Process & Progress

Lately I’ve been knitting like crazy with a side-order of frogging. Unfortunately that’s what I get for knitting during the Oscars – mistakes. However, the nice thing about my handspun RomneyX wool yarn is that it stays put and doesn’t ravel farther than I planned. It just patiently waits for the needle to pick each stitch back up again:

How nice. I’ve taken advantage of that an awful lot lately As I’ve mentioned I’m using Jared Flood’s Brownstone pattern but changing the neckline. That necessitated some knit-math and I’m not sure I did it quite right but the results look promising anyway:

Note that a lot of that unevenness will smooth out in the blocking. But it will still retain some funkiness because it is handspun after all. And pretty darned uneven handspun too! Now I have to bind off the rest of the neck and pick up the stitches for the short collar. The front placket pieces will go last so they can be picked up along the edges of the collar. I want to knit these in seed stitch to give them a little thickness and stability. Oh and I need to find some buttons so I know how many buttonholes to make. Stash dive coming up!

Now that I’ve nearly done this project I will have to go back and fix my Little Black Cardi. Sigh. Not yet sure what I’m going to do about it but it likely means frogging at least the right front and trying again. Oh well. At least I like the process of knitting as much as the results.

Nothing else exciting to report. So in spite of all the warnings that weather bragging is just annoying for those locked in Perpetual Winter Wonderland, I’ll leave you you with some more photos from our recent beach holiday:

This is Nehalem Bay, Oregon, on the river side of the sandbar you see at the top of the photo. (The other side is the wide Pacific.) The 2-mile paved bicycle trail goes right by this spot between the tiny airport landing strip and the bay. Yes, it was about 21C (70F) and gloriously sunny that day. It wasn’t quite as hot or sunny the next day at Cape Disappointment:

It was still rather pleasant though! This is the far northern end of Benson Beach looking south. I’ve never seen such incredibly black and sparkly beach sand before. It’s really very pretty. This holiday was our first visit to Washington State’s Cape Disappointment State Park but we definitely need to come back and explore some more.

Oh alright. I’ll leave off and go finish the Musket Sweater. Stay warm! Hint: wear wool.

A Southern Sojourn

I apologise for having been AWOL for quite awhile now. My excuse is we ran away from home for a week! The forecast was for very mild and sunny weather and we had nothing important on the calendar so we dropped everything and hightailed it south in our little old VW Westie. Thom & I both had beaches on our mind and what’s better than having one’s wish fulfilled?

After suddenly deciding to go we packed up really quickly and made it down to Birch Bay in Washington State just below the Canada/US border for the evening of Day 1. Our first beach walk was along the slippery cobblestones of the bay that botanist Archibald Menzies named after the black birches when his ship, captained by good old George Vancouver, stopped there in 1792. We were happy to get an electric site as there was still a chilly bite in the wind.

Day 2 began in the fog as we travelled south to Olympia and then southwest to the very farthest tip of Washington at Cape Disappointment. Luckily it was a little warmer since for this one night we couldn’t get a power site because of the Presidents Day holiday. This day’s beach was Waikiki:

(Obviously not the one in Hawaii!) That’s the North Jetty on the right and we’re looking out the mouth of the Columbia River with a hint of Fort Stevens on the other side. From the beach we also saw a majestic pair of bald eagles near the Cape Disappointment lighthouse. Later we hiked up McKenzie Head and checked out the WWII bunker at the top. It had some interestingly rusty doors:

On Day 3 we crossed the Astoria Bridge and headed south to one of my favourite Oregon parks at Nehalem. The tide was way out revealing these salty channels between wee islets of sand:

The weather was perfectly lovely and we were wandering the sands in our shirtsleeves. We even spied a “naturist” in the altogether taking circumspect advantage of the quiet beach! On Day 4 we walked around the paved bicycle trail on the Nehalem River side and later went to the beach again but north instead of south this time. I liked the pattern the crow’s feet made in the fine sand:

I especially liked hearing the waves at night lulling me to sleep. The weather was darker and a bit drizzly on Day 5 so we decided to head back north. But first we stopped at Oswald West for a walk. The park was named after a very wise early Oregon governor who decided to set aside the Oregon shore for recreation before the business interests bought it all up. (Thanks, Governor West!) We followed the Short Sand Creek down to the beach:

You can just see the waves at the end! They make Short Sands the most popular surfing beach in Oregon but we didn’t see any except one dude coming down the trail with his boogie board. Then we carried on over the bridge and back to Cape Disappointment where we got an electric site in the campground near Benson Beach on the ocean side of the park this time. The weather was still a bit iffy but cleared up enough for us to walk along the black sparkly sand:

BTW, Cape Disappointment was named in 1788 by Captain John Meares who managed to miss the river entirely because he didn’t go quite far enough. There’s a lesson there, I think! LOL!! We still haven’t seen everything in this state park so I’m sure we’ll be back again.

Day 6 had us heading back up and across Washington, this time along our usual Hood Canal route to Dosewallips. The weather wasn’t cold but it rained on and off. We did manage the muddy trail out to the mouth of the river but not without umbrellas. Not much of a beach especially with the tide coming in but it counts, right? We didn’t see our feral goose of last September who thinks it’s one of the Canada geese but we did see a flock of the smaller black brants:

Well, on Day 7 we were going to go straight home but the weather was nice enough that we changed our minds. Instead we took the ferry over from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island and got an electric site at Fort Casey, in sight of the ferry slip:

That’s the Kennewick heading out after bringing us over. Our beach walk was over those colourful glacier-rounded stones that I love so much. This time I was very good and left them all there. OK, I already have lots at home! Other people might want to enjoy them too, right?

