Current Knitting (and Spinning)

The Queen Susan shawl seriously impinged on my knitting and spinning time over the last few months. Fortunately, the pattern booklet is now off my desk and onto that of Laura, a most wonderful copy editor. I am hoping she will have time this week to work her magic, so I can upload the pattern shortly thereafter. I promise to announce availability when it's off everyone's desk and into the Ravelry pattern database.

Despite Queen Susan, I managed to complete a few small items for Christmas gifts.

I made two hats, one of which I cannot post about, because Kyoko-san is not allowed to open her present before December 25 and I don't want to spoil the surprise. However, the hat I made for Jun is not under any secrecy doctrine.


Jun's family owns Rhubarb, one of the few non-Japanese eateries in Togane City, Japan--the Nepalese chicken curry is especially good. We love Rhubarb's desserts: the lemon pound cake is particularly delicious.

I am sure you guys remember the Friendship Cake Plague? Every few weeks someone would drop in bearing a wad of Friendship cake starter. The idea was that you used to it make your own cake batter, reserving a blob to foist on someone else. We actually made one cake from the stuff and pronounced it Worse Than Grandma Tillie's Matzoh Balls, and frankly, I didn't think anything--foodstuff or otherwise--could earn that distinction.
 
After five of these batter bits had been charmingly received  and surreptitiously handed off to the increasingly resentful neighborhood wildlife, we escaped to Japan, a country renowned for green tea and sashimi, but not for Americanisms such as Friendship cake.

So of course, the first thing we spotted, to our horror, in Rhubarb's dessert case a few days after arrival was--wait for it--Friendship cake. Clearly, a batter glob had somehow stowed away on a jetliner and slithered from Narita to Togane.

Regardless of this lamentable gastronomical lapse, Jun remains a good friend and deserves a warm hat. I used two skeins of Noro Silk Garden, removing the weird green yarn in the middle of the skeins, reserving it for future knitted frog toys. The little 2x2 cable pattern was spontaneous and I took no notes.

 

Tonya's son is now old enough to appreciate the fact that his older sister has something he doesn't, so I now knit them pseudo-matching gifts. This year, Nina receives Douglas, The Extremely Happy Giraffe, while Kai gets Horatio, The Happy Hippo. Both patterns are free, from Bobbie Padgett.

 Horatio is proportionately smaller than Douglas (to match the size of the children), but equally squashy and adorable:

As for spinning, well, there is a drawer full of singles waiting for an appropriate plying device. I hate, loathe, detest plying. It's boring. It's dull. It's frightful. But! There's a beautifully wrapped package sitting on our Gift Slab that may address the Plying Problem. In the meantime, the myriad little copps sit quietly, waiting for Plyness. But I am not idle.

The Spindlewoods pink ivory spindle in the top photo holds gloriously silky Suri alpaca from The Critter Ranch, and the spindle in the lower two images is clearly enjoying luxurious 50/50 silk/merino roving from The Fiber Denn. It might be the only smiling spindle ever made!

Pearly Whites

The weather is lovely here in Costa Rica, but apparently, it's a bit nippy back in the US and other Northern climes. So, despite the fact that we are prancing around in shorts, many of you may appreciate seeing (and knitting) a Really Warm Hat.







The pattern is Susan Pandorf's Gotham hat, which I modified because I used heavier yarn than the original. I happened to have some Yubina Chunky cashmere and a bit of Richmore Count 10 mohair, so I worked them together to make a fluffy, warm little head cover. I omitted the final repeat and altered the stitch count to make the hat fit my head (a practical concept I try to use often).

I wanted to decorate the hat with some beady stuff, but I didn't want pounds of pearls on my head, so I bought some cheap plastic pearls from Michaels and sewed them on afterward. The holes in the pearls were too small to thread on the yarn during construction.

In Other News...

We originally came down to Costa Rica for a bit of medical work and a lot of sightseeing, but our trip didn't work out exactly as planned (as usual). Instead of frolicking in the rain forests and ogling indigenous animal life, I spent most of it in a San Jose hospital.

I can tell you that, while the hospital was fabulous (and accepts Blue Cross/Blue Shield), I was unable to knit, thanks to the plentiful IVs that adorned both arms. In fact, even though I couldn't do anything with knitting needles (Enough already with the needles!), I did sort of resemble of skein of yarn. The knitless weeks turned out to be a good thing, because I was down to a single skein of sock yarn. And folks, there is not a single yarn store in the entire country.

Several lovely people offered to send me yarn--thank you all for your generosity!

We are returning home Wednesday where I shall bury my face in my stash for a few hours and pick up my needles (knitting, not IV) once more. I do have something exquisitely lovely to show you next time, so please come back and enjoy.

And no, before you ask, Harry was totally useless. He picked up a karaoke gig in a local bar, where his Japanese renditions of popular favorites were greeted with wild enthusiasm. He did visit the hospital several times, only to be chased around by nurses wielding tightly wrapped tortillas. He also took my lonely skein of sock yarn with him on his last visit, noting that I couldn't knit, so why waste it? Little heartless creep.

A Little Subtle Color

It was cold and rainy the other day, so Harry decided to reorganize his stash. He kindly allowed me to assist as long as I didn't pilfer anything (or try to steal back my priceless ebony circulars). He did, however, graciously assent to my taking anything he didn't want. Among his rejects, I unearthed a small ball of uninspiring white Aran-weight cashmere silk and a partial skein of variegated Richmore Count 10 mohair.

A few hours later, Kyoko-san's birthday present was finished:


I was intrigued by the fact that, no matter how close I looked, I couldn't see two separate yarns. The Count 10 is so thin that it virtually melted into the heavier-weight yarn, while still imparting its lovely variegation and fuzzy silkiness to the finished object.


The pattern is a free Ravelry download called Beaufort--get a copy here.

As I was working away on the hat, I noticed Harry carefully placing a skein of hot pink fun fur into his neatly arranged stash drawer. When I asked him what he intended to do with it, he mumbled something about a blow-up tarantula doll ... pink furry legs... I really do not want to see that finished object any time soon...