Pefectly Reasonable

Is there anyone that doesn't love to come home to packages?  The one waiting for me today was extra special.

Four beautiful skeins of sock yarn.  Um, oops?

I often feel guilty about my stash.  I frequently need to remind myself that I spend well within my means, all my bills are paid, the dogs are fed, and the yarn makes me happy.  Perfectly reasonable, right?  But when I finished admiring my new skeins and went to put them away, I discovered the sock yarn drawer is full.  I could cram in a skein or two but not all four.  Something about that fact is disturbing to me.  I have several other drawers filled with yarn where the yarn could go so it's not a storage issue.  It just makes me start to wonder if I've crossed some line and have started to go a little too crazy with the sock yarn.

I would feel better if I were finishing projects and using up more yarn, but I haven't been the most productive knitter lately.  That brings me to yet another interesting development.  I finished a Marigold sock last month.  It's a really cute pattern. This weekend I grabbed the rest of the yarn and started knitting.  I was really enjoying the pattern and by Sunday evening I was already about halfway finished with the sock.  Wow, almost a finished pair, right?  Um, not so much.

Uh, what's the problem with this picture?  I knit a completely different pattern when I started the second sock.  It wasn't a mistake; I did it on purpose.  As much as I like the Marigold pattern, I wasn't in love with the first sock and didn't want to knit it again.  I'm so much happier with how the yarn looks in the second pattern (Charade), and when it's finished, the original sock will be ripped and reknit to make a matching pair.  I think this was a perfectly reasonable decision.  I really really love the yarn, and I want to be happy with the finished project.  That's much more important to me than checking another project off the list just so I can move onto another one. So reasonable, right? Yes.  Absolutely.  Nevertheless, this fickleness is certainly not helping me knit down the sock yarn stash, is it now?  Would it be wrong to cast on 5 shawls tonight just so I can feel like the yarn is being used?  Then I could lament about my overflowing WIP drawer....

My new obsession

The whole thing began so innocently with an impulse buy at the farmer's market in July.  I picked up some pickling cucumbers and got it into my head that I would try to make half-sour pickles.  Within a few hours I had dug out some old mason jars, found a recipe, and before I knew it, this was sitting in my dining room:

And a few days later...pickles!  I was so very proud and excited and eager to try more stuff.  When my parents were vising over Labor Day weekend, I took them out to a farm to pick fresh peaches and tomatoes.  My Mom absolutely loved it, and soon we had picked 40 lbs of peaches and about 20 lbs of tomatoes.  The tomatoes were easy, and after a few batches of gazpacho and salsa, they're about used up.  The peaches were a little more challenging.  I've baked since I was a young kid, so before when I've gotten a little out-of-control when peach picking, I've used them to make peach ice cream, pie, cake, etc.  But the pickling put all sorts of ideas in my head, and suddenly I was obsessed with making jam.  Since I had no proper supplies, attempt #1 was plain peach freezer jam.  It was so amazingly delicious, and I was determined to try more.  Not ever being satisfied with only going halfway, I was wanted to do the real deal:  I wanted to try canning.

I spent a couple of weeks gathering up supplies and reading whatever I could find on the Internet about how to can, and off I went.  I started out with a peach rum butter recipe.  The butter turned out pretty well, but the canning was a total fail.  I knew my glass-top stove might be a problem and sure enough, it wouldn't sustain a high-enough temperature to keep the water boiling in the canner.  Sigh.  The yummy peach rum butter was relegated to the freezer, and I went back to the drawing board.  The possible solutions for the stove required more equipment (a canner with a flat bottom and smaller circumference), which I really wasn't ready to invest in.  But I kept reading and stumbled across another option--using a camp stove.  I have a camp stove and the poor thing hadn't seen any use in a couple of years.  Perfect!  So last weekend, I cooked up some peach amaretto jam and attempted outdoor canning.

And you know what?  It totally worked.  The water boiled.  All the jars sealed like they are supposed to.  And now I have a new obsession.  Instead of perusing the Internet for new knitting patterns, I'm suddenly looking for canning recipes, and I'm ridiculously excited about apple season now.  I have a new craving for homemade applesauce and I think the whole family might be getting apple butter over the holidays.

