pepperknit

In a marathon session yesterday, I managed to finish up Goldie’s scarf! We’ve got one happy customer here:

Scarf for Goldie
Pattern: A simple garter stitch scarf, with two tapered ends. Start off with 2 stitches, and on every other row increase into the first and last stitch until you reach your desired width. Garter stitch it. When you’re nearing the end, start decreasing at the beginning and end of each row, every other row, until you have 2 stitches. Bind off!
Finished Measurements: about 11.5 inches across and, oh, 5 feet long (I didn’t really measure it, I’m sorry)
Yarn: Jo-Ann Sensations Simple Elegance Collection in “Spirits Green”
Effect: A bright green boucle held with a strand of thin nylon with spurts of metallic.
# of Skeins: 5, alternating skeins because there seemed to be a difference in density of metallic spurts.
Size Needles: US 7
Date started: Initially, Thursday, March 16; restarted on Monday, March 27
Date completed: Tuesday, March 28
Notes: This is the thickest, warmest scarf EVER. No air will permeate its plush weave. Glad we got it done just in time for all this 60-degree weather! Eh, there’s always the possibility that the weather will turn, and there’s certainly next year.

I haven’t stopped knitting, but this post isn’t really going to be about much knitting. I just thought I ought to follow up on yesterday’s post a bit and show you some fun pictures I’ve taken in the last two days.

Sunday we’d planned to continue our day-trip adventures, but we were both, uh, suffering hangovers from too much imbibing and dancing Saturday night, so we instead chose to take a nap directly after going out to brunch. (I even skipped yoga, that’s how rotten I felt. I’d had so much fun the night before, though! Isn’t that always the way.)

Today’s weather was too beautiful to pass up, so we walked over to Rittenhouse Square to get lunch. Along the way I took some photos. The difference between the sky of yesterday and the sky of today is striking.

In the top row, we have the Ben Franklin Bridge and the Society Hill Towers, in photos taken yesterday. The bottom row features shots taken today of the Drake and the Kimmel Center and some red buds on a tree.
(Click to see each photo up-close.)

The sky was an intense, brilliant shade of blue today, and I simply had to share it with others by posting these photos.

Here’s another cool shot I took. I just randomly snapped it—it’s me and the sky. I didn’t quite realize the sun was so high, and I certainly couldn’t have aligned it with those wires if I’d tried.

Click to see it HUGE!

In actual knitting news, I’ve been working on Goldie’s scarf today. It wasn’t coming out the width I’d hoped, and I was unsatisfied with the bottom edge’s shape (a deliberate taper that was looking more like a mistake), so I took it all out and started over. Yesterday I started Kiri for real (on 6s), and I’m itching to get back to it. I’ve done two pattern repeats (after the first chart–does that count as a pattern repeat? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it creates one leaf, and so I would think it does, but that section of the pattern is written a little differently, so I’m not entirely sure how people describe it. I have 3 leaves from the center down, if that makes any sense), and it’s so delightfully simple to memorize and work on; I’m loving it. I just have to finish this scarf, and I can get back to it!

The boy and I decided to rent a car for our long weekend and play around a bit. Originally we’d thought about going away for a few days, but that fell through, so we kept the car reservation and chose to do some day trips. (We got a brand-new Saturn! Nifty.)

This afternoon, we decided to check out Cape May, NJ. It was about a 1.5-hour drive, and we were there for maybe 2 hours.

It’s a gloomy, cold, rainy day. We were just two of a handful of people who went to the lighthouse. All we did was run over to the beach, confirm the ocean was still there, take a picture, run over to the lighthouse area, look up at it, and dash back to the car. It was drizzly and surprisingly bitingly cold. I did capture a shot of myPomatomus with the lighthouse, though (I worked on it in the car).

We drove around the town a bit, not knowing what was there or where to go, and happened upon this delightful sight:

This seemingly modest yarn shop right in Cape May was overflowing with neatly stacked cages of yarn. I was amazed by the selection, variety, and abundance! But what really got me excited was a spin-rack of buttons featuring none other than the Beatrix Potter buttons I still hadn’t ordered!

Unfortunately, the hooks for Jemima Puddle Duck and Peter with Radishes were both hanging empty (such a tease, to have the info card hanging there!). But they had a different Peter with radish (or maybe it’s a kohlrabi, though a button website calls it an onion). The boy picked up the blue one, which is of some little mouse sitting on a spool of thread, reading. Now, in some ways it looks a little bit like it’s going to the bathroom and reading in there, but my boss is a big reader, so a button of a little mouse reading seems right. Whether the blue will be right or not remains to be seen. I can always save those buttons for another baby and use two of Peter with the vegetable. I can’t find any pictures online of the blue one, so here is the shot that I just took—apologies! It’s really hard to get it in focus and in good enough light, etc., etc.

Now I can finish the baby sweater for real and be ready upon the kiddo’s arrival (due 4/26).

If ever you find yourself at the southernmost tip of New Jersey, I recommend this yarn store highly. And if you’re ever in need of some time “away” from your real life, drive to some potentially hokey tourist spot, take some silly photos, and be on your way. It’s great therapy.

My day started out well enough:

A little Pomatomus in the morning. Note that I only did two pattern repeats before going in for the heel. I don’t think I have quite enough yarn (Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock), and I think the shorter length will not turn out badly.

