Fidget

Last weekend was the annual Black Sheep Gathering - a fiber festival at the Lane County Fairgrounds in Eugene. I rode my bike over there - lucky me - some people come from far and wide and camp out in the field behind the fairgrounds. I could tell when I was getting close… and after awhile I just had to follow my nose. Sheep are cute, but they smell.

Look at the horns on that guy! I ran across my friend S from the Monday night knitting group and we strolled around admiring the sheep. There were big white sheep…

And little black sheep…

And, when I went back on Sunday, I got to watch a sheep get sheared. She was big and looked funny sitting there on her bum.

Besides all the critters, there was a huge market with all kinds of fiber-arts related goodies: spinning wheels and drum carders, buttons and shawl pins, knitting bags and handknit garments, roving for spinning and lots and lots and lots of YARN. Some knitters in my group had been planning for months about what they were going to buy at Black Sheep. But I was totally overwhelmed, there was no way for me to evaluate and choose something for a purpose or with intention. But, I did end up at the Blue Moon booth and buy some Socks That Rock. I’d heard and seen a lot of good about the yarn and it was easy to find 2 color schemes that I liked. Mmmm, pretty soft yarn. Very nice.

Later on Sunday I went to hang out with another knitting friend, M. She was spinning with her mom out in front of their house. When I got there she offered to give me a spinning lesson on one of their several extra wheels. (They are quite the fiber family.) So I learned how to spin! The concept is easy but I can see how it must take a lot of practice to get consistent yarn. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture. But I felt like that was a fitting conclusion to a fiber-arts themed weekend.

Today was World Wide Knit in Public day. Luckily it was also a Sunny Weather day, otherwise knitting in Eugene would have to be not-any-more-public-than-usual! I was sitting outside the Knit Shop with some knitters. A car drove up in front of the coffee shop nearby and the driver started honking the horn… apparently she was trying to get the attention of someone inside the coffee shop… not considering the knitters and farmers market shoppers who were deafened by the earsplitting honks. Just then, one of the knitter’s greyhound dog that was sitting with us started howling, a slow, melodious howl that lasted just a bit longer than you’d expect for a pair of mammal lungs. Evidently he heard a siren in the distance, his owner said he always howls with sirens. I couldn’t hear the siren, really, and I wonder if the honking driver thought maybe she’d provoked the howling. A little bit later I noticed a very old, feeble man getting into her car - and I wondered why she’d been honking for him rather than going into the shop. Must have been in an all-consuming hurry, or something…

Suddenly, the greyhound went bounding across the parking lot, his leash had gotten caught on a metal folding chair and he got scared and tried to escape, but the chair was still attached to him and clattered alarmingly against the pavement. One blink and he was already across the opposite street, and we gasped in horror as he sped uphill toward the main drag, a busy street with 2 lanes in both directions. In the time it took me to think that we should all have jumped up and chased after him he was already out of sight, and none of us could have come close to keeping up let alone catching him, and he was towing that chair as if it were a plastic bag. The owner did set out after him, and the woman next to me anxiously murmured that Eugenian motorists would definitely stop for a dog. (That is, if they even saw him, tearing along approaching the speed of sound!)

We were relieved to see him come safely back with his owner and her friend, mostly OK except for a bloody foot. (I think the chair had scraped it.) One of the other knitters got a first aid kit out of her car and someone held onto him while 2 others worked on bandaging him up. He stayed pretty calm except his brown eyes looked a little bulgy and he let out one sharp bark of protest.

I have been reading a volume of “short novels” by Anton Chekhov, and in the current story the narrator mentioned cruel adolescent townsfolk who would tie an empty kerosene can to a dog’s tail and the poor thing would run himself ragged trying to escape… I felt it was an odd coincidence that I’d just read that a day or two before today’s dog/chair incident.

Yesterday I tootled around on my bike. I’d waited all week for the combination of free time and nice weather. (After our crazy upper-90’s heat wave last weekend, we had a cold rainy week)

First I went to the church to help sort all the dishes and supplies into the new kitchen. It’s a lovely new kitchen, the other one was very old. The new one has a lot more storage and is all clean and shiny.

Later I rode over to the Knit Shop to hang out and knit. They recently moved to a different unit in the same shopping complex, so they had a sale and I got a book for 25% off. It’s called New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and I had checked it out from the library (had to wait in a long list - there are a lot of knitters in Eugene.) I was already pretty sure I wanted my own copy. I’ve already started the Spiraling Coriolis socks that have a shaped instep in the form of a spiral band that winds its way up the foot. Nifty.

I think the closest I’ve come to being acquainted with a celebrity is my friend Eugen Beugler. I didn’t realize he was fairly famous in the knitting world until after I’d spent a few afternoons knitting in the Shop. He’s a fixture there, and designs lace patterns for Fiber Trends. He’s the most cheerful and gracious 80-something that I know, and I know a few.
Yesterday, we were sitting around the knitting table and the shop was gradually filling up with post-lunch shoppers and knitters. One of the employees brought the laptop over to the table to show EB a project that a friend of hers had adapted from one of his lace designs - it was a beautiful chuppah, for a traditional Jewish wedding. We’d barely finished exclaiming over that when a woman came over and said, “Eugen… is that you??” She’d been a co-worker of his about 20 years ago and he’d given her an incomplete afghan project to finish. Then, an old friend came in and reminisced for awhile about taking workshops from Elizabeth Zimmerman back in the day. EB was mentioned in a recent Interweave Knits article about EZ. We like to tease him gently about what a celebrity he is, all the while so pleased he’s part of our local knitting community.

It didn’t start to rain again until the evening. I was glad to have gotten a day out on my bike.

