Maggie Goes Samantha

Maggie, who's had this sweater for a year, has grown into it. Her mom just sent this picture. Are they a dear combination!!

May the force be with you, Gooser

After consulting with Alexander, who has an excellent memory of the possible self-consciousness of an eleven-year-old, I decided not to knit Gooser a Star Wars hat for his birthday, which is today, since he might feel a little un-brave wearing it to middle school, but, rather, to give him a pillow, which he can enjoy in the privacy of his own bedroom. Stormtroopers and R2D2s, yes. Cant wait to give it to him, along with some beef jerky, late this evening, when I get home from teaching the Samantha (dress/jacket/tunic/sweater) class, session one. I know he'll love the beef jerky, and he can pretend to love the pillow, whether or not. (I had Huron County buffalo jerky for him, very special, but Yogi found and devoured it, just before he died; and that's the truth.)
And here's the match to Eliza's Norwegian Star hat, for Ainsley. Mailed last week, these hats might be on their heads when I see the girls this weekend. I'll get to attend their make-up dance class on Saturday morning, after an overnight with Mom, at Dawn's School of Dance, where I got to go every Monday while living in Northampton last winter/spring. It's a hoot and a half. (Not that they'll be wearing their hats in class, but maybe when we go trick-or-treating later on Saturday.)

Hats

Aside from afghan squares, of which I've now completed about thirty-five (of sixty-three), I seem mainly to be knitting hats, hats, hats. All containable projects, easy to pick up and put down (and take dog-park walks with). This blog has subsided; and I don't know when I'll resume thinking about knitting enough to write more, so for now, here are the various hats on and off needles. And a little vest, the fem' variant of Hickory's "Ryland's Vest, " pattern soon available at knittingetc. newsletter, my ruffles an option. To identify the hats here, you could go to my "projects" page, my sort of knitting history, at ravelry.com/people/lyndabogel (at least I think you can go there).

Doing Scales. . .all summer

I'm off of real music, and on to scales, doing every scale I can find, both in Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book, and, quickly, beyond--beyond to her anthologies of stitches, treasuries. I'll be using her book to teach afghan - making this fall, so am getting a jump on the blanket. It's an excellent book, helpfully graduated in technical challenges--one starts with a striped garter stitch square, moves through various textures, cables, laces, slip stitches, keep on movin', until one has--if one pays no attention to the passing of years--sixty-three eight-inch squares. (And then you just have to put them together.) No problem.

So, I'm blocking the first dozen, and will take pattern libraries to Michigan, when I go in about a week, as well as balls of this Cascade 220 superwash.




The only other thing I've done this month, I think, is this little sweater for baby Isaac, across the street (also in Cascade 220 superwash).


I'll be teaching four knitting classes this fall. In addition to the afghan, I'm teaching two sweater classes, the Cayuga Cardigan, and Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. Later in the fall I'll offer a Christmas Stocking class.

Saia's off to the Funny Farm

Saia's off to the Funny Farm as soon as they cross-wrap her arms/sleeves around on the back.

Heh, here's a six-weeks baby in a six-to-nine months "Samantha."

Goodbye to WEBS !!

I think we've had three parties at WEBS in the last week: not only do we love to knit, we love a send0ff. And, lucky me, I'm the one being sent off. In the top picture, I'm wearing a present that I think is not originally a hat, but reminds me of what one wears to Ithaca's 8-sided school house, back in the days when one knit without a commercial alternative.

The other pictures feature the four tiaras I was given; and you'd need to know the Princely Prince Charles story to understand why so many great minds thought alike in giving me tiaras: "I'm a Winner."

I have made wonderful friends at WEBS, staff, teachers, and knit-along regulars. Such a snappy community, of edgy, witty, concerted, varied women. We learn from each other, about slip stitches and canine lupus and matters of the heart. What a rich six months for me!

