Knitting Update

Long overdue update.

Remember the giant snow storm we had two weeks ago?


Most of that snow is gone now. There's still in inch or two in shady places, and where it was piled up after we dug out, but we're starting to see more grass than snow which is great.

I don't know what plant it is called, but along the streams and in the marshy places around here there is a willowy bush/tree/vine thing that turns a vivid magenta when spring is coming. Last year, it was the first sign of color coming back in March when the snow receded and everything looked drab and dead.

There are a few little bulbs poking back up through the dirt right by the front door. They have a dark dark red color. I wonder what they will grow up to be!

The Cider Mill geese have been venturing out more and more too. Spotted them strolling down the street outside the front door a few days ago. They hissed at me for taking pictures of them on such a bad feather day.



I finished the Olympic Sweater a few days late.

Alas. But I do really like it, so I'm pleased. It has a beautiful drape and soft luxurious warmth, despite its relatively open fabric. It's much bigger than the pattern suggests. I blocked it realtively tightly to open up the fabric and to help nudge the arms and hemline a little longer, so that might be part of it, but I'm guessing my gauge was off by a few stitches once I got into the stress of the Olympics. That would account for the arm holes being about an inch or two too big.


Don't misunderstand. I loves me the sweater. Brett thinks it looks good, and it has that funky loose look that so many cardigans have in the stores these days, which is exactly what I was going for. Perfect to wear over a fitted long sleeve shirt or a summer tank top. I'm looking forward to reaching for this on warm summer mornings when I need something I can stuff in my bag and toss on once the sun goes down and it gets a little chilly. Hooray!

I finally finished Brett's Kansas City socks too.

I knew he needed a pair of his own when he kept boggarting my handknit woolies. He needs good wool socks because he does crazy things like run around in the snow to celebrate U of Minnesota victories. He's a crazy person.


After searching the stash, I found I had a great skein of royal blue Mountain Colors Bearfoot that I'd been hoarding since the days of the employee discount at Iris Fine Yarns. (I really miss working at a yarn shop!) Since the color was appropriate, I charted out a little KC design to feature on the cuff and planned a purl bump diamond pattern for the leg and top of the foot. Started out with a few blue and white stripes, jumped right into the colorwork, struggled through a few repeats of the diamonds before abandoning them and then suffered through a men's sized sock worth of dark blue stockinette. I don't know what I was thinking trying to read a purl bump pattern on dark knitting that I usually do in the evenings. As far as eye strain goes, only an eggplant purple or solid black yarn would have been worse.


So I finally finished the first sock and then, of course, second sock syndrome kicked in and the thought of doing another one made me want to take a nap. It took me almost a year to even start the second sock, but it went so much more quickly than the first that I cast on the cuff and kitchenered the toe in 4 days.


Such is the paradox of the sock knitter. You spend weeks, maybe a month on the first sock, the prototype, experimenting with design elements, writing and rewriting the pattern, knitting the damn thing, until you have spent all your creative juices and, now that all the hard work is done, you nothing left to carry you across the flat stockinette finish line. You have hit the Knitters Wall. I have found the same thing to be true of weaving in ends and blocking sweaters and shawls, or the last stretch of most knitting projects, really.

But I find that time is the best remedy. Now that the KC sock monkey is off my back, I feel free to start another pair of socks, this time following a pattern without making many, if any, alterations. Good thing Aunt Karen sent me a copy of Knitted Socks, East and West for my birthday. Beautiful patterns and inspiring photography. I've cast on for Chouwa, a highly textured feather and fan sort of pattern that is producing a lovely surf crashing on rocks sort of feel. It's great. I'm knitting with Christmas yarn too: Happy Feet from Plymouth Yarns in colorway 26 (such a romantic name, right?) which is a really mysterious variegation of charcoal grey, periwinkle purple, and a tiny hint of robins egg blue. From afar the overall effect is purple. I do really like the way the strange color combo is working with the texture, sort of softening and homogenizing the colors.

