Category: knitting

NYC day 4

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The next day we took the train back to Grand Central. We got into the big atrium, looked at the constellations on the ceiling. I expected the boy to be wowed by it all. He looked around at the place, looked up at me and said, “Mommy, this place is kinda small.” I guess you can’t impress them all. I also begged for just one reasonable picture, but was denied.

The least crazy shot I got

Then to FAO Schwarz, which looked a lot smaller to ME than I remembered it. The boy had no trouble tracking down a Lego Star Wars book and a little kitty for the girl.

Then we met up with my in-laws and after  a fun lunch with the cousins and grandparents, they all whisked him away to their house for the weekend.

Zachary and his cousin

Grace, the boy, and Zachary

I stood on the corner of 5th avenue and 50th street and watched his green dinosaur raincoat disappear into the crowd. He didn’t even turn around. And I started to miss him.

I think when we think about having children, we all have something that we can’t wait to share with them. For Eric this has been taking the boy to baseball games and listening to music. For some maybe it is cooking with them or riding bikes. For me, I always dreamed of the day I could travel with my kids, take them to new places and introduce them to the rest of the world. My parents made it a priority to have my sister and I travel to India as frequently as possible when we were children, and I am incredibly grateful for it now. It made me realize that the rest of the world does not live the way we do, and it made me a much more flexible person when it comes to travelling. While New York is still clearly the Western world (at least the part that we visited) it’s a decent first real travel trip.

Back on that Midtown corner, I realized that this was the first time in years that I’ve been alone in a different city. It felt great, so freeing. I stopped missing the boy.

I headed into the subway to find the Habu yarn shop. Habu is a Japanese yarn company with only 2 retail stores–one in Tokyo and the other in New York City, and I just had to check it out. They make some beautiful, unique yarns–silk wrapped stainless steel, bamboo wrapped copper, and fine merino. It’s on the eighth floor of  a nondescript building. You have to know it’s there to find it, which adds to its allure. I walked into a small room filled with beautiful colors, laid out rather precisely.

Many delicious colors of silk wrapped stainless steel

There was no one in the front but in the back room I could hear what sounded like a sewing machine rattling away (I’d later learn this was a yarn winding machine) and women chattering in Japanese. I looked around for a bit and then announced myself.  A woman popped her head in front, told me to look around and ring the bell when I was ready, and then popped back into the back room. Unbelievable. I could have taken anything I wanted, really.

Crazy looking straw yarn! For Rumplestiltskin, perhaps?

I finally settled on yarn that looks like paper but is made of linen, a fine cotton and a pretty thick and thin silk. I tried not to buy anything in orange, but couldn’t resist.

Then I headed a few blocks over to meet a friend that I studied abroad with many many years ago and whom I hadn’t seen in well over ten years, a fact that we figured out by dating her tattoos. It was so, so fun to hang out, catch up, and find that she is the same heartfelt, caring and sweet person that I knew back then, just all grown up.

After that, my sister met up with us and after saying goodbye to my friend, we headed out for a night of bar hopping at chic speakeasy lounges, which Sapana tells me is the “new hot thing.”

Pouring into bed at 3 am, I slept happily, knowing that I had nothing to do in the morning except take care of myself.

Washcloths

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I am incredibly competitive.  I absolutely hate to lose at anything unless I feel like I have absolutely no skill whatsoever at it.  For example, I wouldn’t really care if I lost a game of Scrabble in Bosnian. I am a somewhat gracious loser outwardly, though internally I fume.  I am a horrific, horrific winner.  I try to come across as humble (aw, shucks, I WON? How did that happen?) but really I gloat mercilessly (YES! I rule! And you suck!).

This extends to almost anything in my life, including, believe it or not, knitting. So peaceful and quiet knitting is, you say, how can she possibly make a competition out of this? (Incidentally, there ARE international knitting competitions, most notably “Sock Wars” and “Iron Knitter,” but that’s not what I’m referring to here.) Really, for me it just means that I don’t think of knitting as hard. I mean, doctoring? That’s hard work. Teaching? Hard. Trying to wrap your mind around gravitational physics? That’s hard, too. But I don’t think that anything involving 2 sticks and a bit of string should be difficult, and I never quite get when people say that they just couldn’t get knitting. Most of these women have raised children, a task considerably more complicated and arduous, but protest that they just couldn’t make it work.

