I'm back... April/May wrapup

Whoa, it hasn't been 2 months, has it? Why yes, yes it has... I don't even have the 1st trimester tiredness to blame, though I did get diagnosed with mild (pregnancy-induced) anemia somewhere around 26 weeks; daily iron supplements seem to have helped with the residual tiredness - just in time for the 3rd tri sleeplessness to kick in :P. But besides that, I've actually been being productive, and spending time in knitting and Bip preparations rather than blogging!

So this won't be a very profound post, but I'll try to get caught up this weekend - a lovely long weekend, should afford plenty of time for blogging, painting, and knitting... I'll see if I can get through May in this post, June tomorrow, and then can write about upcoming stuff on Sunday. I may or may not stick to this plan, though!

Starting mid-April, I/we:

• Finished my Eponymous Tote (ravelry link), designed by KT, from one skein of lovely soft Malabrigo worsted in "Marron Oscuro", a variegated brown. Seen here before and after felting. Love it! The flap really makes it - I carried it all over Vancouver, BC in June (probably post about that tomorrow) stuffed with guidebook, GPS, map, wallet, etc. Good thing I'd sewn the button (which I got in Japan a year ago) on extra-firmly! Pictures here are before and after felting - as others have commented on Ravelry, Malabrigo felts extremely quickly and well, so the cables are a bit obscured afterwards, but they are still visible and definitely provide structure to the sides. A joy to knit and use! Thanks again, KT - what a great birthday present!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Went to Boston (see previous blog post in May!), where in addition to hanging out with family, I finished a Mr. Dangly for my cousin's baby Braden, who was born right as we were flying (or maybe the day before?). He's the second of 4 cousins' kids (counting the Bip) who are due this year, but the first I was going to meet in person. The orange is Rowan Purelife Organic cotton, which my SIL gave me for my birthday, and the blue is a bamboo I picked up at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last year. I knit Mr. D. in the round rather than flat. He's a pretty quick knit, and hopefully his dangly arms and legs and bobbly head will make him a good infant toy.
  
  
  
  
• Returned from Boston, and went to family gathering in Oregon to meet baby Braden. He's only 9 days old in this picture. Aaw. I think this is the youngest infant I've held til now - so tiny, with arms and legs still "sprung". Can't wait to see him again in a week at the big family reunion at the beach!(I can't believe we'll have one of our own of these in just 2 months or so! Yikes!)
  
  
• Finished a pair of baby pants ("Itchy Fingers Longies" - sorry non-Ravelers, the pattern is free but hosted on Rav) for expectant (father) coworker #1. Ended up delivering them to dad's (empty) desk the day baby Max was born - so he didn't receive them til his dad got back from a 2-week leave. These were fun, and I have no idea what size they are (maybe 6-9 months?) - I told the coworker to tell me when they fit, just for my records :). They're kinda big in the rear end which will hopefully accommodate their cloth diapering. The body of them is 2 strands of sock yarn held together to approximate worsted gauge - and the pattern is customized to your gauge anyway. One strand is grey, the other the same variegated reds/oranges that I used in Carl's hat. You can see the grey ran out at the bottom so I doubled up the red, and when that ran out I did the cuffs and waist tie with a single strand of the grey eco-wool I had left over from my vest. And I'm still not sure they're long enough - see above about having no clue on the size! Anyway, they were a good stashbuster since they took up 2 skeins of sock yarn.
  
  
• Knit up 3 washcloths for expectant (pregnant) coworker #2: Garterlac (to learn entrelac), KT's eyelets and ridges (quick and satisfying, maybe the first thing I have knit in just one day), and Grr from Knitty (super cute but a little fiddly). You should be able to tell which is which in the pictures - for the non-knitters, Entrelac is a technique where you change direction in the middle of the knitting, making stripes move in different directions :) We'd just taken a baby-care class , and the concept of sponge-bathing a supernewborn was firmly in my head. Now I just need to work up some washcloths for the Bip (maybe good beach knitting?). Aah, sorry about the pictures, Blogger's image placement is always a bit wonky, and I don't have the energy to try to get it perfect. You can see that Sasha, in her accustomed atop-the-couch position, is a willing washcloth model!
  
  
• Knit a present for cousin #2's baby girl Berkley, born on Leap Day! No pics since said cousin may or may not know about this blog ;). If you do, Lisa, I can't wait to see you in a week and meet Ms. B.!! You'll note that that's 2 of the 4 cousins' kids whose names start with B... but there's no pressure on us to continue the trend :). We're still taking name suggestions, but plan to keep it a surprise til he gets here - partly because I have a feeling we won't be able to agree on one definitively beforehand and may have to wait til we meet him!
  
  
• Got and installed a new dishwasher. Oh, it's so nice, it gets the dishes much cleaner than the (20 years old?) one that came with the house! Andy did most of the legwork here since I was not in much position to bend over for plumbing.
• Acquired a bunch of second-hand baby gear from very generous coworkers with older boys, and started to stress out about having a place to put it all... so...
• Sold or gave away a bunch of unused furniture type stuff that had been sitting in the "spare room", soon to be the Bip's room. I was amazed that it all went pretty quick - yay for the work-wide "stuff for sale/free" email list!

