It’s not too late to go to the Shepherd’s Harvest sheep and wool show! We went on Saturday and enjoyed the unbelievably nice weather – sunny and high 60s.

Several animals smiled at me:

We walked through all the vendor barns, had Meredith do some of the kid-friendly demos, and ate hot dogs and fudge.

We met animals, watched a sheep shearing, fingered lots of pretty fibers and yarn, and bought… nothing. Isn’t that so strange, to walk through barn after barn and come away empty-handed? I guess it’s a testament to the size of my stash, or maybe I’m just getting older and less impulsive in my shopping.

I did manage to try a Hansen electric mini-spinner for 2 minutes before the kids got all antsy (“Are you DONE yet, Mama?”). Here’s what I came away with after a short test: it is beautiful to look at, lightweight, fast, and pretty darn quiet. The orifice was wide for the relatively fine-grist spinning I do, but I believe they sell inserts to narrow that down. The demo model that I tried had some weird caulk-covered component on the power cord that I didn’t really understand, but I would bet that would not be on a wheel that they would sell to someone.

One thing that I briefly had trouble with was that I kept forgetting to keep the pedal pressed down – and it doesn’t turn when it’s not pressed. Altogether, it felt quite different from my Butterfly electric wheel, but not in a bad way. If I didn’t already own an excellent electric spinner, and if I were in the market for an electric, this would probably be my top pick. (I believe the Hansen spinner wasn’t around when I bought my electric.) It has a very good reputation and I found it pleasant to use in my quickie trial.

When the sisters were born, Matt’s parents came to stay with us for 3 weeks. During that time, my FIL taught my oldest daughter a song that he learned as a boy. I think the tune will always remind me of that summer.

I had a hat when I came in
I hung it on the rack
And I’ll have a hat when I go out
Or I’ll break somebody’s back!
I’m a peaceful man, I am, I am
And I don’t like to shout
But I had a hat when I came in,
And I’ll have a hat when I go out!

(Sung in true Irish drinking song spirit here.)

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I sewed myself a hat last week! I used a Betz White pattern from her “Make New or Make Do” series.

I think maybe I look a little geektastic in it, but truly, I love this hat. I like bucket hats a lot. Grey ones, especially, apparently. (OMG, 2004. I’ve been blogging for a long time.)

It is next to impossible to find a fun sun hat that fits my supersized noggin (srsly, 22.5″), so it was either go bareheaded or make a custom piece! I love how comfy it is. (Mine is a size L.)

The entire project was made, incredibly, from stashed materials. The outside is gray stretch denim, the inside is an Amy Butler quilting cotton. The felt is a wool blend. I had mostly matching thread already, plus the basement life-archive vomited up a glue gun from circa mid 1990s. I even found the pin backing for the flower in my odds-and-ends sewing bin!

Check out my badass edgestitching!

The outside layer was a little Plain Jane, and I wanted to hide a blatantly mismatched seam, LOL. I google-image searched for “felt flower tutorial” (or something like that) and used the tutorial here. The template for the flower pieces is here. These flowers are very quick to make up (10 minutes, if that). I even made a red one for Meredith and glued it to a ponytail holder. She loves it.

I like that it’s a 3-dimensional flower.

The pin backing allows it to be removed before laundering.

I did manage to match up all of the other seams in the hat. The pattern itself is pretty uncomplicated, only 3 pieces, but I was pretty psyched when it was finished.

It’s also completely reversible.

If you sew and want the gory construction details, the review is here.

Last picture is just for fun – I was messing around with my new camera remote, and I found that it would make the camera fire only if I were making faces at it. What’s up with that?

In the past 20 years or so, I’ve noticed that total strangers will make the same observations about me. It happens so consistently, and the comments are worded nearly identically every time I hear them, I’ve come to the conclusion that these attributes must be true:

1) Doctors: You have very large tonsils.

2) Hairstylists: Your hair grows really fast!

3) Various tech support people (wrt cars, computers, appliances, anything): I’ve never seen this happen before.*

4) And most recently, everyone after hearing about my children: You must have your hands full!

Over to you – what comments have you consistently received from strangers over the years?

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* ETA: The attribute is that I am incredibly good at breaking things.

Goodbye, Ingenue… I hardly knew ye. I lovingly rewrote you for fingering weight yarn and size US1 needles, but I realized this year that the relationship wasn’t going to work out for us. But honey, it’s not you, it’s me. I’ve changed.

You see, since the time I cast on for you, I’ve lost about 4-5″ bust circumference (hello, weaning and later weight loss). There was no way I would look good wearing you at this size. Better to say good bye, or au revoir…?

