Catskills

We usually take a long weekend trip up to the Catskills sometime in the summer. It's beautiful up there in summer and fall, and usually it's much cooler there even though it's only 100 miles away.



That's Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, an ageing beast alarmingly close the the city. I don't think I've ever even seen it before we made a stop in Peekskill. It's right across from Bear Mountain, and we go there all the time.





We got to a nice, pastoral place soon enough.







We did some really hard-core yoga classes at a retreat near Woodstock. It was no joke- that yoga was hard and I'm still a bit sore. I felt like I was being asked to defy physics in every single pose. Happily, the Linda instructor was sweet as can be, and helpful and filled with good, happy energy. If you are even in the area, I would highly recommend that you check out Shakti Yoga.



The grounds were exactly what we needed to convince ourselves to breathe. There were dragonflies and gardens and frogs and birds and a nice waterfall as a backdrop. Periodically, a couple of deer families would dart out of the woods to browse the lawn and to drink from the pond.











One of my favorite things about the area are all the famstands and farmers markets you stumble upon.



I was so excited to see real tomatoes again that I bought a container of the little sungold cherries and ate the entire thing unadorned while walking around.





There's a lot of Dutch Colonial architecture in the area that makes me swoon.







We found a fun little community fair going on. The main event were "bed races".



I didn't even know who to cheer for, the cross-dressing team of clowns or the bed bug extermination team. It was too weirdly fun to choose.









It's nice to get out.

FO: Chunky Rib Hat

The insanity continues.

A 2oz braid of yet another bump of Capistrano hanpainted. This one is BFL. My A-Z stashdown is rolling right along...



The color is "Seychelles". Blue and purple and red cool jewel tones.

Again, with the singles.



I'm trying really hard to make thick, lofty yarns that are even in thickness. It's a huge challenge for me. Lace is my thing.



I feel like progress is being made.

I only ended up with 54 yards of this. BFL is a very dense wool, and it doesn't have crimp like merino does. It has more like a wave. A bit more fluffing or pre-drafting would have given me more yardage.

Luckily, you can do a hat with very little yardage.



This is the Chunky Rib Hat. It's one of those hats that you barely need a pattern for, but the Yarn Princess wrote it out for us. It took about an hour. total.



It's rows of knit stitches. It's rows of purl stitches. It's stretchy and you don't have to worry so much about gauge. If you have the yardage, you can keep going a few extra rows, or cut it off if need be. It will still stretch over your head okay.



The only modification I made was the crown decreases. I had a bit more yarn left than I wanted to have tucked away unused, so instead of decreasing every row, I snuck in a row of plain knit between each row. It's a more gradual decrease and rounded top.

Easy-peasy on size 13 needles. Another skein of handspun, converted from my stash to my winter woolens drawer.

FO: Chutes and Ladders Hat

A couple weeks ago it was sofrigginhot out and it felt as though winter has never existed anywhere ever. How could these waves of oven-like heat come from the same planetary weather system that did this to my car just a few months ago?



I spent the heat-wave week working from home in my little office with no air conditioning. That's how dire my work life has gotten- I would rather spend 8 hours in an airless sauna then make my way into the city with a crush of humanity to sit in a chilly icebox for the day. It actually ended up bring quite entertaining- just when I couldn't bear the heat another second, I would run into the kitchen and cook a big dinner. Corn on the cob, wonton soup, stewed chicken thighs over fresh pasta. Basically, standing in front of the oven and cooking made it so much easier to bear the oppressive heat and humidity because as soon as I stepped away, it magically felt 10 degrees colder. Also, because I couldn't drink water fast enough to stay hydrated, when I drank something with alcohol in it, i was tipsy and having a riotous good time right away. The fact that I spent several occasions over the winter dishing out huge amounts of cash to sit in a sauna or steam room, I had to embrace the heatwave as a way to cleanse my pores. My skin...it's fabulous.

It got so hot in the kitchen, a bottle of homemade beer exploded and shattered into a million pieces. I was kind of proud of the fact that I was tougher than the beer, but cleaning up all those sticky shards was not how I wanted to spend my morning.

