The Vintage in me....

Do you remember when I was doing sample knitting for the new publication of the vintage book A Stitch in Time? I wasn't allowed to show you what I was working on (standard practice in publication), but now the book is published and photos of the projects are going up in Ravelry!

Here is one of the patterns that I knit - the cloche! (Ravelry.com link) I got to choose the yarn and colour myself, as the time to the photography shoot was too short for the editor to send me another packet of yarn from England. I think it worked out beautifully and this pattern from the book currently is the "most favorited" of the Stitch in Time patterns on Ravelry!

For those of you not on Ravelry, I'm trying to get permission from the editor to post the official photo on my blog.

for now...here is a very poor photo of me modeling the sample model in my mirror....(believe me - it looks so much better on the professional model!)



I also knit a beautiful cabled blouse for the photography, but don't know if it made it into the book because there was problem with the post getting the supplies to me, so the editor and I cut it very close with the blouse finishing. I wish I could have done more of the knitting and crocheting, but the timeline for completion was so short and it took 3 weeks to get the packages back and forth from England to here!

Check out all the patterns on Ravelry - there are many sweaters, jumpers, and blouses, a bathing suit, underthings, hats, scarves, and on and on! I think there are about 60 patterns in the book...I'm supposed to be receiving a copy of the book for the sample knitting, and I just cannot wait! This book is my dream Vintage pattern book!

Edited to add: Oh My Bob!! I just saw that the blouse I knitted was included in the book and has been posted to Ravelry! HERE it is for Ravelry users. And here it is, carefully waiting to be finished and sent to the publisher...

running, running...

I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, running through the Red Queen's garden, trying to avoid having her head de-necked. Time is moving so quickly forward, and all that I have left undone is catching up to me, with the swift sword of guilt brandished over my head.

My holiday knitting plans are actually quite modest compared to recent years - only four projects. Well, there should be five, but I've had to give the 5th one up before it was even started because... well,... it's December 3rd and I have to get these things in the post.



Most of my projects I won't be able to show in my blog, but this one is for my boyfriend's mom and I don't believe she owns a computer at all.

This is Rivolo, from Knitspot, in Jojoland 100% natural cashmere laceweight. It took frackin ForEver to make long enough because the yarn is so fine, but I'm rather happy with the results now that its over. It blocked perfectly.



I don't think his mom will actually like this scarf/stole at all. Now that I've met her, I don't think that this is something she would wear. But it's what I've got for her, so she's going to get this. Maybe she'll gift it forward. I love it when people do that with the things I make that they don't like. I tell my little sister that if she doesn't like the hats and scarves I make her, to just leave them casually on the bus and let someone else have their turn with them!

Wouldn't you love to find an abandoned cashmere scarf on the bus?

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Grape juice and lavender yarn

I'm sick...



and a very nice friend from Ravelry sent me a care package all the way from Norway! It was full of tea and this beautiful lavender lace weight alpaca, which is keeping me happy on the couch trying out patterns for a lacey scarf... She also sent a lovely heart-shaped Norwegian potato (I love potatoes!), but I can't show it to you because it is long gone (tucked away underneath a cosy blanket of butter and cream...)Yum.

and I have cosy company on the couch:



My friend Marky in Australia surprised me with a HUGE box last week too - a kind of serendipitous pre-holiday box. It deserves a lot of photos and its own post, but as you can see, I'm only showing pictures that I can take without actually getting up from under the quilts. But this wonderful box had a 1920 tool for mending knitted silk stockings, several 1920's to 1940's pattern booklets (one had a tea cloth with filet crochet teapots and teacups on it!), and a yarn for five projects!

...back to resting, now, but with happy thanks for such thoughtful friends...

Goodnight Moon....

The Golden Moon Shawl



a version of the Shetland Triangle by Evelyn Clark, from Wrap Style...

Yarn: Luscious Silk (sport weight; 360 yards) from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in colourway: Oregon Red Clover Honey; 1 skein

Needles: Size US 9 Addi Lace circular (32")



This pattern is so incredibly easy and fast. Just like last time, this shawl took less than 2 weeks from start to finish - and I didn't have all that much knitting time! I used a size 9 needle, when the pattern calls for a 6, because this is a sport weight yarn and the pattern is written for laceweight. The size was just right!

I did end up omitting one entire repeat of the body lace chart (I think it's 14 rows, actually) as well as the last two rows of the edging chart (I went strait to the final two rows which are in the book, not in the chart). Even so, it is just the way I would have hoped.