From now on, I'll remember that sometimes after over analyzing a project, I should try something I don't think will work at all and just see what happens.

Bridezilla!

I just read a very excellent "wedding undergraduate" post over on A Practical Wedding. It articulated something I've seen on the internet and run up against only occasionally in my own wedding planning where you suggest wanting something (maybe a backyard pig roast BBQ, instead of a buffet reception) and the response sounds like, "Oh no! That's doesn't feel like a wedding! It's kind of...hick, isn't it?"

It's well intentioned, assuming, I suppose, that it's not coming from a wedding industry professional insisting that going with the white standard table cloth is cheap so she can try to upsell you the colored overlays for an additional $50 a table. When it comes from a relative or (dare I suggest we don't always agree?) Fiance, I believe the intention is really to create a beautiful day that everyone will remember forever.

While the post made me feel a sense of support for making unconventional wedding choices, it made me think a little more about the other people involved in the wedding planning process.

Take the parents, for example. My parents have been great about the whole thing. Mom dealt with me wanting non-matching bridesmaids, compromised with me on the dinner service, has left pretty much every decor decision up to me and has generally supported every choice I've made thus far.

Other brides get this:
"it finally struck me this weekend that the only parts of the wedding she's [Mom] happy with are the parts she's been 100% involved in. Any decision my fiance and i have made together, ourselves - she has already decided will be a disaster. anyone involved with the wedding that she doesn't know, will be a failure."

And I thought, "seriously? Your daughter and her fiance are grown people! Trust them already!"

Brett and I watch Bridezillas sometimes and love feeling superior to the poor people on the show. Being tuned into the bridal blog world makes me look at the show and see women who are one week out from what society has told them should be the most important day of their adult lives. So often they scream in tears at their fiances, "this wedding isn't about you! It's all about me! And those table cloths have to match the bridesmaids shoes exactly or the WHOLE DAY WILL BE RUINED!" It's easy to laugh at that and call her a crazy Bridezilla, but honestly, that's exactly how she's been told to feel, and can you really blame her if she's not dealing with that particularly well? The wedding day is supposed to be a reflection of the bride: her taste and class and her value as a female member of society. She's supposed to throw the best, most luxurious party possible. The event of the season that everyone will still be talking about in a year.

A) That's stupid.
B) I know how that feels as a bride, but I honestly (I'm ashamed to say) hadn't thought how that pressure translates to Mom and Dad until I read this comment, "I think, in respect to our parents, many of them still think we are/want us to be 12 years old, not actual, full-fledged adults. Or, if we're going to go and be full-fledged adults instead of 12-year-olds, by golly we better look like extensions of them!"

It was like the clouds parted and I realized that while it's probably not always true, it is a really good thing to keep in mind that Mom and Dad are as invested in my wedding as I am.

Their parents will be there, their friends and co workers and of course they want to be comfortable with the big decisions (in a church, not a pasture) and want to have input in the little ones (bridesmaids attire). I get that. It makes sense.

So I will try to understand where the desire to input is coming from and I will try to be more receptive to compromise. I've gotten everything important to me so far and there's no reason to be difficult about the things that are important to my parents.

Love you Mom and Dad.

News Release

Bob Costas: There is the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. One such story of heartbreak comes to us from Fly Creek, New York where Olympian Kate Hackelberg, after 17 days of struggle, fell just shy of gold. Here to tell us her story in her own words...Kate Hackelberg...

Welcome to the studio, Kate.

Me: Thanks Bob, it's an honor to be here.

Bob: Now, your event was the...knit sweater?

Me: That's right Bob.

Bob: Now, for those viewers at home who may not be familiar with the sport of Olympic Knitting, can you tell us a little bit of how it differs from the Knitting many of us are accustomed to seeing practiced in our living rooms?

Me: Sure, Bob. Many people are used to seeing knitting practiced as a hobby, at various skill levels, with a wide range of goals. Olympic Knitting takes that hobby and cranks it up a few notches by imposing two rules: you must knit a challenging project and you must knit between the flames.

