just another raveller

Sunday brought more snow. More shoveling. I scrabbled away at it for a couple of hours, under the delusion that I was doing something very important. In the end, I kind of made a fort on the side using flower pot molds to make rough crenellations, hoping it wouldn't melt too quickly. It hasn't. I've posted a couple of pics of Gilet 2 at the end. It knit up really quickly in the Germantown.

As soon as I got outside, I knew that I would have more to add to this morning's post. We had a heavy snowfall here - about a foot over the last couple of days and since it's late February, it's wet, heavy, heart attack snow. Nevermind. I went at it. My wonderful neighbour had made a first pass and cleared up about 8 inches of it yesterday morning, so no problem, right? I got through about 75 feet of driveway done with the shovel and noticed a guy with a plow up the street. Yay for neighbours and for guys with plows up the street! I did the bit behind and between the houses and he did the long bit in front of the house for $10. After that, I could not pass up on making a snowman. It was really quick, and I got to use a few knitted items...a scratchy scarf and felted hat. He's a Janus, with one face to the street and another to the house. I like him better without his hat, don't you? His hair is from old peony stems.

I've been working on the Pine Tree Palatine Scarf all week with little visible result. This is supposed to be a scarf? In what universe does this pass for a scarf? I think the answer is technical - there is no border pattern to the lace. The pattern of mouseprints, peas and diagonals continues in one direction. Never mind that it will probably go across a single bed once it's finished and stretched out. If. Ever. I think I'm only on row 291 out of 735. I occasionally have delusions that I'm actually on the second or third repeat of the charts on page 38, when really, I'm just coming up to the end of the first repeat. It's taken me over a year and a half to get this far. But come to think of it, I'm getting on for being half done, aren't I? I just did the math: I'm 40% through. Not so bad, though I obviously won't be finished this month. OKAY, so I'll live. Whine over. NOT QUITE. My fingers are shot for lace because of all the snow I'm ha...

I am one of those people who begins to fret when all of my hand knit socks are in the laundry. With every year that goes by, I bring them out earlier and earlier each Fall. I usually knit plain socks or uncomplicated ribbed socks in order to get them knit up quickly and on my feet. I haven't done any of those popular patterns like the Jaywalkers , or any of Cookie A's patterns just to name a few random ones. I mostly just knit plain ones. So, it was a bit out of character for me to knit Julie Nandorfy's Wakefield Socks, but she's my friend and they looked interesting so I went for it. The colour and the lacy pattern mark them as Spring socks, I think. After I got through the pattern once, there seemed to be a sort of Feng Shui to it. You can tell where you are by looking at what you've just done. It's okay if you don't write down the last row you worked on when you put it down for the night. God knows I hate counting rows. Anyway, I finished them and I want...

Here she is to model her Gilet - Aunty Margaret... I spent most of Saturday morning perusing digitized books in HathiTrust , my latest distraction from knitting. It's kind of like Google Books, but it has more content. You can browse your favorite topics and save your findings. You do this by creating a free account. You can make your collections public or private. There are a lot of full text, out of copyright books, including, for present company - A Beuk o Newcassel Sangs , complete with words and music, published in 1888 by Joseph Crawhall. In the wings, with only a few mods: Gilet no. 2!

Just a quick post. With the opening ceremonies due to begin in less than an hour, I want to go on record to say that as much as I want to, I won't be starting a new project for the Knitting Olympics. I say this regretfully. I participated four years ago, in 2006, starting Knitty's Ella shawl during the opening ceremonies and finishing it before the closing ceremonies were over. I have a decent amount of free time for knitting over the next two weeks and I want to use it to to finish a few things: 1) The Wakefield Socks : I'm on the heel of my second one. 2) Pine Tree Palatine. Must use the free time I have to concentrate on this complex lace! 3) Gilet no. 2 : I'm finishing up the straps, after which it's just the button, neck and armhole bands. There are more tempting unfinished projects to choose from as well, but if I could finish these three in February, I would feel like an Olympian. But it violates the rules to choose a project for the Knitting Olympics th...

I was very excited to see my friend Julie (Aniko) post her first pattern on Ravelry this past week. She's calling it the Wakefield Sock, not for any literary reference, but for the town on the Gatineau River outside Ottawa. It's a nice, short, lacy sock, perfect for Spring, or summer if you knit it in cotton. Julie designed it for her handspun, but it has been knit successfully with several kinds of regular sock yarn to date. I got started right away with a skein of Punta Yarns MeriSock Handpainted that I picked up in the Rochester yarn crawl last Fall. This is a really nicely behaved yarn that produces a crisp stitch. The colour pooling isn't bad either. I checked back last week to see if that had any more at Spirit Works , but they're all out of it for now. The pattern is written for two circular needles but I'm doing it on dpn's cause that's what I like. It was easy to adjust. Click to embiggen, as they say.