Blocking

With a little help from Baxter, again. He waded around in the bathtub while the shawl soaked and then tried to roll around on the wet shawl as I stretched it out. I evicted him from the room.

This is---FINALLY---the Juneberry Triangle, designed by Jared Flood, and made from his Shelter Yarn, wool socks color. He wrote an entire blog post about how the yarn is spun and all I understand is that is is a process that keeps the yarn very light. This shawl is light as air even though it's worsted weight wool. It is the most complicated knitting I have ever done; it had five...count them...FIVE charts. And no safety rows---like purl all wrong side rows. Nope. Every row had a pattern. But I do think it's pretty and even though there are probably mistakes in it, and maybe a zig where there should be a zag, I think I love it.

I'll know more when it's dry and I can actually put it on.

I had better love it....

Serendipity

Again.

This time with mawatas. We bought them months and months ago to make silk mittens with. The Yarn Harlot had written about doing this, and we figured, with no good reason, that if she could do it, so could we.

Using this silk as yarn involves pulling these unbelievably thin mawatas, or silk hankies, out and sort of twisting the fiber a bit until the thickness is right for the intended project.

Isn't it pretty?

L and Sallyknit, while we were all in Asheville for SAFF this weekend, tried to turn one of the hankies into yarn. They succeeded, but only in getting what could more accurately be described as thread. They also tried to knit what they pulled into the ribbing for mittens, but that was not successful either. The mittens would have been very teeny-tiny.

On our way home from Asheville, we somehow turned off the road onto the wrong exit road, and ended up sort of ....not lost really...but sort of dislocated. Suddenly Sallyknit yelled, and I do mean yelled, "Yarn!" We stopped on a dime and this is what we saw:
A beautiful yarn shop in Hendersonville, NC. Not only is the shop as perfect inside as it is outside, the owner is a specialist in dyeing fibers, and especially SILK fiber!!! We mentioned our failure with our silk hankies, and she took us to the back of her shop where she was knitting a scarf from a hankie she had dyed herself. The scarf was beautiful.

The owner gave us a little demonstration on pulling silk from the hankie---and no kidding---we can do this! We decided to make scarves instead of mittens---we don't much wear mittens in Georgia, but a silk scarf? We can wear that all year long.

Serendipity. It's a wonderful thing!

Spinners

Color

Uh oh.

Ooops. Shopping already.

We have arrived. Now off to see EVERYTHING (but not to buy anything...)

BLOCKING HELP

That I didn't want or need.

Hmmm....What's this???

(Daughter's sweater soaking)
Testing the water:

All four feet in:
And now out:
And yes, there I was again, taking pictures instead of reinforcing what NO means. But I was so surprised that he would get in the bathtub and the two inches of water in it that I ran for the camera. He was in and out several times, but when he started walking on the sweater, and then, even worse, chewing on one of the long strands of yarn I will use to sew a side seam, I took him out and banished him from the room.

I have never soaked and blocked pieces before sewing an item together before, but in a recent post by the Yarn Harlot she mentioned that she was doing that, and if it works for her, maybe it's a good idea. The sleeves were so curled on the edges that sewing them up would have been difficult. I'll see how this works, once all that heavy wool dries.

Baxter---bad boy!

Baxter's favorite toys are pipe cleaners. Yesterday, I pulled my address book out of this cabinet and was going to put it back in a few minutes. I had left the door open and Baxter apparently smelled the pipe cleaner supply in there. I saw him on the counter, so I closed the door. When I wasn't looking, Baxter got up on the counter to investigate.He was able to open the door and he grabbed the package and pulled it out.
The rest went onto the floor.
Does he look the least bit guilty?
Hah! He doesn't know what guilt is.

Now I'll have to put a child-proof latch on this cabinet door, just as I had to do with the cabinet where we keep the bread.

Bad kitty!

(And yes, I was taking pictures instead of pulling him off the counter, but I had already pulled him off several times. He was relentless. I pulled out my camera.)

Two Sleeves!!!

Two knit at one time on one needle:
This is what I'm aiming for, except in green, of course.

and minus the flashes from my camera.

Front and Back

Finished!!!

Yay!!! Now all I have to do is:
knit two sleeves, which I am doing at the same time on the same needles with two balls of yarn, even though using two balls of yarn at once DRIVES ME CRAZY because they get all twisted up but I don't want Second Sleeve Syndrome because that's worse than Second Sock Syndrome because sweater sleeves are bigger than socks. And then pick up a few thousand stitches around the neck and sleeves to knit a six-inch ribbed collar.
I learned a couple of things making the front and back:

1. Give up sitting in my favorite rocking chair to knit and instead knit at a table where I can have all three pieces of paper in front of me at one time because I have to keep referring from one to the other because the pattern is so %^&* complicated.

2. Use several counters and don't get them mixed up. EVER.

3. How to knit the following types of cables and twists: claw, diamond, large rope, V, plaited and small rope. Yee hah. (Actually, that was sort of fun, once I stopped staring like a deer in the headlights at the instructions.)

4. Keep the cable needle in my mouth AT ALL TIMES so that I don't lose it---again---and have to spend five minutes looking for it.

5. Keep the scissors in my mouth AT ALL TIMES---next time, once I find them---so that I don't have to spend however long it is going to take to find them this time.

All in all, a learning experience. I can't wait to get the whole thing finished so I can admire it and then send it off to younger daughter in LA and be done with it.

(And as a bonus, I bought yarn to make myself one too. Can't wait......)

I am Smitten

with a British TV series called Doc Martin. I LOVE it. It takes place in Portwenn, a fictional town along the Cornwall coast in England. The characters are wonderful; the scenery is drop dead gorgeous and I swear that everyone who lives in the tiny REAL town (Port Isaac, Cornwall, United Kingdom) has a view of the ocean. The show has the usual mix of British humor and eccentricities. It is on PBS, but on Hulu, I can watch every one of the episodes of the seasons I missed before I discovered the series.

It's perfect.