elixir-of-crochet

Oh blog, I've missed you in a vague sort of way. I was busy with school and didn't let myself think about you, but I've missed seeing your bright, shiny reflection of me (or at least the little part of me that is sometimes bright and shiny). I've missed the way that you represented that there was a slot of time in my day when I could sit at the computer and read blogs or type messages to you, dear neglected blog o' mine.

Oh well. There's nothing better for shaking off the lack-of-crafting blues than some crochet action, WOOO! It's hot pad season, or my name's not Sqeaky McRumple! Whatever--I'm still making hot pads, and what's more, I'm going to join a swap! Go look at this flickr group. The sight of these hotpads make the beams of my 1962 pseudo-ranch-style home vibrate with happiness. MMMMMMMMMMM.

Dear Ali asked a while ago, and I'll finally answer: School? I was going through a program at our local Vo-Tech college in Medical Assisting. I finished that up at the end of February and now I'm looking to join the ranks of the gainfully employed. You see, art sales are quite slow in a recession. My long-range plans are to work as a medical assistant for the next 3 years, then find a physician assistant program that will accept me, and eventually become a PA. There. Now it's all out there. I don't have an internet connection at home anymore, which is most of the reason why I haven't been on the blogs. I figured that since I have a little down-time while job hunting--I might as well renew myself with a little elixir-of-crochet. It was either that or laundry, and we all know how I feel about laundry...

my excuse for being a slacker

Guess what?!? I have a new thing to neglect while blogging. No, it's not another child. (Please, don't stick a fork in me--just take my word for it: I'm done.) It's homework! I've gone back to school and Holy Schnikey, I LIKEY. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy school. My kids think I'm nuts. What do they know? I'm challenging my brain and it is muy fantastico. I'm not sure if it will lead to more or less blogging. I'm pretty certain that there will be less knitting/spinning content, but I think there might be more philosophizing and generalized navel-gazing going on. In that last sentence, I managed to get a Z into 3 of the last 6 words. Huh.

Some spinning...

Crosspatch Creations Totally Tubular Spinning Kit: 4 ounces of fiber divided up into 12 little batts--a joy to spin. I used long draw for it all and I heart long draw. Combed fiber + long draw = a fluffy, fuzzy woolen-spun yarn. I don't know how many yards, but I think I'll make something lovely for my mother out of it for Christmas. (I think that's my urge with all my handspun because my darling mom is so appreciative of handspun. Love her.)

Weedy Surprise

And no, I'm not talking about my garden. It's that Baby Surprise Jacket again. (I'm a little too pleased with myself for dyeing some yellow yarn and calling it "Mustard Weed" so that not only the color, but also the name coordinates with the blue/yellow "Flowering Weeds".) But in today's installment, the jacket is fully completed--buttons and all. I thought I'd mention the rounded neckline, since that's the only modification I made to the pattern.

The original pattern has a squared off neck. I wouldn't normally mess with a square neck, because I really like square necklines, but I just wanted to see what a curving neck opening would look like. In the pattern, when it directs to cast off a bunch of stitches on each side for the neck, I simply cast off 3 at the beginning of the next two rows, then cast of 2 at the beginning of the next two rows, then cast off 1 at the beginning of the next bunch of rows until I had cast off the originally specified number of stitches. The edge was smoothed out with the applied i-cord, but I think it's still maybe a little lumpy. I think I'll be doing the regular neckline in the future; the angles of a square neckline echo the shaping on the front of the sweater, and it just looks right. Favorite part of this project? Doing the i-cord edging. It's such a perfectly gratifying way to finish off an edge. I want to put i-cord on everything now.

I have 2 skeins of Hello Yarn Fat Sock (DK-ish weight, super-springy merino) in Zinnia. I've been trying valiantly to make socks out of this yarn, but every time I get about an inch on my needles, I start having visions of a particular Baby Surprise Jacket (that's a Ravelry link) that I saw in the same yarn--and it was soooo adorable. My real problem is that I'm too selfish to give away anything made out of this treasured yarn, so I've resisted the BSJ urge. Alas, resistance is futile. My weapons are useless. (Save yourselves!) (Does anyone else have lines from Star Trek Next Generation and Tommy Boy flitting through their heads?) I want to cast on today. And it can be my new car-knitting! And I could just knit the sleeves and body a little longer to make it big enough for PeeWee! But maybe I ought to finish the Bog Jacket collar and button bands first. Hmmm.

I stayed up late tonight to do dishes. Not to read, not to knit, not to spin, and not even to watch the Olympics. I finished the dishes and now here I am, actually typing a blog post! I'm stunned, too.

I have been knitting a little, here and there. I finished the body of a Bog Jacket for PeeWee that has been my car-knitting for the past 6-7 months. I started it with some Noro Silk Garden that was left over from Boberly's entrelac hat I made last fall. When I ran out of that, I bought a couple of random balls of Silk Garden from my LYS. Then I bought a few more balls of Silk Garden as souvenir yarn this past spring when I was in Solvang, California for an art show. I'm not really sure how much yarn I used... I plan to finish the jacket off by picking up stitches up one front edge, around the neck and back down the other front edge, then knitting button bands and a shawl collar. I have to add on a couple inches of width to the jacket with the button bands because when I started this project, PeeWee was a lot smaller than she is now. :)

I've also been doing some gift knitting for darling Prairie Mama Kim. She's due in about a month and I'm taking this Baby Surprise Jacket over to her tomorrow. (Kim, if you read this before I get to your house, just act surprised, okay?) I subscribe to the Spunky Eclectic Fiber club, but in July, I got sent the sock yarn of the month by mistake, instead of the fiber of the month. I think it was meant to be, since the colorway (Flowering Weeds) just cried out to be made into a BSJ and the pretty yellow made me think of Kim. I adore this pattern. This was the first time I've knit it and it was a delight. I HEART Elizabeth Zimmermann. (Sisties, she's the designer of this pattern and the Bog Jacket above--and though she has passed on, I consider her to be my Knitting Muse and Guru.) About halfway into it, I got worried that I would run out of yarn, so I pulled out some of my undyed Henry's Attic Kona DK (superwash merino that matched the weight of the Spunky DK sock yarn perfectly) and dyed it a coordinating yellow.

