Holy mother of god, how I hate this cardigan I am currently knitting. I am only about halfway up the back of it, and, were this not my mother's birthday gift, which must be in the States no later than the 25th of May, I have every confidence this would be my very first Unfinished Object, left to languish for a long, long time, possibly forever. I love the yarn. I just hate knitting with the yarn. I have tried every pair of 5mm needles I have, rosewood, bamboo, plastic and aluminium (I think that leaves cassein, which I don't have, probably wouldn't make any difference, and am not buying for this bloody project), and the sad fact remains that this goddamn yarn just doesn't have enough give to make knitting with it a pleasure. I am just going to have to suck it up and suffer my way through this cardigan, and all I can say is she better goddamn love it.
On a happy note, I finished the Airy Scarf, and it is very pretty. There are a couple of errors in it, but ripping back mohair is a nightmare, so I just fiddled with the blocking, and when I wove in the ends, I faked a couple of dropped stitches, and it looks fine. It is as light as a cloud, very, very soft, and doesn't itch at all. I think, since I have a ball of cream(ish) kidsilk haze that I will make my mom one to go with the %$£@! cardigan, which is a lovely rich, fudgy brown (really, the yarn is gorgeous, even though we hates it forever) and that way I have her mother's day gift taken care of as well. The other half of the ball will make the same scarf for my mother-in-law. They live five thousand miles apart; the odds of them wearing the same scarf to the same event are, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.
So now I am working out my reward for making it through this sweater. My reward will probably be yarn. Sock yarn, I am thinking, because I desperately want to teach myself to knit socks, even though I fear double-pointed needles. Sock yarn is just so damn beautiful, and the longer I chug along on this cardigan, the more I come to appreciate the concept of small projects. I am on a mad, mohair-conquering high, so I think I'm ready for socks. And more lace. There are so many things I want to make, and this sweater is not among them. I love knitting for other people, in fact, I probably enjoy it more than knitting for myself, which always feels vaguely selfish, but socks? I need socks. I deserve socks. Socks are nearly Puritan knitting, so wholesome and practical are socks. OK, so I plan on buying some incredibly extravagant ebony dpns and cashmere sock yarn, but eh, they're still just socks. The whole 'use cheap stuff you don't really like while you're learning' philosophy has never worked for me at all. What got knitting to stick for me this time was firmly rejecting the crappy acrylic and buying some nice merino. There is a place for acrylic, I concede, and that place is usually baby stuff, because the little buggers puke and crap and drool all over everything, and you need to be able to just throw their stuff in the washer. Also, you can practically watch them grow in real time, so yay, acrylic. I guess.
Oh god, I want to knit something other than that cardigan. Help me.
Thursday, 13 April 2006
Tuesday, 11 April 2006
Oh, rubbish.
While my in-laws have been on holiday, I've been filling up their wheelie bin, as well as our own, every week. See, I've finally got around to clearing out the guest room (also known as the "crap room"), which I filled up with, well, crap, when I cleared out the old crap room, which is now my study/knitting room. We moved into this house, oh, three years ago, and I am just now finishing opening the last of our moving boxes. They were full of useless crap, for the most part, which is why they were able to sit there, peacefully gathering lots of dust, for the last three years. I have now condensed most of the crap down into five much smaller boxes, which I will go through at my leisure, and that surely means they will sit in the guest room, vaguely irritating me and gathering dust until we actually have houseguests about to arrive, when I will probably just pitch them into our bedroom for the duration.
You see, I am slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that my husband will never see the error of his packrat ways. Our house will never be entirely free of clutter. We live in an Edwardian semi-detached house that, while lovely and very spacious, is completely lacking in closets. As in, there are none. I'm not exaggerating for effect. We have NO built-in closets, and only two free-standing wardrobes, both of which are packed to bulging already. Add to this the fact that every single radiator is stupidly located, the doors and windows and other furniture take up almost all of the remaining wall space, and we have thousands and thousands of books (none of which, no matter how crappy, stupid and unlikely ever to be read again they are, will he consent to give or throw away) on many large space-hogging bookshelves, and it would be fair to deduce that we will never have any more wardrobes.
