Enchanting Juno

Oh Happy Skein

that does not suck, how I love thee.

Now, this is not a perfect skein, I make no such claims.  But it is balanced.  It is a three ply.  It is flexible and soft rather than tight and hard.  It isn't worsted or aran weight. 

It IS what I planned it to be.  What. I. Planned.  How beautiful is the attainment of a goal.

Keeping the singles from being too tightly twisted for a pliable 3-ply just about killed me.  Some people will say I am wrapped a little too tight, to which I say pshaw.  But I do tend to go pretty fast, push pretty hard.  Particularly with my treadle foot (and perhaps one or two other things).  I can't draft fast enough to keep up.  For the longest time I failed to make the connection between a fast treadling style and my over twisted singles, but a lightbulb went off recently, and I am working very hard at slowing down and being conscious and  deliberate.  Going really fast downhill can be fun, but that's a thrill ride, you know?

(Why does everything sound like therapy when you do it right?)

I hate it when the obstacle to progress is me.   It has been very frustrating.   

Camel/Tussah in Fiddlehead colorway from Foxfire.  Yum.  Turns out this is too floppy (camel silk?  Noooo.) for the beret I had in mind.  So any suggestions about what to do with about 180 yards of fingering+ yarn are welcome.

Even though it will pill and fuzz like an angora sweater in a clinch, I love it wholly.

too much is the new normal

I saw this via The Morning News.

What does 120 calories look like?

Do you know?

I am not sure I did.  Plus the pictures are beautiful.

I noticed in Toronto that portions in restaurants tend to be smaller.  Not unsatisfying, but smaller.  And much more full of vegetables used creatively and thoughtfully than I am used to.
The exception was the Indian restaurant - which was delicious, but the vegetarian platter was enormous.  I ate too much.  Carrot pickle, yum.

I noticed that though Torontonians do come in the full range of sizes available to the human being, they too, tend overall to be smaller that what I am used to seeing.
I expect there is a connection.

Don't you?

somewhere without bounds

I plied this weekend.  But I have no pictures for you - the new yarn is not dry and the light sucked anyway and both for the same reason, which is that it was so humid the air felt wet.  One of my neighbors was on her way out for a run when I saw her Saturday, mad creature. 
Of course, I saw her on my way home from a hour at the gym, so I might be mad too.

It was so damp that the sky above the lights - I went to a minor league ball game Friday night - was hazy like the bathroom after a shower, so damp I felt like my eyes were fogging over, no matter how furiously I blinked, so damp I walked in a dream forest rather than a parking lot with my plate of funnel cake, cake that J and I ate so fast it didn't have time to cool, though the powdered sugar vanished into the heat under our fingers far faster even than we could consume it.

Funnel Cake is actually a little bit disgusting.  Despite the number of festivals I have been to in recent years, I haven't eaten much fair food and my childhood self did not find the funnel cake nearly as greasy as my adult self did.  It would be better for a few minutes on a draining rack, I think.  Not that that is going to stop me.  If you assign moral value to food - which I don't anymore, though I was raised to - then funnel cake is delicious sin, kissing an old boyfriend you know you ought not touch but do, do, do, have to.  The sweetness lingers on your lips, un-regretted.

All summer each weekend has slipped past with no activity.  Monday meant a guilty sink full of dishes and a disgruntled feeling of having failed to meet my own expectations and leaving the house on a weekend became a bit noteworthy.    This weekend I stayed in on Sunday as a heat avoidance technique - see misty water colored air of Friday and Saturday - rather than an act of passive drift, but I also did my dishes as I cooked and washed the slipcover on the couch and put away the clean laundry the same day I folded it which was also the same day it was washed.  Nothing is molding in the washer.  I shaved my legs.  I read a book.  I scrubbed the tub.  I made eye contact with people when I went to the market Saturday.

There is still cat hair collecting in the corners of the stairs.   Not too much at once, you understand.  But still.  I feel awake.

Apparently my intellect is antique.

Not really a surprise.  My favorite professor in college told me once that I had a very 19th century turn of phrase.   I had a better vocabulary in those days, I think.

The unexpected, part 1.

On the right you can see a line of yarn overs - that would be the center of the shawl.
On the left are the remaining stitches to be bound off.
In the middle, my remaining yarn.

You see the problem.

Fortunately, before I began my preparations for ritual suicide (well, really, I just started swatching some Wool Bam Boo, rather than disemboweling myself with ebony straights.  Knitting has, if nothing else, taught me fatalism) I thought to email Judy at Smatterings, the artist who authored this yarn.  She believes she has a half skein or so about the place.  If true, I can even rip back and add the last two rows of the border.  Which would be bitchin'.. ..

