Beach Sweater is Done!

Yes, yes, at long last, this beautiful sweater full of bright turquoise-y green and deep blue, colors I saw and loved and bought on an impulse, is DONE! And now I can show a picture and blog about it:

Lovely front of lovely Beach Sweater

Two of the details on this simple sweater are right there on the photo - the slight V-neck with the foldover collar (I guess in fashion circles it's called a "Bistro collar") and the slight flaring of the sleeves so that it covers things like bra straps and is not a true tank top. Which is good from my older POV.

The sleeves are easy to expand - you simply Sl1, M1, K2, Sl1 to increase at the start of the sleeve shaping, and the slipping of a stitch (Sl1) from the left-hand needle to the right-hand needle gives it that little bit of raised look. Which is an effective design technique when you are using a combination of yarns or when using a yarn that has a nub or a slight pattern to it, because it is subtle enough to attract the eye but does not overwhelm the yarn you are using. And the M1 increase happens every 4 rows, just as you're getting bored with knitting stockinette stitch.

The collar option is also quite easy - it calls for picking up and knitting as you usually do when doing a collar (after the sleeve seams are sewn, you then create a collar on those two otherwise plain pieces of knitted fabric). But again, the designer has you do the Sl1, M1, K2, Sl1 to create flaps on the front of the sweater while you make a collar that folds over the back of the sweater like a traditional collar does.

Here is the back of the Beach sweater. The roll at the top
center of the back is the collar that rolls down like a
traditional collar.

Another design change I made on this sweater was to increase the length. Partly because of my bust size and partly because I'm not young enough to want to have my belly button showing when I raise my arms up, I increased the length to 16" rather than the recommended 14 1/2". And that extra inch and a half really, really made all the difference. It also meant that I had to spend a whole lotta time with the measuring tape, measuring the back on the floor, then the top on the floor, then the top on top of the back, then the back . . . you get the picture! But the extra effort was worth it and this sweater is quite wearable.

And really, sewing the side seams was not that difficult. Just a basic mattress stitch that you can do in front of an old movie (yes, it can be a Bette Davis murder mystery - there's no counting, just sewing). I'm not one of those knitting purists who has to knit every single sweater in the round, modifying any sweater pattern that says differently. The way I look at it, sewing side seams is the easy, fun portion of the knitting - it lets you see how the sweater looks from all the knitting you've done. On the other hand, I hate knitting in yarn ends. THAT's the part where I pour myself a glass of wine and grumble my way through that onerous task. I don't know why I hate the yarn ends and ease into the side seams of knitting, but there you have it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had knit this sweater when I saw some Rasta yarn by Berroco (now discontinued. Of course. They were notorious for that.) in another local yarn shop. I had gone shopping with friends K&A near their hometown knit shop, and we brought the boys into shop with us. The boys got a whole new eye-opening experience, and we girls got to shop. Rasta is considered a heavy cotton, knit on size 10, and what was especially lovely about it was it was not a twisted cotton yarn with nubblies on it: it looked like the kind of cotton strips you use for a woven rug, with the nubbly bits all twisted onto it.

This first sweater I knit fairly quickly, as it required less stitches to cast on and I was lazy and went with the pattern directions. It looks great, and it's the perfect cotton sweater to wear with, say, khaki pants or even light colored jeans. The color of the nubbly bits just jumps out at you, and the background is neutral enough for just staying in the background. It's just a little short for my long-torsoed figure, but the pattern is easy enough to increase prior to the sleeve increases.

Here is the almost-completed sweater (the ends need to be woven in, and the bow on the top RH side of the collar is holding the live stitches).

Bistro shirt made of Rasta cotton yarn

Just so you can get an idea of how the Rasta yarn looked when it was in production, and why I jumped on it when I found it at a yarn shop and bought up all they had of the dye lot, here is a close-up of the yarn and its texture:

Rasta yarn in all its glory, with old-fashioned
plastic needles that made this cotton yarn
really fly, with just enough give for my hands

I really, really enjoyed knitting this sweater the second time through, and have already worn it out to friends' house. I think it will be one that is classy enough I can wear it to work. Both sweaters, really. Not that I'm a fashion plate, but it definitely has classic lines that fit with a "business casual" environment.