Ironically, this morning I stumbled across this blog post that mentions how canning has recently become sort of a new fad.  I had no idea my new hobby was the latest cool domestic thing to do, and I admit knowing that takes a hint of the wind out of my sails, but I don't think even that will  slow me down much. Knitting used to be so exciting because I felt that I learned something new with every project.  Knitting hasn't been like that for a long time, and I'm feeling some burn out lately.  A new interest was definitely needed.  So expect pictures with canned applesauce at some point this fall!  But no worries that I will turn this from a knitting to a canning blog--I have way too much yarn to stop knitting (and a good bit more currently on the way).  But for now, I'm off to make more pickles since I'm about out of peaches.

Enjoying the Process

At the beginning of 2010, I joined the Intswemodo2010 on Ravelry.  Intswemodo=International Sweater-a-Month Dodecathon. Twelve sweaters in twelve months. Before I joined, I counted up my sweaters from 2009.  There were eight, and so it didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that I could kick it up a notch and crank out four more in 2010. Well over eight months in and I have finished six sweaters.  It's not looking good for me right now (I firmly believe my new fascination with sweaters made with sock yarn is to blame).  Realistically there's no way twelve is going to happen, but I still have that goal nagging at me.  I'm all of five inches into the body of Vivian, and when I've looked at it the past few days, all I could think is that it's not going fast enough for me to get to the other sweaters waiting in the wings.  Stressing over the sweater made me not want to knit it, and I kept reaching for other projects.

I do this a lot with knitting.  I set all kinds of crazy goals, and before I know it, I start stressing over finishing things and forget that knitting is not work.  At 4 am this morning when I couldn't sleep (shocking, I know), I turned to Vivian determined to simply enjoy knitting.  For a good row and a half, this worked out perfectly as I knit along quite contently.  Then I spotted a problem:  one of my cables was crossed the wrong direction.  Now in a sweater with hundreds of cabled stitches, it's amazing that I felt this was something to worry about, but there was no way I was going to be able to let this one go.

At 4 am I was in no shape to deal with this problem, and I started working on a sleeve instead.  When I was better rested, however, I turned back to the cable problem.  The wrong cross-over was 6 rows down.  Maybe I could just drop all the stitches down, cross the cable to the right, and pick up all the stitches again, and everything would be perfect, right?

I'm kind of impressed with myself that I did just that.

Dropped down 4 stitches all six rows.  It looked a little scary at this point.

But thanks to a trusty crochet hook, there was a happy ending. All the stitches picked up rather nicely, and a few rows later, you could barely tell where I did all that "surgery".  All the cables were happily leaning to the right as they should.

Phew.  I've already got one project in progress with some huge mistakes; I was not mentally prepared to have two.  I guess that trying to be less of a perfectionist has some limits.  Nevertheless, somehow today reminded me to enjoy the process of knitting and to not think of only the end result when knitting a sweater.

On its way

I'm not a warm weather girl, and this record-breaking hot summer has been rough. But when I left the house this morning, there was a chill in the air.  For the first time in months, I'm wearing closed-toe shoes and needed a light jacket. Sweater weather is on its way! And I couldn't be happier about it.

Last week I cast on Vivian.  I'm using Rowan Cocoon in a very pale sage green called "Fog".   I think relaxing on the couch with my new project is the perfect way to celebrate the change in weather.

Goodale

Despite how busy I was last weekend, I did manage to sneak in a good bit of knitting time.  By Wednesday I had a new finished sweater to show for it.

  

Pattern:  Goodale (Ravelry pattern) by Cecily Glowik MacDonald

Ravelry Project Page

Yarn:  Sanguine Gryphon Skinny Bugga! in Southern Green Stink Bug
Needles: size 6 US
Cast on:  July 25, 2010
Finished:  August 25, 2010

I knit Goodale pretty much exactly to pattern with one major exception--the bottom edge ribbing.  Pattern directions have you knit the 1x1 ribbing and then fold over and sew down the fronts.  I had seen a couple of finished sweaters where this ribbing looked really heavy, and I had an idea I wanted to try out.  Before I switched to the ribbing, I slipped the first 25 stitches onto a third needle.

