Knitting Iris

Pre-Spring Cleaning

A friend of mine, who's children are teenagers and beyond, borrowed the boys today.  It works for both of us.  It'll give me the chance to have a break and hopefully clean the house before my parents come next week, and it gives her an excuse to get out all her cool toys and just spend the day playing.  They have plans to make snow cones, make creepy crawlers, do spin art, assemble a Lego kit, and order pizza delivered to the house, something these poor, sheltered, country boys have never done.   ;)

As for pre-spring cleaning, I'm just posting a few backlogged pictures today and the next couple of days.  Though the sun is shining, it's not exactly spring-like.  The thermometer reads 10 degrees F/ -12 degrees C, and the windchill is bringing it well below zero F.  Maybe we're finally getting Winter?

Olympic knitting update:  One row into the 7th lower basket chart and will probably do one extra repeat before the edging.  How's everybody doing?

For the love of knitting

Left: Some I-cord hearts made by R last week from KoolAid dyed yarn.  I showed him how to use the knitting mushroom, and he figured out how to sew them into hearts himself.

Right: Yesterday, I whipped up this Silk Garden heart from the Knitting Pattern-a-Day 2006 Calender's pattern for February 14th.  Quick and cute way to use scraps.

"Love the life you live. Lead the life you love." - Midnite

Top: Heart garland inspired by this and these pictures.  (Check out the whole site and her etsy shop while your at it.)  Ours is made from felted wool sweater hearts on a length of cotton twill tape.

Middle: Heart shape waffles with strawberry sauce this morning.  Our valentine "tree".  Growing up, my mom had a coffee can covered with shiny red foil.  She used to collect pussy willow branches and place them in the can, hanging tiny red foil hearts on them.  Her can had plaster of paris with a hole in the center to anchor the branches.  Ours are red-twig dogwood branches anchored with stones.  I can't believe there are already pussy willows in Seattle right now!

Bottom: Wax paper/crayon shaving suncatchers. Gingerbread hearts with frosting colored with beet root powder.

Turn that frown upside down

O.K.  We're back on track, and then some, this time with a slightly more "sticky" needle which seems to be helping.  I'm finding that I exagerate all my movements to make sure that I'm getting both the strands together on each stitch, although it's pretty obvious and easy to fix when I do miss one of them.  There have been a handful of setbacks this time around, too.  The patterning shows SO much more clearly.  Now, it's the fuzziness of the alpaca and the heathered yarn that is obscuring the pattern more than I expected.  There's no turning back now though, so we'll just have to wait and see when it's blocked.  I can see how a smooth, sportweight merino would change the feel/look of this shawl.   It sure is going to be fuzzy and soft, though!

Not much time for cruising blogs, posting, or commenting, or worst of all, returning e-mails these days.  I'll try and catch up soon.  Thanks for all the encouragement.   

Remember to look at the big picture.

It was getting close to 1:00 a.m. last night when I finished the second repeat of the Lower Flower Basket chart.  For some reason I looked down the introductory blurb at the top of the pattern and read "every wrong-side row is purled" 

!!!!!!!!!!!Alarm bells!!!!!!!!!!!

Purled?  I've been knitting every wrong side row.  Everyone says that lace looks like a muddled blob until you block it and then you can see the pattern clearly, so I just assumed that that's what was going on here.  \

If I had looked at the big picture in the pattern, I might have seen it earlier, but to conserve printer ink I only copied the parts with the written pattern and the smaller picture from the  Interweave Knits  website.

I was just beginning to get a glimpse of understanding how the repeats happen in this pattern, was just thinking that I was starting to get the big picture.  Yeah, right.  Wrong! 

Heart of Stone

A stone in the knee-wall in our bedroom. 

Love. Finnish Style!

This pin was at the artist's cooperative shop where I get some of my yarn.   Besides my wedding ring and a belly button ring I wear little jewelry.  This, however, is the second time in the past few years I've splurged on a valentine-themed pin from that store.  This one caught my on several visits before I finally caved.  I love everything about it: the colors, the silver, the birds, the hearts, the stars, the candles, the snowflake like circle, the cancellation mark.  It's borderline too cutesy, but that can be O.K. around the holidays, as far as I'm concerned.

Check out Megan at Beetlegrass' retrospective of U.S. Love stamps here and here, as well as her entire Postage Stamp category.

