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So, this Sunday before past, I came down with the lung infection that everyone in Montreal is coming down with.  I have never hacked so much in my life – and what’s more, my partner got sick at exactly the same time.

I’m one of those people that turns into an enormous baby when sick, but I did manage to take some pictures of my armbands which I sent off to Boston last Wednesday.  Unfortunately, my sneezing and coughing buddy managed to delete them by accident, so the post I was banking on sharing with you isn’t entirely feasible.  I feel kind of silly; I even got a ravelry message from mmeadow reminding me to post them on my ravelry projects page, and I can’t.

I did get an awesome email from the 146+ crew today telling me that they not only received but really liked my armbands, so hopefully I’ll be able to link to some of the pics on their reBlog once it’s updated.

I’m very nearly done all the knitting on my knitted neckerchief, and my friend Maddy is letting me borrow Melissa Morgan-Oakes’ book, 2-at-a-time Socks which is awesome!  I’m pretty excited about the cables in that book.  I’m really excited to get the neckerchief off of my superlong 2.5 mm needle so I can try this out.

And, because it’s kind of lame to have a post without pictures…

This is the Remix

I’ve been knitting steadily along on my candy stripe raglan pullover. The waist shaping is finished, and I’m basically just deciding on where to start the ribbon at this point. Because I have an odd obsession with even numbers, I think I’m going to knit until there are 12 gold stripes.

I also want to put a kangaroo pocket on the front. I want it to be colour work, and it has to be awesome. This is of course dependent on how much yarn I have left, but considering that I’m almost done the body and have only used 4 balls of mission falls 136 in charcoal, I don’t think that would be a problem. Here’s a shot of the back shaping.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the sleeves. I think I want 3/4 length sleeves, but that feels silly. I don’t know – I guess I have some time to think about it. I have to say that I really like the versions of this sweater online that have long sleeves as well.

I’ve been working on my neckerchief, but I think I dropped a stitch. In fact, I know I dropped something somewhere. I ripped back a bunch and thought I caught the error, but it’s still there. Honestly, I think the ripping back and reknitting over and over again has exacerbated the problem, but it’s enough of a problem for me that I think I’m just going to start the whole damn thing over.

The picture above is what the stitch pattern is supposed to look like.  I think it’s really cool, and it reminds me of the stuff I’d see in my great grandmother’s house.  I want my scarf to look that way.  But it doesn’t, because I messed up about midway across one row.

It’s driving me nuts.  As are the conditions of my windows, but give me a break – it’s February in Montreal.  I’m going to rip it all back.  I think that I could have have handled it better if I had understood the specs of the pattern better.

You see, the finished measurements are supposed to be so that the final width across the widest part of the neckerchief (the side that goes around your neck) is 1 yard 16 inches.  I had no idea how big a yard is – 3 feet?  Seriously?  For some reason, I thought it would be smaller than a foot.  Regardless, I don’t want a giant shawl, I want a small neckerchief, so I’m going to recommence by casting on enough for about an inch and see if I can get something closer to what I wanted.

But isn’t it pretty?

Don’t be fooled by the socks that I’ve got…

…I’m still a knitter that likes to block.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to show you the rainbow herringbone socks that I bound off yesterday.  The newly completed sock hasn’t been subjected to the rigorous stretching and fondling that its older sister has, so it looks much thinner.

The heathered black is a good yarn whose ball band was lost years ago, but the bright rainbow sock yarn is Zitron Trekking (XXL) in 1001.  It’s a great yarn – I liked knitting with it a lot.  This is actually the second pair of socks I’ve attempted using the same ball of yarn.  The XXL in its name is apt.

The pattern was improvised by yours truly.  Knit from the toe-up with a standard houndstooth pattern, they’re pretty and soft.  I took no heed of trying to make them match.  Fraternal socks are much more delicious (in my humble opinion).

Next time, I will use another kind of heel.  While I am generally more than satisfied with these socks, I’m unimpressed by how tight the heels are.  I know that blocking will rectify the problem (after all, I’ve knit basically this pattern before) but I want to wear them now with no problems, and if the socks were my invention, shouldn’t they comply to my every need, whim, or desire?

