Of Rats and Jen

It’s the usual Thursday rush – lots of errands to do because it’s both payday and Knitting Around at Panera day.

Gryphon and I went out yard saling last week, and I never have told you what I got yet. There were some good deals to be had this time.

First up, for the newly discovered sewer within me, a couple of McCall’s craft patterns to make stuffed toys, for only 25 cents each:

Then, at the same yard sale, proof that it’s worth looking at the raw materials when you find kits for sale, and evaluating the item based solely on those:

This is certainly one of the fugliest sweaters I have ever seen.

On the other hand, the kit was completely intact, and contained all this yarn:

That’s enough Reynolds Saucy mercerized cotton yarn to knit a size 5-7 sweater. For the grand total of $1.00.

It’s not enough to knit a sweater for my somewhat larger body, but I’m guessing I can think of something to do with all that cotton yarn. Knitted knitting totes is coming to mind, for instance. Maybe something based on a project somewhere in Mason-Dixon Knitting. Mitered squares could be fun with all those colors…

Our last stop of the day was a Moose Lodge Rummage Sale. We got there just as they were starting to pack up, which annoyed us a bit – the sale was scheduled to run until 2 p.m., and it was only 1:45! I don’t care how slow it’s been, you should stay open the hours you said you’d be there!

That minor annoyance aside, they did let us browse through the items that were still out. And I’m glad we did! There was one table that they almost apologetically explained was higher priced, because it was all the better sweaters. Everything there was $2 each. Horrors! 8^)

I didn’t take a picture of it, but I found a nice, denim blue Land’s End sweater in a 60% linen, 40% cotton blend. Good seams, hugely froggable. You’re not missing anything by not seeing it, it’s the most boring of stockinette stitch, crew neck, long sleeve sweaters. But that yarn will be nice to work with once I’ve unraveled it, I’ll bet!

The other item I spotted on that table was a bulky knit, natural wool hooded sweater from Ecuador. Llamas on the tag, etc. 100% wool, froggable, and dyeable.

As I added it to my little stack, and moved on to another table, Gryphon spotted it and took a notion to try it on.

And he liked it. Even if he does look a little like the Unabomber here. *giggle*

It fit well, even with his long arms, it looks good on him, and he has been wanting a warmer jacket for those days somewhere between a light windbreaker and a heavy winter coat.

And this would be one less sweater I’d need to knit for him.

And I suppose, with nice texture stitches and cables like this, it would be a shame to frog it for the yarn. It is actually a very well made sweater.

So I’m letting him have it. The only price I asked was that he put it on outdoors in 90 degree weather so I could take these pictures.

Good sport that he is, he did just that. I think he earned the sweater!

I’m hoping for more thrifty finds this week. Tomorrow is the last of the season, monthly rummage sale at the church down the block from us. Never know what I’ll turn up there!

A Crafting Checklist

1. Worked on my knitted Ruana: Check

2. Finished a preemie hat: Check

3. Cast on and finished another preemie hat: Check

4. Got out sewing machine: Check

What the…? A sewing machine?

Oh, so that’s what that is on my crafting table.

Alien Machinery in the Folkcat Craft Space

But, you know, I’m not a sewer. Meaning a person who sews, not a huge underground pipe that channels waste to the ocean.

Only, I sort of am. I can sew, it’s just not my favorite thing to do. At least, not clothing, where I always seem to screw up some crucial seam and get something mis-aligned.

I do have a past history with the Society for Creative Anachronism and making my own “medieval” garb, and I usually did quite well with that. But that hardly had any precision fitting involved.

I keep a sewing machine – a now somewhat vintage Kenmore – because every now and then you can’t avoid having to sew something. A hem, a ripped out seam. You know. And sometimes it’s just not practical to sew these things by hand, though that’s usually my first instinct.

I did start sewing a little bit last summer, making a Patchwork Puzzle Ball from Jinny Beyer’s book of the same name. I stitched mine by hand, not machine. It only took a year. But making that little ball was very satisfying, and started me on scavenging fat quarters and odd pieces of fabric from various rummage and yard sales.

I’ve been watching for my next project, and, well, I found it. And then the “Needlework – Sewing” card came up in my 99:99 Plan rotation, and so, here we go!

