Positive - Repost

I've gotten a few messages from readers saying that they can't access my most recent entry, so I'm re-posting it with the hope that it will now be viewable by everyone.  Maybe this will also fix the formatting issue.

 Now that I'm back in Pittburgh and all is well, I realize that I should have been focusing on the positive aspects of my trip rather than everything that didn't go so well.

My trip home, though longer than planned, allowed me to spend some quality time with my family.  Here we are celebrating Mother's Day/a sister's birthday/a brother's birthday/a niece's birthday (with a family this big, you sorta have to share the party.)

 

See?  Quality.  (Blurry quality, but clearly we're all entertained by something.  From the looks of it, my brother's boyfriend is telling a great story.)

And my trip to Wisconsin to visit a friend at my undergrad, although also longer than planned, allowed me to catch up with old friends, chat with my clarinet professor, talk to friends traveling to Bali this summer, attend a choir concert, an orchestra concert, a phenomenal recital by Ali Amr on the Qanun (there's a sound clip of him playing and singing on the first link), a lecture by a visiting ethnomusicologist on the relationship between music, nature, and liminality (and about how musicians are the most powerful and dangerous people on the planet), AND I was able to attend two gamelan rehearsals and see the beautiful new set that they just got.

 

I really don't think it could have been a better trip.  So, although I did let frustration get the better of me by the end (and really, given the circumstances, I think it was understandable.  I mean, it did add an additional 11 hours of driving to my plan...), lots of good happened.

But really (and this is an aside because we're focusing on the positive and not the negative right now), it was so totally frustrating to get back to Pittsburgh and then lose my power that night due to a thunderstorm AND... (and I'm woozy just writing this...) AND finding a wool m*%h in my living room.  And let me tell you, I massacred the hell out of that thing and didn't feel even the smallest ounce of remorse.  Nope, I am a moth-killing Samurai.

I haven't seen any more of them in this apartment, but the scare did lead me to better stash management.  Before, I just had yarn everywhere.  Really, everywhere.  I sort of liked it that way, too.  You know, going into the cupboard to get the cereal in the morning and, oh, what's this?  Hidden malabrigo?  Jackpot!  And then, you know, you open the desk drawer to get a stamp and the sock yarn just leaps out at you.  It's like an Easter egg hunt every day, except you didn't know you were looking for anything.  It's like the stash is so excited that you're home that it rushes out to greet you.  It's like...

It's like I don't bother putting my yarn away and simply throw it wherever is most convenient at the time (which only half explains how I found yarn under the bathroom sink the other day.  When is it "most convenient" to put yarn away in the bathroom?  I must have been comparing it to my eyes in the mirror and then just plopped it on the ground or something.  And yes, I know it's weird for a guy (a colorblind guy, no less) to compare yarn to his eyes.  Don't tell me you don't do weird things with your yarn, too.)

Wow, this digression just keeps going.  Anyway, as I was saying, I found a wool moth not really near any of my yarn, which is sort of impressive considering that yarn is everywhere, and I squashed the thing and fled to Target ASAP to buy a trunk-full of plastic bins and then I began sorting.

I didn't know I had that much yarn.  I know it's not a lot compared to some stashes (and you know who you are), but still, I was surprised.  (Maybe that's why I hide it throughout my apartment - so I don't feel like I have an excessive amount of it.  Putting it all together like this makes me looks a bit unreasonable.)

I inspected every single skein AND sorted through all my partial balls, scraps, and swatches and found nothing.  No signs of the little evil pests.  Now all of my yarn is neatly contained by weight in plastic bins (except Malabrigo, Cascade 220, and Knit Picks Palette.  Those all got their own large bins.  I love them too much to make them share.)  where hopefully the nothingness will continue.

Ok, so now that I feel like that boy in fifth grade who had lice and no one talked to him for three years (really, it was just one moth, I swear.  Please don't shun me.  I'm so embarrassed...), let's continue the good by talking about how it's good to be back.

