It’s hot, hot enough you think you are going to melt.  Hot enough you wish you would melt and get it over with.  Clothes are optional right now when not necessary.  The little AC in the bedroom just gets it cool enough to sleep each night but just barely.

And what am I doing in the middle of this heat wave?  Why knitting a sweater, a bulky sweater, of course!  No, I couldn’t knit a lovely little lacy sweater, but a FREAKEN heavy monster that weighs nearly 2 lbs of wool, cashmere and microfiber in bulky weight!   Why I am getting sweater fever in the middle of summer I don’t know. Obviously the heat makes yarn fumes worse is the only plausible thing I can say in my defense. I had not had the urge to knit a sweater in two years, having whipped out 3 shapeless things out of cheap yarn in 2 months a couple of years ago.  None of the sweaters fit and I ended up giving all three away to charity.

Since then, not one fiber of my being wanted to knit sweaters.  I couldn’t afford to buy enough good yarn to knit a whole sweater and I was an unsure enough knitter to feel comfortable to try to knit something that would not only fit but look good on me.  So I avoided sweaters like the plague, devoted myself to my beautiful socks and never looked back.

Then Las, that evil girl, decided she didn’t want to knit anymore, just spin lots of lovely fiber.  So she gave me all her yarn including an entire bag of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky in a slate blue.  The yarn was just begging to be more into a sweater.  There was no way in the world I was knitting socks out of yarn that was 2.5 stitches to the inch!  In a fit of yarn fumes overdose, I promised Las I would knit her a sweater out of her yarn.

But what to do?  I hit seaming sweaters since my sewing skills are crap to put it nicely.  And even if I could beg Mom to seam it for me, seaming a sweater knit in bulky weight yarn was going to be difficult to say the least.  

Enter the knitting goddess Elizabeth Zimmermann, high priestess of knitting sweaters in the round.  She mocks knitting sweaters in pieces.  She makes knitting sweaters in the round sound so easy they nearly knit themselves. I immediately began swatching, digging through my stitch dictionaries for cable patterns

The body was easy even with me adding two side cables and one center cable, knitted most of it within 3 days even doped up on allergy medication.  The sleeves not so easy as I struggled with starting the sleeves on 16″ circular needles but once past the first inch, settled down into well-behaved knitting.  

However, the great EZ forgets to mention what to do once you attach the sleeves to the sweater and now have to deal with this wooly monster that’s heavy and is doing a very nice job of steaming your lap.  In all the pages of Knitting Without Tears, EZ does not say one word about how to woolhandle this thing.  

 

Innocent, beautiful but a deadly wool monster just ready to make me boil into a puddle of goo.

 

So on through the heat, I deal with this two trunked monster, trying to get it to resemble some sort of sweater, cursing the weight of this thing, cursing the thickness of the yarn, cursing my love for knitting and cursing the yarn fumes that keeps me knitting through this sweater on hot July nights.  In a fit of heat stroke, I pushed on and on last night finishing the sweater at midnight.  I gloated over my victory, danced through the house with my sweater, showed it to the cats and promptly fell into bed, passing out.

In the morning, I stumbled into the knitting room to make sure last night was not some heat induced dream, finding Mistletoe curled up on it.  How could she want to snuggle on something is beyond me.  Kicked her off and then got a really good look at the neck.  It’s huge, it’s big enough I could nearly fit two heads through it with room to spare.  It’s supposed to be a mock turtleneck, not a new addition to the CHUNNEL!  

I am in denial about the neck.  I cursed the sweater, folded it up and it’s currently having a little timeout on the desk until I can eat enough chocolate and Pepsi to want to deal with it.  I finished the cursed Braided Stream Socks since they were deciding to play nicely.

And then, still not ready to frog back the neck of the sweater I started digging into UFO’s rather than deal with that sweater.  I think I’ll go yarn shopping.  That will make everything better, right?

Las is spending the weekend recovering from the 4th of July celebration we had at her house and is working on her cake decorating class.  I’m…while I am the worse for the wear after this weekend.  When Las bought her house this spring, she happened to get a hay field, a wonderful hay field.  Gone are the days of trying to track down good quality hay for the family’s five hours.  However, here are the days of picking it up out of the field and hauling it to my parent’s house 8 miles away.  

