Friday, September 02, 2016

Labor Day Weekend

This is the huck lace draft and incarnations of it that I developed as part of Reno Fiber Guild's yearlong study of profile drafts and block weaves.  I worked at it from time to time and I don't remember why or when I reversed the treadles, but I did.  So after threading and doing the tie-up with the green copy, I couldn't find it when it came time to weave so grabbed the blue copy instead and treadled according to those instructions.  Wrong wrong wrong.  And that was only the beginning.
I finally muscled my way through a baby blanket in spite of the sett being too tight.  I had used the McMoran Yarn Balance and Ashenhurt's formula from Peggy Osterkamp's book to calculate the sett and I still got it wrong.  I showed it to Laura when she was here yesterday and she gave me all the reasons why I should cut it off and they're things I had already considered. 
I had to sleep on it overnight but this morning the dog came off and my loom is free again.  I had misgivings from the get go and should have listened to myself.
And not that it has anything to do with anything, but if you have a lawn and a female dog, you know what her urine does to your grass.  We replace dog rocks in Sammie's water bowl every two months and today's the day.  I don't know why it works but it works, just a fyi.
I looked out the kitchen window yesterday afternoon and found this cheerful face, at least it was cheerful to me.  I had spent the morning replanting things that I planted three months ago in full sun before the trees had fully leafed out and I realized a while ago that they're not in full sun anymore and they're not thriving. This way they'll be ready to grow come next spring.  I was tired, sad about my warp and happy for his company.
And speaking of cheerful, the Salt Water Sandals that I ordered online were just delivered.  My navy blue pair are 25 years old and while I know that summer has just a few weeks left, I saw a vendor at Art in the High Desert with these and I succumbed to lust.

These are my very precious great grand babies, a picture taken by their mom.  If you have read my blog for a while, you'll remember that they're the children of the son my daughter gave up for adoption when she was 16 and who came back into our lives about eight years ago, thanks to his wonderful parents.  I have knitted for all the babies but when Owen was born, I wove a blanket and now it's time for that sweater.
I pulled out all my balls of Cascade 220 Superwash and put them in a basket.  I'm following Laura's lead here as she is knitting a Baby Surprise Jacket for a soon-to-be new grandson.
You would think that knitting a sweater in garter stitch would be easy and actually it is, but the pattern is demented, convoluted and complicated.  I've ripped out as much as I have knitted.  Laura has finished hers so helped me figure out the parts of the pattern I was missing.  I don't know how to make this without counting and so it's not something to knit in front of our nightly hour of TV.  
A friend posted this picture on Facebook the other day and I saved the photo for color inspiration.  I think these Carnival colors would make great towels.
Since I have a free loom it seemed like the right time to pull some cones and think about them for a couple of days.  We have company over Labor Day so nothing will get done until next week.

5 comments:

Theresa said...


Nice buck! So sorry about the warp, but it is always a happy time to have a free loom to plan for. And those sandals are so cheery!

Michelle said...

It's funny; I blindly followed EZ's basic recipe in one of her books when I was a pretty rank beginning knitter and had no problems with the Baby Surprise Jacket. I wonder if I'd have more trouble with it now?

LA said...

LOVE the colors for the new towel warp. Another cheerful set of towels! Good for you...sometimes you just have to cut off those warps that are going nowhere!!!! (They aren't worth the stress!)

Maggie said...

But the lace was so pretty! Ugh! That's kind of heartbreaking!

Laura said...

I ended up putting a stitch marker on each side of the center stitch of the increases, and one through the center stitch of the decreases so I could follow where they went. It's harder for me to count. I just want to knit. I think your jacket is going to be pretty cool when it's done!