Knitting and Crochet Blog Week

I know I'm pretty late to join the game, but I've read some interesting posts on other blogs relating to Knitting and Crochet blog week, and I have nothing for show-and-tell at the moment, except for a navy blob of plain st st that will one day - hopefully soon - become a sweater for Stuart. So here goes Day One (about three days late!)

Day One: 28th March - err, make that 31 March. A Tale of Two Yarns.
Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

Good gracious, I feel like I've tried so many yarns, and yet there are still so many out there I haven't experienced! I am quite eager to try out several North American-produced yarns, like St. Denis, Quince and Co., and Shelter, but I am really trying to knit from stash for a while. (Except for that one 30% off sale in another state where a friend picked up something for me, but honestly, how could I turn that down?)

For this post, however, I'll stick to two yarns that I've actually used recently: Misti Alapaca Chunky and.

Yarn #1: Misti Alpaca Chunky. I bought a bunch on sale from WEBS at least two or three years ago, intending to make something else with it, I don't even remember what. I wound it into balls and then it sat in the stash until recently, when I decided to knit it up into an Aidez cardigan:



I have to be very careful with alpaca. For one thing, it's extremely warm, especially in thicker weights, so you can't make a turtleneck tunic out of it unless you're planning a trip to the Arctic. For another thing, it lacks the elasticity of wool, so projects can stretch out of shape pretty easily. The inelasticity is often made up for in drape, however. Also, I can tolerate all manner of wool on my skin, but alpaca yarn feels pretty itchy to me. I thought that was the case with absolutely ALL alpaca until I finished the Aidez cardigan and started wearing it nearly every day with nary a twitch. I suppose it's the superfine quality of this yarn that makes it so soft and tolerable for me. I think the yarn was a good match with the pattern, too. There are cables, but the sweater is meant to be long, so if it stretches a bit, I don't mind. And the open-front design keeps it warm without being unbearably hot. The best part about this yarn is that knitting with it was pure pleasure from a tactile perspective, so soft and forgiving.

Guess what else? I was smart enough (or self-indulgent enough, whichever way you want to look at it) to pick up a bunch in a second color, so I can make another warm, luciously soft, cozy sweater in cream whenever the fancy strikes!

Yarn #2: Unidentified natural laceweight. Shetland, maybe? Or Icelandic? I have a bunch of this delicate, woolly stuff from my mom, who inherited it from her cousin Ruthie. Ruthie died of breast cancer in the mid-1980s, and a few years ago I made my mom and her twin sisters each a lace project for their birthdays: Cocoon stole, Twilight stole, and a triangular shawl for which I apparently never did a proper FO post or got good pictures, but this will have to do.

This yarn took some getting used to. It's kind of crinkly, full of bits of vegetable matter, and extremely delicate. It's hardly spun at all, and there were sections that just sort of fell apart. Sadly, I didn't figure out spit-splicing until partway through the projects, so I had some ends to weave in that wouldn't have been necessary. But I liked the yarn, in large part because it's vintage and unlabeled (though it was in skeins, so it was probably obtained commercially, and probably in Scotland, where Ruthie lived for a time) and just felt kind of mysterious and unique. I have a lot left, so I could make several more lace projects, should the mood strike. I don't know if my mom and her sisters wear their tribute shawls or not, but I know they appreciated getting them.

polar chullo

Ta-da!! The Polar Chullo is finished!



It's so beautiful I almost hated to give it away, but this hat couldn't have gone to a more grateful recipient. I made it for the director of Daniel's preschool because, well, she asked me to. She loves the Toboggan Noggin I gave her before Christmas, and requested another hat with ear flaps. I sent her some links to a few patterns and she chose the Polar Chullo. She's a non-knitter and offered to pay me, but for a project this intricate and complex I think even minimum wage for the hours it took would have cost at least $200. Of course I wasn't going to tell her that. I made it because I wanted to, pure and simple.



Knitting this hat was really, really fun. Except for those earflaps, which were a complete and total pain in the ass because of the back-and-forth in fair isle, but even those didn't take long. It's just so fun to see all those patterns take shape, especially the polar bears marching around and around. The only other annoying part was all the ends I had to weave in at the end. K wants to line the hat with fleece (she tells me she does this with all her hats), so fortunately the inside with all those ends and stranding will be all covered up.



My one modification was to add beads for all the noses. I didn't want to strand along the black yarn for one stitch in the middle of the polar bear motifs, plus beads are fun. I sewed them all on after the rest of the hat was done, but one of these days I'll figure out how to incorporate beads into knitting without having to string them all on the yarn ahead of time.

I'm proud of this hat. I'm trying to get more adept with colorwork, and with each project I see my tension get better and knitting with two hands gets easier and easier. Next fair isle project I might just grow a pair and try steeking, who knows?

Pattern: Polar Chullo by Mary Ann Stephens from Twist Collective
Yarn: Knitpicks Palette in the colors black, white, jay (dk blue), blue (med blue) and pool (lt blue)
Note about this yarn: I like it. It's really very inexpensive (about $2/skein) and comes in 100 colors, so it's great for this sort of project. I have a lot of Palette, actually, because I've got some serious ambitions to make fair isle mittens for me and everyone I know, perhaps for next Christmas. It's a 2-ply yarn, and I wish it were plied a little tighter because as I was knitting and constantly untangling the skeins, the plies threatened to come undone. It's soft, though.
Needles: size 2.75mm, 16" circular and DPNs for a gauge of 9 stitches per inch!

