This has been a great vacation weekend for me. I've been writing a grant application to fund my postdoctoral research (NRSA, for those in the know), and I worked a number of 12-15 hr days to get the majority of it completed before I went to St. Louis. I wanted to be able to really enjoy myself over that weekend and the Thanksgiving weekend. Fortunately, the grant was completed ~10 days ahead of the deadline (I hope it gets funded…!), leaving me with ample time to relax and get the most out of my holidays.

I've been procrastinating like a crazy person as far as the wedding shawl is concerned. I finally found the time this evening (laundry can wait!) to block the large swatch.

Before blocking

My how she’s grown!

During the blocking process, I could literally see the lace sort of sighing gently as it was touched by the steam. It was as though a wave rolled through it. It relaxed, opened up, and "set" the pattern. I have never seen anything like that before. It was fascinating!

Matt and I are somewhat of the opinion that even after blocking, it really still is too heavy to be a veil. I'm sad about that. I was secretly hoping that it would lighten up and show its true gossamer self. Long-time subscribers to <em>Piecework</em> may remember Bridget Rorem's gorgeous wedding veil that she designed and knitted for her daughter Ingrid. I believe the yarn used was some superfine Italian merino, knitted on US000 needles. I never saw this veil in person, of course, but it still looked all frothy and light in the magazine photos. I'm using extremely thin yarn and US0 needles. So maybe it's okay?

However, now that I'm more solidly considering wearing it as a shawl (over the wedding gown), now I'm not sure exactly how to put it on. Nearly all pictures of "woman wearing shawl" are taken from the back. What happens in the front? Shawl pin? If you know of any good photos on the web, I'd love to know about them.

PS. Pat in Ohio, you asked about the DNA cable, but I didn't see a way to email you? Please write to me (joshiro@fas.harvard.edu), and we can work out your concerns!

I went to visit my sister Amy in St. Louis this past weekend. Although she's lived there for quite some time (~5 yrs), this was the first time I have gone to visit. We did so much stuff in two days!

We painted pottery

I got a manicure

We visited the botanic gardens…

…and also a butterfly sanctuary

Not to mention I attended a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performance (and ran, completely by chance, into a knitter I knew from TechKnit!), ate until I thought I would burst, talked and shopped for hours, and generally had a terrific time.

Thanks, Amy!!!

Do you suffer from migraines? If you do, then you know the kind of unbelievable pain that this kind of headache can bring. I woke up today with a pounding headache – the act of rolling over onto my side to shut off the alarm clock was enough to release a veritable army of angry hammers behind my eyes. For me, nausea also comes hand in hand with these headaches. I wobbled through a shower, but I knew by the time I stepped out of the tub that I had to stay at home today.

I took some Advil, slept until 11:30 AM, woke up for an hour to email my supervisors that I wasn't coming in today, swallowed some Advil, and slept again until almost 4 PM. I took some more Advil and then stumbled downstairs for a dose of vitamins and echinacea. I haven't done anything but stare blankly at the television and spin for a while since. Oy. It's like being in a fog, both mental and physical.

There's no time to be sick – I have too much to do at work, I'm traveling to St. Louis next weekend, there's the Turkey Day holidays… I'm going to be over this once and for all!

Hey, I finished the Viking hat! Not bad for a weekend's work, I say!

Apologies for the lousy picture – it's late, and I'm tired.

In the end, I did have to knit the crown three times. It was first too long, then too short, and then just right. After ripping and reknitting, I have to say that there's something worthwhile to knitting items from the top down, such that you can try things on as you go. Anyway, this hat more or less fits my head – it covers the upper part of my ears without going any farther down my face than my eyebrows.

Yea, no more cold ears for me!

As a knitter, I try to create all of my knitted clothing. Be it sweaters, socks, hats, mittens, or scarves, I'd rather wear one I made – or be really cold! Of course, this stubbornness has its downfall, too, because it's been quite windy lately, and I've been too busy to knit myself some ear protection. You can actually get away without gloves or other winter accessories in New Jersey, because the only time you're really exposed to the elements is when you're running from where you parked your car to the nearest possible building. Nowadays, I walk to a bus stop, stand there for up to 20 minutes, walk for 4-5 blocks after I get off the bus… It adds up! I determined that I must drop everything and knit a hat post haste.

The ordinary watch cap seems kind of boring, I am too conservative (?) to wear a fez, jester hat, or strangely shaped crowned creation, and I wanted something that would give me good ear protection. Thus is born my watch cap with a Viking cable motif!

The cable comes from Elsebeth Lavold's first book, Viking Patterns for Knitting. It's a simple braid and fairly easy to memorize (took me three repeats before I had it down). I did a provisional cast on, knit long enough for it to go around my head snugly, and joined the ends using a 2 needle bind off. I slipped the edge stitches to create a smooth hem and added a few extra stitches on one side of the cable. On the wider edge, I picked up stitches to make the rest of the hat.

