WILD AND WOOLY

What would I do without my
straightening iron?

I often grow my hair long and there have been times when I thought how nice it would be to have it cut and donate my tresses to a group like Locks of Love to provide hairpieces or wigs to those fighting cancer.  Then I take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror and decide that would be a cruelty to a person who already has enough struggles.  My hair is thick, frizzy, has a lot of natural curl, and I generally look like Rosanne Roseannadanna...on a bad hair day.  How could I further torture a child by making her go out in the humidity with my hair planted on her head and watch it expand like a giant wad of cotton candy?

I directed my impulses elsewhere and decided to take part in Debbie Macomber's Knit One, Bless Two project, this year benefiting Halos of Hope, a group providing chemo caps to low income folks.  This week I packed up about a dozen caps and sent them on their way.  I primarily used two patterns.

Foghorn in the Hug Cap.

 

The first was from Debbie Macomber's book A Charity Guide for Knitters.  It's an extremely simple pattern, designed for childrenn called the Hug Cap.  My Ravelry notes can be found here.

Foghorn in the Odessa cap.  Why does she
make me think of Rhoda Morgenstern?

The second pattern I found online and it turned out to be my absolute favorite.  Many a hat was knit while watching Ryan Lochte show his gorgeous chest swim his little heart out at the summer Olympics.  The pattern is the Odessa by Grumperina Designs and can be found for free on Ravelry here.  It's a simple pattern to memorize but with enough stitch changes to keep it interesting.  My own Ravelry notes are here.


While wearing a hat may not be quite as good as having actual hair, when you're comparing my locks to my knitting skills, I think the recipient is better off getting something yarn-y from me, don't ya think?


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EASTER BUNNIES AND FLYING PIGS

The top secret Easter knitting finally got finished and distributed to the recipients. For my mother and sister I decided to try out my recently acquired Fair Isle knitting skills on some socks. For the warmer spring months, I opted for cotton instead of wool, in this case Rowan's Siena yarn.

For my friend Lori's dog, my beloved Tristan, I couldn't resist knitting up a new tug-o-war toy. I used the Nummy Bunny pattern (found free on Ravelry here) and did it in springtime colors of lavender, light blue, and yellow. It ended up being much bigger, and taking much longer, than I anticipated, but I think it turned out pretty cute. Of course I know the thing will be destroyed within the month (if not within the first week), but I always get to see pictures of a joyful hound enjoying his new toy with his schnauzer brother and that makes it all worthwhile.

My beloved with his brand new toy.

My beloved a couple weeks later, surrounded
by the bunny's guts.  Can you see the big
piece of stuffing hanging from his mouth?

On the subject of Tristan, as I've mentioned before Lori is raising money for the rescue group Recycled Doggies via her weight loss efforts. Well, in big news this week she finally passed the 50 pound mark! She has been working so hard, exercising religiously, and I'm so proud of her for sticking with it even when the scale wasn't moving as quickly as it should. Of course she's looking so much fitter now that her scale really doesn't matter. She's currently in training to do the 5K at this year's Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. If you're interested in helping out a good cause, please consider sponsoring the Dog-Lbs. team. (You can read more about it on her blog here.)

The Inmates, their Uncle Chester, and I will also be at the Flying Pig next Saturday, taking part in the kids' Final Mile for the third year in a row. Starting early in the year, the kids log their miles on a chart with the goal of getting to at least 25. Then they complete the 26th mile on a course near Great American Ballpark downtown, thus having completed the same mileage as a marathon (just stretched out over several months). Given the pathetic state of my feet (I live in Birkenstocks) this is as close as I will ever come to doing a marathon. Fortunately parents can sign up as well so the kids have someone to walk with and we get medals too. I'm just crazy about those little metal piggy butts (or maybe I should say medal piggy butts). Get your oink on!

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THE WARDEN WENT A-FROGGIN'

One of the things I love most about Debbie Stoller of Stitch 'N Bitch fame (well, besides her sense of humor and clear instructions) is all the new terminology that's now made its way into my vocabulary.  No, I'm not just talking knit and purl.  How about Kitchener stitch, fake grafting, and two-fisted Fair Isle?  (That last one's not dirty...really, it's not.)

