Saqqara Shawl and Yarn-Along

With all the excitement of getting my Liebster award post ready for yesterday, I have a bit of a backlog of blog photos.  I can finally go public with finished pictures of my Mayan Spring shawl that I finished last year.  This is a pattern called Saqqara, designed by Melinda Vermeer, a knitting buddy of mine, which I test knit.  It's great for showcasing handspun yarn.

So fun!  These are Melinda's pictures, not mine.  I should take photography lessons from her.  I'm through with shawl knitting for awhile after last year's marathon.  It's practical socks for me.

I've started some new socks for Steve.  These are from a Zauberball that I bought in Seattle last month, and they are knit on size 0 Addi Turbos, a gift from my knitting buddy Joyce, who prefers Magic Loop and long needles.  I like the Addis because they aren't too pointy, which causes problems when I use my right index finger to push the stitches along.  In the past I hated working with size 0's because of that, but these make it go fine.  Just very slow.  80 stitches circumference, so I'll be working on these awhile.  I love the gradual changes in the color.

I finished reading The Matters at Mansfield, by Carrie Bebris, part of a series which has Mr. and Mrs Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame as amateur detectives.  For Austen fanfiction, this is well-written and entertaining although not pitch-perfect.  I felt that the author took too many liberties with Austen's characters to be fully believable.

Also on my reading stack is Socktopus by Alice Yu.  It has some nice sock patterns, most of them more complicated than my plain-Jane tastes.  But I'm giving serious thought to trying to adapt Farmer McGregor to toe-up style.  I think I could do it.

Linking up to the yarn-along so you can see what others are knitting.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

Ooh boy, is there a lot going on in the craft-blogging world!  Not to mention Christmas, grading, worrying about the fiscal cliff, and general end-of-year craziness.  Sew Mama Sew is hosting giveaways this week, which will easily take all your time if you let it.  I'm trying to visit all the fellow Easy Street quilt blogs too.

In quilting, I finished my purple Anita's Arrowheads top yesterday.  I'm calling it "Barney" for now.  It's 68"x85" and I was thinking about donating it to the Cedar Tree auction in the spring, but Quarta wants it for her own bed.  That's quite a bit of purple cleared out of my stash.  Funny thing about purple, all four of my kids went through a stage where it was their favorite color.  The boys quickly grew out of it once they became school age though.  The girls are still big purple fans.  I'm really not, although I can't explain why.  I like it, I just don't like it enough to work with it a lot, I guess.

These are for Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street mystery quilt.  I'm really enjoying the colors I've chosen and look forward to the next step coming out Friday.  I could stick with red, gray and white and be perfectly happy, but there will be aqua and lime green added to the mix soon.

I had some extra white triangles so I cut some greens to make another batch of geese, for transformation into trees.  I'm planning to make another signature quilt for the Cedar Tree auction next spring.

I've been digging into the scrap bin and making some crumbs blocks.  If you've been following, it was a crumbs quilt I donated for last spring's auction, and I really enjoyed the whole process of working on it.  In the blocks above you see remnants of the last several quilts I've pieced.  I just need to make enough tree blocks and wonky star blocks to pull it all together, and they make great leaders/enders projects as I'm working on other piecing.  I'm still putting off machine-quilting Jack's Chain.

In knitting, Wingspan is getting closer to finished, and lookit what fun book I found at the library: His Good Opinion by Nancy Kelley.  This is Pride and Prejudice told from Darcy's point of view.  I'm really enjoying it so far.
Finally, in honor of Sinter Klaas day, here's a story from Holland:  a flash mob in honor of an elderly knitter, Loes Veenstra, who has made over 500 sweaters in her knitting career.  Rotterdam parties in her honor:

Yarn-Along, WIP Wednesday

Work on the purple quilt continues.  Only ten more blocks to piece and 40 more (half of total) to join together.

I have started the Easy Street mystery quilt with Bonnie Hunter.  I don't have enough of any one gray or white for it to be my constant, but I'm going for low-variation, especially in the whites, so it will look nearly solid.  Something about the crud going around this week and the dreary weather makes me want to quilt.

I have a finished shawl to report: this is Citron, #11 in my 12 shawls in 2012 challenge.  Tertia and Quarta both wanted to model it.  I didn't get the lighting quite right for Tertia's shot, but I adjusted it later in photoscape.

So I used a flash when I took the photo with Quarta, but I think it was too much light.  In any case, it was a fun, brainless shawl to knit.  Yarn is 437 yards of KnitPicks shadow laceweight.

