Still struggling to find time

to knit on the Classic Elite pattern. However, now that I’m home, I can show some pictures of the Asymmetrical Jacket I finished for my mom right before I left on the big adventure.

It looks really tiny. I hope it fits. I blocked it to her specifications on the measurements, so really, it should. The RNK mailed it off for me today. I guess I’ll know soon.

There are some unsightly bumps from the blocking pins. I pinned it out the night before I left on my trip so it was completely dry by the time the RNK got home and unpinned it for me. There are even — gasp — some rust stains from the pins. They are small and hopefully will come out. You can see the bumps along the arms. The stains are tiny specks in only one or two spots.

I think the bumps will come out in the wearing. I’m sure they will come out if she steams it lightly.

If I had it to do over again, I would do the decreases in the neck a little differently. I did make some modifications on the way the buttons were placed in the section that goes up onto the shoulder and in the shaping of the piece in which those buttonholes are placed. However, don’t ask me what I did. All I know was that I ended up practicing on another scrap of yarn because I knitted and tinked that stretch so many times the yarn would have shown signs of wear if I had worked on the sweater itself.

Hopefully, over the next few days I’ll make some forward progress on the other sweater too. Right now, it’s in one of those back and forth stages where everything I do one night comes out the next and so on and so on and so on.

I knit. I tink.

This just in

I was looking for something else (you know how the internet goes) and I came across this brand spanking new article about 30,000 year old flax fibers that were spun and dyed.

NPR story

How cool is that?

I head home in a week

One week from now, if all goes well with weather and everything, I will be on board a plane that has just taken off from Melbourne en route to LA. It’s bittersweet.

Of course, I want to go home and see the RNK and little Opal and Jakob. On the other hand, it’s been a very pleasant stay here. I met many fantastic people, saw gorgeous country, ate exquisite food and enjoyed relaxing and being on my own.

I wish I could post pictures of the finished sweater. But alas, I doubt if I will finish it over the next week. I’ll give it a go; but, sewing seams is a time consuming process for me and after I get it all put together, then I have to pick up stitches for finishing on just about every edge. The collar will require a fair bit of knitting too, since I plan to deviate from the collar on the pattern. It might have been a great collar in its day. But now, it just looks dated to me. I’m thinking that I need something a little bigger to go with the heavy texture in the pattern too. I may have to experiment.

I hope it’s OK to post this. The photo is from the cover of the Classic Elite pattern, A Morn in May, available from Patternfish. I highly recommend Patternfish. If this pattern is indicative, I also recommend Classic Elite patterns. Well-written, reasonably priced and interesting designs.

I’ve got the fronts and back done, the sleeves are getting really close to the last increases and then a bit of knitting to get to the sleeve caps. Hopefully, there will be time for one more post before I head home. I’m working on another newsletter and I’ve got another project going too, so time is at a premium.

I go through phases

with pretty much everything I do. Perhaps we all go through phases. But I hate to generalize my experience to other people.

I just know that now that I’m nearing the end of my 12-week stay in Tasmania, I find myself looking at everything differently than I did just a few weeks ago and feeling completely differently too.

At first, I didn’t mind being alone too much. It’s not that different from my life at home. We live about 12 miles from town and I work at home. So, there are a lot of days that I don’t see anybody but the RNK. That’s OK. I don’t mind. I didn’t mind too much here either because when I first got here, I had tons of work with me. Very busy.

Then not so busy. I started to feel really trapped. I didn’t want to use the car here because it didn’t seem right to run the house owner’s car all over the place. About the time I got super stir crazy, I rented a car and put 2,300 km on it. I covered a lot of turf.

Then the rental car went back and I had work again. Busy, busy. Now, the newsletter’s done, and I’m here and oddly enough, I’m not going stir crazy. I get out some. For example, I went to Hobart yesterday for the TasKnitters Ravelry group snb. Last Wednesday, I went to the post office.

