Yes, There Is Knitting

Life definitely feels like it's been all about the gardening - personal and work - the last month or so. And the days are long enough that my practical knitting time is pretty much the same as my bus time, plus some time on weekends, or evenings if I'm not nodding off over my tea. You will have to forgive the widely-spaced blog entries for the summer; my daily internet time on workdays is just about long enough to read e-mail and check the weather. But there is knitting going on, if rather more slowly than I'm used to.

I had a pair of navy socks for the boyfriend of the girl I was tutoring. Size 13. They're done and delivered.

Then I went back to knitting for Johanne's stock. She had some new colours in the last batch, and I fell in love with a silver-grey fingering in 80/20 alpaca and wool. There is now a pair of gloves done in that, with little 2-stitch cables up the back of the hand, and I'm working on a crescent-shaped shawl with a lace border in the same yarn.

I'm really loving the crescent shawls right now, and other shawls that are shallower proportions than the standard triangle, so I suspect I will be playing with more of them. The border on this one is a bit of a modified version of one of the lace patterns in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury - one repeat plus part of a second, with decreases in the last couple rows of lace to start the shaping.

I do have to get out and garden tomorrow (ye gads, the weeds are popping up fast!), but it's a bit cool today, and I have a four-day weekend, thanks to the combination of a rainy Friday and a holiday Monday, so I decided today is for the fibre projects. Maybe by Monday, I will have the finished shawl to show off before I drop into the oblivion of another work week.

Olympic Socks, Alpaca Mittens

Ah, yes, the Olympics. I freely admit that didn't watch much of it, except for the opening ceremonies and the semifinal Canada vs USA mens' hockey game, and those were because it was Fridays and I was at my Friday fiber group get-together. Of course during the opening ceremonies we all ogled the various mittens, hats, and other knits the athletes were sporting. I'm just mildly annoyed that I couldn't find a decent picture of the Estonian team's mittens online afterwards, since they looked very nice...

But I did make an effort for the concurrent Ravellenic Games, and polished off not only that baby sweater with alpacas on the yoke, but my Alpha Socks. It was about time - my Rav page listed them as having been cast on just over 2 years previously!

Now I have to be heroic and not wear them until next fall, since I want to save them to enter in the local fair next August.

The other project which has gotten finished this week is this pair of mittens. These are the ones I've been designing as a counterpart to the dyeing classes I taught last summer at L'Ourse Qui Danse. Chantal of OQD has been testing the pattern, and I think it's about ready to go. So with any luck it will be up on Rav as well as available at L'Ourse Qui Danse in the next week or so.

I have to say they're a great knit to use up small amounts of yarn - I knit them in 5 colours because that's the number of samples each dye class produces, but you could technically use up to 20 colours if you felt inclined to. The only drawback is - you guessed it - weaving in ends. Whether it's 5 or 20 colours, you will still have something like 80 ends to deal with. Ah, well. Cuppa tea and something on the telly, and it goes pretty fast!

The More It Snows, Tiddley-pom

Has anyone noticed that it's a tad snowy this morning? Seems like it's a pretty big system, a lot of the eastern side of the continent is pretty snowy right now.

It looks like we had a foot overnight, and it's still coming down pretty good. The birdbath and the fences here at the parents' are getting pretty close to buried, and the car was up to its fenders this morning - it was clean yesterday.

I'm very glad the important stuff got done yesterday - drop off knits for Johanne, dentist appointment for me, and vet for the cat. Julia still wasn't eating, so we took her back for a check-up, and now she's got some different antibiotic for the ulcer, and cortisol pills, and soft convalescent food I basically have to force feed her with a syringe...needless to say she is not happy with me, but she lost close to a pound between the two vet visits, and she needs something!

We'll try to venture out later today for a few errands, but for the morning, the plan is to help Mom warp the loom, and watch the birds at the feeder in this wintry wonderland.

Finished my first project for the Ravellenics last night, a baby sweater with alpacas on the yoke. Hopefully delivering that later today as one of the errands. This pattern is getting referred to as the Noah's Ark sweater from now on - the original had sheep, but now I've done it with horses, and elephants, and alpacas...wonder how many versions it will eventually go through!

Lots of New Stuff

Nice to have survived last week. Everything got done that needed doing - hopefully in a creditable manner! Seeing that some of my classmates had tales of staying up until the wee hours Wednesday to finish the project and study for the midterm we had Thursday morning - after fighting to get home in the  snow Wednesday - I feel I did pretty good there, since I went to bed at midnight.