Moving on, what it comes down to is that I had yet to find a project I couldn’t knit successfully. This all changed with a recent pair of mittens.  I was so excited about them. They’re a pair of mittens with the pattern of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the backs-hold both mittens together and you get a complete picture. I purchased the pattern and yarn MONTHS ago but hadn’t been able to get to it until recently. Eagerly, I sat down and began. I got to the first pattern row, and realized that the color floats were too large to work as fair isle, but still I pressed on.  Eventually I had about 6 strands of yarn coming off the needles and had no idea if I was coming or going.  I ripped it out.

No matter, I thought to myself, I am a GOOD KNITTER. I’ll just use another advanced technique and get these things made. I tried intarsia.  Now that was an even bigger mess, and I had at LEAST 12 strands of yarn coming off the needles and everything was all twisted up and I ended up knitting them shut.  I ripped that out, too.

Not one to give up, I tried again and once more, failed miserably. I was defeated by knitting. Pathetic.

I couldn’t even bear to take a picture of the disaster, such was my dismay. Bad blogger now, too!

Dejected, I asked for help on some knitting sites and found that the mittens, as written, are UNKNITTABLE. That’s right–it’s not me, it’s the pattern! Only a bit of relief because, you see, I still failed to recognize that the pattern wasn’t knittable when I purchased it! Quite a blow to the ego, let me tell you.

What was I to do next?

Clearly, the answer was to knit something so mindless that they couldn’t possibly fail.

I dug around in one of my bins of yarn and found a whole bunch of pink and purple cotton I’d picked up on sale a few years ago.  I don’t like cotton much for knitting, so it had just sat there.  But now it seemed perfect to pull it out and just start knitting some random squares.

I tried different patterns and techniques.

The overall effect was very soothing.

And at the end of the day, at bathtime, the kids now clamor for the purple washcloths! They love them!

Yes! I RULE (at knitting)!

The Cowl that Swallowed Me

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For Christmas, my sister gave me a project to knit! At first, when she handed it to me, I thought she was giving me yarn and a pattern to knit a scarf for her, and was like, “Oh…how thoughtful of you for yourself.”  But no, it was for me!

Pattern: Chunky Seeded Cowl

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky Natural

I love this! It’s big and chunky and I feel for a second like I’m a hip Brooklynite walking in Park Slope instead of a Denverite schlepping it on Larimer.

I would never, never have bought this color for myself–am not usually a fan of chartreuse, but I think it looks just lovely all knitted up.

The fabric is lofty  and heavily textured:

And in case of a sudden snowstorm, I can pull it up over my head to protect my coif.

I happen to have a skein left over and think that a slouchy hat would be the perfect companion piece.

Thanks, Sapana!

Fixing Nemo

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[Let me start by saying that I had  a clever idea for this blog post comparing my quest of the perfect Nemo hat to that of Ahab and Moby Dick.  It was funny.  Then, I mentioned this to Eric, who proceeded to tear it apart bit by bit until it was unusable.  Something about how Ishmael isn’t Ahab and how Ahab hated Moby Dick for eating his leg and how nothing really fit and I really don’t care because every time I’ve tried to read Moby Dick all I can think about is how I’m wasting precious minutes of my life being bored out of my mind, but still, it ruined my analogy and I didn’t want to get mocked by other intellectuals so instead you are left with this:]

The girl hates hats.  The girl loves “Finding Nemo.” It is cold in Colorado, and one needs a hat for the winter.  I thought, why not make her a Nemo hat?

While I was making it, she seemed pretty excited–it’s pretty fast and only took me a few days.

Once I added the eyes, though, she backed away slowly, fear in her eyes.  I got the boy to model it:

Pattern: Fish Hat: Dead or Alive

Yarns: Loops and Threads Impeccable Worsted

I guess it might be a little freaky to see friendly little Nemo eating your head. And before someone starts, I know that it’s not an exact replica but it’s close enough for a 2 year old’s hat.

So after much discussion, we figured out that the big felted eyes were scaring her.  She insisted on a change to “puh puh buttons,” or “purple buttons.” Her favorite color is purple.  So we dug up a few buttons from a sewing kit that the boy has, and he insisted on sewing them on himself.

 

 

 

 

After that, it must have been slightly less scary, because she agreed to put it on for a little bit.

Then she wore it to the store, where it kept falling off her head and I realized it was too big, even though I’d sized it down for her head.  I added a messy looking but functional dart in the back, figuring it would be hidden by the floppy tail.

 

And did she love it then?

No. She completely and fully rejects the Nemo hat.  Won’t wear it.

The boy likes it, though, and will wear it.  With one request–“Mom, can we put the big eyes back on again?”

