Oogyknitter

I hope this finds you all well and safe; we're good here! I'd been looking forward to my weekly visit to Wegmans yesterday - not only to replenish some supplies, but also to see what might be different since my last visit a week ago.  It was also strange to venture out into "the world"! The major difference was that the food rationing continues to work really well - the shelves had sufficient breads, pastas, rice, canned goods, etc.  I even got some bacon!!  Someone there had scored a large shipment of TP - it was an unfamiliar brand, with the label half in French.  I imagined a Wegmans purchasing agent, like a modern-day Radar O'Reilly, bartering with their colleague in Montreal (where else would one get French TP??) to exchange their excess TP (perhaps many of them have bidets??) for our excess Naan (no one has been eating flatbreads here, evidently). The only thing I still wasn't able to get was paper towels.  First world problems, indeed. Also ye

Happy Monday!  I hope this finds you healthy and safe!  We're still good here. Neuro and I had one of our regularly-scheduled Skype meetings over the weekend, during which we shared our coronavirus-themed projects with each other.  Let's just say that Neuro's is soooooooper cuuuuuute, and I really hope that she will blog about it (or similar) some time! As I'd predicted, mine is nowhere close to being finished.  But - in the spirit of revealing - I'll catch you up on where I'm at right now, and will provide updates going forward! I got my inspiration from the pattern for these mitts , as well as from googling around at other cowl patterns to determine size and shape.  I modified the chart as follows: This is actually my work in progress - the bottom magnet is marking my place as I move up the chart, and the other magnets are securing the paper to the board.  I think the entire chart repeats a total of five times to make it all the way around the cowl

I hope this continues to find you all well and enjoying the start of your weekend!  We're still good here! I've been working on the MCP for a bit every day, and it's been easy to tell how my mental fatigue is diminishing with practice using this unfamiliar technique.  I'm nearing the part with the beads, however, which could add a whole new aspect to this!  Depending on what we decide for "the reveal", I'll start to show some pics here.  More to come on that! The second secret thing I've been working on is Neuro's new pattern: I think you can tell that it's got a Switching Modes flavor to it, but wait until you see what Neuro has done with it!  I'll zoom out and post more pics as soon as the pattern is posted!  (Unless Neuro is waiting for me for some reason - in which case that order will be reversed!) Please take note the relative even-ness and lack of rowing out in the smooth and shiny stockinette sections!  I've been kni

Happy Friday, all!  We've all made it through the week, and I hope you're well and safe; all continues to be good here. On Part 9 of their Daily Quarantine Knitting podcast, Arne and Carlos include a short demo to help explain one of the technical details of their knitalong project.  Arne is working right along, zooming back along the row, and Carlos says, off camera, something like - What you're seeing is Norwegian purling; don't worry about it now, but if you want to learn more, we've got some videos that will teach you. What/???  Norwegian Purling???? So I headed for Very Pink Knits (after singing her praises to you just yesterday, how could I not?).  And guess what this technique does:  it lets you purl continental while leaving the yarn at the back of the work!!  Yes, I'm a thrower, but I hold the second color of yarn in my left hand when knitting Fair Isle - which made purling with that color complicated beyond belief.  So I would just change the ya

I hope this finds you all safe and well today!  We're still good here :) Yesterday I had another idea for my MCP.  Why not make it even more complex and time-consuming, LOL! Beads!!!! (The colors here look terrible - I'm hoping it's just the camera.  I'm trying to use stash ingredients so my choices are somewhat limited.) My grandmother would have been absolutely amazed by how much we've all created, "unvented", and learned since "her time".  She taught me how to knit and crochet when I was very young, and she had passed away before The Internet taught me some of these cool things.  Although no one could whip up a pom-pom like she could - I'll never forget the astonishing demo she gave me one time! One of these cool things is what happens when you have yarn, a bead that the yarn can fit through, and access to those teeny steel crochet hooks.  I was never interested in crocheting with any of them, but evidently my grandmother had

I hope that today finds you all well!  We're still good here :) I thought that this would be a good opportunity to revisit some of Neuro's descriptions of mindfulness, particularly in relation to knitting; I believe this work also led to her creation of the Switching Modes pattern (and I see that there is now a cowl  as well!).  All of this occurred to me as I began to struggle working on my MCP last evening.  I realized that I'd been working on it for 2-3 hours, and that I had just hit a wall.  Now - I can knit for days (with the appropriate stretching of course!), but my fingers were getting confused and I felt mentally fatigued.  Well - duh!  This project employs a technique that is relatively unfamiliar and relentless - there is no "rest row" on the way back during which I can relax.  I failed to consider that I needed a break from all of this intense focusing (not to mention counting!). Anyway - regardless of whether or how you use yarn, don't for

