I Fall Victim to Good Marketing

I should put myself on a strict knitting diet: no new yarn, no casting on. I was thinking very seriously about doing just that but then a friend "forced" me to go to The Knitting Tree, a LYS. She needed buttons; I needed nothing. Yet, three days later, I have these:

They are Stripey Fingerless Gloves from Patternology, which is the brand that the Knitting Tree owner uses for her designs.  In a brilliant move, she doesn't sell the patterns; instead, they are free when you purchase the yarn each pattern is designed for.

The yarn in this case is KFI Luxury Collection Indulgence Cashmere. It's a DK weight with 5% cashmere. For $30, you get 437 yards and 150 grams, enough to make a set of fingerless mitts and a matching slouchy hat, which I've begun:

The mitts and hat are going to be gifts for two different people, however.

I have had too much time to knit. Someone -- not me, for once -- backed a car I was riding in into a post and aggravated my highly arthritic neck. Knitting in a neck-friendly position was my main activity this weekend, along with  experimenting with pain-killers. Gee, I sound so old here!

I'm off to catch up on your blogs. That's one other thing I can manage!

From a Coffee Shop

Our Internet is out. We are trying to change companies and the old one is gumming up the works, so here I am!

I decided that I need to start working on my travel sock at home, seeing as I had to cancel most of my travels this summer. Some progress has been made on the first Almondine, an Anne Hansen pattern from the the book, Sock Knitting Master Class. The yarn is Cascade Heritage, a very dependable sock yarn. Affordable, too.

The Trip: Andy Worhol's Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure is itself a trip. It's a fast read about his early career and a car trip to his first Los Angeles exhibit. It's hard to believe he lived such a crazy life with his mother as a housemate! I'm not a huge fan of his work, but his life is very interesting.

Idaho is a literary novel with a mystery embedded. The writing is a bit flowery for my taste; sometimes I feel like the author is trying too hard. The intricate plotting holds my attention, so I'll definitely finish this. I should add that it involves a couple characters with dementia and is overall fairly depressing.

Joining with Kat for Unraveled Wednesday.

It's Never a Good Sign ...

... when I don't blog for more than a week.

My dad has been complaining of back pain. He's also been having a lot of trouble with mobility. So, we made arrangements for him to move into the assisted living section of the retirement community where my parents live.

Yarn bombing downtown Madison! I love this.

But before we could get him moved, he ended up in the emergency room. Turns out the poor guy has a compression fracture in one of his vertebrae. He'll need a stay in rehab before moving into his new digs.

I've been embroidering a lot of ocean stuff lately. 

In between that, I've put in quite a few hours getting ready for school, and we are trying to make some progress in decluttering our house so we can put it on the market int he spring. We don't want to move far, just to downsize.

There simply aren't enough hours in the day, are there?

A Week of Crafting

Joni and did lots of different crafts during her visit last week. We took a great class at Bare Knuckle Arts, where we made paste paper and marbled paper.

We found white shirts on sale at Anthropologie and decided to dye them with red cabbage.  We did a ton of research and tracked down alum and cream of Tartar to prepare the cloth. We added ammonia to the dye to make it more blue, and look at the gorgeous color we got:

Sadly, the color almost completely washed out! Now we have off-white shirts. Is there some way to fix the color?

Joni decorated a store-bought frame with some of my polymer clay tiles:

While she did that, I painted some handmade polymer clay pendants that I made a while ago.

I'm lucky that I have some art/craft friends here in Madison. After Joni left, Tsela and I went painting at the Memorial Union at UW-Madison. Here is mine:

And here is hers:

Art/craft and friends are a pretty amazing combination!

Friends Rock

The upside to having surgery is that I've been overwhelmed by how many people have given me support. All the comments on my blog have meant so much to me. They truly helped me through this, especially those first few weeks.

And I have to give a special thanks to Rose of Sand in My Yarn, who sent me this bundle of knitting goodies:

I am so touched by all the thought she put into this. Inside the great mesh bag I found two darling tea strainers, fragrant Pumpkin Spice soap, darling crocheted Lantern Moon Stitch markers ...

... repositionable markers, washi tape, knitters gift tags that are adorable beyond belief, and sweet nail files that fit in any purse! Thank you so much, Rose! You really cheered me up at a tough time.

Another friend who went beyond and above is my childhood best friend, Joni. We were supposed to meet in Seattle, but my doctor said I could not fly this summer. Instead, she flew from Berkeley, Calif., to spend time with her post-surgical friend.

We had lots of craftsy adventures. But thats another post!

