Madtown Mama's Mama Knits, too!

Do you like the new template? I know it's just like my other blog, only green, but I prefer this template's archives and the the pictures are framed. I think some of the previous posts might look a little wonky, but I'm not going to go back and edit them.

Anyway.

So, my family was here last week for Thanksgiving and we had a grand old time eating and drinking and making merry. My mom always has a project with her wherever she goes. She quilts more than anything else. My little boy Daniel is the recipient of at least three beautiful quilts from his Oma, the latest featuring a sock monkey. I'd share pictures but the weather is craptastic today and the light's no good, so you'll have to wait.

My mom also knits; in fact, she taught me how to knit when I was about 8 or 9 years old. That's right. I've been knitting since way before it was cool. Because being cool was never as important to me as being able to make stuff. I'm happy that knitting is so popular now because it means there are many things available now that didn't used to be--things like patterns that don't look like something the cat dragged in from 1972, and yarn shops everywhere, even on the internets. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, though, there weren't nearly as many options out there, so I wasn't inspired to make very many things. Aside from the fashion disasters required of us in the first two years of 4-H knitting (oh my god, I was such a dork--at least I knew better than to wear that stuff), I made myself a red sweater vest that I never wore, and a dark red bulky sweater that wasn't in bad taste, but was way too warm to wear anywhere in Kentucky. I kept that sweater for a long time, but now I'm not sure what happened to it.

But this is about my mom's knitting, after all. She's made some spectacular sweaters, including that one from Vogue Knitting that's a map of the globe, a nightmare for anyone who doesn't do intarsia. Oddly enough, she likes intarsia, which brings me to her latest Work In Progress:



She's holding up the back of a sweater from Vogue Knitting Fall '05. Isn't it cool? She's using a different yarn than the pattern called for, so she had to adjust for gauge, but I think it's lovely.



That's me on the left, wrapped up in a big warm shawl she knit for me last Christmas. Well, 95% of it. The shawl-wrap thing wasn't quite finished when she gave it to me. That ruffled border? Very time-consuming, so after they left, it was my task to finish it. Not that I minded, not one bit! I was heavily pregnant and miserable with itchy skin (it felt like poison ivy with no rash) and unspeakably bad insomnia. At 2:00 in the morning, scratching my feet raw and unable to sleep, I would haul my whale-like self onto the futon and knit on that border. I finished it right before Daniel was born, and it was the perfect thing to wrap up in and snuggle a new baby in the dead of Wisconsin winter. Still is.

Finished! Barf scarf

For: Me! I wouldn't subject this thing to anyone else.
Yarn: 1 skein plus a little more of "Happy Multi" by Skacel plus some scraps of a dark rusty-orange color leftover from a project of my mom's
Needles: size 11 bamboo
Gauge: ?? indulgently big
Pattern: drop garter stitch pattern from Little Box of Scarves

Despite the fact that this scarf looks like a melange of squirrel pellets or something a cat might regurgitate, I kind of like it. It's warm and soft and sort of fake glamorous. And I made it in, like, a couple of days. I might even wear it in public (if I know I won't be seeing any other knitters.)

Stash Contaminants: Part One

I'm having a bit of Stash Guilt. I don't exactly hoard yarn. It's not taking over the house, and I have a long way to go before I have to hide it in the freezer or the piano. But there's a fair bit of strange stuff I've picked up because it was On Sale. I shouldn't do this because as often as not I end up with yarn I wasn't so gung-ho about in the first place, and then if I don't use it I feel guilty, and when I do use it, it's purely out of obligation.

Enter exhibit A, the ugly pink baby cardigan:

(%^&#ing Blogger is having real issues uploading pictures this morning...maybe Blogger likes this one about as much as I do. I'll just post without it and try to fix it later.)

What is the yarn? A crunchy mauve-ish pinkish wool/acrylic/nylon DK by Sirdar that I picked up in the sale bin at The Knitting Tree. I think the five skeins were $10, and I just couldn't help myself. I got it thinking it would be a nice baby gift for someone who didn't want to bother with hand-washing baby garments. Now I'm thinking I should add "color blind" and "hands so calloused they don't care that the sweater feels like it's made from spun cardboard" to the criteria because, to put it mildly, I'm not fond of this yarn. Why bother knitting it up, then? Because I don't want it to contaminate my stash any longer and I'm feeling guilty for buying yarn and not using it. I wouldn't want any potential recipients to think I chose this yarn because I like it, so it may end up going to charity. (Do you ever feel sorry for the receiving end of charity knitting? I bet they get stuck with a lot of duds...but I digress...)

Exhibit B, the fun fur scarf:





I know the blog description says I don't "do" fun fur. Using big-ass needles (in this case, size 11) isn't my favorite, either. Besides that, the colors are all wrong for me - I can't wear any shade of orange without looking like I'm afflicted with some terrible disease of the liver. Why am I even in possession of this stuff? I fell prey to the sale bin. *Sigh* In my defense, it was in a bag of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece that was 1/2 off (closing sale at Coyote Yarns this past spring), so I had to get the whole bag to get the Cotton Fleece. (I've got more to say about that Cotton Fleece, but this post is already getting long, so I'll save it. Bet you can't wait.) I put the two skeins of fun fur (I think it's by Skacel) on the bookcase, where they and I had a staring contest that lasted a few months. I pondered the best way to get rid of it. Goodwill? Nah, that wouldn've been a cop-out. A felted fuzzy bag? I have very little fashion sense, but even I know better than that. Felted mittens with fur-trimmed cuffs? I could just see that turning out badly. So there it sat, challenging me to come up with a way to use it that wouldn't, well, suck.