Have you ever seen the wonderful free patterns for little stuffed toys available at Wee Wonderfuls? Hillary Lang is her name, and she has a great eye for designing simple, stylish stuffed toys that are adorable. And somehow, they’re both retro and utterly modern at the same time. Great trick, Hillary!

What I fell in love with was the Pointy Kitty patten, available free to download for personal use. You know me and cats – I can’t have them in my apartment, but I love them in toys, art, sculpture, figurines…bad enough you can find them to buy everywhere, how about I start making my own?

And so I did. Here’s my first pointy kitty. Allow me to introduce the oh-so-cleverly named Blue Speckled Kitty.

The fabric was a remnant bought who-knows-where. The buttons are actually the same color, the flash just bounced off them differently. They’re plastic pearly buttons that I’ve had forever – they came from a clearance sale at a fabric store, and I’ve got a couple dozen of them. The dimple in the center (where the holes are) is shaped like a cat’s pupil, and the blue matched the fabric, so voila! I stitched them on using some gold colored perle cotton, then embroidered the little nose.

So there’s the final item on the crafty checklist today:

5. Sewed a Pointy Kitty: Check!

Will there be more such projects? Absolutely! When I cut the pieces out for this one, I also cut another from a different fabric remnant. Stay tuned!

Nashua Area Knit Groups

It has been my tradition on Tuesdays to offer a listing of the knitting-related meetings coming up in the next week and a half.

Well, bless technology and believe it or not, bless Google. That online giant has given me a way to keep a permanent, ongoing calendar of events that you can access whenever you want. And if you have a Google Calendar yourself, you can even add my calendar of Southern New Hampshire Knit Events to it!

Over near the top of my sidebar, you’ll see a section called “Pages”. The second item listed there is “Calendar of Southern NH Knit Meetings.” Just click on that, and you’ll be taken to a calendar page that shows every meeting I’ve currently got on the list, from now until forever.

Add Your Meeting

If you have a knitting or craft-related meeting in the Southern New Hampshire area that is open to the public, and would like to see it listed on my calendar, please send all the details to the e-mail link at the top of this blog. No commercial events, please – only those that are open to the public and also non-profit.

Any qualifying events will be added to the Google Calendar, and I’ll also announce the addition here on the blog.

And now, thanks to technology and Google, we have time for:

A Moment of Rattie Yarn Zen

The WIP I brought out yesterday was my short Ruana. I store this WIP in a zippered sweater bag, with all the skeins of the eight different types of yarn that I’m using in it.

I opened the bag, and set it out on the ottoman at my feet for easy access while I knit. In very short order, a certain pair of short, four-legged, furry beings had discovered it!

Sable (bottom left) and Star begin exploring

Sable especially really loves opportunities to nest and burrow, and she made the most of this chance. Here’s my favorite picture of her in the yarn:

Sable Digs Deep

What, you can’t see her? Just look closer, right in the center…

Really, Really Deep!

There she is!

For those who feel a little uncertain about the wisdom of letting rats play in your yarn – when well socialized, the rats won’t do anything rude in there. In this case, their activities involved mostly sniffing, nuzzling, burying their faces in it, and rubbing the yarn all over their whole bodies.

Nothing you wouldn’t do yourself, right?

Up on the navbar, there is now a live link to my new Free Pattern Gallery. Hoo-Rah!

L is for Lyall, not Lyle,
Whose last name is Squair, not Squire.

He’s my Dad.

L is for Lyall

This picture shows him as I knew him most of my life. Dressed in a 3-piece suit, gray hair (he went gray fairly young), glasses and a pipe. It was taken at a political fundraiser in Syracuse many years ago – he’s been involved in Republican politics in Syracuse as long as I’ve ever known. So this image actually sums up an awful lot of what I know about my Dad.

There were other parts of Dad, too. He was a librarian, first in local schools, and then serving as the archivist for an engineering firm for several decades until he retired. He was Dad to me, my brother Ed, and my sister Kathy. He was also a dad to two other kids from his first marriage, my half siblings Steve and Susie, who visited us for a week or two every year.

