FO Parade

Hallelujah, the semester is over. It's been an exhausting one, this spring semester, with a teaching schedule that tied me to campus from 9 am till 8 pm four days a week, leaving me with very little time for my little one. And that sucked. (Luckily I was flexible in the afternoons and able to sneak in a few hours each day for play and cuddle time.) But we did have a fabulous spring break that we spent with the in-laws in Mississippi, and we also worked a family trip to Chicago around one of DH's conferences--so it wasn't all bad. Not that you know him, but if you did know Conrad, well, you wouldn't recognize him anymore. He's gotten big. And is incredibly talkative, both in German and English. He's awesomely amazing. And fabulously wonderful. And so on.

And now to business. I'm happy to report that after the initial post-baby knitting blues, my old knitting self emerged and has been busy (I'm still waiting for the emailing, blogging, telephoning, facebooking self to return. I've turned into a hermit. A hermit with a toddler).

Anyway, here it goes...:

1.
Let's begin with an entirely unflattering image of moi wearing Cecily Glowik MacDonald's Flyer Cap, one of my favorite hats in the great hat collection Weekend Hats.

Instead of a worsted weight yarn I used two strands of Malabrigo Arroyo (currently my very, very favorite yarn). Love the yarn, but the result is questionable, at least on my head. I think the hat would look better on a long-haired gal. Perhaps I'm hypercritical 'cause DH commented that I looked like I was wearing a condom. Yeah, well.

2.
This is an old FO... I finished it in January and sent it to Tia in Montana, who (almost) shares a birthday with Conrad.

Tia's mom made Conrad a fantastic little elephant in return, and she sent me homespun and -dyed yarn, and a homesewn project bag. Tia's mom is kinda awesome.

Anyway, the "birthday sheep" really is Susan B. Anderson's Lamb, published in Itty-Bitty Toys. I used different yarns and had to fiddle with the numbers to get the proportions right, and I omitted the straws that Anderson suggests using to stabilize the legs.

3.
After a season of cowls and other small objects (see above), a BIG project. I know!! Unbelievable!

This is Laura Chau's Amelia, a pattern I picked primarily because I had the yarn in my stash (Lorna's Laces... yummy yum). I modified the pattern slightly to make both body and sleeves longer, as well as to add buttons all the way down. Unfortunately I was delusional to believe that my pre-pregger chest measurements are still valid, and the cardi is, alas, on the small side. Pfff.

4.
A baby blanket, again??? Yes. This time it's my older brother my older brother's girlfriend who's expecting, and she wanted something green. Voilà, Green Leaves!

I linked the project to Jared Flood's Wool Leaves, although I stumbled across the leaf pattern in a stitch guide before discovering Flood's design, and made up my own. I love the result; it's such an easy and fast knit and uses only 3 skeins of Cascade 220. Yay!

5.
Another baby knit, because I had so much fun knitting the blanket... This is Lovinia's baby set. Lovinia is an elderly knitter who frequents "my" LYS, and one of the teachers there wrote up the pattern from her baby beret and booties. I used one skein of Shibui Sock and am totally in love with the outcome.

I have two more projects drying on blocking needles, and I'm really, really excited to start wearing them! And showing them off here tomorrow. :)

Iva's Dress & Cardigan

My contribution to the swap? Tora Froseth's Magda dress and Classic Elite Yarns' Provence Baby Cardigan.

I used Koigu KPPPM for Magda and Cascade Sierra for the cardigan; the buttons came from Berlin. I'll note exact mods and specs on my project page.

Little Iva looks gorgeous in her violet outfit! But then again, she always does. :)

(My apologies for keeping it so short today. I got a yucky sore throat and want to go to bed, sip hot milk with honey, and read a good book. Good night!!)

Swappin'

During the very early weeks of my pregnancy, before we told anyone for fear of jinxing it, I joined the Ravelry group "January 2011 Mommies," and in the past 18 months (which we spent not only drooling over each other's babies but also yakking about the not-so-savory aspects of pregnancy, the gritty details of birth, and the challenges of juggling motherhood, a career, and our changing relationships to our partner, our parents, and our friends) I have grown very, very fond of the thirty or so women who post there regularly. My "mommies," who are from around the US, Canada, and the UK, from Iceland and Uganda, are unbelievably knowledgable, resourceful, attentive, and kind. And--they are knitters. Knitters who love to swap stuff.

Yesterday's mail brought a package from JayJay. In it: Jennifer Lori's Moss Block Cardigan, which had been sitting in my queue forever, made of gorgeous Rowan Felted Tweed DK.

