Moth Heaven

Sleeve: Cast Off

How determined was I to get the sleeve finished?
This arrived Monday, and I only spun on it for an hour.

Since then, I tried several things, including knitting on as if nothing bothered me, but the next twelve rows of the darkest red held up to the body forced me to reevaluate.  It was just too dramatic a contrast.  Good for some people, not so much for me, because -- you may be surprised to know this, especially if you know me at all -- when it comes to the knitting, I am conservative.  Dramatic sartorial leaps of faith are not appealing to me.  Even when I was a club kid in the 80's, I dressed in vintage cocktail dresses and red lipstick, and thought I was as close to my edge as I dared venture.

There was that one haircut . . . but I was living in London, it was 1984, and it was for a hair show. Sorry: no pictures survive.

But I am in danger of digression.

So I pulled out my Flyingdales, since it is constructed in a similar fashion to the PS136 cardigan (straight sleeve top, dropped shoulder), and laid it out on the floor, spread the pieces of the sweater on top of it and decided that it all matched up pretty well lengthwise without the dark red addition to the sleeve.  I ripped back, and cast off. 

If wristers are in my future, then so be it. They are pretty nice.

You Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours

How about this?  I show you some purty fibery stuff,

Like the beginning of the seventh repeat on the Stained Glass Bag

And the yarn I am working on, inspired by a painting The Boy did

(more grist, more grist)

And the finished Trekking XXL socks (sorrry, I don't know the colour # -- I promise to look) going to live at Megan's house,

and you click over to Stonyfield Yogurt and vote for Sustainable Harvest (the link lives in my sidebar) in their Bid With Your Lid poll and get a coupon for a free yogurt in the bargain.

How about it?

and yes, I am still working on the sleeve.

Sleeve: So Close and Yet

You knew this one was coming.

See those wristers?  Nice, aren't they?  They are padding the length of that sleeve, I have decided.  The only place in the book where such "accessories" show up, and it's with my sweater.

And I don't care how tall those Nordic girls are reputed to be: that one serving as Solveig's model in the book must be, well, average. 

I say this because I reached the designated end of the sleeve this morning as I predicted, and also as I predicted, it was a smidge too short.

How short?

Well, this is how it looks at the wrist when the whole thing is smoothed out (simulating blockage) and held up to the dropped shoulder seam.

Once I sewed down that facing, I would need a lot of wrister to cover up those bones.  And this is how it looks when I pull the sleeve down to cover those bones.

The sweater body isn't in exactly the correct place, but it should give you an idea of how far from the destination we are in this journey yet.  It could certainly use another inch, (or two).  I don't begrudge the knitting (too much), I just worry about the "where" the pattern leaves off at the shoulder seam.  The instructions end the pattern off at the top of the charming pink colour stripe, giving the sleeve-to-shoulder transition a nice soft colour landing: pink next to beige? Very un-controversial.

Another inch of knitting (or two) will bring the colour rotation round about again to the poppy red, and then (should I persist) the persimmon orange, which will look like a dark stripe seamed up against the beige-on-ivory of the body pattern.  I am a bit in a muddle about it.  And no, I won't just knit on with the pink.  It would look funny too.

This is why knitting from the shoulder down would have been a good idea.  Oh frak how being tall is a nuisance sometimes.

Sleeve: a saga continues

It's the same shot of the Poetry in Stitches sleeve as Monday, but one more flower along. That represents about six hours of knitting, many phone calls ignored, and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and dinner on Wednesday for the boy.

I slip the thing over my wrist every colour change, knowing what it will look like (pretty much the same as it did the last time I slipped it over my wrist) and checking the book one more time to see if I remember "four flower repeats" correctly.  Yep, I am right.  Four.  And probably a little more than that because it looks a little short-wristed on the model to better show off the accompanying wristers.  Or maybe the wristers were knit to make up for the short-wristedness of the sweater.  It's hard to say.  But I will probably finally reach the triumphant end of the fourth flower on Saturday sometime only to slip it up the arm and decide that ::wither:: I have half a flower more to knit.  I am braced for such things.

I have promised myself to be monogamous until the end of this sleeve.  The second sock only gets attention when I am out and about.  And no, out and about does not include the patio or the far end of the kitchen table even though the house wifi doesn't reach that far and the phones crap out there.  The far end of the kitchen table technically still counts as "in", so I have to stick with the sleeve.

But I am skeining up some yarn for washing, a la Juno.

And charting up leopard mittens.  I've done the math and the swatch and I have yarn out of the stash -- maybe not enough, but still . . .

(I say this because Tina asked in the comments about my glancing mention of them, and I wanted to email her back, but we're having computer problems, among which is that my server seems to think email from Typepad is spam, and I'm not getting most of my comments forwarded to me.  If you left a particularly witty comment in the last few weeks only to hear nothing back from me, this is why. It is not that I am a dolt or unappreciative of your good humour, it's that I am in an unjust quarantine)

So as for the leopard mittens go: no stitches until the sleeve is done. But there might be washed yarn before then.

On the Brain

I use *knit* as a verb a lot, and not always in the correct context.

I've slipped for years when it comes to the blog.  I'll say "knit the blog" instead of "write the blog" and family lets me get away with it because really, the two activities are so closely connected in the bloggy sense.  But recently, "knit" has been showing up in wierder and wierder places in my conversation.

I said to the boy "Eat two more bites of you dinner and you can have a cookie", but what came out of my mouth is "Knit two more bites of you dinner and you can have a cookie".

You can imagine the look he gave me.

