Enchanting Juno

le clapotis, etc.

Did you know that le clapotis is a French nudist resort?   If you Google it, the English language site has a scenic view, but the french language site has a french lady with a navel ring on and not much else.  That's your cultural differences in a naked nutshell.  This amuses me.

I am afraid I haven't got the talent or energy to write an ode to my scarf, but it is very beautiful.  I am afraid I shan't do it justice, but I have a fake Persian lamb jacket that will look very well with it.

View 1:                                                                                                    

View 2:

View 3:

View 4:

I see I forgot to weave in an end, there.  Oops.

In the end, I do like this pattern very much.  And I will make another when the next batch of Lion and Lamb comes in, but I think I will make it both one repeat wider, and another longer - I think I should just be able to squeeze that out of the 4 skeins.

As for the rest of my sense of purposeful finishing, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak - my wrist has been killing me.   I think I'm going to have to suck it up and have the surgery.  It was actually getting a bit better (I briefly had actual, if slight, movement while performing a finklestein, but right now I can't even tuck my thumb inside my fist), but while performing the incredibly difficult task of tearing a receipt off the printer at the grocery store a shooting pain manifested itself, and now it is all fucked up again.  But slowly, row by row, this is taking shape.

This would be the front of Truffle Darling, which I would like to finish before it is 70 degrees outside.

Interlude.

I don't feel at all well today.  I wish I could say I was sick, but I am afraid it was the peanut butter eggs.  I ate them in full knowledge that they would leave me lethargic and bloated today.  Like that would stop me. 

I am partaking of the Bolthouse Farms Vegetable Cure as we speak.  Spinach for dinner.

I went home last night to a still damp Clapotis - it smells like a wet dog, rather than lavender Euclan, which concerns me a little.  Looks great.

I noodled around - did a few rows on Truffle Darling, started to swatch some Merino et Soie I have lying about.  Tidied the knitting litter around the couch.  discarded the 12 empty diet coke cans that had accumulated on the coffee table.  Ate chocolate.  Petted the cat.  Cleaned the litter box.

Ended up pulling out my IK backlog and the Celtic Collection and flipping through them all while watching TV. 

(Speaking of which, does anyone know Distraction, on the Comedy Channel?  Usually I don't like things where people are humiliated, but this got me in spite of myself.  The premise is that you have to answer some fairly simple pop-culture questions in an elimination round, while you perform some kind of task or have some task performed on you.  This answers Cara's question of a few weeks ago - what do you watch that appalls you?   

Last night the contestants had to play leap frog.  With nudists.  And this one guy - his nudist was a middle aged guy.  With some...um...droop.  And every time he leapt over the contestant, he hit him in the back of the head with his.....boys.  You could sort of see it around the pixelated modesty screen the network was running.  The look on this guy's face was priceless - he was so skeeved, trying so hard not to let it out  and yet HE WAS PARTICIPATING VOLUNTARILY.   The nudist was completely unfazed of course.   That is, frankly, a degree of body self acceptance I will NEVER have.)

Anyway, now I have a bunch of patterns I want to copy, to keep in the hopper - I have a file.  Divided by category.  It lives on the bookcase next to the file full of color cards.  It is a sickness.  (Should I be worried that Norma's stash documentation project is starting to seem like a really, really good idea?)

Was a nice pleasant evening, dreaming over yarn.  Refreshing, while the snow fell, to curl up in my robe and visualize.  I looked out the back door before I went to bed and the world was glowing pink on the horizon while these gorgeous slow fat flakes continued to fall.  Nice.

salmagundi.

Where is everybody?  Traffic was way down yesterday and both yesterday and today it feels like many fewer posts popping up on bloglines.  (And Enchanting Juno isn't showing up as updated at all, even though it has been.  Did the same thing yesterday.  Grr.) It is possible I'm just confused because I got used to wading through the 611 posts waiting for me when I got back from Arizona, but come on people, don't you know I have procrastinating to do?

