Running out of Pam Yarn

It's true. I am nearly finished will all of the Pam yarn. I had a fair amount of the Colinette Giotto in "Florentina" left over from the Giotto sweater, which I sent here (they need some money, so send them some), and so I made a scarf, which I also sent there, and I still had some left over. It occurred to me that I was giving away all of the Pam yarn and keeping nothing for myself, so I decided to make a simple garter stitch scarf with the last of the Giotto, and keep it for me. And here it is:







Nothing special there about the knitting; this one was about the yarn.





And Pam had started a baby blanket for Poppy, and I finished it after she died so Poppy would have it, and I had . . . . . .a lot of left over yarn. So I made another baby blanket. I finished too late to send it here, so I have put it aside for now. Another opportunity is bound to come up at some point. Badly photographed, but here it is:




That would be a delicate, pale yellow in there, not that you can tell. This I did from a chenille yarn in a traditional fan and feather pattern. I think I chose wisely. The texture of the yarn did not at all obscure the pattern, and the stripes set off the waviness of the pattern very nicely.





Now I have three balls of a beautiful fingering weight merino in red (colorway name is "honk." HONK! Isn't that great? That Pam....) left from the Pam yarn. I have had some angst over this





Angst? No..... Really? *snicker*








SHUT UP! I had some angst over this yarn because I had an idea and I couldn't figure out how to execute it. But now I have an executable plan and am almost ready to move forward.






And...... here are the Ziggy socks:

Umm, yeah. So the pattern said I could divide the ball of yarn in half and knit both parts of the zigzag from the same yarn if I started at different colors in the dye pattern. That did not work. There was not enough contrast to show off the zigzag. I needed another colorway, and how. So I went to my favorite website for discounted and discontinued yarn, and I looked to see if they had any Noro Kuryeon Sock. And they did. Now, if you didn't know, Noro does not name its colors. Noro gives its colors very unhelpful numbers. And the color combinations are odd (in the best possible way) so it can be really difficult to picture how anything made from Noro is going to turn out. And since it as going to be so hard to visualize the end result, guess what?

chicken butt

*sigh* *ignores* Guess which color I chose? I chose the one that said "image not available." I ordered yarn in a color sight unseen. How's that for the opposite of compulsive? *beams with pride* And it is turning out just fine. And Champions League Group Stage has started, so lots of awesome knitting time coming up.

Phobos and Deimos

Secret Projects Phobos and Deimos are complete. This is Phobos, also known as Fred, who has gone to live with Poppy, who should be here any day now.




Have you ever wondered what a dog would look like without ears?:

Hahahahaha! When I said that out loud to The Man, Kirby got startled and left the room.

And here is Deimos, also known as Fred Prime, who is even now en route to The Bean's house. Now that The Bean is here, she is known as Nora.

If I ever get over my bleeping cold, I'll get to visit her. Nora lives at the same house as the original friend of the family Fred. He's about 75-80 pounds, and maybe a little much for sleeping in the crib with a baby, if you're into that sort of thing. So I thought it would be nice to have a smaller version of Fred to cuddle with, especially for Poppy, who doesn't have a real Fred.

Don't you love how the white fiberfill is showing through the black yarn? But Fred is black and so his namesakes are also black.

Laceweight

I have lace weight yarn. Not a lot, but some. Zephyr in five colors. A variegated Australian mohair blend. At least half a ball of Helen's Lace in "Black Purl." I have lace patterns. Books with patterns, and single patterns. I have ideers. Many many ideers. I can make any number of scarves with what I have in stash.

However,

I do not have enough of anything to make a respectable shawl. I want to try to make a shawl. In order to make a shawl, I will have to buy more yarn. This does not make me happy. I was hoping to use up stash.

But enough about my problems. The mommies now have all their baby stuff, so let's take a look, shall we?

Poppy's Stuff

The Bean's Stuff

The Bean gets a longer range because Kirby wanted to help display them. So we have blankets, sweaters, mini-socks, hats, and scarves for the mommies. The Bean's mommy is hoping that The Bean wants to be born today. It's a nice day to be born, so come on out, Bean, and meet your family and get your real name. Poppy, maybe you could stay put just a little longer.

I managed to get out of this baby-knitting frenzy without making a Baby Surprise Jacket.

The In and the Out

I ripped out the badly-done seam on The Bean's sweater and sewed the sleeve back on where it was supposed to be and now we are all done:







By all done, I mean the projects for Poppy and The Bean are all done. The babies are still gestating (at least they were the last I heard) so I met my arbitrary deadline. Good for me. I have pictures, but I thought I'd let the mommies have the loot first.



