So, about that new domain…

I’ve decided to not renew seventybyheart.net when it expires. I chose the name on a whim several years ago, and it doesn’t really fit anything I’m doing online anymore.

I wanted to be able to switch to a new domain without losing anything or making a mess. My web-hosting support wiki made it out to be a rather difficult process; Wordpress, though, has some fabulous tools, and in the end it took all of ten minutes to export then import.

From now on, you can find me at http://www.tidewaterknits.net.

I didn’t change a thing–just transferred the whole blog over.

This site will remain right where it is, though, unchanged, until its domain expires in 2010. Sometime before then you might want to update your bookmarks. =)

I know all this moving about is a pain in the arse, but now that I have a blog I love again, it seemed only fitting to change the domain name to match.

FO: Simple Stripey Scarf

Pattern: Improvised!
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock, 1 skein of #258
Needles: 4.25 mm

There’s nothing quite like garter stitch and Noro to get the knitting mojo going again.

Despite finishing that Gathered Scarf more than a week ago while zonked out on cold meds, I’ve not had an easy time getting inspired this month. I’d been pawing through the stash and perusing magasines without any real success, but I came across a skein of Silk Garden Sock hiding in a bag of organic cotton and picked up the needles on a whim.

I started at the centre back, used yarn overs to increase, and just knit until I ran out of yarn. Literally. I switched to larger needles on the last row, finished with four inches of yarn to spare, and bound off with a crochet hook.

I’m sure I could have blocked it out to shoulder-shawl size, but I love the squish and texture of garter stitch fresh off the needles. I did give it a good soak-and-swish but just laid it flat to dry without pinning or stretching.

And now I seem to be back in knit-knit-knit mode. I just finished an off-white beret in a single-ply super-bulky wool, and am about to block it into shape (right now it resembles a giant marshmallow). I’ve also been diving into my stash of Patons Grace to knit some garter-based lace facecloths.

Mm, lace. Yes. I am craving lace, with thick yarn on big needles. I just snagged Evelyn Clark’s Deciduous Lace (Rav link) pattern, and am thinking my stashed Mirasol Miski would make a gorgeous, warm shawl.

I just registered a new domain and have some fun (for me) things in the works. I’ll start coding sometime in the next few days, but my still-healing back muscles (I pulled them quite nicely, really) are protesting at too much time in the computer chair.

Before I go, I should mention that I added to my 7900s challenge. I’m now aiming for 7900 pages read, 7900 yards knit/woven, and 7900 minutes of film watched. I added the last part because I used to really enjoy sitting down with a good film and something to knit; over the past few months, though, I’ve fallen into the rut of knitting while watching reruns on TV, instead.

There shall be no film-watching tonight, though. There will, however, be sleep.

FO: Godiva Gathered Scarf

Pattern: Gathered Scarf
Yarn: 1 skein of Handmaiden Lady Godiva
Needles: 3.75 mm and 4.5 mm bamboo

I started this in the second week of December, but put it aside to finish up a couple of gifts and didn’t pick it up again until a few days ago. It was mindless enough for me to be able to knit it while fuzzy-brained. The only modification I made was to reduce the stitch count from 48 to 42.

The yarn is lovely. It’s smooth and soft and squishy, and even being half-silk, it didn’t fuzz while knitting and didn’t fuzz when I wet-blocked it. Also, it went far enough for me to get a 4.5″ x 60″ scarf out of one 250 metre skein.

I’m still not quite 100% sold on the colours, but I’m more satisfied with them now in the final product than I was at various stages of completion. There are gorgeous shades of sand, light sage, ivory, and taupe in the yarn; the way they combined doesn’t displease me, but it’s not quite as stunning as I’d hoped. Such are the perils of knitting with handpainted yarns.

Regardless, I’m pleased with it and it’ll get worn.

As far as mittens go, well, I had the best of intentions last night. I sat on my bed with a pattern, needles, and yarn… beside me, as I knit instead on a simple triangular shoulder shawl in Silk Garden Sock. It’s a gift with a deadline, true, but I guess I should just come out and admit that I’m basically a crow–easily distracted by shiny things. Hell, my initials even spell KAW.

