Knitting comfort

It doesn't feel like I've done a lot of knitting this past week, but what I have done has made me feel extremely grateful that I have knitting. It's been such a comfort to me. It's been hard to process my grandmother's death, at times; I feel extremely removed from her death, I'm terribly sad for my mom, aunt and uncles-they lost their mom!  and then I remember, I'm part of this too, she was my grandmother. We weren't extremely close, the last 6 years I didn't see her much at all, though we exchanged cards, and I called her a couple of times a year.  She told me I was hopeless when she tried to teach me to knit, and I  never got to share my knitting with her, but I've never forgotten that she knit for all of us. Every Christmas, there were knitted gifts. I remember one pair of gloves she made when I was a little kid. The gloves were white and each finger was a different, bright colour, I thought they were so cool. And the light blue vest she knit, which I thought was totally stylin' (it was the 80's yo).  Plus, everyone had slippers. Knit with phentex no less (her poor, poor hands, there were a lot of us). I was given a bunch of my grandmother's needles and notions a few years back. I couldn't knit with the needles as they hurt my hands, so I donated them to the local English community center, I did keep the crochet hooks and the pattern booklets though.
The service will be this weekend. It's going to be hard.

                                                       Kathleen Bourgaize 1928-2016


In knitting:
 I finished the Meret Mitts. They're pretty fantastic. I was irritated by the yo's at the thumb until I finished them, now I think they're pretty snazzy!

I'm pretty sure I'll have enough for  a pair of full mittens-there's good yardage on the Tanis Fibre Arts-I really enjoyed knitting with it, and I love the colours. The yarn washed up well, very little bleeding. I will definitely knit with that yarn again, in fact,  I'd love to get a sweater quantity some day-I think a sweater knit out of the DK weight would be fantastic, and the Aran weight would be so warm and comfy for winter!

I started knitting Scowl by Xandy Peters.

I'm using some Biscotte & Cie from deep-ish stash in the colourway Charivari (which is a self striping white, grey and black sock yarn). If you recall; I knit one sock out of it and never knit the other because I went down a needle size and the resulting sock was way too tight. The fabric felt like it was made of iron! I figured I'd try it out, see how it looks, and if I run out of yarn, I'll just frog the sock, The pattern is made with a U.S 11 needles, so the resulting fabric is super drapey and can be worn as a scarf or a cowl. Super easy, don't-have-to-pay-attention knitting, and will likely knit up quite quick with the large needles. I can't see myself wearing it as a scarf, I prefer really loooong scarves, but I'm really stoked about wearing it as a cowl.
My daughter P thought it looked chain mail-ish, which makes me invision knitting another one-possibly out of Julie Asselin Piccolo in the colourway Shining Armour!

I put Scowl in time out though, so I could work more on the Greenfield cardy.
Which I finally finished! Huzzah! With a bottle of wine in me, after Easter dinner, I picked up and knit the left button band (brave, I know) and it turned out just fine!
So I tried it on the next morning...and was kind of meh about it.
It really could be longer, but I cannot bear the thought of undoing the bind off. It feels a little wide, but, that does seem to be fit of the sweater-also I'm wondering if I made the right size. I probably could have gone a little smaller, and then just compensated for length. The upper arms and the armholes are a little big.

I do love the colours and the yarn, and I like the neckline and shoulders a lot. So there's that. I might feel better after I wear it a bit, get over my (real and perceived) imperfections.
I didn't have any buttons in my stash that I felt worked with the sweater, so I went to Fabricville and picked up some greyish-purpley buttons that work perfectly.

I also used some grosgrain ribbon on the inside of the button band. Wow, are my sewing skills ever baaaaad, I'm not even going to share the picture, it's that bad!  I may re-do the sewing* at some point.

I have quite a bit of the Miss Babs left...about 300 yards I think, what to make?

After talking about, thinking about it for like, 2 years, I finally cast on the Harvest cardigan by Tincanknits.  I'm knitting it with Julie Asselin Sevilla (which is a lovely worsted weight merino) in the colour Azul.
I had to look up the tutorial for the crochet chain provisional cast-on. I had learned to do a simple crochet chain six-ish months ago for an infinity scarf and then never even used my new found hooking knowledge because I changed my mind about the pattern, but I haven't had a reason or urge to crochet since then.