Conrad's favorite, though, isn't the cardigan but a cardboard book that he couldn't put down today:

Looks like he is planning a trip to California, doesn't it? Well, JayJay did mention that we should stop by her house if we plan on visiting Disneyland a few miles down the road. Since Conrad is making friends with Mickey already (also a present from JayJay), we might do so next summer.

JayJay: Thank you!! (Many thanks also for See's Candies, which were meant as a Californian treat for me, but which DH got his teeth into first, and now they are... gone. I know. He owes me, like, big time.)

You'll be shocked

Alert the media, there's a finished object chez Wollgut! It's that lace scarf for my doctoral thesis advisor that I started one week B.C. (Before Conrad, that is), which was halfway done the night we rushed to the hospital, and that took three months to complete. Sheesh.

Good things come to those who wait, and while my advisor didn't know she was waiting for anything, this scarf turned out mighty nice, if I may say so myself.

I got the yarn--delicious Madelinetosh Pashmina (merino! silk! cashmere!)--the week after I defended, mulled over lace scarf patterns for weeks, then asked you for input, then ignored your advice, and finally settled on a narrower, longer version of Nancy Bush's Lilac Leaf Shawl. Verdict: one of my finest projects.

Want to have a closer look?

Closer?

Yes, those are nupps. And ya know what? They weren't half as bad. Although I admit that I abandoned Bush's technique of making seven stitches out of one knit stitch on a RS row, then purling those seven together on the next WS row. Instead I followed my mom's advice: make seven, slip those seven back onto the left needle, then knit seven together on the same RS row. Much easier, me thinks. And the result looks the same: I checked.

Waaaaayyyy more nerve-racking than making innocent little nupps was grafting the two parts together (lower edge and body + upper edge, so that the top edge mirrors the bottom). Kitchener stitch in itself isn't evil, but bloody hell, once I lose track of where I am (part 1, 2, 3, or 4 of the operation) I just can't figure out how to continue. You'd think it's easy to see if I most recently worked a stitch purl- or knitwise, but instead I experience complete brain shutdown, and then I make a mistake. This time I screwed up five or six stitches before I was done. I kept on Kitchening as best as I could. The two parts are joined successfully, but the mistake is visible to the knitter's eye (but only if that knitter's eye is mean-spirited and closely searches for mistakes). My advisor isn't a knitter, so I just won't worry about it.

And as always when I block a lace project, this time, too, I cursed the lack of blocking wires. I really ought to have blocking wires, 'cuz this isn't pretty:

I used about 5.000 blocking needles, and with a crying baby tied to my chest, it took about two hours to block the scarf ("5.000" may be an exaggeration, "two hours" is not). By the time I was done, the scarf was dry, more or less.

As I said, the scarf is longer and narrower than the original pattern: if I remember correctly, it's two repeats longer and two (three?) repeats narrower. I didn't measure the blocked scarf, but it's fairly long and fairly wide, kinda perfect, actually. The whole scarf is kinda perfect. I hope my advisor likes it!

Gifts!

Two updates, since I'm sure y'all are dying to know:
1. The Bean's EDD (estimated date of delivery) came and went--and nothing! (Which is quite common for first-timers, and except for the grandmothers in spe everyone's calm around here.)
2. I haven't made up my mind yet regarding the lace scarf, mainly because I'm still working on this itty bitty baby cardigan (more about that in a future post).

In lieu of grander news I thought I'd post some photos of gifts handcrafted for the Bean by other fibery folks.

Let's start with these adorable little fish booties that Minh made, which go very well with the summer-y fish onesie she gave us. (And, at least thematically, with the whale-shaped bathtub her husband sent.)

My husband's colleague's wife doesn't see us very often because she lives in California, but we like to go out for dinner whenever she's in town. I was super surprised when her present arrived:

Usually I'm not crazy about things crocheted, but I really love this blanket! I like it better than the one I made for the Bean, which is why hers is in the crib and mine in a drawer.

And finally, a couple of knitted goodies made by another pregnant knitter whom I met on Ravelry:

I have to ask her which yarn she used for the hat--it's heavenly soft! She also sent a gift for "mommy," a perfect little pouch that I've been using daily to keep my knitting tools organized:

In return I made this for my swap partner:

That's the only project for which I know the specs. It's the Knit Picks Little Bubbles Baby Set (sans booties), knitted with Knit Picks Simply Cotton Sport yarn. The knitting was a lot of fun, but weaving in the ends drove me bonkers (the hat alone had 46 ends, the cardi a few more).

And now I shall return to my current project and finish it. (I'm really close. But I've been really close twice before.)

Joy!

A friend of mine brought flowers over the weekend:

And another brought very precious yarn:

That's Juniper by Alchemy Yarns. My friend was inspired by Clara's raving review here. I love love love the color, and already decided to use Juniper not for socks but for a shawl. This stuff is too gorgeous to be worn on your feet. It wants to live up there, near your face.

