Finished Objects

A number of things were finished over the last week or so. The biggest and best of those was Yarn in the City: The Great London Yarn Crawl (V1.0). It was a fantastic day, with ample stash enhancement of all sorts and loads of yarny goodness displayed at the pub afterwards. Our amazing volunteers shepherded their teams around London, despite the vagaries of London transport (I'm looking at you Central Line...), and kept everyone together and happy throughout what was a very long day. And Alli and I are pretty sure that we will be doing this craziness again next year, so if you didn't manage to come this time around, keep an eye out for V2.0 next autumn!

In the final run-up to the Crawl, I spent what precious little free time I had frantically finishing up my Christmassy-cowl, out of Romney Ridge Farm yarn I purchased on my Downeast Yarn Crawl over the summer.

I tend to find entrelac too fiddley for my taste/patience level, but it was just the right thing for me to knit last week - mindless but requiring a bit of focus. I kept going until I was almost out of yarn, and then did a 3-needle bind off using the last scraps and then a bit of leftover yarn from a different project when I ran out.

After the crawl, I spent most of Sunday morning spinning, but then turned to my wee baby cardigan - I finished the knitting on this more then a week ago, but (as always happens) I stalled out putting on the buttons. Not because I didn't have buttons, but just because I couldn't be arsed to pull them out and sit down and sew them on.

Now the buttons are all sewn on, and it's ready to go. Sadly, there won't be FO photos on the blog for quite a while because it's a Christmas present*. Here are the pertinent details:

Pattern: Right as Rainbow Baby Cardigan by Stephanie Lotven
Yarn: Spud & Chloe Sweater, very small amounts for the stripes and edging (Firecracker, Grass, Aqua, Lake and Grape Jelly), Brown Sheep Cotton Top (discontinued) in Natural for body and Brown for last stripe.
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 4 September - 14 September for the knitting, 22 September for actual sewing on of buttons.
Comments: This was a lovely, straightforward pattern, with the only complicated bit coming in the decreases in the yoke to make the nine points. Otherwise the perfect TV-watching, stressed-out event organizer knitting. I may or may not have piles of worsted/aran weight yarns decorating my office, waiting for me to cast on the next one.

Sticks and carrots

With the start of school, Mother Nature decided that it was time to get back to normal weather patterns - so long glorious English summer of 2013 (truly glorious!), hello stereotypical grey damp autumn. The mornings have had that lovely bite to the air that means true woolen season is just around the corner. This is absolutely my favorite time of year (although I could do with a bit less rain...).

With the newly autumnal temperatures comes the ever predictable bout of startitis - I find myself wanting to cast on ALL THE THINGS! And to be fair, there are quite a number of things I should be casting on - two sample knits for patterns to be released next month first off, not to mention finishing off a shawl that's been on the needles for a couple of months now. But I find myself obsessed with the idea of casting on the perfect fall sweater - roomy, cozy, with long sleeves that come down over my hands and fronts that can wrap around. More specifially, I want the perfect fall sweater knit out of this.

My combo sweater spin from last winter when I was putting the miniSpinner through it's paces. So this week, I succumbed to the overwhelming desire to cast on, and knit...a swatch.

I think I've got the right needle size worked out, and I know the borders and cuffs are going to be in moss stitch.

Now it's just a question of using this project as a carrot to get the other stuff done. But if I play my cards right (and am a good designer do-bee), I can have a new sweater soon. I. Can't. Wait.

Before the crawl

Saturday is the first inaugural Great London Yarn Crawl, and I've been busy finalizing last details and pulling together door prizes. Since I'm not going to have a chance to do much yarn buying of my own on the day, I've been doing my best to make up for it.

When I got some more Spud & Chloe Sweater last week, I slipped on the way to the till and came up with 2 skeins of Fyberspates Scrumptious laceweight.

This is going to become a crocheted (!) cardigan somewhere down the line.