 

 

Baby

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The girl LOVES dolls.  The girl has a few dolls, all of whom are called “Baby.” They’re all on the smaller side, except for an old Cabbage Patch Kid that used to be mine growing up.  (Her name is Colette Kate and she’s from Scotland, in case you were wondering.)  The babies use the toilet, eat, get their diapers changed, and when they are asleep the girl runs around the house shushing everyone so they don’t wake up.  We’ve actually had to leave the room not to disturb the babies.  While that may sound like we’re being pushed around by a two year old, you’ve clearly never seen the girl’s insistent side.

Still she didn’t have a soft cuddly doll to play with, so I thought I’d knit one for her for Christmas.  The other part of this is that I wanted her to have  a little doll that looked like her with tan skin and blond hair and they simply don’t exist for purchase.  American Girl comes close but I wasn’t going to buy her a $90 doll.

Look! She even has toes!

Here’s a closer picture of her hair, which I made using a light tan color and a butterscotch yellow twisted together so it looks as if there’s highlights.

Pattern: Baby Doll Set

Yarn: Takhi Cotton Classic (doll and hair), Knitpicks Felici self striping (dress), Lion Brand Cotton Ease (underwear)

The tricky thing about knitted gifts for kids is that you have to prepare yourself for the very very likely chance that they will refuse to wear or play with whatever you’ve spent so much time and care making and throw it aside for whatever battery-powered toy shows up under the tree courtesy of Santa, who then gets all the credit for the cool toy.

I hope she loves her new baby–I’ll report back after Christmas and let you know if she does.

Cozy Winter Sweater

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New sweater.  Fastest sweater ever knit.  Bulky yarn goes so fast.

I don’t remember what I was yelling at the kids about here, but I look like my father’s sister.  That’s sort of a scary thing.  Maybe I need to reconsider my anti-Botox stance.

Pattern: Iced by Carol Feller

Yarn: Malabrigo Bulky

It really is so warm and cushy.  I see in the pictures that one of the fronts is a bit uneven–that’s just button placement and I’ll fix it.  I found the cool bamboo buttons (and the yarn, for that matter) at Fancy Tiger, and I love them.  My only complaint is that this super soft yarn already has fuzzed and looks a bit pilly, even after just wearing it a few times.  And I think I could have made the shawl collar a bit bigger. Overall, though, it’s exactly what I wanted and I plan on getting a lot of wear out of it this winter!

February Lady Sweater

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I finished this sweater nearly a month ago, but because it’s tough to get someone to take pictures of me wearing it, I haven’t been able to post it until now. You know, most knitters who blog seem to have a dedicated professional photographer and stylist who do their hair and take them to some appropriate place for pictures where, it always seems, brightly colored leaves wait in piles to be thrown up and float down for dramatic effect.

Me? I just hope my hair looks slightly less crazy then usual and there aren’t a million toys about in the backyard.

Here’s a picture of the back–the lace goes all the way around.

And here’s a picture of my “Hopeful Obama” pose.

Pattern: February Lady Sweater

Yarn: Dream in Color Classy

I love this sweater.  According to others who have knit it, this sweater grows a ton when you block it, so when I was about 2 inches before I thought I needed to stop, I put the whole thing on waste yarn and blocked it then to see how much bigger it got.  I was so happy I did this as it got about 1 1/2 inches longer and I only knitted another 1/2 inch. I think it could be a tiny bit longer, but that will stretch with wear.  This yarn is also so soft and I love the color variation.  Some of the variegated yarns can look like Rainbow Brite had diarrhea, but I’ve found that the ones that are subtly different in the same color family look prettiest.  It’s gotten a fair bit of wear already and hasn’t pilled much at all.

On another note, this is now the third sweater I’ve knit and it’s amazing how much better it looks than the first one I did, which is honestly sort of lumpy and unwearable.  I may even end up frogging the whole thing and making something else from the yarn.

Back to the FLS, it is a bit more of a spring/fall sweater and it’s already getting too cold to wear this sweater outside.  Luckily, I’m almost done with a big cushy winter sweater.  Maybe I’ll even get pictures with that one with snowy trees in the background…or sipping hot chocolate by a warm fire…or maybe it’ll just be the fence again.

Click Beep Whirr

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How do you make one VERY happy 5 year old?

It’s easy.

Just add hat.

