Alpaca Snugglefest

This week Dug and I are on vacation, going to visit his family in Illinois, and we decided to leave a day early and go exploring. WHY LOOK, we just stumbled upon this alpaca farm! (Okay, so we had to drive 17 miles out of our way down a gravel road through complicated twists and turns, so it may have been SLIGHTLY premeditated, but that's okay.)
Mid-Missouri Alpacas is a division of Binder's Hilltop Apple and Berry Farm, located in Mexico, MO. Dug and I picked our own apples, cuddled some alpacas and bought us some ho-made apple butter. And some alpaca roving. (Yes, Jennifer, I got you a present.)
HUG THEM ALPACAS! HUG THEM! Here I am hugging a five day old alpaca - and you can see by my expression that I am laughing that horrid cave-man laugh that comes out of me whenever I've regressed to three years old. Huuuuh huuuuh huuuuuh! Mommy alpaca was chatting away at me and sniffing her baby's butt. What a good mommy!

The best thing about this trip (well, after all the alpaca snuggling we did) was that when we walked in the door, Sandy Binder greeted us and we had the Where Are You From conversation in which I told her we had come to visit because I am a spinner, and she said, "OH, look at my SPINNING WHEEL!" and whipped the cover off her Majacraft Little Gem. "Why that's a Majacraft Little Gem!" I exclaimed. Then she said the magic words, "Would you like to try it?" I was in the chair before she finished the question. I have been reading and reading and reading about Majacraft wheels, because they are freaking cool, and almost passed out from happiness at finally getting to try one. I had a big scare when I couldn't make it go, but then she realized that it was set up for plying, not spinning, and once she fixed it I spun and spun! I think she'd have let me spin all day, or perhaps forever, working on her big project for her, but I mustered up enough willpower to make myself stop. I LOVE the Majacraft wheel. It was so smooth, so fast, so responsive. Dug is very lucky that she didn't have any for sale in the shop or we'd have been suddenly very poor and sleeping in the truck tonight instead of in this comfy hotel.

Speaking of which, I probably won't be spending any more of our vacation sitting around in hotels with free wifi, so I might as well make this a longer update and share some stuff I hadn't got around to yet. I finished my Hedgerow Socks by Jane Cochran:
These are very comfy, knit from Knitpicks "Gloss" sock yarn (I think the color is called "Cosmo") which is 70% wool and 30% silk, and crazy affordable. I don't know if it counts as a "designer" yarn, but it is purple and soft and I would buy it again. (But in a different color, because I already knit this one.)

Also, I want the book Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. Those of you who are Dug will note that at www.knitpicks.com it costs $7.00 less than everywhere else and that it is already in my shopping cart and my birthday is soon.

Also, a few days ago, Dug took this picture of my computer desk. It's sad, isn't it? The monitor isn't even ON, and everything is buried in knitting.
You'll see here that I've started swatching for the Nuclear Pumpkin sweater. Dug and I have discussed this at length and decided that, while the colors are not necessarily girly, they are not terribly masculine, either. So I get to keep the NP for myself (woo!) and have promised to make Dug a sweater in a more solid, neutral gray. I don't HAVE any solid, neutral gray yarn in sweater quantity, so that's something that will have to be remedied. Sounds like I've got another big handspinning project ahead of me!

C is for...Cthulhu?

Since we're on the topic of knitted novelties...ever have trouble finding appropriate gifts for the men in your life? Well, get your hands on a copy of Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden and crochet them up a nice little amigurumi Cthulhu!

This little guy was my first attempt, in which I realized I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO CROCHET and was just making it up as I went. So his head is not quite round, and his little wings are ... odd, but it doesn't matter because I don't remember Lovecraft going on too much about the perfect roundness of Cthulhu's head. Not that I would, as I haven't actually read much H.P. Lovecraft, but I am very fond of him, personally. Two of you will remember once taking me with you on a Chinese-takeout-picnic atop his grave. I left a tasty piece of General Tso's chicken by his tombstone (because I didn't have a bottle of hooch to poor on the ground) and that cemented the friendship. (Actually, maybe I just DROPPED the piece of chicken, by accident. Actually, I'm not sure if I was the one who dropped it. Did anyone even drop a piece of chicken at all? Ahhh, memories!)
Also, I did a really crappy job joining Cthulhu's head to his body, so I decided that he looked cold and crocheted him a little scarf to cover it up.

Then I made this one out of leftover Blugly yarn. Doesn't he look menacing, even though he is only three inches tall and getting ready to scrub down the kitchen windows with his big bottle of Windex? "Rarrrgggghh! I am Cthulhu! I sit in the abyss and look scary! Snuggle me and despair!"

I'd say "I need a hobby," but that's how all this started.

C is for Cookie!

(C is also for Copyright Infringement, but not really, because this is not an exact replica of Cookie Monster. This is just a googly-eyed hat. Ahem.)


Googly-Eye Hat Recipe For Infants
Yarn: Worsted weight, in main color of your choice, white and contrast color for eyes.
Other materials: Poly fiber filling for the eyes.
Needles: Size 7 or 8 dpns, size 6 dpns for the eyes.