I then folded over the front edge:

From there I started the 1x1 ribbing, knitting each stitch on the front needle together with one from the back.  This gave me the bottom seam I was going to have to sew to make the little pockets and avoided needing to fold over ribbing.  I'm not sure whether this really made any difference or whether I would've liked the other way better, but the finished edge looks nice so I'm going to try not to overthink it.

The Good:

• The fabric is heavenly (have I mentioned I love, love, love this yarn?)--light enough to wear in summer heat and after blocking, it's so soft and smooth no description I give will do it justice.
• I'm really happy with the color. 
• In general, it's a cute style and something I don't have much of. 
• And I love the buttons. (Thank you G Street Fabrics in Rockville, MD)

The Bad:

• I really wish it were a tad less cropped.  I added a couple of inches to the overall length, and I still feel like it's short (I guess this is fixable if I do some ripping....)
• Since I feel like it's a little short for pants, it really makes me want to wear it over a cute sundress that I do not own  (okay so that's not really the sweater's fault).
• I sort of feel like it falls too open when I'm wearing it, and I found myself tugging it a little more closed a lot (hmmm, that might be more me being self-conscious and maybe I shouldn't blame the sweater).

Final verdict on Goodale?  Well....I'm a little undecided.  I named this project "Patience is a Virture" both because it took a lot of patience to wait to start it (I forced myself to finish Tempest first) and because I feel like I rushed through it at the end  and maybe I'd be a little happier with it if I had been more patient and taken my time.  Maybe this winter I'll rip out the hem and add even more length. We'll see. For now I will wear it and enjoy it and over-analyze later.

I'm off in a couple of hours for another busy weekend--at 1pm today I will hop on my bike and participate in a 24 hour ride to raise awareness and funds to fight cancer.  You ride as little or much as you want during the 24 hours.  I'm shooting for between 100 and 150 miles.  By Sunday I expect to be rather sore and tired, but I'm sure I'll steal a little knitting time between rides so maybe I'll also have a little progress on a sock too.

Overscheduled and totally worth it

This past weekend was one of the busiest of my life.  I knew when I scheduled two big events back to back it was going to be a little rough.  At the end of it, I was sleep deprived and exhausted, but it was totally worth it.

Part I: Saturday
At 6:30am Saturday morning I was on the road on my way to Westminster, MD.  Not for a bike ride this time but for an agility trial.  In my very first post, I mentioned that I do agility training with my dogs.  For those unfamiliar, dog agility is where you train your dog to perform certain obstacles (jumps, tunnels, stuff to climb over, etc) and the purpose is to run your dog through basically an obstacle course as fast as you can go without making mistakes.  Each course has different challenges, and on Saturday I ran a total of eight courses with Rugby and Juno.

At over eight years old, Rugby still has some serious spring:

Agility trials used to make me really nervous.  For someone as self-conscious as I am, the whole performing in front of an audience thing is nerve-wracking.  Then think about fear of making mistakes combined with having to rely on partnership with a dog. Recipe for disaster!  But sometimes life forces you to be exactly what you are trying to avoid, and me and my goofy spaniel were often the center of attention not for stellar performance but because of all of Rugby's amusing antics.  It was pretty common for Rugby to take off and zoom around the ring or run over to say hi to the judge.  Once he left the ring to bury his head in a pile of prize toys and another time, he followed his nose right into a kitchen to see what was for lunch.  When I stop and think about it, I'm rather proud that I kept going with agility rather than giving into my fear of embarrassment.  At some point I decided to love Rugby for being exactly what he is--an unpredictable goofball.

As he's matured with age, Rugby is less of a clown at agility trials, and while he certainly still spaces out and wanders away, sometimes he puts it all together really well and we had 3 successful runs of 5 this weekend.

Juno has much more focus than Rugby but is still new to agility competitions so she can be a goofball in her own right.  As she finished a run and before I could get her leash on, she jumped over the ring gating to go say hi to a friendly-looking Corgi.  It's good she's carrying on the family tradition.  Here she is navigating her way down an obstacle.

