knitpagan

To date, I’ve knit five Everlasting Bagstoppers.  Well, four from the pattern and one that I tried to modify and OMG what a mess.  They’re awesome, and they don’t fill up landfills like those damn plastic bags.  I get all kinds of compliments on my bags when I take them to the store.  They make me happy.

I have on the needles one more (the pink and white one) and the yarn for a second (rust and purple and white).  Made from basic, cheap Sugar ‘n Cream cotton, which you can get at any hobby store, they only take a few hours of knitting.  The only modification I’ve made to the pattern is to use i-cord handles instead of the woven ribbon handles that the pattern calls for.

I can’t recommend this pattern enough.  It’s free, it’s easy, it’s very well written, and it’s mindless to do.  Plus, you’re helping the environment by using these bags instead of the non-biodegradable bags from the store.

Theo wanted some things knit.  She went to the yarn store in Lansing (ThreadBear FiberArts) and got some amazing Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in the Seaside colorway — greens and blues and whites and sand — which I made into a shawl for her (that still needs to be blocked), and she got a pattern for a pullover poncho.  She also got me enough Lion Brand Homespun to make it.

Three years ago. 

I made the shawl, no problem.  It’s pretty and heavy and will be awesome for her Michigan home.  The poncho, however, has been making me crazy.

I’ve never been a fan of Lion Brand yarns, and Homespun is the worst.  If she’d asked, I’d have told her not to get it.  She’s a good friend, though, so I sucked it up and I knit it, because I’d do damn near anything for a friend.  All the knitting on it is done; it wasn’t as terrible as I expected.  All I need to do is finish the i-cord trim on it, and I’m confused about it.  I need to take it to my knitting group and get someone to explain it to me while I do it.  It’s driving me crazy, and I want it done so she’ll have it for this fall and next spring.

This is going to become a theme, I think.  And maybe I’ll get these out of the way first to make it look a little less flaky.

My friend Melissa asked for a shawl.  I had a ball of Knitpicks Shadow in the Jewels colorway, and it’s a fantastic yarn and color, so I grabbed the Kiri pattern.

Two years ago.  See what I mean about the theme?

I’m only a couple of repeats into this, but it’s knitting up wonderfully.  I may use it for the State Fair next year and actually enter the Lacework competition.  The yarn and color are more than just visually beautiful; they actually knit fantastically, too.  No splitting, no tangling, the color is bright enough to be able to see the pattern and variegation without direct sunlight but still dark enough to seem heavier than it actually is.  I’m looking very forward to finishing this project; I just hope that they didn’t lie and that one skein of this goes as far as they say it will.

I’ve wanted to create Cheesy Puffs since this issue (Winter 2005) of Knitty came out.  I loved the texture, I loved the color and dear sweet zombie jebus, that model was HAWT.  Plus?  Bulky yarn = fast knit.

So when a friend of mine asked me what it would take to get me to knit him a sweater, I knew that this would be perfect for his Minnesota winters.  I helped him pick out the yarn (at the time, it was Knitpicks’ Sierra; now it’s Cadena), and he bought me my Options set.  It all showed up a couple of weeks later, and I got started.

That was 2 years ago.

I’m not a slow knitter, but I definitely have knitting ADD.  Other projects come up, some get laid by the wayside.  I still have the sleeves to finish on this sweater, and then put it together and knit the collar.  Then it gets sent to Minnesota.  I’m hoping it fits, and I’m hoping it looks fantastic on him.

The Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman is shockingly one of the easiest things I’ve ever knit.  I bought the pattern for it from Schoolhouse Press and despaired.  The pattern was written in the 1960s and the language of knitting has changed drastically since then.  I barely understood the pattern.  Then someone in my Filthy Knitters group brought me a supplement that’s only available to people who already own the pattern.  It’s a row-by-row thing that made my knitting the BSJ ridiculously easy.

I’ve already finished one and I had started on the second, when disaster struck.  I wasn’t paying attention, and discovered that I’d messed up a row back.  No big deal, I just started tinking the two rows I needed to deal with until I could fix the problem.  In doing that, however, I found two or three mistakes earlier on that I couldn’t tink back.  So, I frogged the whole thing.  I’ll restart it soon, because I’ll be able to do it while camping.  And then there will be a fabulous little pink Baby Surprise Jacket.

