First things first

Okay, here’s the deal: Last month, I started knitting a sweater for Sylvia, using yarn that was in my stash. The yarn is Noro New Ruby, which hasn’t been manufactured in at least a decade, as far as I can tell (it’s next to impossible to find information about it anywhere online). It’s a 40%cotton/40%viscose/20%nylon blend, which feels a bit like a cotton-silk blend and also has a bit of a sheen to it.

I’ve just finished the sleeves; here they are, curling like Cathy Overton-Clapham in their unblocked stockinette glory. I love how they’ve turned out, but now I need to figure out what yarn to use for the body.

I’m knitting a simple drop-sleeve pullover (Ann Budd style), and I don’t have enough of the Noro New Ruby to do the front or the back, much less both. (I may use some of that Noro to do an intarsia motif—a big star, perhaps—on the front, or maybe a couple of patch pockets.) I don’t mind using different colors for the front and the back, but I think that each surface ought to be a solid color (i.e., no stripes or all-over intarsia or fairisle). The sleeves were knit on #2 needles (my friend Pat says the Noro is sportweight yarn that would have done well on #3s, but I liked the tighter fabric that #2s produced), and I’d like the body to be knit on #2s or #3s, too.

I was thinking that a sock yarn might work, and so far that only place I’ve really looked is KnitPicks. None of their sock yarns (and sportweight yarns, too) have the same “jewel tone” quality of this Noro New Ruby. I have no objection to mixing and matching yarns, but I do want the parts of the sweater to look like they’re meant to go together. My friend Gina thought that Baby Cashmerino (which I lurve might work, but the colors in that line are too subdued for this project.

Help! Suggestions, anyone?

I’ve been in a bit of a knitting funk these past three weeks or so, ever since I did the cast off for the Artisan Vest. (It’s not quite finished yet, though. I do not crochet but my husband does, so I’m waiting for him to finish crocheting the edging.)

I decide on a project, find yarn for it in my stash, do a gauge swatch, knit for three or four hours, realize that the project just isn’t working out, then frog it. Rinse and repeat.

I think I’ve started—and abandoned (though these don’t count as UFOs ’cause they’re getting frogged immediately)—four or five different things this month.

The other day it occurred to me that perhaps I was going about it all wrong. So instead of thinking “I’d like to knit a hat/sweater/whatever,” I went stash diving with the goal of finding a yarn that I wanted to knit with…and then figuring out what to do with it.

I surfaced with four skeins of Noro New Ruby, which is a lovely 40%cotton/40%viscose/20%nylon blend. (This yarn came from a local knitter’s stash, which was divvied up among my local knitting group about two years after she died.) This stuff has been long out of production—and there’s practically no info on it anywhere online—so there’s no way I can get more of it. So what to do with not a huge amount of really neat yarn?

Sleeves, of course! Not for me, but for Sylvia. I’m sure there’s enough of this stuff for two little sleeves (and maybe a pocket or two). I’m going to use solid-colored yarns for the front and back of the sweater. I don’t have a plan yet for those parts (same color? one color in front and one in back? cardigan? pullover?), but I figure I can sort it out later. I’m using the drop-sleeve pattern (26″ chest) in Ann Budd’s sweater book, so there are all sorts of ways to tweak this.

For now, I’m really enjoying knitting these sleeves. This is only my third experience with Noro, and I can see why people drool over the stuff. The colors are just gorgeous, and I love how the yarn feels. I’m knitting this stuff on #2 needles, but it’s surprisingly fast going.

And no, I’m not going to try to match the two sleeves. Let the colors land where they will!

Today’s mail brought a special treat: the prize I’d won by guessing that Blindpurls was moving her blog to Wordpress! She sent two skeins of Merino 5 from Crystal Palace Yarns and a copy of Crazy Aunt Purl’s book (which looks like it will be lots of fun to read!).

A day when something that’s not a bill or an advertisement arrives in the mail = a good day.

A day when yarn arrives in the mail = a stellar day. Heh.

Thanks so much!

