Moth Heaven

Steaming Steaming Over the Bounding Main

Have I told you about my steam iron?  That I have a super Bernina Steam Iron with an outboard water reservoir and a heated ironing board that has a built in vacuum to suck the steam jet through so that the fabric is fully saturated and dried at the same time?  It's a miracle iron, especially if you're a knitter with some blocking to do.  I haven't wet blocked anything but lace since my husband gave this to me for Christmas a few years ago.  My gal pals (aka the non-knitting friends -- yes, I have some too, Margene) all looked at me like I had cashed in my Betty Crocker chips when I bragged that my husband had gifted me an iron and I was happy about that.   What was next?  A mop for our anniversary?   Rubber gloves for Valentines, my sweet?

But really, if you're a knitter and have some extra cash for luxury tools, I heartily endorse this.  Better yet, ask the partner to give you one for Christmas and be very amused by the expressions on your pals' faces when you tell them what Santa brought.

So the pieces are blocked and as of this morning, the left button band has been knit on.  I took to the button box last night and came up with the perfect whimsies.

And since the mindless stockinette project is off the needles, I felt liberated to start a new sock out of this gorgeous skein Linda Whiting sent to me as a hostess present for when she stayed here before the dye workshop a couple of months ago.  I so admire Linda's work, especially with reds, for which she has a knack.  The sock is Marietta from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks Warm Feet, and features a wicked fun scalloped cast-on that, trust me, while fun is not something to try while following your four year old around the playground.  It makes you mutter a lot, and muttering on the playground with your head buried in wool is not a widely sanctioned social conduct.  Among knitters it's Liturgy, but out there among the Muggles, well . . . Let's just say there were looks.

Of Mice and Men

I had a plan.  It was to be wearing The Scoop by now.  But this is what I got.

(I can't wait to wear this sweater: even the floor looks svelt with the pieces just lying there ) There was a funny little thing called school vacation that slammed into the house last Friday, stalled mercifully by three snow days and one flood day (perhaps you saw us featured on the front page of The International Herald Tribune or the nightly news)  But the sudden withdrawl of my weekday time alone meant the end of expendable time, since any moment I have my hands free I'm otherwise obligated to work on the necessities.  A sweater, albeit a cotton one, is not a justifiable time expenditure when the dew point and the temperature are both over 80.

I did manage this

last Friday, a charming detour typical of many an All Season's Cotton project.  ASC isn't too splitty for a cotton, but it does have its moments, and the splitting is subtle enough that rows can go by before an unsuspecting knitter has to stop and ladder back twenty, thirty rows to fix that one errant ply that slipped by the needle an hour ago.  I only had to do this twice before I became paranoid enough to hold the thing up every row or so to check.  I'm hoping for an early Boy bedtime tonight, and a completed back ready for the blocking table tomorrow.

Scoop du Jour

It may have taken me almost two years to discover how fabulous the Scoop du Jour is as a design, but I have finally figured that out. The ribbing makes a nice vertical and slimming element where I need it most, and the eponymous scoop leaves enough skin exposed so that the one bone I still have to show is framed becomingly by the knitting.

And on top of that, I am knitting for the first time with everyone's favorite cotton yarn, Rowan All Seasons Cotton ( known to its pals and hangers on as ASC). The best part of that is that it's stash yarn,  yarn that has languished in the stash ever since I went a little mad when the nice people at Westminster Trading sent me the warehouse sale flyer four years ago.    It was my moral duty as a Rowanette to rescue as much of the discontinued Magpie as I was financially able (See why I'm a sucker for Cate's enabling?  Call something rare, discontinued, soon to be discontinued,or someday it might be discontinued, and you got me) and while I was at it . . . some ASC in orange, because really, who else but me and Claudia knit with orange?  It was my job.

So I am late to the party, but I hope to enjoy myself nonetheless.  It is my plan to whip through this as quickly as possible because I have other knitting responsibilities.  The sweater for my husband has risen to the top of the knitting basket and must be attended to.  And I fully intend to finish the other argyle sock.  But this week, it's the Scoop.  Think it will take me more than a week?

News Flash: World Peace Imminent

Late on Saturday, I came downstairs from a much needed nap (I only had to ask--my husband is that good a guy) and there was a bag of soft heathery gray baby alpaca waiting for me in the kitchen.  Alpaca Kathy had dropped it off.  It seems that she had been saving it for a special occasion, but was so fed up with my whining moved by my ardent appeal for world peace that she gave it to me as a belated birthday present. This was the comment she left on the blog yesterday:

World Peace is at hand (literally) now that you OWN some of that gray fleece. I couldn't weigh in about farmer Dave turning that fleece into hats, since I've been plotting, for months, to get my hands on that fleece and share it with you. I wanted to write, "hang on," but I didn't want to ruin the surprise. . .

I am mildly ashamed of myself for the whining.

But the happiness does warm my heart. 

Here's more warm thoughts: another arrival out at the farm.  His name is Tuxedo because of his formal wear markings.  He has white socks and an almost purple cast to the gray flashes on his legs.

Laurie, are you paying attention?

Baby News and World Peace

Some of you, and you know who you are, like this sort of thing.  For those of you who aren't knowing that you're one of those people who do like this sort of thing right now, I apologize for once again driving the blog off the road to rubberneck at the cute things that alpacas are when they are fresh off the truck.

