Crafty baby (stair) steps.

Tonight's post is gonna be a quickie, because I want to get back to the loom before I lose my mojo again. Here's what I'm currently working on (read: sick of looking at): 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The pattern is called the Stair Step Rug. I got it from Gist Yarn, but their yarn colors didn't really go with my decor, so I'm using Maurice Brassard yarn instead. The blue, which I'm using for both the warp (the long threads) and some of the weft (the back-and-forth threads), is a cotton/linen blend in the Peacock colorway. The other stuff is a cotton slub yarn, kind of like boucle, in the Turquoise colorway. Here's a photo of some of the photos in the pattern, so you can see what it's supposed to look like when it's done: 

I started it in October or November, I think, and I'd already be done if I hadn't decided to double the length and make it a runner. It's taking forever because this yarn is a whole lot skinnier than the Churro that I've been working with lately. The technique is called crackle weave; I won't bore you with too much technical lingo, but basically I'm alternating the colors -- one row blue, the next turquoise -- with the blue rows all in plain weave and the turquoise rows in a twill pattern. Warping the loom to make all that work was a joy, let me tell you. But it should be very cool looking, with a big Southwesterny diamond in the middle, when it's done. 

The only other project I've finished since my last crafty post is this shawl: 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The pattern is the Moroccan Lantern Shawl. When I started it last fall, it had been quite a while since I'd knitted anything. I wish I knew what possessed me to pick a pattern with a lacy stitch for my first project after my knitting hiatus. It was kind of a slog. But it's now been done for a while, waiting for me to block it so the points on the bottom edge stand out more clearly. I might get to that here pretty soon. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Speaking of getting to things, I'm going to stop here and get back to weaving. I figured out that if I sit at the loom every night this week, I could have the weaving done by next Sunday. The rug wouldn't be done done, but at least I'll be able to take it off the loom. I'll let you know how it goes.

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Let's get crafty again.

I am fresh out of new ideas for a post this week, so maybe it's a good week for an old idea. How about a crafty post?

This one won't be as varied as the one I did in November, when I had refinished a table top, among other things. But I've finished a couple of projects since then, and I'm working on a couple more.

First up: weaving. You may recall that I made four matching cushions for my dining room chairs and that I had enough yarn left over to make a table runner. I did get the table runner done -- and as soon as it came off the loom, Tigs, claimed it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Don't worry -- I got it away from him and onto the table. And as you can see, it does match the cushions. 

Lynne Cantwell 2023

On to knitting. I'd had a scarf pattern called Gridlock in my Ravelry queue for more than ten years, so I figured it was time to make it. Except I don't wear scarves anymore; I prefer cowls these days -- they're just easier to deal with. So I converted the scarf pattern into a cowl pattern. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

I have enough yarn left over from this project to make a hat to match -- and I started it, but then realized I hadn't cast on enough stitches for the cable repeat, so I frogged the whole thing and started over. I've made progress since then, but it's been set aside for several weeks in favor of another knitting project: a holiday-themed afghan. Here's what that's supposed to look like when it's done: 

image stolen from favecrafts.com

This pattern has been around for approximately a million years. It was originally a free pattern from Bernat, but the yarn they developed it for has been discontinued, and the pattern itself is only showing up on random websites these days. I'll tell you more about this adventure when I'm done, which shouldn't be too much longer now -- I started the final rounds of green around the edge last night.

That brings us up-to-date. Hopefully I'll have something more scintillating to talk about next week.

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These moments of fibery blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

My crafty fall.

I have another topic I wouldn't mind writing about (actually, if I wanted to go all political again, I have a few topics I could write about), but I've been promising y'all a crafts post for the past several weeks. So here we go.

This is not just knitting this time, oh no, and it's not just weaving, either, although we'll get to both of those in a minute. First, let's talk about the table fail.

Maybe a year and a half ago, I bought a used equipale table from someone on Facebook Marketplace. Equipale furniture, by the way, is made in Jalisco State in Mexico; Mama Google says the name comes from ikpalli, the Nahuatl word for chair. (I'd post a link, but all the sites I've found so far look kinda sketchy. You're welcome.) It's characterized by thin cedar planks criss-crossed for the base, plus leather upholstery for chairs and either leather or copper for tabletops.

My tabletop was covered in leather, but it was worn out; I tried leather cleaner on it, but it was just too far gone. So I planned to rip it off and redo it, maybe making it look like copper. Here's what it looked like as I was pulling off the leather: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

As you can see, it was pretty rugged underneath. I'd planned to fill in those cracks and things with wood filler, but it turns out that I suck at using wood filler. It ended up all lumpy bumpy. I painted it with metallic copper spray paint anyway, but it just looked terrible. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

So I purchased a random orbital sander, sanded off the mess I'd made, and repainted, this time with metallic copper spray paint that included primer. The result wasn't perfect, but it looked so much better! So I went ahead and put a few coats of polyurethane on it and called it done. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Next up: weaving. Right after I moved into the condo, I'd purchased memory foam cushions for the dining room chairs. Here's the problem with memory foam cushions: if they're not very thick, they flatten out pretty fast. If you're just grabbing a bite, they're more or less fine. But if you want to sit at the table for a while, well. It's not the most pleasant experience. So I decided to make my own cushions. I have four chairs, so I'd be making four cushions total.

