Premie Hats Update

Someone left a comment this morning about Red Heart for the premie hats. Unfortunately, whoever you are, didn't put an email address in the comment and I Blogger doesn't let me track back to you for a reply. :(

Red Heart will be fine, IF it's really soft. Remember, these are premies and their sensory intake is already on overload. If you can rub it on your face and it feels the least bit rough or scratchy, leave it be. And the hospitals prefer machine washable synthetics, just to avoid any allergy issues that wool, etc. might have. The commercial yarns I have found to be the softest are TLC, Caron SuperSoft, and just about anything labels "baby"; but watch out for the ones that have that little ply of shiny stuff, sometimes that single ply can be a little stiff. I still have a pretty good supply of baby yarn to give away, so leave me a comment (with an email address!) and we'll get fixed up.

My standard premie hat recipe? I use dpns but you could probably use circs or a loom, cast on about 40 stitches, then work k2p2 ribbing for awhile, change to stockinette for about 5 inches, then decrease down to about 10 and tie off. But, you could do stripes, ribbing all the way to the top, intarsia, lace patterns, etc.



I've made 20 hats so far, and no two are exactly alike. Just no roll brims (they don't stay on very well) and no pompoms (too much fuzz factor); other than that, let your designing creativity come out! I've used this opportunity to try stitches on a small scale that I wouldn't do on a larger project. Want a real challenge for a premie hat pattern? Try this one. If you really want patterns, then Bev's Country Cottage has a whole page full here.

We're baaack . . . . .

Our 'puter got really, really sick almost immediately after my last post.

And I don't mean that just the closet was full of blue shirts, because when we bought this thing back in January, we purchased it with a virtual walk-in cedar closet of storage space. Besides, if there was simply no room left in the closet, then I know how to take out blue shirts, fold them very tightly, and add some red shirts so everything would be hunky dory. Oh NOOOOO, it wasn't that easy.

Our computer, for which we paid mucho dinero in January, came complete with 40 gigabyte hard drive, wide screen LCD monitor, DVD burner, special sound and video cards, capable of connecting directly to cable to record movies for viewing later, and with a whole house wireless network. A machine, that was, up until Tuesday, screaming fast, suddenly turned into a brick.



Just like what happened to Stephanie, when you turned it on you got the pretty wallpaper. And nothing else. No icons. No START button. No pretty harmonic music. Nothing. Hit CTRL + ALT + Delete. Nothing. No little Task Manager Window. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

So, who do you call? That's right; Ghostbusters! Same guys who came delivered this baby and attached it's little umbilical cords to the Internet, cable, and big screen television. Can they come fix it? Sure they can. On Thursday. That's right, two days of no Internet, no email, no resumes being sent out, no blogs, no pictures moving from camera to storage. Nothing.



Andy Rooney was completely bummed that he couldn't get to his Internet Texas Hold 'Em and chat with his favorite West Highland Terrier, Moxie.

I however, was very productive. It's amazing how much you can get done with no computer to distract you.



Yep, a SECOND skein of that navy heather roving from Woodland Woolworks. I did this on the Ashford Traveller borrowed from Chrispy.

While I was at OFFF last Saturday, ToolMan worked on the wheel that Barbara brought up from Arizona for me. She got a nice two day marination in mineral oil, some nice paste wax, a little massage with a rubber mallet to tighten up her joints, and a nice new drive string.



Isn't she pretty? It's a Country Craftsman double drive, and she spins like a dream for me. First thing we tried was some of that Dragon Waste from OFFF. Just look:



I used all I had of the purple, magenta, pink roving. I didn't buy much of it because those really aren't my favorite colors and just wanted them to get used to the new wheel. Now I wish I'd gotten more of all three colors. I did one single starting with the purple, then when it was used up I moved onto the magenta, then progressively lighter through all the pinks. And plied it with a white single.

Here's a closeup of my very first real yarns, with a penny for perspective:



Not great, but not bad. This could be very addictive. Especially when there's no computer to distract you.

Yesterday, the Ghostbuster guy came to fix our computer. He was only here for about 30 minutes. No, he didn't fix it; he said it was too far gone for him. Whereupon, I retired to my sick bed.

"But," he told ToolMan, "I do know someone who can."

