My LOST socks are done!

Based on my FAVOURITE television program ->


Here are my LOST socks ->


Hints of aquamarine tropical seas, green foliage, with a hint of "darkness" -- (think smoke monsters, others and rampaging polar bears lol), all done with a simple broken rib stitch so I could knit 'n watch at the same time. Knit toe-up on US 3 circular needles. Wool is SRK "On Your Toes" 4 ply sock yarn (with aloe vera!) colour ON 223600.

Knitting update!

The pair of socks I had been working on for Alison a year ago had gone missing. I had looked all over the house, EVERYWHERE ... except for in a large back of wool donated by Rosehaven Farm Store to the 4H Sheep Club, which I have been storing at our house. Luckily I had to pull that out to take yarn to a club meeting a few weeks ago. The plastic bag was buried right in the middle of 20 or so skeins of yarn! This wool was custom dyed by my friend Ann-Marie for Alison, and is a superwash Merino. They were knit using a broken rib stitch on U.S. size one circular needles.



I now have two pairs of socks on needles ... I'm almost done a pair for me, same pattern as above, that I call my LOST socks. They are in a colourway that reminds of my favourite TV series LOST, and the pattern is simple enough that I can knit while watching :-). The other set are Claire's next pair and my first foray into lace knitting.

I'm regretting now that I was on a knitting fast all fall, since I generally don't knit much once lambs are born and outside chores start up. Perhaps things will be different this year :-). What I would REALLY like is one of those old-fashioned hand crank sock knitting machines (so I can be like you Lona!!!) ... there is a huge market for these socks in this area and I would love to make hand cranked socks to fill the demand. It would be a great secondary income stream for our family, especially since my web work has fizzled for the moment (to be resurrected when UCB has money again). I've looked on Freecyle (haha) and I've looked on eBay (GASP at the prices). Lona, if you ever get gifted any more mechanical sock knitters, feel free to pass them on up north!!! (LOL).

M.J., meet Shetland fleece (another fibre addict in our household)

We could NOT keep her out of the raw fleece last night.






And yes, it's true ... in the last photo she is kneading the wool, and sucking it :-P. Ewwww.

This does explain, however, why last year our outdoor kitty ripped in to a bag of fleece in the garage and lived in it all winter :-). I'm thinking a Rubbermaid container full of raw fleece would be the ideal outside kitty house. Inexpensive too when you have your own sheep.

Iain's first real knitting project!

Iain has done a little knitting on and off over the last year, just to learn. Recently we picked up some cotton, and I cast on for a washcloth. This was only a few days ago, and this is the result!

He has already used it to wipe the kitchen counter, and cast on 28 stitches for the next one :-).

I'm very excited about having homemade washcloths, and have requested some for my birthday in May! Additionally, they keep bored hands busy ;-).

Since this is an Iain post, I also want to include a scanned photo from January 2000 (Is that right Mom? When did you visit us in NJ?). It is especially suitable for this post, because it is of Iain and his Grandpa. My Dad is incredibly talented in the whole fibre arts thing, doing the most incredible crocheted table cloths, murals (he did a huge one that to this day hangs in their church sanctuary), and doilies. Rumour has it that Dad started to crochet when he was home from school for an extended period due to measles (Am I right, Dad? Please correct me in the comments section if not!) I so understand why Grandma taught you! This photo had disappeared into one of the girls' bedrooms when they were collecting pictures to scrapbook with, and thankfully it resurfaced a couple of days ago :-).

Christmas and New Year's 2008

Christmas tree 2008 :-). It is always so much fun decorating. Each of the kids has their own stash of ornaments built up over the years. A funny; this year one was concerned that when they left, we would have nothing to decorate our tree with :-). This, as we strained our eyes looking for one last untrimmed branch, and packed away the excess that had no tree home.


We had a very peaceful Christmas (by default, since I was still recovering from pneumonia!). Here are a few photos from Christmas morning:

Dickens, intensely focused on his Christmas stocking containing a few doggie treats. Doesn't he remind you of a child??? He also received a few pig ears and a new stuffed animal to cart around. I am presently teaching him to "tidy up" his toys, however I haven't been too consistent and he doesn't quite get it yet.