It's good to be back because I love the woods here.  Really.  I'm thinking about digging out a little den for myself and covering the entrance with branches and vines so that you can't find it and then just living there for the rest of my life eating berries and seeds from the nearby trees while the chipmunks frolic on by.  Yep, that's what I'm going to do, but I'm not going to tell you where because then you might try to stop me.

The woods and birds go hand in hand and I have to say, I am always so excited to see new birds!  I haven't been in Pittsburgh long enough to get used to seeing birds we don't have in Minnesota, and every day is so wonderful to me!  I'm afraid a lot of the migrating birds have already passed through while I was gone, but I ran across a very dear little baby Robin and we had a bit of a chat.

He only knew one word, though, "Mommy", and I got sick of hearing it, so I left.  I also never tire of seeing the little Tufted Titmouses (Titmice?), and today I even saw both a male and a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak!  That was a first time for me and I almost fell into a stream out of excitement.  I then spent some quality time with my good friend, Mr. Mallard.

We hung out for a good 45 minutes today.  I was practicing my "be so still that you disappear" moves and he was just talking away about his day.  I think he was a little lonely and just wanted someone to talk to because, MAN, did he have a lot to say.  He's quite a handsome fella, too, isn't he?  I mean, check out that tail!

He even showed me his wing patch.

Yeah, we're besties.  But uh, between you and me, the dude's gotta work on his drooling issue...  That may explain why there was no Mrs. Mallard in his life.

Then there are the plants.  In all honesty, I'm not really a plant person.  I'm always too busy chasing the animals, but I came across these flowers today and couldn't take my eyes off 'em!

I had no idea what they were, but they were so iridescent!  I thought at first that the petals were just wet or covered with a fine powder like butterfly wings, but really they're just super glossy.  I loved them.

My camera pretty much sucked at taking pictures of them, so these ones are from my iPhone (and also suck, but I digress).  When I got home I looked up what they might be and found this website all about wildflowers in Western PA and after searching around for a while I've decided that they are Swamp Buttercups.  Who knew?!  (Well, I bet some of you did.)  I don't think I've ever seen a Buttercup before and I was thrilled!  Yep.  Easily amused.  That's me.

And one of the best things about the woods is that they make a great backdrop for knitting photos!

When I was in Wisconsin I had to stop in at my favorite LYS and say hello to the owner.  After catching up I did a bit of shopping, but I decided that I could only buy yarns that I had never seen and/or worked with before (although that rule was sort of made after-the-fact to justify my purchases).

I bought a skein of Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton, though clearly this skein isn't dyed.

I've never knit with cotton before (oh, except one dish cloth four years ago) and this stuff isn't super stiff or dense like other cottons.  I'll probably make a hand towel or a face cloth or something.  I know white was probably the worst choice, but I couldn't convince myself to pick any other color.

Then I got a skein of a Noro yarn that I had never heard of or seen before.  It's Kogarashi which, according to one Raveler, means "cold wintry wind which blows the last leaves from the trees."  Very poetic.  And very beautiful.

It's 51% silk and 49% wool and I love it because it's not well blended and there are clumps of silk and chunks of wool and there's even bits of silk thread and stuff spun into it.  I'm really excited to use it.

The last yarn I saw I knew had to be mine.  It's really bulky and squooshy (it is too a word) and it will make an awesome cowl that will match my coat perfectly.

The yarn is called "Ushya", which means "soft" in Quechua and it's put out by Mirasol.  98% merino and it's not actually plied, but it's essentially knit up into i-cord.

So there you have it - the positive.  Is there any positive in your life today?

Letters From Home

These past few weeks have been quite... well... unexpected.

My short jaunt to Minnesota began as planned.  I arrived and spent several days with my little nephews.