So 4th of July, the entire family spent hauling hay and I spent the rest of the day with out of control hay fever!  My hay fever is not as bad as many people suffer and it’s a bit sporadic so I tend to forget I suffer from it until it has me sneezing and blowing my head off.  By Friday night as fireworks were going off across the United States, my head had gone off and I was so duped up on allergy medication I don’t think I could count to ten.

So what do I decide to do after I have had several does of allergy medication?  Why start Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Seamless Raglan but add in cables and a few modification of my own, of course.

And I wondered why I kept having problems figuring out how many stitches I needed to cast on.  Amazingly enough, it’s coming along very nicely.  Even if several people have commented that Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky can be pile, the yarn is lovely to work with and shows off cables very well.  And enough cannot be said about yarns that knit up quickly.  With just 2 1/2 days work, I’m all ready at 11 inches.

My current pair of socks for the Summer of Socks is grounded:

The first sock came off the needles fairly quickly but the second one is dragging even after 3 days of training where I could I hide in the back and knit and knit and knit and still not make any $@#!& progress!  So they are currently sitting in the corner until they have learned their lesson and decide to play nicely.  We’ll see if threats to dump them for the new skein of Socks That Rock turns them around.

Saturday I was not doing much better from the allergy attack so Mom and I scooted down to the anniversary sale of Mustard Seed Dreams.  40% off everything in the store is a sure-fire fix for allergy symptoms.  I felt immensely better when walking out with 2 new skeins of sock yarn and a pile of Manos Silk Blend.  Silk cures a multitude of problems:

It has been quite awhile since I’ve written. Den has done quite a bit but I was swallowed up by moving to a new house and starting into a new hobby, spinning. During this time I may not have had the free time to sit down and blog but I have done some thinking. This post will not contain any pictures but will be done in three parts.

Disclaimer:
This post is a highly generalized. No animals were hurt except the cat who is highly demented and enjoys being beat like a drum and will bite if you stop and would only allow me to write this post if I first thoroughly abused him.

Now I will return you to your regularly scheduled post.

Many of us fiber enthusiast have had some criticism of our hobbies. Many people say, “It’s an old person hobby.” “It isn’t NORMAL” and so on and so forth. Let us examine these statements and get to the truth of what they are really saying.

“It’s an old person hobby.” I think that rather our hobby shows maturity. We show commitment and the need to remain productive. I think that people rebelled against the constant need for productivity and so they rebelled against the fiber arts. It used to be that people were always working on something, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Does that make it a characteristic of the elderly? No, it simply means that we have chosen a responsible hobby that produces something. These people might feel that you are their grandmother saying to them “Why can you not make something productive? Are you just wasting time?”

“It isn’t NORMAL.” This one I have a hard time caring about. Normalcy is a highly fictionalized paradigm and has no basis. No hobby that happens in the US is going to be normal if you factor in all of humanity. There are way more people in lots of other countries that would never do what we do here. It is no reason to judge and these are people who are terrified that someone else will think they aren’t normal.

Next, we need to explore why women knit. I am not negating that men knit, nor am I saying this is why all women knit.

I spent most of my life feeling guilty if I was not doing something. I listened to my mother say “I should be doing *insert household chore here*” If she was not cooking, or cleaning she was agonizing over not doing something that she felt like she should be doing. As women, we always feel compelled to be completing something. Look at scrap booking, sewing, and quilting. All of these predominant female hobbies center around making something for the family. Granted, the focus has shifted from more practical items to more decorative items but the focus remains.

We feel guilty if we are not doing something for someone. The fiber arts lets us make a product, but be able to enjoy the process. We get to pick the fiber, the color, and the pattern. These hobbies let us assuage our guilt about not doing the thousand things heaped on us, by allowing us to make a finished product.

My next post will be about the need for a female stash. The following one will be dealing with the consequences of why we knit and using it to manage stash.

In case you have not noticed, I am bit into this handknitted sock thing.  The sock yarn, the dpn collection, the stacks of books about sock knitting might give you a clue.  But my biggest thing is Summer of Socks, I did it last year.  Love it.

So of course, when I heard they were doing it again, I blazed a cyber trail over to the website to sign up again. Now, I don’t join because I’m going to win the prize for the most socks, or design an awe inspiring sock pattern.  No, I use to challenge myself to do something a little more than just knit plain 2×2 rib socks that I can be prone to.  I am a notorious rut knitter if I don’t get something to kick me out of my rut.

