Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed

I love tweedy yarns. There's something so very satisfying about their small flecks of colors bursting from the main plies of the yarn. These blobs give a bit of a different texture to the yarn but also to the knitted project, providing depth and dimension.

In my usual fashion, I've collected a bunch of tweedy yarns. Collected isn't really the right word. I've snatched them up gleefully at yarn stores. Spurned their plain cousins. Hoarded them with delight. And I haven't really knitted with any of my darlings yet--because I needed the right project.

The problem is, there's also something sort of utilitarian about tweedy yarns. Sure, they're flecked and delicious. But they're usually on a base of something very straightforward. Like these suckers:

Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed. A DK yarn that I picked up on sale at my LYS because TWEED. On a lovely teal (turquoise?) blue base, but it's pretty straightforward. No variegations. No melded tones of blue shading from one to another like liquid sky.

Anyway, I spent a long time with these in stash. They were beautiful, but they weren't ever quite what I wanted to be knitting. Instead I did things with lace, with colorwork; I made intricately cabled fingerless mitts and knitted plain socks.

This past week, I got sick. Just a cold, but I spent most of yesterday in bed, and I woke up craving simple things. Chicken soup. Orange juice. Tweedy yarn. And not just any pattern. Garter stitch. Something that I could let fall to my lap when I got tired.

Some time in the past year, someone had gifted me Piper's Journey: a simple crescent shawl with a knitted on lace edging. It'd been in my queue for a while (even at the top of my queue for a while) but I didn't quite have the perfect yarn for it and somehow other things always seemed more important. But when the tweedy yarn craving hit, so did the Piper's Journey call. Tweed. Garter stitch.

perfection.

(I only had size 8 needles on hand. So it's a bit looser than the pattern usually looks:

 this image is from ravelry. pergola is the person to whom it belongs. please don't sue).

2014 in yarn: a preview

My knitting plan for this past year has been fairly successful. Planning which deep stash items I was going to use each month and what sort of project I would use it on was very satisfying. Some months it went better than others: January and February, July and September were all fantastic, while other months sucked balls (June and October, I'm looking at you). (December is still up in the air. I want to do some estonian lace but I sent my cashwool to a detangler in Maryland. It should be on its way back buuuut no sign of it yet).

I think what excited me most was finally getting to make some of the products that I really wanted. A shawl for Amanda. Socks that my sisters and I all have the yarn for (they'll catch up some day). A stuffed bunny rabbit that I improvised but that turned out well.

But the other exciting thing is, frankly, making myself use up and get rid of some of this deep stash. I think I've successfully used up or destashed more yarn than I've taken in this year. Well, maybe. But I've definitely used up more than the year before, so this is good!

SO! Knitting Goals for 2014:
exciting! my primary goal is to produce some knitted products that I've really wanted for along time. This means the yarn for it is pretty old too, so I can continue to use up my oldest stash.

January:
I picked up some red and yellow lopi wool (a thick, rough single ply, traditionally used in warm colorwork outdoor sweaters) back when I was in Denmark. Now I've decided at last that I want to make a dragon out of it. There's a (free?) alligator pattern on ravelry, and I'll have to improvise the wings. Haven't decided yet if I will felt it or not. Since I won't be at my yarn for a portion of January, I've chosen an easier project for this month.

February:
The Takoma Cardigan from Knitty several years back was what got me into knitting in the first place. I love it and I want it to be mine and I've always been too intimidated to try it, but this is the year! a short and busy month will make this a tough goal but I'll do some swatching in January and power through it in February. If I stay focused on it, I don't think it will be a problem at all.

March:
For ~ two years now I've had this Shipwreck Shawl on the needles. It's using sea silk and it requires beads. And I love it, I'm sure, but the beaded netting has defeated me. March will be the month that I kick its ass--I am requiring myself to work on the netting for 1 hour a day, every single day. That should make some serious progress on the thing.