...because this is much too pretty to leave on the needles indefinitely.

Unexpected thing the second was much pleasanter but even more of a surprise - I had, after all, rather begun to suspect that I wasn't going to make it all the way through the cast off some time before I actually ran out of yarn.

Last night I arrived home to unusually congested parking and a park ranger (we have those?) who gave me permission to park illegally.   Quite oddly, a person or persons unknown had erected a stage at the end of the street, upon which there were three guys playing some pretty decent summer music.  Kind of a Santana/blues/Ventures kind of thing.

Gotta click for big so you can appreciate one of Our Nation's Fathers supervising the proceedings.

There isn't much that's more enjoyable than outdoor music on a summer night.  I don't know who they were or why they were there, but the ranger told me they were playing in different neighborhoods each night, working their way through the city.  Which is one of those things that is just a gift to the universe - like buying a thousand copies of the best CD you ever heard and giving it to 1000 strangers.   Or the time I was leaving the grocery store and passed a guy coming in - a stranger - and I was done and he needed a cart and we just handed it off like we could read each other's minds and grinned at each other.

Miss Kitty was fascinated by it - once I was home cooking to the blues coming through the open window, every time I looked she was at the door or the window with her ears oriented to the music.

She's an odd little creature.

For all the delicate flowers.

Or as my brother told me once "if I exposed you to direct sunlight, you'd turn to dust, dude."

Nothing but love and respect from that boy, nothing but love and respect.

It turns out there were 5 not 6 (the sixth bottle was a gift with purchase cleanser from RoC.  I love me a gift with purchase.  You should see my new Vichy knitting bag).  The fifth bottle is a small SPF 20 facial fluid from Vichy and still in my purse.

The Roc and Vichy I was able to try in the store, the Ombrelle and Aveeno I bought untested, but have tried since.

The Ombrelle is a pump spray and goes on clear.  It claims to be odor and dye free, and sweat and water proof.  Active ingredients:  3% Parsol 1789, 10% Oxcrylene, 6% Oxybenzone, 5% Octisalate.  No smell that I could perceive, dried fast, didn't sting and may very well be available here, as none of those are the non FDA improved ingredients.  It leaves faint residue on the skin, but not a bothersome one.

The Aveeno is a clear aerosol spray which I am not loving.  It went on clear, but it has a very strong baby powder-ish scent - can't quite place it, but it has been in my bathroom before.  It stung for a minute and the scent lingers.  The active ingrediants are similar to the Ombrelle, with the addition of Homosalate 15%: Parsol 1789  3%, Oxcrylene 2.35%, Oxybenzone 6%, Octisalate 5%.

The Vichy Capital Soleil 30 is what I wore all day today - its a cream for face and body, goes on white, absorbs quickly and leaves no sticky residue.  The first sunblock I've worn all day without thinking about.  It had a very faint scent that dispersed quickly, so fast I never got a handle on it.  Active ingredients Octocrylene 10%, Titanium Dioxide 3.3 %, Parsol 1789 3%, Drometrizole Trisiloxan (Mexoryl XL) 1.5%, Terephalylidene Dicamphor Sulfonic Acid (Mexoryl SX) 1%. 
Its only been a day, so no promises, yes?  But I will mention it if any sensitivity builds up.

The last one is from RoC: Ultra High Protection Suncare Spray Lotion SPF60.  I like the application - a pump spray of a thin white lotion, it doesn't spray coat, it puddles and must be rubbed in.  But it disappears quickly and I wore the sample for a day without noticing any sting or reaction.  Again, I'll be trying it out and I will let you know if any sensitivity develops.   The active ingredients are ....completely covered by the security sticker, which I cannot get off.  So I dunno what to tell you.  The proprietary ingredient is Tinosord M+S and the lotion has glycerin and Vitamin E, that much I can read.

Gotta go wash my arm - that Aveeno smell and sting is not dispersing.

Oh, and the skein in the middle is the Dream In Color Cloud Jungle.   I loooove it.  Trying desperately to finish something so I can justify beginning Laura's Vino Cardigan.

If Yo Yo Ma would design my back garden, that would be great, thanks.

Really.

The Music Garden in Toronto is so gorgeous that I want to make something like it at home, but it would just be much nicer to get Yo Yo Ma to do it.  He does good work. (OK, I can't find his name on the link, but I swear someone told me he was involved. Maybe he played while they created this?)