He really doesn't see this as a problem. You should see his office. Part of the reason his office is such a fright is that I have taken to throwing the piles of crap he leaves in the rest of the house into it. If it were solely up to me, I swear to god, we would hire a skip tomorrow and toss out tonnes of what I consider rubbish, and what he considers potentially useful, or has some other highly idiosyncratic reason for not wishing to pitch. I love to read, and I love books, and I look at our overflowing bookshelves, and I am seized with the almost overwhelming desire to build a bonfire in the back garden. Don't get me wrong; very many of these books are mine, and in most cases, I, too, am reluctant to part with them. I sympathise with his acquisitive and possessive nature where books are concerned, since I share it, too. But if I find one more crappy airport thriller stuffed in a box, I think I'm going to start screaming hysterically and not stop until the men with the butterfly nets come and drag me away.
You see, I am slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that my husband will never see the error of his packrat ways. Our house will never be entirely free of clutter. We live in an Edwardian semi-detached house that, while lovely and very spacious, is completely lacking in closets. As in, there are none. I'm not exaggerating for effect. We have NO built-in closets, and only two free-standing wardrobes, both of which are packed to bulging already. Add to this the fact that every single radiator is stupidly located, the doors and windows and other furniture take up almost all of the remaining wall space, and we have thousands and thousands of books (none of which, no matter how crappy, stupid and unlikely ever to be read again they are, will he consent to give or throw away) on many large space-hogging bookshelves, and it would be fair to deduce that we will never have any more wardrobes.
He really doesn't see this as a problem. You should see his office. Part of the reason his office is such a fright is that I have taken to throwing the piles of crap he leaves in the rest of the house into it. If it were solely up to me, I swear to god, we would hire a skip tomorrow and toss out tonnes of what I consider rubbish, and what he considers potentially useful, or has some other highly idiosyncratic reason for not wishing to pitch. I love to read, and I love books, and I look at our overflowing bookshelves, and I am seized with the almost overwhelming desire to build a bonfire in the back garden. Don't get me wrong; very many of these books are mine, and in most cases, I, too, am reluctant to part with them. I sympathise with his acquisitive and possessive nature where books are concerned, since I share it, too. But if I find one more crappy airport thriller stuffed in a box, I think I'm going to start screaming hysterically and not stop until the men with the butterfly nets come and drag me away.
Saturday, 8 April 2006
Lacy goodness
Stop the presses -- I am knitting a (very simple) lace scarf in mohair. The Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts in Rowan Kidsilk Haze, to be precise. I had three balls of Kidsilk Haze in my stash (more on my stash, later), bought on a whim, and which I thought I'd probably never use, since my one previous experience with mohair was not successful. It was, in fact, so horrible that it put me off knitting at all for a while. I totally hated it, found it agonising, and after about twenty incredibly painful rows, quit, and gave the yarn to my mother-in-law. The texture was icky, it stuck to my needles, and it had no give at all. It was some Sirdar blend of tiny amounts of alpaca and mohair and huge amounts of nasty acrylic. Hated it with a passion.
Fast forward, oh, two years, and I have three balls of Kidsilk Haze. Soft, oh God is it soft. 70% kid mohair and 30% silk, leaving exactly NO room for acrylic in the blend. I love this yarn, I pet it frequently, but I assume I am waaaay too new at Real Knitting to even dream of using it yet, and anyway, I'm still traumatized by the Sirdar experience. I place an Amazon order for some knitting books I've wanted, one of which is Last Minute Knitted Gifts, and there I find the Airy Scarf, which actually looks easy (although, for some stupid reason, I feared yarn overs) and more to the point, is listed as a 4-hour project and requires precisely one-half ball of Kidsilk Haze. As I am currently in the early stages of knitting what is shaping up to be an incredibly tedious Summer Tweed cardigan for my mother's birthday in late May, the idea of a four-hour project, one I think I will probably fail to do in four hours, and in fact will totally jack up, has its appeal: I'll hate it, fuck it up, and go back to the comfort of my easy but boring cardigan. Perfect.