April:
I really want to make a shawl for some of my more distant but wonderful friends, and I have a lovely green mohair that'd look great as some leaves. This'll be the month to start it! Maybe something simple, like birch or haruni--very leaf based.

May:
My Maluka from last year got demolished in an untangling incident so I want to take another stab at it. It was a pretty easy project and it looked great with the linen so I look forward to trying it again

June:
My Summer Flies from three years back got lost on a road trip last year. I finally found some yarn to recreate it, so I want to take a stab at it. That took me only a month and I didn't really know what I was doing then, so hopefully it'll be just as fast this year.

July:
I very badly want a color affection shawl. I've picked out the yarns and the order they go in but I haven't managed to start it yet. If I haven't worked my way around to it throughout the year, July is going to be my start date.

August:
The final lace shawl of the year is going to be a Queen Silvia shawl from my lovely red cashwool. I expect it to be fiddly and go on for a while, but my goal is to put a minimum of 40 hours into it throughout the month of August.

September:
This is when job-hunt season really starts up, and I have lots of holiday things to knit as well, so I'm going to keep it simple with a pair of Edwardian Boating Socks in september. I am thinking this might work nicely for my drachenblut wollmeise, or that satsuma colorway in LRB, or even my purple-black Happy Feet.

October:
Also busy. I don't want to count on getting anything done other than job applications, but I'm halfway done with a pair of mittens for a good friend so I suppose I'd best continue working on those and see if I can't finish them for the holidays

November:
Another insanely busy month. I'll work on my Berrocco Peruvia super-fuzzy cowl/cushion/cat bed thing-it's worsted weight and warm and quite soothing. Unless I churn it out earlier in the year.

December:
I'm a huge fan of fingerless mitts and love to make them for myself, even if I don't wear them enough. Anyway, I picked up some rowan felted tweed this past December and would like to finally make the punky stripey mitts I have planned in my head. At the very least I should have time over the holidays to get a bit done.


This is a pretty front-loaded year for finished objects. lace shawls for 6 months of the year. But I have the yarn for 30+ shawls, and I LOVE wearing them, so it is about time I started knitting and finishing them!

Do you have goals for the new year?

why do I always dream of knitting the things I am not currently working on?

Mostly research. But some knitting, too.

-I need a whole new mitten. in a month. I know that sounds easy but these mittens are HARD. very hard.
-I should make two pairs of fingerless mitts... in 2 weeks. Shoot.
-need to finish that hat but since it's bulky I'm not really worried about it. I know I can finish it in one evening
-the big secret knitting surprise this year is probably going to get pushed off to next year. This... is not really a surprise for me. I've traded it for... um.... stuff for myself. Oops? I guess that's how knitting goes sometimes. I'm not too worried about it--it's not that exciting of a project.

what I want to be working on: a pair of fingerless mitts (for myself of course); a stripey shawl (for myself); and self-striping socks (for myself--never mind the fact that I have two lovely pairs of socks for myself ON THE NEEDLES already...). Oh and I want to spin some fiber. Not even sure what I'm going to spin next but I want to be spinning. While watching Dr. Who. and eating popcorn.

It's possible the short days and the lots-of-work is getting to me.

I am not sure why these two lists don't correspond. The two pairs of fingerless mitts are exciting to me! the hat and mittens for family members is super exciting as well! I can't wait to see how happy everyone is.

most likely I just want a more instantaneous completion. I want to sit down and knit for an hour, or two hours, and have FOs falling from my fingertips (as opposed to WIPs lingering for months). Instant gratification, that's what I crave :)

Okay, a list of things I need to work on that are NOT knitting. I can kitchener the first mitten shut and cast on the second mitten when I get home/before I go to bed tonight, and I undoubtedly will.