There's Citron underneath my final shawl for the year, a Wingspan in my Targhee homespun.  And I'm reading The Legend of Luke by Brian Jacques.  I love the Redwall books!  Linking up to the yarn-along over at Ginny's blog.

I even did a bit of spinning yesterday evening, while watching the Grinch with the girls.  This is hemp.  I've had it in my stash for awhile.  No idea what I'll do with it, but it was time to spin it.  Secundus asked, and I'm pretty sure you could not get high by smoking it, and you'd look pretty stupid trying.

WIP Wednesday

Saturday I finally did it.  My UFO Feathered Star had been loaded onto the Megaquilter frame for a few weeks.  I never had the time or energy to get to it, and I was fearful of the freeform feathers that I was determined to machine quilt on there.  But I worked on it all day, off and on (it's only a wall quilt size) and I got all the feathers done, and I'm really, really happy with them!  Here you can see the feathery whirligig I quilted into the center octagon.

And here is a sample of the background squares and inner border with leaves and vines.  The quilt is being bound now and may even be a finish soon.  I'm so glad I ordered the replacement tracks for the Megaquilter; it's doing its thing very nicely now.  I'm going to try to get Jack's Chain loaded up on there soon.  Now that I can do freeform feathers, I won't be afraid of quilting anymore.  Or at least, I shouldn't.

For the yarn-along, this is my Citron shawl.  I'm starting the final repeat, and it's lots of comforting stockinette stitch.  It will be my 11th in the 12 shawls in 2012 challenge that I am insanely trying to complete.  I finished reading the Mark of Athena (latest in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series) and it was a lot of fun but to tell the truth, most of my reading lately has been grading and work related, or the news over at the Drudge Report.

Randomday

Well, poop.

That was my Facebook status update Wednesday morning.  Some may argue that my usual command of the English language failed me, but I think it's le mot juste.  I've been writing a lengthy post about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in my head all week, but it's still not actually, you know, written.  The reality of four more years of incompetent and misguided leadership is becoming more depressing with each passing day.  But the blog must go on.

Saturday is never long enough for all the randomness that needs to be done on Saturday.  Have you noticed that?

Steve is making lots of applesauce. 

Winesap apples are my very favorite kind.  I thought for a few years that Arkansas Black might take their place, but the Arkansas Black apples are almost too crispy/starchy.  But it's a close competition.

My students all had their final exam on Thursday.  I've graded all of them, but there are still a bunch of other assignments to get through before turning in the grades.  Latin bloopers provide some much-needed comic relief in a week like this.  For example: the 7th grader who translated "adhibenda est in jocando moderatio" as "be moderate in your jocking."  Twice.  And the other 7th grader who left an entire portion of the vocabulary section blank.

I quilted an entire Feathered Star wallhanging today on my Megaquilter.  I did all the feathers freehand, and I am really pleased with how it turned out.  Pictures of that will have to wait until another day though.

Here is shawl #10 in my 12 shawls in 2012 challenge.  Made with some of my handspun from a batt from Butterfly Girl Designs in the "Mardi Gras" colorway.  It is "Mayan Spring" (with the presumption that we will still be here after the Mayan calendar thing, which I'm not so sure about now, but anyway).  It has been turned over to the designer, who asked that she not be named and the shawl not be pictured in full until she has a chance to submit the pattern for publication.  I listed it in the Ravelry group with this picture and a brief description of the circumstances, and the post is gathering lots of "disagree" votes.  Don't you just love the cattiness of some knitters?  I'm going to need to hide the disagree button again.  I was just getting tough enough to handle seeing it in the political groups... but this is the shawl knitting group!

I'm going to bed to finish reading The Mark of Athena.

WIP Wednesday

Remember Works-in-progress Wednesdays?  I barely do.  What is it about this school year that has made it nearly impossible to free time up for quilting?  Actual work on my sewing machine is at a complete standstill other than emergency mending jobs.  My creative corner is a MESS!  But as something of a consolation, I have been doing some handwork and knitting while watching TV some evenings.  I'm binding the Log Cabin quilt -- I only have two partial sides and one corner to turn.  And then a label.

I've been working on a test knit project -- using this handspun from a few years back.  It will be another shawl for my 12 in 2012 challenge, but I can't take a picture of the finished product.  Besides, it's only half done.  The yarn is from a 4-ounce batt by Butterfly Girl Designs, called "Mardi Gras."  It's always fun to work with handspun.

And I started a new shawl, a Citron in some red Knit Picks Shadow.  I decided after the Camping shawl that I needed a break from the lace for the rest of the year!  As for what I'm reading (for Ginny's yarn-along) I'm mostly finished with Mossflower and borrowing the Mark of Athena from a friend.

