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:

Yet Another Gift

This one from my FIL, also out of the blue:



It's Artyarns' Mohair Splash, a silk mohair blend with glass beads and sequins. It's perfect for a small luxurious shawl, but I need to let it marinate in the stash before deciding on a pattern. I'm thinking of something fairly simple; I don't want an intricate lace pattern to compete with an already decadent yarn. Maybe a mostly stst triangle with a small lace border?

Yes, I'm beginning to think "lace shawl" again. It's knitting giant sweaters while holding massive amounts of yarn in my lap that does this to me. That and Anne Hanson. Have you seen her latest design? Stunning. Anne hasn't released the pattern yet, but I'll be the first to get it once she does.

Oooooh! And I need to decide on a Knitting Olympics/Ravelympics project! First I thought to do something small or finish a WIP. Then I thought: that sweater my mom got me the yarn and pattern for, and which knits up on #13 needles (!). Next thought: lace. Following thought: maybe not lace. After all, I'm vacationing at the beach next week. Thought after that: I'm going to the beach, and it's happening next week already!! I won't get to watch the Olympics at all. Should I skip any olympic knitting? Subsequent thought: nay, I can totally knit while on the beach. Maybe not a sweater. Maybe something small. Most recent thought: boy, I'm running out of time and better make a decision quickly.

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:

End of the Line*

As all good things must come to an end, so must our Thanksgiving vacation with the Hubs's folkanoids in the NYC vicinity. Last night's greeting from the train was a quick one, and I owe you a few photos from yesterday's trip to MoMA, another one of my all-time favorite art museums of which I am now a happy member (I'm taking full advantage of annual student memberships these days, since my days of student discounts are numbered).

MoMA was absolutely, totally, and completely packed, and one of the special exhibitions was closed due to large crowds of Thanksgiving vacationeers. The Bauhaus exhibition, however, was open:

It was here that I overheard the following, uttered by a twenty-something year-old gal in that sense-of-entitlement tone of voice that drives me up the wall: "So! Explain to me just what this has to do with the band Bauhaus??" The boyfriend/date person to whom her demand was directed looked a bit uneasy and begged her to keep it down...

In any event, the exhibit was fantastic. As a college student I spent a lot of time in Dessau and attended several events at the Bauhaus. The Hubs wasn't quite as impressed with Bauhaus design as I would have liked him to be, but he was a good sport and listened to my mindless "And when I was in Dessau..." babble.

Of course, we also saw a lot by Matisse:

And by Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman, both of whose work I like very much, very much to the Hubs's dismay (I love walking through large empty gallery spaces with giant abstract paintings or minimalist art: I'm not one for crowded, crammed, cozy, cuddly, etc., spaces. Sometimes I wonder how the Hubs and I will work out our different design ideas: whereas he'd like to live in a Wunderkammer filled top to bottom with interesting things, I'd like to live in a large, empty cube made of glass and white walls. With just a little bit of yarn.)

After MoMA we walked to The Art Students League of New York (sacred halls for my MIL, the artist), visited with our artist friend Hyeseung, had the most amazing Chinese food at a restaurant in Chelsea, and simply walked around the streets of the city:

After a bit of a sleep-in this morning (was it really noon?), we slowly got ready for our return trip to Boston. Since I had gone on and on about the nearby LYS Sticks and Strings, my MIL, who had picked up knitting in June (horray!!!) and I convinced the guys to first drive us there. Hubs and FIL weren't too psyched about yarn and went to a prized wine store instead, and once we got back together again, the Hubs and I had a few new goodies:

That's enough Lorna's Laces Worsted for Norah Gaughan's Bubble Pullover and a bit of yarn for a pair of socks. And while the Hubs won't get to play with the yarn, I sure will help him finish those twelves bottles!

Those manly socks for my dad, you ask? Well, I didn't finish them. We hit the road too late in the afternoon to have any usable daylight, and I didn't knit in the car. I made it around the heels and hope to finish the socks by the end of this week... I got a bit side-tracked the past couple of days trying out entrelac knitting: so addictive, those little squares!

Almost twelve... I'd better publish this post before turning into a pumpkin!

*I stole the title from the Hubs, who has been blogging every day this month as well, and who usually comes up with much better blog titles... Check his blog out here.

Thankful M.

