-obsessed knitter, now once again in the presence of spinning wheels.  It points out that it is made of handspun. The spinner knitter points out that we might need just a wee bit more of that yarn it's made out of...