Our trusty woodstove, for which we are truly thankful! It's true though; weirdly, a couple of times during the Christmas season we STILL put the holiday channel on the TV (you know, the ever-flaming fireplace :-) ... a fire at each end of the family room!


Iain the Rocker Dude with his Christmas guitar. This is an electric guitar that he has been saving up for ... Kev and I were able to contribute and complete the purchase for him for Christmas. He is also wearing an electric guitar rocker hoodie that Claire discovered at WalMart. And Claire's Christmas hat, just because it matched :-).


The true owner of the herringbone hat. Claire, wearing her gift sweater from the Wessel family, that matches her eyes completely and perfectly. It was quite astonishing.


Alison, modeling her Aero Postale bag from Auntie Kim. She's quite thrilled by this, and this morning used it as a book bag for school!


Our turkey dinner, which turned out to perfection (of course, since we had no guests for dinner ;-) ...).

We spent a decidedly lazy Christmas vacation. We now have four "West Wing" addicts in our home, so watched a good chunk of TV. Kev has been trying to interest me in this TV series for YEARS and only this time around did it catch :-).

The only other thing I was personally able to accomplish?

Kevin's socks are DONE. Both of them. Here is sock no. two drying by the woodstove on my homemade sock forms (yes, how fancy sounding -- it's a coat hanger :-) ...). Next sock project will be for Alison, whose first pair are completed, save for casting off sock two, and have gone missing. I have been looking for them since the summer :-(. Hopefully they will turn up as I cast off the second pair.


And lastly, but not least, my Christmas gift from Kevin. He purchased me this:


It's an Ashford drop spindle! And I'm presently making lace-weight yarn on it from his other gift, which was 100% Corriedale roving, custom dyed by Ann-Marie:

I also received lace-weight wool from Claire for Christmas, so I'm about to face my biggest knitting obstacle: my fear of lace knitting :-). I did pick up what seems to be a very easy scarf pattern from Rosehaven Farm Store last week, which I think I'll try first with my handspun. Other fibre news; we borrowed hand cards from Ann-Marie over the holidays and Alison has discovered a special knack for this. I have started spinning Kivu!!!! I'm REALLY looking forward to knitting the first project from one of our own animals.

All in all it was a peaceful Christmas, and because of health reasons it's good we didn't have a whole bunch of family plans ... but I missed family. I would have loved to host a house full! One last piece of news which I may have posted already, but for the life of me can't remember ... our homestudy has been completed and we are now an approved foster home in Prince Edward County! We meet our resource worker this week. Life is busy and full. God is good. Bless you all!

Can I recommend something for keeping last minute Christmas spending in check?

It's foolproof.

The flu.

Blech. I actually have to try to get in to the doctor because although I'm over the acute part of this illness (high fevers, body ache extraodinaire, headaches) I can't seem to shake the breathlessness and exhaustion. Plus my lungs sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies :-) ... you know, snap, crackle, POP!

I managed to do a pathetic job of washing the kitchen floor yesterday ... then had to rest for two hours. Just sad.

My farmer friend Elmer came by yesterday on farm business, took one look at me and suggested I go to the doctors because his wife had pneumonia for six weeks in October, and apparently I bear a strong resemblance to her at that time. I know I don't feel that bad (at least not in the mornings!).

The only small show of productivity in the last week? Below. I've procrastinated these socks for ages because the wool wasn't fingering weight and I wasn't sure how to knit them to the right size. Then I procrastinated even longer because the skein got tangled and I didn't have any interest in the untangling process. Last snow day, I finally took time off from normal chores, and sat and made a centre-pull ball from the skein-mess. It took something over two hours. I'm glad I did though, because in the last week, this is about all I've managed!