So that's mid-April through May. Hopefully I didn't bore you to death! Tomorrow I'll try to blog June. And now, it's time to take our annual sundown 4th of July stroll through the neighborhood and observe what the pyromaniacs, er, neighbors are up to. Fireworks are legal here in the week before 7/4, though only ones that get no more than 6 feet off the ground. That doesn't deter some folks from breaking out the bottle rockets, though! As I've been writing this, we keep hearing rat-a-tat-tat from outside, and at least twice I've asked Andy "is it hailing?" before realizing that no, it's just firecrackers. Happy 4th of July to my American readership!

Oh, and here is a belly pic from June 1st, when I was almost 26 weeks. Between then and now (July 4) I feel like I've really grown - another pic or two tomorrow!

Swatch, felted!

I perhaps over-documented the felting process for my Malabrigo worsted swatch (from the previous post) for the KT collaboration tote. :D. Ah well, at least I'm blogging. One of these days I'll actually blog Japan.

And... here's the swatch after only 5 minutes of felting. Not quite there yet...

After 5 more minutes, the stitches had really melted into each other and the cabled area was taller than the plain StSt section. Here it is, after rolling water out but before "blocking" (i.e. pulling at the StSt section to make it more even with the cable)

After "blocking", still retaining at least 10 g of water (it's fun to weigh your swatch!)

These were all last night. This morning, I took the now-dry swatch out into the cloudy morning for some "glamour pictures"















And now, for the measurements, post-felting:
(reminder, this was 30 stitches wide by 33 rows tall on size 10 needles...)
~6.5" wide by ~4.75" tall (it's not quite a rectangle...)
The St St section (18 stitches) is about 4.25" wide.

The cable section is about 1.75" wide. The purls to the left of the cable are wider than those to the right! I'm a new cabler, and the ones on my tank top turned out somewhat asymmetrical as well.

Lookswise, I'm not sure I'm loving the cable. It's very subtle post felting, though more obvious now that the swatch is dry (when it was wet, it just looked fuzzy). Also, the stripes moving across it kinda hide it. But on the other hand, it adds a bit more visual interest, as I'd hoped, and you can still see the crossings if you look. I don't know. Maybe a couple of cables on the flap would be good (perhaps a cable both thinner and "higher" if that's possible?), but it's probably not worth the wool to cable the whole thing.

It's a nice firm fabric that still retains the softness of the yarn. It's not stiff, though - very flexible. And the color is still somewhat camo-y, but I'm OK with that. It actually reminds me more of produce - I'm having to fight off the sudden urge to knit up a felted watermelon!w

Final notes: I'm liking this little swatch more and more as I blog it. Folded "the short way" it would make a great little coin purse for inside the bag. Folded the long way, it might make a good pencil case. Oh, and when I was in Japan I picked up a couple of .75" wood buttons that I'd like to use on the bag if possible. Pictures later :)

KT swatch - before felting

So about a week ago I finished the swatch for the KT collaboration tote, but then fell into reading the final Harry Potter as my recreation after our guests left. Since I finished that last night (and it was goooood), I have time to post and felt!

Here's the swatch before felting. Both pics are in afternoon sun - first on our lattice iron table out front of the house, and then with the rosebushes for comparison.

Cast on: 30 stitches
Knit pattern (RS): K2, P2, 6-stitch cable (NB I think) every 6th row, P2, K to end (18 sts)
WS: K the Ks, P the Ps

33 rows, not counting CO or BO

Total width: 7.25"
Total height: 6.5" (guess I didn't get it quite square!)

total width of (left side) StSt section: a hair under 5"
StSt gauge: ~3.5 st/inch

Total width of P2, 6-stitch cable, P2: ~2 1/8"

Weight (on cheap kitchen scale scale): ~15 grams. Not too accurate, since the scale is designed for more.
Remaining yarn's weight: ~76 grams. Yikes! It's always surprising how light yarn is! I'm open to doing the strap from another yarn if we run out of this one...

Observations on colors - it came out a bit "camo", which isn't surprising for variegated greens, I guess. It might be interesting to knit it in the round to spread out the colors a little more. I do like the colors - they are significantly richer in person than it looks on the screen.

I just felted it and it's drying now - second installment tonight or tomorrow morning! A preview - it felted down a lot, and is much less tall now! And the cable is almost gone :(

Winding Malabrigo in the Wild Wild West

I'm just catching up on some blogging while watching the 3 nieces (A, M, & L) as Andy, his brother E and sister-in-law C all go out for a nice dinner. The nieces have gone to bed, but judging from the songs and thumps emanating from the rooms, they are not yet asleep :). They're out visiting for the week from Boston, and we've compressed quite the tourist experience into 6 short nights so far.

