Random Tuesday

Random things this week.  I caught the funk.  Not the good funk like Parliament has, but the nasty stitching kind that nothing is interesting.  It started when I pulled out the yarn I purchased last month, then I cast on for the Lily of the Valley in the book Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques, Patterns, and Traditions.  It was all going well, until the nupps.

From Knitting Kitties

Many years ago, BI (before internet) I knit a sweater from Sirdar that had a center panel of the Lily of the Valley stitch pattern.  I was unaware that I should be afraid of the nupp, or that it should be hard.  I whizzed through the  pattern with ease.  Over the years, AI (after internet) I've read blog and forum posts about the dreaded, horrible nupp and I scoffed.  Then came this yarn that I pictured would be perfect for the pattern, however the yarn has other ideas.  It hates nupps and refused to cooperate with the pearl 5 tog.  It fought all my tricks of tugging on the lower stitch,  knitting and yo's very loose, in the end I got a screwed up looking knot and not a perfect little nupp.   Half through the first pattern repeat I gave up and frogged the thing, I just couldn't picture fighting with it for 46 inches.

The yarn is back on the shelf in time out to consider the error of its ways.  Occasionally it shouts out another stitch pattern it might want to be, but I'm not listening.  It was at that point I began to look at all my other yarn and projects suspiciously.  Nothing was interesting, lest it will just turn on me and rebel with that other yarn.  Even yarn that was stowed away in totes patiently waiting to be cast on looked to be suspect.

It was then when the fiber on my spinning wheel began to tempt me.  Hey, you can spin a new yarn, one that will be totally submissive to your wishes.  Together we will teach those other yarns a lesson. Except, I have a love/hate relationship with my spinning wheel.  You see as long as there is fiber attached to spin, I will spin and peddle. Spin, spin, spin, peddle, peddle, peddle.  There is something about the whir of the wheel, the feeling of puffy soft fiber running through my fingers and becoming a thin strand slowly filling the bobbin.  I know this sounds like I enjoy watching grass grow to non-spinners, but it is completely mesmerizing in hypnotic kind of way.  So, I finished the BFL top I was last spinning.  It came out to 325 yards of 3ply fingering with a rough wpi of about 15. Perfectly just what I wanted it be.

From Knitting Kitties

Then I run out of fiber so I stop.  A few hours later my muscles, joints and especially my hips will seize up.  The next day I walk around like Frankenstein's little sister.  Like an alcoholic there is no cure like the hair of the dog, or in this case the sheep.  I pulled out some creamy white Shetland I had stored away.  After 3 nights of lousy sleep because of my left hip throbbing and the noisy people upstairs, I hid the fiber and set the spinning wheel aside.  In a perfect world, I would spin for an hour a day and build myself up to all day spinning sessions.  This is not a perfect world.

From Knitting Kitties

I'm now back to the holiday knitting.  There is nothing as peaceful as plain vanilla stockinette socks with a variegated yarn.  I still need to kitchener the toes of my footies and the finishing for D's slippers.  Winter has arrived in the desert with lows in the upper 30's and highs in the upper 60'sF.  I know those of you from the north scoff at me.  Last week we were above normal with highs in the low 90's.

I've been trying to get a good picture of Butterscotch's toes for Alice of Crochet with Raymond. It has resulted in lousy photos of my being bitten and scratched. I finally caught him in the perfect position that I could photo without injury to me.

From Knitting Kitties

There are his catcher's mitts with his two extra thumbs. His paw measures approximately 1 1/2 inches across. No, I didn't get a picture with the tape measure for proof, I ran out of bandaids. You'll just have to trust me on this one. Like the paws those claws are pretty and big and very sharp.

From Knitting Kitties

I really don't understand what all the fuss is about my paws.