drive-by knitting

I'd really like to get back to posting more frequently, so this is a speedy attempt.  Here are some (not very good) photos I've taken with my iPad to show off recent knitting and life here.  I have finished my version of Kapp, an Icelandic sweater pattern with Lite-Lopi in Size 4. It is too big for our boys now but will be just right come next fall, I suspect.  It was a pattern that required the knitter to already know how to do an Icelandic type sweater.  (in the round, bottom up, attach two sleeves and do a yoke, etc.)  The instructions were well-intended, but minimal.  There is a mistake in this, and it is around the collar area, and I hope you can't really see it because of the buttons (ancestral button stash buttons!) the slanty photo and the collar. :)  Whatever, it will keep someone warm!

Now I am on to the next sweater.  This will be a stripy zip-up-the-front one, I suspect, as requested by my (skinny) boy, unless he goes for buttons at the last moment.  He likes long coatlike sweaters, and this one is being knit at a size 2 width but size 4 length.  There is no pattern to this.  I am just making it up as I go.  Winging it for me is only slightly more complicated than following a well-intended pattern without many details!

Long ago, I started a pair of Selbuvotter mittens, using a pattern from Terri Shea's great book.  However, things got distracting and I found I just could not concentrate on finishing those mitts at the time.  Hah.  You know, when I was writing books and getting ready to move to Canada, but not yet the mom of twins....well, it was the twin thing that did it, I guess.  Put me right over the top. 

I bumped into that little bag of half-finished project recently, and huh.  There was some very nice fingering-sport weight handspun 2 ply that I had done years ago.  It was just waiting to be mitts.  I took one look at that pattern I was trying to follow, and my eyes crossed.  (No, my twins still do not sleep through the night.  5 or 6 wake ups last night alone.  I lost count.)

I just cut the handspun right off the half mitten I'd done and started winging it.  I made some top-down mitts in the 20 minutes before I fell asleep or during odd moments here and there.  They fit fabulously and I was ready to go when I looked at them.  They looked sort of, umm, homespun.  Not bad, but just sort of homemade in a way I wasn't quite satisfied with wearing out and about.

I washed the mitts, gently fulling them in the process.  Then I grabbed some grape kool aid packets on a grocery store errand, and the mitts took a little dip.  They now are a lovely variegated purple/lavender contrasted with rich brown.  They look good and more importantly, they feel very warm, especially with another pair underneath.  Sadly, they do not photograph well in the spare moments when I have a chance to shoot a photo.

Today I was out shovelling and I tried all sorts of angles in the sunlight.  There is very definitely lots of "winter" out here, and while the temperature is tropical (-10 C, around 20F), I still wear mitts when shovelling.

Here's a failed shot of mitts that shows some snow drifts.  Here's also a photo of me in my winter gear.  I've made 2 pairs of mittens for myself this winter and I am now on to a third...I wonder whether winter will beat me and I'll have three new pairs of mitts by the time the snow is done, or -- maybe, (hah) spring will come first.  I somehow doubt it!

PS: I've now managed to download all the currently available pdf patterns from my both of my books to Ravelry...but no one has bought a single one of the new downloadable patterns yet!  There's still time to make mitts before spring!  Join me...?

 

snow season

I keep thinking of posting here, I promise!  However, every day ends up like today--only 20 minutes 'til preschool pick up, and there's still shovelling to do and the compost to take out and it takes 5 minutes to put on boots and coat. (but nothing like the 15 it takes to get the boys ready!)  So, I am doing a drive by post.  It won't look perfect, or maybe not even good, but I can say at least I was over here.  :) Hey y'all.

So, The first photo here is that of the boys' wool pants.  At preschool, folks seemed horrified when the boys did not appear in snow pants on the first semi-cold and snowy day.  We have the requisite snow pants--and we just left them in the boys' cubby at school.  Cause, at home, we put them in these: felted wool pants that go right over their overalls.  This year,we found that last year's handmade wool pants still fit (Thanks Didi--my mom, who made them!) but were too short.  Snow could still hit that delicate area above the top of the boot and below the scrunched up overalls beneath.  So, I fashioned some cashmere (yes, these are from thrifted recycled cashmere sweaters) gaiters.  I sewed them on the bottom of the pants, above the ribbing at the bottom of the pants.  Nothing now gets into that cold snowy ankle region! 