Finn, the cute one that will put anything in his mouth at least once

Darby, the cute one who is too busy digging for treasure to look at the camera

and Xander, the cute one who has so much energy you don't want to see what the blurry pictures look like (that's another nephew in the background, Josh.  Really, they're everywhere.  He's the one too busy being a teenager to show emotion and would kill me if I called him cute.)

When I wasn't pretending to be a babysitter (and I really was pretending.  I fully admit to sitting on the couch and letting them run amok unsupervised for most of the day), I attended my brother's final high school theater production and my little sister's circus show.

Here's a video of her if you want to see.  She's the one on the right:

(Um... that's my first time trying to embed a video.  I'm assuming it doesn't work right.  Let me know.  Here's a link to the YouTube thingamajig.)

Where was I?  Oh dear, this is becoming random.  Let's move on to works in progress.

Tina asked to see a close up of my handspun from my last post and, um, Tina?  You're going to be disappointed.  Here's the best I could get.  It's a 2-ply merino.

The color is about as accurate as a drunk man playing darts blindfolded, as is the focus.  I haven't knit on this one in weeks which is a shame because clearly I'm almost done (not much yarn left) and it's going to be so freaking awesome when it's finished.

I've also been ignoring a vest that I started at the beginning of March.  It's the Latvian Vest by Kieran Foley published in Knitty and I'm using Knit Picks Palette.  (No reason to use expensive yarn on my first full-sized colorwork project, right?  I mean, it could end up being a total disaster.)

Oh, and I'm also knitting another vest out of that Manos that I showed you in my last post and the back is almost done, but now I'm ignoring that, too.  And the pictures I took sucked.  You'll have to wait to see that.

Anyway, my plans that were going so wonderfully at the beginning of this trip have been totally derailed and I'm BACK in Minnesota again instead of in Pittsburgh, where, had my plans been executed without a hitch, I would have been a week ago.  Instead of re-telling my tale, I shall just copy and paste an email (excessively edited) I just wrote to a friend whining about my recent adventures:

Dear friend,

The story begins when I went home to Minnesota on May 6.  I was only going to stay until the 13th, at which time I was going to drive to Appleton, WI for a few days and then head back to Pittsburgh.  Well, the 13th being a Friday and the superstitious bringer of bad luck,  my car needed some repairs and the shop had no openings on Friday, so I had to stay in Minnesota until Monday and change around my plans for going to Wisconsin.  My car went into the shop on Monday and then after figuring things out with my Wisconsing friend, I left for WI on Wednesday with the plan that I would stay there for only a day and then leave for Pittsburgh on Friday the 20th.

Well, that didn't go so well.  Several circumstanced kept me in Appleton longer than expected and soon it was clear that I wouldn't be leaving until Sunday morning.  I got up in the morning, went out for breakfast with my old clarinet professor, and then hit the road around noon.

When I stopped to get gas, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had forgotten something.  Something important like my clarinets or my computer or something.  I double-checked that I had everything, but didn't feel reassured.  I casually glanced over at my apartment keys and... GASP!...  they were gone!  My apartment keys were nowhere to be found!  I searched all my bags, the pockets of all my pants, everywhere in the car, and I couldn't find them.  I made some calls and finally, after giving up hope, I was overcome by that awful feeling.   That terrible feeling like you're going to throw up and pass out and cry and your vision starts to blur around the edges.  You know the one?  It was at that moment that I knew where my keys were.  I could visualize them perfectly in my mind.  But it couldn't be... no.  It just couldn't be.

I made a quick phone call, described what all four keys looked like, what kind of keychain they were on, I even described the little ripped brown tag that's hanging on for dear life and I was met with a confident, "Yep.  They're here."

...my apartment keys were at my parents' house in Minnesota!