It's a very fun pattern to do ... it's called a right twist, and the pattern is a four row pattern. Easy enough that even in my fog I can remember it ;-). The yarn was hand-dyed by my friend Ann-Marie, and Kev saw the skein, loved it and brought it home for me to knit up. Umm ... a couple of years ago. Better late than never! Unfortunately, my correctly-sized needle is missing (along with the socks for Alison I was knitting at the time) so I'm using quite a small needle for this heavier weight wool.

Hot ... busy ... fun!

So much going on right now! We've had extravagant electrical storms at night, and lots of rain (lovely compared to last June when the County was already in drought conditions, HOWEVER impossible to sleep through at night!). I've been getting the house a bit organized since I have a new web maintenance position that starts Monday ... wishing that these jobs would show up in September rather than when the kiddoes are off school. However, the timing is excellent since Iain has a retainer in as of Thursday morning and we are now juggling Alison's brace adjustments and around 8 months of his retainer appointments. Claire will need exposure surgery, but we're praying that she won't be ready until Alison is out of braces.

Yesterday morning I was able to skirt the three fleeces shorn earlier this year. I must apologize to Miss Jasmine, whose fleece I've referred to as carpet brush and even slightly more derogatory terms in the past ;-). Yes, it sticks out like a wire brush, but in fact it was quite fine, decently crimpy, and because it was SOOOO dense it was surprisingly clean, with little vegetative matter. Here it is!


I was able to make it to the spinning guild meeting last week. I took a washed fleece (Billie's from last year) and was able to borrow hand carders from Diane Torney. I still didn't spin, but I was able to start carding and Liese, a local handspinning guru, taught me how to make "rolags" -- small carded rolls that can be spun from easily. Hand carding is quite an art; I must go back to another meeting to make sure I'm doing it correctly!


Hand cards above, and completed "rolag" below:


We have a busy month coming up, and I suspect posts here will be sporadic. June 13 we are going to attend Refuel '08 in Delhi, Ontario. Kevin and I are manning a UCB booth, which means that (hurray!) our gas will be paid, not to mention our tickets. On the bill are Casting Crowns, Britt Nichole, Hello Kelly, NewWorldSon ... oh my goodness ... some of our very favourites. Iain wasn't that interested in such a long day, and will hang with Grandma and Grandpa instead, and likely go for walks with Grandpa and play unlimited computer games much to his delight. Alison graduates from Grade 8 on June 24; I will be decorating, providing snacks for the dance, etc. Claire is headed to Nan and Papa's for a week right after school is out. She has been looking forward to this for months! And then, to cap off the craziness, we will go to pick her up, on our way to six days of camping at Bruce Peninsula National Park!

I called directly to the camp this week ... reservations are now completely done online, but because we only just sorted out our vacation dates, there was very little left. We've been camping at Bon Echo most recently, but Kev's cane makes varied terrain a bit less desirable this year. I got to thinking about the Bruce, and realized that it would be perfect. It has an inland lake/beach with easy access, as well as the tougher hike out to the escarpment. We'll be able to divide and conquer if we have to. Anyway, I spoke with a wonderfully helpful woman, and between her and I we found a WONDERFUL site that is private, level, level trek to the washroom, AND is actually a camp host site and normally unavailable to the public! This, of course, means that it's a pretty nice site. However, the camp hosts will not be arriving until the week after we check out, so it has fallen in to our lap! The site is right on Cypress Lake, but at the far end of the campground. And icing on the cake, wonderful Laura from UCB is going to stay here and animal-sit for us! She has a farming background, and enjoys hanging out with the sheep occasionally.

That's it for now!

Ack!

Our poor woollies are losing theirs ... wool that is. Kivu, because she was shown in full fleece last fall, has never been sheared. She SHOULD have been done in March. Too cold. I was hoping to get them done end of April/early May. However my awesome shearer uses portable clippers to do our guys (electrical not strong enough to run his heavy duty unit). And they aren't working. He's getting them looked at; I, in the meantime, am watching Kivu's fleece shed out on it's own. Waaaah! I'm almost thinking I might take a go at it with scissors. However I know she, and the fleece, would likely look like a dog's breakfast if I tried that. Waiting .....