Next, I finally finished my new mittens--Due North Mitts, one of my patterns.  What I learned was that a normal person might knit these in a week or two.  It took me forever!  Worse, I found the chart swims in front of you when you try to knit at 10 pm, and you never get to sleep through the night. :)  I was motivated by a definite lack of mitts.  I have to knit more, I wear a double layer mitt in the wintertime, but I will probably be knitting much more plain vanilla mitts in the future.  One of my twins still rarely sleeps through the night (at 2.5 years old, yup) and well, neither do I then.   You'll note here, if you are really awake (which I am not) that these mitts match my Slippy the Cowl pattern--first time in the history of time when I have been so matchy matchy...when I can remember to wear them at the same time...

Last up is a funny picture of the slippers I cooked up for the boys in a hurry.  A week ago now, one of my twins took a header down the basement stairs.  It was scary and he has a big shiner on one of his eyes.  He is fine, but we decided we needed some grippy slippers in a hurry.  It was also -20F outside, so I found some leather scraps, a big crochet hook and held 2 plies of Rowan chenille yarn and one of Paton's Merino Worsted and crocheted like the wind.  One twin (the one with the shiner) loves his slippers.  The other won't wear them.  Figures.  In any event, I made 4 slippers in a weekend while we played in the basement.

(I have no idea how to rotate this photo and am short on time!  Tilt your head?  Pretend they are on a 2 year old, racing past?!)

Finally, I have just about decided that winter is a bad name for a season.  I think this one should be called virus.  Someone or everyone has been sick in this house since October, and it was the same last year from December through May.  I am wondering why the season naming rights have not been snapped up already by someone with the cure for the common cold, cough, or stomach bug.  Just sayin....

Now I'm off to dig out the car and get to school and get the boys into all those layers and home before nap time!

Found

...One pair of Due North Mitts. Finally. We've had an abnormally warm winter in Winnipeg. It's been lovely, really mild...with temperatures over freezing on several days recently. Apparently I wore a gray maternity jacket one last time during the fall and left the mittens in the pockets of the jacket. I looked in the jacket pockets on a whim and, after weeks of searching? Found those mitts. Finally. I thought I'd lost my mind with lack of sleep when I realized I'd misplaced those mittens.

Also finally found some time today while someone was helping with the babies to upload photos from my camera. Some of those shots dated all the way back to November.

Here are a couple of recent photos of the babies. They are, of course, sporting knitwear that I've managed to make for them. You may notice that the sweater has enormous stitches. Yes, I knit on #13 needles because there just aren't many spare moments for knitting these days.

I designed this sweater. It's a one off and my version of a traditional "college man" cardigan sweater. It fits Leo well right now and Sam will get to wear it next. In our house, this sweater would be sized 8 months. That's now, and it fits.

The other thing I've managed are one pair of bright yellow knee socks. These wool socks are designed to be worn over a pair of regular socks AND their sleepers for when they go out on cold days. Then, they usually are wrapped up in a fleece sleeping bag in their car seats. They even have sleeping bags for their double stroller...you need it at -20C or colder still. ( -4F) The ribbing is purely to keep them from pulling off the socks. With effort, Leo can still pull these off.

Continuing the "college" theme, the next pair of socks will be navy. The mustard yellow and navy are U. of Michigan colors; one of my mother's alma maters. (sp?)

In any case, we are now entertaining two young gentlemen who sit up, roll over and look very close to crawling. They are both doing pre-language babbling. There is a lot of noise here, lots of yelling and cackling, including words like:

dadadadaada

mehmehmehmeh meh

dididididi

Hey or Hi

and some sounds that actually sound an awful lot like Harry and Sally's barking.

I guess we won't need to teach Dog as a second language here.

