cimorene: a collection of weapons including knives and guns arranged in a circle on a red background. The bottommost is dripping blood. (weapon)
I have a long-term To-Do list, and last week I got this list down to two items, one of which was oiling the sewing machine so I don't really count it, and took myself quite by surprise. You wouldn't think that would be possible, and yet I found myself unexpectedly with Only One Thing On The To-Do List.

And I said to myself "Wow, this thing won't take that long! I will probably finish it quickly and easily tomorrow!" (I still haven't finished it.)

Only then the next day I woke up with a whole long list of things I suddenly needed to do first: clean the counter, paint my nails, have a bunny photoshoot, sweep the bunny cages, ink my italic pens and photograph sample writing. I thought vaguely in there, "Maybe I won't get it done today, but soon!" Except then I finished all those things in the day and also finished reading the book I was closest to the end of. (If I'd just done the last thing on the list instead of reading, I'd've finished after all.)

And that's when it occurred to me that I've been putting off the tasks on this To-Do list not simply because they are difficult or intimidating, but to avoid finishing my To-Do list.

At the end of the To-Do list lie all the other things that I should do, but don't know how to start! (Like removing a lot of wallpaper, because I've already tried several ways that don't work that well. We probably need to build scaffolding, which isn't something we are at all qualified to build.) Even worse, items like "Find more social activities and make more friends" are down there! They're things with a sense of 'should' but with no obvious first steps or convenient handles for executive function to get hold of.

What's more, I realized that I would never even have realized this (that I was trying not to finish the To-Do list) if I hadn't hurt my shoulder and had to stop knitting.

Because all this winter I've been furiously occupying myself with knitting, knitting itself has been serving me as a bottomless To-Do list.

This To-Do list dysfunction also means that anything I don't urgently or impulsively do at once - anything which then lands on the list - is in danger of being indefinitely procrastinated, even if there's nothing inherently difficult or anxiety-causing about it (like buying another batch of ebooks, so actually the list now has two things besides oiling the sewing machine again).
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (pirouette)
Here's the sweater I knitted so hard that I sproinged my shoulder blade! It's been finished for a couple of weeks, but I finally got Wax to take some pictures of it on me in natural light.

It's good that I hurried when knitting, actually (even if it isn't good that my shoulder is wonky), because I think it's going to be too warm to wear it out more until next fall. I got a few weeks of wear out of it when it was new this way.



This sweater was knitted using the popular Finnish knitwear designer Sari Nordlund's Bookclub cardigan pattern in Filcolana Peruvian aran-weight wool in color 227 ("old rose", but it's more a bright pastel lilac, I'd say). (I made a number of modifications and notes which can be seen on my project page.)

I love this sweater. It has an unusual shape and drape caused by the unusual construction with the Scandinavian-style shoulder, where the shoulder seams are moved onto the back and the fronts curve over the shoulders to meet them, and I love the shape of the front V-neck.

It isn't perfect because the pockets aren't deep enough to carry my phone in - which I knew was happening when I knitted it, but I didn't want to lengthen the bottom hem to make the phone fit or go back and move the pocket openings higher up. Also the sleeves are slightly too long. You never know for sure how much they will grow with blocking, and having them slightly too short is worse.
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
(Not G)IP! After years and probably a hundred attempts to draw a version of my old default icon that I liked better than the original, last week I succeeded! I've wanted for a few years now to replace the vintage photo of Helen Kane that I've been using as a default since probably 2008ish?, but I would always get hung up at the last minute in a panic of identity crisis: how will anybody recognize me without a teal side-eyeing profile? (I have a constant urge to make my pixel Art Deco radio my default, but I just can't stand the strain of it being non-teal and not giving side-eye. But I wouldn't like it as much if I made it teal and gave it eyes!!!! It's a dilemma.)

Karar i arbeit. (This means "men at work" in a weird western Finland Swedish hick dialect and is the title of a song by Kaj, the Finland-Swedish band that Sweden are sending to Eurovision this year. And it's what [personal profile] waxjism has started saying anytime it is remotely relevant, I guess because it sounds funny to her.) The diggers are back this morning digging up the rest of the intersection next to our house. They dug up most of it in February and replaced some pipes, but then they've left it and most of the street below covered in compacted gravel since. The longer they leave it there, the likelier that our plumber will manage to get the digger guy to do the digging he needs to do to fix our pipe before they repave the road (not calling people back apparently applies also to contractors and not just to end customers! Great!), so I guess that's good. Possibly this development is bad, in fact (like what if they just keep going until they finish and then immediately start paving?). The cats like watching out the window though, and that's always cute.