Silly Bunny. It was really all for Bunny and not so much for the babies. If Bunny had thought about babies for one minute when planning these projects, she would have made them from machine-washable yarn. It's not like I never met a baby before. I know what they do. [Aside for The Man, who doesn't know much about babies: Sweetie, babies make various excretions. It can't be stopped. They aren't culpable; it's just they way things are. Washability is a big advantage.] So apart from the sheer and complete impracticality of it all, I am pleased with how the projects turned out.



Also, this is done:







The fuzzy purple hat. I used one strand of Cascade 220 in a dark purple and one strand of lilac mohair, and here it is. I remain unenchanted by the mohair but--Hey!--I only have one skein left. I give myself permission to take a break from mohair. I have some socks in the works, and a Man sweater, and a secret project. I think my next project will be something fun and frivolous.




I'm actually down one skein this week on the ole inventory. The Bean's sweater took three skeins of Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino, and the hat took two skeins. So that's an output of five. I bought four skeins for socks. It's not sock yarn, but I'm going to use it for socks.



Four in. Five out. The stash is smaller.

True Confessions

So the Old Folks came up for the day last Saturday and I suggested that we go to the vegetarian restaurant for lunch because--Yum--and besides, it was near the yarn store.



"Yarn Store? Hmmmm" sez the old woman, and that was all Bunny needed to hear, so we all went to the yarn store. The old woman poked around the stuff and had a grand and glorious time but





are you sitting down?

She didn't buy anything!

I almost couldn't believe it. What a weirdo! No Bunny, it's just different, not wrong. Bunny is the kind of yarn lover who buys yarn just because it's nice and then later has to figure out what to do with it. The old woman is the kind of knitter who decides what to knit first and then buys the yarn. Isn't that odd?



So Bunny has this in the stash:

Yup. Mohair. Bunny knows from experience that there is not enough mohair there to make the hat she has in mind. In order to be frugal and use yarn she already has, she was forced by the terms of the Economy Plan to buy more yarn. And so that led to this:

Listen. I don't know what you want me to say. It's not like I forsaw this sort of consequence when I went on the Economy Plan and, well, rules is rules, cuz Bunny's no rebel.

OK. I lied. In addition to the purchases documented above, I also bought a skein of sock yarn. As punishment, I hereby sentence myself to show you my sock yarn stash:

Because I don't want to mislead anyone, here it is from another angle so you can really see:

There are four skeins of Opal Tiger and two skeins of Opal Peacock (I think it's peacock) in the giant Ziploc bag over there. I think I counted 55 total. I will not discount the possibility that there are up to 10 more skeins stowed away in other places in the house that I haven't accounted for. Probably only 2 or 3, but I'm being brutally honest, so maybe, maybe, it could be as many as 10. I am not ashamed.

Here are the completed Mulberry knee socks:

And here is the Bud Collins sweater:

So sometimes I use up yarn.

And here is the bent needle I lost. I found it, clearly.

It's no good for socks now, but I can still use it to make cables.

Non compis mentus

And don't hassle me if I can't spell in Latin.

I would dearly love to show you a completed Bud Collins sweater, but I can't. Last night, while watching the gold medal women's volleyball match, I tried to pick up stitches for the neckline and I fell victim to one of the oldest moron-traps in the book:

Which hand is my left hand, and which hand is my right hand?

That slowed down things a lot and I tried to make it work, but I couldn't, and in the end I had to rip out two hours of work and start over. I've been working on it all day, but I find that I am now KWH, so The Man has interrupted his very important day of doing stuff like this:

to feed me. So this is what I've got so far:

Soon. Very soon. But not right now.

Four, finally

Looks like I didn't completely finish my big mess. Here is the last thing I cleaned up from the pile:

It's a red The Man sweater, in Lamb's Pride, which is a single ply wool and mohair blend. The fact that it's a single is giving an interesting texture to the piece and makes me glad I went for another plain stockinette, since it seems that's what this yarn most wants to be.

Here at the close of the bell is the state of the mess:

That little bit of fair isle there in the back on the dish towel doesn't count because it's drying after blocking. It has to stay out. You can't see it very well anyway on account of the flamingo wind chimes hanging from the light fixture. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to put them back outside at some point.

So what exactly do we have in the last remnants of the pile?

There's patterns and doodads and books, of course, but let's talk about the knitting. On the left, we have a pair of child-size (I hope) mittens from green Jelli Beenz acrylic leftover from the ridiculous green hat. I taught someone how to knit mittens last week and these just sort of happened. I need about 45 minutes to an hour to finish the last one.

And over on the right we have a blue and white v-neck cable sweater, which I think of as a tennis sweater, and tennis makes me think of Bud Collins, so it's a Bud Collins sweater. What a skeevy old geezer he is. But the sweater makes me happy.

In the front we have the second March sock club sock, cuff done and all set up and ready to do five repeats of the pattern before starting the heel gusset. It has been about a week since I touched this, and now I find that it's the one piece I've wanted to be knitting on all along. Sigh. That's what comes from having so many goddamned things on the needles at once. I have trouble keeping my priorities straight.