For Christmas last year, my friends Gina and Todd gave me some yarn and a pattern book from Green Mountain Spinnery. After much thought, I decided to make the Artisan Vest in that book, using the Double Twist yarn called for.

The smallest size in the book is for a 36″ chest. That’s a bit larger than what I wanted, so I did some math and modified the pattern to make it fit me better. So instead of casting on 180 stitches, I cast on 160. And I counted them three times before starting to knit.

Or so I thought. After a week and a half of merrily knitting along (this vest is worked in one piece from the bottom up), Saturday afternoon I found that I’d reached 10″ and was ready to divide the piece. I knit the right front and put those stitches on a holder. I bound off for the right armhole. I knit across the back. I put the left front stitches on a holder. Then I bound off for the left armhole. And then I thought, “Gosh, there’s an awful lot of stitches left on my needles for the back.”

So I counted them. And I counted them again. And I undid all of the bound-off stitches and worked back to right before I started to divide the piece…and I counted again.

Somehow, instead of 160 stitches, I had 194. How this happened, I have no idea. Like I said, I triple-checked the number of my cast-on stitches. The number 194 doesn’t appear anywhere in the pattern, so it’s not like I accidentally followed the wrong line. And I haven’t added stitches anywhere—my rows are beautifully tidy all the way up.

The only solution, I’m afraid, is to rip out the whole thing and start over. Yes, it’s a fair amount of knitting on size 6 needles. But it’s “mindless” knitting—the kind I can easily do while chatting with friends or watching a movie. So I’m sure I’ll be back to this point in no time—and this time around, I’ll have the correct number of cast-on stitches. I plan to quadruple check them this time. And I’ll make Jan count ‘em for me, too.

Way back in the fall, I told you all about KnitMap, a new website with user-generated content (including reviews) of local yarn shops throughout the country. It’s a terrific site, and I encourage all of you to plug in info about your own favorite (and even not-so-favorite) yarn shops.

KnitMap recently ran a contest to encourage users to submit “what I’d like to see at KnitMap” suggestions, and I was one of the two winners. Golly gee! Stacy at KnitMap contacted me for my address last week, and my prize arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon (that was quick!): a skein of Socks That Rock in the algae colorway. I’ve heard about this stuff (usually in reverential tones) but have never seen it in person. Now that I have a skein of it for my very own, I feel like I’ve joined an exclusive club. I wonder if there’s a secret handshake?

I really love the colors in this yarn. I can hardly wait to start some socks with it!

Two of the gifts I received for Christmas last month were a ball winder and swift, thanks for my friend Gina and her husband, Todd. Gina has very kindly let me wind many skeins of yarn on her setup, and now I’m delighted not to have to bug her to borrow them any more. Owning my own winder and swift makes me feel like a real knitter—like I’m now allowed to sit at the grown-up table at Thanksgiving or something.

I tried them out for the first time a couple of days ago, with help from Sylvia. As soon as I started clamping things on the dining table, Sylvia observed that the ball winder crank “looks like a tricycle.” (The pedal, that is.) I let her turn the crank for a few minutes while I set the skein on the swift, and then she helped wind it up. Apart from a couple of time when she started turning the crank in the opposite direction after pausing, she actually did a great job!

And why did I need to wind this yarn? Believe it or not, I’m actually finishing the green sweater I started for myself three years ago. When I last reported on it (two years ago), I had just one more sleeve to knit and seaming to do. Thanks to the winder and swift, I was able to start the second sleeve the other day, and I’m nearly finished with it! (I’m certain to finish this sweater before the end of the month, so it will be my entry for Ali’s contest.)

As with our anniversary, Jan and I generally don’t buy each other birthday or Christmas gifts, either. When Sylvia turned two last May and really “got” the idea of getting (and opening!) presents, we decided it was time to modify this practice a bit in order to teach her about gift giving, too. So for my birthday (also in May), Jan took Sylvia out shopping for a gift for me, and for his birthday (later in May—yes, we are all three born in May) I took her out to find something for him. In both cases, we asked for specific gifts, and Sylvia helped purchase them at the store and wrap them.