He and my mom didn’t have a lot of money, but they always tried to find special things for us three kids to experience as we grew up. One such special memory is when I turned 15. It was 1975. I was not one of the popular kids at school, and I didn’t really have any friends in my neighborhood, either. My parents did make an effort to help me experience “normal” things.

1975 was the year that a rock festival, The Great American Music Fair, came to Syracuse. My parents actually bought me tickets for my birthday, and my father took me to the fair.

Most 15 year olds would be mortified to say that their Dad took them to a rock concert. But there was A), no way they’d have let me go alone, and B) I was a shy kid with no friends, and as much as I would have enjoyed the show, I would have been very much out of my element at the fairgrounds and in that crowd.

My father was an amazingly good sport that day. We went early. We moved around the stadium a few times, as a mid-day downpour drenched the seating on the field and we took shelter under the roof in the stands. We both watched in amusement as folks wandered around, openly offering “free tadpoles” (which appeared to be very short, sample-size joints).

We listened to bands like Jefferson Starship, the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers, and America, among others. If my memory is accurate, I believe that Ian Anderson also appeared with Jefferson Starship, riffing on his flute behind a huge, plastic tarp they put out to protect the stage from the deluge.

My Dad’s been retired for a number of years now. His health has forced him to give up the pipe and cigars, and he hasn’t smoked for a while. I worry now and again about the fact that he and Mom are all the way in Syracuse, and I can’t be there to help with driving Dad to the doctor’s office or to his meetings and campaign events. Mom winds up with a lot on her shoulders, taking care of both Dad and helping with my sister, Kathy, who has MS.

Ah, well. A day late for Father’s Day, but there he is. We may not always have had a perfect life, but my parents, and my Dad particularly, always made an effort to give us rich experiences.

I love you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

Valerie, here is the picture I tried to send you by e-mail. Check your mailbox, you should have the text that goes with it there.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Edited later to add:

Here is a picture of a set of mixed-bead, lace-size markers, shown with a set of my regular size markers for size comparison. (The regular markers are a set of dark purple with a rainbow accent marker.)

The set above is available, plus I have these five others to choose from. Sorry for the photo quality, it’s hard to take a good picture through the plastic bags.

Again, I’ve sent you e-mail with the details about these markers. But for anyone else who is curious, my Lace & Sock Stitch Markers are sold in sets of 10, mostly because lace knitters often need a fairly large number of markers. They fit US needle sizes up to size 4.

Each set sells for $21, plus $1.50 for first class shipping and packaging. I take both bank transfers and credit cards via PayPal. If you’re interested in purchasing one, please drop me an e-mail via the link at the top of the blog and we can work out the details. Valerie gets first dibs, and any other sets will go on a first come, first served basis.

I’m going to be re-packaging these on ribbon, and I’ll photograph any unsold ones again when they’re on the ribbons and more visible.

A little while ago, I saw an item in the newspaper about a local woman who was organizing knitting for charity. I made a phone call to tell her about the many local knitters who gather regularly to knit.

I heard nothing for a while, then today I received this e-mail, which I am more than happy to pass on:

Hello Jenny-

I spoke with you a little while ago about Knitting for Angels. We are finally getting organized in Southern NH and having our first social this coming week. Please pass along this invitation to those who you think may be interested. The founder of this organization will be here!

Knitting for Angels, a global organization, is establishing a local chapter in Southern New Hampshire. Our first regional Social will be held in Merrimack on 6/21 from 7pm-9pm. If you are a knitter, crocheter, or have other talents (website management, fundraising, etc) please join us to learn more about how we provide handmade knits for children in need residing in orphanages and hospitals worldwide. Please contact Joyce Dahl at 429-4288 to attend or email jyoungma@aol.com. You may also find info on our website at www.knittingforangels.org.

Many thanks,

Joyce Dahl

The Bubbly Curtain turns out to be a good take-along project, and that’s what I did with her last night at Panera. There’s a fairly large chart for the lace, but each row is simple to remember, and the wrong side rows are all purl (except the garter stitch edge).

Besides, the overall effect is random bubbles rising from the bottom, so if you do mistakenly misplace a bubble, who’s to know?