The past couple of days, I sat and knitted without having to think about anything. I listen to the birds and the wind and the little eucalyptus thingies that hit the metal roof and the cars off in the distance and all the other things that one hears when one doesn’t have that running monologue that accompanies so many of my days. The one that says, “well, just two more hours and you need to have this project done, then you have to get started on the project for so-and-so, and when you are running the errands, be sure to remember you need to pick up the new shoe laces for the tennis shoes and while you’re at the store, you might as well run across the street and check out the . . . yada yada yada” Does it ever quit? I often found myself wondering that. Now I know the answer. Yes, it does.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that I am having some transcendental meditational experience. No, not that. It’s still just plain old me. I’m knitting. I’m not becoming enlightened or anything like that at all. It’s just that there isn’t anything I have to do. I don’t have to think about a project or errands or anything really. Sometimes I think about taking a nap.

My “job” right now is to be here. Pet the dog. Take care of the horses. Feed the mouse. It just doesn’t take a lot of thought.

Meanwhile, I am also going through phases with the project I’m working on. As I believe I have mentioned before, I picked the pattern because I liked all the texture.

I liked that it’s the kind of pattern that has a 16-row repeat that has two eight-row repeats inside of that and then there are decreases and increases and many of those alternate between every sixth and fourth row. It’s just a heck of a lot of fun. I also like that the resulting knit has a tremendous amount of warmth because of all that texture, yet it’s not all that heavy. And surprisingly, it seems to have a nice drape. I used a superwash merino instead of the cotton the pattern calls for and it’s all springy and squishy and it feels kind of nice — if you have your eyes closed.

But now that I have the back and both fronts done, it’s a heck of a lot of texture. I think it’s too much. It’s overwhelmingly textured. Fortunately, I’m only in the not-liking stage. I haven’t reached the part of the project where I think that I better finish it so I can burn it. That may be coming; but, so far, I just think it’s ugly. It’s still fun to knit. I still like the color. I guess I’m reserving judgement because I have hope that the way it feels will make up for the way it looks. Right now, I see it as the kind of sweater you can’t wait to put on in the winter on a cold Sunday morning, but that you change out of when it’s time to go to town and look presentable.

It’s not all frantic knitting though. Sometimes, I go outside and look at the pretty flowers.

Sometimes, I take a nap.

Dead batteries

I was going to post a picture of the back of the sweater, but the camera batteries were dead. Both of them. And since I feel like a pictureless post is, well, pictureless, I wasn’t even going to post. However, I’ve taken bazillions of photos (hence dead batteries). So, I grabbed a few of my favorites from the photo file and I’ll save the sweater till later. A half-finished sweater, or should I say a quarter-finished sweater, just isn’t that exciting to look at anyway.

First, whoever said money doesn’t grow on trees needs to go to the Tahune AirWalk.

Clearly, money grows on this tree. I had an amazing day with slippermaker (Ravelry name) and her family. They took me on an outing to the AirWalk and it was so much fun to talk with her lovely children and clever husband. Very nice day.

One of the more delightful things about Tasmania are the rainbows. Lots of rainbows. I spent a delightful half hour one day watching a gorgeous complete rainbow moving closer to me over the ocean. I saw a stunning double rainbow that touched down in Hobart on one side and out in the Derwent River on the other. I wish I could have taken a picture of that one; but, I was driving and couldn’t figure out where to stop. On the bridge? I don’t think so!!! Driving across that bridge still white-knuckles me. And I’ve seen dozens and dozens of partial rainbows and snips of rainbows here and there.

I was able to conveniently snap this shot of a lovely complete rainbow from the safety of the deck on the house where I’m staying. Too bad it doesn’t show up better in this web-sized image.

But it hasn’t been all rain. I have had some lovely days in the past month. And just to prove it, I took this shot from the overlook near Eaglehawk Neck.