I took these photos this morning to discuss in tonight's post:

But now that I opened the duffel bag that the Hubs' mom left with me this evening before retiring to the B&B after an eventful day of traveling, I'm at a loss for words and can't possibly discuss holey (and now frogged) socks, a new sock project, and the status of the Fiddlehead hat. I don't actually know how and over what span of time she's been doing this, but it seems that my wonderful MIL has collected a lot (and I mean A LOT) of yarn for my stash. There's some French yarn from her trip to France, there's some Schaefer Yarns Martha, Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock, Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Grande Hand Dye, and something unlabeled that looks handspun and is incredibly soft. OMG! Also, she brought me an assortment of very pretty buttons! I wish I could call her at the B&B to thank her, but I'm afraid I'd wake her up... she was asleep the second we said our good-byes. I'll have to wait till tomorrow, when we meet again to see Harvard's glass flower collection. And until then I'll play with my new yarn... :)

(How we spent our first vacation day? Shopping! Photos will follow of the Hubs, who now owns two extremely cool, very professorial and grown-up looking jackets and three pairs of shoes that are not tennis shoes but made of leather. Hallelujah! It was amazing to see the Hubs crack under the pressure of his wife and his mother to go shopping for clothes that no longer say "grad student/math geek.")

Within 24 Hours...

When I woke up to this, I predicted the day to be pretty crappy overall:

All morning it rained, and rained, and then it rained some more. Alas, after I completed chores that corresponded to the weather and my general meh-feeling (such as cleaning, doing laundry, paying bills), the sun came out, the temperature rose, and the Hubs and I decided to go for a looooong three-hour walk. The destination: my LYS (via the Hubs' hair salon, our fave bookstore, and Trader Joe's: to get my man a better haircut, find some good holiday reads, and replenish our wine [and butter] supply). Why the LYS? I was about to run out of purple Cascade 220, and since I'd like to finish my Fiddlehead hat before the first snowstorm (predicted for early December), I needed more. On the way to the LYS we ran into this prettiness:

Once I was at the LYS I confessed (first to myself, then to the staff) how much I really hated the socks I was knitting for my dad. How could I have ever thought that green, blue, and yellow would make an appealing sock color combination? In addition to color ugliness, I also realized that I had made some serious mistakes and accidentally picked up stitches at the turning point between needles. I often get my yarn twisted, but never before had I actually made new stitches that, at their base, create terrible holes. Suddenly I saw that Dad's sock had three such holes:

So, right then and there I decided to frog and start over again, this time with yummy Classic Elite Alpaca Sox:

On the way home we walked by this sign, advertising the services of the new emergency room of our local hospital:

Goodness! I hope that, once I have a problem that is serious enough to deserve ER treatment, I'll get medical attention within 24 hours! I'd better stay healthy...

Eighty-Nine

Right. This was easy. Memo to self: read pattern corrections before plunging into red alarm mode. Berroco's errata site solved my Heron collar problem, and with the exception of one-and-a-half lower arms the cardigan is done.

And since I'm so close to the finish line I started planning for the next project. How 'bout Liisa Lallukka's Smaragdi Mittens? I have that one necessary skein of Noro Kureyon Sock, and it's even wound into two balls already. Two balls that unfortunately don't measure up to 100 grams:

What's up with that?

Gnocchi

That is the name of this Lana Grossa creation:

A yarn with not-so-small pompons. I picked up three skeins last summer and "knit" up this scarf in two sittings.

Yes, I put "knit" in quotation marks. Why? Well, the yarn doesn't exactly glide around your fingers, and I ended up using my hands to form little loops and put them around the needles. The pompoms (or gnocchi) aren't knit, it's the little bars between them that are worked. The gnocchi then fall into place on their own.

The pompons are super soft (think fancy towels) and wearing the scarf this morning made me very happy (and a bit silly):

However, this one won't stay with me. I'm giving the gnocchi scarf to Hubs' aunt Sylvie. I have meant to knit something blue for her for a long time (and swatched for several different projects using different yarns), and finally I found something that has "Sylvie" written all over it.

Specs: 150 g Lana Grossa Gnocchi (three skeins), needle size 10.5. Cast on 10 stitches by putting loops around one needle (forget any other cast on method with this yarn!), then knit the bars between pompons in garter stitch.

Antennae!

Howdy! How was your weekend? I made my Hubs go gaga; what did you do?

Well, Hubs says I didn't actually push him over the edge, but surely I came close. This is what happened:

For the mystery socks I had wound one skein of yellow golden cashmere heaven, and to knit the socks two at a time I needed both ends of the yarn. This of course is a piece o' cake if you use a yarn swift and a ball winder. Not so if you wind by hand using the back of a chair, since you "lose" the inside end to the yarn you wind around it. So I wound the yarn around a toilet paper roll tube to maintain access to the inside end. So far quite clever, yes? As you can image, my ball of yarn looked fairly... well... un-pretty. But it served its purpose: I had two ends of yarn to work with, to knit two individual socks.

