Be*mused

Happy Easter!

We're dashing out of town to spend Easter with family...a much needed change of pace this week!  Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday weekend.

Barnum & Bailey

It's been a three ring circus around here the past week and as a result, I've been spinning my wheels a bit.  In the past 4 days, we've had 8 house showings, an atmosphere not conducive to digging into a new project.  But I'm itching to do just that! 

On the weekend, I satisfied myself by finishing the thumb on poor Latvian mitten #2, who'd been languishing in the bottom of the knitting basket.  This mitten blocked out to be a perfect fit and now I'm questioning my plan to go up a needle size to #1 dpns on the next ones.  Some new Finullgarn skeins arrived yesterday, including some duplicate colors to knit mates for my so-far-single mittens.  This afternoon I plan to sketch out the next design, if I can only put my hands on my colored pencils, which apparently were shoved under a chair or bed at an impending showing (staging!) since they don't seem to be in the usual spot(s). 

I've been resisting the siren call of quilting because of its mess factor while showing the house but have been drooling over some recent work on the blogs.  Sarah posted a mouth-watering selection of quilts last week, several of which got my creative juices flowing, especially (but not exclusively) the Odette Tolksdorf quilt and Sarah's in-progess piece from her workshop.  And call me *nearly insane* but I've loved the Salinda Rupp quilt for years and have jealously been following several bloggers as they attempt to replicate it.  Yesterday found me veering off the beaten track to fondle some new fabrics at my local quilt shop, which I've carefully avoided since the holidays.  Just as I entered, my cell phone rang...showing in an hour!...and I had to dash home to turn on lights during the dark, dreary afternoon.

Nordic Knit Accessories
ISBN4-529-04140-9   

So today I'm washing and ironing fabric (of course there was time enough to purchase a few quick half yard cuts) and playing with new Finullgarn combos and mitten graphs.  I found this (forgotten) book while sorting my bookshelves last week and while small, it has some nice graphs in it.  I picked it up in Japan while visiting Molly two years ago, but it was new then and I'm pretty sure it's still available.  A few sneak peeks:

Well, this post has been a bit scattered, not unlike my recent days.  Here's hoping things fall into place soon around here!

The never-ending mitten

I was starting to think that this mitten might never get done.  Last night, however, I finally got the ends woven in and blocked it before heading to bed.  There's nothing nicer than to start the day admiring your handwork from the evening before.  (Because we all know how many times it doesn't look as good as we remembered it when we put it down!) 

This piece is another version of my picot-edged, 72 stitch on #0 Inox dpns Latvian mittens.  Happily, I seem to have found my rhythm and this one is almost identical in size to its twin, my last blue & white mitten.  From reading the blogs, it seems that knitters often have a problem getting the first pair to match, size wise, which was one of the reasons I decided to knit a few singles first.  That and of course, I couldn't wait to try a bunch of different pattern and color combos.

In choosing my patterns, I've tried to vary them to learn something new on each project.  This time, my cuff motif was pretty large, repeating 5 times around the circumference.  I centered the pattern so that almost three flowers would be featured on the back of the mitten and two on the inside.  (See photos above.)  I think it worked pretty well. 

What didn't work well were several attempts to pair a pattern for the hand with the busy cuff.  I tried (and frogged) several designs in different color combinations before settling on this intertwining graph.  Its simple repeat in the maroon and raspberry colors allowed the cuff design to shine.  I laugh as I type *simple*, because I also had to frog the thumb once when I realized I had messed up the pattern. 

I'm planning one more trial mitten, on size #1 dpns.  I knit pretty tightly and am wondering if just one size up will allow a bit more room in the fit.  I don't want them loose, but I've had to block these a bit to get a comfortable fit and I don't want to add stitches to my cast on number, as 72 is *perfect*.  Why?  Because it's divisible by 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18 and 24, all common numbers of repeats in cuff patterns, which allows one to just plug them in without fiddling to figure out how to integrate designs where the match abruptly stops.  I'm lazy like that.

A few people wondered where I'd been last week.  I had mentioned that we relisted our house but I didn't add that we hired a new realtor, one who takes a decidedly pro-active approach to sales.  Translation: staging.  Not extreme, but we were here such a short time that we hadn't furnished this house as we had planned, and have been using a mish-mash of family pieces that desperately need to be replaced.  I couldn't see past it, but over several days we added some accent pieces and mostly just changed things around, so much so that I almost hate to leave the place now.  I thought I had a pretty good eye but I learned some things last week and was pretty tuckered out by the time we finished up.  The house finally listed on Thursday.  Friday, at 9:00 am, we had our first showing.  When I returned to the house after the prospective buyers had left, I found this note on the kitchen counter:

Congratulations!!  You have even a bigger stash than I do!!  Happy quilting!!
Signed:  Another quilter

Smocking, too

My first effort, a toddler Christmas dress.