Ready to begin crown shaping

What is sort of neat to me is a couple of things – the brim is actually folded, which doubles the fabric around the ear. Under the folded brim, the hat is ribbed to better snug it up around the head.

Ribbed for my cranial pleasure!

I am using Naturally Karen M. Guernsey Aran 10 ply yarn for this project. The needle size (US 6, 4.0 mm) is a little snug for this thick yarn, which make the hat a little on the stiff side. (I prefer a structured hat over a flopsy one.) My friends Richard and Margaret brought this yarn back for me after they took a vacation in New Zealand. I've stashed it for years, I'm glad it has finally found the right project. It's nice yarn, fairly consistently spun, no splits or knots so far. I've used nearly 100 g to make as much hat as you see there. If I'm properly inspired, I'll make a pair of matching mittens or gloves with the cabled band around the wrist, like a mini-gauntlet style. (Placed the order for extra yarn last night, so I'd better be inspired!)

I've discovered a few things that has made my daily bus ride a little more bearable.

1) Knitting (Well, duh!)
2) Audible.com

I'm a day behind in the news, but I now get to listen to Bob Edward's pleasant voice from NPR's Morning Edition for an hour-and-ten every day. It may seem a little silly to be paying money to hear a program that comes free over the radio waves, but I can't actually get any reception on the bus using a regular Walkman. (We don't have a good streaming set up for any kind of Internet radio feed at home – unless I'm imprisoned in front of a computer.) I also get one audio book a month with my subscription ($15/mo), and with a 12 month committment, I get a free MP3 player which is more or less designed for and made by people hired by Audible.com. For the last few days, I've been burning the content onto CDs, which makes the voices slightly warbly, but it is very understandable and really helps the time go by.

The first day I tried to listen to the CD on the bus, I found that the roar of the bus engine was relatively deafening. In order to hear anything above the street sounds, the volume had to be raised really really high. By the end of the bus ride, my ears were literally pounding. I purchased a new set of ear buds last night, they have special silicone ends (three custom sizes for all kinds of ears) to allow you to place them well into the ear canal. They're somewhat expensive ($40), but they sound terrific and do an excellent job of blocking outside noise. I'm delighted!

I haven't had a chance to wind up more of the Gems yarn for Dad's vest, so I've been working on some socks while the bus rumbles to and from Cambridge.

Their color is especially cheerful on grey overcast days.

I'm so tired! It's been a hard week at work. Last night, I took a short visit to my LYS for solace and came home with this:

Twenty one bucks of silky woolly goodness!

Retail therapy is not my normal means of comfort. I also generally avoid purchasing yarns that I can easily spin up. However, this week has been highly irregular and therefore worthy of unusual fiber purchasing. I don't know what I'll do with the yarn, other than admire the fall foliage-esque color. It feels pretty nice, too, combining a slight silky scroop with the soft hand of wool.

An employee at the yarn shop recognized the sweater I was wearing (St. Brigid) and complimented me on it. I'd forgotten I had it on, to be honest. She'd made one herself – as a first sweater! Good on her! Someone else liked the stripey sock I was working on during yesterday's ride home and commented on my knitting speed. I knit Continental style and have managed to minimize all of my movements, which has the bonus effect of making me a fast knitter.

Speaking of knitting on the commute, I've made a lot of progress on Dad's vest.

Fourteen inches and counting…

The armscye decreases have taken place, and now it's smooth sailing until the back neck shaping. I imagine that I'll be able to start the front some time next week? Looking at the weight of the current piece (~5.5 oz), I'm starting to come down with YSA (yarn shortage anxiety). I bought a 1 lb cone (900 yds), and the Sweater Wizard estimated it would take 936 yds. This will be cutting it close? I'll know a little better after the back is completed and weighed. The v-neck front will of course weigh less, but there are also neck and arm ribbings…

I've been working primarily on Dad's vest this past week. I took measurements from the second swatch after washing and plugged them into Sweater Wizard, using the template I generated for last year's vest. After hearing other knitters rave about it, I tried the new-to-me tubular cast on, using directions found in Montse Stanley's Reader’s Digest Knitter’s Handbook. I used US 000 needles for the cast on itself, but it is still a little loose-feeling for the US 1 ribbing that follows. It's not terrible, and I'll use the same cast on for the front, but I'm not 100% satisfied with the transition between the edge and the ribbing.

About 8 inches into the back

On the spinning front, I did manage to spin my first skein on the Drudik wheel. This is a 2 oz sample of black alpaca, I think it is an Ashland Bay top. It is a 2 ply yarn, laceweight, and fairly tightly spun. Alpaca is a hair fiber and quite slippery! This particular prep isn't made of the softest fiber, but it is pleasing to touch and is almost exactly like my own hair color!

Like everything else I spin, this will also go back to the stash for aging.