Look What Came in the Mail from Canada!

Thirty balls of Jamieson's Spindrift!
From Camilla Valley Farms in Canada.
(a few came in the old skein-style)

Who picked what:
JenniferKristin

Val

Wendy

Angela

Can't wait to start!

A Miracle!

Simma wore her mittens on a date!
THAT is the true test.
I saw this on the counter this am. And yes, that is a bronze lame purse.

Peppermint sticks

Here's my mom, sitting in her nice electric reclining chair, post-Christmas dinner, working a crossword puzzle. I think her Christmas socks (Karida's Neighborhood Fiber Company sock wool in, I think, the Logan Circle colorway) complement her cashmere track suit and designer glasses nicely, don't you?

I'm sold on this yarn. These socks turned out really, really nice and looked great on her feet (worn with wool Birkenstock clogs).

I know I posted this picture before, but I thought I'd include it again. The socks, done in a modified spiral pattern, remind me of peppermint sticks. The scarf, in the same colorway, I've wrapped and left for her to open on new year's.

Finished!

Behold. The socks. I barely finished them, grafting the toes and sewing in the loose ends in bed on Christmas morning. Karida's Neighborhood Fiber Company Seawool in the Lincoln Park colorway, which is beautiful.


As you can see, the heels are really light. I'd brought along what I thought was enough dark reinforcing and a spare spool of the light color (just in case) and ran out of the dark color before I'd even completed the first heel flap. So after calling around to all the area knitting shops and coming up empty (batting 100?) I ripped that heel flap back, used the light color, added a dark stripe (to harmonize with the striping of the socks) and continued on. As it was, I ran out of all my reinforcing on the very last row of the second sock.

Here's my bro modeling his socks. Below, the first pair I knit him, in "Mineral." He says they're kind of baggy. I think maybe I'm making my heel flaps too long. Or his feet are too small. Or both.

Early X-Mas

We do our gift-giving a little early since we will hit the road to CNY today. Here's a pic of the family in their knitted items. L-R: Noah in the hat, Hal in the scarf (but I also knit the hat last year) and Simma in her mittens. They are very nice for letting me post this!

We had fun today...

Angela had some silk "hankies" and a drop spindle.
She spun and plied the silk.

You can see some of the results above. Beautiful stuff!

Eewww

I think this looks creepy:And this doesn't look much better.
But they ARE warm.

Thrummed mittens. There's a good tutorial on how to make them at Hello Yarn.

Early Christmas

Look what arrived on my mother's doorstep the other day:

Notice it's still in the original packaging? That's because it's technically a present from my mother to me and so I need to wait until Christmas to look at it. There's no way I'd be able to resist if I took off the plastic. Thank you Amazon, thank you Santa, and thank you Mom.

What I Did on My Winter Vacation

Upstate NY has gotten a lot of snow, as you can see from this picture of my mom's back deck. It's very cold and today we're supposed to get flurries and an inch more of accumulation. Nice if you don't have to travel. And if you need to stay inside and get a lot of knitting done. Which I do. (See below.)

Here's a gratuitous dog picture. All creatures great and small:


So, onto my brother's Christmas socks. The cuff for one is totally finished with the other one trailing closely behind. Should be able to finish the second cuff today. Did I say I'm doing the mistake rib, or broken rib pattern? It's nice because the rows alternate k2, p2 and k: getting those rows of plain knitting is much easier on my hands.



The colors look nice together, I think. And the yarn is really wonderful to work with. A beautiful color. The only thing is. . . the ball is totally effed up. Above, you can see a big wad of tangled yarn from the center. This happened with the other ball as well and after spending -- no joke -- about two hours trying to untangle the mess, I realized that a good length of the yarn had wound around itself so much that it felted together. A total soup sandwich, as some of my people say. So now I'm knitting from the outside of that ball and expect I'll have to do the same with this one. What's going on?? Could it be that I was the one steering the ball winder? I'm hopeless.

By Friday I'd better be well finished with both heel flaps and all instep decreases or, like the balls of yarn, my Christmas plan for my brother will be totally effed as well. Stay tuned.

All Done!

For my daughter

All I can say: F-ing fringe....

