Cast on River Rock

I am getting ready to cast on my River Rock scarf. This is from No Sheep for You.

Christina and I both bought yarn for the project from Full Thread Ahead after we went on our knitting camp last year. We plan to do it as a knitalong.

My yarn is Naturally Dawn. Its a 50% silk/wool blend from New Zealand. I bought the beads at the same time from Full Thread Ahead on advice from Hollis.

Late spring skiing

We decided on Friday to take a last-minute ski trip. This time we did a day trip to Bear Valley: it's about a 3-hour drive from here, so it was a long driving day, but the weather was fabulous.

Just look at that sky!

The downside of the glorious sunshine was that the snow was rather soft - but when you are learning to snowboard soft=good.

No one else seemed to have the same idea as us , so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Us, and a lift attendant from Newport IoW!

Off the needles - lady of the lake

I have finished my Lady of the lake jacket.

This is a kit from Fleece Artist including Kid Aran yarn and curlylocks; a wool/mohair boucle. The jacket is knitted side to side which means that once you have committed to the size the length is pretty well fixed. The jacket came out longer than I expected but I have not yet blocked it so will see what adjustments I can make. It looks a bit bulky in the picture - but I am wearing it over another sweater. I read other people saying how short the jacket knitted up before blocking so I knitted the larger size - but I will defer judgement until I do the blocking.

The knitted fabric is lovely - the jacket is lightweight but warm and I expect to get a lot of wear from it. It is supposed to be closed with a pin, but I have some nice pewter buttons from Green Planet Yarn and may use one or two of these as closures. I think I can just poke the buttons through the fabric so will experiment with optimum placement. I also notice on Ravelry that other people are pinning higher up the front - so I will try that out too.

I enjoyed knitting this - pretty mindless stitch pattern with minimal shaping. The yarns both felt lovely to knit with, once I got over the mohair making me sneeze. I still love the colour - even though it's refered to as the big booger in my house!

A bigger splash

I took this picture Saturday afternoon and love the colour of the water.

Frankly, it is too cold to swim in an unheated pool, but this has not stopped the boys!

ps. For anyone who is interested the pool finish is Pebbletec in the Tahoe colour. (Tiny pebbles shotblased into plaster.) The actual colour of the pebbles is a sandy shade.

Kusha Kusha

I finished knitting the Kusha Kusha scarf. This is Habu kit 78 which includes 2 yarns: a fine merino (orange) and a stainless steel and silk yarn (grey). I bought the kit at Habu in New York in February.

I cannot say that knitting this was a pleasureable experience; the steel yarn was, unsurprisingly, rather harsh and dried out my fingers, although not actually hard to knit with.

The effect of the two yarns knit together is interesting and gives a texture and depth of colour that would be be achieved with a single yarn. The stainless steel yarn has a memory and a sculptural quality, but the overall fabric really has a nice drape.

The scarf is a short length, as specified in the pattern, but I knitted until I ran out of the steel yarn, I have some of the orange left. The intention is to lightly felt the scarf but I have not yet done so and may not as I like the current light fabric. I also dont think I want it any shorter.

Nigel thinks it looks rather military surplus and has appropriated the scarf for his own use.

An un-Californian activity...

When I first moved to the USA I bought with me a rotary clothes line - they were not freely available here, and I thought I would continue to do what I had always done to dry my clothes and use an outside line.

The arrival of children and convenience of a dryer seduced me away from my line and it went into the shed a few years ago.

Following a conversation with Joyce I decided to resurrect my line and have started using it again.

Not only do the clothes dry quickly, but they smell so much nicer, and I get that nice smug feeling of using less power. Why smug? Because here in Californina, despite perfect weather for drying clothes outside, almost no-one does it. Some cities have ordinances prohibiting drying clothes outside - for all I know LG does, it is that sort of place (my line is happily out of sight). Certainly using the dryer is easier, and the clothes require less ironing (or no ironing if you are not fussy), but the 10 minutes I spend hanging out or taking in the line is a nice break in the cool morning or evening, and makes me feel like a 'good housekeeper'...goodness knows nothing much else in my house makes me feel like that!!

Blue socks (and hands)

I knocked out another pair of socks for Nigel. Using my default sock pattern in a k3 p1 rib.



The yarn is some of the superwash sock that I bought from Tess's designer yarns at Stitches 2008, however I was not that impressed with it. Although the wool is soft now the socks have been washed, it had a hard hand while knitting, however, the worst problem was this:

This is my hand after only an hour or so of knitting, the yarn leaked dye every time I knitted on them, and a lot of the dark blue appears to have washed out. I washed them twice with jeans so far and the blue appears a softer shade than it was when I knitted them up.