Except this is fun! After struggling through the first five garter stitch rows and getting used to the feel of such a fine, lightweight and did I mention mohair yarn, I hit the first row of lace eyelets, and after k2tog'ing, I attempt a yarn over. And I did it right! It worked! And then I did ten more, and they all worked, too. The k2tog parts are a little tricky, since getting my 6mm bamboo needle (alas, I have no polished hardwood 6mms, and I am not cocky enough to go with slippery aluminium on my first real mohair project) through two stitches of a laceweight yarn is not easy, but hey, I persevered and did it. And no way am I getting this scarf done in 4 hours, but damn, this is fun. I can't get over how light it is. Since the pattern repeat is stupid easy, I might just go ahead and use up a whole ball of KH, since the pattern, as written, is for a pretty short scarf, and I like my scarves kind of on the long side. Which will still leave me with three balls of KH to make a shawl from, since, er, I decided, before casting on, that while I love my black KH stash, I really needed to go over to John Lewis and buy the pale pink KH used in the book, since it was just so pretty. And while I was there, well, I needed a couple more skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk to make a tank top with, and damn, if this scarf goes well and quickly, I can make one for my mother-in-law's birthday present, and she's very fond of brown and cream, and look! They make KH in a lovely cream colour, and about ten minutes later, I come to at the cash register, and my £6.50 ball of pink Kidsilk Haze has morphed into, well, a considerably larger purchase than that.
What can I say, the stash is a demanding mistress, but I love her so much it's hard to deny her anything, although at the moment, I'm working on convincing her she can wait a little while for sock yarn. I can't possibly learn to knit socks until I finish that bloody cardigan, I don't care how much she whines for a little Koigu or Lorna's Laces. They will be her reward after I make it through all this goddamn awful Summer Tweed.
It's not that Summer Tweed doesn't make a lovely fabric, because it really does. My swatch, after washing, has a beautiful, interesting texture, and very attractive appearance. Knitting with it is just kind of unpleasant; cotton and silk do not make for yarn with much give, and I am used to using nice, giving wool. This is kind of like knitting with nubbly dental floss. I'm getting better at it; my gauge is very close to dead on, and I've learned to loosen up a little on the tension, plus I switched from a pair of 5mm rosewoods to aluminium needles, so I'm getting some much-needed glide, but really, I just want to be done with this thing, so I can move on to something fun. My first two jumpers, knit for Phil, were made of Rowanspun Chunky (discontinued, dammit, but I've stockpiled some that was going cheap) which I adored, and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky, which is really soft and nice and buttery (and has a good proportion of microfibre in it, so don't think I'm a total natural fibre snob, in spite of me snarking at the hated Sirdar above), and was lots of fun to knit. I suspect I'm just not a big cotton fan when it comes to yarn. I am, however, a total convert to the glories of kid mohair and lace. Time to finish up this scarf and get done with that goddamn cardigan so I can feed the stash some sock yarn.
Fast forward, oh, two years, and I have three balls of Kidsilk Haze. Soft, oh God is it soft. 70% kid mohair and 30% silk, leaving exactly NO room for acrylic in the blend. I love this yarn, I pet it frequently, but I assume I am waaaay too new at Real Knitting to even dream of using it yet, and anyway, I'm still traumatized by the Sirdar experience. I place an Amazon order for some knitting books I've wanted, one of which is Last Minute Knitted Gifts, and there I find the Airy Scarf, which actually looks easy (although, for some stupid reason, I feared yarn overs) and more to the point, is listed as a 4-hour project and requires precisely one-half ball of Kidsilk Haze. As I am currently in the early stages of knitting what is shaping up to be an incredibly tedious Summer Tweed cardigan for my mother's birthday in late May, the idea of a four-hour project, one I think I will probably fail to do in four hours, and in fact will totally jack up, has its appeal: I'll hate it, fuck it up, and go back to the comfort of my easy but boring cardigan. Perfect.