The little girl did quite well for herself.  I only ran her in 3 courses, but she did well enough in one to earn her very first "qualifying score" and first place ribbon, which I promptly displayed on her crate.

What a good little girl.

It was an exhausting day.  I didn't get home until after 8pm and barely had enough time to pack some things and try to get to sleep before the alarm went off at 4:30am.

Part II: Sunday
On Sunday morning, I left the house even earlier than on Saturday, this time for the Iron Girl triathlon.  By 6am I was setting up my transition area in some light rain, and by 7:30am, I was in the water about to start the race.  I'm somewhere out in this big pack of swimmers.

Swimming in a group like this is always an adventure, and I definitely got knocked around a bit in the beginning, but then I settled in and just swam.  I felt like I had a strong swim, but my time was a little slower than I was shooting for.  That meant I really needed some speedy transitions.  Mike barely caught me running by on my way to grab my bike.  That would be me there in the bright blue top.

Despite the rain, the rest of the race went pretty well.  I had an average bike, but with a crowded course and wet roads, I was okay with that.  I was able to quickly transition to the run, and had my best run on this course (which is no walk in the park--okay, well, actually it is in a park, but it's still a tough run), even sprinting full out at the finish. I think I'm verging on actually considering myself a real triathlete. No pictures from the end of the race since Mike was busy volunteering. I came home and not surprisingly, passed out for the rest of the afternoon.  It was a packed weekend from start to finish but I loved just about every minute of it.

Where's the knitting? But what about knitting?! No worries, there was knitting--a decent amount actually (there's a lot of waiting around at dog trial), but I'm saving that for next post.  Psst....Goodale is finished.

The Very Best Part

I've knit sweaters every which way possible--in pieces, top-down and bottom-up, even sideways.  More often than not, however, I find myself knitting seamless top-down yoke or raglan sweaters.  My two current sweater projects, Leyfi and Goodale, are no exception.  I've been switching off between these two and have lately been slugging through the raglan/yoke increases on both sweaters.  For me, this is the most hated part of the top-down sweater: where the rounds or rows keep getting longer and longer until it feels like it takes 30 minutes to knit two long boring rows. The great part about this tedious stretch is that it is followed by my absolute favorite part:  separating off the sleeves and knitting the body. Without those sleeve stitches everything suddenly seems far more manageable.  I feel like I'm making actual progress. And I get to try on the sweater. So exciting!

Since Leyfi is knit with bulky yarn, there were far fewer stitches to begin with, and so it's not surprising that I kept picking up this sweater first.  I divided off the sleeves this weekend. Woohoo!

I then forced myself to go back to Goodale.  It was slow, boring, and at some point I realized I had accidentally changed the way I was doing the increase stitches halfway through the raglan increases (oops!).  It's not hugely noticeable, and there was no thought of ripping back those 300 stitch rows.  Yesterday, I finally reached the end  of the increases, divided off the sleeves and tried it on.

It fits!  Oh, happy happy day!  I'm knitting this sweater in Sanguine Gryphon Skinny Bugga! in Southern Green Stink Bug.  It took me forever to settle on a color, and although it does look very pretty in the skein and knitted up, when I tried it on, it looked so amazingly beautiful that I literally gasped out loud.  (I think my next post might just have to be about my love affair with Sanguine Gryphon yarn). This gorgeousness is obviously not apparent at all in pictures.  Maybe one day, I'll get the lighting and focus just right and everyone else can see what I see.  Given how taken I am with this sweater now, combined with how amazingly hot I was for the five minutes I had on Leyfi, I'm now going full steam ahead on Goodale and looking forward to the next very best part of sweater knitting--binding off and finishing! Yup, I'm one of those rare knitters who actually loves finishing tasks. 

Completely unrelated:  I'm a full-time editor, and I work from home a couple of days a week.  Rugby and Juno are almost always in the office with me during the day, and pretty much the second Rugby sees me sit at the computer, he hops up onto the futon (I let him start doing this right about the time we inflicted a puppy on him).  During the middle of the day when I'm weary from staring at the computer screen, I often look over jealously at my snoozing pups.  Yesterday as I was working I glanced over to see this:

Sometimes I really wish I was a dog.