Working the Wonderful Wallaby

When I was younger, I never felt the ticking of a biological clock warning me that time was running out for reproduction. Somehow I managed to have children nevertheless. I had one child at age 27 (planned) and another at age 42 (unplanned) and each one provided a different and exciting foray into motherhood. However, neither provided an opportunity to knit cute little baby things. I was working full time when pregnant with each child; and as they grew I continued to work. I sewed lots of clothes, nightgowns, doll clothes and Beanie Baby outfits, but I never had the time to knit.

Now that I am a woman of "a certain age" and have time to knit, my grandmother biological clock is ticking loudly; it's screaming "I want grandchildren, NOW!!" Maybe it is that I want little ones for whom I can knit cute little Dale of Norway sweaters, dresses, hats, mittens-- you name it, I want to make it--preferably for little girls. I want to knit frills and flowers. Alas, neither my husband's older daughter nor mine want children. Therefore, I have "adopted" two little boys as my "surrogate grandchildren." (I couldn't find any little girls; besides, we like the parents and we weren't about to dictate the gender of their children!) Thomas and Sean are 4.5 and 2.3 years old, energetic, noisy and adventuresome. Not frilly. Not pink. After having girls, I am astounded at the energy packed into these two little male bodies! These guys need clothing that will stand up to tough wear and that can go directly into the washer and dryer after rolling in the mud.

What to do?? The Wonderful Wallaby to the rescue!!! (Despite the comments that follow, the Wonderful Wallaby is a fantastic pattern, quick to knit, ingenious, etc. Make one, or two!)
No fuss knitting, no fuss wear and no fuss care. These are knitted hooded sweatshirts, with kangaroo pouch pockets and no-drawstring hoods. Pattern by Carol Anderson, from 1984, but not out of print. Carol Anderson channels Elizabeth Zimmerman--both overlapped with their knitting in Wisconsin and I believe Carol attended the early knitting camps. Carol started "Cottage Creations" for her no fuss creative patterns, illustrated by her artist-daughter. She now lives in Iowa and has numerous grandchildren. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a website. But, you can find her patterns here. If you haven't tried one of her no-nonsense, clever, knit-all-in-one-piece patterns, try one.

The Wallaby has only two small seams--the underarm stitches. I'm not going to show you the arm pits of the blue sweater. That was my first Wallaby, and I must admit that my fudging in the pits will not stand the scrutiny of blogdom. But, by the time I got to the arm pits of the second, green sweater, I was ready for prime time--or so I thought.

Here's the sweater when it comes off the needles, needing only grafting of the underarm stitches to the matching number of body stitches. Easy, right? I've done lots of sock toes. I can do this, no sweat. Hmmmmmm, Knitting Rule #10: Beware the technique that seems easy!"

Here's the raw pit:

Here's the full sweater just off the needles. Minimal finishing required. Should take just 5 minutes tops!
See the gap between the last live stitch on the underarm, and the first stitch on the body?? Note: stitches are held on fuschia sock yarn. That is not blood and arteries showing.
Well, I thought, this is a minimal finishing sweater. The directions say only to graft the stitches, and you're done!! I told myself that gap will disappear in the grafting!!! Lies, all lies. I know these boys play hard, but I don't think they need ventilation holes in the underarms of their sweaters. Somehow I had to close the gaps.
I can't really explain what I did. I tugged and pulled at the adjacent stitches, hoping to reduce the size of the holes. Didn't work. So I did a version of duplicate stitch and creation of new stitches to work the gaps together. I think it turned out well. At least, I'm counting on the Thomas and Sean not to examine the arm pits closely. I'm pretty sure their first response on opening the presents will not be, "Oh, cool sweaters. Let's check out the finishing details!" Rather, I think they will say, "Sweaters??!! Where are the toys?? !!" I'm thinking of getting some little matchbox cars to put in the pockets. Little cute knitted bears won't cut it with these guys.
Lucy Neatby to the Rescue!
A few days after finishing these sweaters, I watched a Lucy Neatby DVD about socks. She demonstrates how to eliminate the little holes created when picking up stitches for the heel gusset. I can't quite imitate Lucy's succinct description of the technique--basically she sews a little circle around the hole, on the reverse side, then pulls the circle taught. She makes a duplicate stitch over the tightened hole on the right side and, ahoy matey, the hole is ship shape and all is well! I'll remember this on my next Wallaby!

