Knit My Dog

It involves international travel, dress shopping and yarn, of course.

Last summer on our vacation to Ontario, we visited a yarn shop in Picton and I bought some great alpaca / silk blend from some local alpacas. I thought I'd make a shawl.

In January, I finally started this. I was diligent about knitting at least one pattern repeat each night and was happily working along. I was never sure exactly how much yarn I had, yardage-wise, so I made some estimates after weighing each skein. You see, this was locally spun in Picton, Ontario and had no tags whatsoever. After some fancy math, I determined that after two skeins were complete, I would stop on the body and switch to the border, using my third and final skein for the border.

Then I put the shawl down and started my love affair with my Perfect Sweater (which is done, by the way, just needs the sleeves set in). You see, I had to put THAT project down because the shawl suddenly became all-encompasing. My parents are are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in less than two weeks and we (their kids) are having a fancy dinner party to honor the occassion. My mother has been asking me for more than a month what I am wearing. She's all about the outfit. Me, I hate shopping and usually refuse to go to the mall. It sucks the life blood out of me just walking in the doors. Last weekend my sister convinced me that we needed to go to the mall to go dress shopping. So I went, kicking and screaming. After two hours of trying on everything in Macy's, I grabbed two dresses off a rack for our final trip to the dressing room. Wouldn't you know, one fit me perfectly, and one fit my sister great too. And mine was on super sale, so I didn't feel too bad spending the money. How does this relate to my shawl story? Well, I need something to wear over the dress, a small jacket or sweater, or perhaps a lace shawl. And the shawl I'm knitting is the perfect color to go with the dress.

Last week I put down the Perfect Sweater and changed gears to get back into the lace knitting. I happily finished the second skein, did some more math to figure out the number of stitches for the border, and embarked on the border knitting. I must have been hallucinating when I figured out the amount required for the border, because look at where I am:

I've knit across the bottom, and three quarters of the way up one side. I'm not even halfway around the shawl. And I have about two yards of yarn left. I discovered this on Sunday evening after some great knitting time this weekend. I looked into my bag and the yarn was almost gone!

That's when I started to panic. Less than two weeks until the party, no more yarn, yarn purchased in Canada, one year ago, and it's local, handspun! What's a girl to do? Well, I went to the yarn room and found the receipt. That is no easy feat. I have absolutely NO system for storing yarn or logging purchases. The only reason I still have it is that the woman put the reciept in the bag with my yarn and the bag is still stuffed somewhere upstairs. So I called. And I emailed. And I waited.

She called me back last night! She remembers the exact yarn from my description, and she has FOUR skeins left! Really, what are the chances? So now I just have to wait for the Canada Post to bring it to me. Do you think it will be here in time to complete the shawl for the party? I'm hoping that the money spent for priority shiping is worth it.

Posted by Brenda at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Julie tagged me with the "7 Random Things About You" meme, and since I'm not a very good memer (is that a word?) I decided to just do a random post and call it good. No tagging anyone else, maybe I won't come up with 7 things, and maybe it won't be so random.

1. My washing machine tragedy is solved. Look at this beauty:

All I have to say about the whole saga is this: Buy local. I tried to buy a washer on sale at a Big Box store and wouldn't you know, they don't stock that model in New England. Why have it on sale then?!!! I could have bought it on line, paid shipping (on a washer!) and had it delivered directly to my house. THAT is what I want, a large box in my driveway, with nobody to install it or remove the old one. Instead, I had the most pleasant experience at a local appliance store. I got a fair deal, delivery and removal included, along with removal of an old, unused freezer that's been living in our basement. Buying local just makes me feel good.

2. When I knit a sweater, I like to knit the two sleeves at the same time.
I know it's all in my head, but I think it goes faster. The thing that makes it all worthwhile for me though is that I know the two sleeves are exactly the same. I rarely use a row counter, so if I have to increase every 6 rows until I have the required number of stitches, I invariably mess up and increase after 8 rows once or twice. When the sleeves are knit at the same time, the errors are exactly the same too!

Two sleeves of the Perfect Sweater at the sleeve caps. Hopefully I'll be able to complete the sweater this weekend.