We are supposed to get snow, big snow, starting this afternoon (Reports vary re: ETA) which is particularly great as I have a meeting at 5 PM, but that, my friends, is the very reason I have four wheel drive.  I got my Jeep about 3 years ago after a near death experience on 3 millimeters of snow in my old car.  When I realized that I was buying a house and would be living alone, with no one to notice if I slammed into a ditch and didn't make it home, I knew I had to have four wheel drive before the next winter.  And then, improbably, I fell hopelessly in love with what was then the new model Jeep Liberty, which I still think is funny looking but I adore.  I only test drove it to be thorough, but true love is true love and should be respected. 

It is orange - pardon me, salsa - which translates as deep metallic tomato soup colored. I have fuzzy dice.  And then my brother bought a house in Vermont.  On a mountain.  With a class four (read: dirt.  If I've got the classification wrong, let me know, 'kay?) road.  So it turns out that if I want to visit him during the 8 months a year that they have snow or axle deep mud I need the jeep anyway.  And I kinda have to because the other four months he's in Ontario.  And when everyone else on my historic (narrow, inaccessible, last in the city to be plowed) street is stuck, I drive on.  So everything works out.

I have to say that, as much as I love IK, this issue doesn't exactly rock my world. Spring and summer issues are iffy, I know that the challenge of finding knitting projects for warmer months is significant, but I don't know....I did like the brioche pullover, although I had a little bit of symbol shock when I looked at the 11 million pages of brioche instructions (symbol shock is what happened to me when I took pre-calculus.  My brain became an impervious surface and that was the end of my relationship, such as it was, with mathematics), but it is pretty and shapely.

I think it needs fold up cuffs though, tailored ones in the contrast color.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that my favorite thing was the ad supplement from Tahki/Stacy Charles. That corset pullover is my favorite knitting pattern ever. It took my breath away the first time I saw it, and now I have a .pdf of it saved.  Thanks IK.  I actually have a boatload of the original yarn in olive tucked away for when I feel like my skills are up to the necessary modifications - 'cause it would have to be a bit longer.  We do not show our belly button.  We are 35.  Of course, none of my trousers are that low, either.

Notice how I am cleverly distracting you with other people's pictures to conceal the lack of content of my own.  I did finish Clapotis last night and when it is dry I shall show you.  The pattern lists blocking as optional, but since it was only 13 inches wide, and all the dropped stitches had a bend in them, I went for it.  The Lion and Lamb did bleed significantly in water, so I am hoping the color wasn't badly effected.

I started to pin it out flat and then realized I didn't want it to be aggressively straightened, since the appeal of the pattern is in its ripples, so I just flopped it out roughly to shape and left it.  Looks like it will be about 21 inches by about 67 inches - that's the four extra repeats, which I am glad I did.  It could have been too short for me other wise.  I only have about half of the Fourth skein left, maybe less, so I think I would not have made it it with only three, even knitting as written.  Allow 50 extra yards, I think.

I also seem to have lost my T-pins, which is a shame.  How do you lose a tomato pin-cushion bristling like a stainless steel porcupine?  It isn't like it could fall behind a couch pillow, I'd have found it with my ass by now.

Sea change.

Someone at my Monday knitting class looked at Clapotis - which was significantly worked on, nearing completion in fact, and yet had never been seen by any of them previously - and asked what happened to Truffle, Darling.  Well, they don't know the name, it is just one of "those really cool projects you are always starting."

Always. Starting. 

Oops, they done seen through me.

I have been having the startitis since about September.  I keep trying something new to see if I can get it right, but since I'm not finishing much I don't really know yet if I'm on track for getting it right.  I've been going 12 different directions at once, like a hydra-headed pushmepullyou.

But I feel different right now.

I've got a powerful urge to complete things growing in me.  I think it has something to do with my overall improved mood.  I think we have seasons, and for the past 6 months or so I've been in a season of discontent, restless about a variety of things.  And that is changing, I am starting to see futures, possibilities I could not visualize before.

See the pattern?  Restless and dissatisfied=frantically start new things, but never finish anything bigger than a scarf.  Calm and optimistic=powerful urge to purposeful action.  Interesting.