I bought the yarn last December. (It's churro wool from Tierra Wools here in New Mexico.) Then I spent several months dithering around with the design while my cataracts got worse. Finally, I got started on them several weeks ago.

The first step is to measure out the warp threads (the ones that go the long way on the loom). There are a few ways to do this, but for the table loom, indirect warping -- measuring out the warp on a warping board and then moving it to the loom -- seems to be the way to go. I needed each warp thread to be five yards long, so I could do two cushion covers at once. Here's how the warp threads looked on the board. Well, technically, this is how half of one warp looked. I had to do this a total of four times -- two warps for each set of two cushions.

Lynne Cantwell 2022

If anybody really wants an explanation of the difference between direct and indirect warping, I'll tackle it in a different post. For now, let's just move on. Here's the loom all warped and the first cushion cover about a quarter done: 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

Once the loom is warped, the weaving takes no time at all. But then I had to sew the covers together and stuff the polyurethane foam forms into them. I also braided some of the leftover yarn into ties for the cushions (those will probably get swapped out for something less stretchy later, once I figure out what to use instead). A few days after starting the project, the first two cushions were done, and Tigs put his stamp of approval on them shortly thereafter. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

The final two cushions are woven and nearly finished; I need to sew the second tie onto one of them and finish sewing the sides and ties on the other one. I'm hoping to finish that tonight, once I post this. And I have plenty of yarn left over, so I'm going to make a table runner to match -- although hopefully it won't take me another year to design and it. (It won't. I just need to the additional warp yarn I've ordered to get here.)

Finally, I completed the knitting project that's been the bane of my existence since last winter. On Ravelry, I called it the Spiral Sweater of 897,000 Ends to Weave In. 

Lynne Cantwell 2022

It all started at Taos Wool Festival last fall, when I bought a couple of bundles of Fusion 800 yarn. Each bundle contained 100-yard lengths of eight yarns, all in the same colorway (mine is called Aurora Borealis), but each a different type. One was tweedy, one was spun with sparkly strands, one was a boucle, one was mohair-like -- you get the idea. Every time I ran out of a 100-yard length and joined the next one, it created two ends to weave in. And I switched yarns a lot. 

I knitted this sweater top-down, and it occurred to me last spring as I was about to finish the body of the sweater that the stitches I'd put on holders for the sleeves were in the boucle yarn. Which meant picking up stitches in boucle under the arms. Which wasn't going to be any fun. Plus I had to measure out and split the yarn I had left so that each sleeve would more or less match. And hope I had enough left of the yarn I'd used at the neckline and sweater bottom for the cuffs. And weave in all 897,000 ends. 

At that point I made an executive decision: It was getting to be too warm to knit with wool (not to mention the cataracts), so I set the project aside for the summer. This fall, I put on my big girl pants and dealt with the damn sleeves and all those ends. And as you can see, it turned out fine.

To think I could be writing a novel this month instead...

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These moments of all sorts of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And for my American readers, happy Thanksgiving!

Brace yourselves: it's another knitting and crafting post.

My apartment is in an uproar right now. The movers are coming in less than a week and I'm running out of places to put the boxes I've packed. So how about a knitting post?

The last time we chatted, it was in March and I was dressing up Flora. I've done a few other crafty things since then. Here we go.

First: I decided I needed to clean up the clutter on my desk. This desk has several drawers (and what's with the desks they make without drawers these days, anyway? Where are you supposed to put all your stuff?) but I had a bunch of little containers on my desktop, as well as two cups full of pens and scissors and things like that. The clutter was making me a teensy bit crazy. So I bought an unfinished box and decided to stain and varnish it, rather than paint it. I asked Mama Google about staining and she said you could use instant coffee. Well, I had some packets of instant Starbucks that were about to expire anyway, so that's what I used. It turned out okay. And now the top of my desk is a little bit less cluttered (although right now there's a pile of papers that need to be filed. Gonna do that tonight, I swears it.)

Lynne Cantwell 2021

I also decided to spin up some of the roving I've picked up here and there over the past few years. This stuff is Falkland wool and it came in a rolag, which is what you get when you put a bunch of dyed fiber on a blending board, mix it up, and roll it off into a tubular shape. These turned into lovely yarn. I have no earthly idea what I'll do with it -- it's not enough to make anything with. But it was fun.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

Less fun to spin is the silk top that my daughter Amy gave me a few years ago. Silk is more slippery than wool and it's been a challenge to keep it from breaking. I spun up part of it and put the rest aside. I might get back to it eventually. Or not.

