Cats and Stacks

Life is full of endings and beginnings.  Some have very definite starts and stops, while others just flow through life without much notice of when they make their entrances and exits.  Occasionally they stack up on you.  Sometimes you finish something, and you just sit back and reflect.  

Some things have ended recently, some are in an active phase of ending, and others are wobbling a bit with the uncertainty of whether they will continue with changes or perhaps finish completely.  I'm taking some moments to sit with it all and just be.     

You'll Never Guess What Comes Next

It's a real mystery, eh?  Still, it's something to do, and whether I knit the accompanying cat(s), as per the pattern, it doesn't even matter.  I have my needles going and I'm knitting silly little things.  I've made worse choices in this life, that's for sure.  They're also fun summertime knits, and the idea of floating along is appealing.  Just the idea, of course, as I'm mostly an indoor creature.  Also, when it comes to water activities, well, I'm mainly composed of rock and a propensity to develop swimmer's ear.  

Maybe I'll make it through a rainbow's sequence of float-y rings, maybe I'll go on to knit characters to go with them (cats or otherwise), or perhaps I'll move on to knitting the other styles of cats in the pattern collection.  

I am looking forward to what I hope will be the release of a dinosaur pattern this month.  I think that the previous patterns became available as PDFs in August, so I am hopeful.  

What's giving you hope these days?

Cancel Calendar Event: Zoom with Helen

I spent several years as a social knitter, meeting weekly with other knitters locally.  That ended some years back, but that didn't mean losing contact with everyone.  Last year, Helen reached out, and because COVID is still here, we made a weekly Zoom appointment.  We even managed to show up mostly on time most weeks.  Occasionally, we even knit.  We never did get the weather and our schedules to accommodate a time to sit outside and knit together.   

Last night, I checked Feedly and saw there was a new post on her blog.  It was a death announcement.  So, no more Zoom with Helen.  She is survived by her mom, two brothers and aunt, and while I never met them, got to learn a good bit about them over these past few months.  She is also survived by her husband and three sons.  I only ever met the younger two when they occasionally accompanied her to knit nights, but learned a lot about all three and her husband over the years.  My heart goes out to them.  

I don't know how to try to sum up Helen in a few words, so I thought I would share some pictures.  Turns out I don't have but one where you can see her.  She's in the aqua shirt helping people untangle yarn in a Barnes & Noble cafe.  The pale blue lace crescent was a present I made for her when she had heart surgery.  The skein of handspun was yarn I spun for her for recovery from that same heart surgery.  The cashmere was yarn I used to knit for her.  The viking get up was something she knit for Franklin Habit when he came to our LYS for his 1000 Knitters project.           

Ends on Ends on Ends

It's all over but the crying?  Nah, but I did finish knitting the Hue Shift Afghan.  Now I just have to weave in all these ends.  I don't mind it.  If it were winter, I might've had a marathon session or three, but as warmer weather is here, I weave in a few and set it aside.  Little by little, bit by bit, I'll finish it.  It's a good task that goes well with flitting about between little chores and mindless viewing on ye old televisor.  I'm way behind with Days of Our Lives, (I've made it to April, as of now), and catching up has offered some good opportunities.  I got a little off track, (I had a method to my madness, but madness wins sometimes, eh?) but I think I am over 2/3 of the way through with the ends.  You can't really tell by my picture, as I'm not snipping them until after I've woven them all in and washed the blanket.  Anyway, the whole thing is going well, and it's even helping me get through various household chores.  I just keep rotating through, and bit by bit, I'm getting things done.  

So, what are doing with your Summer?   

   

Saved from Swatching

So, the Hue Shift Afghan has only a few more rows left to knit (and alllllll of those ends) and it will be done.  I could have finished the knitting by now, but a few things have it off to the side.  We've had some unseasonably warm weather not well suited for having a big ol' blanket on my lap.  It will be back and forth with the temperatures, so the project will have its opportunities for finishing the knitting, and I have a backlog of episodes of Days of Our Lives to watch for weaving in all those ends.  It's going to freeze again this week, so who knows? 

Anyway, with the upcoming completion of this project, I've started looking for the next one.  Now, before you mention my Bridgewater, I'll thank you to know that Rock Island refuses to either require less yardage or to magic a particular skein of handspun to have sufficient yardage to knit it.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  

So, I kept up my search for what I was going to knit, mostly flipping through my library.  There's only so long I can just look through patterns.  I either cast on, or I set it all aside and do something else.  Eventually, the itch of the needles got me, and it was time to wind the yarn. 

Side note, with all of the bouts of warmer weather, I have done a bit of work out in the yard.  In and amongst the new green is plenty of brown, and hidden amongst that I found the poison-est of ivies--poison ivy.  I just didn't know it at the time, and it took a few days before the rash revealed itself, and suddenly I had quite a few patches of it.  Did you know that you can get calamine in a spray formulation?  I didn't but I do now, and it is mighty fine.  So, yeah, it wasn't just the needles that have been itching, but I am doing much better now and mostly healed.  

Anyway, I settled on knitting something from Hunter Hammersen's Curls, a book I've never knit from and which is already discontinued.  I decided it was a good choice for maximizing my handspun.  Then I narrowed it down to a few patterns within the book and started swatching.  I changed needle size and tried a different chart, and I still wasn't sure.  My enthusiasm was starting to wane.  