I'm hoping to actually make it to a spinning guild meeting this morning ... lots of house cleaning to do but I got a good start when I got up at 5:30. And it's supposed to rain extravagantly later today so I'll be stuck indoors then. I'm such an outdoors person ... give me sunshine and a breeze on my face any day. I will take Billie's fleece from last year and attempt to turn it into one of these. Ha, ha.

The sheep is in the washing maching felting as I type ...

Here is the inner leg/tummy piece in progress:


Here is the face in place:


And this photo was taken just prior to tossing her in the washer.



Felting seems a lot riskier than just knitting something. All that work, then in to the washing machine it goes. Hopefully I will have a photo of the completed sheep by sometime tomorrow. If you don't see one, you'll know my washing machine ate it :-D.

As promised, the completed felted bags, and the "amorphous blob" of tan knitting

Here are the girls' completed iPod holders.



Here is the amorphous tan blob.


Aha! This is more like it. It took quite a while before the knitting actually started to look like a sheep!


The person who designed this pattern is truly a genius. To take into account that knit work felts more in one direction than another, then design around that to make a 3 dimensional figure ... I've got to wonder how many felted sheepies ended up at the "Island of Unwanted Toys" before she/he finally got this pattern right. I've got to wonder whether whether this particular one is going to work!!!

Hard to believe ...

that this amorphous blob of tan wool is going to look anything like a sheep someday.

Knitters are optimists ;-).

The wool is positively yummy; made from the icelandic sheep (and in this case, made in Iceland).

(Sorry, all ... I removed the photo and I'll do a link instead to Tongue River Icelandics. Hopefully this won't be a copyright infringement, 'cause I think having the photo here was :-) ... )

Icelandics are the only real triple purpose sheep, making them an ideal sheep for the small homestead. They have a luxurious, primitive fleece with a very long staple; excellent for spinning. In Iceland, they separate the fleece and prepare baby clothes and undergarments with the soft underfleece, and make rugs and outerware with the tog (guard fleece)They are hardy and thrifty and provide an excellent carcass with low input necessary. And they have loads of milk for their own young and for the kitchen as well. (In most dairy sheep, fleece quality has been reduced significantly, and carcass size is also smaller). Lastly, they average 200% lambing rate (twins are expected; triplets not unheard of).

And, it turns out the tog also makes excellent felting wool :-). We shall see.

Edible socks, felting and other knitting adventures (this is a long one, folks, and only of interest to knitting nerds :-) ...)

It's been a fibre-arts type of week. Not surprisingly, visits to Grandma and Grandpa in Burlington always inspire us to greater knitting addiction.

Alison and Claire have finished their felted MP3/iPod purses for 4H Sheep Club. During a moment of boredom, Iain even starting making one!

The girls' projects were knit with "Atacama" 100% Alpaca, hand-dyed in Chile (and paid for by the Sheep Club). Alison used a 6.0 mm 40" cable; Claire used a 6.5. (Cable size of 16" would have worked fine; I don't own any). Using the long cable, they didn't knit "in the round" but used magic loop method instead.

Here are the purses completed, pre-felting. You can see the difference in size due only to Claire's larger diameter needle.


Here is a photo mid-wash cycle. If you look up felting instructions online, the experts tell you that front-loading washers don't work. This is not true (at least for alpaca). Here are both purses, with i-cord attached, plus two relatively clean pairs of running shoes, zooming around in our front loader. Use the hottest water setting, and add just a little bit of laundry detergent.



Alison and I actually sat and watched most of the cycle. We are easily amused ;-). Here are the girls pulling out the felted purses.



Here are the purses being "blocked". In this case, our best blocks were the TV remotes, encased safely in ziplock bags. For most purses, a book or books work best.


And the final product! Dried and ready for the next step ... the girls still need to add velcro, plus at a future 4H meeting they will be needle felting designs on the bag with merino roving. Claire's bag is still slightly larger, but they both felted beautifully. I can't believe the difference made by needle size.