A secret part of me is thinking that it’s not the heel’s fault.  After all, I do have EE width size US 5 feet.  Do most hobbits use short row shaping on their heels?

I like them lots.  I’m extra pleased that I’ve managed to make a pair of socks for, y’know, myself.  I think I’m allied with most sock knitters when I say that someday I’d love to have enough handknit socks to replace all the crummy machine knit ones I got from the grocery store.  At this point, I only have three pairs for myself.

But, until I cast on for the next pair, I’ll have to block these.  Not tonight, though;  I’m hoping to have a dinner party tonight, and I can’t just leave my socks hanging around.  I feel that’s poor etiquette.  Patrick is already waiting by the window.

Maxin’ and Relaxin’

The past few days have been a whirlwind of activities and parties and meetings and fun.  In short, I’ve been really busy, and I’m sorry I haven’t been posting as of late.

But!  I did make cupcakes the other day!

Don’t they look super cool?  I tried to make the icing a robin’s egg blue, and made them with mint extract.  I used a Bundt cake recipe to make the cupcake part, and over-baked them a bit.  I’m not the best baker in the world, though, so I was pleased with the result.

I’ve also re-visited my Manos mittens.  I had to rip back the cuff by snipping one stitch about one round from the top of the cuff, pick up all the stitches, and knit down.

The hand of the mitten is in Manos del Uruguay Clasica in Olivewood, and the cuff is Lamb’s Pride Superwash Worsted in Lichen.   The pattern is Bella’s mittens, but reduced in size significantly (I cast on 30 stitches and increased by one in the first round of the hand.)

I used a provisional cast on with waste yarn and knit down the cuff so that the mittens would match, and then slipped the live stitches from the waste yarn onto my needle and started knitting the hand.  I’m almost done the gusset!  I’m really quite pleased with how quickly it’s going, and have been lightly promising myself that I won’t leave my house until the mittens are finished.  It’s too cold!

Hollerdaze

Is it still the holidays?  Is it?  Really?

I often refer to this time of year as the ‘holler-daze’ since it makes my head feel all static-y while everything lumbers past me with holiday gusto.  I’m pretty excited for this to all be over and for me to resume my relatively dull routine.

But, in exciting news, my partner has dazzled my cats with holiday cheer!

That’s Patrick Purrswayze elegantly showing off the utility of this gift.  The cats love it.  They sleep on it and scratch it all to hell and gosh – it’s pretty cute.  Show ‘em, Bazzy!

I like it, even though it impedes access to my fridge – and in the winter, that means something great, doesn’t it?

I’ve spent a lot of time spinning as of late (and I don’t mean mindlessly in circles).  It’s still blue faced Leicester top and I think I’m getting better.  At least, I’m getting more fine.

I’ve been scoping out patterns for thick and thin yarn.  I want to make something for myself out of this first handspun (because it’s just special in that way, y’know?) but I don’t know what.  I’m thinking about dying it with strong black tea and making somewhat lacy fingerless gloves.  Perhaps something along the lines of the Spirogyra or even the Verdigris, both from knitty.com.

In the meantime, I’m chugging away at my sweater.  Unfortunately, it basically looks the same as last pictured, so I’m going to wait until I’ve finished the yoke until I show it off again.  Experiencing second sock syndrome with a sweater is a new one for me, but I guess it makes sense when you remember that I did knit the same sweater but two months ago.  I think my next project will have more colour work than cables, but who can predict anything at this stage in the game?  I just keep reminding myself that this sweater has sleeves that are completed already, so after the yoke is done all I need are button bands.  Tricking myself by sewing the ends in as I go has been necessary.

Regardless, the yoke is 1/3 done, and I’m hoping to have the entire sweater sewn up and blocked by the 31st.  Think I can do it?

And Chaos Ensued

I went shoe shopping today, and it sucked.  I hate malls (was that worded too strongly?) and the people working (or “mall folk” as I have secretly nicknamed them) seemed to dislike my wide-eyed reaction to the shiny things.

On the plus side, however, I got two new shoeboxes.  Two!

A whole new set of boxes in which to play.  Huzzah!

