Sometimes a great notion
I've given up any hope or desire to reduce my stash. I love to buy yarn. My current addiction is Noro and I'm working on a Lizard Ridge afghan. I've also bought 4 skeins on Noro Yuzen and will knit AND PHOTOGRAPH a swirl-style hat. (I gave away the last one I knit before I took a picture of it so my Ravelry page just has a picture of the hat in progress.)
I have become inspired to actually finish projects I start so a number of projects that have been languishing in WIP-dom are now getting done. I finished a second pair of socks and a scarf I started for my mother. Next on the list is a crocheted afghan I started and nearly finished five years ago. The big holdup on that project was sewing a lining on the afghan to hide the unfinished side.
As God is my witness...
I swear I will reduce the mountain of stash in my yarn closet!!! Compared to some, I hardly have any stash at all but what I do have keeps me distracted. So here's the plan, 1) I reduce/sell off a large portion of my stash, 2) finish the WIPs, 3) knit the remainder, and 4) if accomplish 1 - 3 I'll buy one expensive kit a year of something I really want to make. This years it's the Earthstripe Wrap by Kaffee Fassett . Next year, who knows, maybe I'll breakdown and buy yarn for Starmore's Marina sweater. Oooooh, we like we like....
Three Socks in One
The sock knitting craze has sucked me in like so many other knitters and I just had to try my hand at it. I knit one pair, toe-up, no problem. It was a little boring but I still ended up with two socks that fit.
For the next pair I tried a
toe-up Jaywalker in Colinette Jitterbug. I knit it much as before but I didn't like the way the picked up stitches on the heel flap looked so I frogged the sock back to before the heel gusset and tried a different style of heel--an afterthought heel. I loved the look, it had a very professional finish but there was no way was it going to fit on my foot, or anyone else's for that matter. There just weren't enough stitches to go over my heel. So I frogged it AGAIN back to before the heel gusset and reknit it with the original heel. All in all I have knit this pair of socks three times. Of course I never learn, I'm going to try
another pair of socks after this.
Curses Frogged Again!!!
I've actually finished knitting all the pieces for my modified Fulmar and guess what!?!?! It's way too big, I mean by about 10 inches in the width. (It's also not really long enough, but I could always live with that.) So Fulmar sat in the WIP basket for about a year (maybe two) while I was trying to decided what to do about this. I could:
1) just sew it together and give it to someone it fit
2) cut it down to size
3) frog it back to the point where I could reknit it.
I chose 3 in the end. It meant frogging the two front pieces, frogging the back down to the arm bind off, and eventually frogging the sleeves back to the beginning of the arm shaping. (Oh yeah, and the arms are way too long. I must have been knitting this for an ape...) I'll reknit the front as one piece and eliminate all of the filler stitch on the side. You'll see. I post pictures.
Well, frog that!
This little beauty started life as Clapotis, but as many of you know, Clapotis really takes more than three skeins of Lion and Lamb--it's more like five. What I ended up with with three skeins was a very wide and short scarf. Not that fabulous wrap that drapes so beautifully on the Knitty model. At $20-$30+ per skein there was no way I was going to buy more than three skeins, so I frogged that.
I reused the yarn and made what you see here, Midwest Moonlight from Scarf Style. (The i-cord fringe was my own addition.) The pattern is insanely easy and a nice break from this year's magnum opus, Fulmar.
Now there's more bad news, the Lion and Lamb runs like an S.O.B. I was never able to get the rinse water to run clear. After soaking and rinsing the scarf for an entire day, and I mean from early in the morning to late at night, the best I was able to manage was a medium pink rinse water. The colors that absolutely glowed as I knit the scarf up turns out to have been just loose dye pigment. The colors are still lovely, but not $20-$30+ worth of lovely. Furthermore, the yarn is fairly delicate in composition. It's a single ply and does not hold up well to a lot of handling. The glorious texture and sheen wasn't nearly as glorious after all of the rinses.
How disappointing! This was one expensive little lesson.
Niagra Falls...*
Slowly I knit, stitch by stitch, inch by inch...
I've finished another sleeve on Fulmar. Now all I have to do is knit the back, knit the button band, sew it together, and knit the collar. Gad! Fulmar is quite an endeavor, mostly because it is knit in DK/sport weight yarn. I'm using a merino yarn I bought from The Wool Company . It's discontinued, which is a shame since it's a pretty yarn and very soft.
*from a schtick in a Three Stooges movie, "Gents Without Cents", which I have unfortunately committed to memory.
Herself...
Alice Starmore; aka Herself, is a brilliant knitwear designer. Her out of print knitting books sell for outrageous prices on ebay, Amazon.com, Half.com, etc. I can't believe people pay such prices but I digress...
Many of her patterns have appeared in knitting magazines as well (for a lot less money). For example,
- Maidenhair cardigan appears in Interweave Knits, Fall 1997
- Marina is in a book entitled Woolcraft (This Morning), Liz Bloor (ed.) Personally, this is my favorite of her fairisle patterns. The colors are spectacular. Check out the Gallery pages on the Knitting Beyond the Hebrides website to see some pieces knit by members.
- Thoroughbred is in Vogue Knitting International, Fall 1989
- a no-name pattern) is in Vogue International Knitting, Fall 1994
- Mara (the vest version) is in Workbasket Magazine February-March 1992
There are more, this list is just a start. So save your money folks!!! Her daughter, Jade Starmore, has a piece in Interweave Knits as well:
- Beadwork in Interweave Knits Winter 99/00
Currently, the Beadwork issue is selling for obscene prices as well due to a Knit Along currently underway. It's a nice pattern, but, well it's just not
that nice.
Fulmar-Sort Of
I've been knitting Fulmar from Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting for what seems like forever. I actually started in January 2006, so it hasn't really been that long. I call it Fulmar-Sort Of because I've made quite a few modifications to the pattern.
- the sleeves are now a modified drop-shoulder rather than a straight drop-shoulder. I used Jenna Wilson's articles in Knitty on adding sleeves to a vest to modify the sleeve decreases and arm scythe. (thanks Auntie!)
- I've adapted it to a cardigan and rearranged the stitch patterns on the front to accommodate a button band. I plan on knitting the button band separately for ease of knitting and, hopefully, the seam will provide added strength to the opening.
- lastly I reworked the ribbing on the body to encorporate the body pattern into the ribbing. I also knit the ribbing on the same size needles as the body so that the sweater is more of a "tunic-style" rather than a typical pullover.
The rest I'll make up as I go along. Not exactly the textbook method for designing/redesigning knitwear...I sure hope this all comes together in the end ;->
Cutest Kitten in the World
Looks innocent, doesn't he?
His name is Maximus Purroneous Longus, Max for short. He's about five months old in this picture. Max is still a kitten but he's "growing into" his ear tuffs; they're not quite so pronouned.
Max came to us from the Orange County Humane Society and we're very lucky to have him. His companion, Rusty, doesn't agree and just wishes he'd stop bothering him. Rusty is 18+ years. He lost his lifelong buddy, Blackmail, in April of 2005. Somehow, I thought Max would be a good companion for him. (What was I thinking!?!) We manage to make it through most days in relative harmony, but for the record, this was not a good idea.
(...still I couldn't wish for it any other way. Max truely is the cutest and sweetest kitten in the world.)