And Seeds dried, and is now prettier than before:

Squares and Such

A while back I finished Allison LoCiero's Entrelac Scarf. Before posting any pictures I had to make sure that the completed project reached its final destination: the hands of my MIL, my most faithful blog reader (I think she reads it to get news about the Hubs:)). Now that the scarf has made its way to Mississippi, where the unexpected cold wave elevates a scarf from being merely fashionable to also being very practical, I can show it off to you:

Excuse the comparison, but knitting this thing was a bit like giving birth: painful. Absolutely painful. Entrelac, I discovered, is not my thing. But once the baby (=the scarf) was there, all pain was forgotten immediately. That's how much I loved the result. BTW, it's Noro Silk Garden, if you hadn't guessed already. :)

If I had knit this for myself, I would have chosen a different colorway. MIL and I were yarn shopping together, and I had already picked a Noro colorway of neutrals (grays, mainly, with a hint of brown and some black) when MIL remarked just how much she loved the bold colors. And that's when I decided to knit the scarf for her, as a Christmas early January present.

I realize that one of the beauties of Noro is the element of surprise. I'm all for surprises, but when one of the four skeins purchased contains only half the colors of the other skeins, surprise turns into disappointment. Here two photos for comparison, on the left a "normal" skein, on the right its misbehaving sibling:



However, my MIL seems to like the scarf, and that's really the only thing that counts.

Lastly, a photo of my favorite square:

Merry Bookmas!

Howdy folks! How was your Christmas? We spontaneously went to NYC for the holidays, camping out at our friend-the-artist's house in Hell's Kitchen, just off of Times Square. I had the most fabulous time and will tell you about it tomorrow (?). For now just a brag picture of what Santa brought to our house:

(Yes, we believe in giving books. Half of those books belong to the Hubs. The other half is Mine. Mine. Mine. My share is mainly art and art criticism books, with a few clever detective novels here and there and the occasional bestseller. The Hubs' half concerns math, economy, and an effective way of saving the planet and making the world a better place.) (We started with the latter by buying local. We loves independent book stores.)

She Liked...

So, by the time I handed my friend the cowl, I had made up my mind to give her the Sideways Grande Cloche as well. 'Cause, when someone ecstatically screams at the sight of you, and it's neither your lovely smile nor general happiness to see you but the hat you're wearing that causes this crazy-happy behavior, and when, in addition, it only took you a couple of evenings to make said hat and you have plenty more yarn for a second one, well, then you gladly hand over the hat and make plans to knit another. Which is why my friend left the restaurant wearing cowl and hat:

I had a really great time last night. We (=the friend, Hubs & moi, and another couple [who don't appreciate hand-made stuff as much as music stuff, which is why they got music stuff]) went to my favorite Boston restaurant (which is actually in Brookline), the Washington Square Tavern, where the food and the service are so grand, it's worth waiting for one hour. Especially if waiting means hanging out at the bar and sampling the Tavern's fantastic beer selection (=the boys) or, in our case, tasting different wines and, as aperitif, sipping Kir Royale (so early 90s!). Should you ever make your way to Boston, do try the Tavern: the mussels are out of this world, so are the scallops, so are the risottos. My friend had the meatloaf, and while home-made meatloaf can be quite tasty [try Cook's Illustrated recipe for meatloaf: fantastic], restaurant meatloaf is usually pretty lame or outright awful. This one, however, was insanely good. Paired with the Zinfandel... Lawdy!!)

After last night's social and culinary extravaganza, today has been very homey: we cleaned, did the laundry, and went grocery shopping. I started the Hubs' watch cap, and here the only exciting news is that his preference changed from the "original Navy watch cap" (1x1 ribbing) to the "original WWII watch cap" (2x2 ribbing):

A Noble Idea...

it was to knit a X-mas gift for a friend of ours whom we're meeting for dinner and drinks tonight. Since the idea came only on Monday, I decided on something small, and after stash-diving and Ravelry-browsing I matched two skeins of Di.vé Autunno with Emily Kausalik's A Noble Cowl. Entirely wrong weight/needle size/gauge, but what does it matter for a cowl...? I simply cut out two pattern repeats, casting on 90 instead of 120 stitches. This made the cowl more snug, but it also guaranteed that I didn't run out of yarn and--most importantly--it cut down knitting time.

The result:

I hope she likes it...?! (If so, you'll hear about it here. If not, I shall not mention it.)

PS: I quite enjoyed this article in the NYT (on the return of well-dressed men), and of the fashion blogs it mentions, this one is entertaining. I sent the article to the Hubs but have not yet received a response...