It’s been a really great experience, staying in this lovely state for as long as I have. At first, everything was new and scary and I felt stupid dozens and dozens of times every day. Simple things, like getting gas in the car, were hard and felt unfamiliar in spite of the fact that I’ve put gas in a car at home too many times to even contemplate counting. But here, it’s just a little different. Which side is the tank on in this car? How does this pump work? What is that type of fuel for? (Fortunately, I didn’t have any problems identifying unleaded.) Which coin is the 50 cent one? What about the cents? Why can’t I just pull in and out of the filling station any which way I want?

Shopping in the grocery store was no better. Vanilla extract in the States is called vanilla essence here. Mayonnaise here is sandwich spread in Colorado. Eggs are not refrigerated. You won’t find them near the butter. The butter is so delicious it has the power to make a girl want to be fat. As does the King Island yogurt, brie and camembert cheese.

There are all those niggling little questions: What happened to “Z?” What bird is that? Why are the spiders so huge? Why don’t people insulate their houses more often? Is that really a dial tone? Am I using too much water — will the tank be empty when the house owners come home? How do you convert degrees C to degrees F? Why are there so many sheep and so few yarn stores? How do you cook lamb?

Then there is driving on the left side of the road and all that entails: which way to look first when you are crossing a street in Hobart, or perhaps more deadly, which way to look first when you are making a right hand turn in the car. I absolutely know that I induced road rage in at least a few people with my overly conservative approach to making right turns the first few weeks I was here.

To make it just a little more complicated, there has been an element of difficulty in understanding some people’s accents and having some people understand my American twang and the weird words I use. Place names have been really hard. Add in a little stress (say something like the key breaks off in the lock to the trunk of the car on a Sunday afternoon) and the difficulty in communicating expands way out of proportion.

The list just went on and on and on. But after a few weeks, I only felt stupid a few times a day and lately, it’s only a few times a week. That’s pretty much normal for me.

I had a friend who was an exchange teacher in Spain. She said she knew she finally felt at home the night she had a dream in Spanish. Well, last night, I had a dream in which Kevin Rudd made an appearance and everyone spoke in Australian English. Even me.

Homesick? Yes. I want to snuggle up to the RNK and hold the pups and pet the cat. I want to check on the horse and scratch his darling little head. But, I’m starting to feel at home here too. And that’s pretty nice.

Laughing Kookaburra

I haven’t been posting. I have been knitting and touring. On Monday, I drove past this guy and did a quick reverse to get this shot:

I also went to a Tasmanian Devil Park and got this shot right before feeding time:

Tons (or, I reckon, as would be said here in Tasmania — Heaps) of other photos to share (182 on Monday alone!); but, it’s a hassle working on the laptop instead of the “real” computer. That’s why I haven’t been posting much. It will have to wait until I get home. Meanwhile, there have been a significant number of finished objects in addition to the Neon socks:

The Tam kit was a gift from Kimberly at Cat Mountain. She thought I would need something to keep me occupied while traveling. I had heaps of yarn left over so I did the beanie version of the same pattern. Midnight Sun Tam. A very cool knit indeed. She’s at Sock Summit now and if you are there, be sure to stop by to check out her lovely hand-dyed yarn.

The cowl was a pattern I just winged. Turned out lovely I think. I like it quite a bit, if I do say so. Love, love, love the Alchemy Haiku yarn. The color is more true in the first picture.

I’m working on a sweater now, which oddly enough, no one has posted pictures of yet on Ravelry. Does that mean I have weird taste? It’s highly textured. That was what attracted me to the pattern, A Morn in May, available from Classic Elite. I grabbed it from Patternfish. Now that I’ve got the back almost finished, I don’t like it anymore. Why? The pattern is so textured. I guess there is no pleasing some folks. I’ll carry on because I know by now, that I go through this love, hate, like thing with all my knitting. I’m hoping I can get to the “like” stage again when it’s finished. It is a fun pattern to knit and it is doing a great job of keeping me amused. So, whether I like it or not isn’t really relevant anyway.