This is another comfy hat for my friend CG who is on the home stretch for her chemotherapy. Some ladies at church hosted a lovely tea party for her last week and everybody wore hats and brought hats to give to C.

I got this yarn from the bargain bin at Ben Franklin, more than a year ago I think. I’d been working on this scarf since before Christmas, it was my fill-in project for when I was between more significant things. I like it. It came out nice and long, even though I only had 1 skein of the main yarn. More info at Ravelry.

My friend CG found out earlier this year that she has breast cancer. She’s in her second week of chemo, now, and about a month ago she asked me to make her a hat or two. She wanted something with a brim to frame the face, and she wears mostly primary colors and neutrals. She’s very pleased with this hat, especially the detachable flower - I’m going to make her a few more in different colors.

I’m going to make one of these hats for myself next!

The working of these socks is a long, complicated story. In previous socks I’d knitted, cuff-down, I was plagued by either running out of yarn right at the end, or, with so much left over that I wished I had made the leg longer. So, I wanted to try a toe-up pair. I started out with a pattern I found on Knitty.com, with a lovely traveling-vine type of lace pattern and a short-row heel. Once I had a few inches of foot, I decided they were going to be very baggy. So I ripped out and reworked the lace pattern to have more stitches per repeat. As I tried them on, they seemed to fit sleekly and looked lovely. However, a few inches up the leg, I discovered the whole thing was too small and I couldn’t even pull the sock over my heel. At this point, I took a long break from working on this project!

Looking through a library book, I found a lovely, simple, feather-and-fan lace sock. I decided to completely rip out the vine-socks rather than ripping out to just before the heel to try a different heel style since that would have been most of the sock anyway, and I wasn’t totally happy with how the varigated yarn was working anyway.

I worked the socks as shown in the pattern, except from the toe up. This worked out fine, and I like the garter-stitch rows at the ankle and cuff.

I really like the feather-and-fan stitch design. It’s enough detail to look pretty but the yarn is a bit busy so the two don’t fight. Also it goes quickly because only every 4th row is pattern, the rest is all knit.

I did have some sizing issues with these socks as I was working them. I worked the heel-flap twice because the gauge seemed looser once I switched to knitting back and forth as opposed to in-the-round, and I wanted the bottom of the heel to be tight and smooth and durable! So I ripped back and re-knit with size 0’s.

Then, when I was a few inches up the leg, I was horrified to see that again it was going to be difficult to get the sock on my foot, but I didn’t panic - I ripped back to those garter stitch rows and started the leg using size 2’s.

The whole reason that I knit these toe-up was so that I could use all of the yarn. It was looking like that was going to mean knee socks, which I was delighted with, since knee socks are my stay-warm-in-a-cold-house strategy and I wear knee socks every day from October to April. But, the socks weren’t going to go over my calves. I was toying with the idea of adding stitches to each of 4 pattern repeats, but wasn’t sure how to do it gradually and was afraid it would be too many additional stitches. Luckily, it was Monday and I was at the Knit Night at Market of Choice. Several experts there advised me to insert a new repeat at the center back, adding stitches gradually. This totally worked! I added 2 sts on every “round 3″ of the pattern, and worked the “round 1″ pattern as new number of stitches allowed. Saved!

I’m quite relieved to have this project done! It’s been a long time coming.

I started the new year out with a new client. They are a start-up company, with all the fast-and-loose workday scheduling that implies. I have been learning a lot about how to set boundaries and keep my role as a remote contractor; not trying to pretend I’m right there in the office able to switch gears at any moment. (the to-do priorities seem to change about that often.) And the whole 8-hour workday thing… it just doesn’t happen when one works at home. But! I have managed to keep mostly on top of my workout regimen. I do wait for the sun to be well up, if it’s going to be, and I don’t go running if it’s pouring down rain. But, the coldest times in Eugene are when it’s sunny anyway… Luckily I have my newly hand-knitted hat and gloves to keep the chill off until I get warmed up ‘n sweaty on my way up hill to home. Also notice my lovely 2 layers of performance fabric: a “wicking” poly-thermal layer and a streamlined fleece on top. These are courtesy of M.I.L C A-P. But I picked them out, and yes, I did make sure they matched my new handknits. Jog On!

A note about knitting-related posts: I started logging my knitting projects on a really fun site called Ravelry. If you click on a project name below, you can see more details about the project including what yarn I used and more pictures, etc. I also started using Flickr for all of my blog photos; if you click on a photo you can see a larger version.

I had a lot of fun with making gifts this year. In addition to the rugs mentioned in a previous post, I made:

a fair-isle earflap hat for BN.

a crocheted flower scarf for sister HN.

A cabled scarf for sister in law SW; long fingerless mitts for sister GC.

and, character-themed iPod cozies for sister MA and brother RC. Cute!

I also made Chai Tea “kits” with hand-sewn teabags; one with tea and one with whole spices.

I love crafts. My friend GC was throwing a baby shower for another friend at church, who’s expecting a baby boy. G asked me to help out with the invitations, so we got together and brainstormed. We decided on yellow, and a hand-carved rubber stamp, to print on the cards with acrylic paint… GC is even more crafty than me (we are the types who tend to hoard craft supplies) and she had some textile medium to mix with the paint to make it fabric-friendly. So, we made all kinds of matching goodies. I printed muslin patches and sewed them onto a gingham/fleece blankie with satin edging; and printed onto some newborn onesies. I’d been meaning to try knitting baby socks, and I managed to finish a pair in time for the shower - with stranded-colorwork checker designs on the cuffs… which are hemmed with a knit-in facing to cover the loose strands on the back. No snagging on tiny toes!