1) agq is okay, esp in log-log format. I need to make the plots prettier
a) label axes, figure out units
b) make axes neater format
c) plot and save each one with title of quasar on top
d) overplot all of them on one graph and see if they all form two sequences
e) fit w(theta) to each of them, make sure gamma is ~1.77 or 0.77 or -0.77, whatever it is supposed to be
f) if I can fit them, can I find the Agq that makes the fit the best? if I can do that for each of them, then
g) create histogram of Agq with "dustiness" as x axis
h) figure out which quasars are obscured, unobscured, other type

2) work on agq->bgq program
a) make list of things needed for bgq
b) look up gamma functions

3) read older papers
a) find out what information we are deriving, what it actually gives us
b) read up on correlations, cross correlations, etc
c) see if I can get the connection to galaxy evolution on a broader scale
d) see if I can get the connection to the effect of z/point in history

4) read newer papers that have done something similar
a) find out what sort of diagnostics people are using NOWADAYS to report
b) fit my stuff onto those diagnostics
c) figure out what sorts of conclusions can be of interest

5) write paper
a) do a quick draft/outline
b) work on intro
c) work on methods/data
d) re-read thesis proposal (written version)--pretty good place to start

6) submit first paper
a) fix numbers
b) fix text to numbers
c) get Mark to talk to Jason
d) call margrethe/email her again
e) look up submission guidelines and get submittin'!

7) read jason + ric's paper
a) give comments
b) make it clear shouldn't be an author on this unless I contribute SOMETHING significant to paper changes *sigh* which I won't be able to

Missing

I spent 5 years as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When I left for grad school, I fled south because I was sick of winter, of overbearing winter that took the heart of the year and left everything else a brief flame. Summer and fall were too precious there. Spring was a week of rain in mid May.

There were things I loved about winter. Standing out in the cold after being in the hot building all night, with the sky filled with orange and purple clouds and the snow coming down softly and hugely. The city noises muffled with pillows of white down. The cold air on my cheeks, the cold air in my throat, the clouds of my breath rising and rising. The silence as the snow fell. The look of christmas lights in the snow.

But for the most part I have not missed Madison. I miss people: friends who changed my life, apartment mates and housemates and roommates who made coming home an unutterable joy and who formed a new family around me like a shield when things were really hard. The professors who garnered my respect and opened my way into the world of knowledge, who never hurt me, who never judged me. Colleagues in classes and people who I was able to find all sorts of happiness with. But not the city, except maybe the walk by the lake in late summer and autumn, the gathering quietness of the water, the way the ducks begin to speak to you while invisible on the shore, the way the wind moved in the leaves.

Today I did miss it, one thing in particular: I remember in my last two years at Madison that I could scarcely walk two blocks on campus without encountering someone known to me, who'd stop and say hello. There was one particular day that I made a quick walk from the physics building to state street and met someone on every block. And they were all different people--Pearl from my first women's studies courses, who was in band and whom I never would have met or known in the normal course of things but who was so friendly and full of joy that we were friends almost instinctively--Peter from my lab, on his way back from lunch--a student I'd tutored in physics two years ago--Mona, who was on my floor my first year in the dorms--a professor I'd had who knew me by name. It was such a warm feeling, a feeling of belonging and owning. That I was part of this place, and this place was part of me. And the blue sky gleamed through the yellow gingko tree, and I didn't ever want to let it go.

stupid sore wrist

I'm going to have to take it easy on the holiday knitting. My wrist is really giving me some troubles. This is why I don't knit stuffed things--they tend to take it out of me pretty bad.

Busy Bee

Work is kicking my ass.

12 hour days for nearly a week now. I know it will all be worth it in the end, but I am starting to not want to leave my bed in the morning. Especially if the cats are asleep on me.

Here they participate in separate grooming rituals. Sunshine:

 And The Darkness.

Any space that is yours is also mine, yes?

Sunshine may complain but if an ear is presented to her, she will clean it.

Oh, very well.

Right. But this is a knitting blog, yes? How is the knitting front? Is that what you have come to learn?