Then, this weekend, I got in to serious trouble over at Kettle Yarn Co. On Sunday, Linda handed me a lovely wrapped package with the following goodies.

Baby Alpaca/Merino/Bamboo Aran weight. This is going to become an Amor Deliria hat for the public release of the pattern next month.

Alpaca/Merino/Nylon sport weight. Not sure what this will become, but it's amazingly soft.

Falkland/Tencel fingering weight for a shawlette design.

So gorgeous and soft and squishy. I can't wait to crack into these!

Hi, I'm porpoise and I'm a sheep-aholic

I've become a bit obsessed with sheep lately. Some of you may be less then shocked by this pronouncement, but I'm talking about wool on the hoof, not in the skein. So on our recent trip to the northern portions of England, I found myself taking far too many pictures of sweaters-to-be in their natural environment. This tendency was vastly enhanced by the fact that in Yorkshire, there are just a few sheep to be ogled.

There were sheep on the way to the Reeth Agricultural Show,

BFL!
Not to mention, a few sheep at the show itself.

Texel

Swaledale

A highly groomed Teeswater (I think)

a spectacular Jacob ram

Dalesbred

Hampshire Down, aka the Teddy Bear Sheep

More BFL

A genteel sufficiency of sheep, to say the least. Then there were the fleeces,



knitted items,



and strange creatures made out of a variety of vegetables and Haribos.


We moved on to Northumbria, where there were more sheep, this time amongst the ruins of a Roman fort.



Cheviots maybe?

But things really got serious when we got to the Lake District, because not only were there sheep,

there were sheep that are different colors depending on their age.

These are Herdwicks, the sheep that children's author Beatrix Potter was instrumental in preserving when she donated 4000 acres of land to the National Trust.

Herdwicks are born black, lighten to a lovely chocolate brown over the course of the first year, and finally end up white as adults. I was smitten. So was the Wee Ridiculous Dog, who happily chased sheep whenever he got the opportunity.

Thankfully he's not too threatening, and the sheep were none too spooked. They mostly ran twenty feet away and went back to grazing. These sheep have been bred to be territorial, so they don't leave their designated pasture area. Which explains why there are vast herds of sheep wandering freely on the fells of Cumbria with no fences or enclosures of any kind, except for an occasional stone sheep pen.

It's a magical place, to be sure. Somehow I made it home with out any fleece or wool products of any kind, which has got to be some kind of miracle.

In which I bite off more then I can chew

aka: porpoise is easily distracted and prone to startitis, which is not necessarily a good thing.

So. I mentioned a few posts back that I had decided to join a knitalong for Stephanie Lotven's Right as Rainbow baby cardigan. This is a super cute little baby sweater, with the opportunity for loads of bright colors, and it just so happens that I have a super cute Wee Nephew who lives in an appropriate climate for a wool-cotton blend sweater. So I shanghied Allison's Spud and Chloe sweater scraps, and started off.

After a disastrous (at least from my perspective) last-day-of-summer-vacation trip to the cinema with Boo (note to NPH: you are dead to me now. DEAD!!!! I am still weeping from the inhumanity of it all..), I had one sleeve done.

After some much-needed brainless knitting over the end of last week, I had two sleeves.

Now I have much of the body up to the armpits done - I'm going to keep going until I run out of yarn on this one.

I needed a couple more colors, so yesterday I fell down in Mrs. Moon, and got two more skeins of S&C Sweater to finish off the stripes on the yoke:

So, so, so soft and squishy. I love it. I wish it weren't quite so pricey, but for Wee H, no expense will be spared. I got Grape Jelly and Lake to go with Firecracker, Grass and Splash from Allison, and Brown Sheep Cotton Top (long discontinued!) in Natural and a darkish Brown. There will, thankfully, be enough Grape Jelly and Lake to make another sweater or two, although probably at a smaller size. Then I'll just need to find babies to give them too...