Bob: So there's a certain amount of subjectivity in the judging?

Me: Oh no no! It's very cut and dry. Either you finish your challenge before the flame goes out or you don't. There's no silver or bronze in the Knitting Olympics; only gold.

Bob: How did you decide on your challenge?

Me: Well, I've been knitting quite a while and in that time, I've completed a number of projects of various sizes and skill levels so I figured I would try a sweater. I chose the featherweight cardigan by Hannah Fetig. I knew that it would be a challenge to do so much knitting in the time frame, but it was a very simple pattern so I thought it would be doable.

Bob: And yet, you're here today with no gold medal. What went wrong?

Kate: Bob, I think it was hubris.

Bob: Hmmm.

Me: The more I thought about it, the less challenging the pattern seemed. I mean, when you're in the company of Olympians, it's hard not to compare yourself to them and the fearless leader of the Knitting Olympians, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, was knitting Whistler, a brilliant 4 color Norwegian style sweater. Next to that the Featherweight Cardigan seemed like a piece of cake. So in the beginning, there were nights I didn't even work on the sweater. Of course, I regret that now.

Bob: Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but if you knew then what you know now...what would you have done differently?

Me: Unfortunately, Bob, all of my issues came down to poor planning, rather than equipment failure or lack of training. Can't fault the yarn or the pattern here! I would have tried harder to write a reliable schedule. I didn't realistically think about how long the sections would take, but if I had, I would have known on day 5 whether I was behind schedule and would have been able to put in a few late nights early on, instead of being completely out of time in the last few days.

Bob: Well, it seems you've taken a lot of good lessons from these Olympic games. Will we see you back on the course in 2014?

Me: Absolutely, Bob. And next time I'll be coming for gold!

Bob: Alright, we'll be keeping an eye out for you. It's be a pleasure to have you with us today, Kate, and best of luck in your future knitting endeavors.

Kate: Thanks so much for having me on, Bob.

Bob: So many stories have come out of Vancouver, some of glory, some of disappointment, but regardless of the outcome, these Olympians have given their all. They strive to knit swifter, higher, stronger, and we all learn from their efforts. From all of us at the studio...goodnight.

We stocked up on bottled water and canned goods

Snow Day!


Last night we got slammed with our only real snow storm of the year. I don't know what took so long, but it sure made up for a relatively nice winter with about two feet of heavy fluffy white stuff. Brett and I had both gone into work but got to leave early.

The ride home was scary and we wound up abandoning my car in a city lot overnight and Brett drove us both up the snowy hill to Fly Creek. Today we went back for it and not only had to shovel out those two feet in the driveway to get Brett's car out, but the 4 feet or so the plow had dumped into the drive, AND the snow that had buried my car in the lot. But it hadn't been towed or ticketed and I'm just thrilled we got both cars home safe.

Yesterday we enjoyed the early dismissal and played in the snow a little after we shoveled the first foot of snow out of the driveway.



Today we just bummed around and cooked yummy food and did laundry, but it was nice to have a day off. Our mailbox is completely destroyed, though, and our poor snowman has been buried to his waist.

Those plows toss that snow around but good.

The Olympic Sweater is not looking good folks. The body is done and I'm making good progress on the sleeves but I'm pretty certain the collar is at least a three day bit of knitting and I only have two left! I'll keep knitting away though, like the USA Women's Hockey team playing to the last second, rather than concede defeat.

Olympic Knitting Post Secundum

Olympic Knitting is over half over! I'm starting to get pretty nervous that I won't medal. A few nights ago it looked like this


Today it looks like this



I should be focused and project monogamous, but I'm finding loyalty to seemingly miles of stockinette (knit across 400 stitches, purl back across 400 stitches) hard to stay excited about. If a brilliant pair of colorwork mittens is like the pairs figure skating, then this sweater is probably the men's 30k cross country skiing pursuit: long and repetitive with little chance for dazzle (except this year's thrilling race. Go Sweden!).