The other thing I thought would make me feel nice and cool was to whip up some handspun hats. Oodles of them. As many as I could find odd balls of handspun in my stash. I've been spinning for, oh, 6 or 7 years now, which equates to a whole lot of 2-4oz skeins of oddballs of yarn. I'm on a lot of conference calls and webexes all day, and I find if I don't knit to keep my hands busy, I'll just start click-clicking away on the internet or tap-tapping away on the keyboard, answering emails and stressing about all the tasks that I could be doing. So I knit, and try to pay attention to the call. It's nice.

Here's the first one I spun up:



It started as a 2oz bump of Merino/Silk fiber from Capistrano Fiber Arts in the "Etoille" colorway. It was as soft as anything and the 20% silk content made this just a little shiny. I had acquired this at the Yarn Tree in Brooklyn ages ago...I actually bought two bumps and made a scarf out of the first one I spun up. I love the color on this so much- the combination of the moody dark purples and blues with yellow really made my heart pitter-pat.

I spun this up on my Kromski Minstrel into a big, bulky thick-and thin single.





I tried to keep it as lofty as possible. I had some thin spots where a whole lot of twist accumulated, but for the most part, I was happy with my non-lace spinning. It was fun, and making a bulky yarn takes a fraction of the time than cobweb lace. I got about 70 yards.

I found a hat pattern that I wanted to try.



It's called the Chutes and Ladders hat from the "Handspun Handknit" book. It's a perfect fun little hat to eat up a skein of handspun. It's just a ribbed brim, cables with double yarn overs that you drop on the next row. Or, at least that's how I did mine. The pattern had some ambiguous instructions, so I chose to ignore them and just knit on. It was probably just the heat messing with my head. I don't see any scary killer clown faces in this, so I think I'm okay.





It's not the most tidy hat, but I had a lot of fun making this. Also- it took maybe an hour and a half, and that was even with a good chunk of multi-tasking thrown in. I keep meaning to pick up some round balloons at the dollar store. I've been blocking hats over a mixing bowl for years and they all kind of have a flatter top that what I'd like.

Size 11 needles.

FO: Insane Clown will Eat Your Brains

I made a sweater. I dislike the way it turned out. It's the Caftan Pullover by Norah Gaughan from the Spring 2006 issue of Interweave Knits.

It was supposed to look like this:

Pretty, right? It's all bohemian floaty and comfy. I might go to a gallery and spend the day decoding some modern art and then sip cappuccinos and nibble little cookies which cause me to not gain weight or have wild mood swings because of my blood sugar crashing afterwards. La vie est belle.

I cast on for it and started on my way. I do love Norah Gaughan and cables and sweaters and I'm even starting to like silk a little bit more. The cables are fun, and I liked the yarn despite the yarn being a slippery silk novelty yarn- Berroco Ultra Silk. It's a silk knit tube with a nylon roving core. Using size 9 needles this moved along nicely. It's such a pretty shade of summery beach blue.



I made the front, I made the back. I seemed them up. Then I realized: because the front is heavier than the back with all those lovely cables, it stretches out alarmingly more than the back. Even though I made them the exact same length and seemed the armholes so they match perfectly, the front just hangs down lower, like a tumor. A floppy, heavy tumor.





Also, because I still have a bit of dignity left, I seamed up the front panels instead of leaving my ta-tas to awkwardly flop around in the breeze. One the model, it works for her, but she's doing nothing but drinking soy half-caf skim lattes and batting her eyelashes at the off-duty fireman in the corner. Also, because the yarn is mostly silk, there's no way to keep the neckline opened up and keep from rolling over. Silk has not structure and it just wants to collapse in a heap. So it got seamed.

Except, seamed, the two front panels create a face.



A deranged clown face. This is almost as rich as people seeing the image of the virgin Mary in their toast or other mundane everyday objects- except this one isn't a peace and comfort to anyone. Insane Clown is Out to Get You.