We got back yesterday from 3 nights in Sunriver, OR, a resort community near Bend, and a great gateway to some of the wonders of the high desert (caves! volcanoes! horseback riding!). We stayed in a cute rental house which was practical, cozy, and economical as these things go, but had a few quirks of decor. I decided to wind my Malabrigo yarn (for the KT tote collaboration) while we were there in preparation for the requested swatching.

In process of winding: the dining room chairs are kinda charming, in a rustic knotty way (hopefully no knots in the yarn, though!)...




Now, where to place the wound ball to show off it's lovely wooliness? Perhaps near some other animal parts?

Yes, that is part of an antler set sticking out of a lamp, with a cow skin on the wall behind, why do you ask? Here's a shot of the entire lamp and table set. Even the turner-on-er thingy (er, the lamp switch) had an antler bit attached, which impeded its functionality a bit...





I thought the fireplace-tool-holder (yes, I am making up random-hyphenated-words tonight) was particularly amusing in an antlery way...






Also present, but not photographed, were: A deer skull mounted above the fireplace decorated with random polka-dots; a wire lasso hung within reach of the stairway; a couple of "ceremonial staves" on the wall; skies and snowshoes nailed to the wall (in case of emergency?) and a rabbit pelt randomly placed on the bookshelf. The owners sure have, er, interesting taste! Or they are in fact, Gaston from Disney's Beauty and the Beast: "I use antlers in all of my decorating!"

KT's tote questions answered!

Here are my answers to KT's tote questions to aid in design of a bag from my skein on Malabrigo. Please ignore the weird fonts - Blogger decided halfway through my composition to take away the little "change font" option!

The general picture I have of this bag/tote is something simple with clean lines, taller than it is wide, maybe some stitchwork or cabling that would show through after felting, hopefully that shows off the variegated colorway.

Do you like flaps or no flaps?
I think I would like a flap on this one

Do you want a button (or similar) closure?
Sure - I like the idea of finding a cute button.

Do you like knitting in the round, or do you prefer flat (knowing that it will involve seams)?
Normally I prefer in the round, since I am a bit afeared of seams looking wonky, but since felting hides a lot of mistakes, I'd be OK with either.

Shoulder strap or handle? Knit or non-knit? Two straps or one?
I'm usually all about long shoulder strap(s) that let me sling a bag and leave my hands free. But I recently had to spend time in airport security lines with a backpack on both shoulders while also carrying a small yarn-shop bag with small handles in my hand or on my forearm. And it was quite convenient, since a strap would have slid off the backpack straps.
I wonder if we could design something to serve as both - maybe a long strap that you can loop back on itself (attached to a button/toggle on the back?) to make a shorter handle?
I'm thinking knit , and I'm thinking one strap/handle. If we can't do both, then I guess a long strap - I don't spend too much time in airports, after all!

Do you want it felted or lined (or both)?
Felted! Probably not lined - I have no sewing skills. I do have a small sewing machine, but I broke it after making a cat cushion a year ago, and haven't tried to get it working again. Of course, if you can convince me that it will not be painful to line it (heh), I might give it a try, as I'm sure it will help the sturdiness.

Pockets?
Maybe one - it should be discrete, too, but not so small as to be useless. But I don't have to have a pocket

Should the bag be flat or have depth?
I'm thinking a bit of depth (1-2")

How big are we talking here? (clutch, purse, tote, bag)
Big enough to carry a small project like socks, plus wallet and cell phone. I'm thinking about 9" tall, and something smaller than that for width - 7"? Of course, this may not be compatible with the small depth and wanting to carry a project - I could be convinced to make it bigger, but I don't want a huge bag! (and with only one skein, that's not so much an option.

What do you think of ripples, welting, or other stitch patterns?
I like your wavy days clutch, but I think I'm envisioning something less complicated for the overall shape for this bag. It might be cool if the flap could be rounded. Maybe a simple stitch pattern like a cable or two up the back and down the flap? Any non-fussy stitching is fine - again, I'm thinking clean lines, simple, etc. But some reinforcement for sturdiness might be good, since I would like to be able to hold keys, needles, etc in it.

Can we mix crochet with the knitting (for finishing, button loops, etc.)
I've never crocheted (boy, that word looks weird!), but am willing to try simple stuff.

KT collaboration bag, part one.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a lovely skein of Malabrigo worsted in variagated colorway 'verdes' at a very nice yarn shop in Hood River, OR (we were camping semi-nearby, and came into town to escape relentless rain). There was a sample felted bag in the store with a note that it could be made from just one skein (217 yards - a fairly long skein). And it was only $10.50, and I need a smaller bag to go with the giant felted one I've already made - how could I resist?

Later that week, I discovered that my college roomie, KT, had a knitting blog and was in fact a published pattern-writer. (as she put it, we are terrible about keeping in touch, but love each other anyway :)). In fact, her blog was the inspiration for me to start this one! Anyway, her specialty is bags, so I figured I'd ask her what I should do with this lovely soft, green yarn. She emailed me a list of questions to help her in determining the best design. Then I started my blog, and we decided that we'd collaborate on the bag via our blogs! So she posted her questions, and soon I will answer them!