I do have a cuff this afternoon, though. One shocking pink Kureyon mitten cuff. I expect fraternal twins, because I’d like to use the leftovers for a cowl and don’t want to lose yarn by trying to match the pair.

Rather than using the guide in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, I’m going with Design 15 from Noro’s Designer Mini Knits. Still basic, just constructed a little differently.

And now, back to the yarn.

Knitting, rambling, and special bugs.

It seems like I haven’t posted in ages. Really, it’s not even been two weeks, but I’ve spent the past several very long days in bed with some kind of plague. Getting up and moving around this morning kinda felt like coming out of hibernation.

I’m still not 100%, but I did manage to pick up the needles and finish a scarf that’s been lingering in the WIP basket for a month or so. It’s drying on my new blocking mats at the moment, and since the yarn is a heavy silk blend–Handmaiden Lady Godiva–I expect it to take a couple of days.

I got a very tiny but very perfect gift last night–a bright spot in an otherwise craptastic week. Dad works away during the weeks now, and comes home on weekends. He came home last night with something for me; said he found it a few days ago in the bathroom of the place he stays, and almost washed it down the sink before he realised what it was. He put it in his shaving kit, and took it to work with him during the day to keep it warm. It made the four-hour trip home in the car, in the shaving kit, near the heater vent.

What was it?

A ladybug. A tiny, wiggling, red-orange ladybug, with seventeen spots.

I think you all know how much I love ladybugs. I’ve settled her into a tiny makeshift terrarium, with a wet paper towel, a bit of non-acidic fruit, and a couple of leaves from one of my succulent plants. Ladybugs don’t hibernate, but are rather sedentary in the winter; they don’t eat much, but live off their fat reserves. As long as their water supply is consistent, they can easily be kept in a small enclosure during the winter, and then set free in the spring.

I am secretly amused by the mental image of my accountant father bringing a ladybug to work, and also secretly thrilled that he went to all that trouble to bring me home my favourite bug.

I tried to get a photo of her, but she’s so teeny that it didn’t quite work.

Speaking of pets, I’d like to introduce a pair of Japanese Shubunkins named Taiyou and Tsuki:

Photo is crap, but they’re very striking fish, and at already about four inches each, they’re likely going to be ginormous.

I used to have several large aquariums, and while not necessarily wanting to go down the million-fish road again, I missed the pretties and also thought the white noise from a filter might help me get some proper sleep for a change. The aquarium they’re housed in right now will do them well for eight or ten months at least, and then, once they’ve grown, I have a much larger one to move them into.

I have to admit, I prefer the aesthetic of a large aquarium with a few big fish rather than a similar size aquarium with tons of small fish like I had before. The Shubunkins are interesting, but relaxing, to watch, and so pretty.

The filter seems to be doing what I hoped it would, too. It’s not loud, but generates just enough of a hum to help camouflage the constant noise filtering through my thin bedroom walls. I’m still not sleeping well, per se, but markedly better than before.

On another note altogether, I was expecting my spinning wheel this week or next, but turns out it’s now backordered and will be another 3-4 weeks. I’ll be making a day trip to Moncton to pick it up when it does come in, which’ll give me the chance to visit a few of the places I miss most.

It’s been wicked cold here all week; I did have to venture out today to pick up more sinus meds, and cursed at myself (inside my head) about thirty-six times in the hour I was out. Why? Because I have no mittens. Yeah. Despite being a wool-loving knitter living in a cold climate, I’ve somehow managed to knit myself exactly zero pairs of mittens in the past three years.

I went stash-diving this afternoon and picked out yarn for a few pairs. There will be mittens. Mittens and mittens and mittens, and not one of them will likely match or even coordinate with any one of my hats.

My scarves don’t, either.

After I knit eleventy-four mittens, I think I’d like another triangular scarf/small shawl. I’ve narrowed my choices down to four (unsurprisingly, all Evelyn Clark designs): Baltic Blossoms, Hyacinth Lace, Deciduous Lace, and Shetland Triangle. I haven’t made up my mind, but there’s a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Tiziano Red that’s calling to me.

Note to self: Less rambling, more knitting. Now.

You may have noticed a link to my new Etsy shop in the sidebar. It’s very small, but I figured it was time to test the waters.

Book meme!