Bunny has a big stressful week coming up, which means she'll need the knitting but won't have the time she wants to do it.

Poppy's Sweater

Heh, heh, heh. In all its glory, Dirtbunny.net presents....

Poppy's Sweater

'Tis a thing o' beauty, if I do say so myself. I love it because it is soft and cuddly. I love it because it is well-constructed. I love it because it is made entirely of leftover yarn and cost me a mere $4 and that was for the buttons. I love the buttons.

Also, check out this seam:

YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE IT! Ha! Because it is perfectly done. I sat down with my books and charts and diagrams and my three pairs of glasses and I taught myself how to do it correctly and voila!

Fear not the sweater. The impatient Bunny Slob has learned to seam neatly. It can be done.

More thunder

It is time for El Puto to go for his evening walk. He does not want to go because another thunderstorm is passing near here--not enough for rain Chez Nous, but enough so he can hear the thunder. He has been dragged out with promises that he can come home as soon as he makes dookie. The last thing I heard The Man say to him was "Get ready! Think poopy thoughts!" Trust me on this: those words, or any like them, were not spoken in this house before the dogs came.



And that leave me free to catch up with what's on the needles. First, what's off the needles:





The dear, departed blue ribbed socks. They started out fun, but the love ran cold, man; the spark is gone. So they are done, and that's good.

Also, Poppy's sweater is off the needles, stitched together, blocked, and is drying flat. When I get buttons and sew them on, it will be finished, and then you can see.

The purple scarf is still chugging along, and the tiger socks are destined to become my new commuter sock knitting, so they won't take much longer. Here's the March sock club sock, aka "Leafling":

This is knitting that requires frequent consulting of the pattern, so it's home knitting for now.

And the back part of The Bean's lilac dress is done. Here it is modeled by handsome international porn star El Puto:

I have fourteen inches of "teal" sleeve, as worn here by Der Kirbenhund:

Plain stockinette stitch and not much worth seeing. I also picked up stitches along the lace panel to work the top part. That, plus the sleeve and the Elephant blanket, puts most of my size 7 circulars in use. I say "most" because I think I have another somewhere. That won't stop me from getting more in case of emergencies or something.

Oh yeah. The sweater. This time, I only got 247 stitches instead of 250. I did not rip it back. I increased three more evenly spaced along the next row. The hell with it. If i didn't blog about it, no one would ever know. (And since I have practically no readers, that means pretty much no one knows anyway).

There is also the Elephant blanket, but that's nothing to see yet either. All in good time.

That was Fun!

Sadly, Poppy's Sheep Blanket is finished. It was a kick to knit, and now it's over. Kirby helped me take a picture:



Oh, well. Plenty more going on in Bunny's knitting bag. I've got about about six inches a week going on the purple scarf. I've got the second blue ribbed sock started. I've got the March sock club sock started. I've got a tiger sock going. All of the pieces parts for Poppy's sweater are done and I could finish in a couple hours if I felt like sewing it up. I have a hard time sewing a nice seam. I normally just do it however, and it shows. But this is for someone else, so I want to do it correctly, so I'm going to have to teach myself some finishing techniques. Lucky for Poppy (not like he cares, but I do), I have something like 50 books with finishing demos in them. We'll be OK.

I tried to take a week off from the teal sweater, but I only made it five days. I am going to need some simple, portable stuff to do at some upcoming seminars, so I cast on a sleeve.

No, it is not rude to knit during these things:

1. It's a video, so I won't be distracting the speakers.
2. Nearly everyone there (I can say from experience) is going to be reading the paper anyway.
3. Those who are not reading the paper will be fooling around with their blackberries.
4. If you are not convinced, then please explain to me why knitting is more rude than #2 or #3. Also, since I have to go to get credits for maintaining my bar license, i.e., it's mandatory, and since none of it is going to be directly relevant to the tiny sub-niche of the very specialized area in which I practice (and no such courses are offered), please explain to me why I should suffer when no one else is.
5. I can't just sleep. I snore. That would be a distraction to everyone else.
6. If I wanted to pay attention, which I don't, I could knit and pay attention at the same time.

It's time to cast on something for The Bean. I haven't decided what, yet, but I have a shopping bag full of pretty pretty yarn to choose from.

It sucks to have a job

Whoooo! Tough day Friday. A lot of clock-watching. I couldn’t wait for the work day to be over so I could go home and work on this:




I am utterly and completely charmed. It’s a perfect project. I love the yarn (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino bulky and superbulky). It’s soft and plush and cuddly. I love the color: rich, warm green. I love the little sheepies. I like the black one and the little small one next to the black one and I like the one with the big head up at the top. I like changing colors, and just when I get sick and tired of managing all the color changes and the ends and bobbins hanging off the back, I am done with a little sheepie and can do a few rows of plain, soothing stockinette stitch. Just when that gets dull, it’s time to start another sheepie. I even love the seed stitch border.