For Christmas this year, we decided to expand her participation in this process and let her choose the gifts herself (within some parameters, of course), both for us and a few other people. This was an interesting experience, because she often gravitated toward stuff that she liked, which offered opportunities to discuss how gift giving is all about choosing something that the recipient might like. She’s not an expert at this yet, but after a while she definitely got a sense of how it all works. Some of her choices were quite charming, such as a carved, blue, wood tree ornament for her grandmother, “because Nana likes blue!”

I suggested to Jan that he take Sylvia to the yarn aisle at Michael’s and let her choose a skein or two or yarn for me. She’s well accustomed to my knitting and knows that I like it. I told Jan, “If you can, try to gently steer her away from the Fun Fur…but you know, if she really wants to get that for me, that’s fine.”

So late last week, the two of them went out to the store in great secrecy. In this case, “great secrecy” is defined as Sylvia loudly promising, as she and Jan are putting on their coats and I’m in the next room, that “We’re going to get Mommy a present, and it’s a surprise.” They came back with a puffy-looking bag, and Sylvia was fairly bursting with the news. But she didn’t tell me! Well, not quite…

As we opened our gifts on Christmas morning, Sylvia chose her two gifts for me to open first. I picked one up and said, “I wonder what this is!” She replied, “It’s yarn!” then looked at Jan and said, “Is it okay if I tell her?”

And here is the yarn she chose for me. Jan tells me that when they got to the yarn aisle, Sylvia quickly picked out the Wool-Ease, announcing, “Mommy likes brown.” (Brown does indeed happen to be my favorite color.) Then she saw the Jiffy Thick-and-Quick, and its bright colors (including purple, which happens to be Sylvia’s favorite color) instantly captivated her. She declared that I would like that yarn, too, and so they bought both.

Yeah, I hate pretty much all acrylic yarn. Loathe it. But this stuff? It’s my new favorite yarn.

I’ve been very fortunate to have some terrific upstream swap partners, and now I have another name to add to that list. Chris is my partner for the Knitters’ Coffee Swap (not upstream but sort of sideways–we know each other’s identity from the beginning and send each other a package), and her package for me arrived in yesterday’s mail.

To quote Mr. Slinger from Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse: “‘Wow.’ That was just about all he could say. ‘Wow.’”

There’s coffee, of course (fair trade! shade grown! organic!)–Peace Coffee from a Minneapolis roaster. I haven’t even tried it yet and I already love it. To go with the coffee are two bars of chocolate and after-coffee chocolate mints. A notepad (which Chris stamped with a cat image) and a photo album with a coffee cup on it will help me keep track of notes and photos, and a bar of Oliba’s Three Bean Kitchen Coffee Soap (which, contrary to its name, is going in my shower) will ensure that I start the day smelling nice. There’s a mix CD of twenty-seven songs that all have the word “coffee” in their titles–great listening for when I’m knitting up some socks in the fabulous “Mocha Java” sock yarn that Chris dyed just for me and using the coffee-bean stitch markers (how cool is that?) to mark my place.

What a great set of gifts–all just perfect for me. Thanks so much, Chris! (FYI, anyone who has a thing for cute cat photos–I’m looking at you, Gina!–should definitely check out Chris’s blog.)

Oh, and those little hands at the top of the picture? Those belong to Sylvia, who was very excited to “help Mommy open her present” and could hardly wait to get her hands on the photo album.

“I need to take a picture first,” I told her. “Can you be patient?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes, but sometimes it’s hard to wait.”

My mother-in-law lives three hours (mostly) north of me, and about one hour from the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, where the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival is taking place this weekend. You know, Rhinebeck–the fiberfest whose name is spoken in hushed, reverential tones.

I first heard about Rhinebeck last fall–when knitting blogs were teeming with post-Rhinebeck reports, “you’ll never guess what famous person I saw there” sightings, and “look at my yarn haul” photos. I felt like I’d missed the boat on something all the popular kids already knew about. And now that I knew about it (but still wasn’t one of the popular kids), I resolved to attend the next Rhinebeck.