Today I give you, unfortunately, my most-used term:  frogging.  Nope, I'm not talking about hitting up watery areas with my spear to catch the little green darlings.  In this case frogging is unraveling your knitting and I mean huge chunks of your knitting, not one little row.  (Imagine a little knitting frog cartoon saying "rip it, rip it" and you understand the term.)  I think I've unraveled as much as I've knitted since I started five months ago, but today I actually get to show you an FO.  (That's "finished object", for the non-knitter.  Yeah, they've got some good acronyms, too.)

Kanani (on left) with Kit.

Back in July, Foghorn received a new American Girl doll for her birthday.  Since it was Kanani, the Hawaiian 2011 Girl of the Year, I thought maybe a new afghan for the doll's bed would be in order.  I found this super-chunky variegated yarn  that yelled "Pacific Ocean" to me and I tweeked a Warm-Up America block pattern I liked for the design.  When I was finished, it totally didn't thrill me.  The yarn was so chunky that the pattern didn't really show up in the finished product.  I gave it to Foghorn anyway and it was tossed onto the back of a little rocking chair in the family room.  And there it sat...all summer long.

The lonely American Girl afghan, unraveling.

As I was going through the yarn stash I found the remaining ball and a half of the yarn and decided to just use it all to make something new.  That's when I started frogging.

The recycled scarf.

Since the yarn is so thick, I decided on a scarf.  It's a very simple pattern and came out way longer than is ideal because I didn't want any of the yarn left over.  Frankly, I'll never use yarn this chunky again.  The patterns don't pop as they do with a worsted yarn and I have to use size 13 needles, which makes me feel like I'm knitting with a couple of cigars.  Not meditative knitting at all.

I'm fairly pleased with the finished product.  I have no idea who's going to actually use it, since my winter coat is red and the thing is too dang long and wide for Foghorn.  Maybe there's a nice homeless person somewhere who'd like a hand-knit scarf...


If you're interested in making this scarf, the free pattern can be found here.   (You'll need to sign up for a free account with Lion Brand to access the pattern.)  Specifics on the scarf I made can be found on my Ravelry page here.  (You'll need a free Ravelry account to access.)




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SO MAD I COULD KNIT

I have often heard people, mostly on television, talk of finding stress relief in exercise.  Sadly for me, a brisk walk or workout with weights merely leaves me sweaty, hungry, and irritable.  I searched for stress relief in meditation as well, imagining myself as Dalai Lama-like in my peaceful bearing.  Didn't happen.   I have that inner-Rahm Emanuel problem and getting interrupted by screaming children in the middle of my meditation just left my blood pressure higher.  It is possible to find stress relief in pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.  Sadly, this comes with the cost of looking like you ate a dairy cow...or two.

Doggie cross-stitch in-progress

So, what is a mother to do to clear the day's stresses from her mind, lower her shoulders from under her ears where they've been crunched all day in anger, and smooth the creases from her forehead?  Hmmmmm....I suggest a little crafting.  I've done more than my fair share of needlepoint and cross-stitch, particularly when making dog and cat themed items for the League for Animal Welfare's craft tables.  I've dabbled in latch hook rugs (a little too dull for my taste) and knitting looms (a little too limiting).  The favorite crafting meditation for me has been crocheting, which I've been doing for a good 30 years.

Yes, I learned pretty young.  I come from a crafty family, with both sister and mother outstanding in their own disciplines.  Fortunately, for gift-giving purposes, we all have different areas of expertise, and it's unlikely my sister and I will ever give my mother the same Mother's Day gift.  And my mother is the quilting queen, while my sister and I are nearly hopeless with a sewing machine.  It makes for a nice exchange of handmade goods over the years.  Even with a mother to dump my projects on (I mean give to), I found that I crocheted far more than I could possibly pass on to one poor woman, so I began making afghans for Project Linus.  There's nothing like blissing out with some yarn sliding through the fingers while watching television to melt the day's tensions like Ben & Jerry's ice cream on a summer day.