Process baby, it’s all about the process.

A child of the 60s must have

designed Cromarty. What was she smokin? It is a gorgeous sweater, that is why I wanted to make it. But the gauge! The pattern suggests a size 5 (3.75mm) needle and indicates a gauge in st.st. (which I interpreted to be stockinette stitch) of 25 stitches and 31 rows to a 4 inch or 10 cm. square.

Bingo. Right on the money. So without further maths, which was a mistake on my part, I casted on. By row 3, I was starting to wonder. Seemed like a whole lot of distance on each round. So I pulled out a really long cable needle and moved it over just to see. That thing was freaky huge.

I’m talking 56 inches around. Now, I understand this is a really wide sweater with a boxy cut. But, 56 inches is so large that it looked like it would be uncomfortable to wear. I sat down with a calculator to figure out where I went wrong. Cast on 184 stitches for each the front and the back. That’s 368. At a gauge of 6.25 stitches to the inch, that’s 58.88 inches, and given that the pattern has cables pulling it in some, I probably was still hitting gauge right on.

However, the pattern schematic shows the sweater being 57 cm or 22.5 inches. Mistakes were made. I think someone got their math a little messed up and I double, triple and quadruple checked mine so I don’t think it was me.

My choices. Redesign the sweater like a lot of people have done. Leave the bigger more interesting cable patterns, but swap out some of the smaller patterns for even smaller ones and just eliminate a couple. That’s an option.

I also read that a lot of people used way different yarn and needle combos and very few people, even the ones that used a DK weight used a size 5 needle. Most used a 4 or even a 3. I would have to switch yarn — there is no way I could get a reasonable fabric/size combo with the yarn I am using by just dropping needle size.

I also considered that many people have taken well over a year to finish this sweater. That was the deal clincher for me. I brought this yarn with me with the intent of taking a sweater home on 6 Sept.

Back to the drawing board. I have a couple of contenders right now: One is a cable and lace cardigan from Vogueknitting, the other is Classic Elite pattern called “A Morn in May.” Both have lots of interesting stitch action. Might be a real challenge to get either finished, so I’m going to be quite realistic here and keep looking for something that can be finished in just a couple months.

Or maybe, I’ll just go back to socks. I brought sock yarn too. Maybe it’s time for more socks.

I wore these yesterday when I went on a beach walk. I got fascinated by the compositions the shells and seaweed made in the sand. I’ll spare you the bulk of the photos, but here are a couple of my faves.

Why not me?

Lately, it seems, every time I turn around, another knitter has done a review of the infamous Signature needles. So why not me? After I re-confiscated the neon socks from baggage services at the airport in Melbourne, I packed them away until I got settled into the house near Sorell. Then, I put away the offending Clover bamboo needles and pulled out the spiffy new Signature US0 (2.0 mm) needles I bought just before I left.

I swore I would never pay this much for knitting needles. And, given it to do over again, I probably would not. I know, I know. Everyone raves about them. The do have many nice features. Unlike the newer Prym I have used, every needle is the same on both ends. In other words, all the points everywhere are delightfully identical. This pleases me.

I have a set of Inox size 2.0 mm I purchased about 20 years ago, and they too are very similar from end to end and from needle to needle. You can imagine my displeasure with the resident non-knitter sat on them and bent one. He did his best to restore it to a more or less straight condition. Mostly I don’t notice the kink and I guard them very closely now.

More recently (recently being about a year and a half ago), I purchased an ungodly number of Pony needles from Morris & Sons in Sydney (formerly Tapestry Craft). I bought two of every size from 1.25 mm up to 3.0 mm. The ones below size 2.0 are stainless steel and in comparison to the Signatures, I don’t see a huge difference. I think you can get stainless in some of the larger sizes too. I haven’t explored that option yet.