I’ve seen this making the rounds in blogland and figured I should just do it, already.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them. Not a chance. I recommend tons of books that aren’t on this list, and also recommend people skip a few that are on this list.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Mans
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

It appears I’ve read about 60% of them. Which, you know, doesn’t make it obvious at all that I was a university English major. Not all of those were course-assigned, but some definitely were.

Year-End Round Up (and new goals)

I’m not really the type to keep count, but for the sake of statistics: in 2008, I knit or wove 17 hats, 10 scarves, 6 washcloths, 4 cowls, 4 pairs of fingerless mitts, 3 bags, 3 sweaters, 2 pairs of socks, 2 shawls, 1 baby bib, 1 bracelet, 1 felted bowl, and 1 mutt sweater.

I’ve been thinking that 2009 might be the year to challenge myself a little. I wasn’t looking for anything as specific as a list of patterns or categories, just something general and low-stress to keep the needles moving and the brain functioning.

So. I’ve set myself two goals, one craft-related and one not. This year, I’d like to:

– Knit 7900 yards. It’s only a couple hundred yards more than I knit in 2008, and it doesn’t limit me to certain projects or yarns. I thought about including weaving in this, too, but decided against it.
– Read 7900 pages. I prefer a page count to a book count, because book lengths vary so wildly. I used to devour books (sometimes two entire novels in a day), and want to learn to relax with a book again without feeling unproductive.

Why 7900? Because I was born in 1979, and it seemed less arbitrary than a lot of other numbers. Not that arbitrary (or pointless, for that matter) is bad, mind you.

FO, and… spinning?

Pattern: Plain weave with lace insertion
Warp & Weft: 1 skein of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Firefly
Dimensions: 40″ x 5″, including fringe

Tried a lace insertion on this one. I like it; it wasn’t difficult and adds a little bit of visual interest to an end of the scarf. I warped the loom for this one a few weeks ago, but when I realised I wasn’t going to have the time for it until after the holidays, I loosened the tension so the yarn wouldn’t get stretched out.

I can weave for longer periods of time now that I’ve made the space to do it sitting down–leaning over a table is murder on the back. And I’d like to move on to bigger projects. I have some chestnut brown merino that’s going to become the fabric for a tote bag, and I also have some gold pencil roving and a needle-felting tool to embellish the bag once it’s sewn together.

Speaking of roving (or rather, things that roving can be used with)… several months ago, when I was choosing between a spinning wheel and a loom, one of the reasons that tipped the scale in favour of the latter was that I thought it would make more logical sense to have a tool that would help me use yarn, instead of a tool that would help me make more yarn to add to my already substantial stash.

I don’t regret it–I love my loom. I might prefer plain to fancy, and I might not ever produce works of art, but I love that it’s so relaxing, and calming in a different way than knitting; I’d love to combine the two, eventually, and make woven scarves or blankets with knitted-on edgings. I love that variegated yarns look so thoroughly awesome when woven, too, even the ones I wasn’t so fond of in stockinette.

Like some of you will understand, though, where fibre love is concerned things don’t always make logical sense. I’ve never really stopped sporadically looking at wheels, but about a month ago the craving really hit hard. I thought about it for a long while, gathered information, and in the end, I made a deal with myself. If (through Etsy or Rav’s ISO/Destash) I could come up with half the cost of a wheel, I’d take the other half out of my paycheque. I also figured that wanting this bad enough to consider selling some of my stash was a damn good sign.

Today, I reached my goal. Hooray!

Now I get to choose a wheel, which isn’t easy for a beginner. I can read all I like, and talk to spinners all I like, but everyone has a different opinion and I have no practical foundation of knowledge. I do know one thing: I’m looking for single treadle. I have one leg that’s never quite recovered from a series of injuries, and it can’t keep up with the other. I think I’ve almost chosen one, but nothing’s set in stone yet.

As far as the stash goes, I’ve gone through every single ball of it and reorganised my storage. It all fits nicely into the closet, now, and there aren’t random skeins all over the place. I know I’ve said it before, but I think I want something of a yarn diet. I tend to forget what pretties are hiding in the back of the stash, and making myself look there first helps me remember. It’s not no-yarn-until-x-date or x-amount-of-yards-to-destash; it’s just shop-the-stash-first. Simple.