And I know there is some kind of change afoot because although I have PMS (which you can tell because I ate 6 of these

last night) I'm not hostile, depressed or angry.  I am breaking out, which isn't much of a surprise really, is it?

These eggs, by the way, are the nectar of the gods.   Regular peanut butter cups I can easily resist, but these......let us just say that Easter is very dangerous time of year, and when Easter comes hand in hand with my menstrual cycle - well, I'll be eating a few more of these, I can tell you that.

And then probably going on a sugar and hormone crazed yarn buying binge.  I want me some of this:

and I always want some of this:

And I'm sure I can come up with a few more if you give me enough processed sugar, don't you?

A Very Serious Concern.

You know how I've done nothing but badmouth the Cashmerino Aran? 

I'm very confused now.  I know that's what I used for the hot water bottle.  And I didn't hate knitting with it, it was OK....I just hated how it wore after I knit with it.  Anyway, I know that was the yarn because I had a whole conversation with the yarn store ladies about how I should use the blend rather than pure cashmere, etc, etc. etc.

But last night I touched something the Knit Goddess is making in white Cashmerino Aran and it is delicious.  I pulled a completed sleeve onto my arm and felt the distinctive dry cashmere softness slither up my skin, with a little extra something from the microfiber.  I....I....I actually liked it.

My bewilderment is such that I actually stopped at the LYS on my way to therapy to touch the DB yarn and see. 

(Oh, and while I was there I accidentally bought a ball of Jaeger Extra Soft Merino DK....ding, ding, ding, we may have a winner in the what to knit The Fifth Element in.  Be impressed that I only bought one ball so I could test it for the pattern and figure out the yarn requirements first, instead of scooping up everything on the shelf.  Distracted....by.....shiny....things....Must....finish......clapotis....before....swatching.....)

Back to my cashmefusion.  Did I buy merino buy mistake?  Did my touch contaminate the yarn?  Was it something I washed it in?  Is it the fact that it is stockinette?  Was it the touch of the hot water bottle?  I went home and felt up the hated hot water bottle cover, and it doesn't feel nearly as nice as that sleeve.

A bunch of people have told me I would like it better if it were knitted on a smaller than recommended needle.  Maybe that's it.  I comfort myself with the fact that it still wears like shit.  And I don't really like the extra microfiber texture thing it has.  Really.

This is like having a conversation with some girl who was a total bitch to you in high school, a girl you really wanted to stick pins in....and finding out she's nice.  Maybe not your cup of tea, but a nice person.

Oh, and Natalie will be providing a new home for the hated Klaralund, so anyone who grieved for the yarn should be reassured.  She will transform it it to something without negative energy and they will live happily ever after. 

Although I am, frankly, a little worried about the karmic consequences of sending this thing out into the world.

Carnage.

As I get older I find I want and need more time to myself than some consider natural.  It isn't that I don't like other people -well, I like some of them.  But my own company is necessary.  Which is a highfalutin, psychological sounding way of saying that this was the laziest weekend on record, and I loved it, particularly the part where I stayed in my bathrobe half of Sunday and puttered and nursed a hangover, finally emerging Monday when I ran out of diet coke and was forced to shower and put on some clothes before crawling out into the world, blinking, in search of my carbonated elixir of life, my crack, my fizzy Elysium.  Then I scurried back.

Refreshed by all this, Monday afternoon I was infused with a spirit of destruction and decided to take my two most abject sweater failures and reduce them to dust.  This is certainly inspired by the activities over at the Blue Blog, but I want to be clear than I'm not joining anything official, OK?  I just wanted to deconstruct something. 

Rhinebeck Red started Monday as it has started every day since the fall - mostly assembled, ends hanging, mocking me for my foolishness in making something so bulky and yet close fitting. 

Now it looks like this

It is still one of the most beautiful yarns I've seen, although extremely hard to photograph.  It enchants me.  Now I have to finds some way to make it up that doesn't make me want to throw myself on a sharp object when I look in the mirror whilst wearing it. 

The other is this - Klaralund.  The exact opposite sweater in many respects - shapeless, loose, way too big, and deeply unflattering even when pinned to better dimensions.