I think I did okay. While doing the cast on, I couldn't help but wonder if it would have been easier (not that it was difficult by any stretch of the imagination) to just cast on with waste yarn? It just seems like it's extra work, for nothing-waste yarn would be quicker, and probably easier to undo as well.

Anyway, so I'm knitting the scowl (which, since I finished Greenfield, has now become my travel project), and harvest, might as well add another project to that (because monogamous knitting is sooo not for me)  I'm going to cast on The Age of Brass and Steam by Orange Flower Yarn. I'm going to knit it with Manos Del Uruguay Silk Blend in Silver. I'm not going to make it kerchief size though, I'm going to make it small shawl size. I'm trying to hold off casting on until I finish the 10 sets of raglan increases, i'm currently at 5 sets, and the rows are starting to get long and kind of boring, so who knows how long that resolve will last.


Today I culled some of the knits that I've made. There's quite a bit that I don't wear for whatever reason. The wool is too scratchy to me, or the size/fit is wrong, or what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking-buying-pink-wool reasons. Why keep things I don't wear, will never wear? I'm going to donate the items to the local second hand store (because I like that they hire people who've been out of the work force for a long time, people with intellectual disabilities, and newly arrived immigrants who are having a hard time finding work). There's some scarves, mitts, fingerless gloves, legwarmers, hats, that bloody askew top/vest thingy, and an Andi Satterlund cardy that I loooove everything about, except the yarn and the colour. Dusty Rose...WHY??? Also, I used Cascade and I find it too scratchy and hot for a short sleeved cardigan. Before I put it in the bag for donation I cut off the buttons. I feel like a huge jerkface for donating a sweater without buttons, but I couldn't bear to give up the adorable little, metal yarn balls buttons.

I could have probably frogged some of the items and salvaged the wool, used it for other projects. But I know myself, when I'm done with something I'm done. I salvaged some wool from a project made a year ago, and I don't even like looking at it now. It's balled up and hidden away, not even in the nice baskets with my beloved stash.


*(oh who am I kidding? No one is going to see the grosgrain ribbon, it may not look pretty, but it does what it's supposed to do, there's no way I'm going to re-sew it)

Nanny

On Thursday, March 24th, at 2:20 am, my grandmother died. I was supposed to go up to the hospital that afternoon to say good bye to her. I never got the chance and I'm so, so fucking sad about it. I should have went to visit her sooner. I'm happy that she's no longer in pain, no longer confused, angry and scared. I'm so sorry she died alone. She had a long life and it wasn't an easy one. I hope her end was peaceful.

springing forward

Spring is here. In name only though. While we had some super mild temps and glorious sun last week, I know it's not here to stay. Oh no,  not in Montreal. We will likely get one more stupid, blizzardy snow dump, and everyone will bitch and moan about it (including me-probably louder than most) before actual Spring arrives. But, it's uplifting enough to know that in a matter of weeks, I'll be wearing sweaters outside, sans heavy winter coat!

Last week in knitting:
It's been awhile since I shared a picture of  Greenfield :

(and yes, this is a particularly shitty picture, if/when I finish I will definitely take a much better picture) I forced myself to not work on another project until I finished the leaf detail. Which I did finally manage to get done, yay! I don't know what's wrong with me though, I'm so close to binding off the sweater, there's only 3 inches to go before finishing it and I should just take an evening and bang it out.  I don't get it, I love the yarn, I love the colours, I love the sweater, I want to wear it...what is my problem?  My problem is startitis. I want to cast on alllll the things! I am trying to keep it to a reasonable amount, and not cast on too many projects, so that I'm overwhelmed with wips, but it's so hard! So many patterns I'm in love with right now! I really want to finish my cardy though, so what I've been doing is this; if I finish a small project, I make myself knit a few rows on Greenfield. Since I'm going through a small accessories kick, I should be able to get this cardy done by Easter (at the vry least finish the body!)

While at Maison Tricote with mah knitta, I bought one single, beautiful skein of speckled Fox Trail Fibre Arts yarn. It is a worsted weight MCN (merino/cashmere/nylon), the colourway is called Nimbus, and it is perfect. I am in luuuurve with everything about this yarn. I even had them wind it up for me in store, because I wanted to start knitting with it right away.  I cast on a pair of fingerless mitts, but I didn't like how the fabric was knitting up on the size7 needles, so I frogged the whole thing (I'd only knitted the cuff at that point) and cast on Maize by Tincanknits. I chose Maize because I love the mitts (I've made like, 3 pairs), and they're knit on size U.S 6, which works much better with the Fox Trail MCN. I could have re-done the original mitt with smaller needles, but that would have involved math and  mistakes. I wanted no mistakes for my lovely, lovely nimbus, nor did I want to bust my head trying to figure out the numbers, I wanted to knit these babies up as quick as possible!