Then something strange happened last Saturday, and I refuse to recall what it was exactly. But somehow I ended up pulling a large part of the inside body out of the ball of yarn. I accidentally pulled a lot of the inside out! This left me with a huge mess of tangled yarn. I pulled and pushed and untangled and moved around and pulled some more, and I did all of those things for about an hour, but I just couldn't untangle the mess. So I got the scissors, thinking I must cut the yarn near the sock end, and again near the ball end, throw away the middle and tie together the two loose ends.

When Hubs saw me with the scissors, he did this manly thing where he felt challenged to save the world, one strand of yarn at a time. So he sat down and untangled the yarn. And he did so for a long, looooooog time. No scissors ever touched that yarn.

In the meantime I sat in the other room, undoing my shiny "Luxus" sweater to take care of the mess I had created by not watching my gauge. Something I hadn't quite considered: the yarn's a mohair blend. Ripping was painful and took a lot, a lot!, of time.

With all of Saturday's yarn frustration, I treated us to key lime bars on Sunday. They were yum. I made the crust using animals crackers.

And since I was feeling the yellow thing, I knit up a bit of the LaLana Wools Streakers! I got in Taos last spring (mostly white, with a bit of yellow here and there), and I came up with this:

The yellow turned especially pretty once I was ready to cast off, so I crocheted some antennae on top of it:

Unbelievable how quick a knit a hat is! This is my first hat, and I didn't even have a pattern to follow. (Not that this is an ingenious pattern, but I'm pretty happy that I got the measurements right the first time.)

Winter, Where Art Thou?*

*I take that back. Please, winter, stay away for a while, will ya? Send brother autumn first, pretty please.

Mystery Sock

Orlane's Textured Shawl is done and currently drying on the office carpet (note to self: invest in blocking mats and blocking wires. Tell Santa about this. [Also tell Santa about a yarn swift and a ball winder.] [While at it, while not mention sock blockers?]).

(Yes, her older sister, Textured Shawl #1, is keeping her company in this picture.)

#2 turned out smaller than #1, but I figured my friend Emma's shoulders are much smaller than mine, so what looks like a shawlette on me might work for her as shawl.

Since the shawl is taking an eternity to dry I started to knit the Sock Knitters Anonymous September 2009 Mystery Sock, designed by Nancy Bush.

The challenge is to use yellow yarn. I had this golden yarn in my stack, thanks to Minh! It's a beautiful cashmere mix (Zen Garden's Serenity Sock) and wonderful to knit up. This is the thickest yarn I've used to knit socks, and it's amazing how fast the sock's growing.

I hope I'll catch up with everyone else before Nancy releases the third clue next week. And maybe, maybe, I'll even get to work on my sweater this weekend.

Cheers!

Squash Stash

I sent Monsieur to the Farmers Market on his own, with instructions to bring back some zucchini for tonight. So he went to our very favorite Middle Earth organic farm stand at the Brookline market at Coolidge Corner. This is what he brought back:

"Some zucchini for tonight." He admitted he couldn't make up his mind and said it's like me and yarn. Can't say nuthin' against that, then. Cheers summer squash!

Blues

I want to knit a scarf for Sylvie, the sister of Betty for whom I made a mohair scarf a while back. Sylvie likes the color blue, and while in Berlin, Hubs and I found an interesting blue cotton yarn that we thought Sylvie might like. I had a wave pattern in mind and started right away:

Hubs didn't like it, arguing that since Betty got mohair, her sister should get the same fuzziness (although while in the LYS, he liked the cotton... *sigh*). So we went out to buy another blue yarn, this time kid mohair, and I made this swatch:

Now it was me who didn't like the result (partly because it was TOO HOT to work with mohair), and I went back to experimenting with the cotton again. I thought: Orlane!

But somehow the shawl didn't live up to its big sister, my first Orlane, and I stopped after just a short while:

The texture just wasn't right. So, guess what: I pulled the mohair out again, trying different things, among them a basic leaf pattern:

The idea was to start with big needles, decrease them in size, and at the other end of the scarf increase again. So that I'd end up with a regular-width scarf with wide fluffy ends.

Well, I don't like my "design idea" anymore! For now I've abandoned the blue-scarf-for-Sylvie project, but only until I've found a good pattern. Any ideas for a mohair scarf or shawl, anyone? (Yes, I've searched Ravelry. Extensively. Obsessively. But I simply can't make up my mind when faced with hundreds of choices....)

*sigh*

Your LYS in Berlin

Ahem... now that I flooded you with photos of non-knitting matter, it's time to talk yarn. There was embarrassingly little knitting going on during my trips to Germany and Wisconsin, largely because I screwed up that unfortunate Grumpina sock (again!) and spent most of my knitting time not knitting but tinking. I started a little blue something that is, however, still in the experimental phase.

So, rather than showing off projects, I will show off my newly acquired Berlin yarn store knowledge. Ha!

