Weekend with Knittymuggins

Some things I did this weekend…..

 

1. I made tiny little rhubarb pies. 

You know what I love about rhubarb?  Not only does it taste divine and it’s pink of course, but it loves neglect.  Positively thrives on it.  Let’s face it.  I’m a lazy gardener.  I love flowers and growing veggies, but I hate to weed and dragging the hose around our yard every day and night in the summer is really low on my list of faves.  It’s about as pleasant as going on your honeymoon and having your luggage lost on your way to a tropical paradise (this actually happened to me and poor R. Darling had to spend the first 2 days in Maui shopping with and comforting his new bride – pretty low on his list of faves – well, the shopping anyway).  But the rhubarb.  I swear the more I ignore it, the faster and heartier it grows.  I’ve got a freezer full of carefully chopped pieces from my summer bumper crop and I figured it was about time I did something with it. 

2. Ate weird stuff:  (R. Darling’s away, so why cook?) like ramen for breakfast & potato pancakes & rhubarb pie for dinner

3. Or didn’t eat at all

4. Watched too much TV.  But knitted while watching so maybe the productiveness of knitting will somehow cancel out the swiss cheese brain syndrome brought on by copious amounts of visual garbage

5. I found my zen moment and restarted the Debbie Bliss Cable & Moss Stitch Baby Hat I frogged last week

Maybe Buddha dropped by Friday night while I was sleeping and worked a little zen magic; maybe sprinkled me with some peace of mind and balanced my chakras or something, said a few oms, and then whoosh, up the chimney like Santa he went.  Whatever the case, I have been making steady and peaceful (om) progress on this hat.  It’s a bit slow going because I have to follow what I’m doing very closely or the seed stitch will come out wonky, but it’s working.  I actually think I might make another one for another friend with a new little boy. 

6. Worked on my swatch for knitting class (writing my own heart chart) and the swatch for the Kate Gilbert Keyhole Top from Interweave Knits

I was really happy with the swatch and charted pattern (the pink and brown design on the left) for my hat for knitting class.  The edges look a bit funny because we were swatching in the round, a rather finicky procedure that I don’t much enjoy.  Alas, the yarn I bought as a substitute for the Muench String of Pearls needed for the Keyhole top (righthand swatch), looks like it will be a failure.  The gauge is several stitches and rows off and I’m just not talented enough yet to be able to figure out how to make it work.  Oh, I know how to calculate how many stitches I’ll need to cast on and such, but when it comes to the shaping and patterning, I just don’t see how a relative knitiot like me will swing it.  One of those projects I’ll put aside for a while and peek at guiltily now and then.  Maybe next time Buddha pops in he can give it a shot. 

Fun in the mail

Look at these lovely Lexie Barnes minis I got in the mail!  I found them on sale at her website and couldn’t resist.  The skulls (Hermosa print) satisfy my inner rock chick, while the Makiko print speaks to the sweet side of me.  I really spent an ungodly amount on these little cuties, even with the discount, but can you ever have enough knitting supplies and knitting accessories to go with your piles of yarn?  Please.  It’s a necessity! 

Since R. Darling is out of town for the next few days, not only do I have complete control over the remote (shocking!), but I also have oodles of knitting time since I don’t have to cook!  I joined the Fitted Knits Along this week (my first KAL – I’m so freaking excited! Thanks so much to Robin for letting me join) and had time today to go out and get my book.  I do believe the plastic is melting on my visa too since I already purchased the yarn I’m going to use to make my sweater choice.  At least it was cheap.  And, of course (no surprise here), it’s pink!  I’ll probably post about it on the KAL site later.

In other knitting/crocheting news, I have finished the pound of love afghan for my

friend (pictured here – folded in quarters) and have had nothing but frustration with the Debbie Bliss baby hat.  My stitch count seems constantly off despite the fact that I count and recount (and recount) like a demon and no dice.  I’m a particular knitter.  One of those annoying ones that have to do everything by the book, so this frustrates me to no end.  I frogged the 8 rows or so I’d finished and set it aside for a time when I’m feeling a little more zen.  I’m also working on a swatch for my knitting class that I went to on Thursday night.  We’re going to make a fair-isle hat which will be cool.  I printed out some graph paper here and am going to make my own patterns.  The squares and x’s the instructor gave us just didn’t seem snazzy enough for me.  I’m going to try to graph some hearts instead.  I’ll post the swatch next time if it looks decent.

More fun in the mail to come!  Have a great weekend everyone!

Pretty Pink Stuff

I love pink & red together!  These are the lovely flowers R. Darling gave me last night when I came home from work.  A little late for Valentine’s Day, but he was out of town on the big day so it was sweet.  I can’t wait to drink my coffee from such a cheerful mug!

