Mrs. Autumnblossom!

I had a very exciting winter! On Christmas Eve I accepted my boyfriend’s proposal and we planned a wedding to happen over spring break! We looked at a summer wedding but so many people already had vacations or other things already booked and it is so hot over here in the summer that our options were to either wait until next winter or get married very quickly

The theme was birds and branches, nice springy colors and what not. We were married in a lovely chapel at the local University and had a very nice reception.

We honeymooned in Hawaii.

I am truly fortunate to be married to such a kind, loving, and patient man. I know people talk about how their wedding was the happiest day of their lives (except for having a baby, maybe) and I was on the bitter bus and would roll my eyes at that. Well, it’s true. It really was the most exciting, happiest day of my life. Other than some parking difficulties because of a festival and my dad not showing up it was a fairly stress free and exciting and joyful day. I am a lucky, lucky girl.

Clara

Well, it has been a long while since I last posted. I have not been writing patterns, living in this hot climate means that Darby rarely needs sweaters and work and travel has kept me quite busy.

I found some knitting that I have not posted about on a camera that was somehow not stolen when we were robbed a couple months ago. I was very fortunate that much of my jewelry was at my place and not Bill’s so that I still have it. My laptop and ipod and some jewelry at Bill’s were not so lucky. You really feel violated when the place you feel safe in has been ransacked. All my pictures are gone, that part really hurts.

Anywho, I saw this awesome advertisement in a knitting magazine and wondered for years what the pattern was and where to get it.

It is beautiful, right?

As it turns out, the pattern is by Isager and is only available through their website. In Danish. For 66 DKK, which must mean probably 80 or 90 US dollars.

I yearned after it for years.

Finally, our knitting group went to Stitches West, a knitting extravaganza held once a year not overly far from where we lived. At Stitches west was Isager, selling their yarn and if you bought enough they would give you a free pattern. Finally, I was able to get my pattern for Clara.

Clara comes in two sizes and I chose to do the larger as many Ravelry members who had knit it noted that the opening for the head is way to small to actually put over the head of a baby. In turn I made the opening in the back larger and added an extra button to close it. Usually I give my knitting away, I just like making things. This however, I am keeping in my knitting hope chest just in case I ever have my own little girl to swaddle in handmade love.

Cold Toes and 8 Legged Creatures of the Deep

I am not posting on this nearly as often as I should. Here is what has been going on in my life. I came back from Europe, got settled into living with a roommate, started working at a charter school, found out my roommate put her house up for sale, found a new place to live and moved again.
Moving stresses me out.
In better news, I see you all are going through my patterns looking to keep your puppies warm this winter. With that in mind I will make some new (and hopefully more interesting) patterns to keep you occupied and your four legged babies warm.
I have been knitting. Not as much as I would normally because it’s been hot out. Now, however, it is cold. Maybe not to the standards of half the world but when it’s 63 degrees in my little space I am freezing. You can imagine that tiny little Darby is freezing too. Because it’s so darn cold I had to make myself some slippers. Much of my yarn is packed away (I’ve moved 2x thus far this year) so I’m working with all the wool-ease I’ve had lying around for years.
After much searching through Ravelry for a free pattern that wasn’t by DROPS I selected Non-Felted Slippers by Yuko Nakamora (Ravelry link).
They were a quick make, maybe 3 hours. I held 2 strands of Wool-Ease together throughout and also used a smaller needle (size 5) because everything else was packed away.
I have also been working on an octopus (Ollie the Octopus by Lion Brand Yarn) for new-to-the-world baby Calista per her parents request for things with skulls and squids. I’m 5 legs in and have 3 more to go plus eyes and the rest of the stuffing. I haven’t worked on it in a while and need to get it finished so she can enjoy it. Again, I get to use my acrylic that’s been hanging around forever. I really need to bust that stash and get on to knitting better things. You luck viewers even get to check out my favorite blanket, knit on for over a year before it was finished. Next blanket shall be a chevron blanket.

I’m looking forward to going to Disneyland with boyfriend Bill soon, I’m pretty excited. I’m super excited, actually. I’m going to ride Space Mountain and the tea cups and the carousel and Pirates of the Caribbean and eat churros and generally be a total kid again.

My Favorite Things About Summer

As a teacher I love summer. After 9 months of pressure and stress (this year I got lockjaw, hives, and muscle spasms from the pressures of teaching at my two schools) we finally have a chance to sleep in and do all the things we dream about. So far I have read 5 novels, visited Yosemite and Lake Tahoe and have finally finished a gorgeous piece of knitting named Clara (ravelry link, login required).