Beach Sweater in Asheville

I call it my Beach sweater because its colors are, well, beach-like. Bright blue and green, and it's not often that I can find a shade of green that a) I like and b) does not make me look like I'm sickly and ready to fall over in a dead faint. I found two shades last year when I went to help with the tiny house on Mt. Matt (see "Life in 120 Square Feet" blog next door for additional information about my friends' adventures). Since I'm their friend I get to indulge in their hospitality over July 4th weekend and help with whatever odd jobs are on the docket for that weekend.

Two years ago we were only there for a night and one full day due to work schedules (or maybe it was two full nights, one full and two partial days - all I remember was the incredible amount of RAIN that weekend and how dry our new tent kept us). Last year we drove up after work on Friday and took a road we had taken in years past when going to Hickory for furniture shopping, a road called White Horse Road. We hadn't remembered it being as industrial in 1996 as it was in 2010, but then we got past all the "development" and WOW! There was a sunset between two mountain peaks and we realized we had taken the most beautiful scenic route we could have hoped for.

On the morrow last year we spent some time in downtown Asheville. I had heard about this wonderful shop from customers who had been there (*grumble*) while I had to stay in Atlanta and mind my shop while they went galivanting around the country. The shop is called Earth Guild, and it was supposed to be fantastic and full of great yarn and creativity, so I asked directions while in Asheville to it. We walked uphill and down, saw the marvelous fountain park in the downtown area, and finally went into Earth Guild. Oh my.

Really. Seriously. Oh my.

They had everything there - basketweaving, leatherworking, clay, and knitting. Their colors were inspirational and of course I just had to buy. I had been working for almost a year, after all, and wasn't part of vacationing visiting the yarn and needlework shops??

So I found this blue Ironstone yarn. It was a thick-thin cotton construction that called for a size 6 needle. Size 6? Were they kidding? I would have had to wear a shirt under my knitted sweater, and what's the point in that? So I discovered some green, and twisted the two yarns together. WOW. Just wow.

The texture, on size 6's, getting 5 sts to the inch.
Which is why you always knit a gauge swatch.
Yarn is doubled; mfg. gauge for single ply is 5 sts/inch. Who knew??

Just the perfect combination, and surely I could create something out of them. I selected an amount of yarn that I thought would be suitable for a sweater, and then the owner said the magic words and I knew I was succumbing: "Those yarns have been discontinued." *Sigh*

What that means is "the manufacturer decided/sales weren't enough to/they had a disagreement with the mill" and there is no more of that yarn. It means "you better buy more yarn than you think because I can't get any more in for you." It means "get out your checkbook, and you might as well stay for a spell cuz you're gonna be spending money, girl."

I saw two sides of this when I was a shopowner. The first was the reaction I had, above, the "get out your checkbook, honey" where you know, you just know, you're going to sell that very last skein of discontinued yarn and not have to worry about telling the next person that you can't get any more of THAT yarn for them. Ever.

The second reaction, which almost always ended in bad feelings all around, was the "Well, I really don't need that much yarn, I'll leave with what I want to/intended to leave with" that came back to haunt them a few months later when, guess what? they didn't have enough yarn to finish their project and were just out of luck. I learned early on that it was my responsibility to advise them of a yarn's discontinued status; it was not my job to feel responsible for their inadequate purchase when they came back and were upset at me, my shop, my suppliers, etc., etc. A very good learning experience for this shopowner, that was.

So anyway. I went back to the Ironstone cubicles, grabbed more yarn, and decided that since they had some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece yarn in colors I had not yet seen at Sheepish, by golly I'd have to buy sufficient quantity to make that 3/4 sleeve summer cardigan that I had always envisioned as a use for Cotton Fleece, the one you wear in an office in the summer in Atlanta because the air conditioning is just too darn high. And again, there was one color they didn't have quite enough of . . . so another, darker color became the trim. But that's another posting for another day.