In the spring, though, I became obsessed with the idea of learning to knit, thanks mostly to the SouleMama blog.  As I read her daily postings, as well as years of archives that I'm still working through, I found myself itching to get some needles clacking.  (Besides, ever since I had my children, crochet hooks have reminded me of the big instrument they used to break my water.  Hardly a memory to relieve stress.)  The problem was, I had tried knitting before.  Granted I had been in high school, but I was already a fairly proficient crocheter at the time.  Knitting, on the other hand, just didn't seem to come naturally to me.  My mother had tried knitting around the same period and never quite got into it either.  And my sister, who has a closet overflowing with ribbons from county fairs, as well as the Ohio state fair, didn't get into knitting either.  My teenage attempts utterly failed.

Fast forward to 2011.  A year or so prior the aforementioned sister (known around here as The Inmates' Uncle Chester) took up knitting herself.  After the classic beginner's dishcloths were handed out to female relatives, she went on to knitting socks.  And they actually worked.  She made countless pairs of wool socks and one sock in particular, if left on the floor, proves irresistible to my hound dog and it has had chewed holes mended more than once.  What the heck?  If she could do it, I said with all the little sister arrogance I could muster, I could do it.

Armed with a couple sets of knitting needles, a hunk of acrylic yarn from my stash, and the book Stitch 'N Bitch by Debbie Stoller, I began.  (Given my personality, how could I not choose that book as my guide.)  My first attempt looked like something my hound dog had gotten hold of.  Somehow my stockinette stitch square had these holes in it and got narrower and narrower as it neared the top.  When I had only four stitches left on the needles, I knew I was doing something wrong.  That's when I hollered, "Thank God for YouTube!"  Countless online tutorials got me through the basics and then to some more complicated stitches, although my technique still needs a lot of work.

Is it just me or does that one on the right have nipples?

I began by making (what else?) the classic dishcloths.  I have a good eight of them now and they actually work quite nicely for scrubbing pans.  From there I graduated to blocks, making 9" x 9" squares in various stitches that could then be pieced together for a Project Linus afghan.  I tried to make a sweater for my hound dog, but, as is typical of me, I didn't bother to measure her, assuming the largest size in the pattern would fit her nicely.  It wasn't until I was halfway done that I realized it would never fit around my barrel-chested dog's body.  Unravel, unravel, unravel...  I say it like a mantra.

St. Jimmi rockin' her new sweater.

I did finally find an excruciatingly easy pattern, all in garter stitch, and thought the results weren't too bad.  In my previous attempt at the more complicated dog sweater pattern, I discovered my armholes need serious help...

I've finally gotten to the stage where knitting doesn't involve constant furrowing of brow as I hunch over instructions in my lap and constant unraveling.  I'm still slow, ungodly slow, but I've always been a slow crocheter as well.  But since I'm knitting for joy and not as part of a production line, who the hell cares?  I now have a new meditative craft!  I knit and purl and watch television in a kind of haze.  Certain types of programming work best.  Movies or shows that are intricate and have to be looked at constantly are no good, as knitting involves frequent glancing at the needles.  And I don't want the late news invading my happy meditative-space-with-yarn.  Old reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family are good.  The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch transport me to my happy place all by themselves, so adding a little wool just improves the space.  Pawn Stars really works as well.  Thanks, Chumlee!

I'm still lacking enough confidence to put my works out into the world.  ("Out into the world" does not include giving to my mother, who thinks anything I do is brilliant.  Yeah, she's that kinda mom, bless her.)  I'm currently working on an afghan in bright blue yarn that seems to be shaping up pretty well and could just be my first knitting effort to be passed on to Linus... 

And so, tonight, after the children have gone to the finished basement for one of the last before-school-starts sleepovers on the sofa beds, I'm gonna relax in my wooly happy place.  I got the disc of Inglorious Basterds from Netflix today.  I've already seen it once, so it falls into that doesn't-require-too-much-concentration viewing category.  What?  Quentin Tarantino doesn't sound meditative?  Okay, maybe it's not light and frothy, but there's definitely an argument to be made for the feel-good power of watching Nazis get their comeuppance.





If you're interested in making the dog sweater, the free knitting pattern can be found here (you'll need to sign up for a free Lion Brand account) and you can see my notes on Ravelry.  The blue afghan is from the Project Linus website and the free knitting pattern can be found here.

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