Seeing Red

...but not in a bad way.

The other day Joe and I went into town. We were running the usual errands, one of which is to go to UFS. Let me tell you about UFS, it is a, um, "unique" store. It has just about everything you can think of from appliances, furniture, stationary, household goods, clothing, food and alcohol, personal care/makeup, toys, construction materials, the list goes on and on and every bit of it is "displayed" in a no frills fashion. Completely without frills, picture huge dump bins and boxes with the tops cut off that on occasion have some sort of alignment that almost reassembles rows and aisles. The lighting is poor, the flooring is, well, mostly non-existent and what is there is waaay older than me even though they sell flooring! It's also in lousy part of town.

OTHO I love it. It is a family owned business. I can't be sure when it was first established, but it's been in the same location since it opened it's doors and is now with it's second (third?) generation of owners. I wouldn't be surprised if generation #3 (#4) won't soon be taking over. The original name was the "Unclaimed Freight Store", thus the variety and variability of the inventory. To be fair though nowadays there is a substantial portion of their inventory that is constant having picked up distributorships of some name brands ie GE appliances, Ashley Furniture. They also have an excellent liquor/wine department. That is the reason we visit UFS so frequently. No other store can touch their prices and if you buy by the case, well nuff said.

Sooooo the other day while doing our wine run at UFS I poked around the boxes and bins and found a perfect knitting bag for $7.99.




Technically it is a tool "box". It is made of canvas and has a tough plastic tray like bottom, all the better not to stain when placing it on the floor at knit night right?. The interior has pockets all around, there are pockets on the outside, and it comes with a removable shoulder strap. Oh and the coolest part, notice how the zipper across the tops curves down the side giving the whole bag a shape similar to a Doctor's bag? When opened the zipper kinda pops open wide exposing everything making every corner of the interior easily accessible.



Isn't that the coolest???? In the last pic is one half of a bulky weight sweater plus all the yarn needed to make the second half. All zipped up the dimensions are 16 x 9 at the base and it is 9.5 inches tall (remember the doctor bag/triangular shaping) Open it is 16 x 9 x 11.5

Moving on from small thrills to bigger ones, I finished Pretty in Red. Here is Vivian wearing it. I couldn't stop her, she just had to put it on before I got it blocked.


I struggled it away from her and it's now blocking on the day bed in my workroom.



Pretty in Red specs:
Pattern: Drops 105-1
Yarn: Classic Elite Four Seasons 9 balls (927 yards) 70% cotton 30% wool
I also held a strand of a random lace wt. mohair blend to meet gauge.
Needles: size 6 & 7

Modifications: Not too many, pretty much stitch for stitch per pattern til I came to the sleeves. I found the sleeve directions leaving something to be desired, um, like an ending stitch count. Granted I could have figured it out knowing what I started with and calculating what would be left after the decreases, but given the occasional iffy translations I winged the sleeve cap on my own. I also originally placed 5 buttonholes but then decided to close up the lower 2 button holes, partly cuz I only had 3 of the buttons I wanted to use. Oh yeah and I also made the sleeves a tad bit longer cuz their 3/4 sleeves hit me just above the elbow. If you plan on making this yourself, check the sleeve length I do have freakishly long arms.

The Four Seasons was a pleasure to use. I used it cuz this is a sweater for Gillian who doesn't need heavy winter woolies living in Savannah. If she doesn't like it I'll keep myself. :o)

Fall has Fallen

The trees have only just begun to give a us a slight glimmer of the colors that lie within their leaves, but I know it's Fall. It's not merely because the thermometer tops out around 62 everyday and dips to the mid-40's at night it is cuz this happened yesterday.

The farmer dude came and edged out the field. The beans have been turning for a few weeks now and soon they will be not much more than twigs with pods, all dried out and perfect for harvest. Edging out the field is one last step to hasten the drying out of the plants. I imagine the farmers around here have been doing a happy dance lately. Even though we got oceans of rain recently, the weather has been ideal for pre-harvest drying. Strong sun, and cool temps suck the moisture out of everything. Summer has ended, Fall has fallen.

I suppose another indicator of the changing season is Oktoberfest. We had our three-day festival this pass weekend. A good time was had by all. No pix to share with you this time. It would be kind of silly to show photos of Joe and I in the same costumes as last year, although next year there are sure to be photos of the days leading up to the event. Joe bought a new hat to go with his Lederhosen. The pair he has now are black, his new hat is dark green. He'll need a green pair for next year. Good thing I have some green suede in my stash!

On the fiber front there's been some spinning and plenty of knitting done of late but not really worth bloggin about. Miles of spun singles and oceans of stockinette/moss stitch is not thrilling to those who are only watching. I'm still working on Gillian's Pretty in Red. sweater, body done and sleeves begun.