Now, about the knitting. In the spring, I took a virtual class on brioche knitting from here in Santa Fe through fibre space in Alexandria, VA. I'd never done brioche before. It's, um, challenging. If you make a mistake, you're almost better off frogging the whole thing and starting over. There was one more issue: the cowl called for three coordinating colors of yarn. I had leftover yarn from another project and wanted to use it as one of the three colors, but that meant picking the other two while looking at photos of my options online. I was only kind of successful. But it's done, and now I have even more yarn left over, so I might eventually make a hat to go with the cowl.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

Next up: a pair of socks from this sock yarn I bought about a billion years ago and finally got tired of looking at in my stash. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

The socks were sort of a palate cleanser after this next project. 

At one point this spring, I totally lost my mind and bought a shawl kit from an ad I saw on Facebook. The yarn was a nightmare to work with and some of the pattern directions were confusing, so I won't be doing that again. The result is stunning, though, so I guess all the cursing I did was worth it. I'm calling it my Sunrise shawl.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

If I have a Sunrise, then I need a Moon to go with it, right? As it happens, the Moon shawl is what I'm working on right now. I've included the cover of the instructions so you can see how it's supposed to look when it's done. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

This pattern is a different nightmare. Like the Eden Prairie shawl, this designer is using a dark color to separate the sections of the shawl; unlike the Eden Prairie, which sensibly used garter stitch for everything, this pattern calls for knitting each section in stockinette with an I-cord bind-off, and then picking up stitches along the edge of the I-cord to start the next section. I'm currently about half done with binding off the 399 stitches of the third section. If you're not a knitter but that sounds like a lot of stitches, you're absolutely right. I have two more sections to knit, then an I-cord bindoff around the whole shawl, and I get to use duplicate stitch to make those cute little moon phases along the border. I keep thinking I'm making progress on this thing, and then I look ahead to the next section and despair. But eventually it will be done, I swears it. Just not before the movers come on Saturday.

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Which reminds me: I'm going to take next week off from the blog due to the move. See you back here on the 22nd.

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Which reminds me of something else: Our summer reading challenge is heading into the final few weeks. Check out the list and the prizes at the link, and good luck!

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Flora gets dressed.

My life these days has been reduced to three things: the seven-day-a-week legal proofreading job, trips to the grocery store, and making accessories for Flora the llama. (Well, and spending too much time on social media, but that hasn't changed in years.)

 You remember Flora, right? When I introduced her last week, I said it wouldn't take me long to weave a little blanket for her back -- and I was right. Here she is, nearly there but still a work in progress.

I had a discussion with some friends online about the color to use for the tassels on the blanket. A couple of folks suggested that I make each one a different color, and I liked that idea a lot. But in the end I went with gold, because I ended up not using it anywhere else in the project.

The item next to the basket on her back is a butterfly pin crocheted by Kitty.

The choice of headgear was a bigger challenge than I expected. My first thought was a knitted hat, and I may make her one for next winter, but right now I'm thinking spring. So I thought maybe a straw hat, but the only straw hats I've seen are sized either for adults or Barbie dolls. Her head circumference is twelve inches -- bigger than a Barbie but way too small for an adult hat. So I settled for a garland of knitted roses. I think it turned out pretty well.

She needs one more accessory: something for her neck. With pompoms, because c'mon, she's a llama. Tassels and pompoms are required.

I started knitting the band while I was working today. I'd be farther along, but it was giving me fits -- mainly because the pattern I'm using has one of those weird lace moves that cause knitters to tear their hair out. This one calls for a yarnover (abbreviated as YO) right before you purl two stitches together through the back loop (abbreviated, in this pattern, as p2 tog tbl). I think purling through the back loop is pretty easy for English-style knitters. But as a continental-style knitter, I can tell you it's no fun at all. There's contortionism involved. And every time I thought I had it nailed, I discovered I'd lost the YO.

At last I figured out a workaround. It involves an extra step or two, but the stitch comes out right every time and I haven't pulled a muscle yet. If you ever find yourself in similar dire straits, here's what to do: 

1. If the pattern calls for a YO right before the p2 tog tbl, don't do it yet.
2. Turn your work slightly so you can see the side of your project that's normally facing away from you.
3. Insert the tip of your right needle into the second stitch on the left needle. The right needle needs to be pointing toward you. Slip both that stitch and the first one onto the right needle. In that order -- first the back leg of the second stitch, then the back leg of the first stitch. So far, it's just like you would do a normal p2 tog tbl.
4. Okay. Slide the stitches off the left needle and turn your work back. 
5. Now the two stitches are on your right needle, and they're twisted. Keeping them twisted, slide them both back onto the left needle.
6. If the pattern calls for a YO before this stitch, make your YO now. 
7. The back loops of the twisted stitches are now facing you, so do a regular purl 2 together (p2 tog). And you're done. Perfect every time. You're welcome.

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This coming week is the final one for the seven-day-a-week legal proofreading gig. I may or may not have the energy to post next weekend. If I do, here's hoping I'll have something more interesting to talk about than llama wear.