On the phone, I said to a muggle friend "I'll knit up a bag of chips and some dip and be right over."  It would be a neat trick were it possible, kind of Rumplestiltskin-y.  She didn't understand at all, so I had to laugh it off and try again.  She must think that I'm downright daffy, but she let me in her house anyway.

The Mister, however, he gets it.  Actually, he more than gets it.  He takes the position that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  I know this because last night, when the house was finally quiet and we were alone with the cool of the evening and the bottle of wine, he leaned over and whispered ever so sweetly . . .

"Wanna knit?"

William Shatner Presents: Sleeve Monogamy

Head down, needles engaged,
must . keep . going .

Never . mind . new . Rowan . magazine.

Or . leopard . mittens . boy . wants.

or . second . sock . five . rows . from . toe . . .

what?  second sock with five rows to go before the toe decrease? Hey, I should finish that. 

Thanks for the Chairs

Before:

After:

Laurie got her alpaca fix

There was stuff to buy from Heather (and others)

I always love to see Kelly's car.

There were spinners and knitters and rug makers
and weavers and bobbin lacers (in Revolutionary era dress)
and sock crankers and . . . and wow. It just kept going.
And everyone brought chairs.

The father of all sock machines over at Parker River Alpacas:

And die-hards (you might recognize a few of them) an hour after the vendors packed up and left.

Thanks so much everyone for coming up, over, and down to our neck of the woods. We had people from Maryland, Montreal, Mattapan, and Manhattan. And lots of people from around here. Next year we'll adjorn to my house for corn and grillin', because when I got home, The Mister said, "Where is everybody? I thought we were going to party."

Dude, we did.

Have You Seen the Forecast?

Weather in Newbury, Massachusetts for tomorrow?

Mostly Sunny High  72°F

Precip  10%

Marcy asked me this morning whose soul I sold for the weather.  I told her mine, of course.  But I still get to use it for awhile.  Not a bad deal, right?

See you under the beeches.

New Arrivals (with diatribe)

My mom sent along a picture of her most recent FO: argyle socks!  For my dad, even. I am so proud, having been inspired by her argyle stories to knit some, only to inspire her to do the same when she saw mine on the blog. Granted: it took 40 years to come full circle.  But knitting traditions can backtrack like that, you know.  It's kind of like Nancy Bush going to Estonia to teach the next generation of knitters about their own heritage only with a lot less time in airports.  And without the totalitarian regime wiping the hard drive of folklore clean with the brutish magnet of fear and 5 year plans . . . oh damn. . . now look what happened.  I'm up on the political metaphor soap box again. Over socks.

::stepping down::

::brushing self off as if nothing unusual happened::

::pouring fresh coffee::

::taking cleansing breath::

Mom wants me to point out to you the three inches of ribbing at the top of the sock and how perfectly proportioned 3 whole inches of ribbing are for a man's argyle sock.  You were shocked when I said so before, but here is the proverbial pudding of proof.   Three inches is an excellent investment of knitting energy in this case. No whining allowed; it just is.

The yarn is Sisu that I bought at Romni Wools when I was there last autumn.  I don't know where else one gets such a lovely array of muted solids in sock yarn which is why I bought such a lot of it, and why I gave some to mom when she caught argyle fever.

And in other new arrival news, Alpaca Kathy's alpaca Kaja had her first successful delivery of a baby girl alpaca named Moondance.  Here are some pictures for you to admire if you like looking at such things as freshly hatched ginger-coloured baby alpacas.

Please Bring Chairs

Guido came to town this morning to check out the Farm where we'll be gathering next week for the first Fiber Revival.  Happily, the heavens smiled: the sky was stratospheric blue; birds played overhead; it was glorious enough for a Rossini soundtrack.

Kathleen, the children's program director at Spencer Pierce Little Farm, gave us a tour of the house, and then Guido and I sat down under one of the giant beech trees for a little show and tell, and to do his podcast for this week.  I have never done one, but I did have a regular show on college radio long ago.  It was fun, even if I did say a few things I know will make me squirm when I listen to it.  He says it will be up today or tomorrow, so go check it out.
Guido did bring his Bosworth for a little pre-show spinning.  It made me happy to see just one spinner in the place.  I can't wait to see it full up with fiber folks, maybe even, like Guido, some from Boston. 

But I'm beginning to worry about stuff, like the chairs.  I hope people know to bring chairs.  We country folk are used to such things, but city folks, they expect there to be chairs. Kathleen says there are about 40 knocking about the place, but still.  I told Kat with a K that I hope it's the kind of spin-in/knit-in you can see from space, (or at least from an ultralight landing at Plum Island Airport), so 40 chairs just ain't going to swing it.

With any luck, we'll have more weather like today, but failing that, there will be some tents.  This won't help me stop worrying about rain though.  And then there's the food.  The caterer is bringing enough lunches for 200 people.  Either it will be ridiculous and embarrassing -- all that food -- or it she'll have to send out for reinforcements.   I hope she has reinforcements, or at least the number for pizza delivery. ::deep breath::  It will be fine, because wool people are good like that.  We roll with it.  We can stand being a little peckish if there's yarn.  Right?  Okay, you can come.

Still, I worry about the vendors, that there will be enough people shopping to have made their faith in us worth their time.  There are only three and a half of them, so we might pick them clean like locusts, or they might never speak to me again.  It's hard to tell.  But it will be fun all that spinning and knitting and talking and laughing and oohing and ahhing, regardless of how many people come.

Assuming they bring chairs.