cakes to skeins

   The beginning of the school year is practically minutes away, and I'm looking forward to it, almost as much as I'm dreading it. Having a special needs child who hates school definitely makes it harder to get that "back to school" spirit. The 15yr old is also dreading the start of school, but it's a superficial I-hate-getting-up-in-the-mornings hate and not the visceral hatred that B has. I'm hoping this year won't be as difficult as last year, armed with some helpful tools, because it really takes it toll emotionally, on both of us. At least the 17yr old seems to be enjoying school?

Speaking of B, I can't refer to him as the 5yr old anymore. He is now a 6yr old. He's crazy about minecraft, so I made him a creeper cake. I made the mistake of asking him what kind of cake he wanted, because he chose rainbow bit. That stuff is nasty, it has a really strong fake taste, not pleasant at all. Luckily,  I also baked plain vanilla cupcakes.

My cakes are totally worthy of the "nailed it" meme. I hate fondant, the texture is weird (like plasticky playdough) and it tastes odd. But B liked it, so there's that.

So, another reason to dislike Knitpicks Swish Worsted. My sweater grew. *siiiigh* Length-wise; about 3 inches. Width-wise; about an inch. Now, yes, if I had swatched, and washed my swatch I would not be irritated...but I've knit with swish before and NEVER has it grown like this. I was super happy with the fit, it was perfect! and now I am not super happy. And I'm too scared to pop it in the dryer because I don't want it to shrink to B-sized. Obviously I will live with it, because I love this sweater, but never, ever again will I use swish for a sweater for moi. Not including what is in my stash of course. I will knit that. But I'll swatch next time.
(no, I totally won't)

I reorganized my knitting area this week. I had most of my yarn crammed into 3 plastic sterilite drawers (like this)  Decided to put those in B's room for his toys, and use a wrought iron shelving unit  (similar to this) with baskets for my yarn. I keep my skeins in ziploc baggies, and it's much easier to look through my yarns and see what to knit with. Most of the yarn in the baggies is in hanks, but when I first got my swift and ball winder, I went a little cake happy and pretty much wound all the stash. But then I kept coming across these articles  about how it's not great to leave your yarn all caked up for a long period of time, (read here) which made total sense, so I stopped winding all my yarn. But I still had a lot of yarns in stash that had been caked up. Now, while reorganizing, I'm coming across all these cakes, so I set up the swift and slowly start un-winding the cakes. I unwound and re-hanked nine cakes. I took plenty of breaks, and spread it out over 2 days. It's not as fast or fun to re-hank a cake. I still have a couple to do, but I keep telling myself I'm going to knit with those yarns soon. 

 Libby does not care for yarn cakes. She would like some chicken.

FO Alert! I finished Skoodlet (by Lee Meredith)

I haven't chosen the buttons yet, but the knitting is done, the ends are weaved in and it's soaking in a bucket of eucalan.  Binding off, of course using Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off.

 Night time photos in the bathroom always come out kind of funky-will take pictures when it's cold-because hopefully I'll have chosen some buttons by then.

There's still a weird line thingy from the provisional cast on, but it's not as noticeable this time around, you can still see it, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much.

I don't think the muggles would notice? And if they did, and pointed it out, welp, that would be super rude wouldn't it?  I would really like to make this again, but in a super bulky, wildly coloured Malabrigo,

Greenfield Cardy is still a WIP. Got some striping done. I fucked up the arm a little-there's a row of reverse stockinette instead of garter and I couldn't be arsed to frog it, so I'm going to pretend it's part of the design. I took notes, so that will help me to remember to deliberately make that same mistake in the second sleeve. I did swatch the striping on some leftover yarns, to come up with a pattern I liked. I'm pretty happy with the transition from main colour to the contrast colour (which will finish the sleeve). I love this purple colour, Ordering it online, I had worried that the purple wouldn't look good with the grey, but I'm very happy with it. I think it looks awesome.