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I want to express my sincere thanks to everyone who responded to the prior post. I appreciate your candor and encouragement. Most people who comment know that I typically respond via e-mail, and I generally hate doing this “group hug” thing in public, but we put our house back on the market last week (sigh), and I’ve been a little more frantically busy than usual. But please know that your thoughts and advice are highly valued!

As I get older, I think it could be easy for me to fall into the pattern of doing only the things I know I am good at. Took me years to get to this stage, but now I am (she says modestly) a good knitter. A technically competent handspinner. Decent in the kitchen. Have mad housecleaning skillz. Pretty good at editing. I think I could get used to things being easy. And then I might start to dislike doing things that are hard because hey, I’m already good at a lot of things.

But I can’t let myself go on just doing the easy stuff. Isn’t that when the brain starts to go south?

Problem is, I like a challenge but hate to fail. And when I’m feeling petty and small, I find myself avoiding the activities for which I am uncertain of the outcome. I’ve owned an antique circular sock machine for nearly a decade (socks made during that time, 0). I have tried and failed for 7 years to find an organic way to tame the yard (I start strong every spring and give up by July, weeds crowing in victory). I’m still trying to learn to sew (arrgh, working on this one right now). And I take refuge in stockinette knitting. Damn, I am good at that. :b

I’m feeling a little disgusted with myself for regularly, periodically wimping out. How do you stay motivated to do the hard stuff?

Many of my handknit socks are old enough to start junior high this fall. Thus, it is time to make new ones!

On blockers but not actually blocked

Monkey socks! According to Ravelry, more than fifteen thousand knitters have made these socks since the pattern was published in 2006. That’s pretty awesome.

This is Kraemer Sterling Silk and Silver yarn. It feels very nice, not prickly. The yarn is just slightly thick-and-thin, but not in an annoying way.

The dark green and the unblocked “scales” of the sock made me think of dragons. Wouldn’t this toy look so cool made up in green and silver yarn?

What is it about handknit socks that automatically gives one a serious case of the cankles?

Minor mods to the pattern:
1) I knit 5 repeats on the leg instead of 6 because I was starting to run into the daikon calf.
2) I did a slip-stitch reinforced heel because I think it helps withstand rubbing from the back of a shoe.
3) I used Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Cast On (video link). Not only does it stretch like crazy, it also snaps back to shape immediately when the tension is released. Thumbs up for this slightly fiddly but eminently doable cast on!

STRE-E-E-TCH

SNAP!

Admire the sock… But does your keen eye prompt you to ask what’s that lurking in the corner?

Spinning wheel!

Just wanted to give a happy shout-out to Carole W at Software4Knitting (home of Sweater Wizard, custom sweater design software) for excellent customer service. Last night, I tried to install my old CD (copyright 2004) on Win7 and the install failed. I popped off a note to the support contact, and she responded to my e-mail in <12 hrs and provided a fast solution. NAYY, but I highly recommend the software and the support!

In other knitterly news, Connie Chang Chinchio is having a 1-day, 20% off sale on all of her knitting patterns to celebrate her daughter's first birthday! See details here.

Have a great day!

I met Matt’s family in 1995, just weeks after we started dating (his family showed up early in our relationship because its start coinicided with Matt’s college graduation). I can’t remember specifically if I found out about PopPop’s (aka Dan, Matt’s grandfather) fondness of firearms at that first meeting, but I’m sure it was within the first 1 or 2 get-togethers that the subject of guns came up.

Over the years, PopPop asked me to go shooting with him on numerous occasions. I told him I wasn’t interested. I don’t believe guns are inherently evil or awful, but I’m not any more interested in guns than I am in, say, dressage. We spoke at length about how target shooting wasn’t a violent hobby per se, how it was not dangerous if the proper precautions were taken (and he always took proper precautions!), that I should keep an open mind toward new experiences, and that sort of thing. He gave me a disassembled handgun one evening and challenged me to put it back together. Loving brainteasers as I do, I managed to get all but 1 piece back in… but I still wasn’t interested in shooting the damn thing.

Underneath the shooting jacket, Dan is proudly wearing an NRA t-shirt.

Well, time passed, and Matt encouraged me to try it – so in 2010, after Dan had worked tirelessly to convince me for fifteen years to go shooting, I reluctantly agreed. We were visiting that January (I was pregnant with the twins at the time), but when Matt brought it up, PopPop surprised us by saying he was NOT willing to take me. He had read something on the Internet that advised pregnant women to avoid target shooting. He wasn’t sure what exactly about it was bad for pregnant gals, but he would take no chances. We agreed to try again later.

