Love is in the air

The sheddening has begun. This is the family phrase for that special time of year when the cat loses his body weight in hair. Look at the photo below, look how much he loves this time of year!

What you can't see is the hair that was flying off his rear end while I was brushing him 5-minutes before.

The sheddening coincides with one of my favorite times of year... Getting the bicycle out of storage! A few weeks ago I made the trip down to my local bike shop and had it checked out. Since then I've ridden a few times (when the rain has ceased long enough) and as always I come home with bicycle slobber all over.

These palms have been washed once already. See how much my bike loves me! Often the grease is confined to a smudge on my calf or a little bit on my hand as I hang by bike in the front hallway. The picture above is from a ride to the grocery store: the gear shifter got nudged on my way out the door, the chain fell off as I tried to ride (hadn't realized the shifter had moved) and then I had to touch the chain to put it back on. My bike just wanted the attention.

The knitting also wants attention. I've been trying to give the projects a little love everyday. Earlier this week the shawl got the most love. Now it is finished!

The elephant sweater is also sitting in my affections this week. I made the button holes last night and intend to finish the button band by the end of the week. The whole band is only 16 - 18 rows, and I'm on row 10 now. If i do 2 rows a day I'll have it finished by Saturday!

Plus, this Friday night is drunken knit night at Merlins Rest. I will definitely be feeling the love for another project as I sip a beer and finish those gosh darn white sleeves that are taking forever! Feeling the live, feeling the love. Besides, don't we want to feel the love forever?

I'm with the Yarn Harlot on this one, I'm ready to move onto another field of love.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

New & repeat lessons

Yarnover was a blast, and then somewhere around lunch my mind was done. It had been an epic week: game night, friend dinner, Yarnover dinner, Yarnover, and then a concert the night of Yarnover. Uffda!

At Yarnover I took Andrea Wong's Introduction to Portugeuse Knitting. The idea was to add another technique of knitting to my arsenal to help stave off tendonitis flare ups. The class was fabulous! The women asked fabulous questions (like how to do more lace techniques and different cast on) and Andrea herself was fun and a joy to learn from. The most complicated bit was tensioning without using the index finger. You tension by slipping the yarn on a hook on a pin attached to your shoulder.

That gets easier with practice, which I have been doing almost everyday for a few rows. I'm not sure if I've released stress on my tendons using this style, but time will tell.

Portuguese knitting was the new thing I learned.

The lesson I've repeated is the yearly sunburn. The family ancestry is entirely Northern European, with very light skin that burns very easily. Knowing this I tend to carry sunscreen in my purse.

Last Sunday was the annual May Day festival thrown by the local puppet theater, On the Heart of the Beast. If you've never been and never seen photos check out their website. It is quite experience. They shut down a street for the pade which consists of: people on modified bikes, people in costume, people playing music on a wagon drawn by people on bicycles, children with puppets, and people of all ages dressed up and on stilts. It's a blast!

Plus, this year my friend brought along her giant bubble wands and special solution to make 3' bubbles. Yay bubbles!

Be excellent to each other!

Inspiration

A few weeks ago was the local yarn shop hop in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It's always good to begin shopping with some goal in mind. That weekend the goal was to purchase fingering weight yarn that would be inspirational for new designs. The pile in the above picture shows how success I was in completing my goal. 110% successful!

In addition to yarn I've recently picked up two knitting accessories that will be instrumental in the design of new pieces: buttons!

I'm hoping for some fun sweater ideas to crop up while ogling the buttons. It worked last time.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

Accessorize your sweater

The time is nearing to add buttons to the dancing elephant sweater. I met up with my friend today to go over the buttons and decide number, placement, etc. aren't the buttons she picked out great?

Right now the sweater is in the following state:

It's being used to cover my lap while i knit. Spring is coming slowly this year, and the extra warmth from the cardigan is very much appreciated. I finished the yoke decreases last night and prepared to start the ribbing. I'm quite excited as there is a new tool I'll use to make the ribbing slightly easier - it's an interchangable circular needle extender!

I can connect my long interchangable cords in the middle and have an even longer cord to go around the entire neck/button holes of the cardigan! They are Knitters Pride interchangables, and I'm loving them! I rarely use needles larger than a US 6. Buying an entire set of interchangables was never a worthwhile idea. Knitters Pride now sells them individually. So I can buy lots of cords, and only the size needles I need! Right now I have US 4 in wood and US 3 in carbon with metal tips. I wish they carried more sizes in cubics, but maybe someday. Right now it's worth it to use the super long cords.