You know what I hate? I have a project that I’m working on that’s classified in my knitting projects as the Super Secret Gift Project. There are very few people who know about the project, and I desperately want to show off my progress. Sadly, though, I can’t, because the person it’s ending up with is one of the people who would gush about it without even knowing that he/she is the recipient of it. *SIGH* Such is the life of a fabulous ar-teest, I suppose.

Needless to say, the minute that it’s off the needles, I’ll take pictures.  They won’t be posted until the recipient actually has the object and I can get someone to take pictures of the tears of joy.  And that’s when you get the full story as well.

Currently on the needles:

• Baby Surprise Jacket in Opal Rainforest, Flamingo colorway
• Cheesy Puffs sweater in Knitpicks Cadena, Coal colorway
• Kiri shawl in Knitpicks Shadow, Jewels colorway
• Super Secret Gift Project in Knitpicks Pallette, blue, green, yellow, white and black
• Koolhaas in Plymouth Tweed, lovely green
• Galway Guy in Plymouth Galway Highland Heather, sage green
• Peruvian Cuzco Poncho in Rowan Spray, vareigated green
• Pullover poncho in Lion Brand Homespun, earthy colors.

Waiting for finishing:

• Isabella in Rowan 4-ply cotton, Violetta colorway
• Baby Surprise Jacket in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, Seaside colorway

Still to be knit:

• Everlasting Bagstopper in Lily’s Sugar ‘n Cream Stripes, pink and white
• Everlasting Bagstopper in Lily’s Sugar ‘n Cream, rusts and purples
• Socks for me
• Hat and Evil Genius socks for Grey

So, yeah, this is what you’ll be hearing about for the next few weeks, mostly.  I’m going to discuss each of the projects and what I like and don’t like about them.

Sometimes, all the inspiration I need to knit something comes from looking at yarn.  Such was the case last night when I looked at the new colors of Cascade 220.  Colorway number 9544, the red-and-black, reminded me so instantly of my friend Grey that I immediately posted to my LJ to ask him what he’d rather have, a hat or a pair of socks.  Today, I ordered the yarn from my favorite local yarn store.  It should be there in a couple of weeks, though with my luck, it’ll come while I’m at Between the Worlds.  I’m hoping that luck is with me, and I get it next week before the event, so I can start knitting while I’m there and he can see the progress.  I’ll be making both the socks and the hat.  The socks will be made with my friend Don’s Evil Genius sock pattern, and the hat will be a cross between a Jayne hat and a long night-cap-ish type.  There won’t be a lot of patterning to either one, since it’ll get hidden very quickly in the variation between red and black.  At most, I’ll do a 2×2 rib.

Of course, I also want to do the same socks in the 9538 and 9539 colorways.  Maybe I’ll find some awesome friends who understand that, yes, yarn is a perfectly acceptable Yule gift.

Hint.  Hint hint.

It’s been rough the last week or so.  I’m not in a happy headspace, so I don’t think about knitting or blogging.

What usually turns it around, though, is Wednesday nights.  I have a knitting group that turns my entire mood around, even if it’s just for a few hours.  These people are awesome.  They’re funny.  They’re genuinely good people.  And they’re absolutely foul.  I swear, we scare some of the patrons of the coffee house we invade, and we’re there until they close.  Nothing is taboo for these people.  Sex, religion, politics, everything is fair game.  And I fit it.

When it comes to people to knit with, we create our own families.  Hell, when it comes to any of the sideline things we do outside of our own “nuclear” families, we create our own.  My Wednesday night group and the Mid-Ohio Knitter’s Guild are a large chunk of my knitting family.  My LJ friends list, the readers of my other blog , and the readers of this blog are a part of my blog family.  Thanks for being here for me.

I think that knitters have come into their own.  Ten years ago, mostly the only people you saw knitting or heard of knitting were the 55+ crowd of women.  These days, everyone from age 4 up is knitting, and men and women alike are enjoying the needles.

This is not, however, to say that we don’t have a long way ago.  There are anywhere from two to five times as many knitters as there are golfers, yet most airports giftshops carry two or three golf magazines but no knitting magazines.  Really?  In the airport?  How many golfers carry their golf clubs on the plane?  Oh, that’s right: zero.  How many knitters take knitting on the plane with them?  Quite a few.  Some of the best times I’ve ever had have been on planes or in airports with my knitting and having completely random people stop and chat with me because they’re also knitters.  It makes my partner crazy; he doesn’t like random people just talking to him and when they stop and talk to me, he just wanders away.  Me, I love it when strangers are connected for an awesome reason.