The yarn is Rowan’s Handknit Cotton in Sugar for the flower hat I talked about in a previous post (it was backordered so I just got it yesterday).

Tomorrow I start my knitting class at the community college.  I can’t wait!  Though I know how to do many of the things we’re supposed to learn, I’m excited to learn fair-isle work.  Should be challenging and exciting.  Fun knitty times ahead….

Dear Housework Hobgoblins…

Dear Housework Hobgoblins,

Well, you’re not exactly “dear” are you?  I don’t know how you snuck in here last night, me being such a light sleeper and all, but thanks alot for the mess you left.  I see someone had a party in the kitchen and dirtied every dish in the joint.  It took me an hour to do the dishes today!  You probably danced on the counters too.  They looked pretty grubby.  Am I going to find jello shots in the fridge?  And some of you had some kind of sleepover on the couch leaving the slipcover all askew and crap all over the coffee table.  Where do you get off?  This isn’t your personal frat house.  I have better things to do than run around all day trying to pick up after you all the time.  You are seriously cutting into my knitting and reading time.  Just so you know – I’m changing the locks!  Don’t come back.  Ever.

Sick & tired,

Knittymuggins

 P.S.  Despite your every effort to sabotage my “me” time, I’ve managed to finish the crocheted hooded baby afghan I started last week, and casted on for the Debbie Bliss Cable & Moss Stitch Baby Hat in a turquoise fine merino wool yarn from Cascade pictured below.  So step off!

                                                

I might be a real knitter now

SSshhh…. don’t tell R. Darling about the pile of yarn I just got in the mail from WEBS.  Actually, I already told him that I ordered yarn for a couple projects, and he was totally cool with that.  I just kinda left out how much it actually cost, and the teensy bit about how I didn’t really need the two skeins of Alchemy Bamboo in Cherry Tart. 

This is kind of a knitting breakthrough for me.  I mean, the two skeins of Bamboo that I really didn’t need, not the spending more money than I should on yarn.  Maybe I can call myself a real knitter now.  I’m building a stash (granted only a measly 2 hank stash right now), I’m buying yarn because I like it, because it was the right price, because the color spoke to me, because I envisioned a beautiful future for it on my needles and later, on my body.  Is this what it means to be a real knitter?  To love yarn not just because you can make something with it, but because it appeals to you visually, tactilely, sensually?  Have I just fallen down some kind of slippery slope of fiber and now there’s no turning back? 

The brown yarn is Berroco’s Nostalgia in Milk Chocolate and is slated for Kate Gilbert’s Keyhole Top from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits.  I don’t have much experience in substituting yarns, so this will hopefully be an o.k. substitute for Muench’s String of Pearls that the pattern called for.  They have the same gauge and fiber content (approximately) so I think it will work.  The reddish colored yarn is the Alchemy Bamboo yarn in Cherry Tart that I mentioned before, and the pink yarn (looks kind of whitish in the photo) is the same yarn in Evening Pink.  Lovely!  Can’t wait to knit the saucy slip from the staff projects in Interweave with this stuff.  I did love the green color in the sample, but pink is my favorite and the price was so right. 

Can you really meet your true love in first grade?

I never would have imagined it, but I did.

Maybe not right away, but keep reading.  You’ll see.  If you’re prone to cavities you better stop reading now because you’re guaranteed to get a few after exposure to this sweetness!  Yeah, it’s sappy, but I can’t help myself…. I want to tell everybody.  It’s that sweet.

We met for the first time when I was six and he was seven. I don’t remember it, and I’m sure he doesn’t either.  I was the new kid so the teacher probably just marched me up to the front of the class, told everyone my name and called it good.  No feel-good-help-the-new-kid-fit-in PC kind of stuff like they’d do these days.  If you didn’t get beat up the first day, then you fit in fine.

It was the 70’s so he and I had the same haircut. You know, the one where your mom puts a bowl on your head and then cuts around it. My mom called it the “Dorothy Hammill” but I just called it ugly. There we are staring out of our first grade class picture. Me in my hideous plaid jumper with my gap-tooth smile and monkey face, and him in his white fisherman’s sweater looking the most normal out of our whole class. We don’t remember each other, but he claims a roving pack of girls with lipgloss attacked him on a daily basis and he’s pretty sure I might have had something to do with it.