So my goals for SOS 2008; learn to knit toe-up socks, knit a Cookie A pattern, (I’m thinking Monkey to ease myself into her patterns, I rather not poke my eyes attempting Twisted Flower this early in my life), start learning how to write patterns for socks I’ve cobbled together.

And last but not least, I’ve accumulated a lot of sock yarn in the last 18 months of sock knitting addiction; whatever yarn caught my eye or yarn people said you had to knit with or yarn that others gifted me once they realized I was serious about this sock thing.  I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg of this stash that happened over night.  Many of these amazing yarns, I’ve never knitted with.  Just pull out and admire, pet and place back in the stash.  So many biggest goal of this year is to knit with each brand/type of yarn in my stash that I have not knit with before the end of the year.  I’m not going to get it all done by the end of the summer; not with a list this long and the fact I still have to buy for the yarn accidents across the country in the last 2 months:

• Blue Moon Fiber Arts Seduction
• Blue Moon Fiber Arts STR Lightweight
• Brown Sheep Wildfoote
• Chameleon Colorworks Bambino
• CTH Sockittome
• Classic Elite Alpaca Sock
• Claudia Hand Painted Fingering 
• Dream in Color Smooshy
• Fearless Fibers Merino Sock
• Fiesta Boomerang 
• Fleece Artist Somoko
• FlyDesigns Monarch
• Great Adirondack Silky Sock
• Lang Yarns Cotton 
• Mountain Colors Bearfoot
• Online Supersock 100
• Pagewood Farm Yukon Sock
• Regia Bamboo
• Schaefer Heather
• Seacoast Panda
• Sheepaints Silkbamboo
• The Knittery Merino
• Wollmeise Sockenwolle (I don’t know if I can bring myself to knit this, it’s too rare and precious)
• Trekking Handart

Hard as it is to believe, I’ve put a pretty good dent in it over the last two weeks but it’s still a long list and there are so many other things calling me besides the sock yarn; the Pacific Island stole I have not touched in weeks, the Mystic Meadows stole that I have not even started, the cabled raglan I’m designing for sis.  

So much yarn, so little time to knit.

Today, it dawned on me I’m never going to get caught up with the blog unless I posted the world’s largest posts 10 days straight.  Even though I probably miss something important like being able to find wonderful Alaskan yarn in every single port in Alaska (I have a built-in yarn shop locator on me),

cutting off 16 inches of my hair for Locks of Love (I now feel bald, but that’s what happens when you cut off 1.5 lbs of hair),

spending an entire weekend reorganizing the library/yarn room so I could stop the book/yarn war for world domination.

Or the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the Montana Association Weavers and Spinners Guild conference in Helena, Montana where I got to take four classes from the fabulous Janet Szabo of Twists and Turns fame.  No, I am not going to show you pictures of me with the silly hats that Mom, Las and I showed off to the world at large that night during the tea party.  (Unfortunately, I cannot blame alcohol at all for my behavior in the congo line.)

But I can go on and on about the Summer of Socks and how I all ready finished my first pair of socks with cables.  (Cables are so addicting.)

Yarn: Mountain Colors Twizzle

Color: Sun River

Needles: Size 5

Pattern: 3-plait cable of my own design

Now maybe I can deal with keeping up with the blog.

Warning: This may be long, very long post.  I’m sorry in advance with few pictures because I’m probably one of five people in this world who does not have a camera in their cellphone.

I left Idaho Falls on May 19 for Norfolk, Virginia flying through Minneapolis and Detroit, when I was standing in Minneapolis Airport when it dawned on me, I don’t get out much. I’m a country bumpkin that obviously has not been off the farm as I stared in fascination at the Minneapolis/St. Paul skyline.  This was my first trip east of the Mississippi.  I’ve never seen the Atlantic Ocean, never been to our nation’s capital, never seen New York City.  I’m not an experienced air traveler.  I can count on one hand the number of times I had flown before this: 4.  Yes, and one of those times I was 3 months old so I doubt it counts.  I’m a road warrior up there with the best of them.  Long road trips I can plan, execute and still be standing afterwards.  I’ve driven to Alaska and back, California, Arizona, Canada, I do them all again in an heartbeat if I could afford the gas bill.  But, all in all, I’ve pretty much stayed in my neck of the woods.