Having had accompanied my mom to yarn stores in the past (ten years ago and more), I was a bit perplexed to learn that several of the places once famous and fabulous had either gone out of business or changed ownership.

This is particularly true about the KaDeWe, which used to have a fairly good yarn section that it has now outsourced to the nearby Idee Creativmarkt. While the KaDeWe is still worth a trip (especially for breakfast at the slightly vintage yet still very classy restaurant Silberterrasse), the yarn department at Idee Creativ isn't.

So I browsed through comments by Ravelry users to find LYS recommendations. The top three appeared to be Fadeninsel, Loops, and Lalaine.

I previously mentioned that I "found" my former English high school teacher, who lives in Colorado, on Ravelry. Sort of unbelievable, but totally true: she was in Berlin last week. We met and decided to check out Fadeninsel in Kreuzberg. (I didn't take photos, but others have, to be found here.) Now, we both *loved* that store! The selection was terrific and went far beyond Lana Grossa, Lang, GGH, Gedifra, Opal, and Regia (your standard German yarn store selection, as I learned) and included yarns of all fibers, weights, and, of course, colors, as well as many knitting accessories, tools, and pattern books. The two women working at the time were both helpful and nice (and funny, too), and we happily agreed to watch the store while they stepped out for a cigarette. During two hours of oohing and ahhing at yarns, Sandra and I had plenty of time to catch up. After retiring from teaching English, she took up working at a fiber mill, Lonesome Stone Fiber, where she now teaches knitting. How cool is that?

My favorite Fadeninsel treasure? A sweater's worth of this:

Sandra and I had such a great time at Fadeninsel that we decided to go across town to see Loops in Prenzlauer Berg (Wörtherstrasse 19, photo here). In spite of serious overstimulation at Fadeninsel, Loops didn't fail to impress us just as strongly. The store appears to be smaller, but it has a second room, which is full of bargains. The sock yarn selection seemed smaller, but Loops has a wider range of felting yarns, as Sandra pointed out. Prices were about the same.

The best Loops deal? Heavenly fuzz for five bucks (70% angora):

It's impossible for me to say which I liked better, Loops or Fadeninsel. Both were grand.

The next day my mom took me to her favorite yarn store, Lalaine in Charlottenberg. The store has every available yarn by the three big brands--Lana Grossa, GGH, and Lang--and every pattern book issued for each of them, but except for some additional Anny Blatt and Opal, nothing else. And the yarn is organized by color. Which I didn't think was helpful. However, my mom loves the store for precisely the arrangement, which helps her to match different yarns when planning her own designs. So, while I remained quite skeptic, she was totally into it. Now, I was happy to look at new fall designs and yarns, and was even happier when Mom said to pick a few pattern for which she'd buy the yarn as a very early Christmas gift (in July!), but I wasn't quite as happy with the staff: both women were flat out grumpy. The younger one warmed to us after it became obvious we'd be spending money, but the older one kept frowning at us. I didn't like that, but since I went home with two bags full of lovely yarn, I didn't really complain.

Yes! Yarn was purchased! Merry Christmas to me!

(That's three sweaters, one silly scarf, and something-that-was-on-sale-and-will-probably-become-a-scarf. It will last me through the end of the dissertation. I'm officially on a yarn diet.)

Lastly I shall mention Handmade Berlin. I accidentally walked by this small, exquisite yarn store in Mitte. Many familiar yarns from the Anglo-American fiber world greeted me, along with yarns from Anny Blatt, Habu, and Taito Pirkanmaa. Since I was in a rush, I didn't take the time to look around, but shall do so the next time I'm in Berlin!

Grace

While searching for the perfect project for one skein of Fleece Artist Cashlana (10% cashmere; here in colorway Fleur), I stumbled across the very pretty Cinnamon Grace pattern. Once I had started the project, however, I noticed that although the yardage and the needle size were perfect matches, my gauge was completely off. I then realized that my Cashlana was only half the weight of the yarn used in the pattern! I ignored the minor headache all of this gave me and trucked along: instead of increasing to 29 stitches I had to double the amount of stitches to get a width of 7 inches, and as result, the straight part (neither increase nor decrease), which in the pattern measures 17 inches, is very short in my Grace scarf (since it took so many extra rows to first increase and then decrease). I didn't have enough yarn for the full ruffle but had to bind off after just three pattern repeats; there was no yarn left for the oh-so-lovely picot edging. The result is still pretty:

I looooooove the yarn! But to my utter disbelief, Fleece Artist discontinued Cashlana just recently. So unfair: to find a wonderful yarn and then realize that this was the last bit of it.

I still need to wash the scarf and block it. Not my favorite part of knitting.

PS: Betty received the feather and fan "scole" and apparently likes it a lot. Hooray! Makes me so happy.