Everyone flies with four different knitting projects in their carry on bag, right? After once being stranded on a runway for hours with no knitting, I swore it would never happen again!
More details on each of these lovelies as I tour colleges with child #3.
I'm still knitting Olivia. For the record, that's almost seven inches of fisherman's rib. It has taken me just about all of two skeins of Plucky Primo Aran (more like a light worsted weight that an aran) to get to this point.
It has been a long slog, as you all know, because it's just about all I've blogged about for weeks. But it is so worth it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as cushy as fisherman's rib and I can't wait to wrap Olivia around my neck. That is, if I ever manage to finish.
For a brief moment in time yesterday (about 45 minutes) I was as close to knitter nirvana as I can get.
I managed my weekend work to squeeze a bit of time out of the office, sent one child to ballet and the other off to play soccer, and urged Mr. Knitter off to the grocery store (thankfully, dogs, cats and older children were cooperative as well) and I engaged in blissful knitting while getting a pedicure. Not just any pedicure, but the most fabulous pumpkin pedicure of all time. I am told it exfoliated my feet and made my skin baby-bottom soft. Personally, I was just happy to get the uninterrupted knitting time!
It paid off too. The rickety fisherman's rib on my Olivia is almost at the seven inch mark (that's one and two-thirds skeins of Plucky Primo Aran to get there). Olivia and I got off to a rough start. I didn't know how to knit this quirky rib and had a hard time getting directions that explained "knit into the stitch below." And I may have misread some directions regarding the last stitch on wrong side rows. But none of that matters. We are good friends now and I am embracing my early mistakes as learning scars. Olivia is beautiful and I am in love with her.
Today it’s Olivia in my brand new knitting bag from the Silver Shed. Hoping to make some serious progress on miles of fisherman’s rib.
I'm going to need a hat to wear on my travels this spring. I want something lighter weight than the hats I have managed to keep out of my children's greedy little hands and also a springy green color. Since I didn't seem to have anything the fit the bill in stash, I dyed this.
It's a new-to-me yarn, Kraemer's Maria, a 50% silk/50% merino blend with 225 yards in 100 grams. The yardage and the look are both about right for me to call it a worsted weight yarn. For patterns, I'm still deciding between a Plum Tree Slouch
(c) NNK Press (with permission)
and an Irving hat.
(c) Melissa LaBarre (with permission)
They are both tempting choices and I feel sure I'll end up knitting both of them. The yarn itself seems to almost completely lack a Ravelry presence, so I'm knitting blind here. But I tend to like Kraemer's yarns and this one dyed up beautifully, so I have high hopes.
A note about the dyeing process. I like to apply color to yarn in layers, rather than all at once, to get more organic color variation in yarns that aren't going to be level-dyed a solid color. This yarn was originally dyed a pale yellow and then overdyed with a blue that was a dilute almost-navy solution, before being glazed in a yellow-brown. Although I'm often asked is glazing is worth all the work, there is no doubt in my mind that the same principles I used to use in painting collage backgrounds are equally at work in dyeing yarn, and there is simply no substitute for carefully applied layers of dye, each of which makes the final color full and rich.
I cast on my Vodka Lemonade cardigan on the last day of 2014. As of today, I am here:
It has taken me all this time to knit a mere five inches of collar. In my defense, it is in seed stitch on a sport weight yarn (The Plucky Knitter's Crew). And, I've simultaneously knit a hat, finished off a capelet, made significant progress on my Olivia wrap, and knit close to two skeins’ worth of a Sugarloaf Cowl. But I am admittedly slow at seed stitch, although I enjoy it. I do hope the rest of the sweater comes along more rapidly!
Here is a quick picture for a Friday morning. My kind UPS lady dropped off this box, full of The Plucky Knitter's Scholar, a rustic textured yarn that is a cashmere/merino blend. Oh the possibilities! Whatever will it become?
I'm thinking about this sweater, or possibly this one for the red yarn, which is called Strawberry Wine. And this one has caught my eye for the blue yarn, which is Thank You Note. What to knit next is always one of my favorite questions! Happy Friday everyone.
