Moth Heaven

Alpaca Etiquette 101

Just so you know, Alpacas chew with their mouths open.  It is shocking to think this is entirely acceptable in their society, but it is (in fact) encouraged.  It has something to do with competition, as in, my-mouthful-of-cud-I-can-regurgitate-at-will-should you-ever-cross-me--suckah--is-better-than-your-mouthful-of-cud. 

I'm providing this as an information service so that the next time you have an alpaca on the dinner party guest list, you will know to reconsider, or to seat her across from the guy recovering from lasik eye surgery. 

(I say "her" because I know you would never have a male alpaca on the guest list.  They're just tooooo unruly.)

Another common alpaca rule is that alpacas never get sheared when they are wet, for reasons not only of decorum, but also because it's impractical to shear a wet animal.  If an alpaca says on a friday night that she's just washed her hair and she can't do a thing with it, you shouldn't take it personally.  Simply call another time.

It has been raining enough for the last few days that shearing has been postponed. Everything is clean and sterilzed and ready to go. Until then, it is perfectly permissable for small boys to splash about in the muddy corral, provided Mom has Purell in the car and a change of clothes for the ride home.  Alpacas won't be held responsible for where that water has been.

Where Everyone Knows Your Name

PS136 has been greeted like an long lost friend wherever it goes.  Knitters reach out and give it a pet like a dog of mine I haven't walked around town in too long.  They remember my name for it, and call it something like old friend, talk to it in baby talk ("aren't you a prittie thing, yes you are"), or marvel at how long it's been.  And here on the blog, I am a little amazed at the reception the sweater has gotten.  I think it may even have made plans for lunch next Tuesday that don't include me.

I reached the neck bind-off, which marks the change from knitting in-the-round to flat knitting, which also means I am having to strand on the purl side.  Yip.  Before you reach for the comment button to suggest a neck steek, remember that this is Hifa, which is worsted spun, so it doesn't bind with itself in the same way that other yarns traditionally used for two colour knitting do, say, like Jamieson, which is a woolen-spun Shetland.

I don't know what wool Hifa is made from, so chime in if you happen to know. 

I am planning on using Janine's shaped shoulders technique (pdf), especially since she suggests a Latvian-style i-cord three needle bind off which gives me another oppportunity to pull one of the green yarns up closer to my face.

And for those of you who like such things, here's an honest shot of the wrong side.

Off to the farm to help with the Alpaca shearing this afternoon.  Maybe I'll have some pictures next post.

From the Blog's Paleozoic

Hey Beth?

If you have been reading the blog for awhile, you may wonder where PS 136 went.

Then again, it's been such a long time that if you've been reading the blog for awhile, you might not recognize it at all.

Here's the story so far: PS 136 is the blog's nickname for the sweater I'm knitting from Solveig Hisdal's Poetry in Stitches.  Few of her sweaters have names at all, so I have taken to calling this one by the page number it appears on.  I knit it passionately until I lost heart during the long long slow slog through the beige on beige part of the body, and wondered even if I would be able to wear it at all when I was done, so I resolved to someday carefully thread it off the needles and try it on.  I never got that far, so disheartened was I when I saw another one finished at a sheepfest, and hated how washed out it looked, all that flat beige against the knitter's pale skin.  I resolved to frog out the beige section, over-dye the darker colour to make it a warmer tone, and then re-knit it.  But the whole thing lived in a bag for a few years, . . . you know how it goes.

Then last week someone asked about it.  The idea of it stuck in my head like a Black Eyed Peas riff, so I took it out, tried it on, thought better of the overdye plan since I was only a few inches form the end of the body (and besides, using the green for the button and collar bands instead of the peach will fix that "warmth" issue for me) and started out with new commitment.  How long the passion will last is unclear.

If you've been reading the blog for awhile, you know I have a short attention span when it comes to the wool.

That Could Have Been Finished by Now

Why on earth would you take a perfectly fine shawl and pull it apart and do all that work of casting off all over again in what you say is the loosest way you know how?