So with Cotton Fleece and Ironstone Solo in hand (both arms, really), I went to the cash register. Where I was told that I was close to point A on their discount level, and didn't I need some needles with that? Of course I did! I needed to knit a gauge swatch, now didn't I? And being a North Carolina yarn shop, lo and behold they had Twin Birch needles in stock! I had always loved Twin Birch needles - they were a local company, they put other people to work in the community making needles and other knitting accessories, they used mill ends of wood, etc., etc. Their points were very, very sharp, and while they didn't make circular needles, their straights were just smooth, wooden, warm, and one of my all-time favorite products. So I bought needles in the appropriate sizes for both products (I worked with the owner to determine what size to use for this doubled yarn; size 6 was the answer) and again, went proudly back to my growing pile on the counter.

Where I was gladly told that I was almost at the point on their customer discount level that if I bought $X more, I could get a nice Earth Guild bag. Into said pile went two different skeins of sock yarn (including this, shown on the post about sock knitting at The Mountain, and shown here) and I received a nice blue bag in which to place my larger-than-expected purchase. Oh, and Webmaster Bill decided some woodworking tools would be just the thing, so we got an even larger discount for our even larger purchase. *Sigh*

I decided to use a pattern I had used before called the Bistro Shirt by Oat Couture, a fantastic summer sweater with a nice open collar. I had knit a bulky cotton yarn called Rasta into said summer sweater pattern a few years ago, and realized that this yarn with its thick-thin texture and twisted together would be perfect. The pattern is strictly stockinette, so fancier yarns help bring more jazz to it.

(Sorry - forgot to rotate it!)

But, here it is, the day after our annual weekend at Mt. Matt, and said sweater is almost finished. The back I finished before The Mountain venture, and for some reason (maybe after two very complicated socks for the Ravelry Cookies KAL??) I just wanted some easy, mindless, in-front-of-the-TV-to-watch-movies knitting. So the front is done, and all it needs is the 3-needle bind-off to sew together the shoulder seams, and then knit up the side seams. Here are pictures of the finished back and almost finished front:

Back, with yarn instead of metal stitch holders,
to allow the live stitches to "relax" better

Front, with Twin Birch needles quite visible,
and the front RH and LH sides yet to be knit

Oh, and I have tons more yarn left over. Guess I was the other end of the purchasing spectrum, eh? Will post extra yarn on Ravelry - someone is probably looking for it so they can finish their sweater!!

Happy after 4th week!

A Peaceful New Year

Yes, there is something about this time of the year. All the hectic Christmas knitting is done (thank you, Atlanta-area Shop Hop!), the packages are mailed, the kinfolk have visited and been visited by, and the overindulgence is finally over. Having had no traffic to drive through to and from work has kept me re-juvenated, too. It's just that time of the year when there's a little extra energy to spend on projects.

Like blogging.

I really, really enjoy blogging. I enjoy planning what stitched/knitted pieces I'm going to write about, taking picture of them, composing a draft blog in my brain whilst I assemble the pieces for picture-taking, and all of the writing I seem to do once I log onto my NNW blog. And I really, really appreciate how y'all are reading these postings and seem to be enjoying them in your leisure time.

So why haven't I posted in a while? Well, September was a busy month, then came October, and all the while I've been seeing my two-week temp assignment become extended and more involved. Which is fantastic - I'm working in areas that I had considered as possible job options while I was in the process of closing the shop, and am working with a terrific bunch of folks. It's interesting, too, to be in the position again of being an employee after so many years of being the employer; I really think I've gained insight into what an employer really expects and how best to do a task that is asked of me.

To bring everyone up to date, after my blog posting in September, Webmaster Bill decided that I needed to have a happy birthday celebration on Tybee Island, so we spent a long weekend down there in a hotel on the beach. I was really impressed with a small wildlife museum that was close by, and all the work they're doing to keep the sea turtle populations healthy and thriving. When we were there, in late September, 10 of the 11 nests had hatched and they were just waiting for the last one to hatch in the next week or so. Yay! Baby sea turtles! They had a couple in salt water tanks in the museum, and they are really so cute and so tiny! It's hard to believe they grow up to be so huge.