At least a few flowers! All the maples are blossoming now, like little chartreuse pom-poms everywhere. Very cute. Possibly my favorite tree decoration. Lilies have been coming up, but nothing else but our daffodils is blooming yet, not even our tulips (there are some tulips open in town, in much sunnier spots, but our yard has a great deal of shade from tall trees around it).

Knitting for Niblings (they grow up so fast): The triplets I used to help bottle feed when they were born are turning eighteen this month and one of them is working this summer at a bar here in town, so has sought permission to crash at our place in the event he misses the late bus. They are basically adults!!!! Full-sized people!!! I mean he's been taller than me for a couple of years already, but still. Also this means I guess it's time to make them Adulthood Sweaters, but they're all the same age. (We made their older sister a nice sweater for her 18th birthday under the theory that she was now for the first time unlikely to outgrow it quickly.) (We did make her a sweater when she was a small child once but we never managed to make sweaters for the triplets because of this three-at-once issue. Not that they minded: it would be hard to find better-connected small children and they were always drowning in so many presents and party guests that they wouldn't notice our presence or absence.) So I'm thinking we will give them cards explaining that we will make them each the sweaters of their choosing now, but one after the other (Wax has tentatively agreed to this but she's probably forgotten by now because the discussion was a couple of weeks ago). It's summer anyway, so it's not like anybody will be in a rush for a sweater. And with any luck they will choose things that are easier to make than the long allover-cable mohair-and-merino cardigan Wax made for their sister. And I guess we need some kind of smaller symbolic present to go with the cards, but baking is out because their birthday party always features more sugary desserts than can be eaten. But also my shoulder still hurts (slightly, intermittently) and I still haven't called the doctor (or done the other stuff on that list from ten days ago. It was too scary and I froze up and didn't know where to start! Maybe I can start now, idk). So I couldn't start knitting right away anyway.

Fandom drama update, secondhand: I also forgot to mention that the two-week hiatus in Wax's fandom (911) ended and last week the new episode went up! And, as she and I expected, 911 spoilers... lol... ).

Reading Old Stuff: I made another attempt to read Le Morte d'Arthur and didn't get very far yet. The narrative voice is just incredibly dull! I did read the introductions to the Standard Ebooks edition with great interest, and obtained this list of sources which I hadn't heard before: "the great bulk of the work has been traced chapter by chapter to the "Merlin" of Robert de Boron and his successors (Bks. I-IV), the English metrical romance La Morte Arthur of the Thornton manuscript (Bk. V), the French romances of Tristan (Bks. VIII-X) and of Launcelot (Bks. VI, XI-XIX), and lastly to the English prose Morte Arthur of Harley MS. 2252 (Bks. XVIII, XX, XXI)." Having read Robert de Boron's "Merlin", the beginning of Le Morte d'Arthur is recognizable and also startlingly less interesting and fun to read. I looked up the English metrical and prose "Morte"s mentioned here and concluded that they didn't sound very fun either, although perhaps I will try them soon. Also started William Morris's translation of Grettis saga, and contrary to Morris's transports about characterization and poetry in the introduction, so far it is just wading through a lot of run-on sentences of geneology and short summaries of who attacked/burned and looted someone's house, just like the other Icelandic sagas I've attempted to read in the past. Amazing to think this in any way could represent a story designed to be told orally to a live audience who were supposed to not be falling asleep or getting up and leaving.
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (pirouette)
We went to Stentorp and petted the lambs!

Here's all the pictures on my pet photo blog

I got a sweater's worth of very soft brown finnwool too.

This is my favorite. I can't get over the expression of this lamb while Wax was petting it 😂. I want this reaction to everything:

cimorene: painting of a glowering woman pouring a thin stream of glowing green liquid from an enormous bowl (misanthropy)
I picked a shawl pattern (Laulu by Sari Nordlund but bigger, in thinner yarn, with different edging) that's covered all over with cables and lace for my 900+ meters of jelly bean green wool (this was my replacement idea for how to use this color that I love, after deciding against a hat) (the yarn color is actually named for green marmalade balls, a Finnish traditional candy, in Danish, the original language. They are called vihreitä kuulia in Finnish).


a little before the halfway point


I guess I just wasn't realistically picturing how much longer it takes to knit each square inch in cables than just in lace. I have spent so many hours on this shawl. I've been working on it for twelve days, probably an average of six hours a day, and I'm only about two thirds finished.

