maggistitches

Close Encounters of the Sheep & Goat Kind

On Sunday I braved the heat and visited some wooly friends who were surely a lot hotter than I: the flock at Juniper Moon Farm. I recently discovered Susie on Twitter (@shepherdsusie) and, reading through her blog archives, learned that she had landed not so far away from us. As I was returning from a mommy-getaway overnight trip to Charlottesville, I wrote and asked if I could stop by on the way home ~ not knowing the temperature would be well over 100 degrees on the day of my visit! 

Susie was a great and gracious host despite the weather, and introduced me to the sheep and goats huddled in the shade. The three farm dogs greeted us enthusiastically, but I missed photographing them -- or Susie herself! And I left the equine newcomers to their new pasture since they had only arrived hours before me. I'm nowhere near the photographer Susie is, and I can't tell you their names, but here are some faces. 

 

 

 

If you don't know, this was the first farm to offer CSA shares ~ I'm going to buy one for 2011. I love my food CSA and my meat buying club, so why not support someone else who's doing good farm work relatively locally? Juniper Moon also hosts farm stays, so I'm checking the calendar to see when the girls and I might spend a weekend there. My grandfather had a farm property in addition to a home in the city; although it stayed in our family into my childhood, the only time I remember visiting was to relocate some kittens my mom couldn't handle. I want my girls to have a better sense of where things come from ~ 

New Project

When I look at my Ravelry queue, why can't I see that I have a silk scarf, a Koigu shawl and a log-cabin blanket each in the works? And the Scarf of the Rat, purchased from Morehouse two years ago in the year of the rat, and not yet complete. Surely the purple drop-stitch one could be done darn quickly, if I made it my TV knitting in this sweeps month. Yet I spent more than an hour last night searching the free patterns on Ravelry to find something to do with the four gradient skeins of Tess' Superwash Merino Lace I bought at Maryland a year ago.  

At the time I was plotting Eunny's Spectrum Scarf, free via Knitting Daily. But when I go back and look at it, I can't get enthused about holding four strands of laceweight at once. I have many scarves I love already, and at least one other I bought delicious yarn for also last May. So, after lots of browsing, I settled on the wrap called Upstairs.I think this pattern will be interesting with my four gradient colorways. We'll see! I'm casting on wider than the pattern, which does nine repeats across; I'm thinking of 11, which will mean starting with 127 instead of 105 stitches. Stay tuned ~

Secret stitching

Here's a peek at an embroidery project I'm collaborating on. I'm 90 percent sure the person it's a secret from doesn't read the blog, but I'm not taking any chances!

I have done some embroidery in my past, but not in ages ~ seriously, I'm thinking back to the 1980s. So I'm actually having a lot of fun revisiting the stitches. This couching was a new one - I think!

A Little Fame

See that magazine I'm holding down there in the prior post while modeling my new sweater? I was featured in the My Style column of a local bimonthly magazine, R-HOME, and I worked on Rooibos when the photographer came to shoot me and some of my treasures. Of course I would wear something I knitted, but I'd actually started the day in my Tempest cardigan . . .

 

. . . but I changed into my good old Sitcom Chic in order to match the chair, newly upholstered in some Amy Butler fabric. She's one of my faves, a fondness I share with Karen of Darling Octopus Decor, who also used Butler fabric on the rehabbed table beside me. My friend Patience, a/k/a Kindnessgirl, brought me the orchid in December 2008, after I let her know I'd dreamed that she gave me an orchid. I ordered the rug from Home Decorators Collection when they sent me a hefty discount coupon (because, y'know, I do like to shop local at La Difference!).

The large print behind me is by Tanja Softic, who was born in Bosnia and teaches at the University of Richmond. The smaller piece is an oldie but goodie: a serigraph by Juan Logan from an edition of 100 printed in 1996 to support the U.S. Senate campaign of Harvey Gantt, who unsuccessfully challenged the late Jesse Helms in my home state.

I'm flattered to have been included in the magazine, although it was rather close on the heels of a November spread on my monthly Stitch & Bitch in Style Weekly's monthly Belle. I tried to postpone, but editor Brandon would have nothing of it. And so not only it is an arts issue, it's a VisArts issue, since my colleague Aimee's sweet loft building in Petersburg gets a big article, as does the bungalow of Pam Anderson, an artist on our board. 

Knitty surprise=Maggi surprise

If you notice that last post dated nearly three months ago, you'll have a sense that these days I don't expect to knit more than one serious garment per year. And with work, kids, Facebook & Twitter competing for my time, not to mention the affect Ravelry has had on many knitblogs (no regrets!), I consequently don't hold up my end of the blogging bargain as well as I did in the old days (I missed my blogiversary earlier this month ~ seven years!). So I am as surprised as anyone to find myself with a new sweater to report: Rooibos, designed by the talented Amy Swenson, which was offered as a "surprise" late-addition pattern in the winter issue of Knitty, right around the time the Olympics began.

 

If I'd been inclined to participate in the Ravelympics, this was my project. I started it then, but it took me a bit longer to complete. The yarn is Rowan Plaid that I'd bought ages ago when it first came out. I even had a dear friend in London send me that pattern book for the yarn, but I soon realized that my climate was not the one for the heavy-sweater design I'd chosen. When I saw this loose yet fitted vest, I knew I had just the yarn in stash. I think I had to tweak needle size for gauge, but being able to do that -- and make adjustments to length -- is one of the reasons we love the handknits, right?