As for the "edible" socks ... we paid a visit to one of our LYS's this week. The girls had visited Joseph Brant Hospital with my mom, who gave them quite the tour. The tour ended with mom buying them lottery tickets. Where is that grimace smiley when you need it? Truly, it's a hospital fundraiser ... I wasn't that concerned. And Alison won $25! She split it with the other two children, and Claire wanted to use her portion to buy ... what else ... yarn to make HER first pair of socks! She purchased double-knit weight; it's lovely to work with and will knit up more quickly than fingering weight. I continue to refine my generic toe-up sock pattern with instructions for different yarn weights and sizes.

I pride myself on NOT having a stash. I try desperately to work on one project at a time. I blew it this week. I was admiring "TOFUtsies" sock yarn at Lisa's store, and she gave me a free ball, and then another one at half-price. She was trying to get rid of it because she's not carrying it anymore. It was inexpensive. It will make lovely summer-weight socks. I couldn't resist. The yarn is 50% Superwash Wool, 25% Soy fibres, 22.5% cotton and 2.5% chitin (made from shrimp and crab shells; a natural antibacterial ingredient). Okay, only some of it is edible sounding ;-). However I have no plans to knit these anytime soon; hence, I now have stash.


I also purchased enough Lopi felting wool to get my started on my next project; one of these. I hope to donate one to the 4H Sheep Club to be used as a fundraiser this year. Heh, heh. Or perhaps next year :-). The pattern is from FiberTrends in the U.S.

copyright FiberTrends

And ... that's it for now :-).

See, it's good for us ;-) ... that's why we do it!

Health Benefits of Knitting and Crocheting

Knitting Helps Stave Off Alzheimers?

Knitting Has Health Benefits

Knitting as School Curriculum

(last one just for interest!)

Addition to "My Favourite Sites" in sidebar ...

KnittingHelp.com is the ultimate knitting website, with detailed step by step videos in both continental ("pick") and English ("throw") style knitting. It's great, although I still can't master purling using the continental style. If anyone has any pointers I'd appreciate them :-).

It is finished ... my very first Fair Isle work ...

and it was SO FUN!

Pattern: www.slumberland.org/wp/2006/11/29/pattern-madison-hat-easy-fair-isle-hat-bulky-yarn/

(Sorry .. you'll have to copy the address and paste it into your browser.)

Wool: Silk Road Joe Sharp Ultra (85% wool, 10% silk, 5% cashmere). I used a little more than a 50 gram ball of "Lake" (hard to tell because some of the first ball was unusable and ended up being given a second one) and less than a 50 gram ball of the white.

Needles: I used a 32" 6.5 mm circular needle for the entire hat (Magic Loop method) rather than a 16"circ and transfer to dpns as described in pattern.



Although I knit the ladies' measurements a further 1/4 inch longer than the pattern called for, the hat is still a bit small for me and will be handed down to one of the girls. **sigh** I will knit to a men's length of 7" next time around.

It has been both a very good, and a very frustrating, knitting day ...

First, the good! I found a very easy Fair Isle pattern and decided It .Was.Time to try something new. I've always been frightened of the concept of stranding. I shouldn't have been! Fair Isle is extremely fun to knit up, and I have been going great guns this evening with it. Alison is concerned because I am knitting her socks right now, and she is concerned about the distracting potential of Fair Isle :-). However, it is a nice change of pace to be working with heavier yarn, rather than fingering weight. Here is what I have so far ...

The colours are wrong here in the evening light ... it's a lovely, rich, greyed (denim-y) blue. I think it's going to look charcoal grey in the post.

Now the bad ... yesterday I looked at FOUR stores to find the right colour of blue. Finally I tracked it down at Rosehaven Farm Store in Picton. The yarn was on the sale table, but is very good quality (wool/silk/cashmere). About two rows before this photo was taken, I started running into broken plies ... plys ...(hmmm, neither look right). In six different places. SO I have to go back to the yarn store, and find out what to do. I'm not happy about expensive wool (even on sale) if I have to reconstruct it regularly.

Oh well, at least the process of learning the Fair Isle was fun! Just hoping I can actually finish a hat at this point :-).