I need to finish because I have the wool for a cardigan and a fair isle vest waiting. And on Easter we get to buy some more natural unbleached local yarn from Stentorp.
cimorene: medieval painting of a person dressed in red tunic and green hood playing a small recorder in front of a fruit tree (medieval)
Life

[personal profile] waxjism's winter or "winter sport" holiday of one week started yesterday. I had a little bit of energy and got the empty cookie tins from Christmas (9 of them) washed, dried, and put away. We were going to go for a walk yesterday and then we were going to go for a walk today, but the sun has set now - it's almost 4 pm - so I guess we'll try again tomorrow. Also in the last week Wax has taken the trunk of the Christmas tree outside and I finished packaging up the huge box of wrappings into trash bags (and a little bit into plastic and cardboard recycling) and now we have recycling bags all over the hallway and the cold porch. All the star lanterns are still in the windows, but I haven't had the energy to turn them on in a month.

Winter knitting

Since Christmas I have finished this double-layered stocking cap for my dad (Musselburgh by Ysolda Teague), half in Scheepjes Downtown self-striping sock yarn in Lakeside and a contrast half in Sandnes Garn Sunday in Jelly Bean Green/Petite Knit Statement Green. I made two pairs of socks to use up the remnants (adding a solid chartreuse yarn in the second pair because there wasn't enough for two whole pairs). Also some legwarmers, this pale pink brioche sweater and a matching scarf from the remnant of the pink yarn, a balaclava which I have worn almost every day since I finished it (v. amused that it makes me look like the marginalia recorder-playing musician in this icon), and finally this beautiful two-color brioche shawl (Raina by Andrea Mowry).



Pets

Inspector Japp continues hanging out on the sofa frequently. Rowan has taken to coming and personally begging us for dry used teabags which is probably good because he gets less of them that way (we won't let them have more than 1-2 per day; they don't manage to consume very much of the contents). (These pictures are of him emerging from a narrow bunny hay tunnel and nothing to do with tea.)

Tristana continues to hang out near the gate and watch Sipuli with increasing chillness but Sipuli continues getting impatient and jumping on the gate to stick her paw through the bars and try to grab when Tristana won't come any closer. Wax and I continue NOT doing what the animal behaviorist recommended, which is parallel play and training and sitting with the cats close to the gate to keep them calm, because executive dysfunction/energy/planning. I hang out near the gate on either side and sometimes a cat will sit on me, that's about as far as we've come. Wax can't figure out a way to make herself comfortable near the gate at all. A bit like Tristana, hah hah hah.
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
I have been sneezing on average about once per day the last week or so, so there must really be something around that's irritating my nose, just not that badly anymore. It could be the tree, I guess. I took the ornaments off on the 6th per Finnish tradition, but Wax has yet to carry it outside.

I seem to have estimated the socks wrong again. Wax is now wearing the original leftovers socks (from Daddy's hat) and I knitted one sock with the leftovers from them, but it did not use enough of the leftover yarn (too many stripes of Arwetta in between). I am making the second sock mismatched in the hope of using as much of the yarn as possible. I can't bear to waste it because it's really lovely soft and silky merino sock yarn (Scheepjes Downtown).

I should have made a hooded sweater before now, though. My neck and ears are always cold. But I can't promote another project ahead of the next Fair Isle vest I've been planning, so I'll have to get by tying shawls around my head and neck a bit longer.

Actually I've been so focused on knitting lately that it's almost my fandom. I'm not even watching tv at the same time, lately, just listening to David Mitchell's radio show. (I got a bit further in my Star Trek rewatch before getting stuck on the episode where Starfleet tries to order Data to be dissected and Picard has to sue. It causes too much anxiety, but I didn't want to skip ahead.)
cimorene: The words "EGG AND SPOON RACE" in bright turquoise hand-drawn letters (egg and spoon race)
No news yet on the airbnb xmas fiasco or from the plumber. (We aren't concerned about the latter and I don't suppose anybody really expected movement that quickly from airbnb. Or ultimately any satisfaction, although the owner of the property that had already been sold did say he would personally send their money back if the site didn't respond.)

