Author Archives: Jean

Spinning

Fun With Clay

Posted on by Jean

It’s not that I have a shortage of spindles.  I actually have a nice little collection.  The thing is, I’m bored out of my gourd waiting for the Must Have pattern to arrive.  I’m being very stubborn good about not starting a new project so that I am free to be totally committed to the Must Have. 

So what does one do with itchy fingers and some free time….  play with FIMO of course.  That there is a spindle that I made with some granite colored clay.  I do have New Hampshire roots… GO PATRIOTS!!!  Don’t tell Dan… he’s still crying because the Patriots met the Cowboys Superbowl record.  HA!

I’m happy to report that it spins pretty well.  This is something I’m definitely going to be playing around with more in the future.  Already have more clay on the way.  Yippee!!  Another hobby!

Knitting, Travel

Better Late Than Never

Posted on by Jean

I know… hard to believe.  I finally finished one of the Fluted Bannister socks.  I cast it on way back in October.  I’m in a self-enforced knitting lull as I wait for my Must Have Cardigan pattern to arrive.  I want it to be the only thing on the needles once I start it or I’ll find any reason to put it aside.  I love the look of cables, but I’m just a fair-isle kinda girl.

Speaking of the Must Have, I took Tori’s (Tori Knits) advice and washed the skeins yesterday so they’d already be blocked and ready to go.  When I use the ball winder I usually wind once from the skein and then rewind from the cake.  The first winding is usually a bit tight and want the yarn to be able to relax.  It makes a huge difference as you can see.

Thanks to Norma (Now Norma Knits 2), I was able to start my gauge swatch.  I had to go all the way down to a 2.5mm.  I knew I was a loose knitter, but yeesh!  I think I’ll do the sleeves first and use a 3mm since I’m pretty sure I’ll knit tighter doing the cables.

Another baby blog… I get to meet a lot of great people through my knitting addiction.  I met my friend Nilda (Waltzing Natilda) on the Hebridean Isle of Mull in Scotland in July.  She stayed at the same guest house so we had plenty of time to visit in the morning over breakfast and in the evenings in front of the fire at the B&B.  Our most memorable moment though has to be the one-hour bumpy (and I mean BUMPY) ride in the boot of the car (station wagon hatchback…. little hatchback) that Dodie drove on the way to Tobermory.  Hey Mullers!  Who has those pictures, anyway?!  Nilda is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met and I look forward to her posts. 

This view was worth the bumpy ride:

Knitting

One Red Scarf…. check

Posted on by Jean

I finished my red scarf for the Red Scarf Project.  I used two 50gr balls of merino DK that I found here at my German yarn shop.   That’s sounds easy enough but colors over here are not the same as they are in the States.  I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to find a true red, but I did.  Most are really orange, yellows are mustardy and greens are limey.  It looks a little deeper thank it actually is.   Hard to fix the contrast of the snow.  I cast on 40 stitches and used the subtle mesh from Barbara Walker Charted Knitting Designs ; I really like the way it turned out. 

Dear Secret Pal,

You’ll find my SP4 Questionnaire answers on my About page.  This is gonna be fun. I’ve been collecting stuff for weeks to send to my Secret Pal!  Weeeee….

I just received my Knit Picks catalog on Friday.  I saved it for bedtime reading.  Got all cozy that night and was flipping through it when…. Ha….. Check this out.  It’s the Midwest Moonlight scarf from Scarf Style by Pam Allen.   Throw some garter stitch into my scarf and it’s the same thing! 

I need some help.  I want a drumcarder.  It’s one of my Christmas gifts but I’m really on the fence.  I was convinced that I wanted the Deb by Patrick Greene, but I’m torn between it, the Fricke Finest (though it’s a little steeper than I wanted to go for a first carder) and the Louet.  I’ve even thought about the Fricke Petite since I probably won’t be a carding maniac after the first month or so.  I work with medium to medium-fine wools like Romney, Falkland and blends.  Let me hear from you!

Family, Knitting

I Don’t Mean To Brag….

Posted on by Jean

I don’t mean to brag, but c’mon…. Hardangervidda is done!

I’m pretty stoked right now.  Look at that good lookin’ guy in that gorgeous sweater!!  I have carpal tunnel syndrome in my arm from patting myself on the back. lol. 

Even the weather cooperated this morning and gave a little snow effect.

Seriously, is it any wonder why I married this man after only knowing each other two months? He proposed after we knew each other for three weeks, dated for one. Gasp!  That was over twelve years ago so I guess we weren’t as nuts as everyone thought.  In our defense, we were both in the Army.   I was at NSA in Maryland and he was in San Antonio.  If we didn’t get married we couldn’t be together.  So we went to the JP in Annapolis, MD and we had a big church wedding a year later.  Happens a lot in the military.

I did change the bottom.  Got rid of the middle ribbing.  Dan’s like me.  Plain vanilla, except he goes for the chocolate when it comes to ice cream.

Knitting

Yarn Shortage

Posted on by Jean

Didn’t mean to scare anyone with that title today.  That’s probably a huge faux paux in the knitting world, but what’s the deal?!  Two projects in a row now where I ended up coming very close to running out of yarn.  Actually, I did run out of the gray, but got lucky enough to find someone who had extra.  Here’s what I had left in the black

From now on I’m ordering two extra balls of yarn!But I made it.  Whew!  The Hardangervidda is done.  After several false starts on the Red Scarf Project scarf, I gave up and decided to listen to you and get Dan’s sweater done.  Glad I did. All you get is sneak peeks today.   I’ll post a picture of Dan wearing it tomorrow.  It’s upstairs blocking but I took a few pictures of putting it together.  The finishing took me all day. 

