the good stitch

My last post was about our trip to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. In May. More than seven months ago. That’s terrible! I was a little busy, though, as you can see. And I was knitting the whole time. I’ll catch you up.

As I said in that last post on May 15th, I bought four skeins of white cashmere and the Estonian Garden Wrap pattern, and immediately upon returning to Texas, I cast on for a shawl for my wedding. I was knitting two strands at a time to get gauge, and I quickly realized that four skeins wouldn’t be enough. I hopped on the Internet and ordered three more. Miraculously the skeins that arrived were from the same dye lot. Score!

I knitted and knitted and knitted on that eyelet lace pattern. In white. Repeat after repeat after repeat. To be honest, even though I was knitting an heirloom piece of lace for my own wedding, using a luxury yarn, it got a little dull.

By August I’d knitted about three feet of lace. And then one day, I looked down at the shawl pooling in my lap and realized that it wasn’t a shawl. It was a blankie. A beautiful, soft, fluffy blankie, but a blankie nonetheless. I didn’t want to wear a blankie at my wedding.

This posed a big problem. The wedding was in November, and it was August. I was going to have to start over, and the wedding was three months away. I logged on to Ravelry and started searching for shawl patterns. I found Eudyptula’s Wedding Shawl, a small white lace shawl big enough to warm the shoulders but not so big that it would overwhelm a wedding dress. I sent her a direct message asking if she thought it was doable, and within 15 minutes she’d written me back.

She compared it to the shawl I had been working on, and thought that it might be too challenging. She suggested the Shetland triangle shawl, which I’d previously discounted because I hated the points on the edge. A quick Ravelry search turn up this one by Loopy, who had omitted the last two rows to remove the points. I sent Loopy a message, and she replied back that she thought it could be done by November. I had a new plan!

A lunchtime dash to the yarn store netted two skeins of Euroflax Linen and Wrap Style, the book with pattern, and I was off. By the big day the shawl was knitted, washed and dried eight times, blocked on wires, and ready for the wedding. And the Estonian Garden is carefully sealed in a ziplock bag in the closet, waiting for a bound-off edge and its destiny as a receiving blanket.

• Sunday, January 4
• Comments (0)

I met Terri about 13 years ago. I was working my way through college as a part-timer in the print design group at a big engineering company. She joined our group as the traffic manager, the person who processed all of the incoming projects, passed them out to the designers, and made sure they got done on time. She was twice my age and we didn’t really have much in common, but for some reason we just connected.

We usually ate lunch together (she laughed watching me separate the peas out of my fried rice), and I’d hang out with her when she took a smoke break. We talked a lot about our families (she raised five kids) and my future (she was pretty insistent that I plan for kids of my own), we collected Jack balls, and we both started dyeing our hair red.

We also played a lot of pranks on our coworkers. She and I once hid a guy’s truck. We moved it to another parking lot and created a Hotmail account for it, e-mailing him and letting him know that it had run away from home. When she followed me to the Web team, we welcomed her to her new cubicle by wallpapering it in saltine crackers. She’s probably the reason that I’m still a prankster at work.

When my husband and I bought our first house, she showed up on moving day with a huge spread and fed everyone who was helping us. When I was in the hospital with a blood clot, she brought a goodie bag full of nail polish and perfume, so that, even though I wasn’t allowed to shower, I’d still be able to feel pretty. And when my husband walked out on me, she was one of the many friends who helped me survive it.

Terri was first diagnosed with breast cancer about ten years ago. She did radiation and chemo, and went into remission, where she stayed for five years. As often happens with cancer, though, it came back, this time in her bones. She fought it again and we thought she’d beaten it, but last summer it came back a third time. It was in her liver as well as her bones.

This last year she went through a lot and fought really hard, but we finally lost her last week, two days after her 54th birthday.

The charming fellow you see here is the gift I knitted for her birthday. He’s a giraffe from Mochimochi Land named Terrence. I knitted his body from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in Sunflower, his feet and horns from Misson Falls 1824 Wool in Raisin, and his spots in gold Tahki Torino.

Terri’s only been gone for a week, but I miss her already, and I know that I will feel her loss throughout my life, in big moments and in small moments. But I know how lucky I am to have had her as a friend.

• Sunday, April 27
• Comments (1)

We throw things at work. Nerf balls, koosh balls, footballs, even marshmallows. Ok, *especially* marshmallows. So this little guy is genius as far as we’re concerned. All he is is a ball with a giant personality. Fortunately for him he’s been deemed to precious to be used to pelt a passing coworker.

Spherey is, of course, a Jess Hutch Unusual Toy to Knit and Enjoy. I knitted him out of the same Debbie Bliss Stella silk/cotton that I used for the robots. Except for the tendency to split, I really love that stuff. It makes the softest squishiest toys.

His eyes are my standard flat black buttons. I worked really hard on his mouth, though. I tried every different kind of yarn I had, finally settling on eight strands of DMC embroidery floss worked in a backstitch. I laid the thread across his face in the shape I wanted, marking the holes between knitting stitches that I wanted to use for the embroidery. I was really pleased with the results. Doesn’t he have a great smile?

• Wednesday, April 23
• Tagged blue, jess hutch, red, spherey, stella, toy
• Comments (2)

How much fun are these little guys?? They’re SO cute and they knit up super fast out of scraps of yarn leftover from other projects. The zig-zag egg has ties to a robot, an eyelet cap, and some mittens. The gingham egg shares ancestry with a cat toy and a cow.

I’d never really done intarsia before, so I was a little hesitant about that, but it wasn’t too hard on something small like an egg. I’d read this tip in the Interweave Knitting Daily newsletter:

“When picking up a color after it has been unused (a float), spread the stitches out on the right-hand needle over which the float spans. This will help you make the floats long enough so that the work doesn’t pucker.”

That helped with the zigzag egg. The gingham egg was easy compared to that. Because you’re switching colors every two stitches the floats are nice and uniform. You get into a rhythm and the knitting just flies along.

Each egg took about four and a half hours. I finished the second egg at 1:30 in the morning on Wednesday night. I had to get them in the mail Thursday so they’d get to my parents in time for Easter. In lieu of Easter baskets, they each got a little USPS box filled with Easter grass, chocolates, and a hand-knitted egg. I’m hoping to make a few eggs every year to add to their collections.

• Tuesday, March 25
• Comments (1)

This winter we lost our dear gray kitty. He’d been with Guy for years, and with Guy’s sister for a long time before that. He was rumored to have been around when the pyramids were built in Egypt. He was the most talkative (and opinionated) cat I’ve ever known. He’d talk to you all day long about anything at all. He was declawed and only had two teeth, but he could still bring down a bird when he felt like it.

He was also a great knitting companion. He’d curl up in my lap, completely oblivious to the yarn whizzing by. He never tried to play with it or catch it. The only time he really acknowledged the yarn was when, sometimes, it would flick his ear with each stitch. Flick, flick, flick. At that point I’d get a dirty look, but I’d just reposition the yarn ball and we’d both be fine.

There wasn’t a lot we could do for him at the end of his life. He suffered from renal failure, which is how many kitties go. It seemed miserable and undignified, and he definitely deserved better.

I wanted to knit him something, just a little token of love and appreciation for the hours he spent knitting with me. I’ve had this cotton cashmere in my stash for a year and a half, and I found the pattern for a toy mouse in the Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation’s Catwarming Set (the errata helped, too). I hope it brought Smotie a little bit of comfort in his last days.

• Wednesday, March 19
• Comments (2)