Sharon, Barbara, Kathy, Marlene, Rina, Pat, Pixie, Beth, Jenny, Gail, Nicole, Dori, Louisa, Karen, Leslie Anne, oh my: thanks for sharing, laughing, and commiserating.

bathroom pictures

Good morning, Kangaroo yarns. I guess I won't be showering early this day. All my beauties have aired overnight, and feel ready to be wound today.
Above and below: wool with a bit of tencel, for sheen, a la J-Knit Stunning. We did two parcels of this, at 450 yards apiece, so lovely Sharon Burke and I can do identical scarves, a pattern that Dori Betjeman designed and displays at WEBS. I think this forest floor color range might be superb; it's the one I'm probably most excited by, maybe because I know what garment it's heading toward.
The other green colorways yarn is Green Mountain Spinnery's wool/mohair blend ("Mountain Mohair"), a 140 yd skein Gail had given me. It was my first try with the green blendings of dye.
And here's the kid silk haze. I'm not a little relieved to witness it fluffing up and drying away from the sodden matted plops it was yesterday. Gail and I set two chairs on her porch about twenty feet apart and strung this out, so we could, after tying it neatly along the ways, make long colors before it would repeat. Dyeing it in two bowls, I created at first what looked like the leftovers at a beauty shop. But it seems to be becoming. Will be tricky to wind, no?
Trying a range of reds on "O" merino wool, which I bought yesterday at the Shelburne shop, Metaphor Yarns:
And here's sock yarn Gail gave me, the same yarn she dyes her sock yarn for WEBS:
And now, on with the day.

Samantha Six

This one touches on majesty. The button choice is rare. Samantha remains my favorite girl baby present. Drat, the color of the photo doesn’t get the deep raspberry, mixed with hidden tone of blue. dark. Look deep into the top right corner of the front, and think even darker.

This Kate Gilbert pattern always draws me. This one for baby Saia Mizrahi, born on 2 June. The bold reds will take well into November and February. I can't wait to meet her, on my return to Ithaca next week.

I spent all afternoon dyeing, with my WEBS friend Gail Callahan, the fine KANGAROO DYER, whose new book on hand-dyeing will be published in January by Storey Press. (See her ETSY shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=57917; and her web site: http://www.kangaroodyer.com/index.htm

Gail and I had a fabulous three hours. I got to dye that "O" wool, some Green Mt Spinnery Wool/Mohair, some wool/tencel that's exactly the same as J-Knit Stunning (for twin scarves a Webs friend and I want to do), some Kid Silk Haze, in long variegations (by winding the yarn around two distant porch chairs), and a silk scarf. I'm off to hang them now, so I can wind them tomorrow.

Mo's Aran Sweater Pillow

What a great present for Mo, who’s brought me several Irish sweaters from her Galway travels over the years. This centers on and begins with the “three-hour aran,” a one-sided allusion to the sweaters she brings stateside every year. Then I running-stitched the sweater onto a twelve-inch stockinette square. Then knit a forty-eight-inch border, about two inches wide, with one fat cable running around between garter stitch edging. To ease the boredom of doing the edge, I simultaneously knit another, plainer–to not compete–12-inch square, using the “blackberry” bubbles to echo the popcorn on the sweater.

Thought I’d have to find a weenie 12-inch pillow, but with the edging of course the outcome is a plush 14-inch throw pillow. I stayed up late, for me, last night mattress-stitching it all together. and LOVE IT. (And Mo will love it.)

I used WEBS' Valley Superwash, and #6 needles. (I knit/closed the pillow into the pillow covering, so even though it's all washable, I'm not making it easy to do that: don't drink wine next to this one, Mo.)

I salute those who have knitted an entire aran afghan (see Great American Aran Afghan on ravelry and elsewhere), for such a long-running and intricate project. I’ll never do one, but will do lots of pillows in the future, both aran and fair isle (I already have some plans for fair isle sweater pillows), and who knows what else.

a little catch up

I've been busy in May, with a three-day wedding, a niece's Yale graduation, and Elizabeth's becoming Doctor Bogel. I've also been spending more money than I can tally with three dogs having Lyme disease (blech; the nicer person would feel sympathy for the dogs; I feel sorry for my bank account). Yesterday, I got myself tested for Lyme disease, at the Northampton ER, and seem not to have it, since no one's called me with positive test results: and I'm the only one with health insurance.