                                                                 

(Of course, they've been knit up just in time for the weather to go back down to hovering around 0c so it's too cold to wear them. Boo-urns)


I cast on and knit another hat, the Seaforth Hat by Karie Westermann using Tanis Fibre Arts Green Label Aran in Stormy.

Washed it and blocked it, it's wonderfully slouchy. I have another skein of the Stormy, and since I'm on a bit of a finger-less mitts kick at the moment, I'm going to knit up a pair and, because they  take almost no yardage at all, at a later point, I will make a full pair of mitts. In fact, I've already cast on the mitts that I had originally planned to knit with the Nimbus! Perfect!

These are called the Meret mitts by Joyce Weida. The pattern is based on a Wooly Wormhead hat called funnily enough, Meret (mystery beret) which is super cute, and I might need to make at some point. I'm knitting these on US8's-mostly because I'm an idiot. I shoved the wrong needles in my bag and didn't realize until I found the correct needles on the desk. They actually fit pretty well though, so I'm going to finish them and if I don't like the fit after they're all done and off the needles, I'll re-do them on the 7's.


In all that knitting, I still found some time to work a bit on Smash (usually while on public transportation) After reaching 114 stitches on Smash (lace starts after 116 sts) I decided I didn't like the blue/grey and frogged all the way back to the opaline. I just couldn't see myself wearing this scarf. I didn't like the transition from the Opaline to the Dapple Grey, both beautiful yarns, but not together,  not for me.  So much knitting ripped back *sigh*  It's in a time out at the moment, 'cause it's kind of a boring knit, and I have more interesting things to work on right now.

I've been watching Sleepy Hollow while knitting, and it took me a couple of episodes to warm up to it, but then I got hooked. Until now. I just started watching the third season and I'm kind of disappointed. I thought the actors who played Captain Irving, Katrina and Henry Parrish had great chemistry with Mills and Crane and I really miss their dynamic. Also, it seems a little cheesy, with this whole Pandora's box dealio.

I reorganized the den this past Monday, moving bookshelves (a huge pain in the ass, btw) and chairs and stuff. Mainly, so I could be closer to the windows. It's nice when the temperature  starts to warm up, the fresh breezes wafting in, the perfect amount of sunlight to knit by, and eventually the big tree in front will start to bud, and the birds will come back.  When I was pregnant with B, we bought a dresser/changing table, which was perfect for his babyhood. Now, it is home to mah knittings. It's got two big drawers where I stash my knits, sweaters in the bottom drawer, and all the accessories in the top. Two cubbies that I use for storing notions and such. I have it set up so my swift and ball winder are always ready to use (instead of dragging all the things into the living room, which is the only other surface that can accommodate the swift and winder's clamps) and my needles are out.

I feel like the only thing missing from this set-up is more Fox Trail Fibre art MCN yarn...

In which I play yarn chicken and win

In knitting:
I have a FO! Last Monday, I finished the Plum Tree slouch. I knit it using Malabrigo Rios in Black. It was a bit big at the ribbing, but it's a slouchy hat so I'm ok with that. Then I soaked it.  It bled and bled and bled. I emptied and filled the bucket with water 7 times before it rinsed clear. Blocked it on a balloon and when it was dry, found it a too big for my liking...a bit big is ok, too big? Not ok. So I soaked it again, with the hopes of blocking it smaller, which actually worked out really well. The Rios held up quite nicely to the repeated soakings, I even wrung it out a few times and you can't even tell.  It was a really fun hat to knit, super quick,  it's really lovely, and I have been wearing it every day since it dried.         (oh look, cat hair!)

