Problem Solved!

And how did I solve this (imaginary) problem? By buying more yarn, of course!

I now have a skein of Cascade Fixation in color # 9939, which I'm going to knit more soap socks with. I generally hate cotton yarn, and am hoping the springy elasticized Fixation will be fun to knit with. We'll see if I enjoy this, or if I bid adieu to my tentative plan of knitting more soap socks. Or maybe I'll retool the pattern for DK weight yarn and use Cotton Fleece. I love Cotton Fleece. Bonus: I heard a rumor that it's been redone sometime in the last year to make it less splitty!

I also have two skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool in an amazing aqua -green color I'm going to use for the Swap. Pretty! Color #09, for those of you interested. I think it's too green for Margene, but chances are she'll pick someone else's bag, right? I am getting very excited to move beyond the swatch phase of this project!

Yes, there should be pictures. But I'm too disorganized to find the camera...

Ever Get Distracted?

I'm sort of in knitting limbo over here. I still haven't matched my stash yarn with socks I want to knit, my man's sweater is in boring-sleeve limbo, I finished the project I was having fun with, am bored with the baby hat Iwant to make to go with it, already finished the soap sock and...

So I'm swatching for the Arrowhead/Little Arrowhead Lace Swap. I mastered the pattern last night, and am now thinking about how I want to integrate it into a project, and trying out different things. I am going to have to plan carefully to make a usable object...

Need the backstory on the Arrowhead project? Well, the Utah Grrls are doing a little swap for our anniversary in January. All members who want to participate knit a small project using Arrowhead or Little Arrowhead lace, $10-$15 in materials, then bag them in brown paper. We'll trade, blind, in January. We were inspired by the staff project in Interweave last summer. I love swapping and am excited about this!

Although I like to switch projects around until I find something I'm excited about, I really need to get back to the sweater so poor DH can wear it. It's getting ever colder here in Utah. Last week, it snowed. Personally, I find snow before Halloween a little excessive...But it's gone now.

Just So You Know I Do, Sometimes, Actually KNIT:

Finished the reversible cable scarf. I'm very happy with it. Check it out: I used 3 skeins of Classic Elite Lush in color 4420, which is fairly accurately rendered, on my computer at least. The yarn is in fact fairly lush, half angora bunny, half wool. The pattern is an adaptation of the Reversible Cable Scarf in Pam Allen's Scarf Style. I couldn't find the book, just the notes I had from the scarf I made last year, and I wanted seed stitch to set the cable off, so I sort of rewrote the pattern from my crummy notes. It's still entirely reversible, but since there are three sections of 2X2 ribbing on each side, it's a little asymmetrical as you see.

I'm not sure what to do with it now, but it does need some kind of blocking-type help. Wet and reshape, or lightly steam it? I don't want to mash down the fluffy bunny fibers. Also, is it in need of fringe?

It will make a nice gift for my cousin; should look good with her dark, pretty hair.

Been Down To The Basement...Finally

I finally had the courage to open each of the four boxes of knitting books, leftover yarn, and UFOs I inherited from my aunt when we lost her to cancer a year and a half ago.

My Aunt Nancy, my mother's favorite sister, was the person I turned to when my Mom died when I was 14. I loved her very much.

She was also a knitter. I was so moved when my uncle offered me her knitting supplies. It was hard to pack them up, and the boxes of books and bits of yarn were somehow too daunting to open until this week. Suddenly, this evening, it was possible. I found some great memories. Check out the pamphlet on top: It was one of the oldest things in the box, and I'm positive she kept it because she knit that sampler afghan. I haven't seen the afghan in years; it pretty much got redecorated out of Aunt Nancy's family room. I thought there there were three colors of brown, brown, and gold, but according to the penciled notes by each square, there may have only been two: gold-brown and brown-gold. Every square in the book is labeled, in pencil, one or the other. I think she made the thing of sport weight yarn, DK at the heaviest. Some how this is hilarious and adorable to me, a "lasting record of your knitting skill" in brown-gold and gold-brown.