I finished knitting my brioche sweater and it is lovely and soft, but the sunlight has been very gray every day since, and the color is such a pale pink (it's Drops "desert rose") that it looks sort of sickly beige in photos. I also finally made the second sock out of the leftover yarn from the hat I made for Daddy. It turned out, however, that there wasn't enough yarn leftover for a whole pair and I had to order a second skein. So I've now started making another pair of socks using the leftovers from the leftover socks, striped together with some solid colored Arwetta to eke it out. Hopefully I will manage to not have leftovers this time.

I bought some books for me and Wax for Christmas - this is what always happens, I mean, that I just order a present for each of us, because she doesn't care at all about opening presents and she is too literal-minded to take up a present-shopping quest. I can inform her what I want her to buy me, but I have to remind her so many times and give such explicit instructions that it is much easier to buy it myself, and I do not object to buying my own presents on sentimental grounds, and indeed, holidays and anniversaries don't really hold any sentimental value for me either (I just like to buy myself presents specifically around the solstice because I inevitably would like a little treat around then). I think in general if I were really emotionally invested she would put more effort into it, but on the other hand, could someone with that sort of sentimentality have even ended up in a relationship with Wax in the first place? I was in recent years buying us matching pajamas for the holidays, but this year we finally don't need any more nightshirts or nice flannel pajama trousers. (And I'm going to have to find a new pajama source next time anyway, because I require doubled bottom hems with piping, pockets, and drawstrings on all pajama trousers and my previous brand has taken out the pockets. I will make them myself if necessary when our current pairs wear out.)

What was I saying? Anyway, I bought the second volume of Tove Jansson's Moomin comic strips for Wax, which was a sneaky move because I really wanted to read it as well. Both of us have to reread the first volume before we can read it though. I bought a big full-color book about knitting ganseys for myself, and I've already flipped through it all. It was lovely, but the graphic designer or whatever needs to be laid off because it was all typeset in an overly thin gray sans serif on gray, beige, and pale blue backgrounds for most of the pages, which is like... I can read this, but it's also annoying as hell. (The Gansey Knitting Sourcebook by Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell.)

Our bunnies are having a wild hair now that they're about 90 in bunny years (expected life span 10 years; current age 9 years), and we've started calling them the geriatric bunny mafia. A few weeks before Christmas Inspector Japp amused us by discovering that he could sleep on top of our padded foot cubes for the first time, and then using this vantage to steal an entire box of Finnish jelly balls. (There were two left in the box and the others were scattered around under the furniture with dust and bunny fur on them, while little bites had been taken from several and two had been half eaten.) He then moved on to eating the round placemat made of woven seagrass from the little table where Wax keeps her tea, and he kept nibbling on this while it was still on the table until it was completely ruined and I gave up and gave it to him. He also started sitting on our armchairs and stole the cards from two Christmas presents the week before Christmas, nibbling on the corner of one of them. Then last weekend he knocked a box of Belgian chocolate truffles off a different side table, which led his brother to eat half of one of them (fortunately Rowan showed no ill effects). A couple of days later he stole a box of pretzel sticks from a different side table, scattering them all over the sofa! Yesterday I couldn't find him when I went in there to check and then found him out in the hallway, where there are no rugs to sit on, lying in front of the cat litter box (???) and napping, and today he spent most of the day napping on the sofa. (He is still eating his food as normal, so at least he isn't in significant pain, even if he is potentially senile... .)

cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
Supplementary information to a few past posts:

1. Peppermint (candycanes) update: we actually found candy canes, on the 23rd, in a supermarket we had already looked in. They were manufactured in China and are kind of crappy (I bought some). The full size candy canes, an entire box, were all pre-broken into a bunch of pieces in the wrapper. The small candy canes are out of proportion and like... almost U-shaped, and too fat, and insteaad of being wrapped normally they're each in a little clear plastic envelope. All of them are pink and white instead of red and white and they don't taste that great. I will try getting the peppermint drops from that place in Sweden where they invented them perhaps next year.

2. Cat update: Tristana refused to sleep with me in the bed for three nights after the night when BIL's cats were kept in our bedroom, but she is back now. Behavior wise, she seems about the same as before all the visitors arrived. No further progress, but hanging out fairly close to the gate (when she is activated and before she gets too cold and has to go huddle inside someone's blankets or clothing or a radiator tent).