Bubbly Progress

I just about doubled her length last night. Not bad, considering I was knitting while chatting with friends in a busy, noisy coffee shop!

We’re getting into the part of the pattern where the bubbles get more diffuse. As we get closer to the intended five foot length, I may even decide to divert from the pattern and go to straight stockinette stitch at some point. With maybe a very few scattered bubbles for effect.

Because of the layout of the living room, the top half of the door curtain has to block the ceiling lights in the kitchen from shining in my eyes as I sit in my arm chair and knit. I may work a separate valance to add a layer of density after I finish the main curtains, if I find that the fabric still passes too much light at the top.

A Look at Rats

This afternoon, I caught the Rattie Sisters in a wonderful, quiet moment together. We bought these collapsible travel doggie bowls in The One Spot at Target, and they have turned out to be great nesty spots for Star and Sable.

When we got home from errands today, this is what I saw:

Quiet Sisterly Companionship

Being the middle of the day, this was high snooze time for them. So I was able to open the cage lid to snap this photo without them moving – a rare occurrence!

A little later, I noticed they had moved to side-by-side snooze spots at the top of their little ladder, with their heads hanging over the edge as a matched pair. I tried to reach the camera in to shoot that cute moment, too, but Sable decided she was awake enough to be very curious.

Extreme Close Up

As you can see, Sable isn’t shy about the camera at all.

A Brief Budget Beeyotch

Our errands today involved going to Lenscrafters for my annual eye exam. (I’m supposed to get annual exams now because of the diabetes.) Everything’s hunky dory with my eyes – the diabetes was caught early and is completely under control, and there are no signs of any optic damage at all.

No, the problem came when we went to check out after the exam. You know our budget is tight, and we try to plan for every single expense. Well, we had budgeted $20 for the co-pay for this exam, which is our normal co-pay for doctor’s office visits. Only the problem is, this exam comes under our vision plan. Which doesn’t cover as much.

So we both had a mild panic attack when we were told the co-pay was $40. Twice what we had budgeted for. An amount equivalent to half of our weekly grocery budget.

There’s an oversight on our part here, sure. We should have verified what the co-pay would be at the time we scheduled the appointment, so we could plan for it.

That doesn’t keep this from being a bad hit to the budget, though.

So, enough of that whine, now. I need to move on and get my 99:99′s going – today’s my day to do some marching in place!

Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend!

It’s been a productive week here at Chez Folkcat. It seems like I’ve kicked in some new level of discipline and enthusiasm, and my project rotations in the 99:99 Plan are happening easily.

I’ve got a lot of progress to report for just a couple days of crafting, so this is a long post with lots of pictures. I find it exciting to see how much I’ve accomplished, though!

Opportunities Sometimes Come Via Doors

To begin with, on Tuesday I actually invoked the flexibility clause in the 99:99 Plan, and chose to jump out of the normal project rotation to cast on something new. I’ve been hankering to knit the Bubbly Curtains from Mason Dixon Knitting ever since I got the book, and I took the opportunity with gusto.

I don’t want to use the curtains in a window – we actually need light-blocking and privacy curtains, being that we live in downtown Wilton with our windows easily visible from surrounding points. However, I do have an interior application for curtains that I decided would be suitable.

Vegetable Noren in Living Room Door

This is the door between our living room and kitchen. We like to hang a curtain here in the summer time, because the living room air conditioner works more efficiently if it isn’t trying to cool down the kitchen, too. What’s hanging here now is actually the Japanese noren that normally hangs in our kitchen window.

Noren are the curtains used in many Japanese shops to cover the doors. They’re used in windows as well. A few years ago, in better financial times, I bought a number of them to use on our windows. My bedroom and living room windows are all completely dressed with noren in several styles.

I’d like to be able to return the vegetable noren to the kitchen window, though. I’ve been toying with knitting something for the door, ever since a friend brought me this last year:

Mystery Yarn

A local beading friend who observed my rising interest in knitting last year picked up some yarn for me at her town dump, in the “Still Good” shed. (Technically, it was the “transfer station”, not the dump. But we all still call them dumps.) This cone was the largest item in the small pile. Clues to its identity are few – there was a piece of masking tape stuck to it that read “polyester,” and there’s a sticker inside that says “Model Dye Southern, Inc. Sumter, S.C., 29150″*. This is followed by a few illegible numbers and the word “Green.”