The other book has to be one of the last she bought. It was mail-ordered from her favorite shop, Woodland Woolworks in Carlton, Oregon. You can perhaps see the invoice sticking out; it's dated January 2004, about ten months before she got sick. We never talked about this book--we mostly talked about my knitting, not hers--but she loved to knit Arans. While I'm amused by the "Knitting Primer", this one just makes me sad. I don't think she ever had time to use it. In a better world, there would be at least one pattern neatly marked with tally marks, sweater size circled.

Of course we'll never have enough time to knit all the things we plan to, and of course I'm no exception. I hope that when my son, or my niece, or my future daughter-in-law comes to pack up my knitting supplies, there's someone in the family who will use my needles. 

Qiviut

Sorry for being unclear! Qiviut's the undercoat of the musk ox. Musk oxen aren't shorn to get at it; instead, they herd the musk ox into a pen just a little bigger that the animal, then someone combs the musk ox with, I swear to you, a cake cutter of the same type used for Afro hairstyles. I have personally seen this done at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska.

The animals are prehistoric-looking. From pictures, they look enormous, but really they're skinny and short, with a big plate of horn on their long, funky heads. In the wild, the horn flips up like Mary Tyler Moore's 60's hairdo. I was told that the fine folks at the Musk Ox Farm tried removing the entire horn plate to reduce injuries, but the silly things kept bashing into each other anyway and concussions ensued. Now, they just cut the tips off so no one gets gored, and the rams are free to bash away. We saw one attack a fence post several--very amusing.

I have a soft spot for musk ox; the Farm was one of my first dates with my husband, way back when we were courtin'. And we've been married 13 years this week.

The wool's incredibly soft and warm. Well, it comes off an animal adapted to live around the Arctic Circle, so it would need to be. It's amazing stuff.

Things I'll Never Be Able To Make

Well, one thing, really. Check this out:



That, my friends, is an entire sweater made from qiviut, blended with some silk and some other kind of wool. It belongs to my very fortunate friend Gary, who bought it in Lake Louise, Canada earlier this fall. I've never seen it in person, so I don't know exactly what the fiber mix is, or whether it's hand or machine knit. Gar says it's "ridiculously warm", so warm he had to take it off pretty quickly, and it's softer than his silk suit. Which I don't doubt for a minute.

Maybe, someday, I'll buy a $60 skein of qiviut and make a hat or neck warmer or something, but I know I can never knit something like this. Still, it makes me happy just to know that such a thing does exist, and that a friend owns one. I hope it was handknit, and that the knitter enjoyed every second of working with it.

My Bioette

I haven't made much knitting progress this week. Friday, at a friend's house, I wove in like a million ends on the Mason-Dixon baby kimono. I still have to sew it together and add ties, then I'll post a picture of the FO. If that day ever comes, you'll have to tell me if you think it's too cropped. You may remember that I did have to rip back about an inch when I ran out of yarn. Well, newborns don't like stuff to cover their tender belly buttons, right?

I'm also working on a new scarf; it's a modification of the reversible cable one from Scarf Style.

In the mean time, here's a mini-bio I wrote for another purpose:

The story of my life in nine sentences:

I was born in Portland, Oregon, and moved to Anchorage, Alaska in junior high. We grew up camping and hiking and just staring up admiring all the mountains. In my early twenties, while living in Arizona, I found myself homesick and so accepted a summer job selling postcards in Denali National Park. I met my husband in a laundry trailer there. He was adorable, sitting up on a dryer in his brand new Gore-Tex jacket and early-90’s long hair, explaining to his friends how soap works. We married two years later, in 1993, and moved to Seattle, where my Mr. went to grad school in chemical engineering and I sold books. We loved it there, but his new job took us to the Bay Area in 1998. I left the glamorous world of retail management, finished my long-delayed undergrad degree, and had our son. My man accepted a transfer to Utah last summer, and we happily escaped California for a place where life is less frenzied and I can look up at the mountains every day.