Except this is fun! After struggling through the first five garter stitch rows and getting used to the feel of such a fine, lightweight and did I mention mohair yarn, I hit the first row of lace eyelets, and after k2tog'ing, I attempt a yarn over. And I did it right! It worked! And then I did ten more, and they all worked, too. The k2tog parts are a little tricky, since getting my 6mm bamboo needle (alas, I have no polished hardwood 6mms, and I am not cocky enough to go with slippery aluminium on my first real mohair project) through two stitches of a laceweight yarn is not easy, but hey, I persevered and did it. And no way am I getting this scarf done in 4 hours, but damn, this is fun. I can't get over how light it is. Since the pattern repeat is stupid easy, I might just go ahead and use up a whole ball of KH, since the pattern, as written, is for a pretty short scarf, and I like my scarves kind of on the long side. Which will still leave me with three balls of KH to make a shawl from, since, er, I decided, before casting on, that while I love my black KH stash, I really needed to go over to John Lewis and buy the pale pink KH used in the book, since it was just so pretty. And while I was there, well, I needed a couple more skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk to make a tank top with, and damn, if this scarf goes well and quickly, I can make one for my mother-in-law's birthday present, and she's very fond of brown and cream, and look! They make KH in a lovely cream colour, and about ten minutes later, I come to at the cash register, and my £6.50 ball of pink Kidsilk Haze has morphed into, well, a considerably larger purchase than that.
What can I say, the stash is a demanding mistress, but I love her so much it's hard to deny her anything, although at the moment, I'm working on convincing her she can wait a little while for sock yarn. I can't possibly learn to knit socks until I finish that bloody cardigan, I don't care how much she whines for a little Koigu or Lorna's Laces. They will be her reward after I make it through all this goddamn awful Summer Tweed.
It's not that Summer Tweed doesn't make a lovely fabric, because it really does. My swatch, after washing, has a beautiful, interesting texture, and very attractive appearance. Knitting with it is just kind of unpleasant; cotton and silk do not make for yarn with much give, and I am used to using nice, giving wool. This is kind of like knitting with nubbly dental floss. I'm getting better at it; my gauge is very close to dead on, and I've learned to loosen up a little on the tension, plus I switched from a pair of 5mm rosewoods to aluminium needles, so I'm getting some much-needed glide, but really, I just want to be done with this thing, so I can move on to something fun. My first two jumpers, knit for Phil, were made of Rowanspun Chunky (discontinued, dammit, but I've stockpiled some that was going cheap) which I adored, and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky, which is really soft and nice and buttery (and has a good proportion of microfibre in it, so don't think I'm a total natural fibre snob, in spite of me snarking at the hated Sirdar above), and was lots of fun to knit. I suspect I'm just not a big cotton fan when it comes to yarn. I am, however, a total convert to the glories of kid mohair and lace. Time to finish up this scarf and get done with that goddamn cardigan so I can feed the stash some sock yarn.
Saturday, 1 April 2006
Farmer's Market
Phil's been on holiday all this week, so of course it's been raining, and we haven't done much of anything. Can't really go anywhere, since his folks are on some monstrously long cruise around South America, and I'm keeping an eye on their house for them. Bee has about ten million houseplants, and it takes forever to water them all. Plus, they have this new alarm system, which is so stupidly easy to turn on and off -- it's this little gizmo like that I've Fallen & I Can't Get Up thing, you just press one button to turn the alarm off and the other to turn it on -- that I am, naturally, frightened that it's just too easy to use, and that I'm somehow going to accidentally set the alarm off, and then I'll have to deal with the security company and possibly the cops, and man, I just don't need that. My utter, animal fear of authority can be triggered by fucking rent-a-cops, for God's sake. How lame is that?
Yesterday, though, it was good. Flash woke me up at the ungodly time of 6.20 a.m., by headbutting me and purring loudly until I finally gave up and went downstairs and pelleted him. See, that's how Flash gives you a wake-up call; he's all friendly and affectionate and TOTALLY FUCKING PERSISTENT, like a furry, benign terminator or something. Pix will stand just out of reach and howl at you, or she'll do this thing where she sits right next to you and pick-pick-picks at you with one of her nasty little claws until you just give in, because you're going to lose your mind and possibly some blood if you don't. Flash, though, he's just annoying you by an excess of likeabilty and joie de vivre, so you're the bad guy if you get pissed off, the little bastard.