Air travel doesn’t really seem like traveling to me; you get on a narrow airplane, an abrupt lurch and before you have a chance to get your stomach settled down, you are in the next big city that is several states away from where you started.  You don’t get the fun of watching the scenario gradually changing, finding your way through countryside, small town America, big cities, and even have a few misadventures along the way.  You may not get there right away but you have a chance to adjust yourself as you go along.

Minnesota, I think your count of 10,000 lakes is at least a factor of 10 too low.  I lost count at 115 near Minneapolis alone. Flying from Minneapolis to Detroit was my first view of the Great Lakes.  What do you guys do with this much water laying around?  Coming from a state where every drop of water is fought over and we are always one rainstorm from a drought, this much water was mindboggling.  I’m use to lots of water, being originally from western Washington, but generally in the steep Cascade Mountains there is not many places for water to sit around.  

Virginia was beautiful but something was wrong I kept thinking to myself as I got off the plane.  It took me a moment to realize what it was: Southeast Virginia has no mountains!  None, almost flat as can be!  I’m use to mountains in at least 3 directions.  Also, your guys obsession with putting tunnels under major bodies of water is flat out scary.  The thought of being 200+ feet under sea level was enough to give me a panic attack if I was not driving in said tunnel under major body of water.

I went to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens one evening to explore. I love Japanese Gardens and try to find them wherever I go:

Compared to my Idaho, where winter was still beating the daylights out of spring, Virginia was lush and green…and my heavens you guys can grow stuff down there!    Wisteria is an annual plant or houseplant in Idaho.  In Virginia, it is a weed.  I’ll trade you guys my tumbleweeds and sagebrush for your wisteria and rose bushes.

Another evening since I was all ready close to Yorktown, Virginia, I sent out exploring yarn shops in the area.  I found Coordinated Colors Yarn Shoppe.  There was much damage to the credit card so bad I’m sure they are still talking about the yarn raid there.  (You can’t see all the yarn in the picture since I strategically stacked the yarn to do damage control.)

From Coordinated Colors, it was on to Ewe Knits and Kits where I got to join the ladies for Knit Night.  It was a blast to have a chance to knit with knitters from across the country.  We share the same passion for knitting and it connects us across the country.  Even though Virginia was foreign and new to me, I had something in common with them; knitting.

Thursday, Alaska.

 

June 14, 2008 is World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKiP).  Never heard of it?  Visit the WWKiP website to learn all about this wonderful event that should be declared a global holiday in my opinion.  

I will be hosting the Idaho Falls, ID WWKiP:

Location: Sportsman’s Park on the Idaho Falls Greenbelt.  We will be meeting at the gazebo by the local farmer’s market.

Time: 10:00 until whenever

Please bring a comfortable chair, beverages (sorry no alcohol allowed in city parks), sunblock and food to enjoy.  The local farmer’s market will be going on and several vendors sell food and drink on location. Fiber artist of all types are welcomed. So come, bring your fiber and yourself!

Don’t live near Idaho Falls?  Go to the WWKiP website and find a WWKiP near you!

I finally made it home in one piece with several completed socks, lots of sock yarn (Can we say yarn crawl in 3 states?), jet lag for going through 5 time zones in less than 48 hours and living out of suitcase for 2 weeks.  I had a wonderful time everywhere I went, meeting amazing knitters at every place.  (Thank you ladies at Ewe Knits and Kits!)

However, as much as my wandering foot sometimes itches and all the wonderful yarn shops in the world, I’m very, very glad to be home.  Give me a couple of days to do all the laundry, clean the house, find the missing Knit Picks sock dpn set, mow the lawn (well I think it’s a lawn, the neighbors probably think it’s a hayfield by now), and get over the worst of the jet lag and I’ll throw up some posts of my coast-to-coast yarn crawl and much travel themed knitting.

We made it home safe and sound from our tour of The Four Corners.  There was much amazing scenery, some crazy stories to add to the family repertoire of traveling stories, and of course yarn.  Not as much knitting as I would like but lace knitting and windy roads do not mix if you would like to keep your lunch down.

First stop was the Needlepoint Joint in Ogden, Utah.  Thank goodness I was keeping myself on a leash and told myself no more than 30 minutes in the store.  My credit card thanks me but Igor hates me for not bringing home more yarn.  The store was amazing, think a fine art gallery displaying yarn; Lorna’s Laces, Rowan, Koigu, Green Mountain Spinnery, Mountain Colors, Great Adirondack, and Manos del Uruguay. Much better than the yarn stores in Salt Lake City.

