June 2007

At long last, the striped scarf is done:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Patons Rustic Wool, 100% wool; 2 1/2 skeins maroon (color 1014) & 1 2/3 skeins oatmeal (color 1009)
Needles: size 7
Size: 9″ x 67″

The “Rustic” in the yarn’s name must refer to the many guard hairs I had to pick out of it while working. This was a pretty scratchy yarn until I removed those hairs.

This is a double-thick scarf. I worked it in the round with a phoney seam on either side so it folds nicely and sewed the ends together to close it. The stripes are a simple numerical progression. I started with 6 rows of maroon and reduced down to 1 then increased back up to 6. With the oatmeal it was 4 rows down to 1 and back. I had cold ears last night while finishing this thing so I experimented with ways of wearing it. The length allows me to stuff one end up inside it and wear that end as a hat, and I still have enough to wear the rest as a proper scarf… but this does look pretty goofy! It will well serve someone who lives in a cold, blustery climate.

It was bound to happen.

Four beautiful skeins from Fearless Fibers’ Etsy shop.  From left to right, two skeins of sport weight superwash wool in Kildare and Stargazer, then two skeins of sock weight superwash wool in Chocolate Pink Cherry and Robin’s Egg. The yarns and colors are fabulous and the service likewise. I ordered these late Friday night and the parcel was waiting at my door when I got home from work Monday.

No worries, I am still knitting from my stash. I am doing the finishing bits on the long striped scarf tonight (4 stash skeins) and started a short sleeve summer sweater last night (another 4 stash skeins). Let’s not get into yards or ounces, though.

I am completely stuck on the Lily of the Valley shawl. I am at the last little bit, right before beginning corner 3, and none of my rows on the charts are matching up with what is in the instructions. The borders and middle look great; no mistakes there. My only thought is that I missed or doubled up on some of the right-side row decreases, but I checked and had a friend check and they look fine. I’m off 8 and 10 rows, respectively, on the two borders. A couple of rows I could fudge, but with that many… I’d have to frog a pretty huge chunk of it to make it look right. I did take the instructions on faith one time through and came up with something completely wrong. So I emailed KnitU and got a helpful email yesterday from someone who has made this thing but I have yet to implement the help.

I found another bunch of acrylic in my older (5+ years) stash and made a second cage cozy. I wanted something simple for the bus but not plain garter stitch again, so I log-cabined (is that even a word?) this one:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Patons Look at Me! Baby Sport;60% acrylic, 40% nylon; color 6367 (blue) and 6378 (multi)
Needles: size 4
Finished size: 21.5″ x 19.5″

It’s my first foray into the log cabin way of constructing somthing and it was great fun. There was more blue than multi so I initially started making two segments blue and one segment multi. Mr. Mmmyarn observed my progress and suggested I switch to alternating the two. Following his suggestion, I unravled what I had done and started over, and got something that’s not Courthouse Steps but still interesting. The blanket has nice, square edges; the skewing in the photo was caused by my standing at a weird angle, trying to snap the photo before the wind blew the blanket off the roof.

This one, together with the one I made in March, will most likely go to an animal shelter in New Orleans since our local one doesn’t want them and I know folks in N.O. were looking for some cozies a few months ago. I’ll have to look through the stash again, but I think that’s it for the acrylics for cage cozies. I have a little left over of the blue and multi and might make a hat with those bits.

Yesterday was World Wide Knit in Public Day. No, I am not making this up to have blogfodder. San Francisco knitters were quite underrepresented in Union Square:

That’s Lauren (purse), me (sock), Susan (baby blanket for the local general hospital), Catherine (sock), and Connie (sweater) (ladies, I hope I spelled all your names right). There are 7 yarn shops in town so there must be more S.F. knitters or those shops would all go under. But it was fun, and I got to meet some new knitters. The weather was oddly warm: note that we are not wearing coats even though it’s June. I’d wager knitters who saw it was 70-ish, sunny, and not windy that morning decided to go hiking instead.

The toe-up sock went to KIP day in a new format. I unravelled its little toe-up self on Friday, having given up on doing something new. I decided to live dangerously (= possibly run out of yarn) and work it top-down instead. The yarn is thicker, which means I’m using fewer stitches, which means I’m already halfway down the foot of sock #1 after just a little knitting time. Woohoo! 

…that we never did find out whether a sock in progress gives you luck in Las Vegas. From the photographic evidence it would seem the sock was too busy at the slots to be of assistance:

But we here at Mmm… Yarn prefer the dice over the slots. Its choice of game aside, I am not going to blame the sock for my going down in flames at the craps table as it never left my carry-on bag the whole trip except its short photo-op at the airport on the way home. Heck, it was around 100 degrees outside (too hot to knit, even by the pool) and there was too much socializing to do inside with the family to work there. So it was a nearly knitting-free weekend although waiting around at the airport resulted in a couple of inches on the animal shelter blanket I’m working on.