The yarn is a light fingering weight, and there’s lots of it. I haven’t taken the trouble to weigh the cone, but it’s easily near a pound. I’m making a wild-assed guess that there will be enough to knit curtains for my door from it.

Gauge Lies

I did some tests with size 4, 5 and 6 needles – the original pattern in MDK calls for size 5, with a gauge of 5 stitches to the inch. I got gauge with size 6, so that’s what I went ahead with on Tuesday night.

The plan is to knit two panels. If I get gauge, I can follow the pattern as written, since it’s aiming for an 18″ wide panel – perfect for half of my door.

By the end of the evening, I had this:

My Knitting is Too Loose

I wanted something not so loosey-goosey. I mean, these will be lace curtains and you expect a certain amount of open structure passing light through, yes. But I also want the curtains to have a certain amount of visual weight to them. Also, it appears that my gauge swatch lied – I was getting way too big a width here for what I was supposed to be getting.

I knew I’d need to re-group, and perhaps do this on the size 5 needles called for in the pattern. But it was the end of the night, and I wanted to go to bed.

Wednesday Slammed!

I got going early on Wednesday. Early for me, at least. Gryphon went out to do some errands, and while he was gone I did my exercises, blogged, and got to work on my crafting.

First up was the Knitting WIP category I call “Warm Things.” This is items I’ll knit for a friend’s physician mom to donate to her immigrant patients at a clinic. Great opportunity to knit every scarf that ever appealed to me, without having to keep a million scarves in the house.

I began by blocking the Slanted Eyelet Scarf that I’d completed. Acrylic yarn, so a good steaming would do the trick

The Whole Thing

Don’t worry about the dark spots, the iron was spitting a bit of water because I overfilled it a little. The scarf dried fine.

And the Close-Up

I think I may have worked this one a little too short. I was aiming for a length to suit a child, but given the width in the pattern, this scarf should have been longer. I will re-work the pattern next time to be at least one stripe narrower.

Still, it will wrap around someone’s neck and tuck into their coat.

And Next Up:

Having finished one Warm Things scarf, it was time to begin another. This pattern is another from the 2006 Knitting Pattern a Day calendar – January 19, I think. Alison’s Scarf.

The original is knit in a super bulky yarn with size 9 needles. Again, I’m aiming for something that kids can wear, so I pulled out the discontinued Lion Brand Wool-Ease Sportweight in Fuchsia that I’d bought a while back, and did some swatches.


Alison At Bat – Click for a closer look, the cable and lace detail is nice.

Size 4 needles gave a nice look, and made a narrower scarf that would be appropriate for the young. The fabric is a little thin with the sportweight, but the nice thing about that is I can make the scarf longer for wrapping an extra time or two around the neck.

Interesting thing about this pattern is the cast on – an I-cord cast on. Basically, they give a way to knit a starting I-cord strip, while at the same time creating all your stitches that you’ll be knitting from. Much better than having to pick up stitches all along the side of an I-cord!

At the other end of the scarf, there’ll be a matching I-cord bind off as well.

It’s my plan to do all my “Warm Things” projects as sets of at least a hat and scarf. So I will be looking around for simple but pretty hat patterns to go with both of these. Or maybe making up my own!

Cast-On

After working on the Warm Things for a bit, I took a break with a couple of podcasts. I have listened to a few episodes of Cast-On, and enjoyed it, but it’s been hard for me to fit podcast listening into my routine. So what did I do? I made an item in the 99:99 Plan rotation out of it!

100 minutes is enough time to listen to two episodes of Cast-On. I’m listening to them from the beginning, and hoping to stay disciplined enough that eventually I catch up to current episodes. Yesterday, I listened to Episodes 9 and 10 from back in February.

What do my hands do while listening to a podcast? They knit! Since the podcast itself was a 99:99 rotation item, I gave myself permission to step out of the usual WIP rotation and work on whatever appealed to me. And what appealed to me was a second try at the Bubbly Curtain.