 

Recognize R2D2? I have to say I think this is the coolest hat EVER.  I’m still missing a few details–the black dot in the large blue patch and a few white lights.  I wasn’t going to add the second projecting bit since I don’t like how it looks on the hat, but the boy is a stickler for details and noticed its absence immediately.   Here’s a shot of the left side, and then a closeup:

 

Pattern: R2D2 Hat

Yarn: Loops and Threads Impeccable Worsted

 

(Note to non-knitters who read this blog: Feel free to skip the next paragraph of knitting minutiae.) The hat is created as a basic striped hat and then the details are done in duplicate stitch.  I didn’t find this nearly as tedious as other knitters seemed to, though I used a bit of intarsia for the blue rectangle area and it really does look much better that way.  I also used cheapo acrylic yarn because I wanted something that can be easily washed and dried.  I could not get the red spot to look good in duplicate stitch, so I knitted a circle out of red Cascade 220 and then felted it before stitching it on, which is what I plan to do with the large black spot as well.  Also, the sizing of the hat as the pattern is written didn’t work–the first hat I made was HUGE, and thus gifted to a friend with a big-headed child.  I also added a few extra rows of gray for a deeper hat to cover the ears.

Of course, now the boy is asking for a matching C-3PO hat.

Habitat

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Eric’s been asking for a hat for a while to match the scarf I made him last year.  I had plenty of the same yarn left over, so when I saw this pattern, I knew it would be perfect.

Cables are pretty and functional–they make the fabric thicker and a lot warmer.  Here’s a close up of the cabling at the top, which decreases to form a star pattern.

Pattern: Habitat by Jared Flood

Yarn: Cascade 220

I love this hat!  I was initially daunted by all the cables, but I used Grumperina’s tutorial on cabling without a needle and it made it speed by and a lot simpler. The length is also just right to pull over your ears but not get in your eyes.

I may have to make one of these for myself, with some matching wristwarmers.

Jiffy Jaffy Smiley

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Knitting takes a bit of a backseat over the summer, what with gardening, hiking, the triathlon, and the fact that it just seems so warm.  Still, I don’t think I could stop entirely and did manage to get a few things done over the summer.

Meet the newest member of the family, Jiffy Jaffy Smiley, or just Jaffy for short.

This little giraffe has a lot of personality and is very popular.  He gets chair rides, gets read to, and goes swinging.

Jaffy was well loved and fought over by both children.  I intended him for the girl (hence the pink/purple), but the boy LOVES him.  He carries him around and took him on our recent trip to Moab.  On the way home, the boy uttered those dreaded words, “Mommy, I have to throw up.  NOW.”  I’m going about 75 mph on I-70.  I try to pull over as fast as possible, but as I’m swinging the car over, I feel a few splatters of vomit on my neck.  I get out of the car and look at my poor boy, covered in peanut-butter scented disgustingness.  Awesome.  I stand there for a moment, not sure what to do, and then a 16-wheeler rolls by me and I realize that I’m standing in a really, really dumb spot.  I quickly get back in the car and we get off at the next exit, thankfully only a quarter mile ahead.  In the parking lot of the gas station, we do our best to clean up the floor of the rental car and change the boy’s clothes.  My parents are in the car with me, so I have help.

That’s when the boy sees Jaffy.  He’d been holding Jaffy and the poor giraffe had taken the brunt of the projectile.

You know those scenes in war movies, where there’s two buddy soldiers, and they get through a firefight?  At the end, one of them looks forward and says to the other something like, “Jimmy? Man, I didn’t think we were going to make it through that one.” He then turns to look at Jimmy, and sees that his head’s been blown off. “Jimmy?! Jimmy?! Nooooo!!!!!”

That’s what it was like when the boy saw Jaffy, soaking wet in slimy goo.  Up until that point, he’d only seen the clothes and the book that he’d gotten wet. “Jafffffyyyyy!!!” he cried. I did my best to rinse the toy off in the gas station bathroom, stuck him in a plastic bag and tied the top.  I tried not to cry as I thought about the months of work that could be lost in one fell swoop.  Worst case, I supposed, I could take him apart and restuff him.

Back at home, I hosed him off in the utility sink and then stuck him in the washing machine.  I love Lion Brand Cotton-Ease for this exact reason–you can just toss it in the washer and it looks brand new when it comes out.  He’s stuffed with a synthetic fill so that was okay in the wash, too.

After 45 minutes, out he came, smelling clean and fresh and ready for more play.  I think of it as the resurrection of Jaffy.

I’m delighted that he survived and is so well loved.  It’s really fun making toys, like you’re creating this new being, though it felt weird to be sewing into him, like it hurt or something.

Or maybe I’ve watched Toy Story one too many times.