Start with a multiple of 8 stitches. (I used 64 sts knit loosely on size 7 dpns, sized for a very young little one. If you want to make one for yourself even though you are a grown-up, start with 88-96 stitches...or measure your head, check your gauge and size accordingly.)

Hemmed Edge:
(1) Cast on (64, 72, 80) or other multiple of 8 stitches in waste yarn.
(2) Using main color, knit 1 row and join to knit in the round. Knit 4 more rows.
(3) Purl 1 row.
(4) Knit 5 rows.
(5) Fold edge up with wrong sides facing each other, put first stitch of the edge on left needle, remove the waste yarn from this stitch, K2 tog. Repeat until all the stitches from the edge are knit together with the stitches on the needle.

Hat Body:
Knit until piece is 3-4 inches from edge, then begin decreasing as follows:
Row 1: Decrease every 7 stitches.
Row 2: Knit.
Row 3: Decrease every 6 stitches.
Row 4: Knit.
Row 5: Decrease every 5 stitches.
Row 6: Knit.
Row 7: Decrease every 4 stitches.
Row 8: Knit.
Row 9: Decrease every 3 stitches.
Row 10: Knit.
Row 11: Decrease every 2 stitches.
Row 12: Knit.
Row 13. Decrease around, cut yarn and sew through remaining stitches, weave in end.

Eyes:
(1) On size 6 dpn, cast on 3 stitches with black or other contrast color.
(2) Move stitches to right side of the needle, pull yarn tight and increase in each stitch, then divide 6 stitches evenly on 3 dpns to knit in the round. (If there is a little gap in the center of the eye, just sew it closed when you're done.)
(3) Increase every stitch. (There are now 4 stitches on each needle.)
(4) Knit around.
(5) Switch to white yarn, increase every 2 stitches. (There are now 6 stitches on each needle.)
(6) Knit around.
(7) Increase every 3 stitches. (There are now 8 stitches on each needle; if you want smaller eyes you can stop increasing here, knit 3 rounds and skip to step 13.)
(8) Knit around.
(9) Increase every 4 stitches. (There are are now 10 stitches on each needle.)
(10) Knit 3 rounds. (Or more, or less, depending on your desired eye volume.)
(11) Decrease every 4 stitches. (8 stitches on each needle.)
(12) Knit around.
(13) Decrease every 3 stitches. (6 stitches on each needle.)
(14) Cast off. (Or knit around one more time and do another round of decreases if you wish.)
(15) Stuff eye with Poly-fil and sew to hat.
(16) Repeat steps 1-15, unless you are making a cyclops. (Another cute idea might be to make the eyes different sizes, or change from contrast color to white on a different row, for an extra silly character hat.)

Mouth:
In black or other contrast color, sew on a mouth in the size and shape of your choice. (How do you like that for instructions? Mouth: Sew on a mouth. So helpful.)

Optional: I wanted to keep the eyes from flopping around (although eye-floppage may be highly desirable on some hats, so this is entirely optional), so I sewed them together about 1/3 of the way up. To make the eyes point in slightly different directions, I went one row up on the top of the right eye and darted it to the hat, and one row up on the underside of the left eye and darted it to the hat.

I don't have ADD, really! Probably.

It's just that I have all this stuff going on. Anyway, yesterday a friend of mine asked me to make a Cookie Monster hat for her little smunchkin, and sent me an example from Etsy featuring someone selling Cookie Monster and other Sesame Street themed hats, and this brought up a couple of interesting discussion topics:

1. Does this lady have permission from the Sesame Street people to make and sell stuff that is trademarked by them? (She might - who knows?) It was just interesting to me because I read an article recently about various knitters being stopped from doing just that by the television producers they were ripping off. They were ripping them off out of love (and several stories had a happy ending in which the producers thought the knitted rip-off items were so cute that they gave the knitters permission) but still - taking someone else's property without permission and selling it. Duh.

2. EEEEEEEEE! Cookie Monster is cute!!!

I didn't find a pattern anywhere (that was free and/or looked the way I wanted it to), and not wanting to rip this lady off by copying off her exactly (even though she's possibly ripping off Sesame Street), I bought some blue yarn and set about knitting in my favorite way - cast on and knit until it looks like a Cookie Monster. (If I was knitting something else, though, like a sock, I would knit until it looked like a sock, not a Cookie Monster.) I've cast on a few stitches to check gauge and encountered my first problem: I do not know how big a 6 month old child's head is, so how the #$#$ am I supposed to know if the size is right? I'm also doing a knitted hem (the one my friend showed me has a rolled edge, which is a little girly, and this hat is for a little boy) which brings me to my second problem: I do not know how the $#$# to knit a knitted hem. I haven't got very far on the hem yet, but I think I should have started it on smaller needles and then moved to larger needles when the hem is done; otherwise the hem threatens to be ridiculously bulky when folded. Probably tonight I'll start over. YAY, starting over!