Also, please note that I said yarn, not fibre. I have to have something to spin, right?

I’ll be back later this evening, or tomorrow, with a year-end round up. Hard to believe 2008 has gone so fast.

Ice.

New Pattern: Blackberry Cowl

Pattern: Blackberry Cowl (direct PDF link)
Yarn: 1 ball of Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed in #08
Needles: 5 mm KP Options

New pattern! Blackberry knits up in an afternoon with only 90 yards of yarn, making it great for both stashbusting and last-minute gifts. It’s a close but not tight fit for maximum warmth.

Most of the time I prefer neckwarmers to full scarves. They slip down too easily, though, and don’t cover as much as I’d like them to. I never really thought about it before I made my first one a few weeks ago, but cowls do seem like the obvious solution to the issue; I wore this new one yesterday and it kept me snug without any fiddling.

Yarn overs make forgiving and flexible buttonholes, so button size isn’t stated in the pattern. I blocked my cowl out first, then decided on some clear semi-sphere shank buttons that I’d had in the button jar for ages.

In a phenomentally stupid move, I managed to upload the wrong version of the PDF to Ravelry. More than 80 people downloaded it before I realised the mistake. Argh. The chart was fine, but there was an error in the wrong-side row of the written directions. This is not going to make people have faith in my pattern-writing abilities, especially at a time when I want to start testing out some of the more complex patterns I’ve charted, in hopes of eventually offering them for sale.

Bah.

In other news, I’m working on a Melusine (Rav link) beret in a shockingly bright turquoise. It’s cheerful.

FO: Flora

Pattern: Flora
Yarn: Cascade 220, less than half a skein each of Baby Rose Heather & Natural
Needles: 4.25 mm 16″ bamboo circ & DPNs

Cute! And a one-day knit, too, which is a nice bonus.

I didn’t use smaller needles for the garter band because I wanted it to flare out a little into more of a cloche shape, and improvised the decreases at the top so the hat wouldn’t turn out too long. The pattern had some missing information and errors, but they didn’t end up being much of a problem because I’d already made modifications and the colourwork was charted.

I really like the fabric I get from knitting Cascade 220 at 22 sts/4 ins. Just that extra half-stitch per inch snugs it up nicely, and it stays pliable while gaining a little structure. I’m sorta amazed at the amount of Rav projects I see with Cascade 220 knit at 16 sts/4 ins; maybe I just prefer my knits a little firmer than most, but I’d think that gauge would result in a fabric that flops instead of drapes.

I have more than half a skein of Baby Rose Heather left and I think I’m going to do a little cable-panel swatching. I have my eye on Kingscot, but I can’t seem to make up my mind with regards to yarn. I’m considering Cascade 220 in that same coral-heathered pink; I like it at 22 sts in stockinette, but the 23 + cables in the pattern will likely be too firm. I could drop it back to 21 and do some minor recalculations if I like the fabric, though.

It’d also be nice in a crisp cotton/linen blend, though, for more of an all-season sweater. I don’t think I’d use pure cotton for fear it’d stretch out too much, but a blend would be great. And of course there’s the recommended yarn, Berroco Pure Merino DK, which comes in fabulous colours. Even with the WEBS discount, though, the yarn would be over $100, and I’m not getting enough work in the next couple of months to even consider it.

Really, though, it’s not like I don’t have enough sweaters-in-waiting to keep me knitting. I have dark purple Classic Wool waiting (with two complementary colours) to be turned into the Bountiful Bohus from More Big Girl Knits, my much-loved bright blue Rowan Yorkshire Tweed DK destined to be a February Lady Sweater, plus several other sweater-quantities of yarn that don’t have projects yet.

I’m tempted to start that FLS soon; the yarn is discontinued, and it took me more than a year to find and snag the colour I loved. One thing’s stopping me, though–my weight is starting to drop again. This is a great thing, but it leaves me in a quandary about sizes. I don’t want to knit for the size I am now and have it be too big when I’m done, but I also don’t want to knit a size or two smaller and have it not fit because I hit another plateau.

… Maybe I should knit myself a pair of socks. My foot size hasn’t changed in a decade.