Two hours later, I wake up and walk downstairs to find this in our family room:



A young, hunky guy who can fix computers. And, apparently, televisions. This is Nate Montierth. Nate is the owner of Tekology. Nate, however, has no website. If you're in the Portland Metro area and need a computer doctor, Nate's your man. You can get in touch with him at nate@tekology.biz.

Nate put on new, gold cables from the cable box to the television and tweaked up the settings for high def. Nate is a tech guy.



Then he went to work on the computer. Not only did he save all the pictures, resumes, knitting patterns, and ephemera from the hard drive, but he upgraded the wireless modem, took off a bunch of junk programs we don't use, and set up better virus and spy ware protection. Nate is a geek.

He also pretended to be interested in spinning wheels and knitting. Nate is a FREAKIN' GENIUS!

And Away We Go . . .

Remember last week I promised not to knit premie hats and dared you to out-knit me? You have until October 13 to beat my number (currently 15) and try to win the prize package which consists of, to date: 2 skeins of Socks That Rock in positively delightful colors, a large pink ceramic mug with red hearts completely filled with various flavors of Stash tea, and some Moonstruck chocolate. I'll be adding to the prize up to the last minute, so get those needles working! Those babies need hats!

Since I couldn't knit premie hats, I practiced some more on the spinning wheel which I borrowed from Chrispy, and made these:



On the right, a pretty decent sport weight; in the middle is some thick/thin similar to Colinette, and on the left is a very small skein of almost sock weight. Not too bad. So I decided to pull out that little bundle of navy heather roving from Woodland Woolworks. It only weighed about 1 1/2 ounces, but after spinning two singles and plying, I got this:



186 yards of navy heather sport weight. I don't know if I'll actually make anything with this, but I like the way it looks in this chair the guestroom, with the blue walls and the Pendleton blanket.

Then, on Saturday, it was OFFF. The day had barely gotten started when the Kidnapped Can Opener made it's appearance. If you don't know the back story, go to the link and read up on it; I'll wait.



It was a fiber festival, after all, so Kidnapped Can Opener acquired his own knitting project; see his little scarf in progress and ball of yarn?



He also posed with Judy and the PDXKB sign.



Then on to other fiberly pursuits; like seeing what everybody's working on and what they just bought.



We had beautiful weather; mostly sunny, not too hot, and just a little breeze now and then. People stopped by our area to ask about the sign or what we were working on, and occasionally someone came by to introduce themselves because they'd been reading our blogs. So some of us handed out blog cards and collected business cards.



Then, we had a visitor without a blog card or a business card. Instead, she was handing out these:



It was our own Marta McCall, handing out postcard with that great bag on it. I've totally had a crush on that bag since she published the pattern, but I haven't wanted to tackle it because I think I'd cry when I put that knitting in the washing machine. (I didn't notice until I was writing this post, that I bought all the colors of roving to make that bag. It must be a sign.)

It was great being on the lawn in the middle of it all. We were surrounded by buildings with vendors of all things fiberly, the tents outside full of more vendors, the spinning competition right in front of us, and the kids activity tent right beside us.



If you really want details, then go read MonicaPDX, or Cindy, or Judy, or Duffy's blogs because they wrote about it way better than I can. I just enjoyed a whole day of knitting, gabbing, laughing, and buying fiber for spinning.

On Sunday, I decided to photograph my treasures and put it all away in plastic bins until I'm ready to spin it. Of course, doing this with a Parson's Jack Russell terrier in the house usually poses a whole new set of problems.


"Here Mom, let me help you unpack the goodies."



"Inspected by Number 37"

Andy Rooney really liked the polworth roving that Barbara brought me, along with the spinning wheel. He kept putting his head in the bag and inhaling deeply. ToolMan called it "dognip."



Andy stayed close by while I unpacked bags, set up pictures, and marked stuff for storage. See how happy the wool fumes make him?

The first thing I bought was this superwash top from Butternut Woolens. I fell so in love with this that Shelly had to remind me to pay for it before leaving her tent!



It's snuggling up to those sock blockers (courtesy of ToolMan), 'cause that's what I intend to make with it. I just love these sock blockers; he made them of western red cedar, about 3/4 inch thick, then he cut out the free-form holes and rounded all the edges with his router. He's going to add about a foot of rawhide between the them so they'll hang over the deck rail or shower curtain rod to dry.