I think my next wallaby will be fitted in the body and made out of a merino/angora yarn I've had in my stash for a while. And, it will be for me!!

Seafoam Stitch blocking tutorial

I know, I've been ignoring my blog. Sometimes life just gets in the way. However, I've been knitting like crazy on Christmas presents. This year I will reprise my successful Basket of HandKnit Items, from which family members and friends can select a present. This year the basket will be filled with scarves and socks. Last year it was mainly hats.

This year I am in production knitting mode for the basket. I find that I am more broadminded than others, even if I say so myself, on what type of hand knitted items I will wear. Therefore, rather than getting "creative" with my knitting, this year I am sticking with a scarf pattern on which I have received rave reviews from recipients and observers alike--a one-skein scarf using the seafoam stitch. I should carry patterns for this scarf because MANY people, knitters and non-knitters alike, ask me how I made the scarf when I wear one.

I recently drove my parents to Colorado to visit my sisters in Denver and Boulder. When I was not driving, I worked on a seafoam stitch scarf. My mother fell in love with the scarf and decided that she would make one for a Christmas present. However, my mother hates knitting. She hates building fabric one stitch at a time. But, she can't bring her sewing machine with her when she spends a month in Colorado. Therefore, to pass the time in Colorado, she decided that she would knit. Otherwise, she spends all of her time cleaning my sisters' houses. (Somehow, the "keep the house clean" gene did not find its way to any of my mother's three daughters!!)

My mom is an insecure knitter. Every wrapped stitch and evolving pattern in the scarf on her needles is examined for perfection. I keep telling her, "Relax, mom. Blocking will eliminate all the perceived problems and you will have a gorgeous finished object. " She doesn't believe me. She wants it all to be perfect while still on the needles!

This post is my "blocking tutorial" for my mom and for whomever needs a little knitting reassurance on-line. Believe me, it's hard for a scarf to go wrong with the seafoam stitch and some pretty handpainted yarn. (Mom, I know that you are not working with Koigu yarn, and the following photos show a scarf in Koigu. If your scarf doesn't look exactly like this one it's OK. Yours will also be beautiful!!)

Mom, this is for you!

BLOCKING THE SEAFOAM STITCH SCARF TUTORIAL

Step 1: Soak the finished item in cool water for 30 minutes.

See how some of the scarf is dark purple and some is light purple? The light purple portion of the scarf is floating on top of the water. Wait until all of the scarf is underwater! You need to have every little wool fiber saturated with water. That's why I said to soak the scarf for 30 minutes. If your scarf is saturated in 15 minutes, move to step 2. Don't shortchange the soaking.

Step 2: Squish the water out of the scarf by pressing it against the side of the sink bowl. (Oh, don't forget to pull the drainplug first!!) DO NOT WRING the scarf. Just gently squish it against the side of the bowl. Don't worry if the scarf is still dripping when you move to step 3.

Step 3: Plop the scarf onto a towel and fold the towel over the scarf.
Step 4: Stomp on the towel.
Step 5: Spread out the scarf on a bed sheet on top of a bed or on a floor carpet. I spread a bed sheet out on the living room floor carpet. You need something underneath the sheet into which you will stick pins.
Step 6: On one end of the scarf, pin out the points created by the seafoam stitch pattern; see below.

Step 7: With your hand, gently pull out the scarf until you have the degree of "airy-ness" that you want in the scarf. Mom, with the yarn you are using, you will need to stretch the scarf quite a bit to get it long enough to be a scarf.

Don't worry, you stretch as you go with the pinning. The yarn won't break. As you can see in the photo, I put a pin at each segment along the edge where there is an accumulation of four ridges of garter stitch.

