string around my fingers

WIP Wednesday: If it bleeds...

I actually finished Bonnie's scarf (it wasn't a magic ball of yarn and so it did finally run out) and soaked it so that I could block it and it bled. And bled. And bled again. It's still bleeding. It's bleeding so much that the waste water will dye pale fabric (don't ask me how I know this). I'm beginning to wonder if they put any fixative in it at all. I used some vinegar on it and that slowed the bleeding down to a drip, but then it smelled strongly of vinegar. I rinsed the vinegar out and it bled again. I've got synthapol on order from Dharma Trading. Maybe that will help.

In the meantime, I've started a new commission for Joe. It's a cardigan called Lily by Debbie Bliss using her line of Cashmerino yarn.

It uses a loosely knit, blocked ribbing. It's perfect for the tubular cast-on, though the pattern doesn't call for it.

I'm reading a lot about how this yarn pills very badly, so it might be a good thing that this sweater will never be worn. I've found it to be splitty and unevenly spun.  The color is closer to the second photo; the first is too blue.

As excited as I am about Roam in Malabrigo, I'm putting it on hold while I finish Lily, since Joe seemed to want it pretty soon.

WIP Wednesday: Vine Lace and Seed Stitch

Two big WIPs this week. I'm continuing the never-ending Vine Lace Scarf that I think will never end mostly because I've stopped working on it. I'm so bored with it because I've made it before of the exact same yarn just in a different color. See?

Now I'm doing it in a lovely wine color:

but I'm having to slog my way through it.

The other thing that's happening is Roam from the Fall, 2007 Knitty by Laura Chau. I'm swatching in this beautiful Malabrigo worsted called "Velvet Grapes". I'm really excited about this because I think the yarn is going to be gorgeous with the pattern.

I'm using the information I got last year from the class I took with Annie Modesitt about Eastern Knitting and positioning stitches on the needle. Because of the way I throw the yarn, seed stitch is onerous for me, but by wrapping the knit stitches backward I can make them sit on the needle in such a way that makes knitting them the next row that much easier. It also makes the weave a little tighter. Once I finish the swatch I'm going to have to make myself finish the scarf before starting the sweater or I'm afraid the scarf will just go away.

Obligatory New Year's Post a Week Late

Holy Cow. Already this year we've had temps from 12° to 76°, five doctors appointments, $3.05/gallon gas, and I've written "2007" on four checks (so far). I've got a lot of stuff I want to do this year and here's an outline:

--Get back to physical therapy. For a while I was working out three times a week in the therapy pool at the local hospital and it was very good for me. Given the energy I'm expending on the prolotherapy I don't think I can manage that much so my goal is: twice a week, three weeks out of every month for the next three months. Then I'll reassess. I'm tracking this goal through Joe's Goal's with a badge over in the right column. I've been twice since the beginning of the year and I'm appalled at how much stamina I've lost in just eight months. I had been water jogging for half an hour, but now I'm reduced to walking back and forth across the pool for just ten minutes. Oh well. Baby steps.

--Pay attention to blogging. WIP Wednesdays didn't survive the holidays and this year has gotten off to an inauspicious start BUT tomorrow is a new day and all that, so: WIP Wednesdays every Wednesday for three months then reassess. Which brings me to

--Much knitting. If your a Ravelry member you can see from my revamped queue that I have big designs in mind and a lot of them have cables. I've never really done much with cables so I'm looking forward to Zimmerman's Dickinson Pullover particularly. Plus whatever I knit for Joe.

--Loose 15 pounds. This is a continuation from a goal from a couple of years ago when I wanted to loose 40 pounds slowly so it would stay off. Last May I'd gotten down 30 pounds when I had to go on Lyrica which, contrary to their PR, does cause weight gain mostly because it makes you hungry all the time. So I went from being perfectly satisfied on 1700 calories a day to ravening on 2300. Despite my best efforts, I regained five pounds. But I hope now that I've left Lyrica in the dust. So 15 left to go by the end of the year. I'm tracking this through the snail in the grass badge on the right.

--Build a new computer. This is going to happen very soon. My brain's still fried from the traveling over the holidays and I've been completely unable to approach this, but it's on the top of The List.

Those are the big ones. I might add to this post over the next few days because I'm sure there's something I'm not remembering that I wanted to include.

Here's some gratuitous yarn:

We had an ice storm.

Isn't this great? A thousand pounds of lumber that used to be in a tree is now on the ground in my back yard. I've decided not to think about it until after Christmas.

Guess where my chainsaw is?

WIP Wednesday: Stocking-pa-looza

Zooming along with the stockings, with a quick break to run down to my dad's house for our belated Thanksgiving. Current standing now amounts to 1.75 down, 1.25 to go. Theresa's stocking of the first commission is finished:

Ta-da! And the second is being blocked as we speak with the embroidery designed for delivery on Friday. As soon as I finish this quick note, I'm going to cast on for Dee's stocking.

