A Package From Pfaffenhofen

A while back, the Loopy Ewe started selling this lovely sock yarn from Germany.  It had intense colors and fantastic yardage, and everybody wanted it.  “Sneak-ups” disappeared in minutes, people stayed up all night refreshing their browser screens in hopes of catching a few skeins, and there was much drama.  Updates to the dyer’s personal online shop also went quickly, despite the higher shipping costs.

I confess, I was part of the “F5 Crowd” several times, but never managed to snag a skein from TLE.  After the third (or so) batch that went up while I was commuting, I bought two skeins off of fellow Loopy Groupies.  One skein became the Veronica Lace Cardigan:

The other I held on to for quite a while, searching for the perfect pattern.  It is now slated to become the Entomology shawl, and I was feeling a bit sad as I strung the beads, wishing I had a bit more of the elusive Wollmeise.

And then it happened. I caught two updates in a row of the online German shop. The first package arrived yesterday. Inside a padded white airmail envelope was a cute brown/mauve bag.

Inside the brown bag, two skeins of yarn and a packet of Gummi Bears.

The yarn is lovely.  Both skeins are 100% Superwash Merino.  Fliederbusch, on the left, is a deep purple that my camera has great difficulty capturing.  Vroni, on the right, is a blend of black and brown.

I have a few more skeins coming in the next week or so.  And then the hunt for the perfect pattern begins once more.

Stashin’ on Sunday

Friday afternoon, this arrived on my doorstep:

Sanguine Gryphon Sappho I in “There You Are”, a lovely muted blend of blues and purples. That picture does not do it justice. I attempted to make a DIY Macro Studio out of a cardboard box and waxed paper, but I am having difficulty with the lighting source. Direct sunlight is clearly not bright enough. Out from under the waxed paper, the direct sun is too bright. I am still working on it.

I bought that skein from Gryphon’s online shop, along with a copy of the pattern for Call of the Sirens, and two bars of soap. Gryphon usually includes a little sample bit of soap in her packages. My first order from her (the yarn for the Chicago Illusion blanket) came with a bit of clove-scented soap.

I am building up a bit of a laceweight yarn stash to complement my sock yarn stash.

I’m looking forward to doing a bit of vacation stash enhancement next weekend, when I’m in Chicago for the ALA Conference.  I’m planning to be at Loopy Yarns around 12 Noon on Sunday (7/12) and Arcadia Knitting around 12 Noon on Tuesday (7/14). Going to be there, too? Drop me a comment! I hear there’s a Knit Night at Loopy Yarns on Friday evenings; I won’t be in town early enough to take part in that.

‘Fess Up Now

Who is it?  I want to know.

Who is hoarding all the 32″ US8 circular needles in the San Fernando Valley?

I am working on a project knit in the round with a whole mess of decreases. After I got gauge on my trusty size 8 Crystal Palace circs, I didn’t want to mess around with any other needles. So I went ahead and cast on with my 16″ circs.

You know how the instructions always tell you to be careful not to twist? When you cram way too many stitches on a 16″ circ, it becomes clear why pattern writers think knitters need a reminder about that.

After at least two false starts, I got a good way into the pattern before completely losing it somewhere and ripping out the whole darn thing. That was when I decided to get a longer circular.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I had a load of laundry going. It had another 20 minutes to go, and my favorite LYS is open for exactly 3 hours on Sundays. I slipped on my sandals and headed out the door.

They didn’t have the needles I needed.

They don’t carry Crystal Palace circs at all, which is fair enough, although they do carry the Crystal Palace DPNs. I scoured the rack of Addi circs for quite a while before I realized that among the many, many plastic-swathed needles there were no 32″ circs in a size US8. US7? Sure. How about 9? You betcha.

With a sigh, I got back in my car and drove to my local big box craft store. I made a beeline for the knitting section and located the array of Crystal Palace circs. Size 8 in 16″? Check. Size 9 in 29″? Check. Size 8 anywhere between 24″ and 36″? Not so much. In fact, that was the one completely empty hook on the wall. I cornered an employee and asked when they might be restocked.