There are some differences, especially at larger needle sizes. Keep in mind, that I’m only looking at 5-needle sets of double points in an 8-inch length in sizes 2.5 mm and smaller.
1. The Pony needles do not have the size etched onto the needle.
2. The Pony points are almost as pointy, but they have a much sharper taper. In other words, they get bigger faster. The more gradual taper on the Signatures makes it easier to work some stitches because you have a little more room for maneuvering.
3. The tips on the Signatures stay just as pointy as the needles get larger in size and the Ponys do not. The bigger Pony needles have blunter tips.
4. The Signatures have micro-grooves along the needle that seem to increase their “cling.” They don’t fall out of the yarn as easily as the Pony needles do.

However, the Pony’s have a huge advantage. Cost. Granted I spent about $110 when I ordered them. However, I got about 16 5-needle sets of the 8-inch double points. Part of the expense was shipping from Sydney to Colorado. I have two of every size, which allows me to work two socks at once. More or less anyway. I like that.

I spent about the same on the Signatures. I have two sets. A 2.0 and a 2.25 mm.

This photo shows the 1.75 mm less-tapered Pony stainless steel (left) vs the Signature 2.0 stainless steel (right).

This photo shows the Pony 2.0, 2.25, Signature 2.25, Pony 2.5 from bottom to top.

Bottom line: If you have the extra cash and you really want to pamper yourself, the Signatures are a great choice. They would be an especially good choice if you are interested in really sharp tips in larger needle sizes. But, if you are on a budget and the needles you use are important, but not overwhelmingly so, you might find some other options out there that will do you good and still leave you with enough left over cash to buy some luxury yarn.

I don’t know. Call me a cheapskate. I’ld rather spend my money on yarn. I guess it’s all a matter of priorities.

I haven’t been posting because

I was getting ready for a major trip, and then I left for that trip, and now I am away on that trip. Now that I am here — here being close to Carlton River, Tasmania, Australia — I have time to do things like work, knit and perhaps post on the blog again.

I am house sitting for a woman who owns 80 acres out in the country. She has a very nice home with a wood stove (an important item because it is winter here) and lovely ocean views off in the distance. I am caring for her dog, her pet mouse and her two horses. There is a nearby neighbor who I see occasionally, but, she’s working nights now.

Here’s my view:

And the mouse, and the dog and the horses:

He's a sweet little fellow

Also a very nice guy to be around

They thought they could push me around, but I've had none of it from them, especially the little mare. She's so mare-like.

And here’s the nearby beach, where the neighbor took me the other day. Lovely.

The weather has been fantastic, especially for winter!

The resident non-knitter is back in Colorado caring for our two horses, two dogs and our cat. He’s handling all the lawn care, house upkeep and the like. Thank goodness it’s him on that end! I got my fill of those duties when I was there and he was here. It’s the only way we could do the house sit, swap turns as it were. It was a lot more work on that end, and not only because I was preparing for the trip. There it’s summer and there is grass to be mowed, weeds to pull and all my work right there.

It has been a nice respite so far. I’ve been asked a number of times what I do with myself to occupy my time. Well, this morning, I talked to the RNK on the phone three times. Granted, this was a bit unusual, but he was setting up Skype to make unlimited phone calls to the land line here. Normally I only talk to him twice.

I called one of the Tasmanian knitters I met on Ravlery, and who I did a magic yarn ball swap which I will post pictures of someday. Haven’t quite gotten them off the phone and onto the computer yet. I spoke to the sister of the woman who owns the house. I talked to my mom.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying like the dickens to get this post finished so I can get on to work. Several projects in the running right now and I just realized, I need to have the RNK check my cell phone messages for me too. I’ve got two web pages to build, two to update, a feature article to write and a newsletter to layout. Hopefully, I’ll get much of this out of the way before I have to start on the newsletter for my gorilla client right after 6 July.