Next stop: Deadhorse Point State Park.  We caught the sunset there the first night:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day was Arches National Park:

Sunflowers on the Park Avenue Trail in Arches National Park.

We killed ourselves on a 3-mile  but the view was worth it to snapped this photo once all the crazy tourists got out of the way:

We spent two-days in Mesa Verde to admire the ultimate in split-level housing:

Sadly they would not let us in the chief’s tower so I could see the amazing pictographs that much my sock pattern.  Since we did not succeed in killing ourselves going out to Delicate Arch the day before, we hiked 2.5 miles along the edge of a canyon to explore these:

Unfortunately, the side trip to Dinosaur National Monument did not pan out due to a snowstorm so we came scurrying home to our beds.  (I hate hotel beds; granite slabs with sheets on them.)

Miranda asks:

How are you even going to have time to catch your breath? Random, but I have to ask, are you off work for the summer then? 

I’m not sure how I’m going to catch my breath.  I’m going nuts trying to pack for Virginia and pack for Alaska at the same time.  I’m going to forget alot of stuff.  Bad enough I’m forgetful to begin with but add stress on top of this; I’m going to be lucky if I remember my knitting at this rate.  

And no, I don’t have summers off, I really wish I do.  For Mesa Verde and Arches, I just took a long weekend and advantage of having every other Friday off.  Virginia is a business trip for my company but I always go looking for yarn stores when I travel.  Just ask my family.  Alaska is my 7th wedding anniversary present from my wonderful husband since we really did not take a full honeymoon when we got married.  We paid for our own wedding for the most part and there was not much leftover for the honeymoon fund.

Now I need to go recover from the Snake River Fiber Fair. I am for the first time in my life fibered out.  I’m not sure how.  Probably wiping out the Wooly Wonka booth singlehandily might have something to do with it. Oh, and I got to meet a knitting rock star: Shannon Oaky.  I’ll try post pictures of my socks and another little surprise in a little while.  If not, I try to get Las to put up a post covering the fiber fair.  

See everyone at Ewe Knits & Kits Wednesday night!   And just to warn you, I won’t look anything like my picture; I chopped my hair off today for Locks of Love.

As April has left us all behind and May marches across the threshold, I brace myself with my bags packed, knitting needles firmly in hand and yarn coming out of every spare nook and cranny I can stuff it in.  May, month of wandering nomad, I am ready you, bring it on!  Thank goodness most of this is stuff I want to go to.  I have yarn for every occasion and theme:

May 8-12: Mesa Verde National Park, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park.

Five whole days in the car, tis’ a shame I have to share in the driving.  Think of all the knitting time. Yarn packed: Fiesta Ballet Navajo Silver, Fiesta Boomerang Sandstone, Socks That Rock Silkie in Turquoise.  For Patterns: Southwest Diamond Socks, Rippling Dunes Socks and a third pattern yet to be determined.

May 16-18: Snake River Fiber Fair

Yes, it’s local for me but I have a hunch that I’ll be camping at EITC for the duration of the fair.  Yarn: Hoping to score a bunch there.  I’m a sucker for once-in-a-lifetime opportunity yarn.

May 19-22: Norfolk, Virginia

I get to meet the lovely people of Ewe Knits and Kits in Virginia Beach.  Hazardous waste conference and yarn, what could be better?  And any yarn bought on a trip does not count as stash.  Right?  Yarn packed: Since Virginia is for lovers, I have to go with STR Love in Idleness for starters

May 23-June 1: Whittner, Alaska

Last week of May in Alaska?  Yup, I better pack knitting and lots of it.  Never know when I’ll need to knit to keep warm!  So should I take the mountain parka or enough yarn to knit myself a parka?  Yarn packed: Fiesta Ballet Alaska, Fiesta Boomerang Glacier Mist, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Motherload and Fleece Artist Sea Wool Ocean.  (So many good choices for this one, I’m gonna to have to narrow the list down.)  Just don’t have any ideas for sock patterns.

I’ll try posting from the road while in the Southwest but I make no promises.  Be good while I’m gone and if you play in the stash, clean up after yourselves!