Speaking of which, I have decided that I am going to start the Clementine Shawlette over. And I will probably make some modifications and just knit it all in one piece instead of knitting the two sides and grafting them together; I just have a horrible feeling that grafting with this particular yarn will be a nightmare. In which case it will no longer be a Clementine Shawlette, it will be something else entirely. Which is okay by me. I'm not picky. [snicker]

Rambling and Linkage

Despite my lack of spinning output these days, I've spent the past couple of weeks knitting like a madwoman. I started and FINISHED the Hedgerow Socks (here's a link for more information about these lovely socks, and I'll graft the toe and get pictures up later this week) using Knitpicks Gloss sock yarn, in under three weeks. I've started and blasted through 1/3 of a scarf in a beautiful Plymouth Tweed yarn that I couldn't stop myself from buying. (If you click that Plymouth Tweed link, it's the green yarn right there - obviously they chose that specific color to represent their line of tweed yarn because it is the best green yarn ever made.) Oh yeah, and I've started knitting a pair of socks for Duglifer, using my handspun Fine Gray Shetland wool (from Louet), in a pattern of my own devising. (Devising = a doodle on a sticky note.)

Sadly, I've temporarily abandoned my half-finished Clementine Shawlette. I have to confess that while knitting on it during a movie, I wasn't paying attention and put the right-side-purl-rows in the wrong order. Instead of having a nice little horizontal line of stitches every four rows to accentuate the angles of the chevron lace, the line falls every four rows for the first 15 inches of knitting and then it shows up again in 2 rows, then in 6 rows, then in 4 rows, then in 2 rows again...and it kind of looks like ASS. I'm pretty sure no one would notice, and since I'm very likely keeping the shawl for myself it doesn't REALLY matter, but it bothers me enough that I've wadded the project up and stuffed it on a shelf behind some books. If it were any other yarn, I'd just rip it back to before the point in the pattern where I apparently lost 50 IQ points, pick up the live stitches and knit on as if nothing had ever happened. But this is that unnaturally soft Faux Cashmere (nylon) that I spun and it is incredibly slippery. When I've accidentally dropped stitches, I've had to grab and hang on to them for dear life lest they unravel right out to the very beginning - which would not be the end of the world in plain stockinette stitch; I'd just latch the column of stitches back up with a crochet hook - but in this lacy pattern replete with yarn-overs and decreases, dropping a stitch would mean starting allllllll over again. No thanks! So ripping out and leaving the stitches live is just not possible. It has occurred to me, however, that I could run a "lifeline" (this is fancy knitters' jargon for "needle and thread") through the row that I want to rip back to, which would keep the stitches from going anywhere while I pick them up again. I think I'll try that this week, because I was really enjoying knitting that pattern and I don't want to scrap the shawl after I worked so hard on it...and I definitely don't want to just finish it wrong; the mark of a good knitter is not Making No Mistakes, but ripping out and reknitting and PRETENDING you've made no mistakes. I'll let you guys know how it goes! (Because I know you're all on the edge of your seats about my shawl.)

Actually...starting allllll over again might not be the worst thing ever. There were a couple of additional places early on in the shawl where I made barely discernible mistakes and left them as-is because of the slippery yarn, but those bother me, too. And they might actually SHOW, after the piece is blocked. Ripping the whole thing out and starting over might be worth it. I think I understand the pattern better now, so the piece would be better for it. Your thoughts?

Froot Loop Socks and Birthdays

One thing I accomplished in all the turmoil of the past month was Finally Finishing the Freaking Frootloop socks. I adored the pattern, and working with the luxurious Koigu yarn that Jennifer bought me.
I shoulda taken some more pictures of these - it's hard to see the pattern in this slightly blurry closeup. But you can see it here, in the pattern from the designer.

And now that they are, at last, complete, I am even more happy to turn them into a birthday present...although somewhat belated. (Happy Birthday, Windy. Love ya!)

Busy Busy Busy

I don't exactly have mad blogging skillz anymore, but stuff happens. I've promised to keep my blog lighthearted and free from preachy stuff, philosophical meandering, ranting about politics and bringing everyone down with personal horror stories. I'll hold to that promise, and just say this: To all my friends and family, try to stay healthy and ALIVE, please, because I love you all very much. Thank you.

In the meantime, dealing with all the disease and death and destruction and even the occasional fantastically good news (Guess whose mommy does not have cancer anymore? MY mommy! YAY!) I haven't had much time or motivation for spinning and knitting, which naturally can't be prioritized over sick friends and mommies. However, the occasional sock gets knitted in a waiting room here and there (more on that later) and I do have, belatedly, some spinning things to show off.

Finally, with some Louet brand Fine Gray Shetland wool I'd bought on that fabled trip to Yarn Barn, I learned Spinning From The Fold, and it was the best thing in the whole world. I sat down and spun half a pound of wool in one weekend. I could not stop. It was marvelous.

Dug was so amused by my obsession that he took the above photo of me spinning like a madwoman. See how I've got the wool folded over my index finger, so I'm feeding the wool into the twist from the center, or fold of the fiber, rather than the end? Easy! Fun!
Here's one of the resulting three skeins of wool. I ended up with about 500 yards of 2 ply sport weight. I'm told that I will be using this snuggly yarn to make socks for Dug.