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For those who care about such things: The rose pattern is from 150 Knitted Trims by Leslie Stanfield. The pompom band pattern is called "Single Faggot Stitch" and it's from the same book. Directions for making and binding a tassel are in there, too. It's a pretty great reference, all in all. 

The band for the roses is a seed stitch I-cord and the pattern is in Knit Edgings & Trims: 150 Stitches, edited by Kate Haxell.

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These moments of whimsical crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Still wearing a mask and washing my hands while awaiting my vaccine...

A knitting post? Don't mind if I do.

Enough with the heavy, navel-gazing topics already. I'm ready for a crafting break -- how about you?

In our last exciting episode, which was back in November, I introduced you to a gizmo called a Norwegian knitting thimble and showed you the project I was knitting with it: the Community Tunic, a pullover sweater with a colorwork yoke. You may also recall that the yellow-green yarn I picked for part of the colorwork was too pale and didn't provide enough contrast with the main color. And then I made an offhand comment to the effect that I was going to have to go over those stitches in duplicate stitch with a better green.

Now, it usually takes me about a month and a half to knit a sweater. I started the Community Tunic in October. Guess when I finished it? 

Give up? 

Today. 

The holdup was those 14 rows of duplicate stitch. I needed a really bright light to make out the pale green against the gray, so I bought a new table lamp. That was in December, I think. Then I started going around and around, row by row. I got the fourth row partly done before I abandoned that line of attack. It seemed to be taking forever. Then I started working spoke by spoke, which was better, but still so tedious. 

Finally I signed myself up for Great Courses Plus so I could stream lectures to listen to while I worked at the sweater. And at last, I finished it the duplicate stitch. All that was left was to sew on the pockets I'd knitted weeks ago. Of course, I screwed that up, too.

The column of stitches in the circle on the right has five stitches between the bottom edge of the pocket and the start of the ribbing. The column in the circle on the left, alas, has only four stitches from bottom of pocket to top of ribbing. I'd managed to drop down a stitch without realizing it.

There's a saying among knitters: It's not a mistake -- it's a design element. 

A knitting friend picked up a similar saying at a conference: If a man riding by on a horse won't notice it, just keep going.

Normally I would have -- but not this time. Not after the yellow-green yoke debacle. I ripped back to where I'd made my mistake (it wasn't very far) and redid the sewing, carefully counting each column of stitches before taking each new stitch. 

It worked. Attaching the pockets took no time after that. And now the sweater is done -- and I still have time to wear it before it gets too hot. 

The green might be a little too bright compared to the purple, but I am not doing anything else to this sweater. I am done. 

I did finish one other project this winter: a blanket/wrap/thing that I wove on the ginormous loom. Here's what that looks like. It's really long.

Getting that done allowed me to fold up the ginormous loom and gain a bit of real estate in my bedroom, which made me happy. Getting that sweater done and off the couch, where it's been silently rebuking me since Samhain, also made me happy -- it cleared the decks so I can work on accessories for Flora, who arrived yesterday. 

Isn't she adorable? I was going to knit her a hat, but I don't think it will fit properly, given the shape of her head. However, lots of llamas wear pretty woven blankets  and baskets on their backs. And I happen to be extremely close friends with somebody who owns a loom. And I know of a store that sells cute baskets. 

(I haven't gone completely around the bend. I know that Flora's just a statue made out of resin. But she was too cute to pass up. Plus she's cheap to feed, she's potty trained, and the landlady can't complain that I have a pet in this pet-free building.)

The little blanket for her back will take no time at all to weave. I'l show you when it's done. 

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. I know it's been almost a year since we all went home, but keep wearing a mask and social distancing. We're almost out of the woods.

Another knitting post, but first: I've been hacked!

lollok | Depositphotos.com

I promised you guys another knitting post this week, and I'm going to get to that in a sec. But first I wanted to let y'all know that my Facebook author page has been hacked.

A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of inattention, I responded to a notification within Facebook that looked like it came directly from Facebook. It said someone had complained about the content of one of my posts and could I verify some stuff for them. Again, without thinking, I gave away some info that would allow somebody to get into my personal Facebook account. And somebody did.

By the time I realized what was going on, a business entity called Ivo Fidriyani had claimed ownership of my page and installed someone named Linda Chhay as an admin. I played cat-and-mouse with these people (and a couple of other names that never showed up as admins on my page at all) until they bumped me down to Analyst -- the lowest possible permission setting, which doesn't allow me to change anything on my page at all.

I tried deleting the page, but there's a 14-day grace period. Every time I'd set it for deletion, the hackers would undelete it.

In addition to all that, any Facebook ads purchased for my author page are charged to the banking info attached to my personal Facebook account. And the hackers have already started to boost some of my old posts. I've set my budget to $1.00. That ought to slow them down.