The finished object has received the Nigel seal of approval, but I'm not sure I really want to knit up the other skein of Tess's sock that I bought. Its a lighter blue so Im assuming the dye leakage wont be so bad, but I am much prefering knitting with the Austerman Step that is currently on the needles. I did see on Ravelry that other people were having problems with dye leakage - but the yarn gets raves on its long-wearing properties so that is good news.

Spring skiing

As previously mentioned, Adam was promised a snowboard lesson on the successful completion of a chapter book. Of course, with this sort of motivation he quickly read "Horrid Henry Tricks the Tooth Fairy" and has been looking forward to snowboarding ever since.



Although mid-April is the very tail end of the skiing season in Californina, we had a lot of snow this winter and there was still good coverage at Bear Valley. It was also a lovely change from our last trip, when we skied in a blizzard, to be skiing in glorious sunshine.







Adam arrived on the slopes for his lesson with Stephen. Here he is on his first run down the Panda chair slope:





by the end of the first run down he was sideslipping on the board, and by the afternoon he was doing 'falling leaf' and 's' turns down the blue runs.

Finlay also improved his skiing and his confidence, our main problem was keeping up with him as he belted off down the hill...

The highlight of Adam's afternoon was boarding with daddy... "just two boys together on snowboards"...

We had a lovely day, and it was the perfect way to celebrate Mammie's birthday - she was only disappointed that free skiing does not kick in at Bear until age 75...a way to go yet!

Does it run in the family?

During the Ferretworld blog break I celebrated a birthday. This was the card I received from Adam:

Adam knitted the sweater with help from Nana - the perfect card for a knitter!

A short break

So....Ferretworld had an unplanned hiatus...but we're back now after a couple of busy weeks.


We've signed the boys up for a Flag Football league. Its a non-contact form of American football (here it's called, of course, "football") and they had a spring season kick-off. Here the boys are meeting 'Spike' the league mascot:





We also managed a day at the coast - this photo was taken on the front at Santa Cruz.




And naturally, there has been some dining!





In the next thrilling installment: Spring skiing

The final unveiling

For many months in 2006 and 2007 I was working on a large knitting project. Although lots of people saw me knitting it, the item didn't appear on the blog because the intended recipient is an avid reader of Ferretworld: my father. I finished the sweater late in 2007 but wanted to wait to give the sweater to my father in person. They just arrived to visit us and so I was able to hand over the guernsey.

Here he is modelling the finished garment:


It's a guernsey sweater knitting according to the Caister Guernsey pattern in "Knitting Traditional Sweaters" by Madelaine Weston.

Christina and I both knitted guernsey sweaters as part of a 2-person knitalong. The interminable progress of the knitting is documented at Knitalong including my plans to knit my father's initials into his sweater.

I was pleased when i had finished the sweater - it was a challenge of my knitting abilities, and I was quite happy with the results when I packed it away in December. I did also have a small concern that it might not fit well as the sizing was based on secret measurements taken by my mother.

However, not only does it fit really well, but in the 5 days since he received it my father has not removed the guernsey which is very gratifying...almost gratifying enough for me to knit another...almost!

It's madness I tell you...

These are the latest in my quest to clothe my entire family in hand-knit socks. They are the usual pattern knit in Socks that Rock Lightweight in the Lunasea colour.

They are for my mother who requested thinner socks for her walking boots - these are pretty fine weight, but if they dont fit well then I will appropriate them as they fit me. There is no truth in the suggestion that I chose this yarn for mammie based on it's name (lunasea=lunacy?).

I knitted these with my lantern moon dpns (2mm) - I love these needles; the smooth wood makes knitting swift, but there is enough 'grab' that I dont typically drop them out of my knitting. However, there is always a first time and I recently lost a needles while knitting at the school play. I substituted a crystal palace bamboo needle (2nd favourite) and continued.

Then it occurred to me that since Lantern Moon will replace broken needles, they might sell me a single needle (these run about $20 for the set so I didnt really want to buy a whole set if not necessary) so I called their customer service line. Anyway not only did they replace my lost needle free of charge, but they also sent me a spare. I dont think I will buy any other brand of wooden needles again!

Finlays first book

In tandem with Adam reading his 100th book, Finlay read his first book on Sunday.



He had some help with some of the letter sounds - but it was almost all his own work. We celebrated with ice cream!


Excellent job Finlay!