WIP Wednesday: Commissions

Well, holy cow. I have actually been commissioned to make not one, not two, but three -- three -- stockings. For real, actual money. From people who are not family members.

This bleary photograph is of one of the two stockings I'm making for S. The same pattern as the ones I made for L's kids, but with slightly deeper colors. The utter deficiency of this photo is more and more apparent to me as I see not only is it blurry but also the colors aren't very true even making allowances for the computer monitor. Oh, and, I re-did the gusset you see there. The new one looks much better. S's second stocking has red and purple stripes with green toe, heel and cuff.

I don't have a photo of the second commission yet, but it's the same pattern (no, I'm not tired of this pattern yet, why?) with a bright purple and a super-bright red for the stripes with a Christmas green for the contrasty bits. All to be done by December 10th. But I already have one of S's stocking blocking and the cuff knit on the second, so I'm well on my way.

In addition to all that, I'm intermittently working on changing my knitting style so that it's more efficient.  I throw my yarn with my right hand, and I'm happy with my speed so long as I'm just knitting or just purling. The minute I want to do seed or moss stitch or ribbing my normally rapid knitting slows to a crawl and I laboriously switch the yarn from the front to the back and back again. Chunk chunk chunk. Plus, I have to pay way too much attention to something as simple as ribbing. The people around me who can switch back and forth efficiently all knit continental, but all my efforts to adopt that style so far have completely failed to produce anything resembling a consistent gauge. I mean not even close. I blame this on my intense right-handedness. But I've recently been reminded of the video in this post of The Anticraft (which I'd seen before but which slipped out one of the swiss cheese holes in my brain) that details Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's knitting style. She throws and manages to knit pretty quickly even switching from knit to purl. So I'm going to memorize that video and see if I can't implement some of that for myself.

fish or cut bait

I've really not been doing this blog. I haven't felt well and with that goes the cognitive deficits that crop up but I really want to do this and I don't want to let my health get in the way. Part of the problem is a sort of all-or-nothing mentality whenin I think on some level that if I don't post everyday I may as well not post at all. That's rubbish. So I've decided to institute "WIP Wednesdays". On Wednesdays for the next month I'm going to post about whatever I'm knitting at the time. There. Small, measurable goals.

2 steps forward, 1.9 steps back

I'm having prolotherapy done on my back and neck. It's an arduous process that started back in June and will probably continue until March of next year. Every couple of weeks, I drive an hour over the mountain to a university town to visit an osteopath who injects a cocktail of stuff into various joints in my spine. After anywhere from four to six injections, I drive to a friend's house and sit for a few hours on her couch with an icepack before driving back home over the mountain. I can already see the long-term benefits of this happening: my neck, which has had the most work done, is more supple and stable.But the treatments hurt and I get very tired for a few days afterward, and this last treatment was a doozy with the pain and fatigue and the extra added bonus of some sort of reaction to one of the chemicals with a lovely case of neuralgia. On my back, an area about the size of my hand feels like it's been burned. Badly. Lidocaine helps, as does, surprisingly, heat. I'm told this could be gone as early as a week from now. It's going to be a long week.

okay okay

So.

Almost three weeks ago I went to the Fall Fiber Festival in Montpelier, Virginia. I had a great time. Three friends and I walked around for five straight hours in the heat and the dust and all the yarn and roving and animals.

I have a soft spot for alpacas. Before I developed cfs/me, my dream was to have an alpaca farm. Or maybe llamas. They're good too. More guardhair, though. These were some lovely animals.

We sat and watched the sheep dog trials for a while and I had a red-flavored snow cone. It was a childhood taste. Can you see the haze of dust in the air?

The main attraction of the day, of course, were the opportunities to spend money. And there were plenty. I felt I showed restraint and only bought what I could carry. I showed a predilection for sock yarn.

I finally laid my hands on some Lorna's Laces and they're as beautiful as I was told they'd be. I had a hard time choosing just these two.

And from left field, I just had to have this colorway in laceweight tencel:

It's taken me three weeks to post because I entirely overexerted myself and had a flare-up. Big-time flare. But it was worth it.

Well, this would be the CFS part of things

The last couple of weeks are a perfect example of the kinds of frustration I feel about my illness. I (re)started this blog to go with my ravelry membership and ...boom. A big flare-up. Or maybe that should be whimper instead of boom, since everything just sort of stops. Peters out.

Though my brain wasn't up to composing language, I did actually knit:

A fairly easy perfectly adorable baby sweater for the LYS. Really sumptuous yarn from Sublime. As with all good projects, I learned stuff from this-- with silky smooth yarn, woven in ends don't stay woven in. Tie knots instead.