With work keeping me so busy you'd think I wouldn't have much going on. and you would be WRONG, because I am the Queen of Hypocrisy. Never has my knitting been more diverse. Actually it's more that I am the Queen of Short Attention Spans. I am brimming with the love of all my yarns, and finally unpacking them all (the deepest stash) and playing with them all. Except laceweight because I am too lazy to wind it. Am I knitting some of my ever-growing Ravelry stash? No, of course not; I'm knitting up things that have been on my to-sell-or-trade page on Ravelry. Apparently I only find their value when I just want to get them the heck out of my stash, even if I must stoop so low as to actually knit them up.

So, what am I working on?

1. A floppy-eared bunny. I saw one in the local yarn store when I was there for knit group. They couldn't find the pattern that was used on him so I improvised my own based off of his design features. I did mess up one thing--his arms are too thick--but with a little bit of creative maneuvering this hasn't mattered. Alas that he is on hold until I get safety-eyes to use on him, and stitch him a mouth or something (can you believe my local Michael's doesn't have safety eyes? What the heck?)

2. socks for my twin<3! Alas that I need to measure them before I do the heel turn (her feet are a bit larger than mine) and my tape measure has gone missing. So those are also on hold

3. a hat for my brother<3. This was on hold because I needed to make sure it would fit an enormous man-head rather than my own petite skull. I have to corner a coworker and force them to model for me before I finish it, though it's 90% of the way done already :P Need to figure out how to attach/where to get a Green Bay Packers patch or something, so it's still on hold.

4. mittens for my older sister<3! Alas that while they are stranded colorwork, they are a non-repeating pattern and so require CONSTANT attention. I am slogging my way through these but it is a rough long haul. Still, they're one of my few projects that counts as "in progress"

5. the annual holiday surprise. This, alas, has barely been begun, which is really terrifying to imagine. I need to get on this!

6. holiday gift for my mom<3--not yet begun. Oops?

7. socks for myself! I'm doing 2 at a time, cuff down, using magic loop (ie on one giant circular needle). It's not as bad as it was--I was learning how to magic loop when I started them off and it was DAMN slow going for a while--but it still doesn't feel as fast as DPNs for me. I have, however, determined that I only need to go some 4 odd rows before doing the heel flaps and turns, so they are no longer on hold but slowly progressing. Slowly.

8. A cowl. I knit the bulk of this back in March but after I bound off I decided it was just too skinny, and I had 3/4 of a ball of yarn left that I could put into it. I finally picked out the cast off, ripped back 3 rows to a good point in the pattern, picked up the stitches, and re-learned the pattern. This is a really fun knit but for now it's relegated to the emergency yarn drawer at my office, for when I need a simple knit to think about some code that doesn't work, or a way to stay awake at colloquium, but alas I've been so busy writing a paper that it hasn't gotten much attention. Still, it's in progress. Slow, slow progress.

9. The scrappy stripey shawl! This started off as a shawl anyway; I wanted to make a giant triangle, with a single increase every 4th row. But I got bored with it when it was a couple of feet long and frankly I wasn't sure how I was going to wear it as anything other than a weird scarf. So I bound it off and started seaming the pointed end to part of the broad end to make a neat folded cowl. It's not fully seamed up yet, though, and I have a lot of ends to weave in from the striping

10. fingerless mitts. I wove in ends and seamed down one hem of one mitt. I only have 3 more hems left and this pair of mitts that I've had for at least a year will finally be complete. Actually I think it's been 2 years :P Can you tell I don't like finishing? I don't like finishing.

11. More fingerless mitts. These need buttons. 14 buttons per mitt. I think I only got 6 on before I gave up on them. They're lingering going on 2 years now as well, but they've made it back out of the depths and into my work-to-do pile.

