December 2008

That’s close to what I’d imagine Gollum saying in the Italian translation of The Lord of the Rings (probably more along the lines of “mio prezioso”), but in this case it is the name of the yarn:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 3 skeins Allesandra Filati Prezioso; 40% wool, 36% nylon, 24% cashmilon (whatever that is); color 844
Needles: US size 4 for body, 2 for ribbing
Size: for a 2-year-old
Started 7/28 and finished 12/30/2008

I’m not sure about the neckline. I made a split v-neck but it seems a little tight. Not having a little person around to try it out on, though, I can’t confirm. I could always make it bigger, if once whoever ends up with it has too big a head. This was a very quick knit. I think I finished it in about 2 weeks, mostly made on the bus, but then it languished in my bag as soon as I memorized the lace pattern for the Apres Surf Hoodie and I focused on the big sweater instead. I made the neckline maybe a month ago and this morning realized 9 yarn tails weren’t really that bad, bucked up and wove those in. This makes two sweaters in two days! If I keep this up, I’ll have no stash left by the end of 2009. Ha! Yeah, right.

Apres Surf is indeed done and nearly dry. If the weather cooperates, I might ask Mr. MmmYarn to do photos tomorrow.

Christmas kept right on going in our household; today I received a package from Mr. MmmYarn’s uncle, filled with wooly goodies:

Those 2 little ends are all I have left to weave in, thanks to a night of not knitting at knitting group:

Why, yes, that is the base of a wine glass next to the Ott light. I have to summon up the fortitude to finish this puppy and block the hood tonight. It’s relatively warm in here tonight, you see, so I have to grab the opportunity while I have it or else the hood won’t dry for a week.

I visited my parents briefly over the weekend and my mom mentioned that the socks I made for her back in March worked out great for her Grand Canyon hiking trip at the end of October. Nary a blister, thanks to hand-made, seamless socks!

Due to a file fix gone horribly awry last Sunday evening, I was without my computer for a full week. Augh! It’s odd how dependent a lot of us are on our electronic friends and it turns out I’m one of them. The worst part was that I had not backed up my data in a month. I’m usually better than that. But after finding a roundabout way to recover my data using extra computer equipment at work and being forced to reinstall Windows afresh, I found my computer still had all my data. Go figure. Had I known that, I could have had it back the same day it went down. I backed up right away and now I am able to share this with you (pardon the drying rack again):

O, Christmas Tree…

The Kneedler knew we couldn’t have a real tree in the house this year, so she knitted, felted, and decorated a lovely substitute for us. Pretty, huh? I’m certain this is her handspun yarn, too. One of the packages a relative sent Mr. MmmYarn had some fluffy fabric fake snow so I put that under the tree and it looks pretty.

Our local TV station started carrying Knitting Daily TV a few weeks ago and this week I got to see my Famous Shawl, the one I shipped to them back in July, on TV. If you’re looking for it, it’s toward the end of the “Oh-So-Fine” episode.

2008 is winding down and I am still weaving in ends on the Apres Surf Hoodie (nearly every ball of yarn had a knot in it). I really want to finish this in 2008 and I just might make it but you’ll need to wait until 2009 for glamour photos. I also unraveled my Rockstar socks that went on our vacation with us (cuff too big, foot too small); sock #1 is at the heel already. And I recovered all the photos we took of Mystery Stole 4 so I’ll try to reveal those this week, time permitting. It’s going to be a busy week, even with 3 days off work.

Back to catching up on some blog reading.

We had a Secret Santa gift exchange at work yesterday, and all I can say is that my Santa did a great job: he or she got me a gift certificate to somewhere pretty amazing. I decided to use it right away, went out immediately after work before I got on the bus, and ended up with lots of silk. Pardon the drying rack in the photos, but this was the only sunny spot in our place when I took the pictures:

Artfibers Casanova, enough to make a me-size sweater:

And Artfibers Velo, enough for a scarf:

After 13 years at their location on Sutter Street, the nice folks at Artfibers in San Francisco are closing their storefront on January 24, 2009 and will transition to mail order only. If you’re a local knitter, get yourself in there soon if you want to ogle the goodies. Some of the yarns are on sale, ranging from 10% to 30% off. After 1/24, they’ll hold an open house from time to time so you can fondle the yarns but you’ll need to be on their email list to know when and where those will be. I haven’t bought much yarn lately but I felt compelled to go quite a bit above and beyond my gift certificate when I saw those cones sitting on the shelf yesterday.

I see it has once again been more than a week since I last posted. Last weekend it rained (and hailed) so we stayed in and kept both busy and warm with the oven:

Obviously, I had no knitting time last weekend.

