The Rundown

It's been a fun-filled week, and it's only Thursday.

I finished the Green Gable. She is washed, blocked and ready for action. I started and am about 70% finished with a fourth Chickami. I used some variegated Elann Sonata Print from Ye Olde Stashe that had been partially knit and frogged. It's doing much better as a Chickami than it was in its previous incarnation. I've started Samro's A Little Something. I'm not far along at all, however, because this week has been jam-packed with other activities.

I am Tour de Fleece-ing. I'm not on a team or anything, but I have committed to spinning every day, even if I don't get home until 11:40 and only have 20 minutes. That was last night after seeing a show at The Goodman Theater, and the Journey Wheel and I were not getting along at all. I just could not get the tension adjusted properly. Things were better today. I'm currently spinning some Romeldale with silk noil and tussah silk mixed in. It may actually turn into real yarn that I can use.

Tuesday and Wednesday were largely taken up by the joint gardening project my next-door neighbor, Diane, and I took on. There is a 10' swath of parkway that runs between the street and the sidewalks in front of our houses, and it was in sad, sad shape. She had straggly grass on her part, and I had nothin' but dirt on mine. (I had a landscaper put in vinca a few years ago and it all died. All of it. Since then, nothing grew, not even weeds.) We have a few challenges that make it tough to grow things. It is mostly shady (big trees and shadows from the buildings block a lot of the sun, and big trees have big roots), and our neighborhood is chock full of dogs that just gotta go. Still, we were determined. After studying the sun's movement throughout the day and having a landscaper turn and amened the soil, Diane and I went to work. We purchased a variety of plants that featured interesting leaf shapes and colors, made two trips to a stone supplier for limestone and granite rocks, stopped at Home Depot, Lowe's, and a local garden center more times than I can remember, and we got dirty. We went for an informal, woodland vibe, and I think we did pretty well.

Many of the plants will eventually have blooms or the leaves will change colors with the seasons, so we're excited to see how it goes. Hard to believe, but there is a half-ton (seriously...1000 pounds) of stone in there that we hand-picked, loaded onto wagons, pulled to the scale, loaded into her car, unloaded from the car, and placed and replaced in the garden. And now we are tired. And sore. And happy that we did it.

Ooooh, and look at the "skull" rock that I found. I'm sending this pic to Skull-a-Day.

The husband and I also got a surprise invite to a Cubs game this week. We're not big sports fans (that's an understatement), but it was great people watching which made for a fun evening.

Wherein I Ask for Bad Picture Forgiveness

I thought I'd post while I'm sitting here waiting for my Starbucks delivery. (What?! Your Starbucks doesn't offer delivery? Mine doesn't either, actually, but the husband will be bringing my Venti Decaf Nonfat Extra Dry Cappuccino with Three Splendas shortly, I expect.)

In the fine tradition of poorly lit, badly focused mirror pics, I present Chickami #1 and Chickami #3. (You've already seen Chickami #2, the Chococami.)

I love this pattern because of its wearability. (It's a vest! It's a camisole! It's a dessert topping! The Chickam-o-matic!) The rows and rows of stockinette can drive one to distraction (especially when you have to knit entire sections over again), but the end product is worth it.

As mentioned in a previous post, there were a few stitches making me cranky.

They just were off, and no amount of fiddling was helping, so I ran lifelines with the intent of cutting out the offending section and grafting the halves together. It occurred to me that the grafted row might end up bugging me, too, and that's a lot of kitchenering for what could be a not-great result. I bit the bullet and ended up cutting and re knitting from the top lifeline down. Stitches look the same no matter what direction they're knit in, so it didn't matter that I was knitting down on a garment originally knit up. In the end, I think it was the better--though more time consuming--choice.

So, the inventory is:

#1 (Purple) Skinny strap, fitted version

#2 (Brown, aka Chococami) Wide strap, no shaping, pucker stitch from the Chocolate pattern on the cover of the current Verena

#3 (Sedona Red, aka CSI: Chickami (my last post explains the name)) Wide strap, no shaping, eyelet pattern from ChicKnits Sitcom Chic

I don't think I'm done yet, but I'm not sure what the variation will be for the next one. I've got loads and loads of Cotton Fleece, and I also have some Elann Sonata Print that would be nice for a variegated version. Plus, I am within an hour or so of finishing the Green Gable, and a few hours more to finish my Cardigan with Leaf Ties. (I come out of the gate fast, but I am not good in the home stretch.)

In other domestic news, this week I received an order of heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo.