Finished Shawl! Deep Water Dreamer

I finished blocking my 9th shawl in 2012.  I'm calling it Deep Water Dreamer after an Eric Bogle song that came to mind as I was unpinning it.   I'd started it back in August, actually at Family Camp.  It's the half-circle variation of the "Camping" Pi shawl in honor of Elizabeth Zimmerman's 100th birthday.  I was thinking of calling it Indian Summer since that's the time of year I finally finished it, but then I thought of the color of the yarn and cold deep water that you might see if you went camping this time of year.

I experimented with draping it over various foliage, but you can't really see the lace pattern as well as I'd like. 

It shows up better in the blocking picture.  The yarn was variegated in spots that matched rather nicely with the changes in the pattern.  I didn't actually plan it that way, but it looks rather nice.  This used up about 600 yards of my handspun Wensleydale and has a radius of 25".  I'm ready to knit some non-lace projects now.

Here's the detail of the little waves and how fussy it was to block.

Yarn-Along with Martin

I'm linking up to Ginny's Yarn-along today.  This is my September shawl in the 12-shawls-in-2012 challenge.  It's the EZ 100th Anniversary Camping Half-Circle shawl, and it's a free pattern in honor of the late Elizabeth Zimmerman.  It's not really called EZ because it's easy, or anything!  I'm using my handspun Wensleydale light fingering/ wannabe laceweight, and right now it looks like nothing great.  Maybe it will be pretty when blocked.  That's the thing with lace knitting, it's a leap of faith that you didn't make a mistake and that it will be gorgeous when blocked.  I'm in the "willow leaves" next-to-last repeat and the rows are more than 300 stitches long right now, but still haven't used up my first ball of yarn.  I have lots and lots of willow leaves to go.

I'm trying to finish up Martin the Warrior, the second book (if you count them chronologically) in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques.  I reviewed the first, Lord Brocktree, a few months ago.  Quarta and Daniel and I were doing the great Redwall race, but Quarta has finally kicked in and during the last weeks of summer vacation, she sped through several books and is now all the way up to Rakkety Tam.  Maybe I can review Martin in a few days.  I think Daniel has forfeited by going off to college, but it's mission accomplished in getting Quarta hooked!

No WIP Wednesday today because the start of school has meant no time or energy for quilting for awhile, but I did photograph the shawl on the Chinese Lanterns quilt on my bed.

Summer Flies

It is a well-known fact that residents of the Pacific Northwest are prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of depression induced by low light levels and constant rainfall.  Perhaps less well-known is the fact that teachers in the Pacific Northwest get their version of this a few months early, and it has nothing to do with low light levels and everything to do with the onslaught of the school year.

Summer Flies is my 8th in the 12-shawls-in-2012 challenge.  It's a free pattern, I knit it in Dream in Color Smooshy in the shade "Into the Mystic."  I did somewhat intend it as a melancholy metaphor for my anticipated state of mind upon finishing it.  This state of mind has in fact come to pass as the start of school is imminent and my physical, mental and emotional fortitude for dealing with it is nowhere to be found.  I posed it with the hydrangea bush in the front yard because the yarn is the exact shade of hydrangeas in bloom, but even here I noticed that most of the flowers have faded.  Only two on the whole bush had their original color still.  One was blue, and one was purple.

Here's the purple one.  The yarn has elements of both, just like the bush, which is kind of neat. 

But most of the flowers are this yellowish-green now; not a bad color by any means, but not what you expect from a hydrangea in the summer.  I keep wondering where the summer has gone.  Or even, What Summer?  There were two days when it got well into the 90's, and that's it.  Mostly it's been in the 70's and this morning, it was definitely chilly.

Yesterday was Tertia's back-to-school open house, Steve and Peter are due to get back from their long road trip any minute now, and next week will be the start of teacher training for Cedar Tree.  Please, someone, shoot me now  find a ringer who can do all the back-to-school stuff for me while I go looking for summer?

Finished Shawl - Lady MacBeth

Isn't this ethereally lovely?  I've been working on it since March.  This is my 7th shawl in the 12 shawls in 2012 challenge, Susanna IC's Rose Lace Stole.  I'm calling it "Black Roses" or "Lady MacBeth." 

Here's why.  After three soaks in water with vinegar added, it's safe to wear.  I wore it today!  It might leave a slight pinkish glow on my skin, and I'm not trying it over a white blouse.  But it's finished!

