Not Stash

I’ve been a bit… cast-ony of late, so when the new Twist Collective came out, I immediately went not-stash diving.

I’d been saving this gorgeous Lorna’s Laces Worsted for another project, Sideways Spencer Redux by Annie Modesit, but when I saw Ysolda’s Vine Yoke Cardigan, it was love at first sight.

I only have 5 skeins, and the pattern in my size calls for 7, so I’m going to do mine sleeveless and hope for the best!

Zephyrama and I cast on within 20 minutes of each other, so the heat is on to get it done before we hang out on Friday (four day cardi? Doable), so here is my first evening’s progress.

I’m doing the 44″ size, which is one inch of positive ease, and here I’ve done 5 of 7 lace repeats for the front right. I’m loving this project so far.

Another month, another upper body garment to knit.

I had intended August to be Matilda Jane month, having picked up some gorgeous teal-ish Jo Sharp DK that I thought would look smashing with some black Bendi Luxury 8ply that’s lurking around here somewhere.
Maybe next month, though, because the past week spent knitting with Lang Silkdream has resulted in my being bitten by the aran silk/wool bug. I bought a bag of ten balls of the burgundy. I didn’t really know what I was going to use it for and 10 balls seems like it should be enough for a jumper for me. At the same time, I bought 3 balls in the black with the idea of making a little triangle shawl or something out of it, because I thought it would be pretty nice to knit with and wear.

Ariel took 6 full skeins and another 8g from the 7th, which means I have 192g of the red and 150g of the black, which seems to me like enough to knit a nice stripey vest out of.

I started on Sunday, casting on 200 and starting to work in 2×2 ribbing. This is my first day’s progress:

I’m 2/3 through the waist decreases here, pretty happy with how it’s going, though not convinced it will be the most flattering garment!

Last Saturday, I finally admitted that July’s upper body garment was just not going to be finished in time. I’ve knit the body and sleeves and they’re ready to join in a simple colourwork yoke, but I lost my mojo.

I needed a new jumper project, pronto.

Sundays are usually a good knitting day for me, as we sit up late watching films until the MotoGP starts, and we’ve recently been using our Mondays (our day off together) to road trip down the coast to look at farms (more on that later), so I knew I had a good 6 - 8 hours of knitting time there. Combine that with a newly arrived bag of Lang Silkdream in a gorgeous burgundy (sold as red, but what are you going to do?) and a recent flick through the first issue of Yarn Forward and I decided to cast on an Ysolda pattern.

My intention was to photograph each day’s progress, but my camera battery failed while I was away at work.

Here’s the first day of knitting. Gorgeous.

Goldenrod! It’s a colour straight out of a Robert Jordan novel, isn’t it? It’s also one of my favourite colours at the moment.

We launched this colourway a few months ago as part of our lace club (I’m so behind on showing off the projects from the club!) and now here it is in some of our other yarn bases, ready to be added to the store.

l-r: bamboo merino sock, silk merino lace, merino baby alpaca worsted. YUM!

And here’s one I prepared earlier, our yummy bamboo merino sock, in delicious squishy garter stitch (a possible new design that I’m very excited about).

This is the second EGMTK yarn in the pile, a BFL top in purples and maroon. Not my colours at all, but they’ve grown on me as I’ve been spinning (and spinning, and spinning) on this project.

So far, just the singles done, at about 25 wpi, they’re resting for the moment until I get a chance to sit down and Andean ply them. Man, I’m pretty sure I’m making an enormous mistake by choosing to Andean ply 150 g of fairly finely spun fibre, there’s a very good chance I’m going to end up tied to the couch.

Singles spun z on the Roberta.

Frankly, I’m not terribly interested in bicycle racing. Not interested at all, actually, the Moto GP is more my speed, but I’m enjoying competing in the tour de fleece for this year and am VERY glad it’s such a long race.

I’ve spun and plied the first of my skeins, 100g of Polwarth / Bamboo top from EGMTK. Let’s just say that this was NOT an enjoyable experience. I’ve never seen such poorly blended fibre, it was horrible.

I understand that the polwarth and the bamboo have different properties, and different staple lengths, but this was ridiculous, all of the bamboo was contained in two distinct stripes down the length of the fibre. It needed at least another two passes through the carders. Not really good enough, given the price of the fibre.

Anyway, the finished project, a three ply weighing in at about 12 wpi. Singles spun z on the Little Peggy and plied s on the Mitzy.

This weekend, Pants and I took a nice little road trip down to Canberra to check out fibre week at the Bus Depot markets then swung through the National Gallery to check out their Soft Sculpture exhibit which featured an installation by the knitta, please people.

Like most things in Canberra, the whole shebang was vaguely disappointing, but I did see Elin’s contribution to the poorly executed project to wrap the gallery in knitted fabric.

Nice one Elin!

I’ve been working a lot at my sometimes-day-job lately, which lead me to a really helpful discovery:

Our company notebooks are gridded note paper, which is perfect for designing knitwear charts.

We’re by no means self-sufficient, but we’re trying to take small steps towards self-sufficiency.

That means making most of our food from scratch, growing what we can and trying to buy the rest from markets, and eating in season.

This past weekend there seemed to be a glut of lemons at the market we frequent, so we bought a bag. Pants was a tad sceptical that we would use them, so I promised him carrot cake with lemon cream cheese icing.

But I had plans for the rest of the bag. Pants LOVES lemon butter, we tend to stock up at Tarcutta (they have a fantastic craft co-op that we can’t pass without coming home with various jams and the occasional fresh shorn fleece) when we roadtrip to Albury to see my goddaughters.

So I got up early one morning, armed with a pile of lemons, half a block of unsalted butter, some eggs and sugar and made him a wee batch of delicious lemon butter.

He loves it on bread, but I think it’s fantastic on home made rice pudding. Yum.

But I say laziness will do the trick.

Finding myself in the kitchen with my knitting and nothing to use as a cable needle (incidentally, when I’m in need of a cable needle, I generally reach for a KP needle tip or a darning needle), I reached for the (DRY) spaghetti canister and found the perfect substitution.

I will say though, that it freaks me out when one of the spaghettis snap when I’m using it, it makes me think I’ve broken another stupid KP Harmony needle.