Now I'm off to dunk my hands in some frigid ice water. My wrist is aching in a warm way, the first signs of a flare up.

Be excellent to each other!

 

Spring break

This week is spring break at school. In Minnesota it is possible to tell that spring break has arrived by two things:

1. Nothing really productive gets done as one is taking a break.

2. Spring is taking a break because a blizzard hits the state.

My break today involved a two hour nap with the cat. And ignoring the snow that needed shoveling outside.

The real work today that I've been avoiding is heading down to the coffee shop to start (continue) writing these sweater patterns so hopefully they can be tested someday. I'm chugging along with the elephant sweater and really trying to make an effort to finish the sleeves for cloudberry.

The sleeves move slowly. The positive part is that I learned how to do magic loop - I hereby pledge that I will never make just one sleeve at a time ever again! Plus that sock thing for holding the yarn (one in the calf end and the other put in the inverted toe end)a nifty trick!

Now the elephant sweater ...

I probably have 10 rows left of the elephant colorwork and then an edging. After that I make the yoke and decide whether to do the collar and button band at the same time ... I think yes. I like mitered corners.

The heft and sock yarn weight are taking their toll on my hand. I had to ice yesterday, twice. Today I did the ice bath dunking - which I will repeat for the next few days to ensure that all this knitting doesn't inflame the tendon sheath. Thank goodness for that ice bath. I knit for several hours yesterday and more today. Yes my wrist is tired. But there were times in the past that much knitting would have me pouting for a week.

The current ice bath recipe:

5 gallon bucket filled with two cooler sized ice packs and water.

Dunk hands (past wrists) for 10 seconds every 10 minutes for an hour and a half or six times, whichever comes first.

After each dunking dry hands on microfiber cloth and apply lotion to prevent hands from clapping unduly.

 

And I will knit another day!

Be excellent to each other!

 

Your senses lie to you

The elephant sweater is seamed and ready to start knitting the yoke!

With things progressing it was only a matter of time before some minor issue arose. I first thought I hit a glitch when seaming. I couldn't get the back and right front to line up correctly. Which is utterly perplexing as I did the front and backs on the knitting machine which counts the rows for you! Of course it did line up and everything seamed just fine.

So, no problems with seaming. Oh no, the problem came later.

The needle on my circulars BROKE OFF!

Do you see the gap there?! That gap occurred in the middle of working across the sleeve and tons of stitches fell off. Luckily I had the needle that I'd used to knit the sleeves and could salvage the slight catastrophe.

See the wood needle and the metal needle there? Two different needles to hold everything together. Now that wood needle will be replaced by my new interchangables and the metal needle will remain. Except ... I will make a big change. I will split the stitches for the sleeve and put half on one needle with the two front pieces and 1/2 the stitches for the other sleeves. Then 1/2 the sleeve stitches, back panel and the other half on another needle. Which would look like ...

It's working, which is better than having things break. Oh well. It's been an adventure, and now I have to count and make sure I have the right number of stitches for the charts.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

Bottoms up!

The newest (restart) of a project is the Dancing Elephant sweater. I started the sweater on circulars US 4, and realized ... I have a knitting machine. Slap that sweater on the machine to do the stockingette for the back, fronts and sleeves! The first sweater on the machine was a top down cardigan from a lovely pattern called Amande Cardigan. I'm still seaming and finishing all the hems ... But I'm finishing that sweater in a few weeks, instead of my usual 2 months because of tendonitis.

The first sweater was a top-down with the entire beginning hand-knit. This meant that I already had something to slap onto the machine.

Luckily with the elephants I had already knit the ribbing and could slap that onto the machine in three parts. Otherwise I could have done a provisional cast on for each piece and then picked those up later to knit the ribbing in one piece going the other direction. It wouldn't have been very noticeable and wouldn't have required me to do the ribbing before the machine bits.

I started with the back stitches first to determine length. Then the two front pieces. I carefully put the different sets of stitches onto the machine.

The back was knit straight to the 17" armpit mark. The two fronts were knit to 14" and then along the seam edge were increased as a way of making a dart and a better fit for the female body. All the piecework were the. Removed back onto a US4 circular. I slowly insert the knitting needle into the stitches while on the machine and pull the machine latch out of the loop while the knitting needle is there. TADA! The stitches end up on the knitting needle!

This afternoon I finished the two fronts and back panels. At singing this evening I'll cast on and create the ribbing pieces for the two sleeves and I can slap those on the machine tomorrow!

More notes later!

Be excellent to each other!