Knitty Gritty Thoughts

Hiya!

Hi there!  Long time no see!  I've missed you all. 

I've been busy... I moved cross-country from Vancouver, WA to New Orleans, LA.  Talk about culture shock.  It's a different world down here, unique and special and completely different than any other place I've lived.  And that's saying a lot - you all have been following me around the country.  This is my 6th place in 5 years.  I'll talk about Katrina later since everyone who knows I'm down here has asked about it.  It's kind of surreal to see places like the superdome in real life after seeing them covered in water on TV.

We had a rough time settling in down here for a bit, we were living out of a hotel for over a month with our two dogs, me working from the hotel remotely trying to find a place to live.  We bought another house and finally, finally things are getting back to normal.  It feels so good to find a spot that I can call home for at least a few years.  Hubby is a project engineer on bridge retrofits down here.  There are a lot of bridges down here and hence a lot of work.

Oh - have I mentioned I'm scared to death of bridges?  It's a height thing.  My husband thinks it's terribly ironic since he works on them!  There is no worst location we could have been relocated to - we live on the west bank, in algiers, 1 bridge away from downtown.  I'm surrounded by bridges on all sides!  To go anywhere I have to cross a bridge!  I'm trying to get over my phobia but it's hard.  For now, there is one bridge that I will cross, and I will go out of my way to go around and avoid the others. =)

The puppity dogs are settling in....

(elle and griz saying it's too humid!)

We've been seeing what's around the area....

(lake ponchatrain)

There's been some knitting....

(feather and fan shawl out of handspun)

And spinning....

(sweet georgia club fiber BFL)

And more.  I'll be back to talk about that soon.  Just wanted to pop my head in and say hi!

Cleaning out my project closet

Hi Everyone!  Merry --belated-- Christmas!  I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays???  I had a nice laid back time at home - hubby and I were snowed in so we took the opportunity to do some decluttering.

I finally cleaned out my FO project closet - basically after I finish each item and it's washed, blocked and photo'd, I'd place it in a rubbermaid bin in my closet.  I rarely actually use any of my finished items, they just sit nicely folded in my office closet.

I just figured out I'm a process knitter - does that seem weird to be knitting for so long and to not even know that about yourself? =)  I love finding the right yarn and pattern and knitting it up into the image that is in my head but I hardly ever wear or use them.  Strange huh?

At any rate - when we were snowed in I started up my decluttering and cleaning storm again.  I pulled out all my FO's that I finished but never used and listed them up on my site for trade.  I would love for them to find a happy new home where they will be enjoyed and to trade for yarn or needles or patterns or gift certificates so that I use them to create more of my little knitted visions. =)

Just had time to list 5 today but they're nice ones.  Let's see... does Rona, Mystery Stole, Tiramisu, Anemoi, Lacey Scarf and Fiddlehead Scarf sound familiar???  All the details are on my trade site, thanks so much for looking! =)  More will be added as I get to them so please check back! =)

EZ Knitting Style - Butterfly Jacket

Did you hear it's snowing today in Portland/Vancouver??  I'm sure for most of you in colder regions this isn't that big of news except for here - it's a big thing!  Everything is closed - schools, government and roads and everyone just stays home.  So strange!

Anyhow - so my point is - it's cold here right now and I haven't lived in a cold climate for ages so I have barely anything appropriate to wear.  This morning I was craving something warm and wooly.  I went digging through my closet and guess what I found -

Hello!  I don't remember you.

In my flurry of finishing this summer I wove in the ends of this FO and threw it in a drawer somewhere.  I have to admit - I wasn't impressed.  The fit and style was well, blah.  But today, in the cold weather with a little mixing and matching - it took on a new form, just as a butterfly does and I love it!  It feels infinitely wearable and best of all wooly and warm.  Just as a Zimmerman knit should be.