My babies started school this week. I have one big baby who is now in high school. I have another baby (who is actually bigger, though younger, than the big-baby-high-school-freshman) who is now a Big Man on (middle school) Campus. I surprised him with his first cell phone (you got to love pay-per-use phones, huh?) and he's pretty excited, can you tell? My next two babies are still in elementary school, and then the baby of all is here at home. She strapped on a back pack this morning and asked if she could go to school, too. She was pretty disappointed that she didn't get to stay at the school with the big kids. (Can you see the look on my Middle Child's face? He was peeved that I made him stop for a picture.) Sigh. Where did my wee precious darlings go? Why can't they grow up already and stop breaking my heart with how fast they change? I have a recurring desperate fear that I'm going to blink and they'll be old and I'll be really old and I won't remember any of the clever and adorable things they did (are doing)...whatever. I need to go to sleep. I should have left the dishes for morning.

mustard pickles

I dyed some of the mountain of superwash merino I have hiding in my closet. I actually dyed this about a year ago with PAAS Easter egg dye tablets and it was gross. The pinks and blues ran together and made a muddy lavender--and I mean MUDDY. I decided to overdye it with a huge dose of yellow. The yellow turned out--as perhaps you can tell--not ochre, not sunshine, but rather PEE yellow. The splotches of green might save it, though. The color name for it shall be Mustard Pickles--either that or Poopy Diaper. Well, at least I had fun with the dyeing process.

I sent some to a friend and I'm going to spin the remainder soon (after spinning the Toxic for the Snaky Blanky, of course!) and see what happens. This could be very exciting. In my world, yes, this is big excitement. Shut up.

My mother made the best mustard pickles when I was young. I need to find her recipe and make some this year. Did I mention the ravenous bunnies in my back yard? I have no more carrots. The beans are gone. They don't seem to care for the zucchini, onions, or tomatoes. My kids have named the rabbits. So much for the tragic and horrible fate that I had planned for them to meet (the rabbits, not my children). There's one named Mr. Cinnamon Boots. See my problem?

Snaky Blanky startup

I spent the past month gradually spinning up my November subscription to to the Hello Yarn Fiber Club. This is superwash Corriedale wool in a colorway called "Toxic". And in a cosmic turn of events, I hurt my back again last Tuesday--So I spent the following 3 days lying down and swatching crochet patterns out of a Reader's Digest knitting and crochet stitch pattern book that my children gave me for my birthday. (It's not Barbara Walker, but it's okay.)

It started out innocently enough: I just wanted to do something mindless. Swatching crochet stitches goes so fast that you can work, hate, and rip out a stitch pattern in a matter of minutes. Wouldn't you know it, I happened on a stitch that I LIKED! I was just a wee bit loopy from a pain pill, so I messed up the directions and came up with my own version of the stitch pattern. I have decided that I must make an afghan with it. The original stitch pattern is called "Long Waves", but it looks more snaky and sinuous to me, so I shall call it the Snaky Blanky. It's a Poisonous Snaky Blanky because it's made out of Toxic materials. Har har. I love this yarn--what's not to love about handspun in these colors?



I started out with 8 ounces of this fiber and got about 310 yards of 2-ply aran weight yarn. My calculations yielded the somewhat discouraging news that I'll be able to make a itty-bitty afghan of about 36 x 14 inches with this amount of yarn. If there weren't already enough reasons to love Ravelry, I have been rescued by the Hello Yarn group there. I went fishing for generous souls who might be willing to exchange any of their Toxic fiber for some of my other hoarded Hello Yarn club installments. I had two takers on the trade (Bless you Vickie and Felicia, if you read this) and Adrian (Hello Yarn, herself) let me know that she still had a pound of Toxic in storage. It's a Ravelry Miracle!

All together, I'll end up with 36 ounces, which should be enough for a 36 x 63 inch afghan. I might end up blocking it into the more conventional dimensions of 40 x 60--or I might just leave it long and skinny...snaky. (Hmm. I have a tendency to get caught up in themes.) The first batch of traded fiber arrived today, and I'm going to try really hard to let my back finish calming down before I start spinning it. I predict that I will last 2 days.

some summer spinning

Spun on my Schact Matchless using long draw!!! (I love long draw.) It's dreadfully underspun and SO fuzzy. It was a bit of a fight to spin because it was a barely-blended batt and the chunks of silk, mohair, wool, and soy silk didn't always want to get along while drafting.

Kind of a boring post, but there we are. Maybe I could add in some personal details...things like: We have rabbits in our back yard and they ate my eggplant plants. I'm peeved. They haven't touched the tomatos yet, at least there's that. I hurt my back again. I'm infatuated with crochet; it's fast. I tried to knit a baby sweater for a new little niece while I was on a 10-hour road trip to a funeral a couple of weeks ago. It was a dismal failure. I backed into a parked car last night. PeeWee is piteously proclaiming, "I need foooooood!" So is Joe. So is everyone. I've fallen out of love with food. I used to love food. I used to love to cook. I'm tired of it. I think I need a private chef. Yeah, that would do it. Maybe Bob will do it... Okay, enough of the daydreaming, they're starting to gnaw on my ankles.