I had been wondering when smocking was going to make its appearance on the blogs and sure enough, Alicia has recently fallen under its spell.  When Molly was little, I had a friend who taught hand smocking so of course, I jumped right in. 

I revisited the same pattern on a later Easter dress.

Considering how impressive hand smocking looks, it's actually a very simple craft, something akin to counted cross stitch.  After a couple of easy projects, I invested in a pleater, which gathers fabric into even pleats as you feed it through multiple threaded needles.  Very quick and precise, providing the perfect ground for smocking.  (I was surprised at the prices of pleaters while looking for a link...three times the price I paid *way back when*.)  You don't need to purchase a pleater, however.  Most shops that carry smocking supplies will pleat a fabric piece for a small price.

This type of pinafore is a perfect first project because it will showcase even a simple beginner smocking design and its construction is uncomplicated.  Now's the time to try it, with summer just around the corner!  (Tell me that summer is just around the corner...please.)

Sadly, by some weird quirk of nature, I couldn't continue smocking.  Despite being able to quilt, knit, cross stitch and crochet with abandon, something in the repetitive nature of smocking caused repeated flareups of tendonitis in my wrist and I sold my pleater after several years of use.  If I hadn't, it probably would've gotten carted out of here this week.  Our house was relisted yesterday and I've been totally engaged in yet more cleaning out.  What I've parted with would have seemed unimaginable just months ago but is feeling wonderful today.  I'm exhausted from it, physically and mentally, but with each boxful that I load in the back of the car, I remind myself that that's one less to unpack in Chicago.  It's made me even more excited about the move.  I did not, however, get rid of any of Molly's smocked dresses.  There is a limit.

This was my favorite of all of the dresses I made for her, maybe because it was different in tone from the cupcake-y dresses that I'd see in the children's shops.  I had a difficult time getting a nice photo of it in this winter week light, so I did a little digging while I was in the photo closet and found a better shot.  Really, how did I think I could beat this one?

The Christmas card photo, 1988

Why I'm getting a late start this morning

I could not put this down last night.  I have no idea what is coming next as this is the first mitten I've started that wasn't completely planned out first.  Bold move for me!  Sometime today when I'm taking a break from *you know what* (see last post), I'll have to consider my design options for the hand.  All decisions must be made, however, before Project Runway comes on tonight.

It's bugging me that the greens in this shot are not correct, despite a bit of tweaking on my part.  They're much warmer, grassy hues which I'll try to capture more accurately in the final mitten photo.  Note to self:  next house, more natural light!

Scissorhands

Two weeks ago, we had some painting done in a spare bedroom which necessitated moving all of my art supplies, paperarts/stamp materials and large collection of quilting & handcraft books/magazines down the hall to my sewing room.  Just writing that sentence foreshadows the problem.  With so much free space in this house, I've spread out all over and with everything accumulated in one room, it was quite a revelation.  I say *everything*, yet yarns and knitting books/materials are downstairs in the computer room.  Ai-yi-yi.  Seeing it all there together...oh, and all of the art supplies were actually stacked in the adjacent bathroom...I had flash forwards to having to unpack all of this stuff in the next house, which will be decidedly smaller.

I can hear you all thinking, "Is this a republished post from last year?  Didn't she do all this before she put the house up for sale in June?"   That was then, this is now.  That was nibbling, though it didn't feel like it at the time.  This is serious editing.  Painful, even.  Three things prompted it.

• Seeing everything piled together in a space that's probably still larger than what I'll have in the next place.  (And thinking about unpacking it all when I get there.  Ugh.)
• Handing M a fistful of Goodwill receipts while he was doing the taxes last week.  When he asked me what was in all of the ennumerated bags & boxes I donated, I literally couldn't think of one thing.
• An occasional viewer of Oprah, I caught a recent episode in which organization expert Peter Walsh was counseling a poor woman whose kitchen was stuffed with cookbooks and supplies, many of which she had never used.  When she told him she always intended to do more serious baking, he said something to the effect of  'This is not who you are but who you want to be.' 

Wow, that last one really struck a chord with this former art teacher.  I've accumulated so many supplies and references for disparate art & handcraft interests that I'm drowning here.  I took a hard look at my real passions...the ones I actually practice and enjoy...and am now trying to put the blinders on to all of these competing endeavors which tempt my time and expenditures.

So that's where I've been the last week.  Interviewing realtors, tidying up and ruthlessly editing my supplies.  It's not easy but feels great.  One thing I'll share is that I've been cutting out favorite quilt photos from numerous saved sources...calendars, magazines and, *yikes*, even some books. I had tons (almost literally) of reference materials that I've been hauling around from house to house, taking up shelf space, for the sake of a few precious photos and I finally made the bold decision to extract them.  In one triumph, 16" of space was cleared when I went through my 20 year collection of Quilt Engagement Calendars, clipping out my favorite quilts.  A hefty 2" stack resulted, but now my faves are all in one place and free to be pinned up on a bulletin board for quick reference or inspiration.