I think you can understand how freaked out I've been about this. I've reported the intrusion to Facebook as a violation of my intellectual property rights. Hopefully they will do something about it ASAP. 

In the meantime, if you, Dear Reader, happen to see something posted on Facebook from my page (in my author photo, I'm wearing a lavender t-shirt, if that helps), please report it to Facebook as...whatever you think will get their attention. Fraud, if you can. Bullying or harassment will also work. If you get an option to report it for an intellectual property violation, that would be ideal. And thanks in advance.

I'll write more about all this later. Maybe next week, if I'm not crashing on NaNo then -- which I may be, given the amount of heartburn this whole mess has given me this week.

***

Okay. On to happier topics, a.k.a. knitting.

I completed a couple of projects while I was on sabbatical last spring. One of them was this variation on the Vortex shawl. I made it smaller than called for because I intended it to use it this winter as a table-topper for my altar. 

Of course, I have the altar set up on one of the built-in bookshelves in the new place, so now I have a lovely tablecloth with nowhere to put it. Maybe I'll use it to hide the washing machine.

Next up is my well-traveled Traveling Companion shawl. I bought the yarn a few years back at a yarn shop in Boulder, CO, that has since closed. It sat in my stash until I decided to use it for this pattern. A lot of the knitting got done on my Amtrak trip out here in June to find an apartment. I'm sure I'll find somewhere to wear it eventually.

On one of my last days in Virginia, I stopped by my favorite yarn shop, fibre space in Old Town Alexandria, to pick up something for Amy -- and found a cotton yarn that I knew would be perfect for this vest. I finished the knitting after I moved in here. It's called the Brookdale. I like the bottom-of-the-armhole detail.

And finally: Back when I was a fairly new knitter, I made a shawl called the TGV. It was stupid easy -- crescent-shaped, with garter stitch for the crescent part and three or four inches of knit-2-purl-2 ribbing on the long edge. The pattern designer released a variation this year called the TGV Smooth Ride, with stockinette (stocking stitch, for you Europeans) in place of the garter stitch. I had some copper yarn left over from the Level shawl that went fabulously with a variegated skein (a blend of wool, yak, and I forget what else). The point was to use up the yarn, so the shawl is bigger than the pattern called for. but I think it turned out really well.

All knitting photos copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

In other crafty pursuits, I took a Zoom class yesterday on spinning and tapestry weaving. I learned a couple of tips on Navajo-style weaving and I reacquainted myself with how to use a drop spindle. Here's hoping I won't lose this newfound knowledge before I get around to picking up a drop spindle again, because I have a NaNo novel to finish. In all the times I have signed up for NaNo, I have never not won, and I don't intend to lose this year, either.

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These moments of stress-relieving blogginess (and boy, do I need it!) have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Mask up, wash your hands, and save the big holiday celebrations for next year, mmkay?

Knitting in color.

How about a knitting post?

It looks like I haven't done one since April. On my personal timeline, that would have been early sabbatical,  pre-retirement, pre-relocation, and definitely post-virus shutdown. (That is, post-virus shutdown #1. Here in New Mexico, shutdown #2 starts tomorrow. But only for two weeks, hopefully. We'll see how the infection numbers play out.) I did finish several projects over the past several months, but I think I'll write about those next week. (Two knitting posts in a row! The world is going mad...)

This week, I'd like to talk about my work in progress, which is a pullover sweater called the Community Tunic by Joji Locatelli. (That link will take you to a yarn manufacturer's page where you could buy a kit to make your own version if they weren't sold out. Here's a link to the sweater on Ravelry -- I'm including both because non-Rav folks have had trouble getting to Rav from my posts in the past.) This sweater features a Fair Isle or stranded colorwork yoke, which means in that section, you're knitting with two colors at once. 

Alert hearth/myth readers may recall the post I did on my last stranded knitting project -- the Endless Colorwork Shawl of WTF Was I Thinking -- in which I said I'd never do anything like that again. (Apparently "never" is about three-and-a-half years long.) The reason I said that was because I always have trouble with tension in stranded knitting. Usually I knit Continental style, with the working yarn in my left hand; in English style, you hold the yarn in your right hand. Here is a video that explains the difference. (Apologies -- the video is by Red Heart.) The way I learned stranded knitting is to knit Continental style with one color and English style with the other. But the tension on my English style stitches is always lousy. 

Then I ran across a gizmo called a Norwegian knitting thimble. It allows you to hold both yarns in the left hand. Here's what it looks like in action:

It definitely solved the tension issue, so yay! But it was a little fiddly to get it going, particularly when it comes to catching floats. 

What is a float, you ask? In stranded knitting, you carry the yarn you're not knitting with on the back side of the work. That's fine if you're switching colors every two or three stitches. But as I got closer to  the diamonds, I realized I'd be carrying the purple for, oh, 17 stitches. Not only can such long floats cause your work to pucker, but barrettes and jewelry can get caught on them when you're taking the sweater on and off. So I had to figure out how to catch the floats while holding both yarns in the same hand. That took some trial and error. 