I'm glad we had the one chilly day this week for me to debut this FO, because May is bringing us 90 degrees tomorrow! ALSO: my right arm doesn't appear in these pix because I have a brace on my wrist, having received a tendinitis diagnosis and cortisone shot to the elbow on Tuesday. I believe I injured my elbow in an early-February fall, slamming it on the cement basement floor, but I'm betting that knitting this sweet sweater  -- plus two scarves for my girls and a pair of baby booties -- didn't exactly help! While my wrist is immobilized for the sake of my elbow, I have plenty of time to plot the next knit ~ and a secret  embroidery project to work on with my good left hand. 

This Year's Sweater

When Interweave's Knitting Daily got going, one of the first free patterns made available was the Sophisticated-Rustic Jacket by Pam Allen from Interweave Knits, Spring 2002. Thanks to Ravelry, I knew that I had the now-discontinued Classic Elite Zelda it spec'd in the stash because I had bought some cones from Webs during the heyday of my excessive online yarn accumulation. I didn’t really love the green colorway, so I don't know why I bought it, but this pattern offered the chance to punch it up with the contrasting yarn. So I added a unique handspun to my Maryland shopping list last May, and found what I was looking for in Dancing Leaf Farm's Slubby Nubby, a damp, mostly green 88-yard hank purchased in Sunday's rains. 

 I cast on in May and finished in January, knitting on other projects in that eight months, as I do. The handspun was thicker than the Zelda and I made some needle adjustments for the cast-on edges, but I like how it turned out. Fortuitously, I forgot to make buttonholes. I'm not good at those and at the same time pattern directions! I was glad that I had some Slubby Nubby sections with a lot of contrast to use in crocheting the three buttons, but I think they are probably bigger than ones made with Zelda would have been, so the buttonholes as sized by the pattern could've been too small. Instead, I made button loops in the same way I made them with thread on sewing projects; it feels a little like macrame to me (does anyone remember macramé?)

One of my favorite things about making sweaters is making them fit my body. These sleeves are perfect for my long arms, and the body is just right for my short torso. Because I had been working on this at a number of my monthly Stitch & Bitch gatherings, I was determined to wear it, completed, on the first Tuesday in February a week ago, which was also my birthday. I like it so much that I wore it again on Saturday for my all-grrrl dance party sleepover, LNMMXP (which stands for 50 in 2010 Party)! Despite the fact that our latest blizzard kept two-thirds of the guests from attending, we had a great time and the sweater received many compliments! 

 

 
  

The gloves, they are finished

Knitting down from the hand to the cuff turned out not to be so hard. I added the eight additional rows I'd knit plain on the second glove, then started ribbing again. The only thing I couldn't figure out how to replicate was the cast-on edge. Maybe I did not research far and wide because I wanted these gloves. (We've had two more big snows since the one I referenced in my last post!) I ended up going with a picot cast-off, and like the look even though the two don't match exactly. I hid the new cast-off in the photo, alas . . .

Gloves are right fiddly to knit, but this is my second pair and I would knit a third!

Glove love

I realized in the recent snowstorm that I just don't have the perfect pair of gloves. Lovely green kid cannot take on snow, and are not all that warm; same goes for the unlined purple pair I bargained for the last time I was in Firenze. Polarfleece gloves work in the snow and have grippers to hold the steering wheel, but they are none too attractive (still love ya, Lands' End!) Assorted suede ones don't quite cut it in warmth or fit either. I've knitted mittens, but forget those for driving, especially when I still have a five-point carseat to buckle. But, hey, I'm a knitter: I can make gloves!

 I headed for the stash and found some superwash sock yarn purchased on eBay early in my yarn-buying days. I used the other hank I "won" from that vendor to make my first pair of socks. (Cece sells from her site now; I don't know if she is still using eBay since that was an age ago.) Since I have two or three purple coats, this Grape Juice colorway is ideal ~ it looks damn pretty here on the blog, too. I'm knitting these at 6 st/in from Ann Budd's basic pattern in The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, my second pair ever; the prior pair was knit at a smaller gauge for a friend. 

One great thing about making things yourself is that you can make them fit really well. While I may still be learning how to do that with sweaters, it's easy with gloves because you can try on each finger as you knit. So, the fingers, they are perfect. However. With the first glove and its perfect fingers complete, I find I want there to be more glove between the cuff and the start of thumb. In the photo (It's really hard to photograph your own hand!) you may not be able to tell, but my wrist bone is there in the middle of the ribbing. Never having the thumb yet in place (it's knit last, with the stitches on a holder) while I tried the glove-in-progress on, I didn't realize this would be the case. So I shall modify on the second glove, adding rows before I start the thumb, and then either make a third, or cut off the first cuff, add more rows and knit down ~ scary!

Another Made Thing (Facebook version)

I handed over the fourth item I made as a result of the Facebook promise detailed below in the Thanksgiving post. I knitted a wrap for Amy from three skeins of Knit One Crochet Too Mousse, a mohair blend that's also variegated in color. I swooped at her while she was greeting some other friends before the Christmas eve service began at church, so it wasn't really a place for me to gauge a response. The thing is huge: 13 x 96 inches, knitted on US9s with some yarnovers and garter rows but no pattern. I hope she likes it. 

 

Christmas snapshots

The Cherub choir sings on Christmas Eve, the boots Santa brought me, Little B this morning trying out her new cooking set.