Then October I spent learning about wildlife rehabilitation. You see, there was this explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last April . . . oh wait, you already knew about that, right? Of course you do! So I wanted to help save everything, like I usually do, and I went on the website that spring for the Audobon Society to see when they needed me to come down and save brown pelicans and dolphins and everything else that was covered in oil. So I filled out their on-line volunteer form and it asked questions like, "Can you type?" (of course I can type - 120 wpm was my top speed, thank you very much) and "Can you answer phones?" (well, yes) and "Can you file?" (oh, if you could only see me file!). But then at the bottom was a question "Do you have wildlife rehabilitation experience?" and I thought, 'Well, no, but I could get some.' On-line again I found an organization that teaches folks to be wildlife rehabilitators or updates the skills and knowledge of current rehabbers. They have classes all over the US and Canada and some even in Brazil and they were scheduling one for Knoxville over Halloween weekend. Did I let a few invites to a few Halloween parties stop me in my quest to save all wild animals? Oh my, no.

Learning about wildlife rehabilitation was an amazing experience. I read the book, remembered all my basic anatomy courses and cell stuff, re-learned how to do fractions and use a calculator (after all, how much calcium do you feed a growing owl that weighs x lbs. and calcium comes in mg tablets?) after all these years, and it all came back with a loud *wumph.* I took a long weekend and drove up to Knoxville in the late fall (yes, it was a beautiful trip), found my hotel thanks to Mapquest, found a local brewpub for the weekend evenings, and just really learned a new skill. Will I use it immediately? Well, no, but I did find a place near me that has opportunities when I want to take them to assist with the myriad of tasks that must crop up when rehabilitating wildlife, and will take some time this winter to stay in touch with them.

Oh, and before I forget it, here's the link to the organization I took the course from: it's called International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and their website is here: theiwrc.org. Talk about a dedicated, amazing group of people; I'm glad I could be a part of their lives and carry what I know back into the world with me.

November and December were Christmas knitting months for all the great-nieces and -nephews. No, I didn't take pictures; I didn't want to post and then ruin the surprise. And I was too overjoyed to finish all of them (well, almost all!) in time for shipping before Christmas. I have asked some of the recipients to allow me to post their baby sweater pictures, though, so we'll see if there are baby sweater pictures in the next few months! Several that I did make were by Roo Designs; their designs are adorable, very versatile, and put fun animals on the front (which means intarsia which also means yarn ends. I really, really dislike weaving in yarn ends.). Their website it here: Roo Designs.com, and while Sheepish doesn't carry them at the moment, you can probably ask them to order you a few, just to try. I'll warn you, though - they're addictive!

OK, well, here we are . . . at the end of a pretty long blog post (again!). Thank you all for reading down this far, and I hope you all have a happy and prosperous New Year!

Dave the Dog

I know, I know, it's over a year since our sweet friend Dave the Dog died, but I was not in a good place when he passed last spring, and I just didn't have it in me to write out what should be a masterpiece of puppy passing. Then full-time Temp gigs starting picking up, creating a positive cashflow at home, but also taking over my daytime blogging hours.

And then on evenings I was often at my storage unit filling orders (yay orders! They just keep comin'), and weekends I've spent gardening and reading and working on my stash (both stitching and knitting), especially the 5 baby sweaters I knit over the winter, and there was just not the time to write out all the wonderful things that Dave was. Plus, this time delay helped me consolidate what my thoughts were and where my pictures were (always helpful in a blog posting!).

Here's the picture that we showed at his memorial service, thanks to the great folks at Paws, Whiskers, and Wags:



Yes, for all you Atlantans, this IS the snowfall from March 1, 2009. We knew that it would be Dave's last opportunity to play in the snow, and we wanted him to be able to enjoy it. Even here he looks unhappy, with his hindquarters not even able to hold him up and his normally happy face all kind of downward-turning. (For those who don't know, PW&W is a local pet crematory that is a wonderfully compassionate place, staffed by people who love pets and know the grief of losing one. They have an annual ceremony where people who've used their services over the past year come together in a Celebration of Life to grieve and see all the other sweet pets who have also passed. It's a wonderful healing time. The website for Paws, Whiskers, & Wags is here.)

Here are some more photos of Dave, taken when we brought him with us to Webmaster Bill's brother's house up in Springfield over Thanksgiving, 2008. We had to opportunity to see our new great-nephew, and our newly-wedded niece who lives in Chicago who brought her dog, too.





He still looks kind of sad, even though he had visited the Springfield folks before. He certainly enjoyed the visit this time, having a little boy and another dog to sniff, too.