So now I only have the greenfield cardy on the needles (and some socks, but they don't count because I have no interest in socks at the moment) and immediately want to cast on all the things, I'm just not sure what to knit. I could knit something I bought from Twist. Maybe those thrummed slipper socks-thrumming would be a new technique for me; could be fun. Oooh, or something shawl/scarf like with the Blood Curdling Scream sock yarn! So many possibilities, so little knitting time!

Twist!

At last weeks stitch&bitch, I knit a little on my Aiken, I knit a little on my skoodlet, and I knit
a little cat toy for T's kitten,  which I stuffed with catnip before seaming it up.

I think he likes it!

The past week was all about getting serious about finishing the second sleeve of Aiken, casting all other WIPs aside to focus solely on getting that dreaded second sleeve out of the way, and it worked because i'm finished!! YAY! I love love love it.

I'm almost wishing for cold weather, just so I can wear it, allllll the time. My
only issue with this sweater is the yarn, I wish I had used nicer yarn. I'm happy with the colour (which is outside my usual palette) and I like the feel of Swish against my skin, but I think I'm finished with Knitpicks Swish yarn. The colour selection is good, the price is good, but every single ball (out of  11 and a bit) had at least two of these weird areas that looked poorly joined/felted.

So, I cut those parts out, and used the russian join.  Which, is annoying enough to do twice for every ball (not even counting the times I was joining the ends of balls together), but several of those balls had between 4 and 6 those awful felty bits. 
That was a lot of russian joining. Which is very irritating, and maybe I wouldn't have
needed an extra ball of yarn if I hadn't had all these weird spots in the yarn. Btw, that extra ball I had to order ? Had three bad spots. *sigh* (also, got the Jasmine and Vanilla Lavishea bar-yummy!)
It really left a bad taste in my mouth. So, i'll knit up the Swish I have in my stash
but I probably won't buy yarn from them anymore.
Strangely though, early in the week I  dreamt about knitting the Harvest cardigan by Tincanknits, using the Rainforest Heather Swish I have in stash. It was a very vivid dream, and I may just have to cast on when I'm done with the Greenfield cardy. Get rid of all the Swish to make room for better yarns!

Speaking of the greenfield cardy, I was looking over the pattern, and instead of there being 72 rows before putting the sleeves on waste yarn, there's only 70 rows to knit! Awesome. Glad I checked, tinking back two rows when there's over 400 stitches would make me cry. More about Greenfield later though...on to the Skoodlet.
So, I knit section 1, and after I finished Aiken, I started working on section 2. It was my take along knitting, and there was a lot of park visits and errands so it was going pretty quickly. There was this line though, a stretched out line from the provisional cast on.

I kept knitting through section 2, thinking maybe, it'll come out with blocking. Or I could seam it up somehow...and just kept knitting. But every time I picked up the skoodlet to knit on, that line bothered me.
I like this yarn, I like this project-if it has a weird line, I'm not ever going to wear it, which is such a waste. A waste of yarn, and a waste of time. Soooo, I frogged it.
Re-cast on, this time with smaller needles. Knit the whole section 1 all over again and today at stitch&bitch; I got to section 2. There is a tiny line, but no where near as big and stretched out as before. I think I can live with this line, it's barely noticeable, and likely will block out just fine. Or at least I hope so...who knows how I'll feel when I get a couple inches done.

Anywhooo, the best thing ever, I went to my first Fibre Festival; TWIST. It was fantastic. My mom watched the kids, so I got to spend some alone time with my sweetie. The drive was long (an hour and 40 minutes) but very pleasant once we were outside of Montreal (with all it's ridiculous road construction). Once there, we walked around a bit together, but knitting and fibre arts aren't really his thing so he went and chilled out at the car (we brought camp chairs, just in case) and listened to podcasts while I walked around, talked to some super friendly vendors, bought some things. Wabi Sabi had a large kiosk, with Kate Sherrat from Ashford (all the way from New Zealand) showing the most gorgeous wheels and looms. Despite knowing nothing about spinning, I still fell in love with one of the wheels. It's a good thing I left my credit card at home. M and I met up for the foodie fair, we had bison burgers (so so so good!) and poutine made with local curd cheese. I'm not a poutine fan, and even I thought it was yummy. After we ate and chatted, we walked around a bit more, and I did some final shopping.