Last night I was experiencing some knitting frustration: burn-out on the gift projects, utter lack of motivation to plow through more of that ugly pink baby cardigan (someone remind me why I chose a garter stitch pattern anyway!), and the need for some instant gratification. I found some deep rust-colored wool from an abandoned project of my mom's (yet another post for someday), some big-ass needles, an easy drop-stitch garter scarf pattern in Melissa Mathay's Little Box of Scarves, and got going.

Here's the thing: despite the fact that it's fun fur on big needles in colors I can't wear (but given my questionable fashion sense, I might anyway) and the slight resemblance to cat barf, I'm really enjoying this project. It's going lickety-split, the yarn combo is super-soft, and the pattern is really fun. (You yo after every stitch, then drop all the yos on the next row.) It feels indulgent, like eating a gigantic piece of chocolate cake instead of a serving of brussel sprouts.

As long as I'm in this knitting funk, I think I'll make this Stash Contaminants thing a series. If nothing else, it might help get rid of some yarn I probably never should have bought in the first place!

It's done! But what is it...

...a potholder?



a poorly designed wine cozy?



Have you read the blog description? I don't do cozies!

Guess again...



That's right, it's Daniel's new hat!



It fits him beautifully. Thorny's suggestion that washing and blocking would relax the fabric was dead-on. I decided not to go with the suggestion of increasing at the corners because they seem to stick up enough for my taste. I'm still thinking of adding some small white pompoms to the corners to look like little snowballs.

I don't have a name for it. Do we really have to name everything we knit? It's just "Daniel's new hat" for now.

Anyhoo, to recap:

Yarn: Dale of Norway Heilo in heathery blue and white
Needles: size US 3 bamboo circulars, I think Takumi brand
Pattern: my own. I'll share instructions if anyone's interested. I borrowed the 2-color pattern from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia, which is full of drool-worthy color patterns.

I made this hat in part so that Daniel would have something really warm for the upcoming Wisconsin winter, and in part to practice 2-color knitting. It's a little awkward for me because I hold the yarn in my RH. Yes, both colors. I've tried knitting with two hands and it just doesn't work for me. I suppose I'm just impatient. The colorwork in this hat is far from perfect. There are puckers and uneven stitches, but blocking helped. Besides, it's just a hat. Like my mom says about imperfections in her quilting: "I guess this one's not going to the fair!"

Election Day; Knitting for a Baby

I voted today. Unless you're under 18 or not an American citizen, I hope you did, too.

All right, then, on to knitting. I'm afraid I don't have much to show today, but I have been planning a few things. I'm always planning knitting projects, in fact. I think about knitting at night as I go to sleep; it helps de-clutter my brain of all the political, musical, and otherwise insomnia-inducing stuff that keeps me wired during the day.

Remember how I had this whole skein of hemp/wool/mohair yarn that I thought I didn't like, and didn't know what to do with? I believe I used the word: fugly. Well, I've changed my mind:



It certainly looks much better knitted up than in the skein. And I suspect that I didn't fancy the sock because it doesn't look great in rib, either. But look at the dark purple, teal, and fuchsia! Mmmm.

I was doing laundry today anyway, so I thought I'd throw the swatch in and see what happens. This is what it looks like after a trip in the washer and dryer:



It felted a bit, tightened up the fabric, and oh my is it soft now. As in, next-to-baby-skin soft! Like a fool, I didn't check the row guage pre-washing - which is obviously where it shrank the most - but the stitch guage didn't change very much; I think it was nearly 25st/4" at first, and now it's 25.5st and 40 rows/4".

So why the sudden re-interest in this yarn? Well, I have a lot of it in a couple other colors, and I'm trying to figure out how to use it. I recently read about an online baby shower, started by Afrindie Mum (I read a few adoption blogs out of personal interest), for a single, pregnant mom who really needs things for her baby and is, at the same time, under pressure from friends and her church community to have it placed for adoption. For some reason, this story struck me, maybe because she's due in February, the same month my own son was born (he's nine months old today, in fact!), and maybe because she lives in Kansas, a state where I have many family and other personal connections. I feel compelled to help out. I especially feel compelled to knit something for her baby and for her.


I think this hemp/wool/mohair yarn would make some lovely baby things. One reason I tossed it in the washer and dryer was because I'm guessing a single mom trying to make ends meet might not have the patience to hand-wash and flat-dry baby clothes, so I wanted to see what would happen to the yarn. It's so much softer felted anyway, that I think I'll just plan on that. We don't know the gender of the baby, so I'm going to use a bright teal color to make a hat, maybe some booties, and a simple cardigan with little mittens that button on to the ends of the sleeves. I think it will work well for unisex; doesn't everyone get sick of pale yellows and greens? I don't have an exact pattern, but I have enough baby sweater patterns that I can pick any one to use as a guide for sizing and make it up myself. There won't be any elaborate shaping or stitch patterns, so I have confidence! (Can you hear me humming that song from The Sound of Music?)

Now, the mother. This woman, whom I know very little about, really, seems to be having a difficult time. I'd like to knit her a pretty scarf, something fairly simple, but pretty and feminine and warm. I think every new mother needs to feel a little bit beautiful and special. I don't have specific ideas for this yet, but I'm sure I can come up with something. Your ideas welcome!