I had no choice but to turn around and drive back.  I was finally, a week later than planned, on my way back to Pittsburgh and the fates threw one last, cruel twist.  After driving through the first severe thunderstorm, I got a call from my mother.  "It looks like there are some pretty nasty storms heading your way.  Tornadoes and everything.  Be careful!"  Well, three storms later, watching cows crowd under the trees and deer run for their lives I was finally reunited with my keys and here I sit, ready to scream at the top of my lungs while cursing the universe for this cruel joke.  I am more stressed and anxiety-ridden than ever before.  I fear that Brittany has died and shriveled up under her heat lamp because her water dried up two weeks ago, or maybe her lamp burnt out and she froze to death.  Maybe my mailbox is overflowing, or there are boxes waiting outside my apartment door (if they haven't already been stolen).  Maybe the ant infestation I so primitively dealt with using a lint roller before I left has returned while the moldy tofu I forgot to get rid of in my fridge continues its slow evolution into a sentient being.  I haven't played my clarinet in a week and it's very possible that someone has broken into my apartment and stolen all of my valuables and... I'M STILL IN MINNESOTA!!!!!!!!!!!

There, I feel better now.  Let's look at some flowers and pretend all is right with the world.

Subconscious

My semester is over.  Done.  Finito.  I have a vast, expansive summer ahead of me and dude - I couldn't be more excited.  Grad school's hard.  Don't get me wrong, I loved everything about it, but man!  That was a lot of work.  I think the most exciting thing about this summer, though, is that I'm still very excited about the clarinet.

You may remember that last year after I graduated I flew halfway around the world just to get away from my clarinet.  I learned a new language and explored a new musical tradition unlike anything I had known before to get away from the clarinet.  This summer, however, I have big plans for me and the practice room.  A whole list of plans: music to learn, techniques to perfect, orchestral excerpts to tackle...  I'm not burnt out, which is a fantastic feeling (and probably even more fantastic for my future.)

I also have big plans for my knitting.  Sweaters, scarves, mittens, hats, vests, socks... the list goes on.  (Don't you love that time of year when you can make all these plans and actually believe you will have the time in which to do them?)  I'm not making definite plans for myself, though, because stressing about knitting is stupid.  I'm going to just do what I want.  Except for, you know, those projects that I actually need to do.  (Tom's afghan, anyone?)

I was waiting for the rain to stop so I could go out and photograph some of my projects for you, but I finally gave up and dragged myself out to the park in the rainy, 43F weather and had a fantastic time.

Everything was so... ALIVE!  It was gorgeous, and I tried not to mind the rain.  There were new things popping up everywhere.

I think this rain is going to make for a very beautiful Spring and Summer.

I'm almost done with a Boneyard Shawl I'm knitting out of my own handspun.  I finished the spinning a few weeks ago and cast on before I had a chance to photograph the finished yarn.  You all know what yarn looks like, though.

I've always given my handspun away, so this is my first time actually knitting with it.  I love the way this scarf is turning out and I can't wait to wear it.  Only a few more rows left!

The day I was finished with my semester I hopped in my car and drove straight home.  Imagine how surprised I was to find myself instead at the yarn shop!  Really, my subconscious is powerful.  As I was getting out of the car, I even said to myself that I wasn't going to buy anything.  I just wanted to "look around."  Who does that?  Who goes to a yarn shop to "just look"?  It's not like I don't already know what they sell there.

But then I stumbled upon the sale yarn and couldn't resist.

Manos Del Uruguay Wool Clasica in "Putty", with "Chestnut" and "Umber" contrast colors to make this vest.  I already started it and I'm loving this yarn.

As I climbed into bed last night I thought, or rather my subconscious suggested, "I'm gonna love that sweater."  It turns out my subconscious envisions the vest with sleeves.  I wish it would have spoken up when I was buying this yarn in the first place.  What do you all think?  Sleeves?  No sleeves?  I don't know what I would wear it with as a vest, but at the same time, I want a vest (at least consciously.)

I'm heading to my first knit night at the yarn shop tonight and it's possible they may still have some left of that main color on the shelves.  I'll let you know what my subconscious decides.