I also spread out the scarf width-wise as I pin, because when I stretched the scarf for length, the scarf got too skinny. The un-pinned section of the scarf is on the left of the photo above. The pinned portion is on the right of the photo.

Step 8: Now, after you have finished pinning out the scarf, with points pinned out on each end, you can check the seafoam ovals for perfection!


Ah, HA! I found a wiggly strand in a seafoam oval!!! Look just to the right to the yellow-headed pin that is on the middle left of the scarf photo below! Baaadd, baaaadd, baaaadd!!!
I would just leave it alone. But I know, Mom, that this will bug you to your grave! So, get out a pointy object, like a knitting needle, and stick it under that wiggly strand. Give the needle a tug.
When you gently tug the strand, you will see or feel a neighboring strand move and become straight. Go in the opposite direction, gently tugging successive strands, until you have worked in the excess wiggles of that miscreant wiggly strand. For a moment, it will look as if you have created more of a mess than you had in the first place. Keep cool. As you work along, you will see that you have used up the excess and the oval now looks perfect. If it doesn't look perfect to you, just tug at the scarf as a whole around that area. It will all work in. See photo below for proof!
See mom, I told you so! It will all work out in the blocking!! Good luck on your scarf!!! Hugs and kisses to you and Dad, and to the dogs and cats and humans at the places you are visiting!!

Love, Gail

Holiday Knitting and My Mom

Making presents for Christmas was always a tradition in my family. I think it may have started during the depression, when my parents' parents didn't have any money to purchase presents. I remember my mother telling me about how her father would glue colored pictures (from magazines? calendars?) to a piece of wood and then cut it into pieces with his jig-saw making jigsaw puzzles!!

My mother always made each of us (five of us) a new outfit or new pajamas for Christmas. Usually it was a new outfit, and for the girls, a matching outfit for our dolls. One Christmas she made a three piece wool suit (jacket, pleated skirt, vest) for my teenage sister, in addition to making items for everyone else. And, she made everything in secret. How, on earth, did she do this??

My dad also made things, such as a doll house one year. It was a simple ranch home with a removable roof and removable walls. He also gave us a discarded wallpaper book. We decorated the walls and floors with ever changing wall paper! We also made furniture out of boxes and cardboard.

These days my dad makes beautiful wood items for each of us, carefully turned decorations, lovely boxes with fitted joints and inside shelves. As they've aged, my dad's creations have become smaller and more intricate and my mom's have become simpler. Sometimes she makes placemats or decorative pillows out of sale item placemats!

One thing my mother never did was to knit. She was a seamstress who hated making "fabric" stitch by stitch. Knitting was not relaxing to her. She learned to knit in the late 1940's when all the girls made argyle socks for their boyfriends. No wonder she didn't like to knit, when you first project is argyle socks, who could ever fall in love with the process???!!!

However, she must have knit a little when I was young. She described knitting wool soakers, felted wool diaper covers in the days when rubber was in short supply after "THE" war. No wonder babies in those days were "trained" early!

My mom also must have made two wool ascot style scarves that were in our mitten/scarf/hat drawer throughout my childhood and that of my four siblings. There was a smaller pink scarf and a larger red one. The little kids wore the pink one and graduated to the red one at some point. I'm not sure what my brothers did--maybe they went straight to the red one. Those scarves are long gone, but they looked like this.

The neck portion was just long enough to go around our necks, outside of our jackets, as I recall.
The ends looked like little hearts, I always thought, or maybe triangles, or spades from the deck of cards.
The narrow part was a little pass through for inserting the other end. The flanges of the heart end prevented the end from slipping out.

A few years ago, while teaching elementary school kids how to knit, I 'unvented' the pattern from my memory of what the scarves looked like. I'm sure there must be published patterns around, but I haven't seen them. I made this scarf as a sample and the kids liked making it. It may be the first scarf ever finished by a beginning knitter!!

