CC 4 NYC

Pattern: Cece from Chic Knits

Knit by: Leah, age 10

Yarn: Mystery coned yarn identified only as "wool" on the sticker inside the cones, two strands knit together. They're the two cones in the top center of the third pic on this blog post. Cost for the entire 2 cones at weavers' guild "yarn tag sale" = ~$6. I think there's enough yarn left to make another entire sweater. These cones are like magic in that they never seem to get smaller. 

Closure: One glass button, 1" diameter, made by Leah's dad.

Modifications: We chose to make it big, in hopes that it'll fit this growing girl for at least another winter or so. We also chose to lengthen it significantly, because of that growing girl consideration and also because that's how she thought she'd like it best. I followed along and clarified things as she moved through the pattern, but she did all of the work herself. She started with the sleeves and needed to re-knit portions of each because the increases in combination with the lacy pattern caused her some problems, and there are some imperfections in the lacy pattern in the body at the beginning too, but they're just part of the learning process.

Worn to NYC yesterday to attend the Martha Stewart Show's Yarn Special. While the content of the show was disappointing, the day itself was a lot of fun, hanging with fiber artists and admiring each other's work, connecting in real life with people we had previously only "known" online. The fantastic handknit and crocheted items worn and being worked on by audience members were truly stunning. How unfortunate that the Martha Stewart Show missed them, having chosen instead to be blinded by Fun Fur. ;-)

sometimes we make the pretties

and sometimes we make a mess.

Here's a pretty:

Merino and tencel from Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm, spun the thinnest this fairly newbie spinner has been able to manage so far, then Navajo plied, which is a new-to-me technique. You can see toward the left of the skein where the Navajo plying got away from me a few times, but by the end of it, I think I was doing a decent job. Wet finished the skein last night, upon nudges from two other spinners in this household, who claim that we don't own enough bobbins and it's not fair for me to have one tied up with my singles and then not spin for a while. Sheesh -- the peer pressure!

The mess that we've been making? Oh, that would be Jesse's room. Until this morning, it was woefully outdated and outgrown, still decorated with all the fishies painted 14+ years ago by people who were excited about his impending arrival. I realized this morning that we had a fairly wide open day ahead of us. Five hours later, his room looks like this:

Yes, a mess! But it's forward progress, so Yay! We already took the sheetrock to the dump and I'm sitting with ice on my shoulder now. Tomorrow we'll take down the ceiling and insulation, and tear up the carpet. And then we'll have to figure out how we want to put it all back together in a style befitting its teenage resident!

Okay, enough of the messies. Let's go back to the pretties! Namely, Leah's Cece cardigan. The V-neck decreases are underway and she might be able to join the sleeves to the body tonight.

I'm off to clean the destruction debris off me and then work a while on the Taize scarf I cast on yesterday. I wish the pattern came with a little chart that I could clip to my project (so I'll prob. make my own), but otherwise I'm loving this design. Another of the pretties to balance out the messes!

sweater 3

Pattern: Vermont Fiber Designs' Cabled Cardigan #173

Yarn: Mystery wool from the weavers' guild tag sale bonanza stash.
Used 3 cones of the 5 seen in the last pic of the bonanza blog post.

Cast on: early Jan. 2010
Cast off: late Feb. 2010

This is the third sweater knit by Leah
(1st: wrap sweater 2008, 2nd: Cece 2009).
It's definitely her favorite to date.

the startitis epidemic

I couldn't help but laugh when I walked into Leah's room this morning and noticed this chair. How many handknits and WIPs can you spot? I see at least 10! She's like a mad scientist, only with yarn. All the symptoms of Leah's chronic startitis were there a year and a half ago, with a full-blown case now, for which there is (luckily) no cure.

And nearby, a simple woven sash/strap that she's working on using the 4-harness table loom. I think crochet is a gateway drug. It all started off so innocently, but now she's progressed from a simple hook to the big leagues, looms and Addi Clicks, cashmere and silk.

She dove into the Cece cardigan pattern a few days ago and is halfway up the 2nd sleeve now, using yarn we scored last spring. Her version will be longer than shown, and probably even a bit tunic-length so hopefully it'll last her a couple/few years.

Meanwhile, the beadmakerbaker is brewing up some mad science glass button concoctions of his own. These are each 1" in diameter and, besides being really beautiful, I think, there's something uber satisfying about holding them in your hands. We lurves them.

Didja notice the distinct lack of my own projects to share here? That's because my knitting is a major FAIL lately.

