Work In Progress

One of my many WIP's is Carmela's Cardigan from Patons Top Down Classics. I just started this a few weeks ago, but it knits up super fast in Elann.com's Seta Lana (Celadon). I bought this at elann's bag sale, and the day it arrived, I ditched all other projects cuz I just had to get my hands in that soft silky yarn. Mine came on a Monday, and I went to knit night, only to see that I was not alone. Another knitter had her Seta Lana on needles the day it arrived too.

Pix here...more at Raveland

In Which I Finally Caved...

Succumbed
Crumbled
Got Sucked into RAVELRY!

And now I leave you with photos of my finished ChicKnits Twist Cardi, cuz naturally I'm filling out all the details on RAVELRY. I ravel as SeeJayneKnit :D

What's Up??

Well lessee...

It's knit-night tonight, and I don't know if I will be working on this little lovely:



Which I got a fledgling start on last night...



Or if I will be sewing together all these nice blocked pieces of my ChicKnits Twist Cardi. I'm still knitting the Right Front, but why should these other pieces wait.



I can't do any thinky-knitting at knit-night. There is just too much conversation going on, and I make the most pathetic mistakes.

I have all this new handspun that is waiting to be washed and hung up to dry:



And then there is all this other yarn waiting to be labelled, listed, or shipped.



On Thursday, I got my second Tattoo!!! Yippee!!! I'll post a pic when it's a bit more healed. Thanks to Ryan/Llama at Sinister Skin in Port Moody, You rock! You did a fab-oo-lous job dahling.

Booooooo

It's snowing. I am sooo sick of snow. Grrrrrr!



On the other hand, I finished The Man's hat. Yay me!!

They Really Don't Like This Guy in Paia

Sign Outside a Hair-Waxing Establishment in the Town of Paia (Maui)

A Funny Thing Happened to my Camera

When digital cameras became popular, I was a holdout. I liked my Pentax "traditional" camera. But when we go on holidays I take a lot of photos. A lot. Like fifteen or twenty rolls worth. I calculated that I could buy quite a nice digital camera for the same cost as one trip's worth of film and processing for the old one. I bought a Kodak EasyShare with a big-ass lens, not one of those cigarette-pack slip into your pocket kind. I bought it a week before a Disneyland trip several years ago. It took fabulous pictures.

Until it didn't.

It fell four inches. I kid you not, four fucking inches, and then refused to work ever again. And it was in its heavily padded case too. We were in our second hour of waiting to get on the new Monsters Inc. ride (which wasn't worth the wait by the way), and the last photo I got was of that big blue monster guy and then the camera went tharn. A quick trip to Target in Orange County to buy a second one, and my anxiety was relieved.

I loved that camera. Future shop refunded our money on the first one, so I was set. That camera took every picture you've ever seen on this blog. Every picture you've ever seen in my yarn shop. Every picture of family fun and pets and general silliness. That camera took the picture of yarny goodness up there at the top of this post.

In Hawaii, I carried that camera into the ocean, stood waist deep in the water, and took shot after shot of my kids and the Man body surfing. I focused on this big wave they were all about to catch. Action shot. And then felt the wave break right over my head and well, right over that camera. It died on the spot. No long lingering good bye.

This time it was a quick trip to Maui Wal-Mart for a replacement with an even bigger-ass lens than before. Great camera! Sucks up so much light that I have to learn to take my yarn pix all over again. I wonder where I will buy my next camera.

Below: pix with new cam of a hat I'm knitting for the Man. I dyed and spun the yarn. It's your basic knit one purl one watchman style hat. The brim will fold up.





PS. Wow, I can't believe that people still read this blog. Cool!

Tired of Hiding

I am a writer. Among other things that I am and that I enjoy, I am a writer. I have boxes of journals,and myriad computer files, full of poems, observations, essays, and stories about my strange life. Stories that I hope to publish one day. I'm just narcissistic enough to believe that other people might enjoy reading those poems, thoughts, and stories too.

I'm not in a space in my life to pursue publishing at this time, but I miss writing. I miss blogging. I used to share my life here a little...and then I stopped. I stopped mainly because I don't like my family, and I don't like that they can find me here and read things about my life. I'm not talking about my own family -- my husband and kids -- I'm talking about that other family, the one I grew up in. Well, I'm tired of hiding, and I've decided that if I want to write, I'm just going to go ahead and write.

