Yarn Along in pajamas

It has been a looong time since I did the knit along. Mostly because I haven't been able to sit (curse you back troubles) so my knitting has been on GOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOWWWW.  Now I'm way more mobile its going faster.

This project is the tail end of something experimental.  I am making sleeve, leg and tummy extensions for E's favorite pajamas.  I am not normally ambitious enough to bother with this sort of thing because E.'s clothes go right to J. as hand me downs and everyone is happy. 

 However....  

These particular pajamas are for E. the best-est pajamas ever created on the face of the planet. They are boy's pajamas (eg nice and comfortably baggy) we bought in the UK before we moved and they have guitars and other rock/music equipment on the shirt.  I am lengthening them only because when I told E. they were getting too short and she had to hand them on her eyes teared up and J. started jumping around crowing because E.'s precious "Coolest PJs on the Planet" would soon be hers!  

So here I find myself... doing the thing that seems totally futile for the sake of a pajama obsession that is probably quite unhealthy... 

I will post pics next week with a how-I-did-it-and-if-you-are-a-masochist-or-cheapskate-so-can-you!!

I'm reading Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore.  It is a fantasy novel which has two others in a sort of paralell series. I've found it  interesting and I love the world the author created but the book is slow and pushes hard against some moral issues that I feel quite strongly about so I have found it occasionally uncomfortable enough to skip some reading. I would read it again if it weren't for a lot of (gentle) references to said moral/sexual issues which this is not the forum for discussion.  It has a villain I find very very repulsive and A LOT of victims. So I dunno. Thumbs sideways I guess.

You can see E is re-reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Excitement for the The Desolation of Smaug is reaching fever pitch in our house as the girls all know it opens the day after M.'s birthday and I've already bought us tickets at our local cinema (surprisingly good for a small town) as a surprise for him (he LOVES The Hobbit).

Happy kitting!

xx Jo

Yarn along and Pack up... again.

I know how tedious this must be getting to hear that we are packing boxes... AGAIN.

Think how it feels for us though! 

 I am truly and sincerely hoping to just settle after this.

 Our little yellow farmhouse in the country is a rental but I have every intention of not thinking or dreaming or wishing for anything different for a LONG LONG LONG time.  This will be our third move (fourth home) in 9 months. For a person who likes to nestle in, get to know the inside-out of a place, learn the little signs of the changing seasons, know where the warmest shaft of sunshine lands, find the best patch of blackberries and anticipate the harvest: the last 9 months have been a slow cruel kind of torture.

This packing job is a breeze though. We have some furniture (mostly bought at the awesome Lytton Salvation Army ) and the bulk of our possessions, already here, came in five suitcases and will leave the same way and I've been doing new home shopping in the last two days and have more than quadrupled the things we had with us. However it does mean I now have crockery (goodwill) glasses and mugs (goodwill/Khols/Target) and some pots and pans (family/friends/goodwill/Target) and can actually prepare food for my family in the new place.

 

Matt believes he can read my stress levels by how much knitting I get to do. I am happy to report that the crochet hook (a useful and fun tool but not my preferred modus-operandi) has been tucked away and the knitting needles are out again! I finished the tissue box cover, which was a lot of fun to design but I would change some things next time.

 

The base I did as a granny-rectangle (is there such a thing?!?) because it takes up less yarn and I only had one left-over ball of grey and just the dregs of mustard and aqua. That was great but I should have gone through only one loop on the round when I turned up the side of the box, and again at the top, which would have made it more willing to conform to the shape of the sides of the box.  By the time I realized my mistake (and being essentially very lazy) I couldn't be bothered to undo all the stitching and redo it again.

Delphine is almost done. She needs some buttons and a silk ribbon. So I'm holding off sharing till she is there. The fit is truly spectacular even though I had quite a few "Hang on this looks minute and is never ever going to be my size" moments before and during blocking.
 

I've made quite a lot of headway into Paloma  using Rowan wool cotton in Ship Shape. It is a delicious soft wool but I think it may be too heavy for the pattern. I bought the wool with help from the knitting ladies at John Lewis before I left the UK but sadly they were not entirely correct. I have since found that there is a great conversion chart UK-USA yarn weights on Wikipeadia and indeed: my beautiful Ship Shape wool cotton is too heavy. However before anyone starts to wonder that a tension square didn't notify me earlier of the issue I would like to remind you of the afore mentioned fact that I am essentially very lazy... and heartily sorry for it. So I'm in two minds. Do I carry on and hope for the best or pull it out save my beautiful and delicious Ship Shape for another day?

  

Jo xx

Yarn Along and nesting

 

Between rental hunting, homeschooling resettling and just the crazy hurley-burly of building a household routine from scratch all my creativity is being crammed into tiny little bursts of crochet. And all these tiny little bursts of crochet are making tiny little items of homeliness to dot around the 'not quite home' like space we are living in at the moment. So already down are coffee mattes (made out of the leftover Rowan yarn from Delphine), a short runner and a little doily which looks lovely under a gorgeous blue vintage hobnail jug I found at an antiques market in the gorgeous little town of Healdsburg where Matt works.