The yarn is lovely to knit with and is producing a soft elegantly draping fabric that I really like. It's now too heavy to hold and knit standing, so I've had to stop knit while getting in my bike work out. fortunately, the mindless knitting is good to take with to work. Winter is slow at the bakery and I have about an hour to an hour and a half's worth of spare minutes during any given day. The last couple days I've brought the Olympic Sweater and worked on that between customers and clean up. By the end of tonight, I hope to have finished the body and be casting on for the arms. They are knit over far fewer stitches, completely in the round and only need to be 3/4 length, so they should be just a two day section. Then I'll pick up and knit the shawl collar which I already know is going to be the hardest part.

I have let myself be distracted with other projects. I'm working on a little something for the wedding guests and have done some trials for that experiment. Looking good so far. I've also cleaned up some empty jars I had laying around and hot glued some of the Christmas doilies to them.


And Brett asked if I would draw a tattoo on his arm, so one evening instead of knitting, I designed an arm piece featuring our pets as comic book heroes.





It's all washed off now, of course, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

Knitting Olympics Post Unum

I've been saving this post for something special.

::cue happy parade music::

It's my 100th blog post!

Hooray! When I saw that is was coming up, I knew I wanted it to coincide with my Olympic Knitting post.

For those of you who don't know about the Knitting Olympics, kindly find your way to The Yarn Harlot.

Over the next 17 days, beginning with the torch lighting ceremony tomorrow night, I will be casting on, knitting, binding off, and finishing.......

A WHOLE SWEATER!

That's right. A whole sweater, start to finish. Specifically the Featherweight cardigan at the top of this page.

This will be a challenge because I've never knit a sweater start to finish in 17 days, especially at the gauge this piece is knit at. I'm really excited to see if I can do it. There are no silver medals in the Knitting Olympics, only gold baby!

I've checked my equipment.
I've done my training.



My gauge is on and I'm feeling confident. Let's DO THIS THING!

Update

A few things:

1) Today I had my first paid day as a Hall of Fame Museum Teacher. It was nice to walk around in high heels and a suit jacket with a binder in my arm feeling professional again. Been a little while. I think I'm really going to love the work too, which will largely be teaching thematic units to student groups via videoconference. Unfortunately, it's just a few hours a week for now and I'm still going to need to keep pretty much all my hours at the bakery.

It's hard because I really want to be dedicated to the museum and be flexible and generous with my availability there. I know the more time I invest with them, the more quickly I'll be qualified for all the programs and the more hours I'll get, but I can't afford to ask another day off at the bakery and sacrifice 9 hours for 2 or 4 museum hours. Hopefully, I'll be able to work with my manager at the bakery to get an optimal schedule for both jobs.

2) Brett and I drove all the way to Albany this weekend to eat at the nearest Fuddruckers. (Very good. Probably not worth a four hour drive...) Since we were out there, we checked out a few of the comic stores in the town and one of the yarn shops. (Very good and certainly worth a four hour drive) The yarn shop was the best I've been too since I went to Three Kittens in Minneapolis. They were at the end of a class when we walked in, so it was pretty crowded and a little hard to look closely at everything without being in someone's way.

My qualifications for yarn shops include a few things:
The overall store layout should be organized by weight or fiber content, maybe by brand, and not by color.
There should be an excellent selection of pure wool, preferably Cascade in a variety of colors.
There should be a dedicated sock yarn section, especially if yarn is grouped by brand.
There should be a good rotating display of yarns unique to the store or area. Local fiber, or small dyeworks.

If a store meets two or more of these qualification, chances are good I will come back again and again, because they meld with the things I think are useful and valuable when choosing yarn.

My only issue with the store was that the owner lady gave Brett a little flak. I know she was trying to be funny and warm, but she said to Brett as she passed, "See? You didn't melt!" I mean, come on, the guy took me to Rhinebeck and spent all day walking around in the cold with me, getting into things just because I did. He bought me Cinderella glass knitting needles and beautiful bone needles. He has a good eye and I know he was looking at the yarn just as intently as I was. He's a pro, and I do think it was a little presumptuous to assume not only that he isn't a knitter himself but that he was scared to come in. Honestly. Give the boys a little credit!

flicker

Remember those boxes of doilies and lace trims I got for Christmas? I think this is what's going to happen to them. Do we love it?