In the interstices, at the top of the page, is a three-hour aran sweater I made on Tuesday. Three-hour sweater! faster even than a baby sweater for this one is a one-sided, 9-inch "allusion" to "real" sweater. It will get sewn onto a square--which I'm in the process of knitting, to become a pillow. From The Great American Aran Afghan.

I've also made progress on Luella, the cotton vest cardigan:

And worked up a little demi-tam, out of yarn I dyed, in Gail Callahan's workshop at the MA sheep and wool festival: an organic wool from the Green Mountain Spinnery. The hat took one skein, of undyed gray, and I dyed a second skein, of white, which I'll knit another hat from.


Here's a version of Kate Gilbert's "syncopated cap," done in Regia sock yarns:

Tonight I listen under the stars (and knit onward making the aran pillow?) to my dear friend's two-person Blue Grass band, The Don't Tell Darlings, on tour in my part of Massachusetts. Have a listen: http://www.myspace.com/donttelldarlings

Luella

I just started this one, which I'm aiming to give to Schuyler, should it fit (I've been having challenges lately about who fits what, what fits whom). A summer robin's egg blue vest, in cotton with a touch of rayon for drape (Berroco Touché). It's a free Berroco pattern with the regional name "Luella." When I noticed pretty much everything I've knitted this past month has been in tones of brown, I thought it advisable to lighten up color wise.

I'm now mother of Doctor Elizabeth, while she, just back from Africa, without even her internal clock readjusted during graduation rituals in Boston, has taken wing to Paris, to hike in the French Alps with a dear high school friend, before returning to NY and MA, and driving west to Seattle. But she's clothed, should it be intemperate, in new sweaters from moi.

That's Connie's design, and isn't it a beauty! Fleece Artist Woolie Silk 3-ply.

So now, onward to Spring colors, and armless fast-knits.

Zebra Pakuna

Four-fifths of this sweater is a rush, a dash, a few evenings’ stockinette. Then, as though I’d come to the great jungle river, there’s the cautious slowing down, the tediousness of wrapping each strand over the other, the switch-ups, the sleep-inducing slog of the corrugated ribbing. But, having finished that and so feeling sassy, I’ll not complain, except to say I’m not complaining. Quite a bit of satisfying edge and collar work to do, which pulls the sweater together.

Thanks to Pat Ocelet, top, and Dori Betjeman for modeling this sweater at WEBS. (Dori is the knitter's guru, the fearless leader of my Advanced Fearless Finishing Class; Pat O is a knitting pal in several weekly drop-in-knit-alongs, also at WEBS.) It was excellent to fit the sweater onto actual bodies, since the asymmetry made it challenging to envision how it would suit a person, and where to put the single button.

We opted for no button, so the recipient could place the --what's it called?--where the lines fell right.

As you can see from the two bottom pictures, after photographing friends at WEBS this afternoon, I added a braid at the left neckline, to cover the awkward transition from corrugated ribbing to stand-up collar: a successful little trick.

I modified the pattern--Berocco, #277 Pakuna--to fight boredom, by putting in the various lines of contrasting color all about. I didn't use Peruvia (though it's very nice), but kept plugging away at the Cascade Eco Wool I'd bought much of during WEBS' April sale.

And I thought of this as being, in an abstract sort of way, an homage to zebras, and a present to Elizabeth on her return from South African Safari (zebra...). I still believe in the zebra allusion, but don't think the sweater's going to fit Doctor Liz, think it will be a bit small.

If that's the case, Schuyler will get a Zebra Pakuna (and if it doesn't fit or suit her, on to my next smallest friend...).