Clara

Besides being an absolutely adorable little dress the pattern in interesting. First, it is very difficult to find. You can only order it through Isager with the purchase of yarn. Secondly, the pattern has been used by three generations of knitters. I think it is wonderful that we can still appreciate a pattern that is 60-90 years old and view it as fresh and still in style.

Being out of work without the promise of a job to return to is stressful. When I thought that they would bring back the Art program and rehire the art teachers I felt very secure in my lack of a job and wasn’t worried. When I finally got the message that the school district had decided to bring us back I was relieved. Then I learned that the district did not intend to bring back ALL the art teachers, only 1/3 of them. This secured my position in the unemployment line and I totally freaked out. I had been talking about how great and stress free my life would be and how I could use unemployment until I found another position but I was totally full of false bravado. In reality, losing my job is terrifying. I look at every penny I spend and question when I will have a paycheck again.

Here is a picture of Fallen Leaf Lake, in Tahoe, to get our mind off of my woes.

Another gorgeous evening at Fallen leaf Lake

I feel better, how about you? I have gone for the past two years to Tahoe with my friend Jen. This year we were joined by 5 2 week old kittens. Jen found them right after school got out for the year, left in a ceramic pot in the garage of an abandoned house across the street from her school. She found an adorable little black kitten the day before that had one of it’s ears cut off by some mean-spirited (just plain evil) person. So 4x a day Jen and I (mostly Jen) helped the kittens potty and fed them.

Jen feeding one of the kittens.

While in Tahoe I cast on my newest project, a cardigan I hope to have done before I leave for the United Kingdom next week (cough, not going to happen). It is the Windsor Cardi from Knitscene Summer 2011. I like the grey but am still using up my stash yarn and have some very nice heathered blue with putple to use up.

Tomorrow I have a job interview, which is a miracle because with so many art teachers out of work I did not think I would be able to even get interviews. Wish me luck! Hopefully my new favorite part of summer (besides Europe) will be finding a fabulous new art job for the Fall!

An Interlude

While sitting in the layoff hearings for my district I was able to work on my knitting. The first two days I worked on a baby dress called Clara and the third day i made the Interlude Hat.

An interlude is really what the layoff hearings were. A break between my classes, I took off the week to sit in on this farce, while my job (along with almost 300 others) were kept or lost in the arguments between the district lawyer and the union lawyer. Jubilation would spout up any time someone’s layoff notice was rescinded, meaning their job would be kept for the next school year. My job, along with the majority of the art educator jobs, were lost.

Interlude Hat

The hat was nice and tight when I made it but when I blocked it it bloomed a little and is not as small as I would like. There seemed to be minor errors in the pattern, where it would had an extra stitch at then end of a couple rows but I just kept those in and it came out just fine. You can find the pattern through Ravelry here or on her website here.

I also worked on my Clara dress. I love the dress and looked for years for the pattern for free and finally broke down and purchased it along with the yarn to make the dress. The theme in my knitting seems to be purple. I knit a lot of purple things.

Clara is a pattern that is being used by a third generation of knitters, according to the Isager wool guy. You can find information on Ravelry here and on the Isager site here. From what I have read, unless you bind off the top very, very loosely the neck is too tight to allow it to actually be put on a child, so people are knitting back and forth on the top and adding buttons or cutting it to add a button band. Adding a super-stretchy bind off has also been suggested. This pattern is knit from the bottom up with a blousey skirt, then a waistband and decreases at the yoke.

Tonight was the opening of an exhibit of fairy tale art at the Haggin Museum, our local fine arts museum. I went with another art teacher and enjoyed it very much. Hooray. I should illustrate children’s books, perhaps. Either way, I need to make more art. I am looking forward to this summer and intent to use it to explore and create. If I have a job for the fall, that would be awesome. If I do not have a job, honestly, I am okay with that too. i am so fortunate to be able to be happy either way, so many people would be bankrupt or have families to support and I just have to make sure I can feed myself and my puppy.

Almost Finished, or Why Buttons are the Hardest Part

Below the pictures is my writing about suicide and grief, above the second picture is all about knitting, just so you know which part you are looking for.

Buttons add so much character to your sweater. If I choose moose buttons my sweater looks like it came from Montana (or somewhere else with moose in my much geographically challenged mind). If I choose plain buttons then they need to match the beautiful red-burgundy of the sweater, the color of rich red roses rather than cheap boxes of Valentines candy. Going to the craft store involved combing through a whole aisle of buttons, glass, plastic, polymer, metal, and many, many more plastic buttons. I looked at green ones, brass ones, pewter ones, wood ones. After much consideration and back and forth I chose these claddagh buttons, likely because I was feeling romantic and thinking about our summer plans to go to the United Kingdom.