Sorry about the pic being sideways. It is correctly oriented in my computer, but every time I upload it to Blogger, it rotates and I just can't fix it. Just tilt your head to the right and please forgive me. Aren't they pretty, though? Those Vaqueros look just like little cows! They are more expensive than grocery store beans, to be sure, but the varieties are so cool. Two days ago I made a crockpot of Flageolets with sauteed bacon, onion, green pepper, bay leaves, red pepper flakes and rosemary. YUM. Yesterday I did Yellow Eye Beans (they look just like Black-Eyed Peas, only gold) with sauteed bulk hot Italian Sausage from our local farmers' market, onions, bay leaves, red pepper, basil, thyme and parsley. Today I have Cranberry Beans in the crockpot with some onions, garlic, and bay leaves. When they are cooked to the right point, I intend to use them to make baked beans. I'm on a big legume kick right now. Earlier in the week I made red lentils with onion, garlic, rosemary, a cup or so of leftover Pinot Noir, and vegetable broth. I served them over brown rice. I loved them (the red wine and rosemary tasted so...French), but the husband didn't like the texture of the lentils. C'est dommage.

I'm a big fan of using the crockpot in summer. Even though many recipes have a distinctly fall/winter feel about them, the crockpot doesn't heat up the kitchen. (Of course, after sweltering last week, we are now in the low 70s, so heat in the kitchen isn't really an issue. I'm sure it will get hot again just and my neighbor and I are scheduling our joint gardening project in front of our two houses.)

Some of my weakling tomato plants are slowly coming around. About half bit the dust after transplanting. Worm castings from the worm bin would have helped, but my little flock (herd? gaggle? troupe? team?) of worms had just arrived, and they hadn't yet started producing. I filled in with some heirloom varieties from garden centers and the farmers' market, so I should still get some decent ones. I hope they don't all get ripe when I am in Portland for Sock Summit.

The Fixer

So Saturday night, the husband and I were out to dinner when all of a sudden I see these little dots of light across the room. Turns out that one of the patrons had on a pair of glasses not unlike these to read the menu. I don't know about you, but I have been knitting in bed quite a bit lately, and the lighting in our bedroom is not good at all. The bedside lamps are both to dim and too short to help much. I do have an LED book light, but there is nowhere to clip it when I knit. One of the SWAG items for Sock Summit is a different kind of clip-on light which, for $6.00 is cheap enough to give a try. My friend Liz has an over-the-ear version not unlike this one. When camping at fiber festivals, I sometimes knit in my tent wearing my headlamp, but then I end up with a big strap-mark on my forehead. (Since I camp alone, no one will see it, so I'm not sure why I care.) I suppose instead of gadget hunting, I should just buy taller, bright bedside lamps and dispense with the problem once and for all, right?

It seems like the knitting I've been doing for the past two days is all about fixing, so I'm not really getting ahead of the game.

I decided I could not live with the funky stitches on the Chickami, so I ran lifelines. After picking and ripping, I determined that grafting was not necessarily going to make me happy, either, since the single row of grafted stitches was likely to be at a slightly different gauge, and when you are working in a solid color mostly cotton yarn, it's pretty visible. So, I've decided to put it back on the needles and knit down from the upper lifeline using the yarn from the bottom section. Let's hope that works.

Yesterday, when picking up my nearly finished Green Gable, I noticed one wonky little stitch just under the lace panel. Since I'd already bound off the bottom, I had to undo the edge and ladder back to fix the splitty stitch. (I'd missed two plies of the Cotton Fleece, and the stitch was all scrawny as a result. It bugged me to no end.) That bit of surgery was actually a pretty quick fix, and all I have left is the second sleeve cap.

Yesterday I also cast on for Orion's Sock. This was a case of "I should have listened to myself." The pattern is toe-up, and calls for a cast-on of 28 stitches, 14 on each needle. I thought to myself, "Hmmm...when working cuff-down, I usually decrease to 16 or 20 stitches, 8 or 10 on each needle. This seems like a shallow, wide toe." Guess what...it was. Since I'd only knit one pair toe up before, I didn't question the pattern, at least not enough to change things from the outset. I was in denial for a few inches of toe and foot, then took an inevitable trip to the frog pond. I think I'm going to cast on again tonight and follow my own plan until I get to the correct number of stitches around.

The question of whether one is a process or product knitter comes up a lot. I've come to realize that for me, I can't have a product I'm happy with unless I complete the process to my own satisfaction. Which reminds me, there was something about the bind off on the Green Gable that was a little off...