Today, the boys and I will stop by that co-op store to pick up the other ball of light green laceweight yarn I'd like to use for the Flower Basket Shawl.  Thank you for all the good advice, but yes, I'm sticking to the 2 strands of laceweight despite warnings, even after swatching again with a single strand of the sportweight Misti Alpaca from stash.  The single strand is considerably easier, but right now I'd rather work with what I've got than buy all new yarn.   

I won't be watching the opening ceremonies this evening, though, as I cast on.  We don't have television reception.  Instead, in true Finnish style, we'll be at a sauna/potluck dinner at the house of friends, and they don't have t.v. reception either.  I may cast on while I'm there, or I may not.  I think I'm leaning more towards knitting this first shawl project with the attitude of Eddie the Eagle.  Isn't this meant to be all in fun and about cheering eachother on, anyways? 

It's unlikely that we'll see much of the Olympic coverage at all anyways, although I think it's some of the more watchable stuff out there.  How will there be time to watch anyways with all that knitting going on and checking in on everyone else's progress? 

Best of luck to all you mad knitters!  Remember to stop and stretch every now and again.

( Just might have to get to a friend's house to see Project Runway one of these days, though!)

Scandinavian Woven Hearts

We have been incredibly busy doing all kinds of crafting, baking, and getting Valentines ready to send off to grandparents.  Having a Norwegian mother, we always had these woven hearts on our Christmas tree.  Now, we do too, and I've also adopted them as a Valentine decorations.   

You can draw up your own pattern, but the one we followed was this one, with the extra little heart embellishments, from FamilyFun.com, where you print the pattern directly onto colored paper from their pdf file. This project isn't exactly easy for little kids or even adults to do, especially if you've never seen anybody make these before.  As you can see, the little hearts came out upside down on the one I tried to do the first time.  The second time, I just cut the lines straight rather than bothering with the little heart bumps.  Still, this was frustrating for R (almost 6 yrs), so the third time, rather than folding it over before cutting, I just cut one layer, along the lines, again skipping the bumps.  Now, he could just work with one layer, taping the ends together of each strip as he went.  Of course, you don't end up with a basket this way, but I suppose you could tape two together to make one.

I started reading copies of Family Fun magazine that had been left at the laundromat before we even had kids.  Yes, they're owned by Disney now, but the focus of the magazine is still positive ideas and activities for families with children, many of which are sent in by readers themselves, which of course, are usually the best ones.   There aren't any guilt trips here like you sometimes get from reading other parenting magazines.  Their website is loaded full of crafts, games, and activities from past issues.  Valentine's Day ideas are here. 

Someday, I'll make these baskets out of birch bark, like the beautiful ones Kelly at Weaving Major did, but I have yet to find a big enough, not too rotten, fallen birch tree.

Other great how-to links for these baskets are here and, here, here.

Wooly Stripe Fingerless Mitts

Wendy's Fingerless Mitts in Nashua Wooly Stripes, color: Rolling Thunder.  (Nothing but blue skies and high, wispy clouds around here today.  Finally!)  I like these despite they're mis-matchy-ness and the abrupt color breaks where the yarn had broken and had been spliced back together.  The yarn is lightly spun and very soft.  These will be probably be gifted to someone.

It took only a couple of days before I lost one of the Noro Kureyon ones that I made a couple weeks ago.  Oops.  Good thing they're a quick knit.

In Training

My second attempt at the Flower Basket Shawl didn't fare any better this time.  This is about as far as I got before making a mistake about a year ago when I first attempted this shawl.  I'll have to read up on it before starting again on Friday.

Since the pattern calls for doubling the Misti Alpaca Lace Weight, I tried knitting two different shades  together this time, a dark heathered green and a light heathered green.  Just as I suspected, it seems like that might muddle the lace pattern, making it less visible.  I'd prefer to use just the light green shade, since I'll be knitting this ONLY after dark when the boys are in bed so I can follow the pattern without interruption, but I only have one ball of it, so unless I can get to the yarn store over an hour away from here before Friday, then the dark green it will be.

I almost backed out of this Olympic Knitting thing a few nights ago when life was feeling a bit overwhelming again, and it was beginning to sound like a recipe for carpel tunnel syndome, but this week I'm back in race with new enthusiasm, despite trepidations about the pattern.