The zipper was the hardest part but once I got it in there right, I was pleased with the finished result.  

Once I sewed the sleeves in I had to go back and sew the facings down that  were knit into the top of each sleeve. The facings do a beautiful 

job of hiding that mess from the cut edges. 

I also took a close-up to show the puckering that I was trying to show in the Hans.  You can see in the picture to the right how puckery my stitches are in the back.   This will all come out in blocking.

Asperger's Syndrome/Autism, Family, Knitting

Meet Hans

Posted on by Jean

Meet Hans… the sweater from Best of Lopi (pg 95). The boy is Daniel and you’ll meet him later in this post. Was there ever any doubt I’d have it done by next Thursday?  Actually, yes.  When I realized I was cutting it a little really close with the main color.   I thought I was going to have to wait till I could get more.  Think I’m kidding?  This is what’s left:

This is right off the needles.  The underarms aren’t even woven yet.   I wanted to show it so that people who are new to color knitting can see it’s not all smooth and even until after you block it.  As luck would have it, you can’t really tell this from the picture, but hey… I tried.  I’m hoping that when I take another picture of Daniel in it tomorrow after it’s dry, you’ll be able to see the difference. 

Family, Knitting

On a Positive Note

Posted on by Jean
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I cast this on right after I finished Joes’ sweater the other day.  It’s the Hans sweater from Best of Lopi (pg 95).  I’m using Winter Blue, Indigo, Natural and Primary Red (which I toned down with brown dye) Gjestal Naturgarn from Elann.  I’m up to the underarms on the body and just about finished with the first sleeve.  I promised Daniel I’d try to have it finished by next Thursday so he can wear it to school.  They have a dress code, but next Thursday is Dress Down Day.  It’ll be interesting seeing him put on a turtleneck under it.  He picked out the sweater and red, white and blue colors, so we’ll see….

In the last post I told you that Dan kept saying, “Smile right!” to the boys.  This is why:

As you can see, all that’s missing is Joseph’s little red horns.  lol.  The child is every bit as onerey as he looks in this photo and then some.   He is his father in every way from the tip of his hair down to his cute little Flintstone feet.

Family, Knitting

The Lopi is done already!

Posted on by Jean

Well that was quick, wasn’t it?  It hasn’t been blocked yet, but Joe wanted to try it out this afternoon.  Okay.. yea… I see it’s a little big, but Daniel can get some wear out of it this year and Joe should be able to wear it next year.  He still wanted to model it for the blog since it’s “his” sweater.  lol.  I’m a big believer in getting full wear out of kids clothes.  Especially if I’m knitting them.  Notice the green grass?  The last time I checked it’s January and I’m in Germany.  I think that’s gonna change in the next couple of days.   They’re predicting the white stuff.

  Here’s a picture of the change purse I gave my friend LeeAnn for Christmas.  I have one more to do for my SIL, Monica. Click it.

Dyeing, Knitting

Tone It Down!

Posted on by Jean

I’d mentioned in my last post that my order of Gjestal Naturgarn arrived from Elann.  I bought It’s going to be the Hans sweater from Best of Lopi (pg 95).  I bought Primary Red, Indigo and Off-White.  The red and indigo were really bright for the muted red, white and blues I wanted to do.  I’d done tea-staining before on Daniel’s patriotic quilt but didn’t think that would work on the yarn.  I didn’t have that much tea in the house anyway.  I do have a lot of dyes though.  I “tea-stained” them with a little golden brown acid-wash in my dye crockpot.   I’m happy to report that it worked perfectly.  I took some photos but it’s really hard to get the true colors to show on a monitor.  The red is pretty close but the blue isn’t as dark as it looks.   

The yarn for the Hardangervidda still isn’t here (this is killing me) so I needed to start on something else.  The yarn for the Hans was still wet so I cast on Rust Gjestal Naturgarn (can you tell this is another of my faves) for the Lopi Gansey for Joseph.  It’s Reynold’s Lopi Pattern 402.  I just did a search for it on the web and can’t find it.

Dan had the day off yesterday so we went down to the Marktplatz.  This vest needed buttons so we took it with us.  Dan found the perfect edelweiss buttons for it. 

The yarn is a German yarn I bought in Würzburg so it’s only fitting the buttons be German too.

The pattern is Cables 101 and can be purchased from Big Sky Knitting.

How cute are these pj’s?!  Germany does flannel jammies well. 

Knitting

Back To Ye Old Grindstone

Posted on by Jean

I didn’t get a lot of knitting done because of the flu bug, but I have made some great progress on Dan’s Hardangervidda.  The colors are black, light grey and a merlot red.  Lookin’ good.

I’m at the facing rows at the top of the first sleeve.  I messed up in estimating the yardage (I’m using a DK weight by Gjestal that I got for a steal from Elann) and am going to come up short on the light grey.  Luckily, another Elanner had a couple of balls she didn’t need and has mailed them on to me.  Now it looks like I might have enough, but it’ll cut it very close and now, with two extra balls coming, I don’t have to dread it.  That would have been a very ugly situation.