I grabbed a size 5 circular needle, cast on, and started knitting. By the end of the two episodes of Cast-On, I had gotten as far as I had with the previous try. And I liked the results a lot better.

My Knitting is Just Right!

So the Bubbly Curtains are now on track, and I think I’m going to like this a lot. You know, all our windows do have venetian blinds, too – maybe I can do Bubbly Curtains for the bathroom? But am I then going to want a matching shower curtain?

Deconstructing Silk Angora

Next up on the WIP rotation – continuing work on recycling the sweaters I’ve been picking up at thrift stores and rummage sales.

This silk angora continues to come apart nicely. I had frogged the sleeves before. Last night, I did the neckband, and a large part of the sweater front.

Former Sweater

The only problem I ran into – the sweater was a v-neck, and I guess when they knit that they did the neckline with a steek. Because when I started frogging down from the shoulders, the yarn was cut at the neckline on every bit.

Neck Pieces

There’s a lovely lacy cable detail down the front of each piece, so I thought rather than just wasting this, why not cut them off at the bottom of the vee and see if I can use them somehow? Patches in something, maybe make a small bag – I don’t know what yet, but that’s what I’ve done.

Phew! Lots of progress on lots of things on Wednesday. I’m pleased that I’m feeling this much momentum these days. It’s good to be able to look back and see how much I got done, and it gives me new enthusiasm for getting up and doing it again the next day!

Compulsory Exercises

I’ve had a very good response to the new packaging on my beaded stitch markers. That, coupled with Gryphon’s and my need to improve our budget somewhat, is inspiring me to work a bit harder at them – while not letting my days become nothing but making stitch markers.

My normal rotation of projects under the 99:99 Plan doesn’t ensure that anything happens every single day. When I want to make sure something gets a certain amount of attention on a specific schedule, I need to modify the plan some.

And so I’ve come up with the concept of daily “Compulsory Exercises.” Those items which I want to make specific, regular progress on, regardless of when or where they would come up in the project rotation.

I already had that in a way with my blogging – that happened every day, in spite of where the “Computer Work” card came up in the rotation of projects in my index file. So it’s not a huge leap to apply that to other things.

Like making stitch markers. If I just give them a certain amount of focused attention a few times a week, I can probably go somewhere with them. And if I can stay as disciplined with the 99:99 Plan as I have this week so far, I will still do enough other things that I won’t feel the stitch markers have taken over my life.

And So, On to Tonight

Knitting Around at Panera tonight – hope you can make it! Needing to carry a WIP for public knitting once again means I can step out of the rotation and pick whatever appeals to me to knit, and I think it’s going to be the Bubbly Curtains tonight. I’ve got to do two panels at least five feet long, and I’ve knit two inches so far – wouldn’t hurt to make some more progress!

*A Google search for “model dye southern” only brings up a couple mentions of an OSHA case of some sort. And then, only as a citation of precedence in someone else’s case.

I’ve been working on beaded stitch markers again. I had an a-ha! moment on Monday and came up with a new way of presenting them.

On the left, you can see the packaging I’ve been doing. Efficient, professional looking. But it also makes the stitch markers look like a cheap product from a third world country.

On the right, my new idea. Using some industrial strength double sided tape, I string the markers on a short length of organze ribbon (I have spools and spools of this left from the bead store). The hang card is a standard business card that folds in half – the same one I used for my old packaging. I adhere the ribbon to the inside edge of the hang card in five loops, leaving a stitch marker in each loop. (For the lace-size stitch markers that I package in sets of ten, I’ll leave two markers in each loop.)

Five loops exactly fits across the edge of the card. Another strip of double-sided tape on the other edge, and I fold the card closed. Voila! Classy looking presentation that makes the stitch markers look like they’re worth more.

The downside is it’s a more fiddly process that requires more materials. I am working to re-package the markers I have in stock at home, and that’s giving me a chance to study the process and figure out how to make it simpler. I’m already making progress there.

Still, I may be forced by the additional materials and effort to add 50 cents to my wholesale price here. On the other hand, that still means a set of five of my stitch markers will retail for only $11. Not a bad bargain, I think!