Crime Scene Cleanup

So, I'm on a roll with these Chickamis. I just finished number three, and she's a-blockin'. (There may be some emergency surgery later, however. I'm not happy with a few stitches on the front. Depending on how it looks, I may run two lifelines, surgically remove the offending rows and graft the sucker back together. Otherwise, my obsessive mind will never let me forget that those stitches don't look quite right to me.) Pics of all stages will follow if that happens. I finished last night and decided that a thorough soaking might help to even things out, so I put the tank in for a good soak with some Kookaburra Wool Wash (love that smell!), and went to bed. This morning, it looked like my top had been used for major crime scene cleanup. I saved a glassful of the soaking water to show you. There is so much dye that you cannot see through the glass--it is practically opaque. You can't tell here, but it is exactly the deep red color of blood:

The label on a skein of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece warns of color migration, but this is color exodus. I won't know until it dries, but the color of the garment seems not to be significantly different. I've noticed runoff with my other Cotton Fleece projects, but this was beyond the pale. It's a warning to not use Cotton Fleece for multi-colored projects, to be sure. (I'd thought about a striped tank using leftover bits and skeins, but that is officially off the table after this!) It also means that if I do perform surgery, I will pre-wash the yarn I use for it so that it exhausts some of its color, too. (FYI, the colorway is Sedona Red, which is a rusty red.)

I was down in the Craft Dungeon on Friday playing with more yarn and dye. I almost always listen to NPR, and they had some of the more interesting commentary about Michael Jackson. Since we are so close to Gary, IN, the local news has been out of control. Actually, all the news has been. I watched CBS Friday night, and Katie Couric paused for--no joking--maybe 4 minutes to report on something other than the death of Michael Jackson. As someone who came of age in the 70s and 80s, he was ever-present. I loved the Jackson 5 cartoon when I was a kid. I remember watching the Motown 25th Anniversary special and being amazed. My senior year, I was in something called AV Homeroom; it meant that we "produced" our morning TV show, but more importantly, we got to go to the AV room during study hall and watch MTV. Seriously. 1983-84-era MTV in instead of actual study hall? Clearly, a first-rate education was had. I knew every video in MTV's rotation by heart, including his. I must say, however, that the bizarre behavior, the disfiguring plastic surgery, and the legal issues turned me off to him. I do still love some of the old Jackson 5 hits (especially The Love You Save and ABC), although it's sad to think that whatever was happening to him then caused much of the strangeness in his later life.

I'm getting very excited about Sock Summit. I just picked my colors for the Orion Sock. I'm going to use Oregon Red Clover Honey and Crabby McHappyPants. I think the ORCH--which I love, love, love for its subtle shading and sophistication--will be a good foil for the brightymcbrightington-ness off CMcHP. Don't know if I'll get them done for SS, what with the four bazillion Chickamis and other warm-weather tops I still plan to make this summer. (I know some folks are taking things quite seriously and concocting sock-y costumes of sorts for the Sock Hop. I'm not likely to be one of them.) I need to get cracking on my homework for Meg Swansen's class, too. Plus, I'm looking forward to some quality time in Portland with the husband, who has been working way too much lately.

Because I know that the second-best way to show off your knits is to take blurry, not well-lit, pictures of yourself in a mirror, here is a Chococami action shot:

We are in the midst of another thunder and lightning storm--best time to be on a computer, right? Clearly my plans to go to Home Depot to shop for perennials are going to be scrapped in favor of building an ark, it is raining that hard. (Tough to build that ark without going to Home Depot, first, though, not coming from survivalist background.) It's also hailing big, bouncy pieces of ice which I always find a bit freaky. There are police and fire sirens all around (not uncommon when you live in the city, even if it is a generally calm neighborhood), which adds to the apocalyptic vibe. Oddly, the Weather Pixie down there on the left of the screen is wearing a sundress that shows a lot of leg and is calmly holding her umbrella, seemingly enjoying the deluge. Any Weather Pixie in her right mind would have taken cover, as her little black cat companion has already done. (I worry about the Weather Pixie; I think she has been behaving a little strangely of late.)

There is a good chance I may finish my Green Gable today. Yesterday I had an all-out panic because I had reached the end of a skein and couldn't find the rest of the yarn. I knew I had bought enough, but it was nowhere to be found. I literally had one inch to go on the body, then a short stretch on each arm to finish. After looking everywhere, I got myself worked into a state that necessitated that I either have to find more yarn or rip the whole thing out. I went online to check the eBay seller I got it from, and it turns out she had a 50% off sale on Cotton Fleece--and Cascade 220, too. She didn't have the color I needed, but, um, well, she had a few others. Whoops. (Her shipping is reasonable, too, just USPS Priority Mail with no extra fees.) Finally, last night around midnight, I went down to the Craft Dungeon to look again. After rifling through bins I had--ahem--carefully organized last week, I found it sitting on my work table, in plain sight. (Well, it was in a grocery bag, so it wasn't that obvious.)

Speaking of which I need to go check the Craft Dungeon. We have not had water issues in this house (at least not any that weren't directly linked to a failing pipe or faucet or toilet), but we did have a backup in the basement of our former condo, which is just a block away. I hope I never have to go through that again. Knock wood, cross fingers, turn around three times and spit, etc.