And here's a picture we took on the way up to Springfield, when we stopped by a place called Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky at a wildlife preserve where we saw red wolves, a bald eagle (and two in the wild!), and other wonderful animals under the care of some very loving Park Rangers. We were taking Dave out to sniff and to go for a walk:


Dave loved to sniff. In fact, he sniffed sometimes to the exclusion of all else, even walking. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him that he could smell things as he walked along, he still had to at least try to sniff out what was under a bunch of leaves.

Dave came to us via a phone call from a mutual friend who had a friend working at the Lithonia Animal Hospital. A box of puppies had been dropped off at the vet (fortunately, it was at the vet and not on the side of the road), and they were looking for good homes. All of the puppies who were left (there had been a total of 12) were either black or yellow labs with their big puppy feet and square heads. Dave, though, had this small body, these legs longer than his body was tall, and this pair of ears that stuck out straight to the side as he literally perked up his ears to hear what was going on around him.

With the streamlined shape of his head, his loooong legs, and his large barrel (chest), he had all the makings of a whippet with the constitution of a lab. He loved to run, he would somehow curl up his legs on his bed to make a "Dave ball" (I still don't know how he did it), and he was a little high-strung when it came time for training. All whippet traits, but with the coat of a lab and the desire from his earliest puppyhood to be right where his people were (very much lab traits). I still remember him as a brand new puppy jumping up and down on those long legs of his to try to get onto the bed, because that's where his people were. When we moved to Decatur, during the winter months, he would jump with his Lassie jump (oh, so graceful) over the back rail of the bed, then stop instantly and curl himself up into a Dave ball where he hoped he would be unnoticed by us. And he'd never get up on the bed in the summer, except to sleep on it when we weren't there (I guess it was cooler?).

He also had learned about shoes and humans during the time we still lived on 11th Street in Midtown and I had injured my knee in martial arts. I was job-hunting at the time, having been laid off from a computer company, and one afternoon Dave needed to go out. I was having a hard time walking around because of my knee, so Dave took himself into the bedroom and got my shoes AND my socks, to alleviate any extra walking on my part. Just like that - no prompting, just knowing that his Susan was injured and needed help. From then on, he would bring us our outdoor shoes from wherever they were in the house, pretty much until 3 years or so before he died, just when we adopted Max. Maybe he saw that other dogs didn't have to bring their persons' shoes to them in order to go out?? Still, it was a great trick and we really loved to be able to encourage him in that "endeavor" of his.

Dave was the first dog I had for whom I realized the necessity of crate training and formal dog training. He had a penchant for chewing when we first got him - rugs, my left shoes (never my right ones), skirts, and a little bit of a table leg. Never mind that we had chew toys all over the apartment for him to chew - he had to chew what was forbidden. It all was too much, and we went down to our locally owned pet supply store where we bought our first dog crate. He had some anxiety about going into his crate as some dogs do, but then we saw the movie "All of Me" with Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. We were both working for an Indian-owned company at the time and laughed during the parts when the Indian guru is trying to make sense out of what the silly Anglos wanted him to do with Lily Tomlin's spirit. We chose the phrase "Back in Bowl" to be Dave's training signal for stopping all activity and going in the crate. And you know what? The crate training worked. After a few months Dave learned what we wanted him to do and not do, and we never had a problem after that.

He was never a rambunctious dog for all of his high-strunged-ness, but he was always there to greet us when we came home, to let us know that he would like one more ear scratching before bed by thumping his tail against a hard surface, and that it was time for me to stop staring at my computer for so many hours when I worked at home on Tuesdays by poking me with his nose round about 4:00 every Tuesday afternoon to go on a walk around the neighborhood.

He was so loyal in the ways that dogs are, and despite the fact that he was in obvious pain - the walks were becoming shorter, he couldn't stand for more than a few minutes without his hindquarters giving out, he couldn't jump on the bed that last winter - his heart was still good and loyal and he just didn't want to leave his people. But as so many people have said to themselves and to their vets, we just couldn't stand to see him suffer any more. Our vet was kind and loving, too, the staff as well as the veterinarian herself, and when I had to make that phone call to say "it's time," they set up the appointment for the next day, let us in by a back door to give us some privacy, have some last time with Dave, though they still had to sedate him in order to put the tubes in by which they would administer that last dose. But he had looked so sad for so long, he had suffered with pain for so long, and it just wasn't going to get any better. Even our veterinarian was crying when she administered the shot - she was a professional who had worked with us every step of the way to make these last few months possible.