I am not knitting a(nother) Forest Canopy Cowl because the Malabrigo Stonechat was pooling.

I am not knitting a green gansey for Scott because the yarn biased terribly.

I am not knitting a doubleknit hat for Scott because now I know I do not enjoy doubleknitting (but at least I have now learned how it's done!).

I am not knitting the myrtle something or other wrap from Victorian Lace Today because it just wasn't floating my boat.

But I am not discouraged, oh no! Something's bound to turn up and go well eventually. Tonight there will be a tossing of the stash and there will be much knitterly inspiration this weekend, so there is hope! Actually, I am knitting another Flutter scarf because I enjoyed that pattern so much, but I can't exactly get excited about it because it's a fall-back route chosen since everything else I've made lately just plain sucks. :-)

There's always weaving or spinning or Viking knitting or house cleaning...nah, I'm not that desperate!

you'd never know it

I have a home-based business. Have worked at home for 24 years now and provided most of our family's income for about five of those years. I love my job. I have great clients. Even though it's a real job and I get real pay for it, it's super duper flexible, which gives it this magical property of invisibility. Seriously. There are people who I've known for months or even years who discover our main source of income and exclaim, "You have a JOB?!" It happens on a regular enough basis with acquaintances that my sister ribs me about it as an ongoing thing now.

Today I came home from working at a client's office (always fun to add a full-time job on top of my full-time job while simultaneously planning to blow out of town for a long weekend away) and shifted gears to working on another client's stuff when I glanced around me and had to laugh because here's a list of the items on the desk where I conduct most of my business:

1. Felted slippers awaiting soles.
2. Pile of yarn for the rest of Scott's gansey-in-progress.
3. Sock WIP.
4. Ultimate stashbuster scarf.
5. Bobbin of Leah's handspun singles.
6. Ball of Malabrigo Silky Merino. Stonechat colorway, if you must know.
7. Ball of leftover sparkly yarn given to Leah by a friend of my mom's.
8. Hats for donation to soldiers.
9. Handkerchief with incredible tatted border.
10. Felted sample scarf for a demo this weekend.
11. Knitted iPod case Leah made for Jesse.
12. Hats for donation to the local children's hospital.
13. Tatting shuttle.
14. Pattern for Leah's Cece cardigan.
15. Basket of merino/tencel blend that I'm spinning.
16. Plastic case of glass beads and buttons.
17. Papers we'll take to Spa Knit and Spin this weekend.
18. Printed knit buttonhole tutorial for Leah.
19. Jesse's list of foods we should buy at the Asian market. :-)

And then there was this little prototype ditty, which was on my desk when I got home...

and was donned by Leah soon thereafter.

Wait 'til you see the drop spindle glass beads Scott made on suggestion from a customer.
Job? What job?!

2 steps forward, 1 step back

One step forward:
Somebody on Ravelry asked Scott for buttons to go on a purple sweater. This little beauty is what he came up with. It's the same amber-purple glass he's used at other times, but accented with a rod of purple glass that just makes it sing. I already told him I will need my own sweater's worth of these buttons eventually.

Another step forward:
My Taize scarf, a honeycomb-like pattern knit in Ball and Skein's sock yarn. I struggled with this written-out pattern until I made my own little chart for its body motif. Clipped the chart to my work, as I like to do, and I'm motoring along nicely now. Love the deep texture. Mine looks significantly different from the one on the pattern and not nearly so luscious when I spread it out as if to hard block it, so blocking in this case might just be enough of a stretch to neaten everything up, but not enough to take away any of the depth.

One step back:
Leah was just about ready to attach the sleeves to the body of her Cece cardigan a few days ago, when we noticed some boo-boos in the sleeves.

One sleeve only needed to be ripped back an inch or two, to where she got off track in the lacy pattern during the upper arm increases, but the first sleeve she knit (above) had bigger problems. She decided it was too obvious and would bother her enough that it was worth a re-do, no matter how much it hurt to see 2/3 of a sleeve disappear. Both sleeves are back up to the underarms now and she'll be starting the raglan decreases later today.

Even though that was a step back, it was still a step in the right direction! Forward she goes!

MA S&W

The first day of what promises to be a superfun holiday weekend was spent at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair. Audio entertainment for the ride was The Story of the World, Volume 1, The Ancients, read by our favorite storyteller, Jim Weiss. This recording is new to us and was both fantastic and annoying...but in a good way!...because we all kept having a-ha! moments and pausing the CD to talk about the connections we had just made. "So that's why...!"