3. I started getting seasonal allergies as an adult. The last two years have been the worst and I've been taking an antihistamine to control the symptoms. This spring, not only did they come roaring back, but I've also developed an asthma response as well. A deep barking cough, gasping for breath when I run up one flight of stairs, taking a variety of medicines day and night, carrying an inhaler with me. This is all new to me and I must say that I'm not happy with this turn of events. I like breathing.

4. I try to knit gifts for my sister's boys for birthdays and holidays. They appreciate them, my sister dresses them in the handknits, and she has only felted one sweater in all these years. Now the confession:

I gave one of the vests slated for Dulaan to my nephew Peter for his sixth birthday. The day crept up on me, the vests were sitting there, my sister saw them and commented that they were so cute, and in a moment of weakness I wrapped one of them for him. Of course he loved it. And look how adorable it is on him! Because of the guilt I'm feeling (you can thank my Catholic upbringing for the guilt) I'm going to knit two more vests for Dulaan. I guess that's a win-win situation.

5. Pink is one of my least favorite colors. I think it stems from the fact that growing up my mother always dressed me in blue, telling me that blue looked so great on me because of my blue eyes. As a child, I don't think I had any pink in my wardrobe. I was also somewhat of a tomboy, preferring to play outside and get dirty. I don't think pink fit into that image. The house we moved into a couple of years ago had four pink rooms. FOUR! Our bedroom was the most hideous Pepto-Bismol-Pink you could imagine. We painted it before we moved in. Howie said he couldn't sleep in a room that color, even though his eyes would be closed. After more redecorating, we're down to two pink rooms, with one more slated to be painted over soon. I still don't have much pink in my wardrobe.

6. I'm going on a job interview this afternoon; wish me luck! It's a part time teaching job at a local university to augment my current job. I probably jinxed myself by blogging about it before it happened, but it's just about all I can think of right now. I'm off to get ready...

Posted by Brenda at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

First, the laundry story:
After lugging two weeks worth of laundry down two flights of stairs to the basement, sorting the piles, determining that we had a long night of washing ahead, I loaded the washer with the first load. Then ran upstairs to start dinner. That's me, a multitasker. I heard a loud clunk followed by a whirring noise coming from the basement. I thought "That doesn't sound right" and went to investigate. Yes, the washer was broken. It seems that it won't aggitate. It will rinse and spin though. So I stood there and aggitated manually by sticking my arms up to my shoulders in the water and swishing everything around. Then fast forwarded to the rinse and spin cycle. Then I went into survival mode. What clothes are absolutely necessary for the immediate future? I decided to do one more load of essentials and ignore the five or six other piles. They can wait. We have plenty of towels to go until we run out! Back upstairs to tend to the long neglected dinner.

Next, the knife story:
Rinse, rinse, chop, chop as I prepared potato leek soup. My mind was on the laundry though. Do we try to fix the over 15 year old washer or do we buy a new one? Can we afford a new one right now? Why did it have to break tonight? (Not that any other night would be any better.) Into the pan go the leeks. Out come the potatoes. Rinse, rinse, chop, chop. Then, searing pain in my right hand!!! Yes, I slashed my thumb as I was chopping the potatoes. Not enough to get stitches though so thank goodness for not needing to go to the emergency room. But it was enough that Howie had to finish the food prep. I haven't tried knitting yet so I hope that works. ...I'm back. I picked up my sweater and knit a few stitches and it's all good. I was getting worried for a minute.

So if that's the beginning of my week, I'm worried about the rest. Hopefully things will turn around. I guess I just need to stay away from household appliances and sharp items. Oh well, no cooking or cleaning for me this week! I think I'll just sit around and knit.

On the knitting front, the Perfect Sweater is coming along. I'm up to the neck on the front so hopefully I'll be onto the sleeves soon.

And here's two more Dulaan vests completed a few weeks ago, buttons sewn on this week. I loved making these vests. You can tell by the colors that I used up odd partial ball of worsted weight wool from the stash. The sad part is that the four I knit barely put a dent in the stash and I could probably knit four more.

Here's hoping you have a great week!

Posted by Brenda at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)