At any rate, I resurrected the pattern for my knitters' guild charity knitting challenge. Instead of a knit along this year, we are making monthly items for donation to local charities and schools. For November, the item is kids scarves. You can find the pattern here, scroll down to the second half of the post--look for the photos.

If you make one of these scarves, consider donating one to your favorite local charity. And, think of all the moms, whose skills, care and love kept us warm during the cold winters!!

Meanwhile, I am busy knitting items for presents this winter. I flit from project to project, beginning many, finishing few. Photos and more later.

A little of this and a little of that

I've not been blogging much lately as you may have noticed. The end of the summer has turned me into an isolationist. How did the summer come to such a precipitous ending? It was just June and now it is simply September. My mind is still back in June, when possibilities are endless, when the sweet summer smell convinces you that all is within reach. And suddenly, September springs on you from its hiding spot--evenings are shorter, the heat of August dissipates and the projects planned in June are embarrassingly incomplete.

In my defense, I plead a rush of family activity. I attended my 40th high school class reunion in mid August and all of a sudden school planning stared me in the face. Trips to Kohl's, Target, Macy's, back to Kohl's and two more trips to Target. My 16 year old had a hard time deciding what to buy--from folders and note books to tops, shoes and T-shirts. Unfortunately, she doesn't yet have her independent driving license so I have to accompany her on each and every indecisive trip.

Daughter #1 purchased a scuzzy condo earlier in the summer. She knew that a lot of work would be required to turn the disgusting place into something habitable, but she vastly underestimated the amount of work necessary. This wasn't her fault--she is short on cash, she bought a condo built in the late 1930's, in an up and coming location, that was cheap because it needed work--a lot of work. She had the eyes of youth and promise and saw through the scuzz to something beautiful. I (mother that I am) saw the scuzz and saw a mountain of work. It has been the entire Himalaya range of work. We are trying to do it ourselves. All of us are complete neophytes at ripping out carpet and installing a bamboo floor; at patching rotting concrete and plaster and painting over; at determining whether the wiring is good or rotten; at every possible task required!!!

Maybe this has something to do with my magnificent lack of good taste in planning an Elizabeth Zimmerman baby sweater for a new baby in my husband's department at the University. I decided to work from my stash--and I didn't have much good in washable baby yarn. I didn't have enough of any color to make an entire sweater. But, I held up some baby blue, some baby yellow, some white ------and some avocado green. Oh, I know, avocado green just doesn't go with the first three colors. But, I thought it might be funky, cool and creative. (note, I am a child of the 60's and 70's--decades of terrible taste in color and style). The yarn was fingering weight and I wanted to finish this little sweater fast, so I doubled the yarn. I had faith in EZ--nothing done in her style could possibly fail. Right?? Wrong!
The result?? An inflexible, ugly, ugly little thing, but I plugged on. I finished the first sleeve.

Finishing the sleeve didn't help. Both of my daughters told me the sweater was "just ugly, Mom". I stopped. Finally, I realized that I knew it was ugly from the get-go. I went back to the stash and found some pink yarn I purchased 17 years ago for daughter #2. I never finished that sweater. So, the pink yarn became:

Earlier in September I dug out the Dale sweater I started 18 months ago for my husband. I stopped and put the thing in the back of the closet when I became dissatisfied with how the lighter yarn showed through when I twisted it so that the carry wouldn't be too long. I had been trying not to carry more than three stitches.


Ugly, ugly, ugly. Something needed to change. Then the light dawned. At Meg Swansen's Knitting Camp she and Joyce Williams displayed some of their projects for their new book on Armenian knitting. I recognized my Norwegian sweater for what it was--an example of Armenian knitting where the floating yarn is "trapped" every few stitches. The result is a tweed-y texture. Now I felt better; I had used an Armenian technique for a scandinavian sweater. Why not return to a scandinavian technique of long floats?? So I frogged....

And I re-knit.

As you can see I did some trapping when the carries were about 7 stitches long. Much, much better.