It can not be unseen. I put the sweater on and then I break out in a cold sweat, get twitchy and then spend about 20 minutes trying to get this thing off me. Like it's a cicada clinging to me. GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF ME! Sadly, it does not. Insane Killer Clown Face is here to stay. It terrifies me, and I can really only blame the book "It" for all this.

Also, I didn't make sleeves. I couldn't give the clown any more power over me than he already has.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some. Novelty yarn + complicated pattern= the potential for Insane Clown to appear. The Insane Clown will appear to you someday in something you do- or does he just appear to me?

FO: Bamboo Frock Camisole

My A-Z stashdown continues as I plunder my stash for any non-wool yarn that I might be okay with wearing in summer.



I had 8 skeins of Bamboo Tape yarn in my stash. Like so many yarns from Rowan, it's been discontinued, but a almost exact replica will certainly appear with a catchy name like "Tapey Bamboo" or something.

I chose a pattern- after my previous lace project, I wanted something super simple- I wanted to be able to go into a movie theater on an overly warm day, catch a film and come out of the place with most of a garment done. The ribbon yarn did a little twist and coil trick, but otherwise I was as happy as I could be with it (considering it didn't come from a sheep). You just have to pick the right project for the yarn in order to love it.



The yarn basically has no shape- it just becomes this drapey mass. It would be impossible to do lace in this yarn. Just let it hang out and drape. If you fight it, it will win. Let it move like a jellyfish.





I used 7 skeins in the color "Tissue" for the Medium size. It's so pretty and purpley. The whole thing took less than 570 yards. I used size US6 needles.



The pattern is called Frock Camisole by Katie Himmelberg. It's from the Spring 2010 Interweave Knits, but they also have the pattern for free up on their website. It's a really simple piece- really, if you get gauge you can whip this up with no issues while you are taking a nap. It has a line of purl stitches running up the front and back to give it a neat seam. There's a tiny bit of shaping, you work the fronts and backs of the yoke separately and knit up the straps in reverse stockinette. The only real finishing involves tacking and sewing the straps to the front, and you're done.

I love it- it's wearable and comfortable. The fabric is dense enough so I can wear this without a security shirt underneath, lest my bra show through. It's a bit heavy but I'm really in love with it. As far as cute summery tops go, it's pretty much instant gratification.

I like it a lot better than my other Bamboo top, the Lotus Blossom, from a couple of years ago. This one is much more flattering.

FO: Jordan Lace Tank

I have a huge backlog of knitwear to show you. It's embarrassing, really. I made all these cute summery tops and it's been too hot to wear anything but the barest of barely there garments. Most of them require a bit of an undergarment or cami underneath- lace knitwear can be quite revealing and, uh, I just don't want to draw that kind of attention to myself. So camisole layer it will be!

Here's the first one I finished.



It's the Jordan by Wendy Bernard. It's a fun, easy lace knit. You make a tube and then attach two sleeves. Voila! Instant shirt. It's the same front and back, and aside from seaming up the sleeves to the top edge, there is no finishing.



I used 2.5 skeins of Louet Euroflax Sportweight in Aqua for the medium size. Linen is interesting to work with- you get such a nice, crisp lace pattern with really perfect stitch definition. It does show unevenness in your stitches though- any plain stockinette sections irked me. It does work perfectly for lace. I used size US4 needles to get gauge.

It did tend to hurt my hands a bit- it has no give or bounce at all, so I couldn't work on this for long stretches of time without taking a break. The yarn could also be quite slippery. You do not want to drop a stitch with this stuff...you'll find it somewhere near the bottom every single time. Curses.




It did soften up quite a bit after a wash and it's drapey and swinging nicely. I really enjoyed making this and I want to wear it all the time. I have a few more skeins of this in my stash and I'm trying to decide which cute linen top to make next. Ahh, maybe next year. I've already had my non-wool fill.



Linen looks great with a little bit of a tan and a cocktail in hand. I love the way this turned out. The only modification I made is that the sleeves are slightly shorter than as written- I just did one less lace repeat.



Also- the necklace can be had from my Etsy shop. It's a double strand of Garnet gemstones and simply gorgeous.