3. Sneezing update: I tried rinsing my sinuses with two of those little tiny individually sealed packets of sterile saline solution and it worked really well! I've never had such a dramatic affliction to test them on before, though. I only had two more sneezing spells after. So I guess I had inhaled some kind of physical irritant. I do not have a cold.

4. Knitting update: I have been knitting the same sweater since about 20 Dec. I've wanted a brioche sweater for a long time, but brioche uses twice as much yarn over the same yardage and twice as much time to execute because you knit each row twice. This is a benefit for some things obviously and a problem for others! IMO, it's a peerless fabric for scarf/shawl to wrap around my neck in the winter, but sweaters risk being too warm, obviously. I am trying Drops Air, an Aran-weight blown yarn that is fuzzy and hairy (mostly baby alpaca and merino). I've been meaning to try it for years and never quite got around to it. The key point is that a blown yarn is made with a very fine knitted tube of synthetic fiber as an armature and the natural fibers are attached to this, so it has the ability to be much lighter and cooler than a traditional yarn of its circumference, because it's hollow. It remains to be seen whether it will be too hot or not. I had trouble with the pattern and had to decide how I wanted to make the sleeves for myself as a result, and this meant a lot of knitting and frogging and knitting again on the first sleeve. I hate knitting sleeves and I decided to knit this sleeve in the round, which I hate even more because it's a little tube (I have mostly knitted sleeves back and forth and then sewn up the underarm seam afterwards in the past few years, and I am happy with that procedure, but I didn't want to try it with brioche because of the complications introduced by the double thickness of yarn). So what with having to knit twice as many rows, I was kind of trapped in an endless sleeve through the whole armpit between Christmas and New Year's. I initially bound off the body before doing the sleeves, according to pattern instructions, and for no earthy good reason I actually used the Italian or sewn bind-off as recommended by the pattern when usually I never bother with that; and then after I made the sleeves I was like, why did I do that? I want this sweater to be longer than usual, if anything, and I spent basically an entire day unsewing that bindoff with a crochet hook and frogging the bottom ribbing back so I could make it longer. But I am almost actually done now.
cimorene: An art nouveau floral wallpaper in  greens and blues (wild)
My Christmas sweater is finished and every single day I think, Wax can take a picture of this tomorrow while the sun is out.

But every day, even at one pm which should have been the brightest part of the day!, sitting in the brightest room in the house, it was ridiculously dark. Pitch black outside by four. Overcast all day.

Here's a selfie taken at lunch in front of a southern exposure window last week!! My project page on rav is still waiting for nice show off pictures because of that, with this placeholder.

cimorene: Black and white image of a woman in a long pale gown and flower crown with loose dark hair, silhouetted against a black background (goth)
By "it" I of course mean the cursed purple yarn that I have just finished making into its fourth and final form.

My cursed sweater post from November 2022 covers all the mishaps in the first and second sweater incarnations of this yarn. After all of that, this second incarnation got frogged because the toggle closures, while cute, left it with gaps because the button bands weren't deep enough, and it got tight over the hips due to not enough increases but I didn't have enough yarn to redo it and add room there, plus I had already run out of pockets, plus I really WANTED it to have a hood.

The third incarnation was an attempt at a saddle-shoulder pullover and I just quit because I wasn't feeling it. I don't think it would have been a good color for the pattern I picked, anyway. About 10% of a sweater was sitting in a Ziploc bag since spring of 2023 along with all the remaining balls of it.

I weighed the remaining yarn to estimate the yardage and realized that there was no longer enough of it to make a sweater with sleeves, so I picked a sweater vest pattern I liked. It had bobbles and I was excited for the result.

Unfortunately I didn't notice until I had finished weaving in all the ends this evening that I forgot one entire horizontal repeat of the lace pattern on the back of the vest, making the back narrower than the front so that the sleeve holes pulled in awkwardly, like a racerback. The vest isn't too small, but it looks too stupid to wear. And since it's a horizontal repeat, I'd have to start over from scratch - there's no way to fix it.

I staggered into the livingroom with my discovery, dazed, to tell [personal profile] waxjism.

"Well, now we have to burn it," she said. "It's definitely cursed."

"But curses aren't real," I said. "It can't actually be cursed! How does this keep happening?"

My sister summed it up, "On the one hand I don't believe in curses but on the other hand it's clearly cursed."