Ten things to know about me:

1. I love my job (I play with string and fluff and beads for a living)
2. I am a hermit
3. I live in a house with The Man, The Boy, The Cupcake, two guinea pigs and a hamster
4. I think of my old family as Oddly, Weary, Milk, and Poach
5. I go to knit night at Black Sheep Yarns in Port Moody
6. I go to church and I love Jesus, and I even believe in all that crazy supernatural resurrection stuff, but only if gay people and bad people and everyone else gets to be there too. Cuz lord knows, I ain't perfect.
7. I wish that Coke and Cheetohs was considered a healthy meal replacement
8. I love movies
9. I don't read the newspaper
10 I have DID (you'll have to look it up). And no, The United States of Tara is not an accurate depiction. Neither is Sybil.

And here's a bonus...I recently returned from a trip to Maui with Man, Boy, and Cupcake. One of the highlights was that we snorkeled a lot and saw giant sea turtles...like these guys:

Apple of my Sky

This is my newest and mostest favoritest colorway. I've dyed it on roving (and spun), on sock yarn, on BFL Aran, on chunky wool, on merino sport, and on alpaca (not shown). Today I knitted up some fingerless mitts on some chunky handspun in that colorway. So cheerful and purdy...makes me smile.

Haven't Forgotten How To Knit

See! I can still knit!

A new LYS opened up here in Port Moody, and they have a Monday evening knit night. So every Monday, I pack up my Namaste bag for a couple of hours of stitchin' and bitchin'. This means that I actually do knit for a few hours a week, and I've been enjoying that, so I have been knitting on other days too.

I decided to work on one new (natch) project and get it completely finished before looking back at all the other unfinished knit business that has been languishing in drawers, baskets and bins.

I'm knitting Chicknits Twist -- and looky! The back, two sleeves, and part of the left front are all done:



The pattern is easy without being boring, and I love the yarn I'm using. It's an elann bag yarn, a superwash merino/bamboo blend that came out semi-solid in the dye job, so elann sold it off in bags of ten for extravagantly low prices. I think it sold out in 90 seconds. Mine is a deep espresso brown that makes me feel happy while I knit.



Yes, the next thing in line is to finish off the top down cardi I'm knitting in hand-dyed handspun yarn. I did most of the body and all of the sleeves, including sewing and blocking to this point:



I need to do something to finish off the body and then some kind of button bands, and then it is done.

DEAR AMERICA

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very sincerely,
And with many congratulations,

Jayne
(and a whole lotta other Canadians)

PS. I'm in a helluva good mood :)

When Yarn Sings

We all know that yarn can speak. It can whisper sweet nothings into our ears, telling us that it wants to be bought, to be owned, to be cuddled, to be knitted into that extra special something.

We all know that it's true, and if you don't know this, then you are in a deep state of denial. The rest of us pity you. I did not know, however, that yarn could sing until yesterday when this little baby started crooning to me.



I bought the roving from Twisted at etsy. Now you need to know that I have bought a lot of beautiful roving. I've even dyed some. And quite often when I spin that roving, I love the yarn that it becomes. I think about keeping a great deal of it.

But I have rules about these things.

If I have projects on the go in my own handspun, then I'm not allowed to get all hoggish and keep any more. That stuff goes into the shop and gets sold so that yarn can travel out into the world and speak to other knitters, as yarn was meant to do. Somebody has to pay the bills after all, and it might as well be yarn.

Just not this skein.

This skein is mine. The roving was a favorite from the day it arrived in the mail. It was so lovely to spin that I was sad when it was finished. And there's no way that it will allow me to sell it off. I just can't part with it.



Besides, it sings.

Moments Away From Happy Feet

I haven't done a lot of knitting since Christmas. I knit several pairs of mitts for my shop before Christmas; my mom and my nephew got socks. My other two nephews got monster-hats (alas unphotographed), and my daughter "swiped" the one special project sweater that was supposed to be for me.