“The truck comes on Fridays,” he said.

Great.

Home I went, where I once again cast on with my 16″ circ. With a dedication to counting stitches that borders on the Obsessive-Compulsive, I have successfully reached the end of the first set of decreases, and by this point I was supposed to have switched to a 16″ circ anyway. Just in case, I stopped at a big box craft store near work last night and picked up a 29″ circ. It can’t hurt to be prepared.

Waiting

Last week, this was a Jeopardy clue: “It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room…”. I don’t think my answer of “Oh, oh, that book I just got!” would have been accepted.

I am still working on an acceptable swatch for Miss Honeychurch. I’m concerned that if I actually get the right stitch gauge, the fabric will be too loose for me to wear comfortably. This was an unexpected issue, since I normally have to go down a needle size or three to get gauge on socks. Cotton, it seems, inspires me to tighten up on the needles.

I’m in the midst of a Project That Cannot Be Blogged Yet, and very busy with Summer Reading at work, and getting ready to go to Chicago for ALA (which means everything at work has to be set up for someone other than me to run in my absence), and working on some book reviews that I need to send out before leaving town.  And I’m determined to get an entry into the County Fair this year, and the deadline is fast approaching.  So Miss Honeychurch and Mr. Forster must wait on my desk for a little bit.

Scarf Weather

When my first installment of the Loopy Ewe Sock Club arrived, I knew there was no way that beautiful skein of cashmere blend was going to become socks.  It was so soft and lovely that I just kept the hank on my desk for weeks, regularly gazing at it and every now and then giving it just a little squeeze.

Gorgeous blue and green, and so very squooshy. I decided right away that it was going to be a scarf of some sort, but I needed to find the perfect pattern.

And then came an email from Chrissy, looking for a few testers for upcoming patterns. I was assigned a scarf with lace and cables, designed for Handmaiden’s Swiss Mountain Cashmere & Silk. And I knew exactly what my Casbah was destined to become.

Project Specs:
Pattern: Midnight Lace Scarf, by Chrissy Gardiner. Available at many retailers.
Yarn: Handmaiden Casbah, “Ocean Currents” Colorway. Used as much of the skein as possible.
Needles: Size US 6
Dimensions: 6″ x 64″ – about an inch narrower and shorter than the pattern.
Notes: I blocked this really aggressively, because I knew I had less yardage than the pattern called for. While this works for the lace, the cables are a little bit more stretched out than I would like. Still, the scarf is incredibly soft and cozy. I found the pattern easy to follow and easy to memorize, but with just enough action to keep me interested.

I finished the scarf in early May, just in time for temperatures to hit the 90s around here. This autumn, I’m going to be hard-pressed to decide between this and my green Bugga! Clapotis. I can hardly wait.

The Deadliest… Finger Puppets?

I finished Crabby Crawl for Little Miss over the weekend, but I couldn’t resist playing with the pieces before sewing them up.

Creepy, aren’t they? I tried to get a picture of them curling around a door frame, but I couldn’t quite contort myself enough to get a photo of my own hand in that position. And the other members of my household may have had enough of my crab-leg-fingers after I put them on and waved them around eerily in the semi-darkness as we watched The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

Once they were stuffed and sewn onto Mr. Crabby Crawl, though, they were downright cute.

Project Specs

Pattern: The Deadliest Crab, by Amber Allison, in the Summer ‘09 issue of Knitty

Yarn: Cascade 220. The white is from a batch I bought at Stitches West a few years back; the orange is from The Loopy Ewe. It took just over half a skein of orange and about a quarter skein of the white.

Needles: Size US4 Crystal Palace DPNs. I went down to 4s, and you can still see stuffing through the stitches in some places.

Notes: The pattern is pretty easy to follow, especially now that the decrease error has been corrected. I also picked up the stitches for the bottom shell in the wrong direction – watch out for that, or you end up with a reverse stockinette belly! I don’t trust “safety eyes” in knitted fabric for the under-3 set, so I cut circles out of black and white felt and sewed them on with matching embroidery floss.

