Blog

I started off the Plucktober KAL month by casting on for Michele Wang's Arlo sweater.

If you have struggled with tubular cast ons, it is worth buying Michele's pattern for the ease and clarity of her directions.  Tubular cast on gives you a cleaner edge for ribbing on sweaters, cuffs, etc, and is well worth the trouble.  I'll get a better picture when I'm a bit further along, but I'm delighted with the start.

My family tolerates my knitting with a lot of patient, if fond glances my direction.  Sometimes, there is outright admiration, as there was during our trip to Iceland when I provided everyone with warm hats and cowls. But mostly, it's just tolerance.  I'm wondering how this month is going to go for them.  When dinner last night consisted of open faced tomato and goat cheese sandwiches and some chicken soup I had made last weekend, there was a little bit of consternation.  I mumbled something about Plucktober and they all looked confused. They don't yet realize it's going to get a lot worse.  A whole lot worse.  

It has to look crazy to the muggles — the non-knitters.  These KAL months: Malabrigo March, Adventurous April, and now, Plucktober.  A month of intense knitting.  I've got plans to go to bed early and get up in the still dark hours to get in some knitting before work.  And I'll need to keep my yoga up to avoid back and neck problems.  I'm nothing if not serious about this!

Glacier is coming out of hibernation.  This knit along permits you to enter a work in progress if the finished project will take more than 1,000 yards of yarn and you are less than 50% done.  With only the back of my Glacier complete, I'm hoping the KAL will motivate me to knit the front and get started on the sleeves.

I'm going to knit Michelle Wang's splendid, cabled, Arlo cardigan for my youngest.  Sadly, that now means knitting a sweater in a size larger than the one I wear.  In addition to writing beautiful, well thought out patterns, Michelle is incredibly kind and has promptly answered a few questions I've asked her.  Even though they were sort of dumb as questions to go, she managed to make me feel great and give me just the information I needed.  I'm using this fabulous dark green "Old Copper" merino on a superwash base called Trusty because I expect this one to get some heavy kid-wear.

Plucktober starts on October 1, so I've prepared a few meals in advance and put the family on notice that I may go straight for my knitting when I get home from work at the end of this week.  I haven't clued them in that it lasts for a month.  I'm pretty sure they'll survive, and I'm looking forward to it!

A small decor update.

I can’t stop knitting on my Drachenfels. It’s a seduction of cashmere and color play. The apples that need to become applesauce and the dust bunnies that need vacuuming are going to have to wait a little longer.

It was cool this morning.  I kid you not — cool in Alabama.  Even though it was about 5:30 am, I sat out on my porch swing, watched my kittens play, and enjoyed it.  And then I thought

This made me really happy.  I love winter.  I'm happy that I took Heritage Trail along to the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team game in Birmingham on Sunday.

I made a lot of progress.  Next cool morning, I'll be sitting outside drinking my coffee while wearing it.

I am really happy about the massive colorwork stash I've put together by buying a few skeins here and there.  Although I love my Peerie Floors hat, I'm not completely in love with the scratchiness of the wool yarn I knit it with.  This yarn is a merino/cashmere blend and I have mad plans for it.  Plans that are above my skill level and will probably make me curse my needles and my sense of adventure, but I am looking forward to it anyhow.  Stay tuned.

I'm also swatching for Thea Coleman's new Rye sweater.  I love Thea's straightforward, well-written patterns.  And I need a new sweater in a nice warm yarn like Plucky's Cozy because, um, Winter IS coming.  At least, I hope so.

All knitters and dyers need color inspiration. It’s a beautiful, not-quite-fall weekend in Alabama. Here is my inspiration for the day.

It has only been six days since I left Grand Rapids, Michigan and the warm, wacky, wonderful family of knitters that make up the Plucky tribe.  I have never felt so welcomed by a group of total strangers.  This past week was spent in withdrawal. Shindig was so amazing that I felt a real sense of loss at leaving.

The Marketplace was an incredible source of inspiration.  Seeing patterns knit up in a variety of yarns gave me great ideas about what I want to knit and what will look good on my body.  A special thank you to Amy Herzog for the tips I picked up in her Fit to Flatter class!

Lisa (Twosam) was nice enough to let me try on her Rowe sweater.  It's been in my queue for a long time, and I've finally scored the perfect yarn for it, Plucky Scholar in Burlap.  Trying it on helped me understand the fit better — I'll be knitting a size down.  Lisa is a truly inspiration knitter.  If you haven't, you should go check out all of her amazing projects, and especially, THE DRESS.

Shindig was a place where a group of strangers could go to dinner together and walk away friends.

It was a place where grown women wore glow sticks on their heads.

It was a place where the coolest of the cool knitters stayed up knitting in the hotel lobby late at night, some of them in their pajamas. 

I miss Shindig.  The community of knitters is a powerful thing, something I suspect the muggles can't understand and might even laugh at.  It was great fun and I'm grateful for the experience!