Norwegian Blue

Let me introduce you to my newest knit project.



When Brett and I went to Rhinebeck, I budgeted for a small scale colorwork project and this is what I've come up with. The yarn is a simple, very richly dyed, wool yarn in Blueberry and White. I pieced together the pattern from a chart in Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork, a very nice book with beautiful, inspiring photographs (also a Rhinebeck buy), and the traditional stranded black and white mittens in Selbuvotter.



I made up my own chart and it's needed a little tweaking but it's working very well so far.

Wheee!

Brett was looking for some workout clothes in the dryer this evening.



Instead, he found one of these:



Bwahahahahaha. Silly Chester.

Been using my time off from work to be productive (ish). We haven't signed contracts yet but we've started filling them out for a photographer and a caterer. We have printed up our Save the Date postcards and will be mailing them out really soon. Wedding plans progress! (I can't wait to show you the photographer's website; I love his work and can't wait to see what he does for us.)

I finished a pair of mittens for Brett. Double thick. At about a 8st/in gauge. Oofda. A nice knit for picking up whenever there was time but it was pretty simple. Reports are that they are very warm. Now I've started a pair of blue and white colorwork mittens. The yarn is from Rhinebeck and the pattern is mishmoshed from the Selbuvotter mitten book with a motif lifted from Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork as the center. I'll show you pictures soon.

"These streets will make you feel brand new"

Yesterday, Brett and I finally made it down to the big city! He took me down for my birthday and we had a great time. We drove about 4 hours, parked the car and hopped on a train.


Love trains! I wish I could commute on one every day instead of driving.




We did have some trouble finding the station so we could buy our tickets. We ran around in the 0 degree wind chill to all the buildings near the train tracks and we found a lawyer, a post office, a bus depot, and then finally decided we could buy our tickets from the conductor on the train. Little did we know that on the over pass over the tracks, there was an automated ticket machine. Awesome!



We sped our way along the Hudson river


and saw a bald eagle.

It's the little black speck up there. So on the way to Rhinebeck, Brett saw a bear and on the way to New York City we saw a bald eagle. Neat, right?

We pulled into Grand Central and met up with my college friend Kate at the clock. What a beautiful train station. The ceiling is a ethereal cerulean color painted with the constellations. There's intricate metal and stone work everywhere. Lots of oak leaves.

"Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who funded the building of Grand Central, created his own family crest featuring acorns and oak leaves to symbolize his rise from rags to riches.

We walked down towards Times Square and saw Bryant Park and the Conde Nast building on the way. Stopped for lunch at a cute little pub that Kate frequents. Times Square is pretty overwhelming even on a slow Sunday, with video billboards dozens of stories tall, vendors and all kinds of people.

The best part of the trip was Rockefeller Center where we saw amazing Deco art and stopped in the NBC store. (Who wants a Top Chef apron? I do!) Brett and I bought tickets to go up to the observation deck while Kate waited for us down below. I wasn't super keen to go because it's a little pricey, but it was completely worth it. The first level of observation is mostly inside with a few corner balconies you can go out for another (colder) view. Then there's another floor that's all outside, protected a little by big plexi barriers. But the best view was waaaaaaay at the top on a small patio.

There's literally nothing higher than you on the whole building. We could see Central Park, the Empire State building, the Chrysler Building, and far out the Statue of Liberty. New York City is a BIG sprawling city.

After the Rock, we stopped for tea and a birthday cupcake at Dean and Deluca's then strolled down 5th Ave taking in the beautiful art and architecture. We checked out the stunning Plaza Hotel which smelled of lilies and made me think of An Ideal Husband. Kate and I overheard a young mother with very poofy lips ask a hotel staff member where Eloise was and he replied without missing a beat that "Oh, Eloise is in Paris." I wish I'd had the nerve to take a picture of the box of Kleenex in the back window of the Rolls Royce parked in front of the hotel. Didn't really feel like getting in trouble with the guards though, so we finished with a quick jog over to the Central Park subway station and took it back to Grand Central to take the train back to our car. It was a long ride home, but what a great day!