Here's a view from the back. (shoulda done it seamless but I was lazy)

I knit it in Berrocco Ultra Alpaca (2 skeins - eeked through, barely) and the pattern is from Wool Gathering #78 (since sold out, and the pattern is now sold as a spun out and it's called the butterfly jacket.  It's a modernized version of the classic rib warmer.  More details on ravelry as always.

And in other news, I've been sewing up a storm, working on new products.  The first I'm happy to show you are my new pencil cups.  I have a weakness for pens and pencils and little places to store them.  You can find more designs in my etsy shop.

Take Care!

Baby Blanket Mania

I've been a bit distracted this past week.  I don't believe I mentioned it here, probably only on flickr when I went through a baby burp cloth and onesie making spree that my SIL was surprise! pregnant with twins?  It was a bit of a high risk pregnancy due to age (she has 3 children already, youngest is about 7) and she actually wasn't due until February but late last week she was admitted to the hospital for some complications.  Oh the craziness - she went into early labor, stopped labor, went back in and finally, delivered tiny yet healthy twin boys!  Hurray!  Oh the pins and needles we were on!  The babies weighed in at only 3 pounds apiece, luckily they came out crying so we know they are heathy.  They will be in the NICU for about 3 weeks, and will come right around christmas.

What a lovely christmas present!

Anyhow - so I whipped up some soft, cozy blankets for the new additions.  there's a great tutorial for them here - I used some lovely flannel in my stash and matched it with a thick fleece/chenille on the other side.  I used a decorative honeycomb stitch for the top-stitch and I love the way they turned out.  These may become my standard baby gift from now on!  Warning!  If you are expecting you may be receiving one from me =)

Better run!  I have a hair appt I need to get to - I need to get them to fix my badly dyed brown hair!

Fingerless Mitts for Fall

Anyone else suffering from holiday hungover-itis?  Not the kind brought on by alcohol, but by waay too much food and desert and overindulgence topped off by busy times with family and friends?

I have had a hard time getting back up to speed and yesterday was so hard to get up.  I have a 5am Women's Fitness Bootcamp that I joined, started another session yesterday.  Kicked my butt, totally.  But in a good way - hopefully said butt will be smaller even with my holiday eat-athon.  I can't say No to pumpkin pie! =)

Anyhow - so I wanted to show you a pair of fingerless mitts I started.  Remember the knitalong I hosted, Fingerless Mitts for Fall last year??  Well - by popular demand we are back and at it again this year and I couldn't wait to cast on for a pair of my own.

Here's a pair I started for my gma.  She rarely asks me to knit for her, so I jumped at the chance to knit her a pair of mitts to keep her hands warm.

The pattern is from interweave fall 2008, called "Fresco Fair Isle Mitts"[ravelry link] and it's knit in blue sky alpaca and silk.  My gma's hands are tiny so I went down two needle sizes.  I can't decide what to do with it though, I don't love the ribbing at the top of the fingers, it's kind of loose since the alpaca doesn't have a lot of memory.

Any good suggestions?  I'm tempted to rip it out and maybe continue in the pattern and then bind off?  Miss Picperfic suggested an i-cord cast off which I thought was a cute idea too - although I've never tried one, is it easy??

Front Detail

Oh! and if you're knitting fingerless mitts this season make sure to come join us at Fingerless Mitts for Fall - we're having a great time!  We'd love to have you join us too if you'd like?  Just send me an email. 

Back Detail

Have a great day!

Happy (Early) Thanksgiving!

Hi Everyone - I just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a Happy Early Thanksgiving!  We're taking off - headed down to CA to visit hubby's family and an 11 (!) hour drive =)  So I won't be around until next week.  Sure am excited to get out of town for a bit.

You know I have to have car knitting right???  My car knitting is a handspun version of my spiral cowl pattern - I couldn't resist.  It's just mindless enough that I can knit it in the car.

I started with this... 230 yards of 3-ply handspun (by me!) pencil roving from Rocket Yarns in plasma green at approx a sportweight.