Easter Bunnies

To celebrate Easter here is a link to a pattern I cobbled together last year for Nancy.

http://www.work4idlehands.co.uk/Pattern_of_the_month/index.html

Nancy had worn out a much-loved pair of crochet bunny slippers and I tried to recreate them. I started with a Lion Brand pattern, but modified it for better fit and shape (but I did keep the bunny face and ears the same). I used these Knitpicks suede slipper bottoms. You could use fabric paint to make non-slip bumps on the bottom too if you like.

They turned out pretty well in the end (although one of my 'swatch' versions fitted me), and Nancy was pleased.

Christina wrote up the pattern from my notes and test knit it. I'm linking to the pattern again for those folks who find this blog searching for "bunny slippers"... aplogies to those who arrive searching for ferret-related stuff!

On the needles: Kusha Kusha scarf

Im still pegging away at my Habu scarf. This is the kit I bought in New York.

The interesting thing about the scarf is, of course, the yarn. This is knitted in 2 yarns: the orange is a merino wool, the grey is a stainless steel and merino mix. Yes, that's right, stainless steel.

Of course its not the softest of yarns, after you complete the knitting you should lightly felt the scarf which causes the merino to bloom and make it softer. However, its not quite as bad as knitting wire either. The knitted fabric is quite light and airy, but because of the steel content you can scrunch or twist it, and it retains it's shape.

I think this is quite the oddest thing I have ever knitted.

All I want for Christmas...

...is my 2 front teeth.

Adam lost the second of his top front teeth at the weekend (after days of the thing hanging on by a thread) and now looks like some sort of Norman Rockwell picture.

Toad for dinner

Adam and Finlay recently discovered from their grandmother that their Father's favourite childhood meal was toad-in-the-hole. This was a treat for the first and last day of school.

Since then they have been begging me to make them toad-in-the-hole and yesterday I obliged:


I couldn't find an actual recipe for toad-in-the-hole but I used Delia Smith's Yorkshire Pudding recipe with chicken and apple sausages that had been browned on the BBQ.



It went down well!

Backstage boys

In my youth I attended many concerts (or "gigs" as we preferred to call them); I got to meet my musical hero (Feargal Sharkey of the Undertones) outside the Portsmouth Locarno*; but I never scored one of these:

It is, of course, a backstage pass. The boys entertained themselves (and us) all weekend with the preparations for a concert to be given by themselves to a select audience (Nigel and I). They selected their costumes (sunglasses and baseball hats), practised lip-synching to their playlist (High School Musical and The Backyardigans), and issued numbered tickets, as well as the treasured passes.

Possession of the pass entitled the bearer to go and sit on the bottom bunk along with "the band".

* While googling the correct spelling of Locarno I found this: http://theundertones.net/ugigs.htm a list of all the Undertones gigs. I think I met Feargal during the 1980 tour as it was not the first time I had seen them and I think I saw all their appearances in Portsmouth!

On the needles: Lady of the Lake

Well, the Ribby Cardi is in timeout - waiting for me to go to the wool shop in daylight to match a new colour for the body. Advice from my knitting group (Thanks Mary!) has persuaded me that I am never going to be happy with the purple and I should look for a colour that better matches the overall pink/orange tones of the sleeves.

So to cheer myself up I cast on the Lady of the Lake jacket.

The colour is lovely and the yarn is knitting into a light yet textured knit. The jacket is knit from two yarns: and aran weight and a fine boucle.

I had assumed the yarns were knitted together, but on receiving the pattern I realized that it was knit in a most unusual way: knitting each row with each yarn, with a 4 row repeat, the boucle is knit every alt row and the aran k1p1 every alt row. The effect is terrific and because its knit on 7mm needles its growing quickly.

A corner of my home

I have seen on other people's blogs that they occasionally post an artistic shot of a corner of their home. This usually showcases some delightful object or furniture.



Here is a corner of my home...





The delightful artistic object is an embroidery that my mother made, she made one for each boy...but look closer...



"onle Adam alowd"...!

Lurid knitting

I have finished the sleeves of my ribby cardi and cast on the the body...

and I don't like it.

I selected the purple colour for the body because it picks up one of the colours in the handpainted yarn. However, the impression of the sleeves is of a pinky-orange colour and that, together with the purple just doesnt look nice to me. I think I may go back to my original plan of dark brown for the body, but in the mean time I will just set it aside and knit my green jacket.

Who knows - maybe after an infusion of bright pea green the purple/orange combo won't seem so bad!

Edited to add: When I got my knitting out in daylight to take the photo, it didnt seem so lurid as under artificial lights. That maybe OK as long as I plan to wear the cardigan in daylight.