Claddagh Buttons

I also am sewing ribbon onto the placket so that there is more stability in the button band. I haven’t done this before and now know that I should have bought the ribbon first so that it would be the same size as the button band. It is slightly thinner and as such may show a bit on top but now that I am basting it on much more loosely it looks much better. This will also help ensure that my buttons are secure. I read a tip on the Berroco site saying that the best thread for sewing on buttons is embroidery floss but I keep all mine at work (art teacher) and will just use red thread for now.

Button band

Today is a mental health day for me. I thought it was a vacation day and scheduled some appointments to meet with different mental health professionals today. Since it wasn’t actually a vacation day and I had appointments at the doctor and dental offices I chose to take a sick day rather than reschedule all three appointments. I’m telling you, dear reader, all this because I lost a brother to suicide 4 years ago and have finally decided to start dealing with all the grief and anxiety that comes with that. It is not easy to talk to people about this. Nor is it easy to find people who support people like myself. I don’t like to burden other people with my problems and so I tuck it away. The person i spoke with this morning says I need to talk to people about it and wanted to know if I have grieved properly.

What exactly is grieving properly? Can anyone do it? I have always felt like (and have even had people tell me) that I should be better by now and that it’s time to move on. No one can tell when it is time for anyone to be “finished” grieving and I think that when you lose someone to suicide that the grieving never really stops.  Attached to my grief is the loss of my stepmom and the guy I was engaged to leaving me, and all of it in 9 months. It makes me afraid that all that can happen again, at any time.

Now, I have a really great life. Or, to rephrase, I have a really great life now. But letting go of what’s happened in my past to my family has become a huge way of how I identify myself. It is beyond time I let that go. I’ve found a local group for people who have lost family to suicide and I even called and left a message and may go to a meeting because going to a regular grief or loss group they may not understand the tangled web that is loss to suicide.

It feels good to finally put my foot down and take steps to heal. I don’t know if anyone who ready my blog has ever been in this position but if so, I hope that you have already taken steps to heal or in reading this maybe I can encourage you to do what has taken me so long to begin to do.

Year-End knitting

The end of 2010 was so busy that knitting time was limited. Bill’s sister-in-law’s sister-in law (I know, a convoluted explanation of someone not related to me) had a baby just after Thanksgiving and upon realizing I would be seeing them over Christmas I knew I had, absolutely had, to knit their new baby girl something.

With less than 48 hours and absolutely no trips to the yarn store or time for poring over patterns, I pulled out something I love. I made little ladybug booties.

These booties are designed by Lucie Sinkler and can be found here or on Ravelry as Mary Jane Booties.

After finishing these and discovering I didn’t have any ladybug buttons for them (I had super-cute ones last time) I went back to the same craft store to get more only to discover that, gasp, they didn’t carry them any more. Now, for any knitter trying to finish a project 2 days before Christmas, this is a tragedy. However, a helpful lady came along. She was scouring the button racks for fish and while looking for my ladybugs I started looking for fish buttons for her as well. Neither of us being successful in our hunt we went our separate ways when I heard her call “Miss?” She had found different ladybug buttons over in the tie-dye and puff paint section!

Now, Christmas wasn’t the magical sparkly time I expected it to be, but I did enjoy it. I got to see family I had not seen in a couple years, drove a couple hundred miles, learned more of my family history and even got a real live tree. I did not get to meet the new little baby who so needed lady bug booties but I am hoping to see her some time this year.

My first project of the new year is the same project I have been working on since fall break in early October. Originally designed by Wendy Bernard in her book “Fitted Knits”, my version is really a heavily modified Wicked made into a cardigan.  I love the MIssion Falls 1824 wool and am disappointed to learn it has been discontinued.

My concern at the moment is that the ball you see in the picture is the second to last one. I don’t ‘know if I will have enough for sleeves, also, without the placket the sweater is very tight. I know it is supposed to be very snug, but I’m slightly concerned. I suspect that my 4 month investment may take a turn into the frog pond and then be reknit into something on slightly larger needles so it’s a little more drapey. Actually purchasing Ms. Bernard’s book may be in order, she has really beautiful stuff. Also, then I won’t run out of wool before sleeves are made any more.