When we visited this past January, later became now. “I’ll let you win one,” I told Dan with a grin. “I’ll go.” He was very excited. One afternoon, Matt, SIL Marcia, Dan, and I piled into a car, and we were off like a shot. (Har.) He had 3 guns – a .22 (“a kitten,” Dan reassured me), a .38, and a .45 (“a tiger,” he promised).

I was given ear protection like what you’ll see below – sort of the kind of earmuffs that you see on gardeners working with power equipment. From that, I had naively expected the sound to be about as loud as a riding lawnmower. I was wrong. It was so loud, it made me feel angry. It was, to borrow a phrase, unfuckingbelievably loud. But let me back up and explain for a second – in recent years, I have noticed that I have maybe a little bit of a sensory issue with noise. I can’t stand listening to the radio or music anymore because it seems to scramble the thoughts in my head. Loud sounds induce a mild fight-or-flight response, and the louder or more prolonged the noise, the more I tense up.

So I lasted about 5 minutes at this indoor range before I sought ear plugs for an additional layer of protection. I’m not prone to panic attacks, but I think I might have had one there because I stayed for the entire hour. It was as though my thoughts were a pane of glass that shattered every time someone fired a gun. I’d clutch the shards and try to reassemble my brain and then BLAM! I’d be in a million pieces again. Marcia very patiently tried to show me how to load a gun, how to check the barrel, how to engage the safety mechanism… but every few seconds, BLAM! and I’d completely lose BLAM! where I was, what she was saying, BLAM! what I was supposed to BLAM! do, BLAM! how I was supposed to BLAM! level the BLAM! gun. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!!! What? Squeeze the trigger? BLAM!

I tried, I really did. I shot the .22 a few times and apparently did well (enough). But I could not acclimate to the tremendous noise of everyone firing and continued to startle every couple seconds like a schizophrenic rat. Dan offered me his other guns. I declined. I don’t have words to describe how loud it was, and to have something that loud at a literal arm’s length away from my ear was more than I could bear.

After a while, much to my chagrin, I began to weep. I was not sad, not at all, but noise exposure touched some primitive chord that directed me to cry. I never knew noise could bring me to my mental knees and make me sob and twitch like a fool. Marcia looked concerned and horrified. Matt put an arm around me and, laughing, told me I needn’t come back again. And… that was my experience at the target range.

Would I go back? I might, but only if I had better hearing protection. And silencers. And got rid of everyone else at the range. So, yeah, it probably won’t happen again. But I’m glad that I went, and I’m grateful to Dan for not giving up on me and to Marcia for trying to teach me what she could under difficult circumstances.

I did have my camera with me – I think it’s definitely my preferred form of shooting! I took some rapid stills and made a little animation of Dan shooting his .45 (note the recoil).

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And hey, I hope I don’t even need to say this, but let’s be civil in the comments, OK?

Lookee, lookee, a real knitting FO!

(Hm. Sorry about the picture quality! I was using [thought I was using] a custom white balance setting. I tweaked it as much as I could to lighten, but they look a little odd still.)

This is the Vitamin D cardigan by Heidi Kirrmaier. Yarn is Frangipani authentic guernsey yarn from the UK, 100% wool. (Not the softest stuff out there [actually kinda prickly, to be honest], but I’m hoping it will wear really well.) It was marvelously hand-dyed by Kim of The Woolen Rabbit (oh, she is so talented, let me tell you!), colorway New England Red. Kim dyed this for me back in 2009.

A few more words about the yarn – it was Anne of Knitspot who turned me on to this particular colorway. She was developing her Maplewing shawl pattern at the time and had posted several in-progress shots. Swoon! It was SO my color, and I happily dreamed up a gorgeous textured sweater in that fantastic shade of orange. I ordered white yarn, had it shipped directly to Kim, she turned it around in a matter of days, and then… it sat. (Y’know, 2009 – I had a 1-year-old and was pregnant.) By the time I was ready to knit it up in Fall 2011, my brain had been battered too long by chronic sleep deprivation; thus, I gave up the original idea of a complex gansey with nary a whimper. The cardigan that it did turn into is hardly a consolation prize, though. I am extremely happy with the outcome.

The pattern is fantastic for those knitters who prefer “blind follower” directions. Stitch counts are provided at every major point in the pattern, no calculations required. Directions are very complete. I made no changes. I used the “surprisingly stretchy bind-off” to finish up the edge. I worried that the back length might not be long enough, given some of the photos on Ravelry, but it was just fine for me.