 It has beads, but it's really hard to see them.  Imagine how hard it was to put them on.  I'm really not sure I'll ever do beads again.  But!  It's 100% cashmere, from a reclaimed unravelled thrift store sweater, dyed with Wilton's cake decorating gels, it used up about 1000 yards of the yarn, 22"x70", and earns me some kind of knitting brownie points.  Maybe even a merit badge.

I loved how it fluttered in the breeze outside.

In the knitting Olympics, a setback today: I realized my gauge was consistently 4.5 stitches per inch when the pattern was 5 per inch, and this made the circumference of the garment too big, even for someone who grew up in the '80's.  I mean, the recipient is a size larger than I am, but not 3 sizes larger.  So I ripped back to the beginning and cast on a smaller size.  I'm almost caught up with where I was after 2 days of knitting.  Does this count as a false start in the Sweater Triathlon?

Finished Color Affection

My finished shawl for June is Color Affection.  I really like this pattern by Veera Valimaki, and almost every single one of the thousands of examples on Ravelry.  I don't believe it's possible to have an ugly color combination for this shawl.  And it's big... 93 inches long, and an estimated 900 yards of yarn!  I kept my New Year's resolution not to buy any new yarn until I had knitted my stash down a little bit; the green and blue yarns are both reclaimed from thrift store sweaters (and have both featured in fair-isle sweaters I've knit in the past), and the charcoal is alpaca that I purchased at an estate sale last year (and used in my previous shawl of the 12-in-12 challenge).  I have actually worn this one already, even before the ends were sewn in. Just the thing for stylishly keeping warm when it's still in the low 60's and raining at the end of June!

The bright flowers are rose campion, and you can see a little Jupiter's beard at the right of the top photo.  We like flowers that reseed themselves, take care of themselves, and still look pretty!  In fact, our gardening philosophy could pretty much be summed up as "turn your weeds into assets."

At Starbucks last night I cast on for a new shawl, Summer Flies, and I'm still slogging along on Lady MacBeth, but no pictures of either for the yarn-along.  I've also tentatively chosen a pattern for my blue handpun Wensleydale, but I really shouldn't have more than 2 shawls going at once, don't you think?

Source: ebooknetworking.net via Katherine on Pinterest

Speaking of Jupiter, here's one of the books I'm reading while working on several epic knitting (and soon to be spinning) projects.  I highly recommend it.  Steve and I enjoy reading bedtime stories, and since we both love history, this is perfect.  The one of us least likely to fall asleep while reading (usually me, although not always... I come up with some pretty funny word substitutions when I'm sleep-reading) reads aloud to the other, and we usually make it through a chapter -- fortunately in this book, they're short.  The book is organized very nicely, with duelling timelines at the end of each chapter so you can review what the Egyptians were doing while the Assyrians were doing something else.

The most recent chapter, "Conquest and Tyranny," features Greece, Sparta vs. Athens.  In light of my recent blog posts, I was highly entertained the other night to read about the transition of the first kings in Athens (archons) into annually elected rulers.  The practice was more of an aristocracy or oligarchy than democracy, though:

"The first annual archon," Eusebius writes, "was Creon, in the year of the 24th Olympiad" -- in other words, 684 B.C. ...

In 632, though, the seams of the semi-democratic practice gaped wide open.  An Olympic champion named Cylon (he shows up in Eusebius's lists as the winner of the diaulos, or "double-race," the 400-metre foot race, in the Olympic Games eight years previously) made a bid to turn the archonship into something else.

"Cylon," Thucydides writes, "was inquiring at Delphi when he was told by the god to seize the Acropolis of Athens on the grand festival of Zeus." ...Cylon ... decided that the "grand festival of Zeus" must refer to the upcoming Olympic Games.  What more appropriate time for an Olympic victor to seize power?  And so he ... occupied the Acropolis, announcing "the intention of making himself tyrant."

...But Cylon had chosen the wrong "grand festival of Zeus."  The oracle had apparently been talking about a later festival which took place well outside the city ... Rather than rolling over, the Athenians grew indignant."
                       - The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer, pp. 425-426

 And it continues, describing yet another power-grab that did not end well for its instigator.

Tuesday Spinning Report

It has been awhile since I did any serious spinning.  I finally powered through and finished my 8 ounces of Wensleydale.  I bought this back when Woodland Woolworks was going out of business, and I dyed it with Wilton's cake decorating gel "Delphinium" during one of the rest days of last year's Tour de Fleece.  I started spinning it sometime this year, I forget exactly when, but it was really hit-or-miss for a couple of months whether I'd even get any spinning in at all.  Now I'm gearing up for the 2012 Tour de Fleece, which starts June 30.  I've got a fairly massive amount of spinning to do, and then will come the Ravelympics, when I'll try to knit it all up.  But I needed to clear up the bobbins on my wheel first.