Suddenly I was saved by the arrival of a new pattern, and the new yarn I ordered in anticipation of said pattern had arrived the day before.  I think I'll just knit these for a while.  It's probably some of the best use of my time for now.   

Happy Groundhog Day (again)!

Yay!  We made it!  It's Groundhog Day!  This year's celebration called for a new hat, so I knit one while watching the movie.  I was going to make a pie but decided against it.  I have plans for a different day for that pie.  I hope you found joy and meaning and meaninglessness in the holiday!  

 

You'll Just Have to Take My Word on This

This picture is thrilling.  You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.  Maybe you're having a second look at it, trying to decipher a hidden meaning.  It can't be that wiggly-looking bit of a partial ball of gray yarn being celebrated, can it?  Ah, but it is.  It is the remains of ball one (of two) from the Hue Shift Afghan kit meant for the border, and I have completed the first two sides.  Now you get the excitement, eh?  The worry of running out of yarn has been lurking around throughout the knitting, but now it has evaporated.  Even though the last two sides are the long sides, I will have enough yarn to complete them.  So, yeah, the picture itself may not crank anybody else's tractor, but it tickles the stuffing out of me.  I can't wait to see how far I make it on the third side with this bit of yarn.    

A White Tiger and a Regular Tiger

In the vein of time being impossible to track and possibly being meaningless while also looming larger than ever, I finally knit these tigers just as the Year of the Tiger ends.  Sure, the new pattern for the Lunar New Year helped prompt me to get going with this, but that wasn't all.  My nephew recently had a birthday, and it was a special one.  It's hard to believe that he is now twenty-one.  He was a precious little baby, a precious little boy, and is now a precious young man.  I want to post picture after picture of him, but I'll resist the impulse.  

You know how small children often like to share animal facts and their enthusiasm regarding their special favorites?  He was no different, and tigers were there at the top of his list.  He loved tigers and was especially intrigued with white tigers.  Still, in his young mind, to declare a favorite would have been disloyal.  So when he was asked about his favorite animal, he would most often respond, "A white tiger, and a regular tiger."  I managed to crochet a regular tiger for him when he was little but never got around to making a white one.  So, for the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, I added a white tiger and a regular tiger to his birthday presents.   

Two Years Later

A lot was happening two years ago today.  I have many thoughts on what happened that day and in the days since, but I'm not the right one to write about it all.  I remember dyeing my hair purple while watching and wondering about what was happening.   

As it also happened, it was my sister's birthday (she has one every year on this day) and so I sent her a birthday present.  Because it was a milestone birthday, I got her something extra special--a Hue Shift Afghan kit.  I got one for myself, too, and we made plans for a knitalong.  Back then vaccines were rolling out, and we thought that by the time we had made significant progress on our afghans we would be able to gather together, put on a movie marathon to accompany an end-weaving marathon.  We weren't right about so many things.  I've made much more progress on my afghan than she has on hers, but that's neither here nor there.  I can hope that when she makes it as far on hers as I have at this point, we can weave in ends and watch movies.  If it works out, I would even help weave in ends on her blanket for her.  Realistically speaking, that only seems likely if her progress stays at its current pace.  

Anyway, here's my progress shot.  I have not woven in a single end.  My next step is to stop gazing at it, unpin it, and start seaming.  Then I will decide if I feel like picking up and knitting one million (nah, it's only around 250-300 or so depending on the side) stitches and working the border or weaving in all those ends.  I don't dread any of the next steps, really.  The seaming is my least favorite because I am neither as skilled nor as speedy as I would like to be.  That being said, I will gain more experience, and that may help me to improve.  It's a win-win, or something, right?         

New Year, New Blog Post

We made it!  That last bit was a bit rocky, (no need to worry--life is like that sometimes) and for the last couple of weeks of the year, I had a lot of trouble keeping track of what day or time it was.  Much of that lingers, but it seems a little less difficult.  I don't have a personal 2022 wrap-up, and I'm just fine with that.  We're still here, and that is enough. 

Anyway, you're here for amazing knitting content, right?  My Featherweight Wrap to Knit has all its ends woven in and it even had a nice soak to wash away the years and, well, you know what a difference a dunk makes.  I don't feel like a modeled photo shoot, and it laid out on the floor is not all that impressive for a picture.  It is a mainly stockinette, three-quarter-ish-length sleeve, black, lightweight, cardigan.  You'll just have to trust me on the finished status, mkay?  I like it and might even knit another of this pattern one day.  

I finished knitting the final quadrant of the Hue Shift Afghan.  I really thought I would have sewn the quadrants together or worked in the ends during the ultra-cold weather, but that didn't happen.  I didn't even drag out the other pieces of the blanket.  I'll get to it someday.  I have some shows I want to watch and I think working on this while I do so will be a good match.   

I knit some little bits for the nieces and nephews.  I wanted to make many more tiny things, and I even thought of sewing little stockings for each of them to fill with doodads and little knits, but that was not to be, and it was probably just as well.  In the end, a snowperson and a chocolate chip cookie felt like the right amount of knitting to attach to their Christmas gifts.  

Welcome to 2023!  I'm glad you're still here.