Of course, that got all of my quilting juices flowing again, but since we're *reintroducing* the house to the market on Monday, I'm tamping down such inclinations in the interest of the staging efforts of our new realtor.  Not for long, though.  And a new mitten is in the works.  Back sooner than later...promise!

Three down

Three mittens down and more lessons learned.  I had high hopes for this one but I'm feeling kind of *meh* about it.  One positive...I wanted to center the design on the body of the mitten, aiming to position the top motif so that the white outline lined up with the decreases that form the top point.  Voila, it worked!   

I've been admiring the many blue and white mittens over on Ravelry, but as pretty as it is, I found this bold design a bit tedious to knit.  Being so large, I never did quite memorize the chart, requiring constant referral.  And despite my intent to shorten the length (as compared to my previous two) it is exactly the same.  Here's why.

I chose this floral border design for the cuff and because it was a more delicate than the design on the hand portion, I wanted to give it some visual weight by offsetting it with some solid blue.  To my eye, this ended up working to the opposite effect, emphasizing its airy quality.  I had planned to start it where the picot edging was attached, but knitted 6 more rows of blue at the last minute.  Instead of going with gut instinct, I caved to caution and paid the price.

The border design is pretty and simple to knit but I don't think it holds its own against the design on the hand and proabably would have been more suited to be paired with a smaller, overall motif.  This mitten needed a bolder cuff.  Or maybe I've just been looking at it too long. 

In any case, my Latvian mitten project is amusing me while we put the finishing touches on the house (again.)  They're easy to pick up & put down and are providing me some practice in two color knitting.  I still haven't developed anything resembling a smooth rhythm, though I'm more and more relaxed as I check off the rows.  I still have lots to learn...on to number four. 

The party's over

My relaxing 4 week reprieve from showing the house is coming to an end.  And a bit of panic has set in this week, as I'm trying to bring it back to the spiffy condition in which I had it last summer.  Although I'd kept it neat through the fall, I had mostly cleaned with a lick & a promise through our busy travel months and the holidays.  Soon we'll be interviewing new realtors and probably holding open houses so this week is dedicated to serious cleaning...orange oiling all of the woodwork, shine coating the kitchen floor, cleaning blinds and organizing closets.  The good news is that we have several reasons to believe that the house will sell this spring so maybe soon I'll be out of this limbo.

This is how I left my *spot* last night when I finally went to bed.  I'm dying to cast on a new mitten, but had to get the orange one off the needles first.  The 6" Inox #0 dpns are my absolute favorites for these mittens, so I am waiting for an order of several more sets so that I can be knitting new designs while still working on companions for completed ones.  The needles are sturdy but coated so they're not at all slippery and they're quite inexpensive, less than $4 a set. 

Last Saturday, I spent the afternoon at a Ravelry meetup of Indiana knitters.  Cindra had given me a heads up on it, as I hadn't joined that group (seeing as how I'm on my way out of here, eventually) and it couldn't have been more fun. There was quite a turnout of knitters from far & wide and although I didn't get to meet everyone, the ones I met were all knitting such interesting projects!  It was quickly apparent that I need to get out more because I hardly knitted a stitch and gabbed for several hours straight.  If you're registered at Ravelry, I'd highly recommend joining a group from your geographic area.  If our meetup was any indication, you'll meet some lovely, like-minded people.

Since I often marvel about it being such a small world, I have to share this.  At the meetup, Cindra & I were talking with a younger knitter about her project and Cindra asked where she had purchased her pattern.  From that simple question and her answer, 'a shop in Maine', conversation evolved about where we were from originally to the astonishing realization that her mother and I graduated from high school together....were possibly in the same homeroom!  Now that's a small world.  You have to admit.

Gray, gray, go away

When the weather is wet and gloomy and the skies are dark and gray, sometimes you have to import your own bit of sunshine!  Mine arrived yesterday from Nordic Fiber Arts.  I'm having so much fun with the mittens that I ordered more Finullgarn colors to play around with, complementing the more basic selection that I started with.  This should keep me busy for a while.

I've been the grateful recipient of a number of *You Make My Day* awards this week.  What a nice way to celebrate my blogiversary! Thank you, Lisa, LaurieG and KT.  Since I could never possibly whittle my favorites to a list of ten, instead of passing this award along, I'll use the opportunity to link to a few recent blog finds that might make your day.