I gave the hat to K today at preschool drop-off, and she squealed with thanks and put it on right away. I think that's an affirmative that she likes it. I did get a picture of her wearing it but forgot to ask permission to put it up here, so that's why you only see unmodeled shots here. It's only about 34 degrees out there right now, which is unseasonably cool even for Wisconsin, so she'll have plenty of opportunity to wear it in the next week or so!

i-cord

I'm nearing the end of the Polar Chullo.



Except for those earflaps, knitting this hat has been really, really fun. It's good to know this about fair isle: even if the gauge is dauntingly tiny, working the color patterns is interesting enough to move things along.



The finishing work is taking forever, though. Two nights ago I began the applied i-cord edging (a first for me!) and I declared to my husband, "I don't know why people complain about i-cord edging. This is actually kind of fun!" Half an hour later when I'd ripped it out twice and it still looked like crap, I retracted that statement. I finally got it right (choosing the right size needle helped a lot - who knew?) and finished the i-cord last night.



Now I still have about a thousand ends to weave in, tassels and pom-poms to make, blocking, and oddly enough, some beads to sew on. The pattern doesn't call for beads at all, but I thought it would be fun to use them for the polar bears' noses and eyes. I really want to get this hat finished by tomorrow to give to the recipient (one of Daniel's teachers at preschool) because even though it's technically spring, it's still plenty cold enough for warm wool hats here!

new sweater for anya

Anya benefits greatly from having both a mama AND an Oma who like to knit for her. My mom just finished up a new sweater, and Anya graciously agreed to model it this morning:



She wore it until it got too warm and she had to remove it. And her socks. And her shoes. And eventually, her shirt.

See the daffodils there? They just bloomed today. I've been in my hometown in Kentucky this week, where I brought the kids for a visit while Daniel is on spring break. It's been nice and warm and relaxing, but we're returning home to Wisconsin tomorrow, where the daffodils won't make their appearance for a little while!

this is only the beginning

Despite ranting and raving all day long about the political events in my state, my city over the last 30 hours, I don't have much left to say. I am not surprised that the budget repair bill eventually went through. I am not surprised that the Republicans in the state Senate resorted to desperate and illegal tactics to bring it to a vote.

I am also not surprised at the public uprising in response to the whole situation. Folks, it is about damn time we as a public do something about the decades-long attack on the middle class and the poor in this country. This piece from The Guardian lays it out brilliantly. And for once it doesn't blame Barack Obama for not undoing more than thirty years of anti-union anti-middle class public policy in just two years of presidency. This paragraph, in particular, stands out to me:

Undermining and destroying collective bargaining rights is one of the most important structural reforms that any rightwing government in a developed country can win. And it is not just because, as has been widely noted, that unions contribute money to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. It is much deeper than that. Organised labour is relatively weak now, but for more than a century, it has been the most important force for positive economic reforms in the United States, from the eight-hour work day, to health insurance and Medicare, social security, pensions and minimum wages. The labour slogan, "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend", is a true but vastly understated historical reality in America.

Once again, I went downtown with my children to join the protesters - determined, angry and cold. Since the public was denied access to the Capitol yet again (even state representatives and the Reverend Jesse Jackson were denied entrance for a little while), we didn't stay long before Daniel and Anya both cried and complained that they were cold and miserable. It's okay, I assured them. This isn't over, far from it. We don't have to stay right now.

Well, you all have better sources than this insignificant corner of the blogosphere to find out what's going on here, so I'll jump ahead to the knitting now. This morning I finished another hat for a Democrat:



This one goes to Josh Zepnick, a representative in the state Assembly. I don't even know where he hails from, but by golly, he's getting a hat.

Yarn: Plymouth Galway tweed something-or-other, leftover from Stuart's Valentine mittens
Pattern: improvised, but there was really nothing to it. I cast on 112 stitches on size 6 needles, knit a couple inches, did a round of purl, switched to size 7 needles, did an 8-point decrease at the top, sewed up the hem and called it good. I wanted to do a red duplicate-stitch Democrat Donkey on there, but I ran out of time.

It's a nice hat. I was rather sad to give it up, though you can see that it's a little big for me since it's meant for a man's head. In fact, I've discovered I'm fond of the turned-under hem on hats. I have yet to do this on a sweater, but I expect I'd like that, too.

Stand up, Wisconsin, and stand strong. Keep fighting for the public good. I stand with you.

red hats for democrats!

I have joined an effort with some other knitters to knit hats for the Democrats in our state legislature. Thanks to social networking via Ravelry (esp since I don't do Facebook!) and one intrepid local knitter-activist (craftypuppylover on Rav), volunteers from Madison and beyond have volunteered to knit a hat for every one of the Fab 14 and all the Assembly Democrats. There may even be enough of us knitting to include the four Republicans who voted no (in the middle of the night!)



So all other knitting was more or less set aside for a couple of days while I knocked this one off the needles.



Pattern: Squared Away Ribbed Watch Cap (Rav link to free pattern)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northampton in the color "red" (obviously!) from the stash. Not the stash conveniently located inside my house, I might add, but stash that was packed away in airtight containers in the shed in the backyard (oh, for a garage...). I had to put on a jacket and snow boots and go hunting for it on a cold afternoon.
Needles: size 7 circs and DPNs
Mods: I didn't really follow instructions for the decreases. It was confusingly written in the pattern, so I just kind of did my own thing. I think the original looks better, but this is all right.



My kids were both eager to model this for me, as you can see! They sat by the only window letting in good light on this chilly, cloudy day.



This hat is intended for Assembly rep Mark Pocan. He's not my rep, but I really admire his actions of the last several weeks supporting protesters and his efforts to keep the Capitol building open to the public.




I have a backlog of projects I need to finish soon, namely a sweater for my husband and that Polar Chullo hat for a friend, but first I've got to make another hat for a Democrat. I promised to knit two!