Category — General

I wish the camera had not been scattered in all its parts to the four winds prior to the deconstruction of my last thrift store sweater purchase.

We have a very large thrift store down Route 1 South from where I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I believe it goes by the inspired name of Virginia Thrift. Remind me, please, that I ought to take a photo of it for you.

At any rate, I tend to do whirlwind tours through the place, digging only briefly at the back right corner of the store where they keep the grab-bags of crafty ingredients and fabric remnants, and then on the way to the registers I go down the aisle set up for men’s sweaters.

On my last trip down that aisle, I found a very large man’s cardigan that had obviously been hand knit. (ETA: The whole point of the title to this post is that the sweater reminded me very much of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and was even the proper pale blue for a non-red-cardigan day in his Neighborhood.)

I am relatively certain the yarn is wool, because the sweater was ever so slightly felted before I started de-constructing it — a process which initially brought me a fair portion of pain and suffering, because I, ostensibly a knitter myself, forgot that if there are decreases anywhere in the knitting, you really need to pick apart and unravel from the *beginning*/top of the knitting, not the end/hem. ~facepalm~

In any event, cordial relations with ballwinder and knitting sense restored, there later came this:

This being a somewhat startling quantity of tweedy blue yarn of indeterminate fiber.

Anybody care to hazard a guess as to whether or not it’s wool?

This is Max:

Max would like it to stop raining now, please, so that he can chitter at the birdies some more. Max also is in the window that overlooks the pool in our backyard, shuttered for mechanical problems and the winter, which resembles the frog pond my knitting is about to become. (Stretching Segue, meet YarnGeek. YarnGeek, meet Stretching Segue.)

I am making the Elizabeth Zimmerman saddle-shouldered aran cardigan for TSH. It began thus:

The front — note steek stockinette portion in center — and the back:

Classic Elite Skye Tweed, because Jared’s was so lovely in the same yarn, and because WEBS had it on sale. Look closely, because all that knitting is going to get frogged.

There are a number of issues, most of which aren’t readily visible in those images because to confront them directly even in photography was too much for my delicate sensibilities. Chief amongst my troubles with this iteration is that I made mistakes in cabling that I was able to drop down and fix, only to discover yet more issues, etc., and on until I’d dropped down so many times that it all just looks a right mess. I don’t care if blocking would bring the huge ladders thus created back in line, I just can’t stand looking at it another minute.

Secondly, I forgot when I cast on for this sweater that you pick up stitches for garter stitch edging all the way around the cardigan post-steek. See the twisted ribbing at the bottom of that?

Yeah.

So, it’s getting frogged. As is the Lizard Ridge Square. Sigh.

True to Renee’s advice, I consulted Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters book for her instructions on picking up wraps and I agree that this should solve my issue with Lizard Ridge. So maybe I can show you more than one square in the not-so-distant future, eh?

I leave you with today’s drug of choice:

Crack, I tell you! (Dear Peninah, THANK YOU for introducing me to Vosges! Are you still out there so I can send you your bag I promised way back when?)

But first, this is how much sock there was pre-stupidbowl:

And this is how much knitting happens from 30-minutes of pre-game show on through to the end of the crazy upset last night:

Lest you think it’s not that much, consider that there are two socks on the one needle. This is the thank-Ravelry-for-pattern-searches Nutkin pattern from Knitzi. I am totally in love. This may become a Cara-like obsession, mit der picot edge, for socks for me.

(a slightly amusing aside: I had my pretty blogroll all set up over there for a while, but had added a few new reads since I moved on over to WordPress. So I went to update it? And my blogroll is now too big for WordPress. How ‘ya like THEM apples? So I’ll have to find a new way to link it so you can see how many of you I really do read! :))

The yarn (I have since discovered since uploading the image to Flickr) is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the “Java” colorway. I knew I’d gotten it for husband socks, and now I remember why I knew he HAD to have it. He’s a bit of a coffee fanatic. But I love how the subtle colors are still so lovely:

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this before or not, but my great-grandmother had a yarn shop way back when called Celeste’s. (If anybody in PA has a photo of the place, I would be forever grateful, but I don’t even know for sure where in PA it was. I think Coatesville?) So my great-grandmother taught knitting, had a yarn shop, etcetera, and then my Nana learned from her, and SHE taught knitting. This card comes from among a box of my grandmother’s papers, which include a bunch of really fantastic things I’ll show you over the next little while — lots of Singer 1950’s sewing stuff, newspaper columns pasted onto my Granddad’s Defense Intelligence School agendas, that sort of thing — but I loved this so much because of the connection it helps me feel to the women in my family:

I believe this to be circa 1956-’58 or thereabouts.