• Kathryn Ivy, a wonderful blog, mostly knitting but not exclusively.  Great photos and meticulous documentation of a variety of projects, some designed by the authors.  Nice list of free tutorials in the left sidebar...check out the mushrooms.  (Here are some made by a reader.)
• Susan B. Anderson is the blog and the name of the author of Itty Bitty Hats.  Her work is lovely and her posts are always bright and entertaining.  My favorite recent post was about her young daughter and a children's book about knitting.  I think you'd enjoy it.
• Pat's Knitting and Quilting is a treasure trove of wonderful work.  (This little Norse pullover!!)  Unfortunately, Pat's recovering from a shoulder injury so she's not posting as regularly, but I'm sure you could find plenty to look at in her archives.
• I know I've mentioned Kathy & Sarah before and many of you probably already read it, but there's always something inspiring on the quilt front over at Material Obsession.  This post alone has me itching to dig through the stash and start something new. 
• And finally, when I need a blast of color and inspiration, I love to visit iHanna.  You never quite know what she'll be up to over there, but it often shakes me out of my chair at the computer to go make something! 

If you want to chase away your gray skies this weekend, this post of Hanna's would be a good start.

Making progress

What a week.  Between babying my newly-finicky computer, trying to learn the ins & outs of my new camera and hosting painters in the house, it's taken me a few days longer to get this post together than planned, but here I am, finally.  With a finished mitten...ta-da!  The good news?  It's so pretty...I could look at it all day.  The bad?  It doesn't fit as I'd like, but it's pretty close.  Close enough that I've made some adjustments to my proportions and have started on another.

 

The three main fit problems on the black mitten all are related to the thumb area.  First, Latvian mittens are knit as a tube...very easy, little shaping necessary...but the thumbs are knitted in without gussets.  Therefore, when planning the width of *the tube*, consideration needs to be given to the measurement across the palm and the lower thumb joint, not just the palm.  I wish I could illustrate the slight stress at that area but the mitten's too dark to capture the snugness there.  Suffice it to say, it's wearable, but uncomfortably tight across the lower hand at the lower thumb.  The black mitten was knitted on 66 stitches, size #0 dpns with Finullgarn yarn.  On my new mitten, I changed the number of stitches to 72, just 6 more, but you should be able to see the difference in the photo above.

The second thumb problem was that I inserted it too high for my taste.  I didn't want the cuff to extend quite so long on my arm but when I was deciding where to place the thumb opening, I opted to put it at a natural break in the pattern in a one-color row.  Again, it's hard to illustrate on the dark mitten so in the above photo, I've inserted a knitting needle at its base.  The thumb opening is 6 rows lower on the new mitten (closer to the cuff.)  Problem #3 is minor, but worth mentioning.  The actual thumb is a little snug, too.  I used a 13 stitch opening with 2 stitches picked up on each end (13+2+13+2) but on my new mitten, I put 15 stitches on hold.  The carried yarn on the backside of the patterning adds to mitten's thickness, which because of its relative small size, impacts the thumb area more so.

One positive surprise in these mittens, however, is the comfortable fit of the thumb considering the lack of a gusset.  Aside from my sizing issues, the addition of those picked-up side stitches on the thumb (which are knitted together after a few rows) add to its shaping and I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice it looks and feels.  When photographed, these thumbs look flat and kind of primitive, but not so on the hand.

 

So, does my new mitten look familiar?  The piece on the right was my initial effort in this type of knitting when I plunged into this in December.  Of course, I unwittingly chose one of the more difficult patterns...5 colors and many 3-color rows.  Additionally, I had been so confused by the many options in the Upitis book that I decided to just pick a pattern, cast on and see what developed.  This particular pattern called for an 84 stitch cast-on, which of course, was huge for my hand, but I was having fun with watching the pattern develop so I forged on. 

After knitting the black mitten, I decided to reformat the design to eliminate 3-color rows (best left for more experienced knitters...maybe next pair!) and chose a different red/white pattern for the wrist which would look better, visually, on my smaller mitten.  I have lots of tips for how to switch out designs and how to figure that math so that patterns repeat around the mitten and don't come to a dead stop, but I don't know how many of you would be interested in that.  If you are, let me know and I'll write about it. 

I still can't believe how long it took me to try these mittens.  They look intimidating but if you're willing to go through a little trial and error, they're really pretty simple and give you a lot of creative bang for your time and effort.  If they've been on your *someday* list, don't deny yourself the fun!  I can hardly put them down for wanting to see what a few more rows will look like.

The weather here in the heartland over the past few days has been downright frightening. Changing from moment to moment, it's dark/it's sunny, it's warm/it's freezing, it's pouring rain, pounding, pounding against the windows/it's suddenly as still as can be.  I know it's been like this for many in the US in recent days.  I hope that you all are safe and sound as this system takes its toll across the country this week.