I'm off to bed. I "found" these moments by staying up later than the babies....and I'm sure to regret it tomorrow. Just dropping by to say hello, celebrating finding some precious mittens, and show off a new project or two. As Sam and Leo say, with big smiles:

Hey.

Lost

Lost:

One pound of coffee...this was lost sometime last summer. After the babies were born, I went back to drinking a large strong cup of (french press) coffee each morning. This has a lot of caffeine in it. I have needed it.

Most people who know me know that I do not lose things with any frequency. I try hard to keep track of things...but I lost a whole pound of coffee.
This is, in retrospect, entirely reasonable. Anyone who has as little sleep as I have had would be losing a lot of stuff. At this point I estimate that I have not had a complete, long, full night of sleep in a year...since I had to get up every 2-3 hours starting last January while I was pregnant. (Twins in the womb don't leave a lot of room for, err, liquids to collect at night.)

I started asking everyone to keep a look out in case they found the coffee someplace weird, like in a baking pan or something. Nobody found it.

A very unhelpful person wondered if I had early onset Alzheimer's. (Really.) It wasn't funny...

The professor has been in charge of baby bottle stuff, since I am not to fully supply two babies with breast milk. He lost some very expensive plastic baby nipples, new in the package, at the same time.

The conclusion? A friend determined that somewhere, we had some nipples very hopped up on caffeine.

More recently, I seem to have lost something that upsets me more. Remember these mitts?

I seem to have lost them, too. I can't figure out if I left them somewhere outside the house (unlikely, since my hands would have been cold all the way home) or if someone picked them up inadvertently when they left our house...or??

I just don't know.

All this brings me to the bigger point. Time, at least for us right now, is not elastic. It doesn't stretch anymore. I cannot find any more of it by managing my time better. Believe me, I've tried. I am using the twins' morning nap time (20 minutes of shared sleep is a great nap around here, I don't get more of a break than that. Ever.)

We are finding it so very hard to get basic tasks done, like making dinner, or doing all the laundry, etc. Why? Well, I had a taste of what it is like to have one baby this week. The professor had to take Leo to some appointments. I had blocks of time with just one baby. WHOA! Amazing!

I could take a shower. (bouncy chair in the bathroom kept Sam amused.) I could use both hands when I put ONE baby down. When one baby napped, I didn't have to try to help the other baby fall asleep. I fed only one baby at a time. WOW.

The professor's undergraduate research mentor had twins. She told him being with just one twin was like being by yourself. I get it now. Really, I do.

All this is to say that time--time to blog, sleep, shower, eat, shovel snow, go to the bathroom, etc. is in very short supply. Having someone around to care for the twins occasionally does not allow me time to work yet, or even to rest. I run around cooking 3 dinners in an hour to feed us for the week. I try to take a shower. I rush off to do laundry...

Ooops. Nap time is over. Crying is starting. If you find my mittens...or the last 7-8 months? Please let me know!

More Maryland Sheep&Wool

Have I mentioned how very wet it was at the festival on Sunday? It poured all day. Only the most ardent festival goers were there, and even so, it was a crowd. One thing I've noticed, after attending so many festivals, is how comfortable I am with the "back of the house." I hung out in the sheep barns for a while, talked to the farmers, snuck into an out of the way bathroom, met two girls from farm families who brought their 11 day old ram lamb with them (to the bathroom) and then headed out again. The backside of a festival looks a lot like this. Miles of pick-up trucks, RVs, and tents. Farm trucks, with trailers and manure. From the "front side of things" where the customers are, it's a sea of women shoppers with a very few men. Back in the barns, in the show rings and behind the scenes, you can see that the festival is not just about females! Three young men were having a serious conversation in the rain...and all of them were at the festival's back of house.

This year I was pleased to see some breeds that I appreciate being celebrated. There was a large display about Texel sheep--a breed that is good for meat, cheese and lovely medium fleeces with nice crimp and long staple length. (great for spinning from the lock)

I also saw that the very lustrous, mohair-like Teeswater sheep have made it east! Teeswater, in my opinion is as close to mohair as any sheep wool can get--it's a fascinating wool that I thoroughly enjoy spinning. There have been some West coast breeding programs with AI that I saw back in 2007, (and I'm sure it's been going on for a while) but it was nice to see these Teeswater rams at Maryland!