Which has now become this -

yummy spirals and picots oh my!

And of course it has to have a nice travel bag too - the bag is from a trade with Valerie.  I have  a weakness for bags, particularly boxy ones and she picked out the most perfect colors.  She sells them now too - head over if you want to get your own!

Take care everyone and see you next week! =)

Karma in a good way

I believe in the power of positive thinking.

A few hours after I was just saying think positive thoughts about our house renting or selling we were contacted by our rental management company letting us know that somebody was interested in renting! 

The only downside was that they had 3 dogs, 2 had been our set limit.  We actually go out of our way to be dog friendly on a rental because we've been there - we have two large dogs, are very responsible with a rental and all the things that people look for and we have a heck of a time finding people who will rent to us with the dogs.  It's a catch-22 actually- it's what has driven us to buy our last two homes.  I'm not saying they're not out there, they are just harder to find.

So anyhow, the prospective tenants had three dogs, 1"indoor" and 2"outdoor."  Although I don't really know if I believe this outdoor thing.  I mean how many people leave their dogs outside in the freezing cold all day and night?  OK - don't answer that, maybe I don't want to know =)

So anyhow, we have accepted and I just hope my carpet and hardwood floors don't get destroyed.  Maybe I'm not chalked up for this landlord thing =) 

My SIL just called this morning to let me know the "for rent" sign has been removed from the lawn and the lockbox is gone.  Hooray!  We have tenants!  (That sounds so official!)

And for more happy thoughts....

Cashmere cowl, mmmmmmmmm

Free Pattern - Spiral Cowl

Hi Everyone!

As promised here's my new free pattern - Spiral Cowl

This pattern is very easy and mindless to knit and is very elegant and simple.  Encompasses many of my favorite things in a handknit!

You can queue it up on ravelry here
OR
You can download it directly from my site here - Link to PDF File

Happy Cowl Knitting!

Crochet Me

Crochet has recently, temporarily, taken over my household - at first I treated it a little like washing dishes - necessary for putting an edging on a shawl - but not very enjoyable.  Then it was upgraded a little bit to an appetizer, just a taste with the ripple blanket.  Now I'm having a hard time putting it down and it's become my main course! =)

One afternoon I was caught by the whim to teach myself how to granny (here's a good tutorial if you want to learn) and granny square I did - I started crocheting with any yarn and hook near my desk that I could reach.

First, to practice I pulled out some scraps from my old ripple.

Next, I started thinking, I wonder how that would look in sock yarn??

Socks that rock to be exact - Yea!  My granny rocks!

Wouldn't a scrap granny square sock yarn blankie be fabulous?  I'm very tempted.

And finally, handspun -

I had a half knitted pair of socks, yanked the needles out and started crocheting.  Around and around as fast as I could go.  I actually LOVE the way handspun looks in this - it has nice color changes.  Unfortunately I only had about 270 yards, not very large for a blanket.  More like a doll blanket =)

What would you do with a moderately sized granny square?  I have my ideas but I'd love to hear from you!

And finally -  the next level of the crochet disease - hexagons!  (And don't say they don't look like hexagons Angelika ;)  they do - I just haven't tried seaming them yet! =)

Haven't you seen and drooled over moonstitches?  Yea - me too.  I found this FAB tutorial online on how to make hexagons, picked up wool scraps and gave it a go.

The final level of the disease?   I have a few japanese crochet motif books on order along with a few of those uber nice japanese crochet hooks.  Who knows what's next???  No - I haven't gone over to the dark side but I sure am having a heck of a time visiting! =)

What I've been up to

Gee - thanks guys!  Here I am sticking a toe out which is my equivalent to peeking around a corner to see if anyone had even noticed I was gone and you overwhelmed me with your response!  Thank you all SO much for making my day!  It's such a treat in this virtual world when people care enough to say hi! and notice when you've gone.  I feel so lucky.