This did not go as well.  Silk Garden does not wish to be picked out of the seams.

AT ALL.

I was so, so, so very careful, but managed to cut the sweater in two places on the last seam.  And then I tried to pull it out. 

I tried one end.  I tried the other end.  I looked at the pattern to make sure I was at the right place.  I tried again.   I turned it over.  I tried the other end again.  I went to one of the cut spots and tried to start it from where I had sort of created a new end. 

Fuggetaboutit.

I never even got one row undone.  It is bound to itself in some alchemical way I cannot comprehend.

After a while I threw it on the kitchen floor.

That's where it still is.

I don't like this yarn.  I love the colors, yes, but I hate the yarn.  The stripes leave me cold, the rough texture revolts me, I couldn't stand the weight of the fabric it made.   It is to me anathema.  And a fine reminder that you should always listen to your original instincts, particularly when they say "ick".   I talked myself into it - almost became obsessed by it - because I liked the way the sweater looked on someone else.  Someone, by the way, built nothing like me.  Come to think of it, it was Alison at the Blue Blog.  Apparently she has some strange power over me. 

You know what I really want to do?  Put it in the trash.  It is going to stay on the kitchen floor until I make up my mind.  Or the cat pees on it.  Which is another way to make up my mind.  Of course I still have five skeins of it even if I do throw this away.  I expect that this will be a yarn that follows me, haunts me, for the rest of my life.

Then I went to knitting group where my spirit was refreshed and I began the Clapotis decrease rows.  I believe I might have mentioned before that this group is full of fabulous women.  I laughed so hard my throat burned raw.  And I totally dig the way you get to drop TWO sections per repeat decreasing Clapotis.  It makes sense.  I should really have read ahead, because I can tell you I spent a lot of time staring at this trying to visualize how the end shaping was going to work, and man, I could not see it.

Blame Rabbitch.

See, nothing goes unpunished. It is a lesson for us all.

I succumbed to a meme, and here it has rebounded upon me, and from someone I just plain old like too much to dis. It is very, very sad. Really. First cat pictures, now this.

Do you knit using the English or Continental Method?

Um, lefty, pick-style, whatdoyoucallit. That’s continental, right? For the longest time I couldn’t remember which was which, but the Knit Goddess is Swiss/German, and she knits the same way I do, only much, much better, so that must be Continental. Often, but not always, I also knit combined - depending on the yarn and the pattern demands.

How long ago did you learn to knit?

Christmas of my senior year in high school – which was…December 1986. Shit, how'd that happen?

But last night when I replaced my cell phone - which had developed some serious issues - you know how they xerox your drivers license? The sales girl handed it back to me and said, "wow, you really don't look 35", which made me Very, Very happy. If a straight man said that I'd know he wanted to sleep with me and if one of my girlfriends said it I'd know she loved me - which is not the same as telling the truth in either case. But a girl you don't know or a gay man (friend OR stranger), you can count on them for the truth. Which has nothing to do with knitting, except that it helps me knit up the ravel'd sleeve of care and thus form fewer wrinkles, but I wanted to tell someone.  Cause, you know, it was cool and fed my vanity.

Who taught you how?

Me mum, at my request. We had a January term where we could take some oddball classes and crafty things, and there was a vogue for knitting that year. She showed me over the holiday, got me set up so I could participate upon my return to school.

She learned in college from the one person she could find who was a picker, not a thrower. She said the throwing looked so awkward to her she knew she could never do it.

What was your first FO?

A dusty plum acrylic sweater from my senior year in high school – although, to be fair, I finished it in LAX, waiting on a six hour layover for a flight home my freshman year in college. When I realized I had forgotten to learn about gauge and therefore was knitting a petite sweater to fit on my very non-petite frame, I put it down for 8 months. (This may explain why I am so willing to swatch and swatch again to make sure I have the sizing/yarn/gauge all sorted out.) Then I remembered my best friend was petite, and started up again. She says she still has it.

Then I didn’t knit again until fall 2002, when I made two novelty scarves. And then didn’t knit again until Christmas 2003, when I completely sold my soul to yarn and pretty much haven’t stopped since.