This is the first time I've been to TO in the summer and it really is very wonderful.  My feet were walked down to little blistered nubs, as I am a suburbanite and unaccustomed to kilometers of concrete under my shoes and also I am maybe a bit of a delicate flower.  But even with sore feet I am sad to be home ignoring the yardwork and getting yelled at by my cat instead of hanging out with Steph and seeing new things.

I had never had a cherry before.  Some where along the way I never met them.  I think I thought they tasted like that weird stuff in commercial pie and regarded the fruit with suspicion.  Turns out, not so much.

We call this Still Life With Beer and Cherries.
And Stupid Knitting (because it turns out I cannot do yarn overs on the TTC.  I needed garter stitch.)  Also, I am the only person in Toronto wearing sunglasses.  That happened to me in England too. 

Paparazzi shot of blogger at work. 

I'd forgotten what good pictures the little camera takes. 

I came home with 6 kinds of sunblock (No fooling.  My dermatologist gave me a bollocking last month for failure to protect and I found the mother load of non-icky, non-sticky, non-FDA approved but it doesn't sting or make me crazy to put it on my face sunblock), a sweater's worth of Dream in Color "Cloud Jungle" (the "Black Parade" was really good too, but there were only two skeins left.  Oh, and the Cocoa Kiss.  Very nice.) (This is seriously gorgeous yarn.  You should get some.) and a determination to do more cardio, but mostly I came home feeling lucky (well, lucky and also a little bitter about the return of regular service.  My desk was a sad sight today.) and remembering the wind on the lake, in the grass, through the streetcar window.  In Steph's face. 

Also, we went on the merry-go-round.  We are four.

Home is really not as good as I remember.

 

Nauseating knitters since 2004.

I'm so proud.
And thank you all for responding to That Picture with all the horror I could have hoped.  It is nice to not be alone. 

Further adventures in yarn washing - and then I must leave you for a week or so.  I am taking a trip next week and there is no possible way I can go if I don't stop dicking around on the internet and get some work done. 

There is another reason to wash your coned yarn: sometimes it is filthy.  The Colourmart cones have all been immaculate, but that is not the only place to find this stuff.  The manufacturer might have used a different oil, or it might have been coned a long time ago and the oil has attracted dirt, or it was stored in a warehouse, or insert reason here.  A lot of coned yarns - particularly mill ends and closeouts - were meant to be used in industrial production where the important factor is that they move smoothly through a mechanical system.  Fuzz, bloom, softness - so desirable to the hand knitter - mean snags and machinery problems. Gunk in the works. So they are seriously coated. The end product would be washed thoroughly after being knit or woven, also an industrial process designed to remove whatever it had picked up along the way,  so the oil and whatever hardly matters.  To the machines.

This is the same reason I lost interest in spinning in the grease once I did a little reading about sheep dip and parasites.  Do I want to touch that?  I do not.

Dark brown 80/20 merino/cashmere from a Webs closeout a few years ago.  My first cashmere, I think.  I've done the calculations and I seem to have bought 2.97 pounds at 1000 ypp.  Worsted weight.  Perhaps something with cables, then?  (I think it was 14 bucks a pound. I wish I had gotten there in time to get more colors, is all I can say).

This was done in the sink with regular laundry powder (wool wash didn't make a dent in the oil), hot water and a plunger - the swatch I tried in the laundry bloomed a little TOO much.

Skeined.

Weighed.

The end result dried only one gram lighter.  An important gram.

Some of this is color run.

But not all.

It is not as soft as I expected considering the two fibers - and I did put hair conditioner in the rinse - but has great body.  Will knit into a nice cardigan someday.  No itch.

Pre and post wash comparison.

See you in a week or so. 

This is the way we wash our ....

yarn.

I have a terrible problem with colourmartUK.  All that cashmere.  I get a bit flushed (fans self).

There is a fair accumulation of coned yarn around the place at this point, and somewhere in my recent swatch frenzy, I started experimenting with how to get the best out of it.  Originally I was charmed by coned yarn because of the lack of ends to weave in - so efficient! - but the oils make it hard to predict bloom and final gauge.  And anyway, if I'm going to bother to knit with something exquisite, I would enjoy wringing every last ounce of tactile pleasure from it, instead of running the harshness of machine oils through my fingers for 1800 yards.

Once I discovered that it was completely possible to fit one 150 gram cone of dk cashmere in a single niddy-noddy load AND that it all fits neatly and easily into one ball-winder ball, well, it became open season on the cones.

Autumn Tweed was an early acquisition, almost 2 years ago when I first discovered ColourMart.  A very soft 2 ply, it actually looked good enough to work with on the cone.  This one responded very well to hot water, sink and hand agitation and though I am sure it shrank a bit, it was not noticeable to my eye.

