distractions...

everyone needs distractions now and then, especially when you're having work days like i'm having lately. suffice it to say things are a bit hectic, but we'll leave it at that. at least when i come home i can see all the pretty green things that are popping up in my windowsill. soon enough, my pretties, and you'll be outside growing fat veggies. not today though - i scraped ice of my windshield this morning despite the nearly-May calendar date. gotta love it.



there has been some knitting, although i'm not much motivated lately. my friend lucas has been complaining that A always has new cool toques to wear, and although he's not the first one to do so, he somehow motivated me where others have not. there's something about knowing have to do something that completely stalls me in my tracks. in this case though, i mostly had fun. i used a variety of stash yarns, with a green and light brown theme fitting for project spectrum (and a bit of blue thrown in). the wave chart is from swell - yet another adventure in my goal to excel at colourwork.



the edge has a few rows of garter stitch rather than my standard rib which i think creates a nice clean effect. the top is an 8-pointed decrease. i have to say, while i do love all the colours mixed together, sewing in all the ends is a pain in the ass. luke won't get this till friday, but hopefully it'll shut him up - i mean, make him happy.



my other current project is child's first socks from Knitting Vintage Socks. After being inspired by pam and kelly, i knew mine also had to be purple. so far so good, but the shell pattern gets to be a bit of snore very quickly. i'm pretty dismissive in this post, aren't i? obviously not quite settled from the day's events. hopefully i have another FO post soon, but i can't say i won't also start a new project before then!

spring, we're so glad to see ya...

although winter is slow to relinquish it's gloomy grip on us (a foot of snow just two hours south of us on saturday!), there are signs here and there that spring is slowly making an appearance, albeit a late one. here are a few shots from today's walk along the campbell river.

feeling earthy...

Just got back from a relaxing weekend at Tsa-Kwa-Luten where my mom and I took part in the Fun Knits knitting retreat. Was a great mix of women madly knitting away, and also good workshops. More on that in a moment, but first, my start for Project Spectrum: Earth.

These socks are a variation on Yukon Leaves, which I previously interpreted in my niece's little hat. I knitted the socks toe up (of course), so my leaves perhaps look upside down, although I think I like them better this way. I was initially concerned that the four repeats called for in the pattern would make the socks too big, so I started with one up the instep with a twisted stitch cable on each side. For the leg, I did three repeats of the Yukon Leaves pattern, with a cable in between each.



The cable up the back is different from the other two - a bit bigger and with three strands instead of two. These socks fit awesome, and I'm pretty happy. However, you may have noticed a little something - see how the sock on the right is evenly variegated? then notice the sock on the left? yeah, that's right about where I was. This yarn is Sweatermaker, which is soft and lovely, and local. But the second ball turned out to be noticeably lighter, and unfortunately did this strange pooling thing whereby the dark part worked its way in a spiral up my leg. I've let it go, breathing has returned to normal, but this was my first real experience with bad pooling, and colour my unimpressed.

There will be several more installations for this segment of Project Spectrum - a brief glance at my wardrobe will confirm that it's not hard to get me excited about green and brown. Stay tuned.



So what did I do at the workshop? Learned how to spin of course. I do tend to get frustrated when things don't work for me instantly, so there may have been much huffing and gritting of teeth, but ultimately I'm pretty pleased with the result. I can definitely see it is a skill you need to practice again and again, but at least the basics have been explained well to me. This is Romney wool, by the by. And a great colour for PS.

One last bit of "Earth"? Check out the tiny tomatoes poking their heads up behind the handspun. Yummy veggies are on their way!

recent images from tofino...

travel snapshots...

around here spring is well on it's way. however, last week i was in ontario where the deep snow definitely makes winter still feel very close at hand. although i didn't get a chance to take as many shots as i would have liked, here are a few things that caught my eye.


st lawrence river, at prescott.


dock in the frozen harbour bordering the st lawrence, prescott.


stonework feature, parliament buildings, ottawa.

the twisted end of the spectrum...