Favourite yarn?

I have to choose? That’s just plain mean.

Um. Merino. Alpaca. Wool/silk blends. I touched some alpaca/silk recently that moved me to strong emotion, but I haven’t knit with it (yet) so I can’t say for sure.

Jo Sharp Silkroad and DK pretty much blow my skirt up.

Favourite pattern you've knit so far?

I’ve had some real misses, but they weren’t the patterns’ fault, and I learned a lot, so I don’t hate them or anything. I guess my unfinished Salt Peanuts is probably the thing I most enjoyed working on end to …well not end, because I put it down to work on something else. But I didn’t put it down because I was bored, only because I’d heard so much about the front shaping that I was a little scared. I really, really like the design though, as I have liked almost everything I’ve seen by Veronik Avery, and the (sadly discontinued) yarn and should finish it because I think it might be one of the better things I’ve chosen for myself and it is a bit silly to finish things that look like ass and avoid things that might work.

Favourite Pattern Source?

IK.

Even when I don’t find anything I like, I still like it, and then when I go back, I always discover something new. And I really like that they tend to carry sizing past 40 inches, and that they put the pattern together in the magazine, not indexed in the back. Now, if only they’d get some different models – one with a real bust would be nice – show multiple sizes of the sweaters on different figure types and, oh yeah, get a better photographer.

Favourite Needles?

Bamboo or wood whenever I can. I really like Addi Naturas – best cord and join by far, and I like very much the Bamboo interchangeable set I got from WEBS, even though the screw attachment is inconsistently tight. The wood needles from Lantern Moon are divine, even if they are straight, but they are very expensive.

I like Addi turbos for yarns with less memory or that drag a bit for whatever reason, and Swallow caseins for some yarns that are slippery or easily snagged.

I hate regular plastic and the shivery sound of hollow aluminum needles, and I have some vintage Boye baleen needles that have utterly failed to grow on me. Which is strange because the vintage Boye baleen crochet hook I got on eBay is my favorite by far

Nicest thing you've ever knit?

Finished? The Multi Yarn Scarf Thing made me really happy – it was something I visualized and followed through the way I visualized it and really enjoy wearing and looking at. But I haven’t finished that much yet I was really satisfied with. This has been a year (almost exactly, come to think of it. I bought the yarn for the Multi Yarn Scarf Thing in January 2004 and it was really the beginning of the madness) of learning mostly. I think I will find more success this year, that I’ve finally learned enough to do this right.

Most hated project?

Oh, the cashmerino aran bottle cover by far. For a thousand reasons and counting.

Who are you going to pass this on to?

No one. I done learned my lesson. Feel free to chime in if the spirit moves you.

Another standard out the window.

Can you stand the cuteness?  I picked him up from storage today - he enjoyed a refreshing spa while I was in Arizona.  17 years old in May.  Slightly cranky.  Extremely fuzzy.  Giving me an evil look  right now, because I moved my foot.
Will probably pee in my laundry room once I go to bed.  That's my standard punishment for going out of town.

It was either this, or a picture of 12 more rows of Clapotis.  I think we can agree this was the right choice.

That is all.

Miss me?

Hello, my babies. 

One thing I know now is that where ever I end up in the world, there must be mountains.
The Southwest  is nice, but it doesn't speak to me the way it does to so many.  But mountains - ah, the mountains draw me.  Everytime I left the house I stopped dead in my tracks.  Mockery was perhaps made of me for this, but that's what little brothers are for.

But this is the view outside my mom's front door. 

Not bad, huh?

And it wasn't so bad, really, the family visiting thing.  This time, for the first time I felt like I couldn't be drawn in to the sickness.  Not that I was apart, but the oddness that characterizes my mom was hers, not mine.  I didn't feel that urgency to convince her of my view point, to change her.  I could mostly just tolerate it, and when she trespassed in ways that upset me, I just said "I don't like that" and left it alone. 
I think that might be growth.  Huh.