So I hatched a plan: Jan, Sylvia, and I would drive up to his mom’s place on Friday, spend the night there, and get to the festival bright and early the next morning. We’d all get a kick out of seeing the animals and participating in the hustle-bustle of a big festival, and I could pet and maybe even purchase some can’t-get-this-stuff-anywhere-else yarn. The plan expanded to include our friend Gina, who decided to come with us, leaving her uninterested-in-yarn husband, Todd, home to look after their six (yes, six cats). (And yes, they are nuts. “They” being both the humans and the cats.)

But a few weeks ago, I looked at my stash (not huge by any means, but there’s enough in it to keep me busy for a while) and my bank account (not huge by any means, but there’s enough to pay the bills–but not enough to take a big hit from festival-euphoria-induced yarn purchases) and decided to stay home. If Rhinebeck were an hour away from me, yeah, I’d probably go. But four hours there plus an overnight plus four hours back add up to far too much time and effort to make a trip just to look at yarn (but not purchase) and other nice stuff worthwhile.

(There are several wool/knitting festivals in my part of the country, but I’ve yet to attend one. This reminds me of my experience with academic conferences: many of my fellow graduate students were barely scraping together funds or sometimes even going into debt in order to go to academic conferences, but I didn’t attend one until late in my grad school career, when there was one close to my university and I could actually afford to go to it.)

Gina took the news well, thankfully, and I’ve decided to start saving my pennies now for next fall’s Rhinebeck. Or maybe I’ll try Maryland Sheep and Wool* in May (which I’ve not attended because my daughter’s birthday has fallen on the same weekend) or Knitters Day Out in September (which I’ve not attended because my anniversary has fallen on the same weekend). Next year, all those weekends are free of other events (thank you, Leap Year!), and I’ll be ready for them!

(* Take a look at the URLs for the NYS Sheep and Wool and Maryland Sheep and Wool websites. Think there were any fisticuffs over who got which one?)

Another terrific package from my upstream SP11 pal landed on my doorstep this afternoon. The presentation was so nice (garden-motif wrapping paper and a Halloween-themed box and ribbons) that I was almost reluctant to unpack everything!

Again, she sent me a cute tea-themed notecard with a teabag tucked into a special pocket inside. (Where does she find these cards, I wonder? I love them!) This time the tea was from the Charleston, South Carolina, tea gardens, “America’s only tea garden.” I had no idea this place existed! (According to the Great Wik, however, tea has also been grown in Hawaii since about 2003.)

The box also contained more tea, chocolate, notecards, and sticky notes. And a jar of pear-ginger jam. That she made herself. I can’t wait to try it on some scones alongside a pot of tea.

She also sent two skeins of Crystal Palace Maizy, a new sock yarn that’s made of 82% corn fiber and 18% elastic, as well as a trio of stitch markers with little teapots on them. Teapots, people! The cuteness is overwhelming!

Last but not least, she sent a project bag that she made of fabric with pictures of cats, yarn, and knitting needles on it. In her note, she wrote, “When I saw you were learning to sew*, I figured you would not be critical of my sewing.” “Not be critical” is an understatement–this little bag is amazing. I adore it and can’t wait to put it to good use–perhaps for whatever socks I’m knitting at the moment. It’s the perfect size for them!

Thanks for another great package, SP11! Everything you sent it just perfect for me!

(*Sometime in early summer, I mentioned that I’d recently acquired a sewing machine and a book for beginner sewers, and was planning to learn how to sew. Well…I got about halfway through a tote bag when the thread got totally derailed off the bobbin and I ended up with a machine that punched lots of holes in the fabric without actually putting any thread in them. I spent some time looking up “how to thread your sewing machine” videos on the Internet, but none of them were helpful to me. So out of frustration I temporarily abandoned the sewing, but I do hope to get back to it soon–especially when bags like the one I just got make me remember all the cool things you can do with sewing!)