P.S.: I'm driving 16 hours to Minnesota tomorrow, and then 5 hours to Wisconsin on Sunday, and then 5 hours back to Minnesota again on Sunday and then I promise to reply to all of those comments and emails in my inbox.  Promise.  Also, my computer screen is doing something and it looks expensive.  I'm hoping it will fix itself and not continue to get worse until it no longer works.

Resurfacing

I've been getting messages lately from people asking me if everything is ok or if I'm still alive.  (Fluffbuff, I don't seem to have any way to contact you, which inhibits my ability to reply to your emails.  I'd love to be able to do so.  If you'd be so kind as to email me at yarndudeknits AT gmail DOT com or send me a message on Ravelry with your email address, I'd finally be able to reply to you!)

I didn't realize that so much time had passed since I last blogged.  Quite a bit has been happening around here as the year is quickly coming to an end and everything, as always happens, seems to be happening at the same time.

I feel like I've been performing every other day around here (which may be a little bit true).  I even found myself playing a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, but I was only there for about 18 hours and didn't actually see any of the city (it was rainy and foggy.  Where are those famous monuments, anyway?)

The bus ride did allow me to do some knitting, though.  Just in time, too, as my friend's birthday was on April 7th and I wanted to get these things to her as quickly as possible.  (Hmmm, the DC trip must have been the weekend of the 8th, then.)

Also while I was off not blogging, Spring seems to have happened.  It's a bit of a shame because those are mittens and mittens are not needed in the springtime.

However, I think they sort of look like Spring, and that's gotta count for something, right?  The pattern is Clepsydra by Kirsten Kapur and I knit these ones using Malabrigo Worsted in Tuareg (with a bit of Lettuce for the cuffs).  It's not the most practical yarn choice for mittens, but I couldn't help myself.  I started them back in February when I desperately needed some Malabrigo in my life and the colors gave me hope that Winter would eventually be over.

 I should have known that Spring was just waiting for me to finish these mittens.  I apologize to everyone who was waiting for Spring to come, it's my fault.  (Also my fault was the last snowfall.  I may have said something like, "I think we're in the clear.  Spring has to be just around the corner..."  I know, I totally shouldn't've, but I can't take it back now.  I already apologized (out loud) to the whole city of Pittsburgh.  Oh well, that's in the past now.)

Because mittens no longer seemed to be the perfect gift I thought they would be back in February, I also had to include something that might still serve some sort of purpose before next October.

I had a skein of MadTosh Sock in my stash in the colorway "Oak" and, well, the Cedar Leaf Shawlette was a natural candidate for a pattern.  The pattern actually calls for a DK weight yarn, but I clearly didn't care.

I think it worked out just fine and the recipient loves it.

But how could anyone not love those leaves?

With two weeks left of class, I am going to disappear from the blog (and knitting, sadly) again for a bit, but expect me back in the beginning of May with some new projects!

Happy knitting.

Random Tuesday

I have a lot to talk about and can only loosely string it all together, so we're going to do a random post today.

Andean Chullo

I finished knitting up the body of my Andean Chullo Hat, which was a kit that used to be offered from KnitPicks.

I still have to do an attached i-cord around the entire bottom and make some tassels and weave in all the ends, but I sped through the knitting of the body because...

Latvian Vest

...I needed the needles to start a vest.  I've been wanting to knit a vest for quite a while and just decided on a whim to do so (and I needed another colorwork project now that the hat is almost done.  See how that worked?  I only finished the hat because I needed the needles and now I'm using the hat being done as my excuse to start the vest.  Sneaky, eh?).

No, my vest is not going to be those colors, don't worry.  I swatched with the two colors I thought I would be least likely to use.  This swatch did teach me several things, though.

1. I am, apparently, in the minority.  I have read in several sources about colorwork knitting that, in general, the color carried below the other color will be the one to stand out.  Let's look at my swatch.  I switched halfway through, can you tell?  Do you see how the blue stands out on the bottom more than on the top?  I carried it above the gray for the first half.  You shouldn't trust everything you read.

