An Apology

Yesterday I posted about my opinion of some yarn that was donated to the seniors' charity group with which I work. It was donated to Operation Gratitude, and it was then passed along to us for the making of hats and scarves for the troops.

I have inadvertently caused trouble to the OG contact in my group, and upset and dismay to the Operation Gratitude people themselves. I have been reminded that a group such as OG is given many items by generous companies, and it is their job to find a use for the bounty.

I cannot at this point do more than apologize for my post. I have deleted that portion of my post, and I have posted a response to the OG person who commented and to Operation Gratitude at their website. I have a net readership amounting to about a dozen, and I did not think that my opinion would cause these problems.

I am sorry for my thoughtlessness.

Mission Possible - Not Much Progress

Hmm. Not much progress for Mission Possible 2008 . I've only done #8, my beautiful green Wool Peddler's Shawl; started #7, DH's entrelac vest; and almost kept up with #12 (February item was knit on March 1). I do have a total of 6 charity hats and 3 charity scarves done so far. I cast on and tried knitting the Urchin hat with the Woolspun (#10), and frogged the first attempt; note to others - short rows with a thick/thin/floofy yarn is no picnic. I'll give it another try later.

1. Seam and finish Ribby Cardi (from early 2007)
2. Finish and seam Something Red cardi
3. Finish and gift Ribwarmer vests to Rita and Anna (this is an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern, found in her Knitting Workshop book) (spring 2007)
   
4. Finish Keri Mac socks (test-knitting pattern)
   
5. Finish Jaywalker socks (UFO from 2006 Knitting Olympics)
6. Finish Dayflower Lace shawl (2007)
   
7. Knit DH entrelac vest with SWS, Natural Slate - first entrelac project STARTED
   
8. Knit shawl with Lonesome Stone alpaca DONE
   
9. Knit Odessa hat
10. Knit Urchin hat - pink LB Woolspun - use this old stash up, and give to charity
11. Knit Wisp or Branching out, or other smallish scarf in laceweight - first laceweight project
12. Knit or crochet (finish) at least one project, minimum a hat, for charity each month KEEPING UP
    

As I posted earlier, I frogged several long-term UFOs, mostly charity items: a baby blanket, a lapghan (lap-sized afghan), a scarf, a shawl, and a kids' toy. And I frogged one new WIP, another charity scarf. All of this is gone from stash. I've knitted 2344 yards from stash and 1576 yards from yarn purpose-bought for the project, a total of 3920 yards.

I have 5 new WIPs in progress, four from stash and one from a gift yarn. So - I'm feeling pretty good about the Stash Knit-Down, in spite of the MP2008 goals yet to be met.

Had Fun, Too!

My Fridays are full of fun and knitting. Besides my seniors' group which meets in the early afternoon, there's a small group of friends who meet Friday evenings at our LYS, Unwind. Last week was a birthday for Debbie S, and there's only one picture, since we all forgot to bring cameras. I slid into the background on this one.


So I thought I'd include some views of another birthday we had earlier in the year, that of Mary Ellen. We somehow started this odd tradition of having to have our birthday pictures taken wearing these incredibly dorky glasses.



In no particular order, then, here's Debbie A, enjoying some of our snacks,







Patti carefully focussed on her big baby blanket,







another view of Patti, this time with Kris in the background at the ball winder,


and Debbie S again, concentrating on a tricky pattern bit.


As you can see, the shop is open and airy, and full of yarny temptations.

Ah, yes. Snacks do include wine, and usually champagne on birthdays. Plus chocolate, chips and cheese. All the necessary ingredients for a fun evening with knittery friends.

Busy Week for New Projects

I signed up for the Mystic Light Shawl, a mystery KAL that is now closed, and I've actually started on it in the first week of the KAL. Since I'm doing this one with the recommended fingering weight, it's moving right along, though I frogged the start twice last night. Once was a beginning screw-up, the other was to add a border stitch on each side, so I can do a slip-stitch edging. The top edge of this shawl is a 4-st cable, and I didn't like the large loops I was getting with that first stitch. I can tweak the slipped stitch to get it tighter, and it seems to be folding under the cable nicely. This is through Row 13 of the charts. The yarn is Elann's Baby Cashmere, in Starlight Blue, which name seemed appropriate to the shawl name.