At this point, I'm not a big spender at festivals. I figured I'd buy just a very few things, some spinning wheel oil, a hook for my Canadian Production Wheel, that kind of thing. I surprised myself. First, I bought a handmade wallet for the professor (he loves tri-fold wallets) and a belt. It seemed practical, I've been needing a belt! Then, on Sunday, in the rain and cold, I started thinking. Winnipeg will be cold. The professor is going to need a warm hat for those -40 days...and moments later, the trooper's hat (with ear flaps) from Shepherds Flock. My feet were already cold, so shearling slippers also hopped off the shelf and into my bag.
While waiting to meet up with my mom, I bumped into the Old Mill yarns booth. I'm not sure what came over me, but I think I fell in love instantly with the color palette of their Domy Heather yarns. It's a fingering weight yarn, 495 yards in a skein for $9 a piece. The hand is firm and crisp and the heathery color was so appealing that I started serious shopping. I'd meant to buy some contrast yarns to match green Danish yarns the professor bought for me in Arhus, Denmark several years ago. Suddenly, I was buying a whole 'nother fair-isle's worth of yarn. These things happen. :)

When we got back to the car after my book signing, I could no longer feel my feet, so off came the muddy shoes and handknit socks. I drove the hour and a half home to my parents' house in those slippers! On the way, my mother "played" with her own purchases, and she whipped something out of her bag. Apparently when my mom visited with The Barefoot Spinner (a friend of hers) and shopped, a present came home for me! Two skeins of her beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn--more fingering weight--were gifted to me from The Barefoot Spinner! You can bet I'll be knitting more Mary Jane Socks soon. In case you were wondering, all the patterns in Fiber Gathering that don't have a designer's name at the top? Those are my designs. In fact, that's even my foot in the book photo!

Despite the cold and wet, it was a fun day. I'm paying for all this socializing and damp weather now with a case of the sniffles and a quiet day in my parents' guest room. Hopefully it will disappear by tomorrow, when I'm catching a flight up to New England.

Thanks for all your positive comments about the Due North mittens! The pattern is now available for sale HERE. Hope you enjoyed the armchair traveling to Maryland in 2009...read this with a cup of hot tea and you'll be so glad you didn't experience the very damp real thing!

firsts...and new horizons

Wow, it's been a whirlwind trip so far! My first official book talk happened on Thursday night, and it was fabulous. Forty or so folks showed up and it was a sweet mix of people. Some were the mothers of elementary and religious school classmates, friends of my mom's and even--my pediatrician! Others were complete strangers who felt welcomed by our inclusive invitations. Knitters and non-knitters alike felt welcome, and I was absolutely joyful about that one. (that is part of my goal in creating an inclusive fiber arts book) I was even honored to see Shirley Waxman, a well known fiber artist who does exquisite work, in the crowd. I got a lot of hugs and kisses, heard updates about childhood friends, and had a great time.

Then it was off to Nature's Yarns on Friday--another marathon of visiting, knitting, and signing of books, this time at a really super yarn shop.

Saturday morning I got up early and went out to Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. I did informal signings (rush into a friend's booth, sign the books, and get out of the way!) so that the crowds could shop. The weather was cool, damp, but not rainy on Saturday. Good weather for a festival...and I took lots of time to visit my friends-- the shepherds and the sheep.

Last, but certainly not least, I'm celebrating another first. On Friday, in the late afternoon, we FINALLY heard that we've received official notification of my husband's new endowed professorship in Winnipeg. In preparation for our big move, I've designed these mittens as a celebration. They are called... Due North. I hope to make them available for sale soon. (#3 needles, 6 sts to the inch, and the sample mittens were knit in Green Mountain Spinnery's luscious wool/mohair blend, Green Mountain Green.)