2.  I should never be allowed to pick colors.

3.  I am so far off gauge I can't even believe it.  Maybe you can check my math for me, alright?  I want a 40" vest.  The gauge of the pattern is 27sts/4 inches and the medium (40") size has a CO of 270.  That makes sense.  Now, my gauge is 36 sts/4 inches.  This means that if I knit the 2XL size (kill me now), with a CO of 352 (seriously, do it, please), then I should end up with about a 40" circumference.  The fact that I will be knitting a 2XL size and just hoping that it fits me and not me-plus-a-friend is overwhelmingly scary.  What if my gauge changes and all of a sudden I should have just knit the Medium like the pattern says?  So much could go wrong.  I may not be ready for this.

Tuesdays are for Tom (or something like that)

I really need to get back to my brother's blanket.  I sort of don't knit it because it's all garter stitch and there are so many more interesting things in my apartment to distract me.  I'm going to try something that is so against my personality that I think I may be going crazy.

On Tuesdays I will knit on this blanket.  I know, it sounds simple, right?  Why do I even have to announce that?  How could I mess it up?  Well, I'm telling you all with the hope that I will be held more accountable now.  If next Wednesday I show you the beautiful lace shawl I started of the pair of mittens I just finished the day before, it is up to you to shower me with guilt until I return to the blanket.  You see, I'm not saying that sometime on Tuesday I will knit on the blanket, I'm saying that on Tuesdays, I will only knit this blanket.  (There will, of course, be exceptions for my sanity.  This is knitting, after all.)

It has to get done and, well, right now it is nowhere near "done".

Should we do some more math?  (I hate math right now).  The finished blanket needs 40 of those squares.  I have 11.  I need 29 more.  Each square takes 8 hours to knit.  That means I only have to knit for 232 more hours before I fini...

...sorry, I just fainted.

I do this math more often than I care to admit.  (More often than I actually knit this blanket, that's for sure).  It just has to be wrong, right?  Please, PLEASE tell me that it's wrong.  No matter what I do, no matter how I time myself knitting one of the squares, it always takes 8 hours.  I can't ignore that.  But 232 more hours of...

...sorry, I just passed out again.  Is it Wednesday yet?

The FairyGodknitter

 Do you all know Joan?  That's a stupid question, everyone knows Joan.  (If you don't know Joan, you should.  She's pretty amazing.)

I have tangible proof that she is, in fact, THE FairyGodknitter and not simply a wonderful woman posing as the real deal.

She may not have a magic wand or musical gibberish (though I suppose I can't prove that she doesn't waltz around her house mumbling to herself.  Cookie, does she?), but her magic is just as amazing.  You see, she solved my needle crisis FOR GOOD.

 She also, magically, knew about my love for Swedish Fish and all things Post-It.  See that?  Magic.  She has it.

She may have been joking about my "old lady fingers", but somehow, magically probably, she's not that far off.  (My brother, for a photography project, took photographs of each of my siblings' hands on a black background.  Once he posted them all to facebook we could all go through and guess who's hands were in each picture.  Let's just say that people thought mine belonged to my grandpa.  I have old man hands and I may have gotten a little upset about that.  His class voted my hands the best, but I think it's just because they had the most, shall we say, character.)  She has to be magic to have known about that.

But that's not the point.  The point is that she's my Fairy GodKnitter and delivered this to my apartment.

I know!  I couldn't believe it!

I didn't know what to say.  I was speechless!  I kept muttering things like, "No.  No, no... no no no..." because I didn't believe it.  That's usually what happens when something magical happens.  There's all sorts of disbelief and crazy mutterings.  But so far the needles haven't disappeared and I think they're here to stay.  Along with this...