All continues to be relatively quiet here; I hope the same holds for you all as well! I don't have much non-secret knitting to report, but I did take a quick yarn side trip and did this: Plying!!! From left to right:  the last bobbin of Only One, and two blue-ish palate cleansers needed for the BadAss Hybrid.  At the top is a bit of the next spinning project - a basketball-sized ball of carded alpaca.  I think it needs to be a little floofier than my usual two-ply fingering weight yarn - I may even need to change the wheel ratio - gasp!!! In wildlife news:  The robins are now singing their asses off, in addition to bopping around on the lawn.  The Pileated is very active and noisy, and for one second there I think almost got eaten by the foxie - who then trotted away looking a bit pissed.  The goaties continue their pasture meandering.

Yup, it's snowing here today.  It's mostly behaving like rain, except it's starting to stick a little here and there (right now the flakes are so huge they look like they could take somebody's eye out!!).  All of the spring plants that were sending up their shoots will need to get out their mitts and slippers for the next couple of days! Continued Pandemic Hats Off to Weggies!  I ventured out to do our weekly shopping earlier today, and they continue to have everything under control.  I only had to improvise on a couple of things (canned lentils vs. the dried ones - there wasn't a dried bean to spare!!  I don't think those had been on the rationing list, LOL).   A new Pandemic Hats Off to Black Button Distilling , who began producing ethanol-based hand sanitizer a few days ago.  They were one of the first of our area's distillers, so have been a leader since their inception.  What a great way to help the community!! I thought I'd mention the

As always, I hope this finds you all well in these uncertain times!  Things continue to be quiet and uneventful here. I wanted to show you a pic of the last of the mitts, all finished and drying on the blocking board: Also, after much YouTube watching and pattern finagling, I'm casting on for the MCP this morning: I'm still pretty obsessed with working on BadAss Hybrid as well, but that work is going to come to a halt very soon since I'll need to make some more handspun (well, I have a lot, but not in the quantity or color family that I need for this particular project).  I should also do some more work on Neuro's latest pattern, so I'm ready for when she publishes it! The only wildlife I saw yesterday was fairly domesticated - the goaties, Bella (the border collie who lives next to the bottom of our driveway), and one of "our" four cats.  There are still birds everywhere, but no signs of the deer, foxies, or other critters.  It's hard to

I hope this continues to find you all healthy and safe.  We're still good here!  Oogyhubby had been enjoying the sparse commuting traffic and quiet office with blazing fast internet, but he too has been instructed to work from home; he would find that appealing were it not for our molasses-slow internet (he's in IT so he actually needs to do stuff!).  We're so far off the beaten path that we have satellite (which is preferable to DSL, which we had when we first moved here!).  First-world and pre-pandemic problems, I know :) Big knitting news: I zoomed through the rest of the knitting on the CWA last night!!! I didn't necessarily have it in mind to get this done yesterday, but at one point I realized I was within just a few rows of being done, so I powered through.  It still needs a bath and a tag sewn on, but it's otherwise ready to be sent along to its destiny! I also finished the last of the Wool-Ease mitts, but they're swimming at the moment; I&#

I hope you all are safe and healthy today; things here are still (relatively) uneventful, and we're well. I think it's only fair that I share the pattern that gave me the idea for something coronavirus-related for our March Gift project.  It won't necessarily reveal anything major, because I spent some time yesterday modifying the chart for my own nefarious purposes.  In epidemiological terms, this is the MCP origin!  (And, from a virology perspective, I suppose I've created a mutation with my version of the chart!) At the same time, I've also had to spend some time figuring out how I'm going to execute this idea; this involves watching some YouTube videos and making some decisions where there are options.  I also wound the red yarn into a ball, and will do the same for the white yarn today.  I should have everything I need to cast on at that point, and then off I'll go! Meanwhile, I did some more work on BadAss Hybrid: Eventually, I'm going