… 3,345,283 times. The Apres Surf Hoodie hood is finished and now I am doing the i-cord bind-off along the neck and hood edges on what feels like a bazillion stitches. Plus after this I still have cuffs and the hem to do this on. Mmm… pretty:

Once I get my size 2 needles back from this project, I plan to embark on a baby sweater for our now 2-month-old niece who was a tiny preemie and is now full-term baby size. I really have to get cracking before she gets too much bigger. I swatched with the orange and yellow yarn the other day, intending to use either one pattern or the other all over the sweater, but after seeing the patterns in action I plan to put the smaller pattern in 3 rows at cuffs and edges and work the polka dots after that:

Oh, the horror: the Mmm… Yarn blog went down a few hours after my last post and fixing it was beyond my capabilities. My blog hero, Mr. MmmYarn, was away this week. He had an Internet connection but couldn’t access the server to fix the problem. I have to admit I felt a little lost being unable to post when I had things to post. He got home today and got right on it (what a great guy! so I can finally share knitting with you.

After 6 years of working somewhere where I need to wear a staff badge, I decided enough was enough. No more wearing a cold metal bead chain around my neck! I realize it doesn’t get that cold in San Francisco. We don’t get ice or snow, but putting a 50-ish (and sometimes 40-ish) degree piece of metal on my 98.6 degree neck is still an unpleasantly bracing start to a winter morning’s arrival at work. Not to mention it makes a Jacob Marley-like rattling noise as I proceed with the workday. Here is my solution:

Pattern: 3-stitch i-cord that I grafted together after threading it through my badge
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, 100% merino wool, color P105
Needles: size 1
Started 12/2 and finished 12/3/2008

It’s colorful, it’s warm, it’s quiet, and above all, it’s Koigu. Mmm… Koigu. After all, my neck deserves something great.

On a side note, I never thought the top of a washing machine in the laundromat could make a good background for a small object photo.

I saw the pile of knitting on my side of the sofa over the weekend and realized last week’s finished projects represent a basic kindergarten primary color assortment.

First up, a bright blue hat:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Wolle Roedel Universal Superwash, 100% superwash merino wool, color 835
Needles: size 3 and 4
Size: adult average
Started 11/5 and finished 11/13/2008

I designed this one for Mr. MmmYarn and he found it to be fine in the house, but outdoors his ears were cold so he requested a long, folded brim. I have re-made the hat in the same yarn, this time with a big brim. He’ll get to try it on tomorrow. I’m going to try to write a pattern for it in a couple of sizes but that won’t be ready for a few weeks, I’m sure.

Next up, a long, skinny, yellow scarf:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Schoenbuch Garne Superba 100 4-Fach; 37.5% cotton, 37.5% superwash wool, 25% nylon; color 214
Needles: size 4
Size: 4.5″ x 78″
Started 11/10 and finished 11/28/2008

Even though to my eyes the yarn reads as a yellow, it is composed of two plies of yellow and two plies of white. I didn’t do a burn test, but the yellow looks and feels like the wool and the white looks and feels like the cotton. The chevron pattern is a simple k3 p3 rib on 31 stitches that I shifted one stitch to either side on each row.

And to complete our collection of primary colors, a flash of red:

Sunday was warm so the Mystery Stole dried the same day. Does crawling around on the floor around your blocking bulletin board for an hour count as exercise? Non-aerobic, of course, but definitely a lot of bending and stretching, crouching and reaching. It must count as something as I was incredibly sore Monday morning and am still feeling the effects today.

And where’s the green? I know it’s not primary, but it’s usually included in the grouping of primary colors when a fourth color is called for. Well, the green Apres Surf Hoodie is up next after the re-worked hat. I’m about less than halfway through the hood, having ripped out a good 4.5″ tonight after finding a mistake (!) that I thought I spotted a few weeks ago but must have buried in the back of my in-denial brain. Tonight I decided I couldn’t live with that wonky row in the middle of the lace pattern and out it went!

The craft fair I mentioned a couple of posts ago was a bust this year. I sold one hat. This will in no way finance a yarn crawl at Stitches West, especially not an Mmm… Yarn- sized crawl. That’s OK, though, as work is going to try to hold a second one just before Valentine’s Day, which falls conveniently before Stitches West. I hope the day they hold it is cold enough to freeze one’s ears; I sell much more stuff on cold days than on warm ones.

It has been a rough two months here chez Mmm… Yarn, with more rough months to follow, but the knitting must go on. Blogging will continue to be sporadic.