 

In the picture, the coned strand looks nearly the same as the washed skein, but a side by side of a washed and unwashed skein shows (or it least it would if I had not apparently failed to photograph this stage) at least a third greater volume and a significantly softer texture.   The construction is two plies of a very soft single and I expect was originally intended to be knit on idustrial machines into a sweater.  I love it.  Can't wait to knit it.

This other yarn - also from ColourMart - is a much less soft 6 ply.  The vendor takes fine singles for weaving, twists them into two-ply laceweight and then plies 3 strands of two ply and I have to admit that though I adore the color - olive heather - I was initially disappointed.

The resulting yarn arrived looking a little bit strandy and felt a bit hard and  I didn't see how it could turn into something nice to wear and knit.  I washed a skein in the sink a few weeks ago with detergent and hot water and a plunger - a successful technique with the first yarn
- and it improved.  But not enough.  It didn't bloom.  It didn't feel like cashmere.  I wasn't satisfied.  Saturday I decided it was worth a potential 35 dollar loss to learn more.

On this intellectual whim, I stuck it in a small (to minimize freedom of movement) lingerie bag in a load of towels, with regular laundry detergent (BioKleen) and a warm wash, warm rinse.  Extreme skeinwashing.  Maybe even Xtreme.

I may have been a little feverish.

When it came out, I was sad.  Oh I was sad.

Very, very sad.

But I'm a determined woman.  I pulled and stretched and yanked. 

I cranked the swift as wide as I could.

The autumn cashmere skein - which fits completely over the green one - was wound on the same niddy noddy. 

20% loss? 25%?

But it looks pretty.

Very pretty.

Not felted.  Not matted.  And soft.  Like luxury air.  Like cashmere.

I think I can see a difference.

I can feel it too.

A few quick calculations caused me to run and quick order another skein, since there's no denying there was some significant yardage lost to this experiment.  I don't recommend trying this with something that isn't replaceable without a 2nd mortgage, or if you are not the type to be able to shrug off the loss of 100s of yards of cashmere, one way or the other.  And I expect it might be possible to generate a similarly lush result with less shrinkage.  But I'm glad I tried it.  I learned something.  Next time I have a load of towels I'm sending the next skein through and when they are all done I'll have something that's a pure pleasure to work with.

I had the skeins on the desk next to me while I wrote this.

Guess I am not the only one in the house who likes her cashmere fluffy.

Morning sunshine.

I had some pervert email me on the dating website recently going on about our deep compatibility and waxing poetic about the wonderful conversations we would have over the coffee he makes from fresh ground beans every morning.

As a typical morning for me involves leaving 10 minutes late with wet hair and an unmade bed (and that's a reasonably good day) and I don't drink coffee, I think he might be barking up the wrong tree.

(I should clarify that while I found his morning habits disturbing - all that alertness, she shuddered - the designation of 'pervert' is made for other reasons and not with whimsy.  And I am not at all judgmental about these things.)

I am going to have to reconsider coffee though. 

I made all kinds of plans for stepping down from the sweet, sweet poison of Diet Coke, but found myself unable to comply.  The tree of knowledge is powerful - once I read what I read about what this stuff actually does, I couldn't bring myself to drink it again.  Cold turkey by default.

The first four days were worse by far than quitting smoking in terms of the physical misery - headaches and exhaustion and muscle weakness, despite substituting iced tea for caffeine replacement (the day I accidentally drank decaf tea was particularly brutal).  But Saturday I woke up and thought that I might want to live after all, and unlike my experiences with cigarettes, that seems to have been the end of the craving.  I am finding it physically impossible to drink as much tea as I once drank cola though, so I am running at a caffeine deficit.  I'll get used to it, I know, but I'm an odd combination of more alert - from not being full of weird chemicals, I expect - and completely shattered.   

My hands looks smaller to me, my rings fit more loosely and overall I seem less water retaining around all my edges, my joints seem more flexible and aches and pains less - I'm going to the gym for the first time in 10 days tonight though, so I expect this will be corrected soon - my appetite is less and my heart rate down about 10 beats a minute, so I think I'm on the right track.   If I could only wake up. 