Anyhow - so I promised to tell you all what I've been up to - it's been so crazy!  I'll try to give you the long story short rather than the short story long ;)  Heh!

So let's see - The big news is that hubby came home safe and sound from Iraq (thank goodness!) at the beginning of the summer.  We did the long distance thing for a few months as he transitioned out of military life to his new life as a civilian.

He had something called "terminal leave."  It's basically paid time off- in his case, 3 months worth.  Plenty of time to search for a good job.   He spent the rest of the summer looking, while he was doing that he was home all day which was a wonderful treat.  We had a lazy, wonderful summer spent with time at open air farmers markets - eating almost 100% local and whole foods, cooking from scratch and decluttering and generally just simplifying our lives. We had lots of visiting time with family and friends too which is nice.

We really did have a lazy summer - it was a nice time to catchup and spend some quality time together.  He did go on a number of trips for interviews and was offered a good job as an structural engineer - the only catch was that we would be moving cross country to Vancouver, WA/Portland, OR!  We actually are both from the west coast originally (I'm from Southern CA, he's from Northern CA) so we jumped at the chance to move closer to family.  The west coast is home to us, you know?

I'll spare you the gory details but it was a LONG move - 3300 miles cross country.  Here's a link to my flickr map if you want to see just how long.  We chose to move ourselves which only added to the hardship.  After a nice zenful summer full of decluttering it was a complete wake up call to try and load the contents of a (nicely decluttered 2200 sq foot home!) into a rental truck. =) We also had the two dogs of course, and two cars so we had to drive separately which made the trip seem never ending.

We hit our share of pitfalls along the way - the trailer broke down and we were stranded for 10 hours.  Also, when we came out here with no idea of where we were going to live - it was a complete leap of faith - finding housing was hard.  Especially temporary housing with two large dogs.  Working while traveling is no fun too.  To make it harder we will only be here for a few months (for his training) before they transfer us to a project.  Yes, we will be moving again - most likely over the border to  CANADA!  (Yes I am very excited about that if you can tell!! =))

Hubby and I had both decided ahead of time that we've been wanting to downsize.  It sounds so simple when you say it - downsize.  In reality, we have downsized from a 2200 sq foot decluttered house to a 800 sq foot 2 bd/2ba apartment.  Yea - wanna guess how decluttered it feels now??? ;)  Luckily we have a garage because none of our furniture fits in this space so we have only a chair or two, a bed and some office furniture up here right now.  

Oh yea and we put up our house for rent when we moved thinking it would be easy, and with this down market it hasn't rented yet.  We're going to try selling next but we'll have to sell at a loss after including commissions and fees and such.  On top of that - when we move to Canada I will no longer be able to work at my job being out of country.  I'm currently in the process of transitioning out of it.  I actually was looking forward to transitioning out and taking a break from the corporate world and take the opportunity to follow my dream and work creatively in fiber and fabric, designing patterns, dyeing fiber, battlets, sewing bags, etc. 

Unfortunately until the housing situation is settled I won't be able to do that - so please cross your fingers for me that things go smoothly on the house front?  I would just love to sell the house so we no longer have to worry about it so I can move forward onto bigger and better things.

In the meantime I'm updating my etsy as much as I can with my full time job and working on a ton of new product ideas that I'm just dying to try out!

Ok that was probably more short story long =)  Too much to tell!  Please tell me what you've been up to also?!  I can't wait to hear!

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And in other news...if you're on ravelry or flickr you've probably been seeing what I've been working on.

Here's a preview of a quickie little cowl that I designed and knit up when I needed something mindless and soothing.  Going around and around in a circle is the only way to go and it goes so fast.  I think I knit this one in only a a day or two.  My next one might be out of handspun, it's just simple enough that it might not overwhelm the natural beauty of handspun yarn but I might have to go with a garter stitch border instead!

Working on the pattern now and I'll put it up on ravelry as a freebie soon!

Take Care and Happy Wednesday!