Here's the back side of my sweater. You can see here the difference between doing floats (toward the top) and catching them (at the bottom):

Oh - you want to see what the front side looks like? Sure! 

All photos copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

That yellow-green, frankly, is a problem. You can see how it blends in with the gray, and trust me, it's even worse in person. I am probably going to go over it with a darker green. I am definitely not ripping it out.

Anyway, the Norwegian knitting thimble gets a thumbs-up from me. Someday I may even do my own YouTube video for how to use it. The ones I found all seemed to be 30 minutes long because they included instructions on how to knit Fair Isle. Yo, I already know how to do that -- I just want to see the gizmo in action! 

I'm now past the yoke and need to knit the rest of the sweater. I'll post a photo or two when it's done.

***

NaNo update: We are at the halfway point today. Once I publish this blog post, I'll dive in and write my word count today for today; that will bring me to 25,000 words. I'd be done with today's words already, but I spent the entire freaking afternoon sleying the reed on the ginormous loom. At least that's done now and I can start the actual weaving, which should take nowhere near as long as warping the loom has...

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These moments of knitting blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay home and stay safe!

Sometimes a craft project works and sometimes it doesn't.

Holy cats. You mean I haven't done a knitting post since August? I'd better rectify that.

Some projects work out the way you think they will, and some don't. So it is with the first project in this batch -- the Sun Glitter Shawl, which I completed last summer. A friend bought the yarn on a trip to Ireland and gave it to me. I carefully blocked the finished shawl so the lacy panels would have a concave curve along the bottom edge, just like the photo on the pattern -- and as soon as I wore it for ten minutes, the curves stretched out. Oh well. (Also, my photo is lousy. Sorry about that.)

Copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

I'm not going to show you the next project I finished because it really didn't work out. The sweater is called the Dacite. It's long-sleeved, with an interestingly-shaped collar that comes all the way up under the chin. The problem is that the designer, bless her heart, didn't respace the knitted-in buttonholes for the larger sizes -- which is to say the neckline is too tight and the collar doesn't lay right. To make things even worse, I tried to do a fancy thing and add pockets, except the sweater is designed to be waist-length and the pockets ended up being girly pockets (i.e., too small to be of any use). In short, the sweater needs an overhaul. I have plenty of yarn left, so now that I am on sabbatical, I'm going to rip back the bottom edging and lengthen the sweater by several inches, then rework the pockets so they're a usable size. I'm also going to sew those knitted buttonholes shut and install snaps. Then I'll post a photo on the blog.

Next up was the Dotted Rays Shawl, designed by Stephen West and knitted with yarn I bought at his shop in Amsterdam last spring.

Copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

Toward the end of February, I started working on a long, shawl-collared vest. The pattern is the Everyday Favorite Vest. It's written somewhat confusingly, but I've done enough sweater-type things by now to figure out what she was after. I finished it today.

Copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

You're supposed to use a decorative hook-and-eye closure, but of course I had a better idea. Since I was knitting it in Silky Wool, which has kind of a rustic vibe, I decided to make ties from some latigo leather lacing I bought years ago. How to attach the ties to the knitted fabric, though?

At first I planned to loop the lacing around the shanks of some buttons I already had, but the shanks were too short. Then I remembered I had used some interesting metal closures with screw backs on a shawl several years ago. I went searching for the manufacturer and learned the closures were called conchos. Now conchos are used in leatherwork. Moreover, if you look for conchos on Etsy, you can find approximately a billion designs in all sorts of sizes -- plus they're about a third of the price I paid for the ones I bought at a yarn shop.

The vest took me longer to knit than normal because I stopped partway through it to make masks. And then when those didn't suit (I'd essentially glued the two pieces of fabric together, so I couldn't breathe through them at all), I used a better mask pattern to make a couple more.

Having powered through all of that, plus the kimono-style jacket I wove... Wait. Did I not post about that here, either? Well! Here is the kimono-style jacket I wove. It took four loom warpings, a fair amount of cursing at my sewing machine, and Fun With Tear-Away Fabric Stabilizer, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

Now then. Where was I? Right. Having powered through all that, I picked up a quickie embroidery project and finished that today, as well. This requires some explanation: Sometime last year, as a way to help mark the passage of #escapevelocity time, I bought myself a bunch of trinkets and stuck them in paper bags, one for each week I had left, with a piece of chocolate in each bag. The idea was to give me something to look forward to on Mondays (by the way, it worked really well). Among the things I picked up were oversized safety pins with three little loops on one straight side, one each in gold, silver, and bronze finishes, plus charms to hang from the loops. Once assembled, they would be shawl pins. I made sure I opened the bag containing the card of safety pins fairly early on, but I mixed the charms in with the rest of the trinkets.