And how is that, exactly?  Using a size 35 needle?  No? Oh, yank on every stitch after you make it to pull it out to the furthest extension allowable by the stitches in the previous row.  Oh.  Did you take a picture of that for me?  No?  Gee, what a great blogger you are ::rolling eyes::.  See if I ever have a use for that idea anyway, dude.

But seriously, then the whole thing needs to be soaked again, doesn't it?  But you think just dipping the edges in and letting them season damply will give you enough moisture so the whole thing blocks properly?  Yeah, I'll be there to see it.  ::sighing heavily:: It was perfectly fine before you know.  I don't know why you would bother with all this.

Oh.

Nice points.

Pass the Salt: I have some words to eat

I have something I wish to un-say.

A few weeks ago, I went on a rant about the size-challenged Big City Knits book, about how all the designs had limited finished measurements and how no knitter should stumble into that book unwittingly since nothing in the book indicated that it was for the smaller among us, aside from the clue one might gather from the vapid and malnourished-looking models wearing the designs. I really appreciated the things people had to say in the comments, and I do remember that some people  had said that the sweaters featured negative ease, whatever the heck that means. 

That's Project Runway for too tight, right?

Well, I have seen the yarn, and I have now seen some knitted garment samples and I am here to say that the designs work up to be tiny, it's true, but then, in spite of incredulity, you slip them on over your head and voila, they fit. 

Even me, third or fourth tallest knitblogger in the land, they fit.

I do believe it was the tank top in a size small that I popped on over my turtle neck in the LYS the other day, and while it may not have been at all flattering or in a colour I would want to be buried in, it did in fact fit me.

So my friends, I take back everything I said about the limited sizes available.  However I stand by my sensitivity to tiny boned hollow-eyed models who would call a scoop of fat-free cottage cheese dinner as the culturally sanctioned definition of the female body.

I'll take care before I poop all over someone's book next time.  I promise.

News Flash Sock Knitters

I'm not usually one to jump up and down about such things as new yarn (it's a creeping obsession,actually), but when my darling Kaffe puts his imprimatur on sock yarn, I gotta shout it from the blog tops.
I can't wait until these babies make it to my LYS, or even the United States.

For now, you can pre-order it here.

In Which Our Knitter Confronts the Challenge of a Nor'easter During School Vacation

What shall our intrepid heroine do?

Great honking five-year-olds, Batman, she knits, of course. 
Thanks to keyword "steam locomotive" on You Tube and an unreasonable amount of Sprout.

There was the moment of hesitation before I tinked out the Swallowtail cast-off (If Sarah can show you raveled yarn, so can I).  The yarn is blocking out right now.  Perhaps tonight, I will knit it back up, loosely this time, of course, and there will be Blue Ridge razorbacks where once there was Highway 40 out of Amarillo.

And there is my continuing dedication to the Twizzle vest. One of the four skeins has a colourway anomaly, but it landed at the bottom of the back.  Pure luck.  Or knitting kharma for the koigu I de-stashed.  It certainly wasn't because I was paying attention to the vagaries of hand painted yarn. oh no.  That would be something like I knew what I was doing here.

It's getting there rather quickly, which is in large part to knitting while catching up on my backlog of  Bloglines, and an unreasonable amount of American Idol. I'm really only doing it for the button I can lash to the front, which the pattern says must come from Grandmother's button box. I gotta love a pattern that knows me so well.

And the Winner is . . .

Necia!
and Jen!
Man, do lurkers and drive-by readers come out of the woodwork for free yarn: 385 comments by noon today.  That's some kind of record for me.  It's an ordinary Tuesday in June for Stephanie, I know, but for me?  I am astonished.  It feels good to be a comment whore.  Thanks everyone.

Back to regular business.  I cast off the Swallowtail Shawl (again, my own handspun fingering/sport weight from Spinderella's thrums fiber, in a trade from Susan), and stretched it out on the floor of the guest room for blocking, only to realize that I'd not left the cast off loose enough to make those appealing swoopy points along the edge, and since I had knit in green glass beads to accentuate the points, I can't just leave it the way it is and claim that was my plan all along, can I?  So rip I must. ugh.

