sweetgeorgia

Keeping Warm. Keeping it Simple.

It’s getting cold in Vancouver. I know, I know, “cold” is relative since it’s not cold like Vermont… but hey, I just got back from sunny California. My hands and feet freeze up in my office because I’m mostly sitting at my computer, moving at the absolute minimum, typing away. Last week, the handspun yarn that was sitting in my office with me was taunting me, “I’m warm, you know? You could knit something from me and you’d be warm…” So I pulled the Blueface Leceister handspun from the shop and knit this:

It’s basically 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, knit for 6 inches, then decrease every other row (i.e. Row 1: *k6 k2tog, repeat from *. Row 3: *k5 k2tog, repeat from *. etc.). The ultimate no-brain knitting (NBK). I knit the entire hat in about two episodes of “House MD”. And I love this hat. So warm. I wore it out grocery shopping and looked at every person on the street not wearing a hat and thought “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

Here’s the start of Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat:

Again, super simple. 56 sts on 10.5 mm needles, 4 rows of 1×1 ribbing in dark green, 2 rows of stockinette in lighter green, 2 rows of white and then a little zig zag pattern in fair isle. Knit for 6 inches and then decrease as above. I’m wondering if I should do the ear flaps and make it more “authentic” a la movie costume. I kind of like it without the ear flaps. Simple.

And oh, BTW, has everybody rushed out to see the new Harry Potter movie yet? The DH and I saw it at the Metreon on San Francisco on Saturday night — waited in line for 1 1/2 hours for the 9 pm show and got out at 12 midnight. Love love loved it and I’m going to see it again this weekend!

Finishing what you start.

It is Monday morning and I am ticking things off my list. I am being productive. I am… “getting things done”… (who knew — it really is like a cult!)

I finished knitting and assembling the little baby Trellis sweater. It’s so tiny! So adorable! And that’s without the baby! All it needs now are buttons… so I’m off to visit the local button lady today.

And since I finished something, I figured it was ok to start something else. Ok, ok. I started a bunch of things, but they are all gift things that are impossible to talk about here… So, I started Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid sweater. Commence the cable-y goodness.

I’m knitting this in Jamieson’s Heather Aran (or whatever they are calling what used to be Soft Shetland). I bought this from them a couple months ago when they were having some massive over 50% off sale — this colour is called “Pagan”, a really vibrant, clear purple.

This is so far one repeat (plus two rows)… I have made some changes since I don’t really want to be swallowed whole by the sweater. I’m only going to do 7 repeats rather than 8 to help shorten the sweater a bit — don’t want to look like I’m wearing a giant wool dress. Also I ditched the two double seed stitch panels on either side of the sweater — this should remove about 10-12 cm (approx 4 inches) from the width of the sweater. That would still make it a 40 to 41″ sweater which is quite large, but liveable for me — it’s an outdoor sweater… or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Yippee, I also finished spinning for Ron’s Animal Cracker Hat — you know, the hat he’s wearing as the boys are sharing animal crackers in Prisoner of Azkaban? Yeah, me like-y. Most of the yarn was spun from Border Leicester — the same stuff I spun for the Jayne Hat. The darker greens on the left are a mix of Border Leicester and brown Romney (both dyed in the same pot together). The red is actually the red yarn that was leftover from the Jayne Hat — but I overdyed it with straight Magenta to get this blindingly brilliant red colour. It’s pretty glow-in-the-dark!

And in weekend news, I taught one of my friends to spin! Jen’s a knitter but her mom used to spin flax, weave and other crafty things. It was Jen’s birthday recently, so I stained and finished a bottom whorl drop spindle and dyed two little bumps of Corriedale wool for her. By the next day, she told me it was all spun up! The infection process has begun…. muahahhaha… ,