Fast-forward to last week and the start of my sabbatical. I have opened all but the bags intended for my three post-sabbatical, pre-retirement Mondays. The silver pin has been completed long since. I have a gold pin, a bronze pin, two gold charms, and two wooden circles that are meant to be cross-stitched. (Looks like they've been discontinued. Sorry if I got you excited.) I remembered having trouble finding bronze charms, but I couldn't remember if I'd meant to use one or both of the earring blanks on the bronze pin. So...I peeked. And in two of the three remaining bags I found one more gold charm...and one more silver charm.

I don't know what the hell I was on.

Anyway, I stitched up the earring blanks today and ordered a bronze charm from Etsy. Here's where we are.

Copyright Lynne Cantwell 2020

Anybody want a silver Celtic knot charm? It'll be available to ship in early July.

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These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Practice physical distancing! Keep washing those hands!

Did someone say "knitting?"

I know you're all here for the knitting, but first: I finished the first draft of Molten Trail, the third book in the Elemental Keys series, earlier this week. It's shortish -- just over 41,000 words. But I'm confident I'll be able to add another 5,000 or 6,000 words in my next pass, which will be happening here presently. In any case, we're still on track for a late September-ish release. More news as it happens -- maybe even next week.

In the meantime, I offer you a post filled with lovely knitted things.

Time sure flies when you're having fun. My last kniting post was in March, and here it is, late August. Summer isn't the best time to knit, and certainly not to knit with wool. But that's why the gods invented air conditioning, right?

These last five months have been all about shawls. I already have about 30 shawls and shawlettes, which is a little embarrassing to admit. I keep thinking I should stop making them. But then some lovely new skein of yarn catches my eye, or I see an intriguing pattern, and I'm off.

Speaking of intriguing patterns: Last time, I showed you the Level in progress. Here's what mine looks like, now that it's finished:

Copyright 2019 Lynne Cantwell

In this project, I learned the importance of using yarns with more or less the same heft. The copper yarn, it turns out, is a DK; the blue is fingering weight; and the speckled yarn is single-ply that's more of a light fingering. I found I had to duplicate-stitch over some of the places where the yarns met, as the slanted ends of the lines weren't as obvious as they were meant to be. The colors go well together, at least. (And isn't it impressive how this shawl coordinates with our circular rug?)

The next project falls into the "lovely skein of yarn caught my eye" category. There I was at my local yarn store, minding my own business, and this skein of fingering-weight yarn nailed me at the door. So I brought it home and looked for something to make with it. The Hitchhiker Beyond pattern won.

Copyright 2019 Lynne Cantwell

Unlike most shawl patterns where the detail is at the lower edge, this has straight lower edges and a sawtooth design along the top. It was fun and quick to knit -- all good things.

The pattern for the next one is called the Ridgeline. The designer is in British Columbia, and had the Canadian Rockies in mind when she created the pattern. But I had yarn in my stash in Southwestern colors, and the Rockies stretch into New Mexico, so I thought my color choice was justified. And I love the way it turned out.

Copyright 2019 Lynne Cantwell

Finally, we come to the Amulet. Now, alert hearth/myth readers know that I'm not a lace knitter. And I also never knit with black, except under extreme duress -- it's hard to see the stitches and makes what's supposed to be a fun hobby way less fun. But then I realized I could use a black shawl. Then somehow the black yarn I found (the colorway is called Raven - I can't imagine how that caught my eye) got paired with a skein of red yarn. And as long as I was going there, I figured I might as well go completely nuts and add beads, too. 

I finished knitting it a couple of weeks ago. But thanks to Molten Trail and life in general, I didn't get around to blocking it until yesterday. It doesn't go as well with the rug as the Level, but you win some, you lose some.

Copyright 2019 Lynne Cantwell

Earlier today, I pulled out the blocking wires and pins and put it on. Instantly, I was in love. I'm sure I'll find somewhere to wear it.

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The more I think about it, I think I may post an excerpt from the new book next week. 

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These moments of bloggy knitting have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

As promised: a knitting post.

Knitting, they say, is a great stress reliever. They often say this just before throwing their current work in progress across the room in frustration, but anyway.

Since we last chatted about knitting back in October, I've been flying through projects like the hounds of Hell were after me. I'm not sure why. I think it's partly because I've had weaving on my mind since taking that two-day workshop in November and would like to get the loom out again -- but I had several knitting projects queued up, with patterns and yarn purchased, that I wanted to finish first. Too, the queued projects all use wool yarns, and I'd like to finish them all in time to wear them before the weather gets warm again.

First up: a cardigan. The pattern is called Old Growth and it's in the Tin Can Knits pattern book that I bought in Colorado last summer. I loved the design as soon as I saw it -- the button bands are offset from the center front, which allows for a tree-shaped lace panel on the wider side. That panel, I knew, would not only look awesome, but would keep the boring torso portion of the sweater from being too tedious to knit. I even found buttons with a nubbly surface that looks like tree bark. Here's how it turned out:

Next, I resurrected a shawl project called Sepia. I don't typically have many UFOs (UnFinished Objects) lying around -- I tend to start one project and stick at it 'til it's done. But this one I started and put aside. The pattern calls for increases along the center ridge of the triangle and at either end -- pretty standard stuff -- but in this case, the designer used backwards-loop cast-ons for the increases, which are super easy to do but I'm not nuts about them. To make matters worse, you're supposed to pay attention to the slant of the loop -- so you'd twist the loop one way for right-leaning stitches and the other way for left-leaning stitches.