Then I must face the ufo pile, since I did tell myself (and apparently about 385 other people) that I was going to finish at least some of the ufos around the place.  This is the first thing: a vest out of Mountain Colors Twizzle in Elderberry.  I bought this last April at The Elegant Ewe and told the blog about the yarn, but never showed off the cast on, nor the six rows I managed before dropping the thing into a bag and never looking at it since.  I did wonder about its location around September when the weather turned chill again, but then quickly moved along to other things and socks.  The pattern is for Moutain Colors Alpaca Blend, but the yarns share gauge, happily enough.  I have one front done and now I'm almost a whole skein into the back, knitting hopefully that there's enough.  It's not glamourous, but it will get worn a lot and I adore the yarn, so that's what keeps me going.

 

Blogiversary Contest

Strange thing, touting one's own web-based preoccupation with one's knitting by crowing about it, but it's a fine tradition as far as I'm concerned, and I'm here to play.

Today (April 11) is my third blogiversary.  Yep, I'm one of the middle aged knit bloggers.  And Since I've started keeping track of the fiber in public, I've covered a lot of ground and accumulated some yarn I now know I will most likely never get around to making into something, so I'm having a Comment Whore contest.

Wish me a happy blogiversary in the comments for today before noon on Saturday, and The Mister will pick from a hat two names who will get their pick (in order of their winning) of the following prizes:

Your very own Koigu stash.  Random colours, almost match well enough to make a Charlotte's Web or just some nice socks.

10 skeins of Turquoise/Sea Foam Blue (or something like that) Silky Wool enough to make yourself any pattern for the yarn, and one skein each of brown and moss green for whatever

Three 180 yard skeins of unmatched but coordinated autumn coloured handpainted rayon boucle from A Touch of Twist, for a lovely Clapotis or a simple triangle.

A pair of handpainted sock yarn skeins from Furry Yarns, in grape, charcoal and midnight purple.  Sorry the colours don't survive the digital process, but they really are a purple-sock-loving-kinda-Donny Osmond colour.

Name number one will choose first, name number two will choose second.  Just so we're clear, and there's no fighting over the koigu.

Thanks for playing.

Do I Contradict Myself?

Every once in awhile, I stumble into my archives looking for a record of a project's beginning, or a comment someone left that was helpful, or I wander about the place like a narcissist in a mirror shop thinking how much more interesting the blog used to be, and I see all my plans, all my what's next on the needles, all my impulse buys for the little side projects "that won't take too much time away from the big sweater . . . really." And where have they gone?

Since I finished Celtic Dreams, I've been fighting off a huge fit of start-itis because there are already so very many things started.  I haven't been entirely honest with the blog about everything going on, I admit.  There are so many things cast on that I've then dropped.  Was it really April 2006 when last I knit on the Poetry in Stitches sweater?  Have I really had the yarn for a Manos Cotton Stria scarf and the irresistible felted Noni evening bag for more than a year now? I have one cardigan in black Harrisville Knitter's Luxury Blend (read:cashmere!) with a whole back done, and another in Rowan Cashsoft (more cashmere!) with only four rows finished.  Both have been like that for over a year.  And they were both in their time the apples of my eye.  Other things -- many other things -- have risen and fallen in my esteem since then, and now it's Spring, again!. There is by now knitting hanging over every doorknob in my house, in many piles about the kitchen, and collecting dust at the bottom of the stairs (on their way to storage, you know). I no longer have a leg to stand on when I ask the Mister to finish the baseboards in the kitchen or plaster that last spot in the upstairs hall. He just looks at the knitting bags and rolls his eyes. I think I may need to tidy up the place.

Here's the plan.  In a renewed dedication to the Knit-From-the-Stash-Plan, I'm going to do some of the smaller projects that have accumulated and finish up some of the older on-the-needles things just to de-clutter the belfry and release the guilt.  It is Spring after all, and time for a fresh start. I'll be doing a little de-stashing, and also have a contest for the blogiversary on Wednesday.  I don't know how long this all will stick, but as Walt Whitman says, "Very well then, I contradict myself."