12. A sheet of colorwork fleece. I'm doing stranded colorwork in the round with some hairy single-ply peruvian wool "peruvia" by Berocco, I believe. I love the stuff--it's super warm and fuzzy and fluffy--but it isn't really garment-appropriate because it fuzzes like the devil. So I'm going to knit a tube, felt it in the washer, cut it open and up into pieces, and try to make some cat beds or something out of it. I might cut it open before the washer, just to take a stab at cutting a steek like I someday want to do.

13. The blanket I started in January. It's a good thing I don't really want it right now because I've only got 2 or 3 squares done. I may have a few more planned but I'm a bit worried about what I want to do and also about getting the right background color of yarn. Anyway, it's malingering.

14. For this month's goal for the year, I wanted to start a shawl out of some green mohair I got in Denmark, for a dear old friend of mine who lives on the other side of the country. Haven't managed it yet but I'll try to cast it on tonight!

Things I've relegated to the depths:

Stripey socks. They're from some leftover scraps of plain sock yarn I found in my deep stash. They're fun and easy but they are locked in a government building that I won't have access to until the shutdown is over :P woot!

The brown sweater. It needs to have the sleeve ripped out and I have to figure out how to do the front and back top pieces because I don't have enough yarn for full sleeves. I might rip it out completely. I like it so far but the fit is not perfect; to be honest it's kinda crummy.

fixing the other cowl I knit back in February/March. Half of it is knit too loosely (I was in a hurry to finish it), and really it has had too many stitches cast on. I need to cast on fewer. It fits around my neck 3 times with ease and it just looks ridiculous.

the surprise mittens for my best friend. I finished one but haven't added the ribbing for the convertible mitts part yet; plus I need to knit the other one. But I can really only do one stressful colorwork project at a time and the mittens for my sister are taking that up right now.

Things I really can't wait to cast on:

1. I want to improvise some stripey fingerless mitts from some rowan felted tweed dk that I don't even HAVE yet

2. I want to re-do my Hanna Cowl using the neon yarn I found in my LYS

3. I want to start Takoma. I finally have enough yarn for it! I've been craving this sweater for YEARS. Alas that the yarn is in a different color but I still have enough, actually enough for it and I want it, I want it so bad, and I am gonna steek it and do it in the round! woo!

4. I want another shawl in progress for me. I am not sure if I want to cast on my Color Affection yet (a few years later it's just... not as appealing) or if I want to remake my purple Summer Flies that was lost in the car crash, or if I just want to toss it all out and find a new crazy shawl to make, but I'd love to have one on the needles.

5. I want more socks, but mostly I just want to HAVE socks, not to knit them.

3

3 projects finished in September.
none of them useful/on my list
Ghost Leaf mitts;

Pumpkin Pickers out of my handspun;

Pine Forest baby blanket because babbysurprise for a friend!

3 projects started but not finished in September.
all of them useful/on my list (so I am not showing you, neener)

3 gifts in progress right now: for brother (almost done!), sister (nnngh well making slow progress), and twin (30%, not bad!)

3 things I am sitting on that should be gifts: mitts for Patrick, surprise for Louise, and slippers for my mum

3 work projects currently eating all my time:
my LIRG paper (Eee! so close! but 3 sections left to edit!)
my thesis (must. program.)
the random work with the two dudes from Germany (which I thought it was all abandoned or whatever but now it keeps popping back up)

3 meetings in the next 24 hours:
2 dr appts
and galaxy evolution group

3 errands to run:
get groceries
visit pharmacy
get a haircut

3 things to mail:
the baby blanket (after it gets washed)
a surprise for my twin
a letter to my aunt (eep!)

3 things to figure out:
whether or not to do grading
how to do this meeting on Thurs with possible professional network connection
what to get from the grocery store for $90 to last me 2 weeks

3 bills to figure out
internet bill (which needs to be reimbursed/paid?)
the garbage bill deal with the neighbors
my phone bill

3 hours left of work to do tonight. but I'm gonna do them at home because I want cats and dinner whilst I work.