Little Miss found him in the den on Monday morning and immediately exclaimed, “Crabby Crawl!” She proceeded to carry him around by one leg for quite a while. Ah, a girl and her crustacean. Is there a sweeter sight?

Knit Along with Me

I am just about ready to really start knitting on Miss Honeychurch.

I’ve got my pattern, and my yarn, and my book. That swatch, sadly, is getting about 20 stitches to 4″. I swatched again on size US7s, and perplexingly got the same gauge. I’m not entirely sure how strenuously to block, either, since I’m kind of thinking that no matter how much I block it flat, it’s going to end up longer and narrower once the sweater spends the day hanging from my shoulders. The fabric is pretty loose, so I don’t really want to go up another needle size. I think there’s going to be some math.

If you’d like to proudly proclaim to the Internet that you’re knitting Miss Honeychurch, too, feel free to snag this button:

Please save it to your own server. Thanks!

I’m planning to start reading and knitting the first Monday in July, since I have a couple of other projects (both reading and knitting) that I want to wrap up first. Who’s in?

Uncursed

I gave the orange Cascade 220 another shot after I got home from work last night. When I once again found myself short a couple dozen stitches, I finally did the math. Literally. As in, 75-34 does not equal 63. It wasn’t my mistake at all, but an error in the pattern (which had been corrected by the time I looked at it last night). With the correct instructions, I managed to make a very small legless crab.

I think he’ll be awfully cute once he gets some eyes.  And a mouth.  And legs.  Don’t you?

It Might Be Cursed

I’m starting to wonder if this particular yarn is cursed.

Looks perfectly innocent, doesn’t it?  Nice orange Cascade 220 all skeined up, waiting to be knit into a cute toy for Little Miss.  My plan was a carrot from Amigurumi Knits for my daughter’s play kitchen.  I popped the yarn onto my swift, wound it up into a ball, cast on, and happily knit away for several rows before realizing that I had miscounted somewhere along the line.

Off to the Frog Pond with the carrot.  Maybe I should try something else.  So, I cast on The Deadliest Crab and knit merrily away for several rounds, all the way through the first set of bobbles, and then I noticed that something was wrong.

Miscount.  Again.  A really big one this time, and I could not for life of me figure out what happened where.

Ripping out stitches can be so satisfying.

I’m hoping the third time is a charm in this case.  If this one goes all wonky, I’m afraid this skein will be in need of a time-out, and I’ll just have to comfort myself with stringing another couple hundred beads for Entomology.

More Cuteness!

When I wasn’t looking, a whole new knitting e-zine went live. Who knew? And it is full of terribly cute things. Seriously.  Just look at Jacques Crusteau and tell me he’s not adorable. (Little Miss would call him “Crabby Crawl”, of course.) I really like the way the pupils are made of felt and sewn on – I think that’s what I’m going to do for Mr. Deadliest Crab’s eyes.

Summer ‘09 is the very first issue of Petite Purls, a new quarterly e-zine full of free patterns for babies and children. The feature articles are on children and crafts, subjects near and dear to my Children’s Librarian heart. Their aesthetic is clean and classic, with a touch of whimsy, and I like the way they describe difficulty levels from “Totally do-able for a mama while breastfeeding or snuggling with baby” to “Seriously? Wait until the kids have been dropped off at college to take on this project”.  (Okay, the descriptions might not appeal so much to the knitting dads/godfathers/uncles.) Patterns in this first issue include – besides our friend Jacques – a Debbie Bliss-inspired little girl’s dress, a cute summer cardi, a sweet cabled vest, a halter dress, and a felted intarsia & fair isle messenger/diaper bag that comes complete with its own changing pad. I hope that future issues might have a few heirloom-style projects, like christening blankets, but I love the very current, wearable feel of the garment patterns.

Very much in the mold of Knitty, Petite Purls is off to a strong start as a great resource for kids’ patterns, whether you’re knitting for your own little one, need to whip up a baby shower gift, or just want one of those bug-eyed lobsters for yourself.