Treats in the mail

Becky at Skacel came good on her offer: This week I received a parcel from Skacel containing the replacement ball of Austerman Step, in a different colour, as requested.



She also included these needles which appear to be Addi needles - but are gold coloured rather than the usual nickel. Anyone have any idea what these are? I'm not complaining either way.


When I got back from New York this was waiting for me:

and unlike the wool that usually arrives in the mail, I didnt buy this myself. This is a gift from Ingrid and is from The Knitting Goddess (the dyer - not Ingrid herself - although she may also be a Knitting Goddess). It's fingering (4-ply) weight cashmere in the Brown Owl colour. My problem now is deciding what to knit with it.

Spring

There is a definite feeling of spring in the air. Walking back from town today Finlay declared "it's snowing" as white blossoms fell on us.



The apricot tree that we planted outside the front door is blooming:

Our neighbour's mimosa is in its annual yellow glory:

and all around the neighbourhood the trees are flowering.

The Santa Clara Valley used to be known as "The Valley of Heart's Delight" apparently because of its extensive orchards. It was a center for fruit, particularly prune, production. The next town to us celebrates this with an annual Prune Festival - although there are sadly not too many prunes around these days.

In the 11 years since I have moved to the area, I notice that there are fewer orchards, these being replaced by housing estates. At one time Blossom Hill Road, used to be orchards along it's entire length from LG to San Jose, but I don't think there is a single working orchard any more. I guess this is the price of progress, but I will be very sad when the very few remaining orchards around here go.

Step out in style

While we were driving back from Bear I finished Nigel's latest socks.

He requested short socks (and I'm always happy to oblige with a request like that!). These are knitted in Austerman Step in the Cobblestone colour. I really like this yarn both for it's texture while knitting (it's infused with Aloe Vera) and for it's washing and wearing characteristics. I'm not thrilled about the colour/patterns but they are great for Nigel's socks.

The eagle eyed among you will notice that they don't match. While winding off some yarn to start the second sock at roughly the same place in the colour run, I encountered a knot. I didnt think too much about it, but as I knitted the cuff it was clear that after the knot the yarn had been rejoined in reverse order. After consultation with Nigel I continued knitting the sock anyway (as you can see).

I was pretty annoyed however, I'm not really bothered about knitting matching socks, and don't usually try to match them, but I think this sort of mistake is pretty outrageous in a high-end yarn. I mind less when I'm paying $3 for the yarn than when I shelled out $20!

At Stitches I noticed that the manufacturer had a stand and went to talk to them. I explained that I had not tried to return the ball to the yarn store (well I had already knitted one and a half socks out of it) but I wanted to pass the feedback on. The person on the stand was interested to hear (or at least feigned interest) and offered to send me a replacement ball anyway. She said that she had not heard of that happening before.

She also explained that Austermann are moving away from yarns with long colour repeats (like this colour) because they get so many complaints from people who want to knit matching socks, and there is not enough yarn for 2 long or big socks and matching. I guess this is the knitting equivalent of "additional yardage required for plaids".

Stitches West

I went to Stitches West on Saturday. I didn't attend any classes but did manage a little shopping!

The market was not actually as busy as I expected, I arrived about 10:30 before the 'Yarn Train' arrived from Sacramento bearing an additional 500 knitters (!). Previously I have been on the Friday so I expected it to be mobbed. It was odd going on my own (instead of with Mammie and Finlay) but I did meet a lot of friends there...well, I guess every knitter in the bay area was in the Santa Clara Convention Center sometime this weekend.

I got to meet the founders of Ravelry who were as sweet and friendly as everyone says.

I planned to buy some sock yarn...and succeeded in that:

ShiBui - I apparently cannot resist this shade of green!



Tess's designer yarns below - great colours and very reasonably priced.

Creatively dyed - I had been wanting to try Sea Wool and these colours were very pretty.

I bought a kit for Fleece Artist Lady of the Lake that I had eyed up online, but had not wanted to commit to chosing a hand-dyed colour without seeing it in person. Again with the bright pea green!

I came home tired and spent-up!

Bear

We had a quick ski trip to Bear Valley as it was winter break at school. It turned into a very quick trip due to weather and other travel considerations.

We stayed at Murphys and braved the blizzard to the ski area. We got a couple of hours skiing in, and it was nice to see how well the boys had retained what they learnt at Christmas.

Once we were all cold and wet we decided that enough was enough and that we would come back for some spring skiing.

How busy were the slopes?

The drive back out of the snow was slow, but beautiful. Its amazing how a layer of fresh snow makes the scenery so majestic and seem so quiet.