Time passed.  We got older, made it through different elementary schools, middle schools, friends and fads.  Fast forward to freshman year of high school.  He’s dating my best friend.  They don’t have lunch together so he eats lunch with me at our (mine and my best friend’s) locker instead.  Two weeks later, they’ve broken up but we’re still eating lunch together.  Clueless nerd that I am, I don’t wonder about this.  I figure we’re just friends and he maybe feels sorry for me, queen dork of the universe.  Besides, I’m not supposed to think about how cute and sweet he is, right?  I mean, he’s my best friend’s ex!  High school has rules, right?  A few months later he asks me to a dance and I say “no”.  I couldn’t bring myself to go to a dance with someone who was asking out of pity (or so I thought).  Next year he’s gone.  Junior and Senior year he’s back.  But he’s much much cooler than me.  He wears a leather motorcycle jacket and listens to Def Leppard and Motley Crue.  I go as far as the Def, but not much more.  I read, he parties.  I have acne, he has dates.  We don’t really talk anymore but I still have a little crush on him.

10 years later I go to my reunion as promised to my good friend (not my old best friend).  The first night at the social hour I walk in and there he is looking exactly the same as 10 years earlier, minus the leather jacket and mullet.  He’s still cute and still sweet and we talk.  A lot.  Turns out he had a bit of a crush on me way back in freshman year.  Next night his friend convinces him to go the the fancy dinner and dance thingy and I go with my friend too.  I’m flirting with him hard core and we end up making out in the lobby of the hotel after the dance.  I don’t go home with him, but I kind of wish I had.  He makes me promise to come see him the next day before I leave town.  I do, and now almost 6 years together later (2 1/2 of those married), we still feel like we’re on our first date (which wasn’t really a date since he didn’t ask me and we didn’t go together, but that’s beside the point.  We still call it our first date).

Looking back I think we were meant to be together, the times just weren’t right.  But maybe having those memories of our friendship gave us something solid to build on when the stars finally did align themselves in the right place at the right time for us to be together.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone reading (if anyone’s reading!).  Hold out for your soulmate.  You never know who you may find and where or when you may find them.

Hat-trick Update

 Here’s the third hat from the hat-trick experiment I was talking about yesterday.  It’s from the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Book.  Yarn came from Yarnware in Light Blue Baby Cashmerino.  This stuff feels like bunnies, it’s so soft! 

Well, real life beckons…. you know the kind where you can’t sit around and knit all day because the sink is full of dishes and the laundry is overflowing, and you’re supposed to care because you’re an adult.  Isn’t grown-up life wonderful?  At least I can have chocolate for breakfast if I want……  There’s always that.

Hat-Trick

According to Wikipedia, a Hat-trick in sports is associated with succeeding at anything three times in three consecutive attempts.   I guess you could say that I’m setting myself up for a hat knitting hat-trick.  Say that 6 times fast. 

It’s that whole consecutive thing that might be a problem.  Like almost every other knitter I know, I have a little trouble staying focused.  I’ll be plugging away on something, making good progress and something will always arrive to tempt me.  Take the new issue of Interweave Knits  for example.  Can you really expect me to settle for three hats in a row while there is that beautiful keyhole top by Kate Gilbert beckoning from the pages?  I’ve already scoured WEBS for an appropriate substitute for the Muench String of Pearls that the pattern calls for.  Or how about that beautiful green lace nightgown?  I’ve already found the yarn I want for that too.  I can’t turn off the voices.  You know the ones…. they whisper seductively….”You know you want new yarn.  You do.  You’ve already got 10 other projects, but igonore them.  You want me instead.  Why knit another hat when you can run your fingers through my silky skeins?”

But just in case I manage to hold onto some shred of my resolve, here’s pictures of two of the hats that I plan to knit very soon (hopefully consecutively; you know….for the hat-trick). 

The cute pink one with the flower on top is for a friend from an old job who is having a baby girl soon.  She’ll dig the fun and funky flower on top.  It’s so cute I kind of want to knit a big version for myself! I bought the yarn for it from both Yarnmarket (the GGH Samoa for the white flower), and Yarnware (the Rowan Handknit Cotton for the body of the hat and the stem portion).  The pattern came from the Spring 2007 issue of Better Homes and Gardens’ Knit it Magazine.  The other hat, which you can’t see as well, is a pattern from Plymouth yarns for a Cabled Hat with Earflaps.  My MIL saw this pattern at a shop once and really liked it, so I told her I’d knit it for her.  She was supposed to find some yarn she liked, but being as she isn’t nearly as obsessed with yarn as I am, she hasn’t found anything.  She did say she wanted something washable though, and her favorite color is purple.  So I found some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky in Plum on sale at Yarnware and (hopefully) got enough to finish it for her. 

 If I can’t score a hat knitting hat-trick, well, at least I can score me a yarn buying hat-trick!  I’m already two thirds of the way there!  Shhh…. it’ll be our little secret!