I hope that this finds you healthy and safe.  We're fine here so far. In a burst of motivation yesterday, I blitzed through the remaining items from my February Gift list.  Here's the final pair of socks-to-mitts: These were a kit, and I wore the heck out of them in spite of my love/hate relationship with the colors.  They resemble a lovely garden at the peak of blooming in late spring, and are lovely by themselves, but they just don't come together for me.  But they made for comfy socks! I also completed the repairs at the thumb juncture of these (made by Neuro herself!!): Thus ends my month of mitts!  That was fun!! Now, on to the MCP!!!  This may be the only photo until the "reveal": These yarns are repurposed from a sock kit (I wasn't wild about the pattern, anyway).  The darker one is a bit redder than it shows here, but it's more of a dark reddish pink than a true red. I'm also making some slow progress on B

First, I have to give a shout-out to our local grocery store chain, Wegmans.  As I'd mentioned, I needed to pick up a prescription at mine, and thought I'd get a few other items as well - and also I wanted to check out how things were going. Everyone else must be home trying to figure out how to work remotely, because it wasn't crowded.  There wasn't chaos.  They are rationing the popular items (although today there were scores of carrots and bananas, go figure), and even though many things are still scarce I got most of what I needed, everyone was friendly, the store was organized and tidy, and even if it stays this way for a while it will be quite acceptable.  Hats off and cheers for Wegmans!! (Oh - I also ran into the liquor store to get a couple of things.  I asked the cashier if it had been busy there, and she said it was crazy-busy, like at Xmas.  I also asked her what the popular items were.  She said everything was really popular, but especially vodka and bo

Wow!  Several days ago a friend and I had arranged to meet this morning for coffee, and we had to try three different places before finding one that hadn't already closed its indoor dining areas.  We ended up at a Wegmans, which was quite empty!  We took great care to bump elbows, sanitize, and use napkins to touch any handles or similar, but it seems like it will be best to lie low for a while until we all start to figure out what exactly is going on.  (We had a lovely time catching up over coffee, though!!)  I called today to reschedule a routine status check-in with my physician, and they sounded quite relieved.  Everything is getting pushed forward until April though - if we're through this by then, we will all be very busy as well!! Back to some knitting content! I think I can show you a bit of what I've done thus far on Neuro's new pattern without giving too much away: (You can ignore the dark green yarn - that's a provisional cast-on.)  The gray ya

All the local schools here have closed for the time being, so I made the decision to do my weekly grocery shopping a little deeper into the country, rather than at the Wegmans store in the suburb one town over.  Someone once described most Wegmans parking lots as "Thunderdome", and that holds especially true for days leading up to holidays as well as periods of social isolation - so I wasn't taking any chances today.  I may check it out a little later in the week, mostly because I have to pick up a prescription there - but I'm curious as well.  The other day, all of the bananas were gone.  Perhaps bananas are a leading indicator of panic grocery shopping?? Even in the country store (it's still a fairly major chain, Tops, but it's in the other direction), the place looked like a bunch of 5-year-olds had run through with grocery carts and grabbed all the bread, pasta, mac-n-cheese, milk, carrots, and toilet paper they could carry.  So now everyone is going to

We had some good friends join us last evening for dinner in the country, which was such a blast!  I spent the day cleaning the house and preparing the meal (jambalaya in the crock pot!); all my scrubbing muscles are sore today, but the house hasn't looked this great since we last had visitors some time ago.  I plan to enjoy the tidiness for some time to come! I'll continue with my commitment not to show you pictures of my food, but if you're looking for a super easy and delicious cornbread recipe, I highly recommend this one .  It was moist and on the sweet side - perfect to accompany the spicy jambalaya.  Even Oogyhubby liked it - and he is no fan of cornbread.  I didn't have a square pan so I used a 9" cake pan - so it baked up a bit faster as well! Just this morning, I finished the knitting on BadAss Autumn Handspun: I couldn't resist adding that bit of color at the top, although I'm not sure what I'll think of it in a few days (the ti

Things here have been fairly quiet so far this week, with a few competing priorities slowing down the knitting process a bit - but it's all good. I continue to enjoy working on the BadAss Autumn Handspun cowl: And I've completed Part II of Phase IV of the CWA: I've got another bunch of small amounts of handspun that are dying to become another handspun cowl, so that may very well be the next in the BadAss series; these are blues and purples mostly. Yesterday there was quite the cacophony of red-winged blackbirds up in the trees around our woodshed.  I don't think there were too many of them, but they were making quite the racket!  I continue to enjoy their silly noises!