I was a little heavier when I cast on than when I cast off; in fact, with the recent weight loss and weaning of the youngers, I lost more than 4″ of bust circumference. But I had started the sweater to fit the size that I was when I cast on. In any case, you can see from the back view the the cardigan is a smidge too big (waves).

The drape in the front is actually totally fake on my cardigan. I picked a sturdy wool yarn, not a silky, drapey one (as recommended by the designer), and the front pieces splayed out in stiff panels after the initial wet-blocking. Undeterred, I placed the garment on a hanger, manually arranged the folds, and steamed the heck out of the front pieces to lock in some waves.

And here’s an “action shot” of the sweater! I’m holding a recently released physiology book that I edited last year.

Meredith is definitely opinionated about the clothes she wears. She has begun to eschew anything that is even remotely restricting and has recently renounced denim pants (even those with elastic waists).

I wanted to make something for her, something to continue sharpening my sewing “skills” (still in quotes, that word), that would meet our criteria of cute (me) and comfy (her). My inspiration was a dress from the Tea Collection:

I started with this downloadable .pdf pattern, which I modified to add the waistband and skirt portion. Even though this is a small pattern (kid sizes only), it involved a lot of paper cutting and taping. But when you live far away from any fabric store and the urge to sew comes over you at 8 PM on a Friday, downloadable patterns are the path to instant gratification! For this dress, I cut out a size 5.

Serious picture

I wish I could wholeheartedly recommend the pattern, but it seems to have a slight drafting error. I deviated from the instructions to sew the side seam and sleeve seams first and then set the sleeve in the round. In doing so, I noted that the side seams are not the same length (in a size 5, they were off by about 1 cm). Is it a big deal? No. But I spent kind of a long time scratching my head, wondering if I had assembled the pages incorrectly or made a mistake while tracing. Anyway, after trimming off the errant edge, the sleeve set in perfectly, so who knows.

I used a sewing machine, coverstitch machine, and serger to put this together. I added swimsuit elastic to the shoulders (I think the pattern recommended twill tape). I followed Sarah Veblen’s video tutorial on making a neckband. I added casings and inserted elastic in the sleeve edges, similar to some of her favorite RTW (Hanna Andersson) dresses. The skirt was gather-basted before pinning it to the waistband, and I deliberately serged off the basting when attaching the skirt because it would restrict the stretch.

Can I make goofy faces now?

Fabric is a stretch velour (probably polyester?) from the stash. This stuff is a slippery b*tch to sew. I ended up using a washaway glue stick for nearly every seam, it was the only reliable way to hold the pieces together.

Meredith’s red leggings are also Mama-made. I traced her favorite Hanna Andersson leggings (size 100) and improvised the cut-on waistband casing (inserting 1-inch elastic). To make the pattern, I folded the pants in half and pin-traced around the top half onto a sheet of butcher paper on top of corkboard, then flipped it over to trace the back half. (My method is very similar to this technique.) Not much to say about the pattern, other than I’m amazed that I didn’t somehow stretch the pants out while tracing them. Fabric is a cotton interlock from the stash. To make the outfit a little more matchy-matchy, I used the same fabric for the leggings as I did the contrast bands of the dress.

The coverstitch machine that I have (Janome Coverpro 1000cp) is still managing to defeat me every so often. I continue to work on finding the right machine settings to avoid the dreaded dropped stitch (like knitting, an improperly executed coverstitch will also unravel in the blink of an eye). The first 3 times this outfit was washed, it came back with an opened hem somewhere, but I’m getting there, the seams look better and fall apart less often.

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ETA – I forgot to add the comments from the designer when I asked her about the apparently mismatched side seams. This is her reply:

The armscye is designed a little deeper on one side to fit the body a bit better than if they were equal. Because it is deeper, it makes the side seams appear to be different, but I believe that you will find that they match up just fine when you sew the pattern together.

Sometimes, especially when sewing with really stretchy knits, the side might stretch and end up a little longer. Since the fabric is stretchier (like a waffle knit) than usual, it usually won’t matter much and I just cut the extra bit off.

I note that I made a second dress (not shown), following her assembly instructions (ie, attach shoulders, attach open sleeve, then make 1 long side seam that closes the sleeve and the side), and I still couldn’t get the sides to match up. So I don’t know if the problem is me, the fabric, or the pattern. Re Penny’s comment below, I certainly could have sewn it front-side down, which would have “shortened” that piece even more relative to the back, so it’s all kind of a mystery now. Good thing no one is looking at Meredith’s armpits to see if the 4 corners meet up!