I'm also 75% done with a scarf for my seniors' group; I started this on Saturday. This is from 2 skeins (190yds) of lovely alpaca that was donated to us. The pattern is Smariek's easy Georgiana pattern.

And I finished the scarf I made to go with the Binary Hat for A4A. This took about 1.5 skeins of the darker yarn and a bit of leftover in the lighter shade. This is Nashua's Creative Focus Worsted, and I really like knitting with it - soft, a bit fuzzy but not at all splitty. The spin of the yarn gives this mistake rib pattern some nice variation in the knit stitches - subtle but not boring.



I finally scored a skein of Posh Yarn!! I 'met' Dee via Ravelry, when I was looking at yarns used for the Wool Peddler's Shawl. She's quite nice, and is a wonderful knitter; see her lovely projects at Ravelry, where she's known as PoshDee. The new yarn is offered on Sundays and the sales fly, so you've got to be quick on the 'buy' button, at 10am sharp Pacific Time - which is 6pm Greenwich Time. This is Lucia, 70% merino/30% cashmere, with 430yds in the 100g skein. The colorway is Royalty, but Posh doesn't repeat colors exactly, so you can't get quite this same yummy color. The deep reddish-purple is wonderfully saturated. I expect this will become a shawl of some sort.

I had a bad case of start-itis this week, so I did some playing around with ideas. I've settled on some Crystal Palace Waikiki in bright tropical colors for the Montego Bay scarf; I picked up 3 skeins of this at Marie's garage sale last fall. And I fiddled around with variations on the Chevron Scarf, finally choosing a Peacock Plume pattern that's part of a bolero pattern at Elann, since the simple feather and fan pattern as written in the Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book is boring. But neither of these are further than a row or two, and I found my start-itis was satisfied with the setup work.

Liberating Yarn from the UFO Archives

A few weeks ago I started a charity scarf with Lion Brand's Jiffy yarn, just about the only acrylic yarn I hadn't already sworn off using, making a narrower version of the Palindrome reversible cable pattern. I got nearly to the end of the first skein and stalled, fretting about how short it was going to be with just the 2 skeins I had in stash. So it sat for a while, and I checked out the local Michael's for another skein, with no luck; then more time passed and I finally stopped in at JoAnn's and found another skein. This is no-dyelot stuff, so I wasn't too worried about matching colors. So that Friday I picked up the scarf while at my seniors' group, and discovered that I had come to hate working with the yarn. It squeaks on the needles! Yechhh! I've since hauled it out twice at my group's afternoon meeting, knitted a few rows, and promptly switched to my always-one-there baby hat.

Saturday morning I decided I have had it with even Jiffy yarn. I hauled out the charity yarn bins and dug out the UFO piles. I frogged and wound into balls, and then frogged and wound some more. I got rid of quite a few projects that have been faintly nagging at my conscience to be finished 'one of these days':

• A pale yellow Red Heart Baby blanket, stalled out at a few rows past the 400+ stitch circumference where the border begins (3 years old)
  
• A Homespun pillow meant to look like a lamb. I REALLY hate Homespun! (3-4 years old)
• A partially-finished pair of crocheted leggings for a friend who long ago gave up on getting them. (2 years ago)
• A diagonal crocheted box-stitch multi-colored striped afghan, with about 8 different colors of RH and no-name acrylics. These skeins went into a separate bag; it's now an afghan 'kit'. (BTW, for the crocheters in my tiny readership, this is a fun and fast pattern.) (2 years old)
• The beginnings of a scarf and a shawl, both for charity and from the same chunky blue-grey acrylic, of which we got 20 skeins. (last fall)
  
• The said Palindrome scarf and all the other skeins of Jiffy in my house.
  

So I have 4 big bags of yarn to take to my group on Friday. And my 'charity yarn' bin (just one bin!) has alpaca, wool and wool blends in it, plus a bit of Simply Soft and acrylic/nylon baby yarns. Our group does get donations of nicer-fiber yarn from time to time, and two or three of us always snag it to make shawls or scarves from. We started doing this after one of our older ladies was going to double-strand some sportweight wool with a Red Heart-type baby yarn to get the worsted/chunky gauge she was used to. We intervened to save the lovely wool!

OK, feel free to call me a yarn snob. All together now:

You're a Yarn Snob!!