And a closeup of the text:

The Wednesday Morning Knitting Class. I am relatively certain this was a class Nana taught while my Granddad was stationed in Athens, Georgia, but it may have been in Texas, also. This same box holds a number of sewing paraphenalia from a home making school (!!) in Georgia, so I feel fairly confident that this card comes from that time frame.

I have a couple of sweaters left over from my mother and Nana, and I think my dad still has a sweater that Nana knit him way back when. This is just another link that makes me feel connected to the women of my family in those wonderful ~click!~ moments that make you say, “So THAT’S where I get that from!”

There are upsets –WAY TO GO ELI! — and there is serenity:

Some really lovely black, red, and white fiber that’s spinning up with a considerably greyer/more purple cast — Valkyrie from Flawful Fibers, and I think it’s Falkland wool. I’ll have to check the blog archives to be sure.

A basket of more Flawful Fibers waiting to be spun:

My sincere condolences to Patriots fans — I’m actually a Redskins fan, so we really had nothing at all emotionally invested in this game, but I do love Eli’s baby-face, and I was thrilled that he made it an honest-to-goodness game, instead of allowing the Pats to walk all over them like it seemed everyone expected them to do.  Anyway, that lovely light on Friday (or was it Saturday?) morning made my whole weekend, and I thought I’d share a little sunshine with you to store up in preparation for the six more weeks of winter that Punxsatawny Phil says we’re going to get. Have a great week! I’m hoping to show you tomorrow how much knitting one can get done from 3o minutes of pre-game show and the entire SuperBowl…

To get this out of the way, there’s still open comments on my last post, in which I am comment whoring soliciting input and offering free yarn to a randomly chosen commenter, so you know, go see and comment, please?

I awoke this morning to actual sunlight! Given the weather of late in these parts, this was nothing short of a miracle, so I took advantage of the light to take a bunch of photos. (I know. Try to restrain your excitement.)

I am going ahead with the scary showing-you-my-mess, but not inside the blog itself — if you want to see what a wreck my great room is right now, you can see it on my flickr page, here.

Meanwhile, this would be the yarn, all in one place:

I can’t decide whether this is an excellent method for restraining further yarn purchases until I make some room in the cedar chest, or if it’s just a demonstration of the fact that I’ll have to tap into the empty wooden tool chest that sits on the other side of the couch the cedar chest sits in front of. Elspeth is encouraging me to go ahead and log the stash on Ravelry, she says that it’s terribly freeing to know what you have, etc — I still maintain that I’m not sure I’m ready for my heart to handle knowing how much I’ve spent on all that wool sitting in a cedar chest right now. Admittedly, it’s been spread out over at least five years, but it’s still sort of scary to contemplate.

The cedar chest itself is a pretty cool object. I was given the cedar chest by my maternal grandmother, Nana Acquaviva, and it was made by Nana’s great-grandfather. This chest has been from Pennsylvania, out west across Kansas and further to unknown places, then back to Pennsylvania, and it ended up with Nana at their home in Delaware. Ultimately she gave it to me, which is something for which I’m very grateful, as through a series of unfortunate events the house in Delaware and all its contents are now gone.

I love how scarred and loved the top of the chest is:

Obligatory knitting photo, since I TOTALLY owe you some:

I think, alas, that I must frog this, and at least one other thing on the needles right now. I seem to be experiencing all manner of issues picking up my short row wraps for Lizard Ridge and I’m still not doing well after trying this same colorway several times already. So tonight I’ll go investigate online about picking up short row wraps and see whether I can do justice to the current Kureyon collection:

I think chances of me having documentation of what colorways I used for this afghan are fairly slim.

I have more to show, but will see if I can parse it out over the week so I actually have ~gasp~ some updates! Until then, go comment so I can give you stuff! Also, happy February! Go check out Anna Maria Horner’s blog for a lovely free wallpaper of a heart card made of vintage buttons. So very lovely. (Both the card and Anna Maria herself, in fact.)

This is how my husband describes our home’s design aesthetic, and I rather like it, really. Christmas brought the usual flurry of visiting hither and yon, house full of packaging and paper and STUFF everywhere, and the new year brought the usual mixture of resolution-making-and-breaking and some actual impetus to organize things for the year to come. I began that process with moving my blog over here to WordPress, and promptly sunk back into stagnation until this past week.

