Orange Stranger September 17, 2008

I’ve been trying to figure out what rose this is for about four years now: it’s not Chihuly because I have that, and these are much more vibrant. They are a floribunda, disease resistant, repeat flowering. Could be Charisma, but the petals don’t curve back quite the same and I’d be surprised if there are 40+ petals. Confetti, possibly. Fruitee, I don’t think so. If you recognize her, do tell.

(Blooms are normally better formed; this one’s blown out but new ones will be opening in the next couple days.)

Moorish Vixens September 17, 2008

Silky Leaves continues and will be done in the next few days. Next, I’ll start swatching for this:

SheWhoMustBeObeyed’s* Lindisfarne. I have a lot of production knitting to do – Christmas knitting, things people have asked for, etc., – but then I’ll be ready to take on a challenge. At this point, it’s a toss up between Lindisfarne and Dale of Norway’s Whistler pattern (that may or may not be the sweater of the 2010 Winter Olympics).

Can Dale of Norway promise that if I knit their sweater I will find myself wandering the fjords at dawn’s early light? Because with Lindisfarne, I shall find myself combing the moorish lowlands in a cape:

Note to self: purchase jodhpurs. Also black leather gloves.  Wear ring on the outside.

 

* Name redacted to avoid shrill e-missive.

What entomologists knit September 12, 2008

The Entomology pattern by Adrian Bizilia of course!

I have been thinking about this hat since I first stumbled across it on Ravelry, and then I went out and bought the book a few months ago but had too many other things on the needles to begin it. (The Pinwheel Blanket pattern is also from this book.)

This week I used my fully stamped discount card at my LYS for 6 skeins of Dale Falk in wine and oatmeal, and I took up my circs, and I knit. Stranded colorwork is so satisfying. It’s hard to put it down when the picture starts to emerge.

The model is Babe-o-licious, a cat our neighbors left us. He’s a beautiful, if bitey, specimen.

The ridges you see are where the pattern repeats begin and end, but it’s not lumpy (see picture below). I’ve tried to be very careful with tension as I’m a white knuckle/tight knitter but you can see the floats across the top of the circular needle, and they’re quite loose. (Is ther such a thing as too loose? I’ll be finding out.)

I like this braided edge. It’s made with purl stitches where you twist the colors as you knit and it makes a nice clean edge. Very good detailing, I think.

No stranded project may be discussed without pictures of the wrong side. I sighed a little when I saw the pattern in reverse on the inside.

This hat is part of a gift set for my mentor. She doesn’t need to know that I kept putting the hat on and squeeing while I was working on it. I suspect I’ll be making a few of these sets. I love this pattern.

Noro and Vanilla September 8, 2008

The beehive hat is at about 90% and this morning as I was lying in bed (because I had left it overnight on the nightstand where I could see it) and counted on my fingers how many months until I could wear it comfortably. Five. This is not a fall hat. It’s a dead-of-winter hat.

And the vanilla orchid bloomed. This isn’t the species that sets the beautiful beans, but it’s a beauty nonetheless. The leaves are bigger than my hands and nearly as thick. The flowers have no scent, but check out the ants at the base of the petiole. They’ve been there since before the blooms opened, and they don’t go into the flowers, they just hang out down there at the base. This plantlet was a cutting from a monster mother plant at the university greenhouse – it’s over 10′ tall and grows in a planter made out of a 3 pallets. It’s a beast.

19 Years Ago Today September 5, 2008

I started my first “real job”. What that meant to me at the time was that I got to wear pantyhose and sign up for medical insurance. Typing had been one of the only classes in high school I had a) regularly attended and b) received a pretty good grade in, so taking an administrative job made perfect sense. My previous experience had been several years in a pet store, but now I was moving up from catching feeder fish to inside sales for an electronics manufacturer. Laid off a couple years later in one of aerospace’s waning years, I moved on to another administrative job, and then another and another. Over the years, my salary got higher, my benefits got better, my offices cushier. I had some great jobs in those days, and some super shitty ones.

At one time, I was going to write a book about my adventures as a personal assistant, but then I decided just living through it once was more than enough.

After nearly a decade and a half of jobs that made me feel less-than because I didn’t have a degree and had to be a secretary instead (no one ever stated or implied such a thing to me, that was my own angry and informed-by-my-own-inferiority-complex assessment back then), I quit my last job in that field and went in search of greener pastures. Literally, I moved over to the green industry. That was five years ago, and this fall is my last term of school towards earning my bachelor’s degree. In January, I start graduate school.

It’s a singular experience to have now worked as both the secretary and the not-secretary – working anywhere and not being an administrative person. So many of the tasks of that job were just a complete pain in the ass, and I don’t have to do them anymore. Someone else has to. It’s quite delightful.

The admin staff where I work is helpful and professional, but also so familiar: they have that suppressed irritation thing going and desks decorated with mementos of their past or planned escapes. I’m probably projecting, but it looks absolutely miserable. Of course, not everyone hates it like I did, and anyway, I didn’t always hate it. That profession took good care of me and I made friends and learned things I wouldn’t have otherwise. But JesusMaryandJoseph am I glad I don’t have to do it anymore.

On the needles September 5, 2008

Ah Silky Leaves…a lovely little* lace scarf knit up in Frog Tree Alpaca on #5 needles. I knit so many socks it seems like a novelty to use straights. The pattern is a little challenging and I’ve noted on Ravelry the errata I’ve discovered:

• The chart begins on a WS row. If you paid careful attention to where the numbering was, you would know, but if your habit is to begin in the lower right corner as is customary, think again.
• Second, after the repeats, you need to work a WS row before beginning the rows with written instructions. That would be a WS row between rows 8 and 9, which are both RS rows on the pattern.

Frog Tree 100% alpaca yarn is so soft and buttery to work with. It’s slightly fuzzy but doesn’t split too easily and it doesn’t obscure the lace pattern in Silky Leaves. Unfortunately though, it makes my neck itch. This is not a pressing problem as the scarf is not for me, but I wonder about the recipient. This is a gift for my advisor** as I am graduating this December and she has been professional and diligent when our department has made things difficult for all of us. So I thought I’d knit her up this hair shirt beautiful scarf and maybe she’ll be like me and wear it on the outside of her coat. This person is very petite and that works for this scarf; it’s proportioned for a smaller person when knit in DK or sport weight.

I also have gift knitting on the needles, but I don’t post pictures of that stuff until the recipient has received it in case they cruise over here to the blog and ruin the surprise.

Next up after the gift knitting which must be finished this weekend is the Noro Beehive Hat. Swoon.

First, the yarn. Oh god, the yarn.

Not everyone likes Noro, but I think it’s the shit.

It’s a Japanese-made yarn in slightly twisted singles, and it’s slubby and rough, and the skeins frequently have grass or twigs in them, lest you forget that wool comes from sheep. The colors are saturated and wild and with this particular yarn, Noro’s Kureyon (which always brings to mind ‘Carry on my wayward son’) the color changes are long – you get a good amount of one color before the transition to another. And all that makes it possible to create the Noro Beehive Hat, which you can see here, here, or here. The last link is in the same colorway as the yarn pictured above.  I started the hat but then tore it out to begin again because although I seem to have a pinhead in relation to other people I know, the hat was too small on #7s and even on #8s. I’ll need to pick up a #9 circular and begin again and in the meantime, maybe my gauge will loosen up a bit.

I’ve had to tape my fingers while I knit socks on metal DPNs because of my death grip. How else to get 12 spi?

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* Really, it’s tiny. 3.5 inches across before blocking.

** Horticulture program = leaves scarf – get it?