The Forest for the Trees

Yarn + needles + glass beads + dried lime peel + cloves + dried lentils:


times a lot of knitting =


This is a good example of the power of gauge, for all of you who hate knitting swatches (you know who you are). This is the exact same pattern using the same number of stitches but in three different yarns knit with three different needle sizes. The tiny trees were knit with Koigu sock yarn on #2's. I got a whopping ten (yes, count 'em, ten) little trees out of one skein. They're all about 3" tall. The mid-size trees I knit with Koigu Kersi on #4's and was able to get five full trees and a shorter one -- so 5 1/2 trees -- out of one skein. The large trees I knit with a thicker wool on #8's and I'll be able to get 5 trees out of one skein. (There are 4 shown in the picture below because I still have the last one to do.)



Now I'm ready to start my brother's socks. Think I'll get them done in time for Christmas? Wagers, anyone?

Teeny Tiny

I made this one for my son.

I made these for my friends.

I bought this one at Reading Terminal from and Ecuadorian woman for $2. Isn't it great? She has lots more...

OK, I know this is corny.....

But I don't care.
Last year it was tiny socks, this year it's tiny sweaters.

Hope to see everyone at the SnB! If you can't come, be sure to look at the blog next week. I plan to post pictures.

The Bickford Improved

Kinda nifty, huh. Printed around 1880, it's a great advertising circular for a knitting machine. Looks pretty complicated. I think these things go for big money on eBay and they're difficult to use. When we saw a demo of sock machines a couple of years ago at Maryland Sheep and Wool, the woman said they were really delicate and just taking them on a road trip was enough to get the mechanisms all goofed up. I mean, really -- look at all those little hooks!

(Click on it for a larger image.)

And what, exactly, does it make? Reminds me of a sausage extruder I once saw at the Italian Market.

Done and Done-er

To go with the socks I knit for my mom, below (I'm posting this kind of backwards), I made her a lace scarf with the same colorway, but a mohair blend. (This is Cecil, wondering what the h*^^ I'm doing.)




Close-ups so it's easier to see the pattern. I still need to block the crap out of it -- John, I need my T-pins back -- but the knitting's done.

The socks:




























Above, Mom's Christmas socks. I'm happy with them -- they look like candy canes or peppermint sticks. The yarn was great to work with: Neighborhood Fiber Company hand-dyed merino sock yarn created by a woman named Karida from Washington, DC, who names all her colorways after DC parks and neighborhoods. Yo, check it: http://www.neighborhoodfiberco.com/wordpress/

The pattern is a simple spiral rib. I was going to make them as tube socks -- the entire thing as a spiral with no shaping but then I lost my nerve. These guys fit great (like a glove, one might say, only they're socks) so I'm glad I changed up the pattern.

It's beginning to look a lot like. . .

. . . I might not finish all my Christmas knitting.

This weekend was spent crafting my little fingers off. Got the bright idea I'd make some Christmas tree sachets, thanks to inspiration from the Purl Bee: http://www.purlbee.com/
I changed the pattern a bit, using Koigu worsted weight and beads. They're each about 5" high and I ground up some cinnamon sticks and anise seed to give them a nice and spicy but not chokingly horrible pot-pourri smell (I hate that stuff). And used a lot of lentils to weigh down the bottoms. They're like smelly bean bags. But in a totally cute and non-threatening kind of way.



So the Koigu can make at least 5 of these babies. I still have enough to make one more big one and then I have some Koigu sock weight that I'll work on smaller needles. My goal is to knit 15 altogether (adding a third size that's even bigger, maybe) and be able to give them away in sets of 3 different sizes. (Three seems like a good number, better than 2, which is weird, and 1, which seems stingy.)
On the left, a finished tree. On the right, the skein of Koigu just waiting to be made into 5 trees, with green beads on. Oh A.C. Moore and your 40% off coupons. How I love thee.

What's that? My book? Is someone wondering about my book? [Insert sound of chirping crickets here.] It might just have to take a backseat to the knitting for the next couple of weeks. Because did I mention I'm also looking to knit a pair of socks for my bro? Yes, please just shoot me now.

Look what I got in the mail!

This is the Resource Guide from Harrisville Designs. It may be the best bet for yarn for the Latvian Mittens. (Jamieson's seems to be having problems- Rosie's has a very small supply, and the Satakieli comes in rather large expensive skeins.) I will bring it to the next S&B and we can put in a group order for yarn. The picture doesn't do justice to the colors. They are really nice. The interesting thing is that they dye the wool in only a few colors and then they blend those colors to create new colors. Then they spin it. So the colors are interesting and complex. Kind of heathery.