Kiss My Knits!

Had a good time at the Carolina Alpaca Celebration in Concord on Sunday. I went with turtlegirl76 and illiane. The animals were so cute I considered smuggling one out, but decided it probably wouldn’t fit comfortably in illiane’s SUV. Curses, foiled again! The event was geared more towards breeders, but was still fun.

However, we did have a good time at the free spinning seminar, which turned out to be more of a talk about shearing, picking, carding, and very little spinning. We got to see a bit done, though, and I learned that I like a double treadle, more modern machine than the single-treadle antique that I briefly experimented with in the seminar. No, that is not me in the picture, it is Donna Blackmon of Flint Ridge Alpacas.

There were, of course, vendors there, with all manner of alpaca and craft-related stuff. I wound up spending every single cent of the “mad money” my husband left me. (I had paid bills the day before and mentioned that we were officially broke, but oh well, I’d still have a good time. He left a wad o’ cash on the bedside table for me before he and my daughter took off for Laurinburg. Sweet!)



What’d I buy? Well, Creatively Dyed Yarn had a booth, so I had to get that pretty skein of sock yarn to the left, of course. Also, the one to the right, which is a little more tan and less pink than the picture shows. There was also some worsted, and from other vendors, a bar of really minty eucalyptus-y soap, a pair of incredibly soft baby alpaca gloves, some finger puppets for my daughter, and a little treat for my husband which I can’t show yet because apparently he does occasionally read my blog. Who knew?

Then it was back to Charlotte, where I helped turtlegirl rearrange her furniture. I swear, it was more fun than it sounds. Our cat mercifully let me sleep until 7:30 this morning, so I awakened full of pep! I’ve spent the day cleaning the house. It still looks like a sty, but it looks like a sty which could actually someday be clean. At least the piles of crap are smaller. Just gotta keep that momentum going.


Major down side? Today was Presidents’ Day and there was no school. Or so I thought. We had a snow day two weeks ago, and apparently the school system decided that today was a makeup day. I didn’t know this until my mother called at noon and mentioned it. Meanwhile, my daughter’s out of town. I seem to remember that when I was a kid, they just tacked all those days on the end of the year. I figured that’s what they’d do this time. Apparently not.

My daughter’s school has an automated system which they use to call us all the time, once in English and once in Spanish. If there’s a school play, or a “donuts for dads” type thing, we get calls. They couldn’t call and say “hey, there’s school today!”? Gr. So we missed a day, which is frustrating.

Well, it’s back on the alpaca horse tomorrow, but hopefully we’ll all be in high spirits. I know I feel better having a cleaner house and new yarn to play with.

Now when’s my next vacation?

Hats up for: OR, OR, and NY.

Super easy, super quick. Afterthought heels are officially my new favorite thing for self-striping yarn. I could actually knock the second one out this weekend. Yay!

I’ll post details after I have an actual finished pair. 🙂

Jayne hats up for: PA, OR, NY

I decided to go ahead and go with socks. I’m doing the ribbing pattern from Knitty’s Thuja, but on fewer stitches since this is sized for a woman’s foot instead of a man’s. Also, instead of that heel I’m doing an afterthought heel. This is also sometimes called a grandmother’s heel or peasant heel. The idea is that you knit some, then you put in a row of waste yarn (that’s the red row on my wrist), then you knit all the way down to the toe. Later, you come back and unravel the waste yarn and put in your heel. Supposedly it makes it very easy to replace just the heel when it gets worn out. I haven’t done one before, so I wouldn’t know.

This particular heel appealed to me for this yarn since it means I wouldn’t have to interrupt the striping along the top of the sock, and because it should create a nice pattern of its own. There’s a pair of striped socks with an afterthought heel in Weekend Knitting and it looks really nice.

I think I’m going to rip back to the heel, though. Now that I’ve had a chance to look at it, I think the heel will work better if it’s in the middle of a color change rather than up on one end. More symmetrical. I said it before, but if the vendor has more of this at the alpaca festival, I’ll get a skein (thanks for the birthday money, Dad!). I might write and ask her to bring one if she’s got it.

These are going to be very thick and warm. I can already see that they’re not pilling like the Koigu, which makes me feel better that it was the yarn at fault and not so much me. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have made my mom’s out of something sturdier.

Didn’t get enough sleep last night, but I’m about to make myself some buckwheat pancakes and plop down in front of the TV to do a little Jayne knitting, so that’ll be cozy and nice.

The meeting was less than a stellar success. My co-leader for tonight was also the cookie mom, so she had to load cookies into peoples cars, which meant I had to run it alone. The girls blew through the conversational lesson very quickly and with little attention. In fairness, I had very little for them to do besides talk and make a few faces, and I didn’t factor our three chatterbugs into this. They’re charming girls, but if there’s one thing those spirited little pixies don’t need, it’s tips on how to strike up a conversation.

The best part was coming out afterwards. The girls helped clean up some, in the scattershot way that seven-year-olds do, and I didn’t press it as much as I should have. I wound up cleaning up heaps of glitter, so we got out about 7:15. It was dark.
Emily looked up and said, “What are those dots?”
“Those are stars!” I said, “Look, there’s the constellation Orion!”
“What does it look like?”
“You see those four stars, with the line of three stars in the middle? The three stars are Orion’s belt, and the constellation is Orion, Orion the hunter. People think he looks like a hunter, hunting other constellations across the sky.”