(Edited to add: Feb 8) Rosehaven Farm Store continues to be my favourite place to support. One quick phone call and I received instructions on how to frog back to a woven-in needle (who knew you could do that????), and a free ball of yarn to replace the damaged one PLUS I can keep the damaged one, cut off the weak parts and use the good stuff in case I require more yarn for the hat. PLUS in the middle of fixing the hat, my 24" cable from KnitPicks broke (the cable pulled out of the metal end). I transferred to another cable, made a call to the 1-800 number for KnitPicks, and a package of 2 more cables is already winging it's way to Forty Food Road :-). I'm blessed today by excellent service. Now if only we could get the rest of our wood delivered ... :-).

More about Claire's trip to Quebec later, but check out the cool marionette she brought home for Alison!

Of course, she is stereotyping knitters as old and grey, and we all know that's not true ... I will edit this post later and add some great pictures of our January 4H Sheep Club Meeting to attest to that!

Second hospitalization socks ...

I'm particularly proud of these socks. I knit the first one this past April, and then, because of my EVIL cats, ended up being unable to complete the second one. Here is the post describing their heinous acts. They actually BIT the yarn off eventually, causing me to give up the whole concept of "pair".

Then, during my decluttering bee of early January, I found the replacement ball I had purchased "some time" in the summer ... and ... heh, heh ... forgot about. Because, of course, it was summer, and who wants to knit wool socks in the summer? (Okay, if I had the time, I would, but we're too busy with the wool-MAKERS at that time of year!)

This became my project during Kev's Picton hospital stay. I knit this baby in record time, and if you are a knitter, you might notice that all the stripes line up perfectly, and my tension was pretty decent given the months in between, and the fact that I didn't even knit it on the same needles. (Same size needles, but I used my new KnitPicks Options Size 3 circular needle rather than the Addi Turbos).



One sock (the one the cats played with, rolled around in and stretched around chair legs) is slightly softer and larger at the moment, but this should even out eventually!)

Next thing on the needles? Beautiful purples/blues custom dyed for Alison by my friend Ann-Marie ... (plug for AM; here is her Etsy shop where she sells hand-dyed and handspun yarns online). Isn't it lovely??



I'm looking forward to experimenting with some different patterns for the instep and leg with these socks, rather than plain old ribbing.

On what can be accomplished in 3 hours in an OR waiting room ...

I was able to finally complete sock no. 2! Here are Iain's socks, washed and blocked (on coat hangers) and drying. As I've said before, waiting rooms are the best places to knit, especially mindless inches of straight knit or simple knit-purl pattern.

While, of course, the surgeons were accomplishing this in the OR ... (I've made this picture small. For those of you who are brave, click on the photo to see an enlargement of the surgeon's handiwork).


My last view of Kev as he was whisked away to the ambulance was my hand-knit socks keeping his feet warm as his fever was rising.

And one more life/knitting parallel ... since her many visits to the hospital, Alison has been looking online at medical schools. She was incredibly "at home" in the hospital, and coped with situations that would leave many of us freaking out. She had nurses showing her how to use monitors and other equipment. She was not overly disturbed by the tiny man dying of cancer in the next door bed. I ended up pulling her from school for two days and bringing her with me since she was learning so much from "life" (still a home educator at heart). She is wondering whether her love of knitting and all things sewing, along with her love of all things medical, might mean she should look into becoming a surgeon. Yikes. Knitting people back together again.

My very first skeins :-)

Really, very little about these is truly mine. Yes, I did the spinning. However, Ann-Marie dyed the wool, and after spinning plyed and washed it.

(But I'm still pleased. If you should chance clicking on this photo and enlarging it, you will see some areas of fine fingering-weight (sock wool), areas of chunky weight and areas that are barely spun and somewhat embarassing. I am not consistent. Ann-Marie was very encouraging though, and said it was fine :-) ...)

Alison babysat at the MacKay's home last night, and was treated to a very brief 10-minute introduction to spinning once Ann-Marie was home (cut short by Kev coming to pick her up!). She is very eager to try more!