oh, so many things to post about, and lots of pics. have just returned from a week in the ottawa area and had a really great time. will share some photos soon, but to start, i finally finished my first project spectrum project:


yay for red mitts! you may have noticed in previous mentions i was looking for the perfect pattern, something a bit cabled, possibly some lace, and wonderfully long, and i've come out pretty happy on this one. you may recognize the middle lace pattern as one half of the baudelaire chart. in fact, the mitts are mirror images of each other, so each mitt uses one half. the lace is bordered on each side by a simple cable.


the fun part was the twisting. i knit these from the hands up, so on the first mitt i put in a k2tog and a m1 on either side of the cables and lace pattern, doing these stitches every second round. on the second mitt, i did m1 and ssk, so the mitt would twist the opposite way. tops and bottoms of the mitts are 4x2 rib. the main problem i found with knitting from the fingers up was that i had a lot more trouble adding in the thumb afterward than i normally do. i'm not completely happy with them, but the rest is so great i can live with it.

the yarn, as previously mentioned, is colinette jitterbug in morello mash. wonderful colour that i love endlessly, but the yarn itself i could take or leave. i've definitely used many softer fingering weights (although it may soften with washing), and i also encountered numerous knots in the skein, several ridiculously close together to have me gritting my teeth.


despite my love of red, this is likely my only project for the fire part of project spectrum, especially as the end of march looms quickly toward me. dare i admit that i've well into a project for april/may? not sure if that's allowed, but the green yarn was calling to me and socks were a perfect travelling project. but the earth months will be easy for me, so i'm sure there will be more projects to come. plus it's not hard to be in a green and brown mood - did i mention that it's spring here? i'm going to be starting garden plans this week, and i'm terribly excited about it!

spring is calling...

you can definitely feel it in the air. it's a bit warmer, a bit more mild. i actually wore flip-flops the other day. this crocus shots were taken a week ago - our yard is full of them, mostly purple, with a few yellow ones glowing sunnily in between. not much else is going on yet, but that soon will change. we have been talking dreamily about the coming season and all the vegetables we will plant. i am eager to start some things indoors, but i am going away next week and figured i would wait to do until i return. but soon i will hopefully be filling this blog with images of fresh veggies bursting forth.

but to take an abrupt turn away from spring, next week i will be heading to ontario, where i hear winter is much less ready to release its clutches on the landscape. it will be an adventure, i'm sure, but will also make the spring weather that much more enjoyable upon my return.


my project spectrum project is well underway. these fingerless mitts combine a bit of lace along with some cables, and i'm very excited about the finished product. i am well into the second mitt, although the first still requires finishing touches (to thumb or not to thumb?), so i hope to have a more revealing image to show you soon. this colinette jitterbug is gorgeous, and perfect for ps.

warm head & cold sheep...

The boy quite liked my Koolhaas, and admittedly I enjoyed the project, so it wasn't hard to convince me to make another one. But in the interest of not having any matchy-matchy episodes, I wanted them to look as different as possible. The Malabrigo was a perfect solution. The colour variations in this yarn create and entirely different hat, but is just as soft and squishy as version one. I've never worked with Malabrigo before, but I will be returning.

There isn't as much stitch definition as the Cashmerino, which I suppose is partly from the slight fuzz of the merino, and partly from the variegated colour. But man is this stuff soft.

And in the world of yarn to be, the clear sunny day that was Sunday turned out to be the day Sally, Cookie and Jumper lost their winter coats. Yup, those are my folks' three ewes, fat with babies and usually pushy women, but once flipped on their backs remarkable docile. The women who does the shearing is surprisingly adept with the large animals, considering her own small size. Good thing the sheep have a barn to stay warm in for the cold nights still to come; however it's good to get them sheared before birthing as otherwise the little lambs have trouble finding the milk.

These first two shots show Sally (the Suffolk) putting up with her fate, while the bottom shows Cookie (brown) and Jumper (white) looking a bit lighter (and perhaps sheepish?) after their shearing. Soon enough my mom and I will be washing and carding in prep for spinning. I still haven't tried out this spinning stuff, but we are booked for a workshop in early April to figure it all out.

And yes, this new hat has distracted me from Project Spectrum, but I'll be back on track shortly with the red gloves. Promise.