Acrylics do have all sorts of uses in the knitting and crochet world, especially for nursing homes and hospices. My seniors' group support those and other places where a machine wash-and-dry yarn is a necessity. I've just decided not to spend my knitting time using them. The items I'm going to knit from now on will be fundraisers at our charity boutique, and the money we raise from their sale will go to charities that don't need our handmade items. Our group just gave $500 from last fall's boutique sales to a local group that serves Easter dinner to the needy.

The pictures are two projects that came from the non-acrylic yarns. There's a Comfort Shawl I knitted from the Knitting Daily pattern in a mid-blue mohair/acrylic blend and the so-talented Gaye's shawl - the Sun Ray pattern from Shui Kuen Kozinsky at Elann - in a glorious alpaca.

And BTW? If the Sun Ray shawl isn't already sold to one of our members (the Comfort Shawl went to a fundraiser a friend's group was having last fall), you can buy it - the price should be around $25US. Yeah - *that* cheap!

Easter Eyecandy

We are so fortunate to live in SoCal. Yes, we 'pay' in terms of horrendous traffic jams, hour-plus commutes over just 11 miles one-way, smog, and all the other problems of living in a huge metropolitan area. But Burbank has much in common with a small city (pop. 100,000) and Spring is joyful for me, even if our flowers don't have to push their way through snow and cold. So today I'd like to share the bounty with you. Click on the pictures for a larger view.

The first roses are blooming: Diana, Princess of Wales with her pale peachy-pink that will add yellow tones later, and First Prize, the deep pink that makes blooms 4-5in across.


In our arbor, just outside my office window, the cyclamen are blooming again, and have produced some tiny new plants; you can see one just at the edge of the top plant. The deep purple oxalis is spreading, and the wisteria is adding its lovely grape-jelly smell. Last summer some of the dad-dratted squirrels took a fancy to the bark, and we lost several large branches to their gnawing. We've sprayed the remaining branches with cayenne pepper as advised, and I'm hoping that this year's growth will fill in the gaps (blooms on 'old' wood).

Elsewhere in the yard, our newly-pruned lime tree has the last of the old crop, thumb-sized new fruit, and cascades of tiny white flowers, all at the same time, promising another huge crop, spread over several months. Our 'peppermint' camellia is blooming, for the first time in over 10 years; it has always had lots of buds, but they have all dropped without opening. Finally we seem to have found the combination of water and food to suit it. Our other two camellias exist entirely on their own on the north side of the house in the few feet to the lot line fence, unwatered and unfed, growing higher than the eaves, and producing dozens of deep and light pink flowers. The neighbors enjoy the colors more than we do, since they have a better view.

The front yard is finally looking much better. The gazanias we planted last fall are thriving and showing off their lovely cheerful yellows and deep oranges. Gazanias are evergreen, and when they've spread make a lovely and drought-tolerant substitute for a lawn. Last Saturday we replanted the hanging baskets by the back porch, and they're popping with lavenders, white and sunny yellows.

Into the Frog Pond

AAARRRGGHHH! The Sea & Shells stole is destined for a complete remake via the Frog Pond. I'm in the middle of the 7th repeat, and thought I'd check the remaining yarn. So - 100g total in the skein, currently 60g on the ball. Huh??? What you're seeing here ('scuse the sunlight blur at the bottom) is approximately 13in, which I'm guessing would block out to 16-17in.

This obviously required a re-reading of the yarn requirements. OOPS! The pattern as written calls for 100g of laceweight yarn, which, at least in Posh Yarn, the source of the pattern, has approximately 650yds per 100g. Sea Silk is light fingering weight yarn, with 437yds per 100g. The other Ravelry knitters who have finished this shawl in Sea Silk have used TWO skeins. None of them have listed the final dimensions of their shawls; it's really annoying when Ravelers don't include this information.

Gee, golly, gosh, shucky darn!!!! (my teenage swear) How the h**l did I screw up something so basic? California dreamin', I guess.

So - I'm currently knitting 3 horizontal repeats of the Print o' the Wave pattern. I'm going to try this again, with only 2 horizontal repeats. That will reduce the yarn requirements per inch of length. This will still probably be only a scarf, not a stole, but the yarn and the pattern are a terrific combination.

The good: the pattern is much easier to follow after 7 repeats; I've only had to tink back part of rows here and there, and less often than before.

Drat!!