“…Orion…”

She kept looking, to the point that she tripped a little as we were walking because she couldn’t take her eyes off the sky. So we stopped and watched for a while. We looked again at home. She was really interested. It was very nice.

I’m really wiped, and may not go to knitting tonight. We’ll see after she goes to bed.

Emily lost another tooth last night, this one on the top right as you look at her. She knew it was loose, but in contrast to last time, she didn’t make a big fuss. She was eating, it came out, she put it in her tooth box, and came back to tell me the tooth fairy was coming tonight before I knew anything had even happened. Okay then!

I had to go out to a Girl Scout council meeting last night, so I wasn’t there when she went to bed. However, Steve asked her if she’d rather put her tooth box in the hall so the tooth fairy wouldn’t have to come into her room. Her highness doesn’t like to be disturbed at night. So that’s what they did. I was pretty tired when I finally came to bed. The tooth fairy came and did put a coin in her box, but when Emily woke up, the tooth was on the bathroom counter. Oops! We decided that probably the tooth fairy had to use the potty and accidentally left it. We figured she’d be back to get it later.

On the Brownie front, I decided it would be better to do the animals badge in the Spring, when there was a chance of, you know, actually SEEING some animals. Instead we’re doing “People are Talking.” Considering my daughter’s issues, this’ll be interesting!

What we’ll do.

Tomorrow night I think we’ll work on the “animals” try-it. There are some good ideas for activities. However, since our troop is two merged troops, I thought I’d try to throw in a new activity. To that end, I’m going to rename the game sleeping pirate to “cat and mouse” and talk briefly about predators and prey before we play. Then they’ll be cats trying to get the mouse, instead of pirates trying to get the treasure. I don’t know if NC kids are familiar with sleeping pirate or not. We’ll see.

If I had a little more notice, I’d say that the Carolina Alpaca Festival would be an excellent field trip for the girls. I’m actually a little nervous about field trips, since that’s new territory. Hm.

When I told my husband I was going to play sleeping pirate with the girls, my jokester husband, who has played many games with our family, said, “You’re going to teach them to cheat??” I said, “No, we’re not playing like my mom!” Now, my mom doesn’t cheat at party games like “Mother May I?” She just seizes upon the chaos around her to sneak a little closer to her target. It’s simply a creative interpretation of the rules which she uses to her own advantage, that’s all!

And speaking of Mom, who hopefully is still speaking to me after reading that, I’ve shanghaied my first family member into helping with Brownies! Yay! My mom will be coming to the next meeting on the 28th to help with the Write Away Try-It, since she is a newspaper editor. I think it’ll be interesting for the girls to have a guest speaker.

I have many, many errands to run today, and a girl scout council meeting tonight, so I’m off!

So remember the skein of handpainted yarn I got at Yarns Forever in Greenville a while back? It was self-striping, but I didn’t realize that until after I bought it and read the designer’s blog. I decided to knit up a swatch today.



SO! PRETTY!

That’s some nice crisp striping! This recommended needle size on the label was 1-3, which seemed a little small to me, but I gave it a go. This swatch is on 3’s, and I got 6 stitches per inch. On those needles, it makes a pretty dense fabric. I think you could go up to a size six needle, easy, although I’d want to swatch it first. The base yarn is listed as “worsted” on several sellers’ sites. I had been thinking “gloves” for this, but depending on how deep the stripes are on a wider garment, this might make a good yarn for a baby sweater. It’s so pretty, I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. I’m open to suggestion!

I do know that this dyer will be selling her stuff at the alpaca festival this weekend, and I am there, baby!

Yammering about dyeing and barnyard animals. Bonus pic of my dad!

Done!

Pattern: Crusoe from Knitty
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, colorway P123 dye lot 231. It looks like P123 varies widely from skein to skein.
Needles: #1 DPN
Gauge: 7 sts per inch

Changes: I mainly wear long pants, and thought that the rolled cuff in the original pattern might be too bulky under my jeans. I changed it to a k2p2 ribbing. I also cast on 64 stitches instead of the recommended 48 and adjusted all the math accordingly.

Notes: I started #1 in November and worked on it intermittently. They were both carried around in my purse while I worked on them, and they’ve already fuzzed up some. Last summer I knitted my mom some socks out of Koigu, and looking at them a couple of months ago, they’re also fuzzing up some inside the heel and on other areas of wear. Those were knitted on 3’s, and I thought a tighter gauge this time might help, but apparently not. Is this just a characteristic of Koigu, a result of being toted around for too long, or some other mystery factor that I’m introducing?

Fuzzing aside, the yarn is very soft. I nearly wiped out walking on my kitchen floor when I put them on. Also, I’m seriously considering a trip to the Wide Shoe Warehouse to pick up some really colorful pedal-pusher type sneakers to show these off.

The pattern was clear and easy, and the author is right that this is a good use for super-bright or busy sock yarns to help break them up a bit. I’d knit these again.

Well, I’ll say this. There’s nothing like reading a book on cholera to put a little food poisoning in perspective.