After finishing class and job interview Friday, I headed for the country to recharge over the weekend. Mom and I stopped in to Value Village on the way home, and I found some books on gardening to add to my collection, and some definitely vintage fingering wool.

One of the books we found that I don't have a picture of is a fascinating one, titled "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady". It's a facsimile edition of someone's actual journal from 1906, in Warwickshire, England. Filled with a whole year's worth of lovely notes on which flowers are blooming, and what she sees in her travels, quotes from favorite poets - and the most amazing watercolour illustrations of the flowers and birds and insects.

Saturday was errands - drop off the last month's knitting at Johanne's (she and Chantal were very happy with everything), and start another pair of mitts for them.

Then a quick visit to a friend's mother, who had a gift from her daughter in New Zealand to give to me. (Lovely bale of local alpaca roving - thank you, Sara!) Topped off the afternoon with a stop at the organic bakery to pick up a couple loaves of bread and the news - a lovely finish.

Re-Cap

A little bit of everything to share today, if only to get caught up. This coming week is Reading Week - no school, just a number of assignments on the list, so I'm aiming to get a little more blogging and pattern-writing done than has been the norm lately.

Two pair of mitts done for Johanne's farm store, blocked, photographed, and bagged up.  A third, a pair of fairly basic gloves, should get done today, and I have to plan out what the pair after that will be.

I meant to get pictures of my Wednesday stint at the Green Trade Expo, but never had time. Basically a Horticulture trade show, and one of our profs offered us as volunteers to help out with things like registering people. So I was out at the CE/Ernst & Young Centre all day. I signed up for 2 shifts, figuring I could use the third shift time to see the show, but ended up working all three shifts, and getting 10 minutes of free time just as people were packing up. I did wander over to the booth where they had a plant ID guessing game, and discovered something new to me. A little shrub, species Kerria,  with rather astonishingly emerald-green stems. The man at the booth said it's not terribly hardy here, which explains why it's unfamiliar. Found it in a book here, with golden-colored double flowers. Very striking, isn't it?

In construction class, we're back to stone. Our group was to build a light pillar this week, and the teacher said to think outside the box. Umm, yeah, I guess you could say we did that - ended up with a spiral design. Now for our logbooks, we have to do sketches with measurements, like plans of the pillar.

New Projects

The cria shawl is done and blocked (with expert supervision from the cat, naturally). Turned out very nice, 65" across and 28" deep final size. I'm thinking Tiger Moth for a name - the center pattern is Tiger Eye, but it looks moth-like to me in this orientation. And yes, there is a bit of striping going on - innate to the handspun, not a different lot or anything. If I'm very good, I could get the pattern written up this week and start hunting testers, but I suspect it will take a bit longer.

 

Finished shawl means I get to start a pair of mittens.

The pattern is a nice basic one, doesn't require a graph, so good to take around. Actually got it from a weaving draft in a book on Latvian weaving I borrowed from the Guild this week. There were several promising patterns in there - a source I'll have to consider more often.

For a change in pace in Construction lab today, my group ended up in the wood-shop, making planter boxes for the upcoming show. My woodworking tends to be like my gardening - few if any power tools involved. But today it was all power tools. Miter saw, table saw, jigsaw, band saw, and brad nailer. I feel like I've definitely added to my repertoire! That's my group-mates in action, below, using the brad nailer. We basically take turns doing things and taking pictures and recording - we need records for timesheets in our logbooks, and pictures for that and for our portfolios in English class.

Alpaca, Various

I'm putting the edging on the first shawl of the handspun cria I'm doing for Johanne. It is going to be very pretty, I think. With any luck, it'll be blocking tonight or tomorrow.

When I get that done, I have some more alpaca to play with for her, for the farm store. They sold a lot of their finished products over the fall and winter, and a restock on some of the smaller things is needed.  So Mom and I will do a bit of knitting - scarves for her, mittens for me. I'm happy - make a little money, and get turned loose with license to play with colours.

If that wasn't enough alpaca - I finally got to this month's Guild Meeting after missing a couple, and got to take home a prize for Viewer's Choice Award from the Spinning Challenge - a bag of 100g raw, cream-colored cria fibre. Alpaca is definitely the fibre of choice this week!