And I got to know my nephew a little bit.  He's a cutie,  a little reserved with people other than mum and dad yet, but so sweet and serious. 

I'm afraid his favorite person in  the family is my mom's cat, who comes supplied with a fuffy tail, good for pulling.

We went to the zoo and saw this facinating fellow.

And giraffes, and the world's largest rodent and peacocks and a couple of wicked,  lazy, menacing panthers and looked at butterflies, and a desert style cottage garden and saw cousins, and played dominoes and backgammon, and drank margaritas in the back yard and threw lots and lots and lots of pebbles in the pond. 

And when family was a little too much with me, I worked on Clapotis.  I've finished the 13 straight repeats.  The jury is still out for me on this one.   I like it....hmm okay...but I liked it more when it was just the pointy little increase end - at this point is seems a little frayed and wrinkly looking.  Dunno.
I need to make a decision about whether to make it a couple repeats longer, or start the  decreases.  I'm afraid it might be too short for me.

Any thoughts?

 

A superbowl story in pictures.

I just can't take another joke about the clap, the clapper, etc.   But .....

Friday night: It was after midnight and I'd spent the evening working ONE row on the Redhead (3 times. I was misreading the increase stitches.  Let us not speak of it), mostly just to get it switched on to a shorter circular needle (I had it on a 40" and it was driving me crazy), and playing with the MP3 player and learning how to use my camera, since I need to take pictures of my nephew this week. (I am very parenthetical today).

Around one I looked at the Lorna's Laces all wound up on the coffee table ready for the plane, and thought, eh, sleep is for sissies.  And so cast on.

Then I remembered I had to meet my trainer at 9:30 AM.  So I stopped with 9 stitches on the needle.  And took a picture for you.

Saturday I was hanging out at the house of my friend non-knitting H and I thought - a new pattern in a house full of sugar cranked toddlers?  Great idea.  And picked it up.  Did a couple of repeats.

When I got home I ripped it out (sugar cranked toddlers not being helpful companions to knitting) and started again - even though it was 10:30 PM.  I was instantly addicted and forced myself to put down the first 4 pattern (maybe 5?) repeats at 2:45 AM. 

It will not surprise you to learn that I slept until nearly 12, although it did surprise me, as I've only recently started to get over four years of insomnia.  I make no never mind about staying up half the night, because I am so used to being tired I don't count it and in the past would probably have been awake again by 8 anyway.

But I'm learning how to rest again, and when it takes me, it takes me down.  Noon.  I can't remember the last time I slept straight through to noon.   Since most of Sunday was already shot, I gave up the idea of productive work at this point and went for a walk with a neighbor's new puppy, and re-categorized music on my computer (It makes me crazy when the downloaded data for an album is misspelled or mislabeled, and it happens a lot.  So I have to fix it on my hard rive.  Otherwise it will download onto the MP3 player wrong.  And piss me off every time I scroll through) and knit a row or two.  Didn't take a shower until 4:30.

Then I went to a Superbowl party.  Since I don't give a rat's ass about football, I did this:

And after I got home, of course I had to finish the last section 2 repeat.  And the first section 3 repeat  and drop the first column (and take pictures.  And save them to Typepad.  So I could show you today.) before I went to bed at 2 (!).

Gratuitous yarn close ups - these are the only pictures that really show a hint of the lavender tones in this yarn.

Lion & Lamb = ridiculously, sinfully soft.   The thought of paying for a sweater made out of this makes me feel a little faint, but then again, so does the thought of wearing it.   I'm hoping to have a little left over so I can make wristlets.  How sick is that?  I have a fourth skein "just in case" but I should be hoping I don't need it so I can save myself the ridiculous sum of money it cost.  But I'm not.

Caroline : package on the way today. 

Other contest participants:  I'm leaving for a week tomorrow and I am afraid I shan't be able to have the consolation drawing until I get back.  You will not be forgotten.

You may not (or may) hear much from me for a while as I don't know how much computer time will be available to me in the House of Mom.                              

Think of me with Sympathy until I get back, a broken shell of my former self, in need of massive psychotherapy to recover from the 8 days in my mum's house.