Anyway, I got up, and the sun was just dazzling. Beautiful, clear blue sky, a few fast-moving fluffy clouds, very nice. The local farmers' market is on the last Friday of the month down at B'head market, which is one of those big all-purpose markets, where you can get everything from eggs to orange pleather stilettos. The farmers, though, they only come in once a month to sell their expensive and gorgeous organic stuff to the vile, semi-moneyed hippie scum like us. Not that we're particularly rich, mind, it's just that when I look at how much money I spend at that monthly market, I feel kind of ill. Yeah, I smoke, but I'm afraid to eat meat that doesn't come directly from the hands of the guy who raised and slaughtered it, and who can give me chapter and verse on its pleasant, if brief, existence.
The market traders are all really nice, though. You get your usual run of meat/poultry farmers and butchers from Cheshire and North Wales, and your basic organic vegetable farmers (not much beyond root veg and brassicas at the moment, sadly), but also small, independent brewers and cheese-makers, a man who sells the most beautiful olives, stalls selling homemade chutney and jam and bread, all of which I make myself anyway, but I still love looking at their stuff, and then, occasionally, a real oddball, like the Catalan lady who had made a bunch of Spanish food, and was selling it. I bought a potato and caramelized onion tortilla from her, and brought it home for lunch. I thought it was lovely, but Phil's not mad keen on potatoes, and he was somewhat less enthusiastic than me.
Shortly after I got home, the rain came back, and after filling my freezer with all the meat I bought, I went and took a nap. No spring lambs haunted my dreams, thank God.
Yesterday, though, it was good. Flash woke me up at the ungodly time of 6.20 a.m., by headbutting me and purring loudly until I finally gave up and went downstairs and pelleted him. See, that's how Flash gives you a wake-up call; he's all friendly and affectionate and TOTALLY FUCKING PERSISTENT, like a furry, benign terminator or something. Pix will stand just out of reach and howl at you, or she'll do this thing where she sits right next to you and pick-pick-picks at you with one of her nasty little claws until you just give in, because you're going to lose your mind and possibly some blood if you don't. Flash, though, he's just annoying you by an excess of likeabilty and joie de vivre, so you're the bad guy if you get pissed off, the little bastard.
Anyway, I got up, and the sun was just dazzling. Beautiful, clear blue sky, a few fast-moving fluffy clouds, very nice. The local farmers' market is on the last Friday of the month down at B'head market, which is one of those big all-purpose markets, where you can get everything from eggs to orange pleather stilettos. The farmers, though, they only come in once a month to sell their expensive and gorgeous organic stuff to the vile, semi-moneyed hippie scum like us. Not that we're particularly rich, mind, it's just that when I look at how much money I spend at that monthly market, I feel kind of ill. Yeah, I smoke, but I'm afraid to eat meat that doesn't come directly from the hands of the guy who raised and slaughtered it, and who can give me chapter and verse on its pleasant, if brief, existence.
The market traders are all really nice, though. You get your usual run of meat/poultry farmers and butchers from Cheshire and North Wales, and your basic organic vegetable farmers (not much beyond root veg and brassicas at the moment, sadly), but also small, independent brewers and cheese-makers, a man who sells the most beautiful olives, stalls selling homemade chutney and jam and bread, all of which I make myself anyway, but I still love looking at their stuff, and then, occasionally, a real oddball, like the Catalan lady who had made a bunch of Spanish food, and was selling it. I bought a potato and caramelized onion tortilla from her, and brought it home for lunch. I thought it was lovely, but Phil's not mad keen on potatoes, and he was somewhat less enthusiastic than me.
Shortly after I got home, the rain came back, and after filling my freezer with all the meat I bought, I went and took a nap. No spring lambs haunted my dreams, thank God.
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