And today, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, there. is. SUN!

Changes the whole look of the wintery world, and I can't even say how grateful I am for that.

christmas catch-up

My brother's glittens went out in the mail yesterday and hopefully they will arrive soon to warm his poor frigid 1850 workin hands. They were a pretty simple pattern that I whipped up to use up left over yarn bits in green and blue and red. It's perfect "recession knitting" and they're all ideal yarns for hardwearing handwear. Hope he likes 'em.

I'm working on a pair of mittens for Brett with some of that Rhinebeck yarn. It's the same basic structure as most of my other mittens, but since the yarn is a little on the thin side, I'm going to line them like I did with Aunt Karen's alpaca mittens.

Christmas was excellent for collecting antique textile things. The awesomness started in the stocking where there was a lovely little apron with purple gingam and an embrodiered cluster of grapes. Also a pocket. Love it! There was a darning egg (I needed one, remember!) that opens to store your darning needle and thread. It's wonderful! AND! There was a whole collection of these weird little crocheted hot pads? decorations? rodeo clown flags? in shapes of things like bloomers that I have no idea what to do with. Suggestions?

There was also a whole bunch of beautiful handkerchiefs that I would love to work into the wedding somehow. There's one in particular that I think I'll probably be carrying down the isle. Want to see?

Flora

I promised my Aunt I'd throw a post up about wedding flowers.

I've been collecting pictures online for a while now, mostly from The Knot and Offbeat Bride as inspiration and to try to decide the styles, shapes, colors and kinds of flowers I like the best. The plan at the moment is to do most of the centerpieces and ceremony arrangements ourselves and to have a florist do the bouquets and boutonnieres. I'd like to be able to talk to a florist with general conceptual ideas and then let him or her get creative and fun with it.

Generally, the flowers should have a simple, old fashioned feel to them, like they just came out of someone's wonderful garden. (If I get really lucky, maybe they even will be...) The fabric details will all be royal blue and the floral details will be bright orange, yellow, and red.








I like this style for the pews at the ceremony, with the pretty galvanized pail and the billowy hydrangea. The white is good, but big orange carnations or marigolds would be nice too. I think the silver detail would be nice with all the warm natural wood in the church. And we can pick the pails up and take them with us to the reception site pretty easily.

At the reception, we're going to go with simple groupings of tall skinny vases with single blooms in each. Like this!


I think these are carnations and dahlias and I love the way they just float above the table with all that pretty glass below. Imagine these in those flame colors with just 4-6 blooms on a table.

The use of herbs at weddings is a pretty old and usually overlooked tradition, but I really love the idea of fresh smelling rosemary, mint, and lemon balm in among the flowers. This arrangement has mint in with zinnias. How summery and pretty is that?

Maybe a pretty pitcher full of mint with a few golden nasturtiums nestled in to put on the desert table would work for us?

I don't know logistically how sprigs of rosemary would work tied to menus or napkins (we're short on set up time between the ceremony and the reception...) but isn't this a lovely little set up?


In India, marigolds are traditional wedding flowers. They string them in gorgeous long garlands. How beautiful would a few of these look curtaining the door to the reception?



For the bouquets?
The girls should definitely have fun bright blooms. I love the one on the top of the post with the little blue buttons! And how's this for elegant?


For myself? I like the one above. And I lurve this relaxed white and slightly blue bouquet.


So I'll probably either go with some serious color, or a pretty white and blue thing, depending on the advice of my floral artist!

Of course, I haven't ruled out flower alternatives, like these gorgeous fabric (or maybe paper) blooms. How fun are they?


For other gorgeous paper and fabric flower pictures, head over to Martha Stewart Weddings (right here, actually) and don't blame me if you waste the next hour looking at all her pretty ideas.