P.S. Now that she has headed back home, I'll be catching up on all your blogs.

Stitch Markers Rock

Many of you commented on the challenge of casting on 472 stitches for my Winter Ridge Cowl Shawl (that is really a poncho). Vicki noted that she uses stitch markers every 20 or 25 stitches. I couldn't cast on a lot of stitches without markers!

For this project, I used stitch markers every 50 stitches. Using them every 25 stitches would have given me too many markers to keep track of.  It was painful, but it worked out. And I'm very happy with the project so far.

I am a true believer in the long-tail cast-on. I was taught by a Norwegian woman when I was 10, and I can do it in my sleep. It is flexible and looks great. But even I don't want to try to figure out the tail for 472 stitches especially with yarn that ain't cheap!

For this project, I used the cable cast-on (which has nothing to do with cables, as far as I can tell). I don't think it's as stable, but it did the trick.

Update: I had my staples out today, and the healing is going well. The nurse warned me that it will take a full year for my incision to heal! But I should be able to drive soon, so I'll settle for small victories.

Have a great weekend!

Black and Gray for Today

As long as I have to spend a lot of time lounging around, I thought I'd start my Winter Ridge Cowl Shawl. It requires casting on 472 stitches. Seriously.

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After you finally finish casting on all those stitches, you get to make the adorable loops that go around the bottom. This part is way more fun than casting on and counting. I especially hate the counting part.

I am reading a really great mystery. I rarely pick up mysteries because I burned out on them a long time ago, but Magpie Murders got such great reviews that I actually purchased it for my Kindle.

And it is every bit as good as the reviews said. I don't want to give away too much, but let me say that it is a cozy English mystery wrapped inside a contemporary mystery. I think the story-within-a-story gig is hard to do well, but Anthony Horowitz has built two solid stories.

I'm not done yet, but I bet the ending won't disappoint.

Join us over at Unraveled to share what you are knitting and reading.

Getting Some Things Done

I think I've turned a corner and the pain level has really dropped. Still, this has not been a terrible recovery. I knit an entire shawl already:

This is an Antarktis in a Knit Circus gradient (can't find the ball band!). I thought I had too much yarn, but I was wrong and I had to end a bit early. I can't move around enough to block yet, but I'm sure it will block out to a good size.

I finished the painting I started on a day trip Keith and I took before my surgery to Viroqua, Wis.

This is a beautiful old building. To me, the touching thing is the For Sale sign along the side of the building. I'm not sure painting is the right word because I used Derwent Inktense Pencils, my usual medium.

I packed up a box of hand knits for the folks on Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States. You can learn more about this project at the Ravelry group. I mostly sent mittens and scarves.

I've been trying to knit outside for a little while every morning, before the mosquitos swarm! Yesterday I noticed that our yard is dotted with these:

It's a mushroom, not a flower.

Summer break is roughly half over, and it's going way too fast! When I can move around a little better, I need to go into school and start getting organized for next year. I learned the hard way last year that the pace is very fast in high school and I need to hit the ground running!

Getting Out A Bit

I have been able to do a few outings since my surgery. The most fun was a visit to Studio You with my friends Marsha and Tsela.

I decided to paint some dessert plates as a wedding gift. It didn't occur to me to take a photo of the first one before it was taken away to be fired, but here is the second one:

As you can see, I'll have to go back to finish this one.

Both Marsha and Tsela are talented artists. Here's Tsela with the vase she painted. I reminded her when my birthday is.

Marsha had knee surgery a few weeks ago, so we both very much appreciate Tsela ferrying us around and putting up with our very slow walking pace.

For the most part, though, I'm just hanging around the house and trying to heal, welcoming visitors, knitting, reading and spending time with Nagi. He's very cute, but not much on conversation, as you can see.

Hope your weekend is relaxing and fun.

Double FO Friday

When you are under doctor's orders to sit around all day, you can get a lot of knitting done! As a result, I have two finished hats to show you.

This first one is the Toboggan Run I was working on earlier this week. Details are here. It's a great pattern if you don't mind miles of seed stitch. I think it's worth it. I love the yarn and tried to get more online, but I don't think it's possible😞. It will be a holiday gift. One down!

This is Maayan's Hat. My own design. There are lots of baby hat patterns, but I couldn't find a colorwork style that I liked, so I made up this one:

I don't think it qualifies as a Fair Isle design because some rows have three colors. I've wanted to figure out how to do that. My method is clunky, but it gets the job done. I used Encore DK yarn because it's inexpensive to experiment with, hard-wearing, and washable.

Now I need to get the model over here to see if it fits!