Love, love, love.

I stayed up later than usual Thursday night watching el futbol on the DVR because I wanted to finish just one more sheep before bed. And then I got up and finished the last sheepie Friday morning before work while I had my coffee. So now I only have some ends to weave in (ick) and about 10 rows of stockinette and 10 rows of seed stitch and then it will be done! It was horrid being at work when all I could think about was getting home to the sheepie blankie and finishing it.

Also, I'm done with the teasing.

Behold the Red Lace Scarf

It is ethereal! It is soft! It drapes! It lies flat! It no longer looks like ass! I just might do some more lace someday.

And now we wait

So. My blocking wires came. I washed them in soapy water to get any traces of machine oil off, and I dried them, and I got the red lace scarf all wet in a clean sink full of cool water, and I squeezed out the excess and I threaded the wires through the edges of the wet scarf and I took some measurements and I placed my pins and I gave the whole thing a big ole stretch and here we are:

And when it's dry, we'll know. Nothing else to do until then. Still nothing to see.

I finished The Bean's seed stitch hat. As usual, it looks too big, but it's cute.

I wound the March sock club yarn so it's all ready to go:

We went to the yarn store last weekend to buy yarn for Poppy and The Bean, and I told my girlfriends I was sick of the teal sweater and I was going to take a week off from working on it. Then this thing happened and I needed to have some mindless and simple knitting to work on, so I picked it up on Thursday and, well, in taking a week off from it, I ended up finishing the bottom part:

Yeah. I'm a big ole liar. Poppy's sweater has two sleeves and a back, the blue sock has a heel and part of a gusset, the tiger socks have a cuff, and Poppy's sheep blanket has one slightly off-looking sheep. I'm grumpy and I hate everything, and I think I need to go to the yarn store to buy more yarn. I can't get into bed with chocolate and Pellegrino because the red lace scarf is on the bed. That may have been a bad choice in retrospect.

Gaaaaaah! Deux

So Yarn Bandit has been brushed and I cleaned the brushes and dragged The Boys back inside and went back to the cleaning up of the yarn piles thing I was doing. My next step was to deal with the Poppy sleeve, which is now complete, or so I thought. First to separate the light grey from the dark grey, and then the several balls and skeins of blue into piles by their two different dye lots. The non-Poppy yarn over here into that Ziploc bag, and the Poppy yarn over there into the other Ziploc bag. Hey, this ball of yarn sure has a long tail. Let me yank on it until I find the end and then I'll wind it up.

Bunny wises up after mistakenly ripping out half the bind-off on the Poppy sleeve. She had finished, i.e., she was done knitting and had bound off, but she hadn't finished, i.e. cut the yarn and tied it off. Dumbass.

The Poppy sleeve has been rescued, the pieces parts and the needles I was using have been stowed, and now I have de-yarned my desk, although there is plenty more yarn to deal with elsewhere in the house. And now it's time to switch over the laundry and vacuum dog hair off the sofas.

Gaaaaah! Gaaaah!

This house is an embarrassing crap hole of yarn piles, knitting book piles, and assorting yarn-related detritus strewn about in a stress-inducing anxiety-making way. Every flat surface in this house is covered either in yarn or dog hair (it's warming up and they are shedding). The Old Folks are coming tomorrow and there is no where to sit.

I have bathed Kirby and now I need a bit of a rest before I can start working on denuding the Yarn Bandit of his winter coat, so I started poking through the yarn mess to see where we are with what.

Here is the Ye Olde Yarne baby hat:

You will see that I ripped out the old version. The rolled edge didn't look right, so here we have a do-over with a ribbed cuff, and a little I-cord top knot. This is for Poppy. I hope it bears some relationship to the size of a small human head so that Poppy could actually wear it someday.

Here are the stripeys:

They are displayed to advantage on my new sock blockers. What, may you ask, is that in the background? That is someone's jacket---not mine---draped over the back of the same chair where it has lived for about three weeks now. I bet you one hundred billion dollars that someone--not me--hangs it up in the closet before the Old Folks get here tomorrow.

Yesterday, to my great delight, I received the May sock club sock. This yarn is uncommonly beautiful, but for now, it goes into the drawer where it will wait its turn.

It is time to start a new plain sock. I'm not sure what to do. I have another skein of stripey, and another skein in another color, and I would like them to be done. I also have a bunch of different self-patterning stuff I want to get to. I am most called to do a set of tiger socks, but starting those now would violate my rule prohibiting more than one Ye Olde Yarne project at once, because I had planned to start a pink hat for The Bean from some heavyweight socks that rock leftover from the twinkle toes. Can't do both.

I defer that decision until after I brush Tiki.

Bunny out.