Blue.  I mean yarn.  Blue yarn.  Suri Blue yarn from Fleece Artist and Joan is magical.  I can't even think straight at this point.

So how does one thank the Fairy GodKnitter?  (Oh, by the way, if you haven't seen what she's been up to over on Etsy, you should definitely go check it out.  Now.  The rest of this post isn't very important.)  Thank you, Joan!  I will never again say I don't believe in Fairies.  (Oh wait, that's Peter Pan.  Does this make The Composer Wendy?)

Socks

I finished some socks.  (Man, after that last section this feels so lame).

I know that for all of you who knit socks all the time this isn't a big deal.  I, however, am not a capital S Sock Knitter.  I tried like four different sock pattern tutorials (you know, the ones where you just plug in your own gauge and measurements and it tells you know to knit a sock?) and they all left me stranded.  Not because I don't know how to knit socks, but because the socks I was knitting didn't fit me.  I finally just threw caution to the wind and cast on a number I thought would work and went from there, even if the tutorials told me that they wouldn't work out.  And guess what?

They fit.  They fit really well.  They fit so well, in fact, that I made sure to take every possible measurement I could so that I could use these socks as my template for all future socks I make for myself.

This was some KnitPicks Felici that I bought several years ago in the colorway "Pebble" (now discontinued) and I used about two and a half balls.  I have very large feet.  Hence why I don't knit socks.  (As an aside, I intentionally reversed the striping sequence on each sock.  It would have bugged me like crazy if the stripes were 4 rows off from each other, but if they're totally backwards it's no big deal.  Let's not discuss how the dark brown stripes still almost line up.)

However, now that I might be able to make socks that fit me without having to rip them out five times in the process, I may try again with this.

STR Mediumweight from my Fairy GodKnitter.  I can't even tell you how many times I've swatched with this yarn.  I've even knit two whole feet, but it just wasn't meant to be.  Maybe now it is.  There might still be some of Joan's magic lingering around these parts.

Pass the needles.

Acrobatics

I'm on Spring break.

Yeah, I found that humorous, too.  I do wish that the weather would make up its mind.  I don't like getting my hopes up only to be let down time and time again.

A few days ago there were daffodils poking out of the snowless ground.  (That's The Composer's shoe.  He seemed amused by how excited I was about "the first signs of Spring!" while dancing around and taking pictures.)

 

And today, well, look at that first picture.  Spring break, indeed.  All of my friends (including The Composer) have left me to fend for myself all week, which means I can spend each and every day knitting spinning watching movies and eating chocolate while not cleaning my apartment or putting on real clothes practicing for as long as I want.

I picked up my spindle again yesterday and spun for a while.  I was lulled into that peaceful zen state that spinning tends to create.  The soft merino sliding through my fingers, the mesmerizing spin of the spindle, the way that the repeated motions allow you to lose yourself in your thoughts, the spindle whorl doing graceful acrobatics as it flies across the room...

I guess I got a little too excited with my thigh roll.  It was cool to see what the copp (spun fiber wrapped around spindle shaft) looked like without the whorl on the spindle, though.

 

I was able to stick the whorl back on and keep spinning for a bit, but eventually it fell off almost every time I went to spin the spindle and my stream of expletives kept getting longer and longer...  I eventually just laid some unspun fiber over the hole before sticking the shaft in to tighten things up and it worked like a charm.

I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy spinning.

Did you know I've never actually knit with my handspun?  I mean, it's not like I've produced very much of it, but I've always given it away when I finish it.  I should probably keep some for myself at some point...  if I ever finish what I'm spinning, that is.  Honestly, as much as I enjoy the process of making this yarn, I gotta tell you, I don't think I'm a spindle kinda guy.  I'm still waiting for the day that I have a spinning wheel.  I have all these ideas of myself spinning yarn for sweaters and hats and mittens and wonderful woolly, warm things and, well, that's just not going to happen with me and a spindle.  I get the portability thing, but I don't take my spindle anywhere and I know a wheel would suit my needs much better.