Maybe I'll actually finish the sweater for this Christmas!! Two years after I "gave" him the idea of the sweater for Christmas!

The socks I knit for my Sockapalooza sock pal, inspired me to knit a similar pair for myself. Because I wear my home made socks year round, I need something suitable for summer. I made these short socks out of a cotton/wool blend using my favorite pattern of all time--Feather and Fan from Socks, Socks, socks. The snug fit, the cute little scallop on the cuff--perfect!

OK, a success. I decided to start another pair of socks for myself for the approaching fall. I like the self striping yarn, but I get bored with stockinette stitch. And, I just finished Feather and fan. I decided to do something new. How about Canal du Midi from Knitting on the Road?? Sure, let's go to France!
Next time, I'll go to France with a solid color yarn. The wonderful patterning of the travelling stitches is not shown off by the striping yarn. The stripes of the yarn are blurred by the traveling stitches, and the traveling stitches lose their definition due to the stripes.

Oh well, I'll make the second sock. The socks are for me and I like the pattern and the yarn.

Knitting is kind of like life these days--I take two steps forward, then one or two steps back with each project....

Hope your projects are perfect the first time!!

Knitting on the Road

No, this isn't a post about the wonderful book of socks. Rather, it is about some of my knitting while traveling this summer. I didn't finish, or start, anything extraordinary. Rather, I just knit things I didn't have to concentrate on. We were on the road for three weeks exploring northern Idaho and Washington State, on our way to Seattle for the wedding celebration of my step-daughter.

In an earlier post, I showed you the not-lacey wedding shawl on the floor, being blocked. Here are two photos of the finished product.

This is daughter #2 (now 16 years old!!) modeling the shawl at the family gathering that celebrated the marriage of step-daughter #1 (now 40 years old!). You can see how sheer the shawl is. I used laceweight cotton. Never again.
And, here is the front. Pattern is the Landscape Shawl by Evelyn Clark, available through Fiber Trends.

And finally, the bride and groom, cutting the wedding cake, with the shawl draped around the bride's shoulders. I was very happy to participate in the wedding by making the shawl. And, I think that the bride truly loved the shawl. I hope she wears it frequently.

I knit a lot while in the car and on airplanes. For airplane knitting, I decided to take bamboo circular needles and not my 2.5mm circular needles on which socks-in-progress were dangling. On the way out of the door when we were leaving on vacation I grabbed three balls of variegated cotton yarn--I purchased the yarn last summer while in Barcelona, Spain, from a yarn shop owned by a knitting friend in Barcelona. She is American, her spouse is Catalan/Spanish. I didn't know what to do with the yarn at the time. But, I like bright colors. After I get home with bright yarn I question my sanity. However, I thought an airplane ride would be perfect for forcing me to make a decision.

After swatching (I tried the seafoam stitch--doesn't work well with cotton, I discovered) I decided to use the yarn for a fishnet lace scarf, from the Montego Bay Scharf pattern in Summer 2007 Interweave knits. Amy Singer wrote the pattern. It's not difficult at all. A simple four row pattern that is really a two row pattern. But, somehow I managed to get off track at the beginning. Maybe the airplane hit some turbulence. Or the man next needed to climb across me to get into the aisle. Do you see the problem??
I didn't see the problem right away. I just kept merrily knitting along. When I finally realized that my fishnet rows didn't line up in row 6 or so, I had three options:
1) rip out 12 inches of knitting to fix it
2) pretend there was not problem and that no one would ever notice
3) cut off the beginning and knit on a border.

I chose option #2. Denial. Belief that the knitting fairy could come one night and fix it. Pretend that the end of the scarf is supposed to be wonky.

So, I knitted and knitted. About 5 or six feet of knitting. Because I made a garter stitch border on the sides, at the end of the scarf I did 8 rows of garter stitch and bound off. Then, I looked at the beginning again. Option #2 was not the right option. I needed to implement Option #3. Cut it off!!!

By this time, I was in a long distance car ride and hubby was driving. Bless him.

