Category: Blog

This was the closing act on Saturday night. I just stood there and marveled. We didn’t even get the rain. Just the rainbow.

It has been an amazingly beautiful weekend- and a three-dayer to boot! We got a lot done around the homestead, but as you can imagine, we’re pretty pooped.

I kind of hoped that I was going to getting some swatching done for the zipper edge of the Denisee-ized Urban Aran, but that has not come to pass. I even have a friend’s zip-front cardigan on loan to examine in detail and use for inspiration. But it hasn’t even made it out of it’s bag yet. And I have approximately 1.5 hours of my waking weekend left. Dag.

I also failed to complete my second sleeve on time (had set today as my goal), but I suppose it’s not a tragedy, as I probably won’t have need to wear this Very Toasty sweater until maybe October or November.

My one fiber-y accomplishment for this past week is another skein of Gershom the Ferndale shetland. Such a handsome boy.

And there is another reason I’ve had less fiber time this week. We’ve got a visiting pup.

Sam is the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel of our friends who are off getting the royal treatment in Frankfurt, Germany. Now Sam is not any trouble at all. He gets on fine with Syd and Bruno, seems to have adjusted to rural life pretty easily, and is as cute as can be, but it does mean I have 50% more tummy to rub on a regular basis. So I’ve been a little tied up making sure all the boys get the attention they require.

Hot.

It’s been hot HOT HOT!

What you’re looking at here- on the right- is a 92 degree temperature recorded at about 4 pm yesterday. Just above it in the photo is an indication of the max temp from earlier in the day- approx 97 stinkin’ degrees. Yeeks!

It was much more tolerable in the living room- where I sought refuge from the insane heat of the afternoon, and knit some sleeve:

This is a fun knit. Cable interest, but not so much that you have to think about it. I memorized the repeat after a couple times through, and now it’s pretty relaxing work.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’m really looking forward to the shoulder construction stage- I think this will make a really nice EZ seamless hybrid.  And that pattern/scheme/construction technique is just so clever.

Doing this mod required changing the cable on the sleeve a bit. You might have noticed that the pattern photo (previous post, below) shows paired cables on the sleeves, just like on the front.  After looking at the gauge and the cable chart, it became very clear that the double cable was going to be way too wide to be a shoulder saddle. So I decided to just do one cable on each sleeve, the one on the right turning right, and the one on the left turning left.  Ta- Da! Still balanced.

I’m a little nervous about the zipper installation,, but I think there are some tutorials online…Guess I should do some research.

It’s really nice to have a sweater in progress. Hopefully the heat will pass and we’ll get back to wool-friendly weather.

It figures, that the one time I set my mind on a sweater that someone else thought up- it would be one that is out of print and not available on most store shelves.

I was starting to think that I was gong to have to buy the leaflet on Ebay and wait for it in the mail. But hoping against hope, I stopped by one of my LYSs, and sifted through all their baskets and stacks of pattern sheets and booklets, and just when I was about to say “when”, I stumbled upon it:

The Urban Aran- Patons “Street Smart” booklet #500989.

Ah- sweet relief! I don’t have to figure out and chart those cables on my own! I can just figure out how I want to modify it, and get started. Here are the materials (a sampling, anyway):

And here is my little gauge swatch (Isn’t it cute?) It really is square- it just looks warped in the photo. I think that the reason I’m so enamored of this swatch is because it just looks so pristine and neat and tidy, and I can remember when the fleece it’s made from was dirty and stinky and laying out on the driveway after I hauled it out of the feed sack it was stuffed in. Quite a transformation!

And I think it’s going to make a gorgeous sweater-

See Tina’s blog for the background on this one. I think this is an interesting idea.

So here we go-

“following my gut seems to work”

“landlubber, homebody, spinning off into space-”

“all wool is grass- get mowing!”

I’ll try to think of more later.

Right now my mind is consumed by the need to identify a new knitting project.

I’m seriously considering the “Urban Aran“, probably cardiganized, ala Jared.

I love those cables, and it looks like the pattern would be compatible with my aran weight three ply Romney.  (That stuff really wants to be a sweater)

But I really want to do another EZ seamless hybrid. Maybe I’ll devise a way to seamless-hybridize the urban aran. Those sleeve cables would look really nice continuing all the way up the saddles, don’t you think?

Me too.

Guess I’d better get swatching.