Alpaca Kathy is expecting a number of new babies at the farm this month, and here's the first one to arrive, with Kathy's daughter (note the nail polish) included for scale .  Her colour is what we Standard Poodle owners call apricot.  I can't believe that colour occurs elsewhere in nature.  Can you imagine spinning alpaca hogget in apricot?  I am plotting, I tell you.  Making plans.  Must. Have. That. Fleece.
Still, I am pining for the heather grey baby alpaca fleece I coveted last year, but it doesn't seem to have done me any good, to have offered Farmer Dave money for it. Nor to have laid down in the road in front of his car for it.  He wants to make hats.  Felt hats. They are lovely hats.  But to take baby alpaca and felt it?  It's a crime, to matt down such lovely stuff and cram it on a head, squashing the hair and possibly denying the scalp a necessary dose of vitamin D form the sun, but hey.  It's his fleece. 

Baby alpaca fleece may be the softest thing this spinner would ever have the chance to turn into yarn, and that fleece in particular, given its otherworldly properties to make me happy, to make me so happy that I'd be radiating happiness and spreading love and kindness just by driving down the road with that kind of happiness drifting behind me like a vapour trail, entering people's nostrils and stimulating happy endorphins. Policemen would smile.  Road Ragers would sigh and let kids cross the street unharrassed. Teenage daughters would kiss their moms.  Presidents would articulate coherent sentences.  To deny me that just might mean the end of civilization as we know it, because heaven knows what kind of effect the beating of that butterfly wing might have on the state of the world.

Baby Alpaca.
World Peace in your hand.

Here's another picture just in case it helps.

Uncluttering

I start something to relieve the endless rows of something else -- say a little lace schmatte or fun socks for a vacation from a big sweater project -- and before I know it, I've started so many little diversions that they become the dirge.  Understand that I mean that only as far as knitting could ever be a dirge, because this is the fun in my life.  But it's like the weeding part of gardening, extracting myself from the snow drift of little side projects: not as glamourous as installing that new peony or harvesting the first crop of peas, but it's all good, all part of keeping my fingers busy.

I have quite a few projects on the needles in this diversions category of my knitting, some knitted toys and a few socks and some scarves.  So today, I say with great relief that Trinket is off the needles, ends woven in, and all the beads are in place.

For those of you just tuning in, It's a Kim Hargreaves pattern, and used about two and a half skeins of Kid Silk Haze.  I liked the ruching effect of doubling and halving the stitch count, but it wasn't until the ruffles went on that I remembered why I thought I wanted the thing in the first place.  It is very girly, and fun to wear.  I think I need a pair of Mrs. Beetons to complete the ensemble, but no . . . no!  Must.  Stay.  Focused.

I Bought a Sheep

I bought a sheep.  Really. 

Well, actually, I am leasing the sheep from my new best friend, Valerie. (my affections are changeable when it comes to wool. I love most the most recent of my enablers, so Valerie is this week's Tiger Beat cover girl).

Valerie showed up at spinning night at the library, and was there for about five seconds before she asked if anyone wanted to buy fleece on the hoof. She had pictures of a four- month-old Cormo/Rambouillet cross.  She's just a baby.  Isn't she sweet?
What does a room full of spinners do when offered such an opportunity? 
We blink in disbelief.  The brain says something like this:
"You're offering me fleece?  Like, I can spend next year's  fiber budget now?  And the animal will grow it for me, and I can come visit?  And pet it, and love it, and call it George?" (actually her name is Penny).
It's staggering, I know.
But happily, I was the only one capable of firing the synapses quickly enough to say yes.  And the fact that most of my gals already have reliable sheep and alpaca sources may have had something to do with it. In ten months, I'll have a fourteen month Cormo/Ram lamb fleece.  How cool is that?  I did promise Cheryl that I'd share some with her, since I think she was almost about to maybe say something like: "What?" which in this case would have meant "If this is true, and it can't possibly be true, I wanna get in on this.  But explain to me once more what you meant by offering me fleece." 

And here's the good news:  There's another one: Penny's mom, Princess.  Princess is a Cormo sheep, and you too can buy her fleece from Valerie by sending Val some money each month or so to pay for vet bills and food and clean hay.  While it isn't the cheapest way I've ever gotten a fleece, I sleep well knowing that I'm supporting a local farmer, and I like to say that I have a sheep. 

And I can pet it and love it and call it George.

Even if her name is Penny.

The Case of the Missing Skeins

Lo, about a year ago
A spinning friend, Susan, you know
turned me onto a fiber bright
That sparkles and twinkles and glistens with light.

A blend so sweet, I couldn't resist,
and kept the yarn soft with not too much twist.
I thought that perhaps once I had spun it all
I'd knit me a green Highland Triangle Shawl.

But slowly I spun, it took me a year
A skein done there, and a skein done here.
I measured and tucked it away like the aces
in ziplocs and drawers and other dark places.

I know what you're thinking (oh no, there'll be moths)
but no, worry not.  My brain is the cause
I done plain forgot where the wool has all been tucked
for now they're all lost, and my knitting is f*cked.

Without all the skeins lined before me, I can't
know how much yarn I have, thus the rant.
I've looked high and low, no corner to spare
In closets and drawers, the skeins just aren't there.

So 200 yards are all that I see,
Until I find the rest, pity me.
I'll never give up, that shawl will be mine.
That's all for today; cheers, until next time.

Scarf News

Trinket has reached critical mass, and it's time for the ruffles!  I can't wait.  Beaded cast off, here I come.

But first, a little news ditty in honour of scarf knitters and footballers everywhere:  The record-breaking World Cup Scarf on the BBC today.

Check it out.

Extreme Makeover: Alpaca Edition

Alpaca Kathy's animals had their spring haircuts this week.  I can't believe Sueno, our featured boy here, is a year old already.  Kathy brought some of his first year fleece to knitting on Tuesday night for all of us to fondle. She's not sharing any of it, no way.  It's like cashmere, or vicuna, or hell, baby alpaca. And in exchange for the fleece, he gets this new look for summer.