OK, that's sort of a lie. The body isn't totally done, I don't think. If you look closely at the pic you'll see the shoulder stitches are on holding threads and they each have tiny balls of yarn hang from them. I do this with almost every top I make. I get to the supposed bind off point and keep the stitches live with a length (a few row worth) of yarn still attached. I just think it makes it easier for any adjustments that might be needed later. Ripping out something that has been bound off ticks me off to no end. It's a make or break deal for me. If I bound off these stitches right now and then discovered that I needed one or two more rows on a shoulder the whole thing would never get done. The sweater would languish in the blackhole of UFO's for all eternity. Only needing 19 stitches unbound, a row or two of those 19 stitches knitted and then bound off again. What would you say, 10 minutes of work after how many hours invested? It's silly, I know, but there you have it.

Papa G, the bulky remake of the Mr. Greenjeans sweater, wasn't enough to quell my need for bulky woolie knitting so I started something else the other day. A chunky car coat that I'm sort of winging as I go along. I was merrily knitting away on it and it was flying off the needles. See? this is what it looked like a few days ago.


I stopped knitting on the bodice shortly after the colorwork and began the sleeves. I figured I would make the sleeves and then knit the length as far as my stash would allow, hopefully fingertip length. What happened next I care not to show you even if I could. Both sleeves complete, with a colorwork band that lined up perfectly with that of the band on the bodice. But wait! Did it really line up?? Something wasn't quiet right. It looked funky and wonky and not merely cuz it was not blocked, there was something else about it I couldn't put my finger on. Then it hit me. I hadn't worked the same the colorwork pattern. The pattern on the bodice is a fretwork pattern, the pattern I worked on the sleeves was a Greek key pattern.

Ooops. Although, "oops" wasn't the word I used.

I have since ripped out both sleeves all the way up to the armpit so it once again looks similar to the blue blob in the photo above. I ripped all the way up cuz not only did the pattern not match, neither did the stitch multiple. All the figuring I had done for the decreases was wrong.

Bummer. Although "bummer" wasn't the word I used.

I haven't touched it since. I have looked at it a few times. Is it just me, or is my sweater mocking me? Take a quick glance. Doesn't this look an awful lot like a row of Swastikas to you?


"Oops"

"Bummer"

"Darn"

Surprise!

Betcha just thought I was joshin' when I said I was thinking about making Mr. Greenjeans in a bulky wt...... Behold.



An icky, poorly lit, through the mirror, self portrait, of an unblocked bulky wt sweater, but a photo nonetheless. It practically flew off my needles. If it wasn't for the fact that I had to do the sleeves, not once, not, twice, but three times, (even seaming one of the sleeves each time, which is the bane of all things good) I would have been done two days ago! I wonder when I will learn that those nifty little gadgets they call tape measures are worth their weight in gold?? Guess I should have taken a clue from the gold market of late and used one. Obviously "eyeballing" is not a good thing.

Specs: Vintage yarn...Ballybrae Bulky by Brunswick 100% virgin unscoured wool with natural oils. 135 yards/100 grams. (total yardage 675) #10.5 needle 3sts=1 inch color Dover White Tweed.

Um yeah, they weren't kidding when they said, "unscoured wool with natural oils" It took me longer to wash the stuff than it took to knit the sweater! WOW

I sort of followed the pattern, but not really. What I did was follow the silhouette. Just changing the gauge and going from there doesn't work too well sometimes and I just knew it wouldn't have worked this time. So basically it's just a raglan, with a deep v-neck, and an empire waist. There are darts here and there that are not in the orginal pattern and I changed the cable a tiny bit. Each cable twists in the opposite direction than the one before it. I'm thinking I should have gone a tad bit longer in length (I have one skein left) but then there's the issue of the button/neck band....sigh Oh well, it's still long enough to cover my butt when I sit so it's all good.

Languishing while my attention was focused on "Papa G" (as I'm calling the Mr. G bulky remake) was "Pretty in Red". I know, it's a lot of red. I'm about half way up the back, as you can see. The fronts aren't much and then the sleeves. I was orginally going to make this long sleeve, but Gillian thinks she wants it 3/4 sleeved, so 3/4 it will be. It won't be done in a day or two, but it will be done soon.



I am totally enamoured with the pleats!



On the spinning front, I've been sporadically spinning here and there. This is what's on the bobbin now. It was originally supposed to be part of my Ravelympics....oops. You can see my Ravelympics prep for this fiber here. I dyed it myself.



The ball of roving seen here on the left is exactly what the ball on the right looked like before I began spinning. Large ball 242 grams, smaller ball, 119 grams.



The plan is to have a sportish wt. 2 ply with a really long color sequence (ala Kauni). Then a I'll use a solid/semi-solid in a dark color such as black or navy, and do some color work. I've been "stealing" and adapting paisley prints from my stash of fabric and charting designs, we'll see how that goes. :o)