My Feet Have Wings

I am an admitted enthusiast. I get on a kick with something and I just can't stop. (Some might call it compulsivity.) Lately (for a few years, actually), I've been quite enthusiastic about Fluevog shoes. I suppose I'm a collector, of sorts. Some other knitbloggers are, too (hello Marisol!), which is confirmed by the presence of a Fluevog group on Ravelry. (Okay, there are groups for almost everything on Ravelry, so it's really no wonder.) On Sunday I was swinging through the listings on eBay and happened upon a pair that called to me. (I know, used shoes--eeeew---but this pair could not have been worn more than once or twice given the condition they are in, and they were a sweet deal.) I think they look pretty fun with a pair of Monkeys:

I must note that these got to me from Kissimmee, FL in one day, USPS Priority Mail. And, my mailman--who has been hailed here as the nicest mailman ever--thanked me for getting a package! The guy really seems to like his job, even if things are not so great at the Postal Service these days. Mail volume is down (which, from an environmental standpoint is a good thing), and they reported a huge loss last quarter. They're talking about cutting Saturday delivery, and I think a lot of people are concerned about their jobs. (Some of the people who work at my local post office don't seemed to be concerned about their jobs--or much of anything for that matter, but that's another story. I try to avoid the actual post office as much as I can.) All-in-all, when the mail works, it's a pretty great deal.

Anyway, I digress...they are from the same Angel "family" of shoes as these boots that I wore last night when I was slogging around in the rain downtown:

My other 'Vogs are mostly of the 3" heel variety, but I'm kinda feeling the London-y, Punk-era vibe of these right now. Plus, it's still cold here in Chicago, so closed shoes with socks feel pretty good.

Because I know that bathtub drying racks are the BEST, most flattering places to photograph knits, here are some pics of the Chococami:

It was not getting dry on the blocking mat (what with all the moisture in the air and no airflow through the mat), so onto the rack it went. The patterned stitches are starting to "pooch" more as the water evaporates, so maybe it will be okay after all.

Yesterday's Craft Dungeon experiment was pretty cool. I have a veritable smorgasbord of yarn samples, and I wanted to see how they each took color. I took my mini skeins, "labeled" them with a semi-elaborate system of cotton ties, each with a different number of knots corresponding to my list of samples, weighed them, and calculated the depth of shade I was going for. Then they all went into the hot tub together. It was so interesting to see how the characteristics of each yarn changed (undyed yarn looks very different than dyed yarn which "blooms"), and how each fiber took up the color differently. Here are just a few of the mini-skeins strewn across my desk:

If only high school chemistry had been this much fun!

The Hurrier I Go The Behinder I Get

The title is one of those Pennsylvania Dutch phrases that you see on kitschy trivets in tourist traps in PA Dutch/Amish Country (Lancaster, PA, and surrounding areas.) It's not something I've ever heard any of my Dutch relatives say, but it seemed to apply because projects are being completed, but photos are lagging seriously behind. For example, here is a (kind of blurry) pic of the cowl described in the last post:

Today I wove in ends and soaked my Chococami. It is a mash up of a Chickami and the Chocolate pattern on the cover of the latest Verena that I worked up in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Truffle. All seemed to go well until I dunked it, and then the lovely puckery part (the element that attracted me to the design in the first place) kind of...deflated. It flattened right out. I'll have to see what happens when it's dry. It might still be fine, just different than originally intended.

While Chococami was soaking, I cast on for the Classic Elite Sprout Center Detail Tank. (Is that not the longest name for a tank top ever?!) I'm using some Araucania Nature Cotton picked up on the cheap from Webs. (I found out that an old friend that I recently reconnected with is moving to Northampton. Sounds like a Webs pilgrimage--I mean a visit with my friend--may be in my future!) It's going quickly which is good because bulky cotton is not the most fun to knit with, though it is producing a nice fabric. I'm also planning to make the Sprout Tee in the same yarn before this summer top mania I seem to be in passes.

I've got two other projects on needles right now, both in Cotton Fleece. I'm making my second Green Gable, this time in a bright blue. I made my first one during the time of the original Green Gable zeitgeist, and it was always too big. I tried to shrink it a bit in the wash, and from that point on it fuzzed like a milkweed pod. Eventually, it got thrifted. I'm experimenting with sizing on this one, and I hope I get it right. I'm also making the Leaf Tie Cardigan by Stephanie Japel.

WWKIP Day was damp, but there was a good turnout anyway. It was originally slated for Millennium Park, but it moved to the Cultural Center because of the rain. (If you are ever in Chicago and haven't already done so, you must visit Preston Bradley Hall in the Cultural Center to see the Tiffany Dome, and then pop over to Macy's (formerly Marshall Field's) to see the Tiffany Dome there, too. Gorgeous.) Hop over to Lynnette's post for the touching story about the pianist bound for Iraq who gave an impromptu mini-concert for a room full of knitters.