I figured that I could use waste yarn (that I luckily had in my purse) to make a safety line. But, I couldn't seem to follow a straight line. The scarf is really on the bias. And I could not, for the life of me, seem to follow the pattern. So, after multiple false starts, I painstakingly used a needle to pick up the stitches, tugging on each stitch to find out where it led to the next stitch. Painstaking. Real painstaking. Did I mention that I was doing this in the car?




Well, it worked. I used the picked up stitches to do 8 rows of garter stitch, and then cast off! I didn't add the fringe that Amy Singer used. I decided to give this scarf to my Boulder, Co sister and she is only 5 feet 1 inch tall.

Why did I ever think that #2--denial of the problem--was ever an option? I would have been embarrassed to give the scarf to my sister, who would never have noticed the problem. But, I would have known. Why do I do this--pretend that a mistake will never be noticed, when I would notice--even if I never saw the item again in my lifetime??

Ah well, here are some photos from the road trip.
The first one is sunset over either Priest Lake or Pend d'Oreille lake in northern Idaho.



Next photo is not photoshopped! For some strange reason, there is a miniature statue of liberty at the beach in Sandpoint, Id. The sign did not explain.

We stayed one night in Leavenworth, WA. This was a dead or dying former lumber town back in the 1960's. Then, some civic minded citizens decided to save their town by turning it into a Bavarian village. They succeeded and it is now a tourist destination, complete with Bavarian style buildings all over, Bavarian dressed store clerks, and a production of Sound of Music every summer in an outdoor ampitheater near the ski hill.

Last week I attended the 40th high school graduation weekend of my small (33 graduates) girl's convent school. Here are some of us looking grey but happy!!
More of my on the road knitting later.

Fabulous Sock Pal!

Do I have the best sock pal of all, or what?? Kathy of Vast Amount of Spare Time
used her sparse time to make me this delicious pair of "Rock and Weave" socks out of sumptuous Cherry Hill Supersock yarn in a color called Spanish moss.
Not only are the socks beautifully made, not only do they fit perfectly, not only are they a perfect color, but everything about them shows that Kathy read my blog carefully to determine what I like. What a woman!! I can't tell you how touched I was by her thoughtfulness. For example, she knew I lived in Spain and chose "Spanish Moss" as the colorway.
Cute of all cute things, she mailed the items in a ball winder box!!! Of course, my photo is upside down; she packed everything right side up. When I hit the turn arrow on the photo manager site, somehow the photo flipped twice and I didn't notice. Sorry, Kathy.

She also knows that I am making a blanket for my 16 year old (and now one for my 30 year old) out of leftover sock yarn. She knows even that I beg for leftover sock yarn. So, she included some of her leftover sock yarn, as well as the leftovers from the sock she made for me! What a woman!

Plus, she knows that I make a variety of knitted items for Christmas presents and put them in a basket from which family and friends can select an item. She thoughtfully added some very soft fleecy yarn that will make a great hat for Christmas 2007.

Moreover, she knows that I like Chocolate with spice in it. She noted that I liked a chocolate bar from Barcelona that had pepper in. What a blog-reader that woman is!! She sent me some made-in-Oregon chocolate bars with chili. I can't wait to try them. My 30 year old (who went to school in Eugene, OR and who lived in Portland for a while) is salivating over the bars and can't wait for me to open one.

And finally, she sent me some badger cream for cuticles. How did she know that I have hangnails and cuticle problems? Did she realize that Wisconsin is the Badger state and, thus, purchase some Badger cream for me???

Kathy, you are truly a thoughtful and caring person.

Thank you. Now, I need to read your blog more carefully. I know there was just a wedding in the family, and that you made an outstandingly fabulous shawl, and ties, and purses and more. And, I know that you lost your beloved cat. How sad, but how wonderful Tabby was in your life. We have a very beloved Cosmic, who follows the psychotic Molly (blessedly short-lived) and the most loved Pippin. Cats are such wonderful personalities and they are missed terribly when they go.