So I plied it all up.  Amazing how fast plying goes in comparison to spinning!  This is (my estimation) 816 yards of heavy laceweight or light fingering.  Wensleydale is a long-fibered wool, and it's very lustrous.  I used similar dyes to color the BFL that eventually became my Oslo Walk shawl, but it never posed for photos quite so well.  You can see how the color ranges from true blue to purple. This yarn will probably eventually become another shawl-that-I-never-wear. 

Quarta wanted to help with a silly pose.  Wasn't that thoughtful?

WIP Wednesday and Yarn Along - Jack's Chain edition

Jack's Chain is a completed quilt top now!  I overcalculated the number of blocks needed and have enough extra for a small baby quilt too.

It will be interesting to figure out an appropriate quilting pattern and then the binding will be like binding a double wedding ring, but those are both in the future.  Also in the future is a big "how-to" construction post, because I kind of would like to record that for posterity.  This is an obscure pattern but it deserves more popularity.  And it totally is not that hard and doesn't require any special construction techniques other than set-in seams (and a lot of them).  There are always some spots where the points don't perfectly meet, but a good pressing makes it lie flat.

I'm working on the binding of the Framed-In quilt.  This is the first time I've used a vintage sheet for a backing and it went pretty well.  The higher thread count does mean it's a little harder to stitch down the binding.  I should probably change to a finer needle than I'm using.

In knitting, I've succumbed to the Color Affection virus going around.  I'm using various yarns that have been in my stash for awhile; both of these are reclaimed from thrift-store sweaters I unraveled, and the third color will be more of the alpaca from my Traveling Companion shawl.  Henle Latin book 1 is my reading material for the week because I am still in the midst of all the year-end craziness.  This is the text I use for 6th and 7th grade.  Final exams this week!

Projects:

Jack's Chain Quilt - finished top!

Framed In Quilt - binding

What will be my next quilt project? I'm honestly not sure.

Black Roses Stole - maybe 55% done 

knitting cotton bath rug - no progress

knitting argyle-fest - no progress

spinning - working on blue laceweight Wensleydale - Halfway through another bobbin

Linking up to Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Small Things for the Yarn-Along.

Finished Traveling Companion Shawl

My 5th shawl in the 12 shawls in 2012 Ravelry challenge is finished: The Traveling Companion Shawl.

Quarta helped me model it.  550 yards of vintage Indiecita Alpaca in fingering weight.  It counts as the first "large" shawl of over 500 yards, of two total required for the challenge.  Not that there is a prize, but I'm a play-by-the-rules kind of girl.  And then there is the fact that I don't wear shawls much, but we don't worry about that.  Because the knitting is the fun part.  Yay!

And here is Quarta's latest creation: an entirely edible re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party.  There were audible gasps of amazement from the other 4th graders when I carried it into her classroom.  She did it all herself; I only helped get the brownies out of the pans and I came up with the idea of cutting a slot in the Twizzlers to hold the Necco wafer heads.  I think there was some concern that it would need to be refrigerated over the weekend before it's consumed, but I figure frosting from a can probably has enough preservatives in it, don't you?

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

Considering the fact that this is the most stressful time of year for a teacher, and that I have a son graduating in just a few weeks (why yes, he was just named valedictorian yesterday, and yes, I'm just a little proud!), the WIPs have been rolling along rather nicely.  This is Jack's Chain, just past the halfway point.  It's all about a billion little set-in seams from this point on, so smooth sailing.

The Framed-In Quilt came off the machine yesterday.  It just needs a binding and label.  This was my UFO for the month of May.

My Traveling Companion shawl (made from estate sale fingering weight alpaca) is finished and blocking on the guestroom bed.  It will need its own post in a day or two, but I was excited to finish it!  Debating whether/when to start a Color Affection, or just continue with Lady MacBeth.

I started spinning more of my blue hand-dyed Wensleydale yesterday, and I made a discovery:  if you start spinning using the Scotch Tension set-up and realize partway in that you really wanted the double-drive set-up instead, you can't switch midway through the bobbin, because they wind on in different directions.  I've been spinning almost 10 years and didn't know that.  But then, I never claimed to be a technical spinner.

And I'm supposed to say what I'm reading, but right now it's mainly grading papers.  Boring!

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced and Ginny's Yarn-Along today.  There's also this amazing collection of giveaways going on at Sew Mama Sew, (I was too busy to come up with something for that this time around, but that doesn't stop me from entering!) and there is the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side, in which I do have a quilt entered (#265, just in case you wanted to vote for it).