Wax admitted that curses are not real, but pointed out that the pattern is incontrovertible evidence. Even if the curse is actually a psychological effect on me, it's clearly not safe for me to try to knit anything else with it. "Get some different purple yarn to make the purple hoodie that you want," she said.

I ordered some yarn for a holiday sweater today and also some replacement fingering wool to finish a second Fair Isle vest after that, but I was so excited about knitting yesterday and the day before that I kept putting off ordering the yarn, so I don't have it yet. I have had vague thoughts of gathering up leftover scraps to make a stashbuster random-striped zigzag sweater (a vague Missoni copycat), but I'm not sure it would be safe to use the remainder of this cursed yarn in it, even though it's the right gauge.

We will not actually be burning it because wool has a natural resistance to burning. It would be difficult to to do. I suppose I'll actually put it in the trash (where it would be burned to produce electricity). Or maybe use it as a cat bed or something.
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (pirouette)
Here's the project page for the sweater I finished the other day, Yana by Isabell Kraemer in dk merino, with three pockets and double long cuffs. I hope the extra tall turtleneck will be warm enough in winter that I won't miss wearing a hood.



I'm focusing on knitting for now.
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (pirouette)
You know, other people are like "Oh, autumn, time for ghosts and blah blah spooky and orange and red leaves and pumpkin spice", but for knitters it's the season for emotionally craving a whole bunch of sweaters and every day or so getting a brand new idea for a sweater you need.

My new cowl/turtleneck sweater with pockets is blocking and then I can weave in the ends and I'm a third of the way into a purple waistcoat with bobbles. In the past few weeks I've decided all these contradictory plans for my next sweater:


  • a 2nd fair isle waistcoat with the pattern I bought last spring (Starnkeeker by Kate Davies)

  • the pullover hoodie my sister made for her visit here (Traveler hoodie by Andrea Mowry) in peach like my favorite cotton hoodie

  • the gray zipper jacket I've been meaning to make for years (Monte Rosa by Isabell Kraemer, with modifications)

  • a pullover with Sandnes Garn Peer Gynt in that lovely cream and natural tweed, 2523

  • I should finally make a sweater in Drops Air (but what?)

cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (pirouette)
Cat divorce has really affected our overall knitting productivity because at least one of us is exiled from the sofa at all times, and that's the most comfortable place to knit. Last winter I had to be the one in our Isolation Suite (the kitchen and dining room), where the futon sofa bed was therefore my only real choice to sit on and knit. But sitting up on top of a mediocre mattress pushed up against the wall, even with appropriate pillows behind my back, is not nearly as comfortable for knitting as a sofa!

Also cat divorce is depressing, which intermittently makes one or both of us too upset to sit and watch videos regularly (either because they need to read compulsively for comfort, or because they're too anxious, or their attention span too shot, to focus on anything as long as reading even short fanfic or watching even YouTube videos).

Nonetheless, last winter, in addition to several pairs of socks, including those garter-topped tube socks (only one of them hideous), I managed to finish a fair isle sweater vest and a new DK-weight brioche knit merino shawl (I think this is the best solution for me to wrap around my face and neck in winter).

At the beginning of summer I started a cotton summer cardigan to replace a store-bought superfine cotton cardigan that wore out ten years ago. My concept was a slim 3/4-sleeve cardigan to throw over summer clothes when nipping into the grocery store, but near the middle of the summer all the stuff started to go wrong that led to nervous breakdown, and what with one thing and another, I only managed to finish my Corran cardigan, block it, and sew on the buttons last week. I put on summer clothes over my pajama pants so that [personal profile] waxjism could take some photos in the sunlight on the upstairs landing on her coffee break from work, so that I could then pack it away till next year. It is already too cool out to wear it this year. But I'm savoring the sense of accomplishment at actually finishing it!



I was having trouble deciding what I most wanted to make next, and rather than going for one of the designs I'm most excited to try (a traditional gansey or a next fair isle project) or one of the garments I most long for (a zipped funnelneck jacket with pockets or a pullover hoodie), I decided to go for a new sweater for lounging around the house. My most recent one, from 2021, has had the cuffs wear out past the possibility to mend them and has a couple of stubborn grease stains, and it doesn't have pockets. I am going to make Yana by Isabell Kraemer, so I'll get the pockets and the big turtleneck, but in merino.