After knitting the Plum Tree Slouch, I craved more hat knitting, so I cast on one called Foliage by Emilee Mooney. It's a really cute hat,  super easy to knit, and is a free pattern btw.  Because  it didn't seem to require a huge amount of yarn, I went ahead and foolishly cast on with the 79 grams of Madeline Tosh Vintage in Violin that I had leftover from a bolero and hat* that I knit years ago. Did I mention that Violin is discontinued? And that halfway through the knitting, I was pretty sure that I would not have enough to finish this effing hat? A few days back,  I posted a help message on Reddit and Ravelry asking if anyone out there had a small amount to sell/trade-but there were no replies. So today, I decided, fuck it, I'm going to knit to the ribbing and see how far I can get-if I have to, I'll just try to find a complimentary colour in stash.  I got to the ribbing, and it seemed like I could eke out a few rows of ribbing with the yarn that was left ...one row of ribbing, going smoothly. Second row of ribbing, yaaas queen! Third row of ribbing, doing alright, getting a little scary. Fourth row of knitting, can I squeeze out one more? Lets do this!  Knit the 5th row, started to bind off, and sadly, about 1/3 of the way through, I knew that I was not going to be able to finish the bind off. Soooo, undid the partial bind off, tinked back one row and was able to bind off!!! Boo-ya! Two FOs!
                                          Finished the pattern-is there enough for the ribbing?

                                          Ribbing done, Bind off completed!

                                          But it was hella close! What was left:

                                          Look at mah lovely hat! (needs to be blocked)

[Speaking of hat knitting, I needed new 4.5mm dpns-the ones I currently have are an old pair of knitters pride, and one of them has a fairly deep groove on one side,  I've sanded it, and covered it with nail polish (a suggestion I got from a knitting forum) and it hasn't helped. Still catches on everything, very frustrating. Of course, when I was at Maison Tricote this week, I completely forgot to look for dpns, and when I was at Fabricville on Thursday (finally spending a gift certificate that I got for xmas) they didn't have any wooden dpns in 4.5mm. They had Knitpicks Nickle plated dpns in 4.5mm, but ick. I don't like the KP nickle plated needles (I just gave mah knitta my KP interchangeables because I no likey) Luckily, there is another local Fabricville, and while doing errands with mah sweetie on Saturday, we stopped in and they had 4.5mm dpns! With the leftover amount on the gift card, I only had to pay a buck!]

With my leftover Miss Babs Yowza in Candied Pecan, I cast on a pair of Optimistic Mitts. I love these mitts, they are absolutely perfect for spring. I could however, stand to go down a needle size or cast on less stitches next time I make these. Easiest pattern ever, and I love the look of the broken rib.

                             Knitting the seed stitch band. Only tolerable amount of seed stitch IMO

I finished the second mitt on Saturday while driving around doing errands (M driving, not me obvs) and I finished the seed stitch bands while stitchin&bitchin on Sunday with mah knitta. Did all the finishing and voila!  Three FOs!

I love having a matching set of knitted items, these mitts with the Coldest Summer shawl will be perfect for Spring, even though it's more of a fall colour.


Smash is still on the needles, but I finally got to 100! I went up to the larger sized needles, and I did a Russian join to add colour B-which is Julie Asselin Piccolo in Dapple Grey (which is a beautiful pale steel blue). I haven't started the lace yet, but I'm close...ish.

I hate to admit it, but I'm terribly bored of knitting this scarf/shawl thingy.

Also, I think we either need to get a new table, or re-finish this one-it's 17/18 yrs old, been through 4 toddlers, 3 moves, numerous artistic endeavors, and the most destructive of all, me.


In yarny shoppings:
I've not been buying a lot of yarn lately. There are several reasons for this: I don't actually need new yarn.  I'm still hella broke from xmas. I'm not buying anything from the U.S (thanks to our crappy dollar)right now and I prefer to support my local yarn stores even if the Canadian dollar wasn't in the toilet. I have a couple of sweater quantities worth of yarn, plus a bunch of single skeins purchased from xmas gift certificates and I have a pretty decent stash on top of that.  All legitimate reasons for not buying yarn, yes?
Except, I have this coin sorter that I dump my change in, and the other day, I noticed the coins weren't able to pass through the slots properly because it was so full. I made C help me, and we rolled everything up. Dude, I had 106$ in change!  I've been wanting to buy a set of  Leizu Nuances by Julie Asselin for a couple of months now, and I could even get a skein or two of Foxtail Fibres MCN worsted in some kind of speckled yarn (which I've also been lusting after), What better way to spend surprise money?? (and yes, I view change as surprise money).
Did I buy?
No. I did not.
Because when I went to Maison Tricote this week, they only had the pinkish set (aroha?) left. Ugh. I am not knitting and wearing a pinkish-red gradient scarf. I wanted the grey/black gradient (souvenir?). Nor did they have two skeins of the same colourway in the Foxtail Fibres that I was interested in.
meh.