In order for the new year, I have a personal goal that I don’t want to share but really want to share. Anyway, I’ve been dating the same sweet fella for 2 years and after a year a girl my age starts thinking seriously about things. After a year and a half a girl my age starts looking in windows at white dresses. At two years I started looking seriously at the calendar. At two and half years maybe it’s time to start looking at shotguns. If that isn’t a hint I don’t know what is.  My other goal is to use up the fabulous bulky alpaca yarn my sister sent me. I have 880 yards of it and high hope that will be enough to make a sweater before all the cold weather leaves for the year. Another goal for the year (since I’m sharing) is to lose 10 more lbs. Last summer I (with dr. support) lost 25 lbs or so and am thrilled at my fab new physique. But I also have hips that pop and a teensy bit of arthritis creeping into my 31 year old bones, so my goal is to take more weight off my hips so I can keep them for as long as possible. I don’t yet know why my hips like to pop out of socket, they have done it for 10 years but I am doing exercises to help hold them in place and am looking in to why they do it.

Hopefully next time there will be more knitting content. I hope you all enjoy the link to the Mary Jane Booties, as they are a free pattern!

Happy Solstice!

Happy shortest day of the year!  My Christmas knitting is done and in the mail.  Two knit gifts were made this year, one for Bill and one for my brother.  One of those people is more likely to look at my blog before he gets his gift (Hi Ad!) so I”ll put one picture up now and the other one later.

I made my first socks!  The yarn was gifted to me by Frivilousfluffy with a note saying she hoped I would use it to make my first pair of socks.  That was last year, before Christmas.  Finally, a year later, I’ve done it! My first pair of socks are complete, they fit people’s feet and are even the same size!

My first socks!

I used Noro Kureyon yarn and the pattern Thuja.  it was also my first time using Noro and well, hmmm. I don’t know if it is a yarn I would be able to fit to my projects easily.  I’m trying to get away from my single color projects and into something more colorful.  This is the kind of yarn I would use with a stranded project so that the color would change as I knit around or back and forth with a solid yarn too.  I also loved Jared Flood’s Noro scarf pattern and may do that with the final skein of Noro.

[I had a Christmas stress rant here, but I deleted it.  You really don’t need to know, I think you are here for pretty pictures of my knitting.  So, here ya go.]

True yarn colors here. I'm glad Bill likes thing colorful.

Halloween Knitting

There was much knitting to be done the week before Halloween.  A friend had a baby due Halloween day and I offered to knit a hat for the impending bundle of joy.  But it was a HALLOWEEN baby and as such a temptation could not be resisted.  This is obviously not the new born but this little one will probably be her best friend…

This hat is called the Lil’ Devil Baby Hat and you can find it on Ravelry.com or here (free pattern!).

There has been other knitting of course, I can give you a sneak preview here while it blocks and before I sew on all the buttons and patches and what not.

In other non-knitting news, I have been plenty busy.  I walked/jogged my first 5k, which turned out to be a 10k of which I did 7k (hee).  It was harder than I though and yet I am not really training still for the Race Against Hunger Thanksgiving Run, Thanksgiving Morning.  Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am hopeful that one of these years I can have Thanksgiving without somehow making someone upset because our schedules and plans don’t match.  sigh.

Budget cuts will once again be hurting our schools, with the threat of mid-year layoffs looming over everyone, also again.  I still teach art.  I still do not have a credential to teach anything else, nor would I want to especially if I had to go to the highschool to do it.  We will see what the following year brings… it’s not in my control so I am really trying to just let whatever happens happen.

I’m coming up on 1 year with my wonderful boyfriend, woot!  I am knitting him something for x-mas (shhh) and still avoiding the sweater curse.  Darby is as great as always.

Two and a half years ago I wrote the Ruffled A-line Sweater Dress pattern and was looking at the number of people who have looked at that pattern.  So far I have had over 12,000 visitors look at that page!  I am thinking that when it gets to 15,000 I’ll celebrate by knitting Darby a Cinderalla dress or maybe a costume of some sort and publish that pattern too.  Darby will be 3 this year, on the 24th if I recall correctly, so perhaps a birthday sweater will be in order.

Alive and Well

Hello all, I am alive and well.  Plenty of things have happened since my last post, including some knitting.

The best and most important thing was seeing my brother, together we traveled to see the rest of the family, parents, grandparents, the sister, all that.  Then we hopped on a plane and went somewhere that looks like this…

and it had some of these…

and then we went here…

to check out this…

It was hot.  I could even say it was “muy caliente” but I know it gets way hotter than the 90-95 degrees and 90-95% humidity it was when we were there.

There was knitting on the airplane, knitting during the drive to and from said airplane, and absolute ignoring of the 1500 meters of laceweight silk and #2 needles in favor of worsted weight  wool and #7 needles.

Next post will answer some questions about my patterns as well as modifications as necessary to make it fit a different sized beastie.  Speaking of beasties, Darby was super happy to have me back home and I was super happy to see her again too.  I did miss my puppy an awful lot.