I need to make sure (1) that it fits correctly through the shoulders, with is a frequent problem for me - I guess my shoulders are just narrow; and (2) that the sleeve holes are roomy enough for wearing tshirts underneath, which is a problem with a great many sweater patterns; I can only presume a lot of people don't wear them, but idk, it just seems really silly to wear sweaters next to the skin, even with sleeveless undershirts, and risk getting the armpits dirty, when they're so problematic to wash. I knitted my last lounging sweater deliberately in a bigger size (Wax's size, which I know is comfortable from stealing her hoodies) to get a roomier fit, but this will exacerbate the risk of the neck falling off my shoulder. I have one merino cowl neck, a Pom 2 that Wax knitted for me: the pattern is a boatneck, but when she made the body in the correct size to fit me perfectly, the neck hole ended up so wide it won't stay on even ONE shoulder. Rather than redoing all that I asked her to just knit a big cowl neck. And this sweater is really cute, albeit a bit of a hassle recentering the neck from time to time. But more importantly, I discovered that the merino cowl neck is the nicest neck for lounging around in. I've worn it all day twice this week, even though it's fitted, hip-length, full of lace holes, and pocketless, so while it is very cute, it's not ideal for throwing over my pajamas.
cimorene: Closeup of a colorful parrot preening itself (>:))
I just finished making these Simply Irresistible Socks, Worsted by Christie Archer. I saw the pattern go by in my Ravelry friends feed and was instantly intrigued, because I've never seen a sock like this before: they don't have any heel at all, they're a straight tube, but because the top of the foot is worked in garter stitch and the back in 1x1 rib, they contract and stretch to fit the foot anyway, at least, going by the photos.

Even though the weather is definitely warm now, I cast on a pair of these in heavy worsted wool, boot sock weight, because that was the yarn I had around when I was waiting for the yarn for my next project (a chunky cotton eyelet cardigan - Corran Cardigan by Rebecca Clow). I finished the second sock today and wore them around the house for a couple of hours and they do indeed seem to work as advertised, for me! I'm looking forward to making a longer pair and a pair in fingering weight sock yarn after I've done some more seasonally appropriate summer knitting.
cimorene: Blue willow branches on a peach ground (rococo)
Last night I failed to cast on for legwarmers three times. I mean, I started knitting them three times but they were always too loose. Today I knitted a pattern swatch for a DIFFERENT Fair Isle vest (one written for DK weight, so I can use the natural lanolin wool we bought at Stentorp at Easter). I started to do math, and then I decided not to bother. If I run out of yarn, we'll have to go back and buy more.

There are some green flower sprouts in our yard, but none of the crocus have even opened. The earliest blooms are these two adorable dwarf irises to the southeast. It's pretty exciting to see them! Our yard has some beautiful perennials, with three beds of big old lilies and daffodils, but there were no purple irises (until the bulbs we planted last fall), which are by far my favorite lily. (I don't really have a favorite flower overall - maybe rhododendron and azalea?)

cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (precarious)
I started the gauge and pattern swatch for my much anticipated Stjärnkikare Fair Isle vest this morning, only to discover, to my great dismay, that my attempt to duplicate the colors in the pattern failed! I was really looking for colors that were extremely similar to the sample, but the blue I picked is too much lighter than the model blue, and after a few rounds of knitting, it didn't show up against the gray background color with enough contrast!

I looked around for another substitute color, but I don't have any good candidates. I have to wait until I have more yarn to make this vest. In the meanwhile, I have some other new yarn - the local wool from Stentorp - that I can make something with, but it still needs to be wound into balls, and I can't do that until these two cats get up off my lap.

I suppose the immediate necessity of getting some more fingering weight wool for colorwork provides a good excuse to pick up a couple more skeins of merino sock yarn, so I can finally make the house socks I wanted and use up the rest of an orphan skein that isn't enough for a pair on its own.
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (wool)
(Not really. I mean,Read more... ) The spring equinox still feels like a way more interesting and inspiring holiday, but it's not well supported to call it 'Easter'. It's just more clunky to say "The really moving part of the time around the spring equinox".)