* I knit a hat out of the Madtosh Vintage called  Stella-but I hated it once it was knitted. I knit it really well though, and it looked fantastic, just not for me. So I gave it away. *sigh* You can see a picture of the madtosh Stella here. Now, why would I make a second hat, if I didn't like how the first one looked on me? Who does that? Whatever, I love my new madtosh Violin hat!

Bonus Pet picture:             Halp! I r stuck in yogurt. Delicious, delicious yogurt!

The "I don't just knit" post

Welp, so much for that blizzard we were expecting...

*hee hee*



In knitting:

Smash! It's been slow going, mostly because haven't been knitting but also because of the tiresome increases and decreases of the two rows. On row 1 you have two decreases and one increase and on row 2 you have three increases and one decrease. You repeat those two rows until you get to 100 sts. Just to make it a bit clearer,  lets say you start with 5 stitches on the first row. On the second row you would have 7sts on the needles. The next row, you would have 6 sts. The row after that 8sts, and so on. You can see how that would take long, yes?
Currently, I am at 96 sts. There's light, light at the end of the tunnel. I'm so so close to 100 sts and then I can change to bigger needles.
No pictures, because it looks exactly the same as it did the last time I posted a picture. I will post new progress pics when I change yarns.

I've been craving hat knitting, which of course, led me to Ravelry, where I purchased Plum Tree Slouch by Alana Dakos.  It's a vry cute hat-minus the rolled brim, which does not look good on me, so I did a 1x1 ribbing instead. I cast on using some Black Malabrigo Rios (<3) Which is hella staining my hands.

 Sometimes I fantasize about getting rid of all my knit accessories and replacing them with stuff knit with Black MalRios. Everything would match, everything would go together. It would be wonderful! I would have three different black hats, three different black cowls, three pairs of black mittens, and a pair of fingerless mitts as well.
All the black, just like my cold, withered heart!
Except knitting only with black yarn, when there are so many lovely colours, would be super boring. And possibly hard on the eyes.

Some pictures of the Coldest Summer shawl:

In videogames:
  I used to be a gamer. We had an Atari for a little while when I was 5ish, but I didn't play all that much. A few years later, we got a second hand Coleco vision and I played that whenever I could get it to work. Finally, we got a Sega,and a little game called Wonder Boy and I was hooked! Even more hooked when one of my brother's friends brought over a Nintendo and Super Mario Bros-oh man I loved me some Yoshi. I would stay home some weekends and play Sonic the Hedgehog or Shining Force (which is still in my top 5 favourite games of all time)  instead of hanging with my friends-none of them played video games. Throughout my 20's, I played a lot of Playstation, and then xbox. Games like Silent Hill, Rock Band, GTA (in the top 5) Assasin's Creed and Fable. While also playing pc games like Summoner and The Sims (also top 5)
And then I hit my 30's, I got pregnant with my 4th child and learned to knit. Then, I had a high needs baby, who didn't sleep much and a new hobby. Plus three other kids.  I didn't get addicted right away, but I started knitting more and more. Now I go through periods of just knitting.  If I'm not knitting then I'm reading (my first love) or  doing yoga. But every once in a while, I still hanker for some virtual killing. Which led to me installing Steam on my laptop.  This is probably a huge mistake, because gaming has seriously cut into my knitting time (that was already seriously cut because of March Break) but Age of Empires (another top 5 game!) is just too good! I've been playing Age of Empires off and on since '99, and it is just as much fun now as it was then.

In Soapmaking:

I don't know if what I do is technically soap making, it's more like soap crafting, as I buy the melt&pour bases and add colours, essential oils, herbals/flowers etc.

I made two small batches. For the first batch I used an Oatmeal m&p base and added Neroli essential oil (yum), Lime eo and Rosewood eo. I also added in some Elderflower buds because I like the slightly spicy smell and I love scrubby soaps.
 For the second batch I used a goats milk m&p base (which is my favourite base) and used Tea Tree, Patchouli and Grapefruit essential oils and for the scrubby I used some bladderwrack-which, huge downside, has a slightly fishy smell. Or maybe I'm imagining it, I'll have to ask my people if they smell fishiness. I also added in some green mica, hoping to get a slight tint. It's a vry, vry slight tint. Like, barely noticeable tint.

And with that, March Break is over-back to school tomorrow for my boys, back to routine for everyone.