 

At the moment I am creating a crochet box cover to fit a tissue box.  Instead of there being a hole for the tissue to pop out of I'm covering the box bottom and sides so the top can be cut off and the box makes a handy  *pretty*  holder for tape/calculators/glue sticks/erasers etc that tend to wander homeless around our schooling space. Next in line for a cover is a small coffee can for a pen holder also for the girl's homeschool desk.


I'm almost there with Delphine. She is at the point of blocking but I haven't had an iron or a suitable place to block since before we left the UK. So she sits in a corner of the cupboard languishing for want of blocking. I've also started Paloma in a slow/haven't got the focus/haven't got the time/ haven't got the mental energy for a lace pattern sort of way. So she mostly sits in my knitting bag languishing for want of focus perhaps another yarn along she will make an appearance in all her gorgeous teal coloured yumminess.

Also... did you see those little people by the hobnail jug... Really. So delicious. They are my little souvenir from Paris. There were whole cityscapes for sale (v. v. expensively) but these little folks with their sweet little dog looked very Parisian to me. Maybe sat by the Seine admiring the view of the Eiffel Tower.

X Jo

Knitting for fidgets

Researchers recon that people who are fidgety tend to be slimmer than people who aren't.  I am the proof that that doesn't work for everyone.
 

I didn't used to be "delightfully Rubenesque" as one acquaintance described me (thanks Nat, that gave me nooooo end of confidence!). M. is convinced that I could model for Lely's Venus which sits in his favorite room (wonder why) in the British Museum ; not having recently seen myself crouching at my bath I can neither deny or approve of his assessment.

 

I also didn't used to be fidgety. I don't find it difficult to sit peacefully or to relax but I do have difficulty having empty hands. I sometimes fill the gap between my fingers with sketching, especially when I'm supposed to be looking attentive in meetings. **blush**

 

  Knitting however is perfect. I can do it while sitting as a passenger or watching a DVD; I do it in the cinema and sometimes (awkwardly) in the bath. I will pick it up while waiting for the kettle to boil or talking on the phone. I got an indignant huff from K. as I knitted during a card game (she won btw).  M. never gets impatient when I say "Hang on- just finishing this row", never ever suggests that I could be more gainfully employing my time and is happy for me to lounge across him with my knitting in hand in the evening while he reads aloud to me. I think its because it's almost always a jumper for him on my needles.

Earlier this week I finished another jumper for M.  This one is in Rowan's gorgeously soft and luxurious (machine washable) Cashsoft in Thunder. The pattern is from the book Warm Knits, Cool Gifts which is full of stylish practical knits and the authors include loads of information about adjusting patterns to fit your needs. So for Matt's Polo I shortened the sleeves (he doesn't like rolled up sleeves) and broadened the chest to suit him.

It was nearly 8 inches longer & wider because M. decided (while it was still damp and blocking) to try it on. I went... mental.  The poor man apologised in a tiny terrified voice. It felt like that moment where Galadriel is tempted by the ring.  Combine that with my "Rubenesque" (thanks Nat) figure and it makes me feel...

Not Good.

Jo x
 

 

Yarn along and Here we go again...

At present it is a daily struggle not to hyperventilate or allow my head to explode.  I'm not too worried about the head-explosion because the mess will just blend in with the carpets but I am a bit of a whiner when I pass out and get a bruise.

This is our living room as of this morning:

 

M. has gotten a job in California and is headed out tomorrow for his medical and to hammer out the details of starting dates etc (breath, breath, breath) and he will- God willing- be moving all our life across the ocean sometime around the end of December. I will follow with the children mid January (breath in, and out, breath, breath, breath).

 

Knitting at the moment is doubly important to me. I use it as a kind of  meditation: I'm not a fast knitter. When I sit and knit with my mother-in-law she has basically been knitting like a machine and has finished her project within a week and I am gently click clicking away on my project month after month. It means that I am forever growing my projects until I get bored and start another one. So I don't finish nearly as many as I start but I'm sure it keeps my blood pressure down and my brains off the carpet.
 

 

Growing on my needles at present is Delphine in a lovely golden-mustard coloured Rowan yarn. I own the book French Girl Knits which I ordered off Amazon on the weight of Delphine alone. In all honesty there are only three patterns in it I would wear so it was a bit of a wasted purchase but I adored  Delphine and Paloma so much I kept the book.
The yarn is Rowan Pima cotton DK in Dijon. Its so beautifully soft and has a lovely drape you don't always get from 100% cotton yarns. Delphine works up really fast. I had 10 cm on the needles (its knitted in the round) after just two days of picking it up when I had the chance. As lace patterns go it is super duper easy- a 4 row repeat with rows 2 and 4 being the same. The only hitch really was figuring out what the UK equivalent of 'Sportweight' yarn is which the lovely and very knowledgeable ladies in the knitting department of John Lewis were able to help with.

So here is me- going onward with my wonderful and terrifying adventure. Knitting in one hand and packing tape in the other.

Xx Jo