The yarn is very delicate. I treated it very gently, but still got a slight 'halo' or 'blooms' and a couple of pills. I'm hoping they won't show too much after blocking smooths everything out...

and here is a final shot - it's dark on the colour, but you can really see the stitch pattern.



This was actually a blast to knit. I can't wait to make the next one!

Untangling...

Yesterday, I got an a frantic call from a friend to go over to her house for an emergency unscrambling... she had taken her precious bundle of Habu pure raw silk and tried to wind it by looping it around the legs of her coffee table and pulling on the end. She thought that it would slide smoothly around and around the table while she wound it on her spooler - kind of using the coffee table like a swift, but a swift that doesn't turn around...

Okay! This sounds like a job for.....UnravelingSophia!! Hey - that name's not just for show, you know! I even have a superhero cape!

This is what I found when I arrived:



Ah, the hubris of humans when encountering the natural silks! How we love to think we've subdued the strands with our spinning and our natural dyes. Not so. These threads - these teeny tiny smaller-than-laceweight threads - were so full of sproingy static electricity that they kept leaping off my fingers and back into the tangled mass. They were wiley, those threads!

Then the bright idea part of brain decided to send me a message - Use the power of the (water) Force! it said. I asked my friend for her laundry water bottle and spritzed the silk. Immediately, it snapped to attention and obeyed. Ah, how satisfying!



Unfortunately, the tangled threads were too intertwined to find any semblance of a skein so I couldn't wind it from my own swift. I had to untangle, wind, untangle, wind, untangle, wind a little tiny bit at a time.

Once I had a hand-wound ball from the mess, I threaded the end on to the ball-winder, and made a nice center-pull ball. This was more to keep the threads from re-tangling than anything else. With a yarn this apt to escape its bounds, I recommended that she really unwind it from the outside when she actually knitted with it. And, I cut off the toe from a pair of her nylon stockings and slipped this over the now nicely-behaved ball with the end sticking out... Nice and orderly...



My job here was done and it was time for me to fade away into the sunset... "Who was that masked woman? I wanted to thank her!" (special prize for anyone who correctly identifies where that pseudo-quote came from!)

Really, this took hours and hours and was one of the most arduous yarn-untanglings I've ever attempted. There were several times when I thought I'd never succeed, and never get to the end of it! I love the Habu, but it needs to be treated, very, very gently.

In other news, my fabulous swap partner from the Vintage Swap on Ravelry sent me (along with lots of other fabulous treats) a skein of midnight Blue Indigo Moon sock yarn!! My first skein ever of this yarn - I love it!

Happy Halloween!

I hope that everyone is being happy little witches and wizards today!!

My friend Nad sent me the most wonderful Hallow's Eve package in the mail:



This is the new Harry Potter sock yarn in the Hedwig Owl colourway! Hooray!!! I have a special idea for a pattern in my mind just waiting to attach itself to this yarn...

Isn't the tiny skein great? Its the Harry Potter colourway... and the wrapped package is a stack of music CD's of the group Harry and the Potters singing such rocking tunes as Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock and Luna Lovegood is OK.

Have a wonderfully spooky day and night, little batling friends! I'll be flying with you in spirit.

comfort

I had one of those weeks – those weeks where you get a call from the doctor’s office and they say “we saw something on the xray…” and you have call back a million times and then go into the hospital and have a million tests and several doctors come in and stand by your bed and talk about your tests in front of you but to each other….and you’re really grouchy to everyone who comes in to take care of you. (oh, you’re not really grouchy? Well…hmmmm...I am.)

But finally, one doctor comes in, and she’s nice and intelligent, and a good communicator. And she says, “it’s nothing – well, a mysterious something, but not cancer.” And you finally get to get dressed, and go home, and you’re sore all over, and embarrassed that you cried in front of them.

This is me, curled under the ugly scrap blanket. Don’t you find that crochet is so comforting when you are stressed? When times are hard, I get out this blanket and add a few rows, going around and around the outer edges, sort of like a square spiral…



It’s made out of all the bits of all the other projects I’ve made in the past several years. When I look at it and run my hands over all the different textures and colours, all the beauty of the various finished projects that are now living other lives with their recipients comes back to me. It’s very comforting and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I have a new project in process. It’s another Shetland Triangle, from 100% Silk in Oregon Clover Honey (made by Blue Moon Fiber Arts). This is such a fast and easy pattern (if you don’t count the number of times I had to search the entire house for the pattern which – of course – I hadn’t put back in its place when I finished with it last time) and I think the luminous silk makes the little leaves look like phases of the moon!