But the day went steadily downhill, until, around 4pm, my coworkers and I had offices looking like this:

That’s Yellowtail Chardonnay in a cheap plastic cup, sitting on my desk. We are all fried. The arm of a coworker is also in the shot; she was playing with my travel SpiroGraph.

I have Monday and Tuesday off, though, as a minivacation, which means plenty of nice knitting time!

First off, a big thank you to everyone for the praise and kind words you had for my Sunrise Circle Jacket! Random funny: The cost of the buttons came to about 1/3 the cost of the yarn. Seriously.

Next, more thanks to all who weighed in on the needle size for Kiri. 6 seems to be the resounding favorite–tho I was happy to see that the 4s got at least some votes (via email & on the Knitty board), since I did like the look on 4s a lot too. Going with 6s will, as Candsmom pointed out, mean the whole thing will go faster! Never a bad thing. I need to get my brain in gear to go at the lace again; I’ve been happily Pomatomus-ing in the meantime.

Random bummer: The pretty stitch markers I bought are too small to be used comfortably on size 6s! It’s so not a big deal, but still. :)

Let me start my first real post about knitting Kiri with a little “uh, wow, harder than I thought” plug for lace. Despite all the warnings about not using Addi Turbos for lace, they’re all I have on hand, so I sat down and gave it a whirl. No. That will not work. It was beyond frustrating. I dug around and found some Clover size 4 circulars (16″ tho; not large enough), so I decided to try them. Not sharp enough.

So yesterday I traveled up to Loop, and found they have Crystal Palace bamboo needles. These points seem sharper than Clover, but the join between the cord and the needle leaves something to be desired. Still, it’s what they’ve got, and it works better than anything I have in the house already. Unsure as to whether I wanted size 4 or 6, I got both sizes.*

And now I’m stuck. The top swatch, on size 6s, has a nice openness. The lace feels airy, but it all might be too big. The bottom swatch, on size 4s, has a delicacy due to the smaller leaves. But the lace might be starting to feel too dense. Which should I do? Please help! (I don’t think size 5s would solve the problem, either–I like the tininess of the 4s and I like the openness of the 6s. I like them both for different reasons.)

Please ignore how badly I pinned it out and the errors I made. It’s my first real lace! Both swatches have errors, so I’ll be starting from square 1 either way.

Beacuse I can’t decide, I’m paralyzed. (Seriously: HELP!) I’ve started another pair of Pomatomus, these for my boyfriend’s mother for Christmas. (I’m never this ahead of the game for Xmas! But usually I don’t knit people gifts, either.) It’s in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn, in navy. I thought the color was very bluefishy.

*The cords were so tightly coiled I had to do something to relax them. I used the method I’ve seen people mention on the Knitty boards: I boiled some water, poured it into a bowl, and carefully dipped the cord into the water. It takes just one dip for the thing to uncoil itself, then just a few more dips to get a perfectly straight, even cord. After each dip I pulled it out and held the cord taut to help it straighten. Yay!

I spent a good deal of yesterday hunting down toggle buttons. My friend Goldie suggested I find ones that looked like bamboo, and I thought that would be a great idea. But no such buttons could be found, and (albeit brief) web searches didn’t turn any up either. I was willing to settle for simple toggles, but ohmygod there are no toggle buttons anyway. I found one, maybe two made of wood at one place. Eventually I found these at Sophie’s Yarns, and they’re fine.

Pattern: Sunrise Circle Jacket from Interweave Knits; participated in the knitalong
Yarn: KnitPicks’s Wool of the Andes in Fern
Balls: Bought 9, used 8 (only a small amount of that 8th)
Needles: US size 7; used a circular throughout
Size: XS (33 1/2″)
Started: Saturday, February 25
Finished: Sunday, March 19 (knitting and seaming was done Monday, March 13)
Notes: This is a gift for my mom and as such is a size smaller than I would wear. I can put it on, and I’m happy with its construction, but it looks ridiculous. So there will be no shots of me modeling it. Besides, I feel as though I’m stretching it out across the shoulders–I can’t really even think about buttoning it. Well, that’s not true. I put it on and buttoned it, and I like the placement; if I had a smaller chest it would be perfect. Anyway, I was initially concerned about the fit but it turned out just as I’d hoped it would!

I took some photos around the city and around the house of red and pink things. It was an interesting exercise; I have rather little red or pink in the living areas of the house, though I always think of red as a color that compels me. In walking around the city, my eyes were drawn to taillights, stop signs, and the like. Here’s a few things that I captured.

The yarn! The yarn is here!

Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud in “peppermint”

Knit Picks mailed it out on the 9th and I got it on the 16th; that’s one full week of shipping. I ordered it on Sunday, the 5th. So that was a little bit more time than I’d like, and the anticipation was kiling me, but it’s ok! It’s here! I’m ready.

I kind of can’t believe that this little itty bit of yarn is going to make a full kiri shawl. I know it will, I know it’s super skinny yarn, but I’ve never worked with yarn this fine before! It’s a whole new world.

My coworker and friend Goldie, a reader of the blog, asked if I would knit her a scarf, if she bought some yarn. Of course, I said! She brought in two skeins of a novelty-with-a-captial-N yarn. Boucle! Sparkles! Sticky-outy-bits! It’s fun, crazy, and really speaks for itself. No need to make a fancy pattern scarf, because the real appeal is the sproinginess. She’s buying t more skeins because as it is it’s waay too short, but here’s a sneak peek:

Click to see it bigger—there’s a whole lotta dimension in that there photo.