Oh, and several of you asked would I be willing to repeat hard blocking on a sweater every time I washed it.  I probably would, it just doesn't seem like that much trouble to me.  It also probably wouldn't be that necessary that frequently - how often do sweaters really need washing?   Then again, Matilda Jane is the first thing I've finished that I actually do wear a reasonable amount, so my perspective may be off.  Generally wrinkles and cat hair are my primary problems, which can be addressed in other ways more effectively.   
There seem to be as many definitions of blocking as there are knitters - which I think is as it should be, I'm a big believer in finding your own best method.  I AM going to take my yarn more fully under consideration before I act - understanding the properties of construction and the materials can't be a waste of effort.  I want to test a swatch of the blue stuff I'm working with now in the wool cycle - I think a spin in a lingerie bag might be a very good way for this yarn to get clean and stay fluffy, despite the handwash only label.  JoVE and Webbo are right to question care labels - people wore silk and wool long before there was dry cleaning and everyone survived it. Of course, that was before washing machines too, but experimenting to find the simplest effective method is totally worthwhile.

semantics, semantics.

Which is actually one of my least favorite things to hear, ever, because semantics are incredibly important, language being one of the primary ways we understand the world.  Claiming that the specific meaning of things is irrelevant is a great piece of evasion, plus I always find it fascinating to discover the way that different people use the same words to mean different things.  It can be very, very interesting to try and discard jargon in your own speech - I can't think of a good example right now becasue I am stupid from the aspartame withdrawal and subsequent exhaustion - and be specific.  You can find out surprising things about what you are saying to another person, or what they are hearing, anyway.

The semantic question on the table today is "blocking."

Steph and Dr. Steph both had the same reaction in the comments yesterday - if it can't be blocked, how can it be washed? 

Which I thought was kind of odd.  Well, actually, I thought Steph was snarking at me.  But then we got talking about it and ended up spending about an hour debating the definition.   We have come to the conclusion that there may be a cultural difference at work here.  Though whether it a Canadian vs American difference, or a knitterly variant based on being self taught vs. trained in older tradition remains a question.

To me blocking means applying wetness - steam or damp towel or complete immersion - and then tension or shaping of some kind.  It involves a tape measure and probably pins. It is about setting and evening my stitches but equally about shaping.

I am strictly self taught.  The first time I heard of blocking was an article by Jessica Fenlon - what happened to her blog anyway? - about the first time she knit something and it didn't fit and her knitting mentor asked her if she'd blocked it and she discovered that if your sweater hiked up over your bust you could improve things by adding a little extra room at the bust by soaking the sweater and placing some wadded up plastic bags inside to stretch and shape the front while it dried.

And then - I don't remember exactly, but I heard of blocking wires and blocking boards and I saw a picture of Shetland lace frames and I related it in my head to hat blocking - which is a pretty brutal process with hot irons and a wooden form.  So blocking to me is a practice involving some degree of applied force.  (I have to admit that this is a reflection of my personality to a degree.  It is possible that I like to over manage.....things). Plus, I have had some trouble with things that stretch impossibly large when they are worn - this is a function of scale, my sweaters are larger and heavier than Steph's - and I want to knit them and then block them out to their maximum measurements so they are done stretching before I ever put them on.

To Steph blocking begins with washing your knitting and laying it flat and arranged gently.  (HARD blocking is what you do to lace at the other end of the spectrum).

I guess I think that's laundry. 

I've got no skin in the game regarding which is 'correct' and I have deliberately avoided looking anything up.  I am really interested in what other people think blocking means. And whether it relates to how you learned to knit, who taught you and your particular concerns with shaping your knit wear.  Please tell me your version.
Abby had a wonderful post yesterday about definitions of things and cultural context, which I encourage you all to read and which I found extremely timely considering the conversation I had just finished.

Isn't context fun?

I should have been clearer about one thing though - when I blocked the sleeve the first time, I did it way too aggressively – laziness on my part, I was trying to avoid redoing it when I knew it was two inches too short.  Some yarns are very cooperative with this sort of thing, but this one is not one of them.  The yarn was stretched out and working against the properties of its construction and when I reknit it right from the cast off without relaxing the fiber first, it just looked limp.
The second time I washed it I used Steph's definition of blocking - laying it flat and patting it gently into shape - but I ought to have read the manufacturer's laundry instruction first.  Hand washing with no squeezing and compression and low temp steam for shaping.  Instead of rolling it in a towel and jumping on it.   There is was a lot of air in the yarn and I squashed it all.

It’s not quite dry yet, but it seems happier having been skeined, washed and hung with no tension.

My point yesterday was not about whether blocking was 'good' or 'bad' for any particularly type or brand of yarn, but about my own assumptions in thoughtlessly treating them similarly, though they are not made the same.  I am trying to be more aware as a knitter – I’m tired of ending up with sweaters I won’t wear. As much as I like the process, really, I’d like some nice clothing at the end of it too. 

Not a very good picture of the sleeve being knit the second time.  The help was in the way.