I’ve been working on transferring my archive and photos from Typepad over here to WordPress on my own domain, which is proving more a challenge than I initially expected. I also managed to obtain three new bookcases a few weekends ago — from Ikea, natch – which are finally put together and making me grin with glee every time I go into the Great Room and see them there. The bookcases have spurred further rearrangement of that whole space, which serves as congregation space for guests/friends/family, gaming-group space for The Sainted Husband(TSH), sewing/quilting/spinning/knitting space for me, and play space for Sophie. There’s a LOT of stuff in that space. It’s a big space! But not so big that a rearrangement results in some pretty impressive chaos.

I’m not sure I’m brave enough to show you any before images, but I DID get all my lying-about-in-baskets fiber and yarn tucked away into my cedar chest, and I think I may finally attempt to document The Stash for Ravelry — but having said that, once I see it all gathered in one place, I may decide that there are some things I am just more comfortable NOT knowing. You guys understand. It’s one thing to have an obsession with your crafts, and quite another to realize in a sudden visually visceral manner what the approximate aggregate COST of that obsession might add up to.

Anyway, if you’re still out there and reading and are interested in seeing me bare my figurative soul in terms of the embarassing mess that my house has become, following the old adage that things have to look worse before they can look better, then leave me a comment, won’t you? I’ll pick a commenter at random to receive some nice yarn as a gift in thanks for letting me know that there’s still folks floating around out there who haven’t decided I’m dead or forever dormant.

…and my heart beats so, that I can hardly speak! (or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. :))

Editor’s Note: Such a funny thing, blog expectations. I typed this entire post pre-Christmas, and stuck it in “drafts” pending my ability to take photos of the various projects in progress I refer to, and there it has sat, with nary a photo and no posts from me showing up in the “real” world. So I finally decided enough was enough, I ought to post the bloody thing already and pictures will just have to happen whenever it is that they happen. Hey, you get one! That’s good, right? Also, as an errata, because spam has been such a nightmare for me of late, I haven’t placed my email directly on the site anywhere until I get get tools in place to help reduce the spam I get. Having said that, should you need me, if you send to yarngeek, with the little a with a circle ’round it, yarngeek, dot com? That will get to me.

Heaven, my friends, is white. chocolate. ganache. (it’s okay if you have to pause to wipe up some drool. I almost did just typing it out. It’s cool — I’ll wait.) This month’s issue of Gourmet magazine has miscellaneous holiday cookie recipes in it, and I, upon spying a souped-up version of homemade oreos, decided to tackle the first half of those cookies tonight. You KNOW you’re Full of Win(TM) when your 16 year old youngest stepson tastes said white chocolate ganache and pauses…looks at you…goes NOMNOMNOM on the remainder of his tasting spoon, heaves a sigh, and says, “Yeah. That’s pretty good right there.”

My knitting needles continue to clickity-click on the Noro stripey scarf, as well as the Elizabeth Zimmerman saddle shoulder aran cardigan, an idea ripped off from Jared over at b r o o k l y n t w e e d because the man makes me want to weep with tweedy gorgeous knitterly love forever. Aranmor shall not be discussed as I haven’t been able to bring myself to tackle the thing in more than a year, and I think I can only handle one mega cabley item at a time.

The Sainted Husband (TSH) (TM) said, after wearing and getting many complements on his skully hat, that he would not be complete until he also obtained a skully scarf. So that, too, is on the needles.

Back out from the back of beyond a drawer amongst my craft things is TSH’s cross stitch Christmas stocking, which will match Sophie’s stocking from the same pattern company — Sophie’s stocking that I started while in the hospital to have her, and that I finally finished Christmas a year ago. (She turned four last Saturday, if anybody is keeping score. *I* am not. I am many things, but swift completer of projects is not one of them.)

Newest item to come into our home as a very early but OH SO NEEDED Christmas present to ourselves is an entirely new bed — bed frame and mattress, courtesy of our new BFF, Ikea.

We got the Hemnes four poster bed and a Forestad foam mattress, because frankly any mattress with springs in it just does not work for us, as proven after spending about six times the cost of the bed set we just got over the past eight years on four different mattresses. ~headdesk~ Now, however, the drawback of a wonderful new bed is that it’s where everybody in the house wants to be ALL the time.  Although I suppose as drawbacks go, it doesn’t suck. :)  I was thinking initially that the yellow was horrible even though I loved the shape of the bed itself, but we got it into the bedroom and suddenly found that it’s growing on us. Happy color, yellow.

Next to conquer in the world of IkeaLove, bookcases. Is there something wrong with me that to read design blogs already trumpeting the arrival of the new Ikea catalog for 2009 in February fills me with indescribable glee?

Lights and tree are up; ornaments are not, yet. One batch of cookies made; another halfway through the process. Knitting continues apace with no expectations of completing anything by Christmas, but many happy hours spent whiling away with needles in hand anticipated with glee.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!