Dave was born during that horribly hot summer of 1993 (when the temps were in the 100's for several weeks), found his way to a caring vet to get the care he needed to come be our canine companion, helped bark away the homeless guys when we lived in Midtown, barked fiercely when we first moved to the 'burbs until he realized he didn't need to, did a Lassie jump onto our bed during cold winter nights, and brought us our shoes for nearly 16 years. He left us on April 21, 2009, and we will always remember him.

My Summer Vacation

It's been a wonderful summer and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. We started with a road trip heading up to Vermont for our youngest niece's wedding (looove that Neon!) and Triple AAA's TripTik became, as always, my new best friend for road trips. We took no road trip pictures, alas, because we were really pressed for time on our journey. It was cool and rainy but oh, so very, very green.

But wait - there was more! Since we knew we would be camping once we arrived, and we had a little extra cash, we bought ourselves a real, live camping TENT in which to live. And what's more, Webmaster Bill had stayed in KOA Kampgrounds before and I never had even though I had wanted to during our looong roadtrips to Princeton in the summers when I was a kid.

So that's what we did - one Sunday morning that became Sunday afternoon, Webmaster Bill took the planned route from AAA's TripTiks, our desired Points of Interest on the way up, and lo and behold, we were booked at KOA Kampgrounds with our new tent! I will admit, I had poo-poohed the idea after my Wilderness Trip in college, but life changes you and KOA is such a community of its members, with playgrounds, ponds, stars at night, your own private spot with a picnic table and grill that I came to realize camping at 44 is different than hiking at 17. Not to say that I hiking is out of the question, it's just not where I am right now.

We traveled the highways and some lesser-known by-ways up to cool, wet Vermont, and I stopped at one point when we saw a Knit Shop to buy yarn for a hat because the weather was cool and wet and I sooo needed a hat to stay warm (in June, no less). Which I knitted in the car while traveling up US 7 and seeing some beautiful Connecticut countryside.

The wedding was beautiful - outdoors with a huge tent, a beautiful bride and her handsome man, a day without rain, and lots of folks from both families who came to celebrate. The ties to family and the land in Vermont were very strong, and I was so glad to see some untouched areas of trees and old family farms. The winters are very hard, though, and it must be rough to rise long before the sun to tend to the elements of farming life.

On our return journey, we headed through the Catskills and their twisty, windy roads (looove that Neon!) listening to the book on CD of Last of the Mohicans. We were both fans of the 1992 movie and its lush countryside, and it was very amazing to hear how the original story was written. Being in the same area with the famous cave, waterways, and remnants of the French and Indian War made the story all the more relevant. And once through the Catskills, the haul ourselves home quickly driving took over.

July started with some great friends, one set who had built their lake home by themselves after the rough-in work was completed by the experts (a 4-year long odyssey), and others who were building a Tumbleweed home near Asheville. The first set we enjoyed adult beverages, a lovely lake, the comfort of friends and their home, and the other we enjoyed camping, campfires, the community of others, and a real, live barn raising. It was so exciting, and I'm really thinking that in the next few years a modest mountain or lake home is a good goal to shoot for.

Now it's August, I've signed up with a couple of different temp agencies, and have gotten a couple of calls for some quick assignments. Which is what I've been asking for all along, but I'm narrowing my search for permanent jobs to some very real possibilities. The whole idea of SmartGrowth is very appealing to me, where you can live, work, and play all in the same area (think downtown Decatur, Paris, London, Boston, New York, and virtually any older area of a major city when most travel was by foot or on horseback) without the huge pricetag that these areas currently have for housing. Or in this new Green Jobs economy, where my desire to Save the Earth will be able to earn an income.

It's also almost time for Dragon*Con, where I'm giving three (3!) separate talks on the TolkienTrack. I'm almost glad I don't have any temp postings right now, as I'm reading in so many different areas to have a more thorough grounding on Myth and how it relates to Tolkien that the books are piling up on the living room couch for my afternoon and evening reading times. That will shortly take the place of afternoon web-site updates!

More pictures of ongoing projects soon - I promise!