Patrick decided to take a nap in the larger box.  My partner had the brilliant idea to (lightly) place the top of the box on top, and then Bazzy decided to jump on to investigate.  Cute!

The Jig is Up

That’s right, Bazzy has been collared.  And by that I mean, we have found my cat’s collar in our closet and Bazorov has been properly wearing his collar like a sweet little domestic gentleman.

It snowed!  There’s snow everywhere, and I am positively kicking myself for not buying boots earlier.  Procrastination is no good, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s frostier than Mr. Frosty’s house during a frosty spell in Frostland.

I’ve been knitting away on my sweater, but you know, one full repeat of the cable pattern requires about 26 rows of pure unadulterated knitting concentration and my sweater has four panels of cabling magic, so it takes a while.  I promise I’ll take some snazzy pictures tomorrow, but until then, you will have to content yourselves with what will become my glorious sweater.

Even the kittens are getting involved.  Or maybe they’re just being nosy.

Or maybe they’re just enjoying the radiators.

Bag of Infinite Mystery

I have this bag.  It’s green, it’s small, and I carry it with me everywhere.  I usually have at least one knitting project in it along with needles and waste yarn and stitch markers and scissors and various notebooks and, well, everything that you need to survive (including snacks!)

My cats are therefore obsessed.  They sleep on it whenever it’s off of my back, and Bazzy chewed off one of the zipper pulls when he was a kitten.  Remember my Kitties in Cases post?  They sitting in or on most cases, but they love my bag most of all.

The bag is perfect for kittens who like to sleep.  I highly recommend a backpack for making kittens perplexed.

In other news, I got around to changing the strings on my guitar.  They’re so new, it’s intimidating.  I used to have excellent rainbow strings that we got in Venezuela.

Now they’re boring and bronze, but they sound much sharper and more clear.  I get frustrated when I can’t hear my guitar because it reminds me of one time I was busking in the Halifax market.  An older man came up to me, gave me twenty dollars, and lectured me for about 10 minutes on playing with dull strings and professionalism.

There’s an old myth that you should name your instrument or it’s bad luck to play it.  My beautiful guitar is named after Tarzan’s lovely gal, Jane Grey.  Ain’t she gorgeous?

She’s very nearly as pretty (and sometimes prettier) than my kittens.

Fridge-B-Gone

this morning

This is a picture of my cats this morning.

Our old fridge has sat in our living room since last Sunday.  The cats have slept on it, played on it, and were generally adorable rolling around on top of it.

There is a program in Montreal called Recyc-Frigo where (if you have a fridge that is at least 10 years old, that works, and that consumes too much electricity) they’ll come and pick up your fridge and recycle it.  They came today and took away the cats’ new favourite toy!  I’m so pleased to have my living room back, but the cats look heart-broken.  I think we’ll have to get them a new climbing device soon.

Thursday night was knit night at Ariadne Knits, and it was super fun.  I’m always blown away at how a skill like knitting can bring together so many diverse people, and how we can all get along so nicely.  After all, there are a myriad of reasons why someone might pick up the needles and knit, and it’s no requisite that all knitters be nice and respectful.  But (at Ariadne at least) everyone really makes sure that they’re not stepping on toes even when the conversation breaches topics that are a bit uncomfortable.  I really like that, and I don’t think it’s odd that knit night makes me like knitting all the more.

I was running rather severely short of yarn on my cabled hat, so jumped out of the river denial (see what I did there?) and bought a new skein of yarn from Ariadne.  This skein has more than twice the yardage of the previous skein, although it is a 50/50 combination of wool and superfine alpaca as opposed to 100% superfine alpaca.

super alpaca on the left; ultra wool on the right

I think it’s an upgrade, really.  Both yarns are from Estelle.  The first was their Super Alpaca, and the new one is their Ultra Wool.  The wool adds a delicious springiness to the yarn that I adore.  I showed the yarn to my partner, a new knitter, last night, and he described the difference perfectly.  He said that it was warm and soft, and less fluffy (but that’s not a bad thing at all) and weightless.

And what a deal!  The price was $20 for 280 meters for a pretty chunky yarn.  I have this problem where I’m a bit spendthrift and have trouble spending any kind of money on anything, but when I wound the skein into a ball, the ball winder actually got stuck because it was too big.