Anyway, MA S&W was much like CT S&W - plenty to see and do, but not so much that it's overwhelming. We browsed the booths, then went back to buy some irresistible handpainted roving. Ran into some friends along the way, including Donna (and daughter Nicole) from Knit1Spin2. Jesse roamed on his own and chose to settle in with the weavers' demonstration.

Later, when I joined him there, he was showing the little guy next to him how to work the looms. I was talking to one of the women from the weavers' guild and said that we're still learning the basics of weaving. She said, "Oh, he knows exactly what he's doing and has given all the right answers!" So the weavers were kind of standing back and getting a kick out of watching him be a weaving mentor for the people who sat down on either side of him. When I asked him what happened where there was an errant strand traversing the surface of his weaving weftwise, he promptly replied that it was a "design element." That's my boy! ;-)

Eventually, we found some shade and empty chairs in a temporarily unused demo tent and hung out with our friends for a while, knitting and spinning and chatting. Leah received a purple felted pouch as a birthday gift from one of her friends. We discovered later that it exactly fits one small (sock size) ball of yarn, perfect for a mobile socknitter! Scott tried spinning on a Bosworth charkha and found it quite easy.

Even though we just happened to be hanging out, doing our thing, folks kept coming over to watch Scott and Leah spin. (Scott was working on the remainder of the merino/tencel yarn so I can finish my handspun cardigan. Leah was spinning the fiber she bought earlier in the way.) These young guys were very interested, so Scott gave them each a turn at his wheel. At one point I looked up and there were about 10 people gathered around this impromptu spinning demo. Scott loved every minute of it.

The scheduled knitting demo was well attended, so we moved our little party to the pavilion and bleachers off in the distance. Magic Hat beer has little sayings printed on the inside of their caps. The first one of the day for me yesterday said, "Always be kind to a creative mind." Will do. :-)

Some of our friends arrived at the shady pavilion with a new member of their furfamily, an agouti angora who was just a sweet and soft and cuddly as can be.

Scott and Jesse hitched a ride home with pals. Leah and I chatted some more with the oh so pleasant Leslie Wind, then headed off to Mamacate's blegger (blogger + kegger = blegger!), where we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening among all the spinning wheels and fiber and socks-in-progress and other projects and beer...and the delightful people who love these things. (There were many more bloggers and non-bloggers there, but these are a few I can remember off the top of my head.) We celebrated Lee Ann's 40th birthday, a new travel wheel, the birth of CeCe's first spindle-spun skein, and a new spinner trying out a wheel for the first time. We arrived home very tired but soooo excited to try some new techniques (jar dyeing and felt rugmaking, especially), looking forward to two more days of weekend romping!

cooking up glass goodies

I have sometimes referred to Scott as the beadmakerbaker. That's because his main work-for-pay is in our home-based wholesale bakery. Recently, though, he was asked to bake up goodies of the glassy kind as a result of a swap we arranged with Carissa of The Cupcake Factory. Carissa requested very specific cupcake bead "flavors," including one to match her logo, complete with sprinkles and a cherry on top!

Meanwhile, we received an order for a sheep to sock stitch marker set from Lixie, who used to put out a podcast that we enjoyed. While packaging her order, I remembered that Lixie used to wax poetic about her love of cupcakes and at one point I asked Scott to make her a cupcake bead. He did that and also made a bead with her name on it, but somehow they got put in the bead box, not mailed to Lixie, and then she stopped podcasting (only temporarily, I hope!) and time passed and...well, you know how it goes. So I rummaged around in the bead box and found the two beads that were originally made for her.

Apparently Scott's glass cupcake-baking skills have improved in the interim, but the older cupcake was still fun, so off they went to London with Lixie's order.

Thanks, everybody, for the stitch marker loop feedback so far. Lots of great ideas and comments in there. Never thought much about the glass sheep, drop spindles/bobbins, socks, and balls of yarn as jewelry or bracelet charms, but hey, if you all are fiber-crazed enough to adorn yourselves with glass sheep, who are we to argue?! Will get some more jewelry findings and let you know when I post them on Etsy. Meanwhile, keep those comments coming. We appreciate your input!

BTW, Leah's in the home stretch on her Cece cardigan. She has about an inch of raglan decreases to go and then a narrow button band to attach. She intends to block it today and then dive into her dad's pretty glass button stash and see what she can find to perfectly complement her second handknit sweater.