We went to the open house at a local sheep farm, Stentorp, for all the new lambs and bought a lot of wool yesterday! I've been wanting to work with more undyed Finnish wool, hopefully for some colorwork, and the wool from Stentorp is especially soft even by finnwool standards. In general finnwool is slightly less smooth than blue-faced Leicester, but very close to it, which is to say, second only to merino. The combed skeins we bought yesterday are just as soft as the blue-faced Leicester sweater Wax recently finished making me, and more lanoliny, which is a big plus because it smells nice, is good for your skin, and helps the wool be more resilient against both physical wear (like pilling) and dirt and microbes.



The Stentorp house, a charming little 1907 villa with adorable rustic Art Deco details, was also open and we got to walk around the downstairs. I was enraptured. The doorways! The windows! The door handles!!



Boulder arena, a great little natural stage where they hold small concerts, and their guest house on the water which they rent in summer. It's also got adorable Art Deco details. (Wax has a knack for taking a picture of me at the absolute most unflattering and awkward-looking moment, but the other picture didn't show the porch.)

The lighting wasn't great inside the barn and it was crowded, so no lamb pictures, but I got to hold one and it peed a little on my jacket sleeve! So cute!

And we both still have two days of vacation left right now, but Wax almost immediately after that sproinged her back out trying to pick up too much cat food at once at the grocery store. That didn't prevent her from making an English chicken mushroom pie and some peanut butter cookies yesterday, but it does put a crimp in our activities and her enjoyment.
cimorene: Blue willow branches on a peach ground (rococo)
I accidentally uglified the thick wool boot socks that I picked up to make in order to clear my mind from picking a fair isle project.

I hadn't really planned them in advance and I made a couple of impulsive color changes which don't mesh well with the textured pattern, but by the time that was obvious, I didn't want to lose the time I'd spent. Sometimes you'd rather have ugly socks than increase your sock-knitting time by an hour or so.

Boot socks are rarely seen in their entirety, since the only time you wear them is when it's cold, and just the foot or just the top of the cuff won't be as obvious. The funny thing is that I'm now seriously considering making a second pair, non-ugly, before starting the fair isle project. There's still plenty of sock yarn. It's already warmed up enough that it's almost certain nobody will be wearing boot socks until next winter, though.
cimorene: white lamb frolicking on green grass (wool)
I've been meaning to get into Fair Isle knitting for absolutely YEARS. I've made a few stranded colorwork projects in that time, and I even made a Fair Isle hat a couple of years ago using bits and bobs that we had around, which was intended to be the first of many projects. However, the hat was disappointing because it came out too large for either of us to wear and the color scheme wasn't all that could be wished. It was easy to go back to making other things, since I have such a long list of single-color sweaters that I need want at any time.

Since I recently became fed up with cables, though, and it became warm enough that I can only wear a few of my lightweight sweaters at work, it seemed like an opportunity to try out something else. I spent a bunch of time trying to pick a better first project, this time. After last attempt, I realized there was a real risk of not liking the colors if I tried to either make do with only colors I had, or make up my own color scheme without a lot of care (the standard method in Fair Isle knitting is to make swatches, but you should start with the yarn skeins in front of you! And I can't actually find any Finnish yarn stores stocking Shetland yarn. I may order some from Germany or the Netherlands in my next project. In the meantime I'm using Finnish and Norwegian wool of a similar type, so the product will not technically be a Fair Isle garment). Since last Thursday I've been in a whirlwind trying to decide what to make next. I was going back and forth between trying to look for a design, and then going through trying to decide which colors to swap out, and then slowly changing my mind and looking for a different design for those colors... and then swapping more of the colors for the new design... it was hours and hours and I filled up my cart at online Finnish yarn stores like six times before I had to take a break last night and start knitting some plain socks instead.

This morning I decided to purchase a pattern with good instructions and follow its yarn colors, so I bought the Starnkeeker vest pattern by the Scottish designer Kate Davies. I've had a lot of her designs in my wish list for years, but I think this might be the first one I actually make. This design only has four colors and I stuck pretty close to her example colors. I have learned today that Ysolda Teague has some good material, online classes on stranded knitting and choosing colors, which I may make use of for my next project (I wasn't completely convinced by the motifs in the design, and I didn't want to fuss with replacing them with different motifs until my second project).

My ultimate Fair Isle goals are The Prince of Wales painting sweater, the Voe vest by Mary Jane Mucklestone (but it would need modification because it's written for DK), Peigi by Alice Starmore, and Chestnut, Magpie, and Yell by Marie Wallin. I mean, those are the ones I want the most. There are more on my list.

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Cimorene

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