When I’m not working or caring for animals or myself, I’ve been knitting. I’m working on a very subversive project. A pair of socks that were confiscated by not one, not two, not three, but four Qantas flight attendants. I pointed out when they challenged me over this terrorist act of knitting on the plane, that I was in fact using size 0, bamboo needles and a toothpick would be more deadly. With a straight face, the lead attendant, a man, replied, “yes, it is the very size of the needles that is so worrisome.”

I’m still pondering that one. I just can’t, for the life of me, figure out what is worrisome about a set of bamboo needles that are so fragile that I was in fear of breaking them as I worked. Stick them in a flight attendant’s hand as she passed me my beverage? Hold a fellow passenger hostage with a knitting needle at their neck? In either case, a sharp brush of the hand would have rendered the implement useless and I would have been disarmed. Oh yeah, there are five needles. It would take five swats to completely disarm me. Maybe six if they missed once. And it could be muscle under all my fat. I could be a deadly assassin, hidden by the demeanor of a slightly overweight, flabby, middle-aged woman who looks out of breath even while engaged in the strenuous act of sitting in an airplane seat.

On the other hand, perhaps it was the color of the yarn they found offensive. I picked up this Opal Neon on sale a while back for $10.50 a ball. The colors are brighter in person than they were on the web site. I was a bit shocked when I opened the package. It will be a garish pair of socks. Not for the squeamish. Dangerous stuff.

Perhaps the enforcer steward feared I was going to flash the completed socks at the pilot and blind him. No worries. Wasn’t there a flight en route to the UK just the other day on which the pilot died of a heart attack mid route? I think the co-pilots carried on and the flight attendants continued to serve beverages and meals and not one of the passengers was any wiser until they saw the ambulance greeting the plane. Garish as these socks are, I think the co-pilots would have had the good sense to avert their eyes and carry on with the flight.

Ah well. I will carry on with my subversive activities. Hope to finish them soon and them move on to a tamer project. Cromarty* anyone?

* From Alice Starmore, “Fisherman Knits” or some such title. Ravel it. There are some lovely examples out there.

I hate pictureless posts

but if I wait to grab a picture, I may never post again.

Life is crazy. Someday I’ll tell the world all about it. Not enough time to write it all out now. Suffice it to say that the Resident Non Knitter is in Australia, I’m home alone and we still haven’t sold our house.

Meanwhile, I’m doing a major computer migration. I’ve got a new laptop — a Mac none-the-less — and I’ve made the decision to abandon the old desktop. This afternoon, I completed the migration from that machine to the new desktop. New being a comparative word in this case. I’ve had the machine about a year and have used it off and on for months. Used it enough in fact, that I have probably introduced Windows issues and it needs to be rebuilt. More work. That may just have to wait. I did solve all the little boot error problems so at least I can get a clean boot and it seems pretty stable now.

In between file transfers from one machine to the other, I read several Mac tutorials and loaded a lot of software on the Mac. Of everything I’ve done, so far, Quark seems like THE best company to work with. Their software license allows me to load the program on my Windows machine and on the Mac laptop with no extra fees. Adobe on the other hand, would require a cash outlay of something on the order of $1,700 for this privilege. Hmm. Time to migrate to Quark along with all the other changes?

In between all of these little projects, I’ve got lots of work and lots of projects to deal with on the home front. No knitting. Mom’s sweater languishes. She came out to visit for a week and went home sweaterless.

There is some happy news: Tag the old horse I watch for the neighbor is on Equine Sr. and some stuff called “Weight Gain.” He looks so much better and I can tell he feels better too. I’ll have to get a picture of him. He must have been a magnificent horse in his day.

Two parting comments. First, I just have to say I’m right in there with Sheri from The Loopy Ewe on the Twitter thing. I just don’t get it.

Second, check out the yarn contest at Yarn4Socks. It’s all about Hand Maiden Sea Silk and Shawl knitting and the winner will win a skein of Hand Maiden Sea Silk so they can knit their own lace shawl/scarf of their dream!