I ripped out and started over a couple of times, trying different increases, but in the end I gave in and did what the pattern said to do. Mostly. I also gave myself permission to not stress about whether I'd done the correct slant for each cast-on stitch. I'm sure a fair number of the increases are slanting the wrong way, but it doesn't seem to matter much.

My third project was another sweater -- a pullover called the Pavement. You start at the top and knit down in stockinette, in the round, except for garter stitch at the collar, cuffs, and bottom edge. There were short rows in the collar back and for the shirt-tail hem, which kept things interesting. In all, it was a surprisingly quick knit -- partly because I was rushing to finish it and shorted the sleeve length by an inch or two. Ah well. It looks fine with a turtleneck underneath.

I might pull out the garter stitch and lengthen the sleeves someday -- but not right now, because I've moved on to my fourth and final queued project. It's another shawl, called the Level, and it's my third Nancy Whitman pattern -- she designed the Eden Prairie and the High Street shawls that I've enjoyed knitting and wearing. This one has her characteristic blocks of color, but this time they're narrow lines on a plain background, with a lovely wide border.

I'm not very far into it yet, as you can see.

Eventually I'll have three copper-colored stripes and three blue ones. It's been going pretty fast, but the rows get progressively longer. And then I get to knit the border. Let's see, it's the beginning of March...spring will be here in two and a half weeks... Hmm. Well, at least I got the sweaters done in time to wear this winter.

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These moments of knitted blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Weaving, or: another crafty distraction.

For starters, I want to reassure you all that I am making steady progress on this year's NaNo novel. In fact, I'm right where the NaNo folks say I should be -- 30,000 words today. Together with the 12,000-ish words I wrote for this book prior to the start of NaNo, I'm basically at the point in the narrative where things should begin hurtling toward the denouement -- and they have.

Neither the book nor the series has a title yet, but I'm sure that will fix itself by and by. It always has before.

I'm saying this upfront because I didn't want to scare y'all by telling you I'm picking up another hobby: weaving.

The term "fiber arts" encompasses a multitude of disciplines, and aside from creating my own fiber from scratch (as in raising sheep or cotton or something), I've tried nearly all of them at one point or another. As I kid, I learned sewing and embroidery. Crewel work was a natural outgrowth of embroidery, as it uses the same stitches. I picked up needlepoint when I was in college. Most of that stuff went by the wayside when I started raising kids. But then some years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to knit, so I got a book and taught myself. 

Some fiber arts I've taken to more than others. Crochet and I have never gotten along, despite my mother's best efforts to teach me. Then there's spinning. A couple of years ago, I learned how to spin yarn with a drop spindle, and managed to spin a whole skein of yarn myself -- but while I like collecting pretty spindles, that's probably as far as I'll go with it.

So with some trepidation, I signed up for a two-day, pre-Halloween "weaving retreat" at fibre space, our local yarn shop in Alexandria. It was an intense couple of days; our instructor, Liz Gipson, confessed on day two that she called it a retreat because if she called it "Weaving Bootcamp," nobody would come. But there was a method to her madness. On day one, we worked in pairs to warp our looms. Warping is the process of putting the long threads on the loom so that you can weave the cross threads (called the weft) through them. It's also the thing that gives most new weavers fits, so doing it twice on the first day was a genius move. Also, we started with a small project -- a 24-inch-long table runner -- which we easily finished in a day. Here's mine. I hadn't yet washed it or trimmed the fringe when I took this photo, but you get the idea.

On day two, we warped our looms again and started a new project: a scarf that incorporates colorwork in the design. The pattern called for a light main color and a contrasting accent color; I had to be different, of course, so I used a dark variegated yarn for my main color and a light gray for the contrasting color. Here's the project in progress on the loom. I'd tucked the shuttles in between the warp strings so I could take the loom home.

Both of these yarns were leftovers from earlier projects, and the scarf turned out so well that it's giving me ideas for all the leftover yarn I have from all my other projects. Plus my enthusiasm for knitting has been waning a bit lately, and weaving has the same kind of Zen appeal while using up yarn a lot faster. And you can weave more than just long, thin things; this little loom won't do rugs or tablecloths in one piece, but there's nothing saying you can't weave a bunch of strips and sew them together. Or weave your own cloth and use it to make clothing.

I haven't yet warped the loom for project number three, but that's only because of NaNo. Come the New Year, I see placemats in my future. And maybe a handwoven kimono-style jacket -- possibly even featuring that yarn I handspun.

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These moments of warped blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.