Day 8 we finally decided to come home though again it was a near thing because the weather had gotten sunny again. However, we had run out of food and clean clothes and figured we would be pushing our luck to stay away any longer. It is February, after all! Though the alders and other deciduous shrubs were still pretty bare, it was amazing how far along all the plants are for mid-February. We saw cherries, camellias, flowering quince, daffodils and even a rhododendron or two in full bloom. We could also see views that are usually obscured by leaves which was interesting too. There still could be some cold weather coming yet but spring is very early this year.

Now that we’re back I’m starting to think about the garden and planting my usual seedlings under the basement lights. Thom has already started with the pruning and turning under the winter cover crop in the veggie garden. I’m somewhat behind with my clearing out there thanks to the Hand Incident but there’s lots of time to get caught up still. Meanwhile I’m still doing laundry! I have knitting to talk about too but that will wait until next post. At least now you know where I’ve been!

A Visit To The Frog Pond

Well, I was going to show you my Little Black Cardi which was up to the armpits:

However, I discovered a serious mistake! While I was trying to divide the body for the fronts and back I realised that I hadn’t done the decreases for the waist correctly which left me with too many stitches. Of course, Murphy’s Law being what it is, the error was 2/3s of the way back down the body. Boo. And not quickly fixable in any satisfactory way. So, to the frog pond ball-winder with it. Sniff! I zipped it back to the place where it went wrong, picked up the stitches and am merrily knitting away again. It’s all about the process, right? And I’m now pretty sure I’m going to have to dye at least 2 more skeins to finish it since I used half of what I have getting just to the underarms. Luckily I’m in no hurry for this lighter-weight cardi. But that’ll teach me to knit a black yarn in the dark of winter! Maybe…

I also started on the Musket Pullover sweater for Thom. After winding all 7 skeins into cakes, I began on one sleeve. Partly this is just following the directions for the Brownstone by Jared Flood but also it gives me a chance to double-check my gauge in the round without having to knit another boring swatch. I’m going to use this pattern for most of the sweater except I’ll modify the front neckline to accommodate a button placket and also knit a short stand-up or fold-over collar, possibly in moss stitch but I haven’t finalised that last idea yet. I’ll wait until I get there! It’ll be awhile. It’s bottom-up and I have to knit both sleeves plus most of the body first. Though it goes pretty fast at this gauge.

In other knitting news, it took me since November but I finally finished Thom’s Emerald Socks:

They’re a lot more green in real life. Chalk the colour shift up to the dark grey rainy skies we’ve had recently – yet another Pineapple Express. The pattern is just my usual plain socks and the yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Stile colour 8015. There was a lot of turquoise dye that came out in the water when I wet-blocked these! It took 4 rinses to come clear which is unusual. The socks are quite colourful but Thom loves having fun hand-knit socks on every day. Yes, he’s spoiled and he knows it!

So nothing else is new here. The Hand is continuing to improve but slowly, though there’s still quite a lumpy scar remaining. At least it’s finally nearly normal functioning with just a little bit of remaining extra-sensitivity. I’m very thankful. I still haven’t done any weaving or sewing yet. Mostly because I’ve been too busy with preparing and spinning over 700g of yarn! Can’t do everything. At least not all at once.

Loading Up The Musket

OK, not what you might be thinking! The RomneyX fleece I’ve been working with has the colour that in Shetland sheep would be called “musket”. It’s described as a very light brown with light grey fibres underneath, fading to beige or oatmeal with the animal’s age. Exactly. The Shetlanders have such delightful words to describe the colours and patterns of their sheep! I’m extrapolating it to a different sheep breed which I hope is not completely incorrect.

I also rather belatedly discovered a shortcut to removing the brittle tips while teasing the locks. I used one of my little 2-row Forsyth mini-combs to flick the tips:

This worked a treat though it created slightly more waste than pulling off the tips by hand:

However when I finished flicking each lock it didn’t need very much more teasing to get it ready for carding. Note that you can actually see the grey fibres in this lock though they barely show up in the spun yarn.

Spinning long-draw for me means letting go of micromanaging every inch of the yarn. It’s hard! The results are quite a lot more variable than my usual inchworm drafting style. To try and keep some consistency in my singles I’m using a sample card attached to my wheel:

I tied it on with a length of plied wool too so I can check both as I spin. Here’s a bobbin full of singles:

You can see how fuzzy it is! The spinning wheel is Klaas, my Louet S90 that I’ve owned since 1992. They are now out of production on this model. It’s a bobbin-lead wheel which has quite a strong draw-in and in this case that actually works in my favour. I can’t hang onto the yarn very long before letting it pull into the orifice which helps to keep the twist light and airy. I only need to use the leather brake when plying this yarn because I don’t want to over-ply it either.

Here’s the four skeins I’ve spun already:

These haven’t been “finished” yet. I still need to wash them and full the yarn a little by rinsing in cold water and slapping the skeins on a hard counter. They will be a lot more durable then and hold up better in a man’s sweater. This is just over half of the total that I think I’ll need.

So I’ve been kind of neglecting the blog lately, haven’t I? Bad damselfly. Nothing exciting going on around here really. It’s beginning to look like spring though:

Photos were taken by Thom on his iPhone while we were out for one of our long walks. We didn’t have a very cold winter this year at all. Even some nice sunny days though they were mixed with a few visits from the Pineapple Express – warm and very wet. Sorry to anyone reading this who lives in a colder climate! If it makes you feel any better, we pay dearly for our moderate Pacific Maritime climate with outrageous property values and very high taxes. Today though it’s raining and dreary so we’re staying in and doing some housework instead.