In January and February, I eked along on a pair of socks for a dear woman I know and love. She has size-10 feet, so that took a while. Then I started a pair for myself. What is special about mine is that they are knitted with some of my very first yarn spun finely enough to knit some DK weight socks. DK/light worsted is my favorite weight for sock knitting. I had to sub in some other yarn I spun and plied as I didn't keep quite enough to finish the job. But I like the final effect just fine. One toe to graft and a few ends to get rid of, and I will have happy feet.

And now for a quick sweatery update:

Now About That Sweater...

So I decided on a whim that I would start my handspun sweater. I had dyed up a particularly glorious batch of Blue Agate merino roving without a clear plan of what to do with it. Spin it? Sell it? Sell it spun or as roving? Keep it?

Then I noticed that a few other Etsy roving-dyers had posted what looked to me to be colours that would coordinate very well with my Blue Agate. I ordered them and started spinning. I saw a picture in my head of a basic cardigan that would stripe out in different, but coordinated colorways from similar rovings.

This is the front:



This part will really blow your mind. When I had spun enough of the three different rovings to get started, I looked at the yarn and thought, hmmm, maybe a size 9 needle. and then I looked through my copy of Fitted Knits by Stefanie Japel, and thought, maybe something like this (looking at the short sleeved yellow cardi), but without that big panel thing.

And then I cast on. I made a guess about gauge (no swatch) and I made another guess about how much to start with, and I started knitting. Basic top-down raglan with open fronts. I'll add a band later. I knitted and worked increases, took note of the happy marriage of yarn with those size 9 (5.5mm) needles and carried on. I changed yarns, increased some more, knitted some more, put it all on a string, tried it on, put it back on the needles and kept on going.

This is the back:



In the spirit of making things up as I go along, I worked increases until the top part fit to where you divide off the sleeves. I knitted and tried it on again and decided where a bit of waist shaping should go. I'm working on that part now.

Here is a pic of two of the three spun yarns I'm using with some of that delectable Blue Agate roving. The spool has more yarn, cuz I was starting to run low on that colour.



Today, I'm working waist decreases, and I just put it down this second to take an up-to-date photo of where it's at. Stay tuned for more updates...



By the way, I'm having fun with this :)

The Coolest Stitch Markers Ever

In my travels through the land of Etsy, I've recently discovered, and fallen in love with, the style known as Steampunk. If you go to Etsy and search "steampunk," you will find all kinds of intriguing pieces, put together with love and old junk. Funky old junk. And when I say junk, I mean it in the most affectionate way. We're not talking about trash.



I started getting ideas in my head about how this might work with stitch markers. I imagined a cluster of unique markers that could be slipped on and off an aged chain. I imagined something I could wear that would capture that steampunk sensibility, but that would be practical and useful at the same time.

Then I went to all my favorite beaderies and used-stuff shops. I dug through my old bead box. I hunted supplies at etsy, and lo, the idea became this:



Yes, they are super cool. Yes, they are available in my shop. I kept a set for myself, and I love them! And yes, there will be variations on the theme available as I continue to dream them up.

Dear Blog...

I am knitting! Here is a little peek:



Cheers,

Jayne
xo

Dear Jayne...

I miss you.

Your Blog
xo

Spin Spin Spin

In spinning news, things just get better and better all the time. Here are some mitts I knit with some of my earliest handspun. I dyed up roving in Blue Agate Beauty and spun it thick 'n thin into chunky. The mitts are soooo soft.



I bought a roving from a wonderful seller on etsy called Pigeonroofstudios. But don't shop there, 'cuz her rovings are so popular that they sell out in minutes, and I don't need any more competition. Hers is the one on the right. She called it Tree Scum. Mine is the one on the left. I called it Little Green Apples.



After I spun them both as singles, I plied them together into what I'm calling Apple Core. I love it and kept a skein for myself. I listed the other skein at etsy.



This is another of my recent spun yarns. I haven't listed it yet, and not sure if I will or not yet. I will likely call it Embers since I dye that colorway on other yarn. I plied it with two different rovings that I spun into singles.



This one never got named. I took it to an appointment to show off to a knitter-woman I know. She couldn't stop cuddling with it and finally asked (sort of begged) if I would sell it to her. It's a single of 100% Blue Face Leicester that I spun by stripping off roving that I dyed and reversing two strands so that they spun as they mixed colours from each other.



And finally, a couple of delectable rovings I dyed last week. The first one is BFL; the second one is merino.