Block Party

No loops-through-loops action this week. Just a weekend long “block party”. Four projects finally got blocked, at least one which had been waiting for more than a year.

First arrival at the party was Surf. Yes, I know I said this project would be done last weekend, but it turns out that I had some good reasons to jump back into the waves. For starters I’d forgotten to crochet the edging around the cuffs. Oops. The second discovery was that the back edge didn’t really block flat, observed when I picked the cardigan up from the blocking towel. So I tied the button bands together with spare yarn and flipped the cardigan face down on the towel. I shaped it without pins and then the offending seams were steamed.

Now I have an excuse to show you the back of the sweater laid out flat! It’s my favorite part. Check this out:

The buttons went on after blocking to avoid thermal shocking the glass. Of course I have to show them to you. The picture’s below. I’d stashed these lovelies quite a while ago. They were a Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Fest purchase that I put aside for just the right project. The creator is called Moving Mud and consistently has one of my favorite booths. I was thrilled to pieces to see how perfectly they matched the Surf Cardigan. Plus here’s a nice symmetry… Anyone who’s stood in the ocean surf on sand has felt “moving mud”.
I won’t bore your with going into yet more detail about this project. The details are in other places on the blog. Feel free to comment with questions, but beware that I could type about this adventure for pages and pages!

One point worth noting... I’m going to try to post a project on Ravelry for the first time next weekend and this project will be my guinea pig. I’ve decided to give it a fancier name. If you search for it there look for “Rhythm of Surf”. Seems more elegant than my lazy nickname based solely on the yarn colorway name, (Fiesta Boomerang Surf.)

Looking back to the first picture you’ll see a single sock lurking in the corner. This is finally the completion of an experiment that I mentioned in a post in January ‘08. I wanted to see if these top-down Rocking Sock Club Summer Sock cuffs could be blocked after the foot was knit. The big trick was to turn the socks inside out. Then the cuff was steam blocked without pins and wires. I steamed, shaped by hand, and then steamed again. It worked out fine and the set matched. Here’s a finished cuff close up.
The next arrival at the party was this Cashmere Koigu scarf, also knit over a year ago. (Cashmere Koigu is available exclusively from String in New York City.) You can check it out as a WIP on my posting on December 14, ‘07. I’ve actually worn this scarf for two winters in its tightly rolled form, almost like a 1.5 inch diameter boa. The yarn’s feel and color were irresistible.

This muscular length of rope fought me all through the blocking process. (Seems there’s a trouble-maker at every party!) The only way to lay the scarf out flat enough to pin it was to switch to a wet block approach. Hours after blocking it still seemed springy when I tugged on it, so I steam blocked it as well. Here’s a shot of the neatly folded, well behaved results:

Fashionably late at the block party was this amazing lace scarf, the diva of the group. The pattern is “Hydrangea” from Fiber Trends and the yarn is called “Dawn”, a 50% merino / 50% silk blend, from Naturally New Zealand yarns. I ordered both from the Yarn Barn in Kansas. (Their catalogue was just irresistible.) This celebrity is shy of paparazzi so this picture is not that good.

Hydrangea was knit sometime in the window of silence that happened while I was recovering from my stem cell transplant, so I don’t think there are any other blog posts about it. I did enjoy knitting it, and it was certainly the project I needed at that time.

You can breathe a sigh of relief. I have no other projects queued for blocking. Next posting will have to be good old fashioned, loops-through-loops knitting.

Messin' with Multi's

For anyone who was worried about me, no, the Stash didn't get me. It's still ruling my existence, but I continue to work, eat, sleep, and even knit at times. I guess I'm just happy it doesn't demand access to the TV remote.

I've actually been struggling with lining up my next project. An exercise that should be one of the most fun parts of knitting took on something of a dark overtone this time around. Even though my multiple myeloma is in remission, it's pretty hard to forget. This time I looked at all of the projects I want to knit and tried not to think about whether I'll really have a chance to do the ones I put aside. So I ended up not feeling much like communicating about the whole experience.