An octopus printed project bag, and a skein of sock yarn "Blood Curdling Scream" (is that not the best name ever?) purchased at the Trailhead yarns booth. Really friendly mom and daughter duo from Ontario. Loved their stuff, and would have liked to buy more, but I'm trying to be more responsible about yarn buying  (ie: not buying just to have more yarn)

At the Zenitude Fibre Arts kiosk, I bought a Thrummed Slipper sock kit. I love me some knitted slippers, and I love how thrummed items look, and I especially love having warm footsies! Gorgeous colour combos, I had a really hard time deciding which colour to get!

How gorgeous is this colour? ^
At the Gaspereau Valley Fibres booth, I fell in love with a shawl; Virpi by Lilja Palmgren and purchased the pattern and some yarn to make said shawl. Chatted with the ladies from that booth for a bit, they're from Nova Scotia, where I lived for a year, and would happily move back in a minute.

I had already spied Sweet Paprika Designs Fish in the Sea sock kit, before I went to Twist,  and had planned on buying it if I saw it in the booth-so I did! I may be out of sock mojo at the moment but I think these might be the socks that bring me back. Totes adorbs, and super nice gal running the booth! (Also, local! yay local!)

How cool is this? A drop spindle and some wool roving (plus instructions!) Bought this at the Shepherd's Spring Farm booth. Since, I'm not in the place to buy a spinning wheel (as in, I've not researched wheels, and have no idea what one should look for in a beginner wheel) I figured a drop spindle is a good place to start.

That was all the wool I bought. I was very good, very rational. But also full of regret of the yarns I did not buy. But, I bought other things that were not yarny goodness, but equally lovely! Such as:

 Felted soaps, yummy smells from Les Belles Bouclettes. Very difficult to only buy 3 soaps. I didn't really get a chance to check out their booth (was always pretty full of people anytime I walked by), but they had some bath bombs, and lip balms that interested me as well as their yarns; they specialize in mohair, alpaca and llama!

 A lovely little necklace, and a gorgeous knitting bowl from Julie Magnan, I had a difficult time choosing which bowl to get, there were so many to choose from, and all equally appealing!

Lotion from La Flaneuse-I grabbed a Lavender and Rosewood lotion, and I'm in love with it. It's light, but so moisturizing. That was a particularly dangerous booth for me, I could have easily walked away with hundreds of dollars of lotions and soaps-everything smelled so so good. The soaps (and maybe the lotions?) are made from donkey milk. Sounds weird. Smelled awesome. Should have bought soap, but I already had bought some felted soaps. (again, leaving the credit card at home was a very wise decision)

 

And finally, from Water Willow Design, I bought a circular needle case, and my favourite non-knitting purchase; a messenger bag. It's stunning and I walked by the booth 4 or 5 times (ok, like 6-7 times) before I finally bought it. My (admittedly) shitty pictures do not do it justice...but follow the link and you can see all the gorgeous products (I want them all-in every colour)

And now a bunch of random crappy pictures from Twist!

 (I want this one ^ I have no idea how to use it, but I want it)

 (giant needles! I made a joke about staking vampires when not knitting. no one laughed. except me.)

 (this booth was fucking cool, and i'm really, really sorry I didn't buy anything, but I ran out of cash.)

 (food shot! Bison burger and poutine, plus, ice tea I brought from home)

 (Heyyyy look, Maison Tricote had a booth! I'll see you guys in September)

(sassy little buggers, turned away from me or lowered their head every time I tried to take a picture)

So, then I was broke, and it was time to head home. Sad face. Goodbye Twist. Maybe see you next year!
I knit on my Greenfield cardy, and thanks to the 1hr40min there, and 1hr, 40min back-I was one row away from separating the sleeves! Which I did today at stitch&bitch. Separated the sleeves, cast on the underarm stitches, and even knit a row after that. I feel like I got over a very big hurdle. Now...do I start the sleeves or finish the body...or yunno, sleep.