An Instant Gratification Project; Knitting Punctuation.
I love a good semicolon; the way it transitions from one sentence into another without a hard, hard pause. When I saw this pattern for a comma, apostrophe or quotation marks I was smitten. As I was showing my husband the nearly finished item, he smiled and told me that I "should knit it a friend and make it a semicolon; I use semicolons at work a lot". And so the seed was planted and with just a little wrangling of the pattern I had made the comma's spherical friend and joined them into the beautiful semicolon.
Now I have this crazy idea to knit an interrobang, but I think it might be better suited to colorwork than to a softie.
Spring is for Spinning, Part 1
Spring has sprung, bringing with it the ever changing rain-sun-rain-sun-hail-rain again cycle that is one of the things I love most about living in the Willamette Valley. My crafty desires have been following the path of the weather, changing on a whim. I have nine knitting projects in progress right now and as they all move slowly along I crave the instant gratification that comes from small spinning projects.
To kick off my spinning binge I finished spinning up some 90% pygora 10% silk blend batts from Rainbow Yarns Northwest. Terry and Susan, the women behind the pygoras, are absolutely fabulous and I couldn't resist these amazing, cloudlike puffs at last fall's Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival.
I broke out my awesome fast flyer for my spinning wheel and spun the singles at a ratio of 16:1 (for non spinners, that means that for every one turn of the wheel the flyer turns 16 times) to put a good deal of twist into the singles to hold the very fine pygora together in thin singles.
From there, I plied them at the same ratio, and the result is 600 yards of squishy and shiny laceweight yarn, that is being knit (slowly) into Romi Hill's Bitterroot Shawl from Knitty Winter 2009.
It's not the most fluffy yarn I've ever spun, and I probably could have gotten away with less twist, to make a softer yarn, but I'm relatively pleased with it. More spinning projects to come!
Verdaia, or Testy McTesterson
I've been doing some more test knitting. This time, I test knit ViolinJodie's new shawl pattern Verdaia (ravelry.com link).
I ended up taking an impromptu trip east to stay with my mother for a week, which saved me a little money on postage as this was a gift for her. We got a little bit of snow while I was there, which is the perfect backdrop for this lovely shawl.
I knit this one in Madeleinetosh Tosh Sock yarn in the color Malachite and used less than one skein. The pattern is easy, and the main body stitch pattern is extremely easy to memorize. In fact, I liked knitting it so much that I started a second one, in red, for myself.
Looking Back: Blanket of Love
One of the things I am most proud of from 2009 is this blanket:
Knit for an online friend whose family is going through some major upheaval and shake-up, I enlisted the help of Lisa and a double fistful of other knitters and crocheters to help me create enough blocks for a big Blanket of Love.
The squares came from as far away from Japan, all carefully stitched with love and good wishes for speedy resolution of the family's sadness and stresses. Lisa and I seamed all of the squares together, zip-zip-zip, edged the whole thing with a black crocheted edging and sent it to it's new home in the Midwest where we hear it created quite a stir of joy.
We live in an amazing time, where people who are scattered all over can create such strong, amazing bonds and make a real difference in each others lives. I am proud of being able to corral a little bit of this to support someone who needed a little bit of reaffirmation that there is good in the world. I am proud of every person who set aside their own worries, cares, wants and projects to take the time to help with this (one woman squeezed a square in the week before her wedding!) It's a great thing sometimes, this crazy internet.
Great Horned Owl
I'm on vacation but Cathartic Ink is not. Enjoy these posts, and I'll be back with even more content after the end of my Great New England Tour of Aught Nine
One of the brilliant hansigurumi patterns by Hansi Singh. I knit this back in July as a gift for Lisa, my favorite owl lover. Knit in three colors of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes it took me way longer than it should have since I kept getting distracted. The knitting itself was not super time consuming and the construction was interesting (brilliant, really. Super neat uses for short rows) but I would have liked a few more schematics. This one would be okay for wee ones if you omitted his fuzzy beak fluff and the fluff around his legs, but since they're not sewn in, it would be super easy for the very wee to pull them out and choke.