I went with a blue/purple shade and I just love it.  I don’t often wear anything, well, that isn’t grey or green, but it’s gorgeous.  I was wary of looking like a grey-green super heroine, you see.  I’m much more of a Jennifer Susan Walters than a Savage She-Hulk; never mind my behaviour when I can’t find my sewing needles.

But enough of that;  now I’m reading an article about Bangladeshi garment workers.

As someone who actually can’t remember not knowing how to ply at least some kind of needle to cloth, I have a hard time relating to the idea that all garments should be ready-made.  To me, ready-made clothes are for when you don’t have time to make something, or don’t have the equipment at the ready.  Other than that, there’s no reason to wander around colossal malls that aren’t interested in providing clothes with a good fit or with longevity.  Making clothes doesn’t feel so much of a privilege as common domestic labour.  I sweep the floor, I patch my pants, I wash the dishes, I knit my own mittens: it’s all the same to me.  And yes, it is luxurious to have pants that will last more than six months, but if you put the work in it’s not so much of a luxury as something to take pride in.  And I think that we should all take pride in taking care of the basics.

Reading this makes me so upset:

The calorific intake of ready made garment [...] workers is deficient, causing stunted physical development. With income reduced by static wages and rising costs of basic foods, malnutrition has become so widespread that in 2008 some workers were reported to be hallucinating in a delirious state during long shifts.

It’s not right.  It’s not fair.  And it seems as though there’s no escape, because workers like these are the people who spin our thread and weave our textiles.  Why should they starve for our fourth pair of pants?  They’re so malnourished, their growth rates are stunted and they’re hallucinating.  I can’t fathom being that hungry.

Living sustainably seems so far away, and yet, I think it’s inevitable.  This recession has affected so many aspects of daily life that I think most people have started to scale back, but not enough.  I know that I still do things like shop at discount stores, even though I know the labourers that manufacture my socks and clothes hangers weren’t paid enough.  I hope that we can figure this out;  until then, I’m going to try to live as reasonably as possible and not buy ready made garments unless my current clothes are falling to shreds.

Excerpted from the article:

As a female garment worker explained;

‘You see, as women, one of our wings is broken. We don’t have the nerve that a man has, because we know we have a broken wing. A man can sleep anywhere, he can just lie down on the street and go to sleep. A woman cannot do that. She has to think about her body, about her security. So the garment factory owner prefers to hire women because men are smarter about their opportunities, you train them and they move on. Even when he compares a small boy and an older girl, he will think, “She’s only a girl, she can’t wander too far away.”‘

Naila Kabeer - The Power to Choose, taken from libcom.org article.

Sock it to Me

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!  I went for a walk today and got my kittens some new toys.

I don’t know if you can tell, but the top mouse is green.  I also got them a little grey mouse on a string with a bell that hangs from a claw that hooks on the bedroom door frame.  It’s the perfect combination of furriness and bounciness that our cats love.

I think it’s sweet and the cats enjoy it.  I love autumn, and I love how different root vegetables are filling up the grocery stores.  I also love this picture of my kitchen counter.

There’s something about cookies in an old hummus container that makes me smile.  And that pumpkin is going to become a delicious pumpkin pie. Yum!

Knit night is tomorrow, and I don’t really know what to bring.  I’ve been trudging along with some socks that I improvised for a while now;  every time I pick them up seriously, I just get excited about something else and they end up on the mantel, waiting for some attention.  I’m hoping to get them done before the yarn shows up for my new sweater.

I also really want some undyed Cascade Eco wool for a cardigan with a shawl neck.  Something with a beautifully simple stitch pattern that will show off the sheepy wooliness and elbow patches.  Now the temperature is getting so chilly, I just want to wrap myself up in yards and yards of yarn.

I’m trying to be as grown up as I can be and hold back from buying all of the yarn at Ariadne.  There’s a spinning class this Sunday, and I’m so excited!  I’m finally going to be a part of making the yarn that I work with so much – and I feel like I’m going to learn an exciting secret from my best friend, if you know what I mean.  We got some candy for this Sunday as well, just in case there are trick-or-treaters.  This weekend is going to be awesome.