And when I get one (note I said "when" and not "if".  It may be ten years from now, but I'm determined to have a spinning wheel before I die) I will spin up this fluff that I got for Christmas this past December from my mother.

I know a picture doesn't show you much, but it's a blend (well, handfuls really) of a bunch of different fibers - mohair, leicester, corriedale, ...something else... I can't remember.  Anyway, this is my wheel fiber.  It may have to wait a while.

And just so you don't think I've stopped knitting, I give you the beginnings of a lace shawl (by the way, that blue one from before?  Ripped.  Thanks to all of you for being so incredibly eager to tell me that my knitting looks like crap and that I was out of my mind.  You didn't say it quite like that, but I got what you were thinking.  I appreciate the support.)

And a hat that I started this past August.

Please don't say anything about the crappiness of my stranded knitting.  I function under the delusion that once I block this hat my stitches will be the image of perfect.  Blocking, in this delusion, will also get rid of all those ends.  That's the only way this hat will ever be finished.  Those ends intimidate me.

And hey, if you know anyone desperately trying to give away a spinning wheel, I'm your man.

The Swatch

After realizing that attempting to get the needles back from the lace shawl was a pointless effort, I changed tactics.  The new plan was to knit as fast as I can until the shawl had no choice but to release its grip on the needles out of sheer exhaustion (and completeness, but mostly exhaustion).

It turns out the shawl has more stamina than I do.

Here's where I seek your advice.  I admit to buying this yarn with a bit of hesitation knowing that it is variegated.  Variegated yarn does not work well with complicated lace patterns. (this is always true.  No amount of denial is going to change this.  Not even if you really, really, really want the yarn and pattern to be united.)

I'm considering this shawl a swatch.  (By the way, the pattern is Damask by Kitman Figueroa and I'm using Malabrigo Sock in Azules.  You may not be able to tell that it's the same pattern because of the variegation.)  No, I could not have knit a small square swatch.  How could I tell how the colors would change with the decreasing stitch count in each row?  How would the nupps look?  What would be the overall effect?  Clearly I had to knit the largest swatch possible, and it might as well resemble what the finished shawl would look like, right?  So this shawl swatch and I spent some quality time together and I just can't decide.  I quickly pinned it out to see what I have to work with.

I was a bit deflated by what I saw.  We needed some time apart (though, obviously, the shawl swatch held onto the needles).  After a few days I picked it back up and knit steadily for an hour, or six rows, whichever measurement you choose to use.

I thought it looked funny.  I thought, "This pattern isn't lining up."  This was on the first row.  I decided that the designer knew what she was doing and I should just continue.  "Oh, good", I thought, "the next row lines up with the one below" and this is how I continued for an hour.  I thought it was time to count my stitches.  153.  That seems right, it says in the pattern that after row 56 I should have 153 stitches.  Perfect.  But what is this number in parentheses?  Oh, never mind, that's just the stitch count for the medium size, but I have 153, so I must be knitting the small size.

But that doesn't make sense, because I cast on for the medium.  When did this change?  Have I been knitting the small size all along?

I studied my knitting.  I looked again.  I saw where the pattern didn't really line up, that the stitches were falling in the wrong place above the nupps.  "The nupps," I thought.  The nupps at the top of this chart.  The top of this chart that I just started knitting.  Why are there already nupps?  Somehow I must have...

And then I realized.  I've already knit this chart.  Not the entire thing, that would be too easy.  I knit through the nupp rows and then stopped 4 rows shy of moving onto the next chart.  Three days later when I sat down to knit this shawl swatch again, I assumed the logical thing to do would be to begin at the bottom of the chart.

For an hour I did this and didn't think twice.

Stupid shawl swatch.

So what do you think.  Is the variegation too much?  Maybe we should wait to see until I block the shawl swatch.  You can never believe a swatch until it's washed and blocked, right?