I'm glad to be back. Playing with Fire's finished and waiting to be blocked. My next projects are on the needles. The big project waiting beyond those is on paper and in my computer. All of these projects have a common theme, (predictable given the composition of my stash), and that's that they all use multi color yarn. Unfortunately none of the concepts I'm playing with right now are Fair Isle, but I'm enjoying them just the same.

The project that's getting lots of attention at the moment is a Lace Leaf Scarf. Even though the pattern's source is Vogue Knitting, the source of my inspiration is this posting by Grumperina about a beloved gift from a friend. I never gave the scarf a second look in Vogue because they showed it knit with a very open gage. The pictures that Grumperina posted show a wonderful ripply effect and leaves that have much more body. Very cozy and inviting, at least to me. By strange coincidence, this same stitch pattern showed up at about the same time on Yarn Harlot as a pair of socks called "Embossed Leaf". (See Stephanie's Dec. 7 posting.) When you're hot, you're hot!

Yarn for the Lace Leaf Scarf is a Cashmere Koigu sold only at String in NYC, shades of red closing in on black in spots. It's not as soft as I'd usually expect from Cashmere, but somehow it has an extra cushiness that's unusual and appealing to both touch and eye. This yarn's really been talking to me, wanting to cuddle around my neck while I drive to work and Christmas shop. I'm sure I've stretched its patience by taking so long to find just the right pattern. (I've had it for some months now from a city trip with Susan.) I didn't buy enough to do the full lacy length called for in VK, but by knitting it on smaller needles, (US#3 instead of US#5), I've decreased the width. Estimating by the weight that went into one pattern round, I'm only going to be a few inches short in spite of having only two skeins instead of three.

The Cashmere Koigu skeins are the two on the right. Their current competitors for my attention are Blue Moon's RSC Raven in color Lenore, then two by Hand Maiden, Sea Silk in Sangria, and Mini Maiden in Amethyst. (Loopy's pictures of the Sea Silk don't show the precious-metal sheen of this amazing stuff.)
I'm very happy with the way this scarf is turning out and also with the loops-through-loops experience. I can't wait to wear the finished scarf, but once again don't want to finish!
I also mentioned that Playing with Fire is waiting to be blocked. That will probably happen this weekend along with blocking of the first cuff of the Summer RSC sock. The exciting finish of the Fire project is all tied up in the strange behavior of the insanely varied multi yarn. Blue Moon's Fire on the Mountain color has a dark band across the middle of the skein with rainbow colors all around it. In the collar of my sweater the dark band hit three times so that each round alternated the forward and return colors in the skein loop. This was the resulting effect.Isn't that wild?! Even the lighting bolt effect is perfect for a project named "Playing with Fire"! I just enjoyed everything about this silly project. Hope blocking goes well. Also hope I don't double in weight over Christmas so that I end up looking totally dumpy in it!!

Speaking of crazy pooling effects, I've begun the analysis of my amazing Fiesta Boomerang Surf yarn. It's been a while since I raved about how much I love this yarn. Right now I'll just say that while the rest of my stash has been banished to the floor of the Knit Pit, Surf continues to enjoy a privileged and reserved location on the sofa with me. Yes, all nine skeins. Even a swatch of this stuff reduces me to tears with its beauty. I wonder if I should buy enough to decorate my house…

As a token of my great love for Surf I've set up my PaintKnits program to analyze how the multi will behave. I will settle for nothing less than perfection on this project, (even though I'm sure this yarn could never be ugly in any form). Here are some of the fun poolings I've come up with based on pattern width and the start point in the color banding. These could be button bands or borders.
Check out these lovely patterns.
And this one's worth setting up a design around just to see if it really happens!

I'm deep into sketching my design for this sweater and can't wait to feel that Fiesta slipping through my fingers. We'll just have to see if I can exercise enough discipline to finish up the C & G cardigan first. (Not likely at all! Notice I don't even mention all those ends that need tucking on Pyramids!)

These are all fun and wonderful things to think about, (except for tucking those ends). Maybe I'll be smarter this time about lining projects up ready to go before I run out. Or maybe more time spent swimming in Surf is what my spirit needs. The future will tell.