I am absolutely obsessed with working on my latest cowl, BadAss Handspun: Here are the rules (so far, anyway!): - Use Casapinka's Cut The Scrap framework - e.g., gauge, # stitches, some of the stitch patterns, etc. - Use my handspun - For each new color of handspun, keep going until it's all gone - handspun is too precious!  Make this the new beginning of row, and keep moving it as needed for each new neutral-colored stripe.  This creates more ends to weave in (because the neutral-colored yarn doesn't travel all the way up the seam as it does in the original pattern), but that's the only downside as far as I can tell. - Let each new yarn tell me what kind of stitch pattern it wants to be.  All of these are roughly fingering or heavy fingering weight, but they differ in terms of fiber content and length.  This part is the most fun, because Casapinka's stitch counts (148 to start, then increasing to 160) allow for a lot of options and flexibility.  I thin

I know this because - I am not exaggerating - a thousand of them just swooped in and landed in my yard.  Then swooped off into the woods.  And are now flitting around in the woods making quite a racket.  I hope some are going to stick around, I've missed their chirp-chirpchirp-CHIRPs (or, as I've imagined, they're very agreeable birds, so translated this becomes deh-fihniht-LEEE!). It's like an Alfred Hitchcock movie around here these days.  I don't remember seeing these large groups of birds last year - but, considering how quickly they're here and then gone, I suppose it's largely coincidence that I'm seeing them at all, let alone two in one week! It happened so quickly I didn't get a chance to take a picture - that is, without opening a window and scaring them all off. However, here is a pic of the CWA as of this morning: The border for one side is complete, and I've cast on for the second side, ignoring the pattern and just

Although I didn't accomplish much else from my yarn project list yesterday, I did get Phase IV underway: It doesn't show well in this pic, but the border color is a very deep blue.  It's all garter stitch, all the time for these borders!! (I may have done some more knitting on Spring Scrappy as well.) Earlier this morning, I saw three deer wander by in the woods, followed by two more, then another group of three.  I'm also starting to hear some different bird noises now as well.  The Vernal Equinox is just around the corner, but around these parts that doesn't mean that we can't still get some big snows; I think some of our largest ones have happened in Marches of yore!

I don't have any adventure knitting to tell you about today - things are pretty quiet, but in a good way.   The plum fingerless mitts are drying happily on their blocking board: Instead of starting the first border for the CWA, I spent yesterday's knitting time working on Spring Scrappy.  It's such a happy pattern, I couldn't help it.  But - at the very least I need to pick up the border stitches during some decent daylight.  The rest I can do completely blindfolded.  I'll endeavor to get that started today. The Goat Hat saga continues.  Prototype 2 might be salvageable: it's possible all I need to do is re-knit the last 8 inches or so, such that the Goat Milk? lettering is moved up towards the top of the hat by a couple of inches (no easy cut/paste option here!).  While I'm feeling brave, I'll do the ripping out today.  I still think that the overall design isn't the best, but I'd hate this version a lot less with this change.

Well, of crows anyway.  I happened to look out my window early yesterday afternoon and saw this: (Please continue to ignore the poor quality of my images and instead focus on the number of black dots - these are crows!!  Imagine them flying around in the air as well, and the caw-ing - oh my!!) Just as mysteriously, they were gone about an hour later. I can't believe they are migrating - they've been around most of the year.  Could they be taking a break from some kind of adventure?  Was there a crow convention in the area?  Perhaps a family reunion of sorts? In yarn news - I decided to assess the availability of size 5 circular needles yesterday, hopefully the interchangeable ones where you can connect more than one cable together for those extra-long projects (like a big sweater or, say, an afghan border!).  Evidently, at one point (um, several years ago) I anticipated this need, because I'd obtained a 40" circular cable for my Denise set - AND the size 5

Yesterday I realized that I could work the next 2/11 of CWA Phase III in two parts: one at the beginning of the day, and one at the end of the day.  Ta-dah!!!!! (This is the wrong side of the blanket, demonstrating that no loose ends remain!) On to Phase IV now, which consists of picking up and knitting 250 stitches on each side, and knitting for 20 rows (I'm trying not to do the math for how many total stitches remain!).  Fortunately, I expect this phase to be rather fun - even if it will take me more than one day to do the border for each side. I had a couple of appointments this morning and managed to knit most of two preemie mitts (minus the ties) during the waiting times.  Work continues on the fingerless plum mitts and Spring Scrappy Cowl (the latest Scrappy, just re-named), and I still have one pair of socks to convert into mitts as well as the thumb repairs on the awesome Neuro mitts.  I'm already thinking about starting another pair of mittens, LOL.  I'm w