Then Barbara told me about this great buy on roving at Ronnie's Handspun. Ronnie is sadly without a website, but if you want her contact info, ask me and I'll share it. The light one is a little too yellow for me and the darker one is a little to "blah", but I think if I ply the two together, I'll come out with plenty to make a sweater coat.



Then, I found what I considered my find of the day. At the tent for Mountain Shadow Ranch, there was a laundry hamper labeled, "Dragon Waste, $14/lb." Mixed superwash fibers in beautiful colors that you pick through and choose whatever you want.



I bought two pounds; mostly for socks, but who knows what else will come out of that 2 pounds. I really liked that yellow and brown twist; we all said it reminded us of some candy from when were were kids that was banana and chocolate but none of us could remember what it was called. If you know, then please leave me a comment with the name; you might be rewarded with some handspun. ;)


"What do you mean 'That big ball doesn't belong to you.'?"

ToolMan has been saying he'd like to have an alpaca cardigan, so I bought that pound of natural-colored alpaca from Mountain Shadow Ranch for the main body and 6 ounces of heathered roving from Aurora Colony FiberArts to do some fair isle or mosaic patterning on the yoke area.

I also bought this Colonial top from Aurora Colony. I don't know what it will be yet, but I couldn't resist the coloring. You can't really see it in the pictures because it's got a slight shine, but it's peacock colors: blue, teal, green, purple, and burgundy. I think it needs to be done in some fair isle patterning.



I thought Andy was behaving pretty well while I was busy doing all the photographing and stashing. Until I looked over and saw this:


"I totally don't know why you think I've been in your roving. Why would you think that I'd do a thing like that?"

Yessiree, that's my boy; Mama's little helper.

One fine flock of sheep . . .

I don't think we'll be seeing this "breed" at OFFF.



These remind me of the drawings of sheep knitting a sweater from their own wool.



Do they still have party lines?



"I know they're talking about me, but I'm going to ignore them."



"I beg your pardon?"



"Hello?"



And, of course, the black sheep.

These are on display at the Museum of Communications in Frankfurt, Germany. They just crack me up!!

Ready . . . , Set . . ., GO!!!

Ok, so Barbara, MonicaPDX, Chrispy, Melissa, Judy, Cindy, Duffy, and Karen are not the only ones excited by OFFF!!! I've printed stickers for our shirts, made more blog cards, cleaned up the chairs, charged the batteries for the camera and phone, emptied the memory sticks for the camera, downloaded podcasts onto the MP3 player, wound big skeins of baby yarn into smaller balls for distribution (PREMIE HATS!!!), decided what to wear, washed out the thermos for tea, pulled stuff out of the pantry for snacks, rearranged the stash to make room for purchases, and strong-armed ToolMan into taking me to breakfast before OFFF (I told you, I get up EARLY). Now, what am I forgetting? Oh, yeah, knitting projects and money!

I double dog dare you . . . .

I've been knitting premie hats for Aunties in Stitches for the local hospitals Neonatal Intensive Care Units and issued a challenge on the PDX-Knit-Bloggers Yahoo Group and want to repeat it here. I've knit 15 hats so far (they only take about an hour each) and dare anyone to knit more hats than I do by the deadline of October 13, 2007. I want to show the NICUs the power of knitters by burying them in premie hats.

Duffy of Aunties In Stitches came to knit night at Streets of Tanasbourne tonight and handed over custody of a large bag of donated baby yarn so if you're in the Portland, Oregon area and need yarn to make them, let me know and I'll make sure you get some. The hats need to be made out of washable very soft baby yarn, any color; they should be k2p2 rib with no pompoms; they should fit any size from a small tangerine up to a grapefruit. Just cast on 40 to 70 stitches and work in rib for about 6 inches, then decrease down to about 10 to 15 stitches and tie off. Nothing difficult, just easy mindless knitting for a good cause. So you have NO EXCUSES for not making premie hats. (Insert my evil laugh here.)

The bait, er . . . prize for the challenge (which is in a really cute green and turquoise retro print gift bag, by the way) currently has two (yes two!) skeins of Socks That Rock yarn in two different colorways, and a pink and red ceramic mug which is stuffed full of assorted Stash teabags (including herbals, English Breakfast, Earl Grey, and Chai). And just to ensure that it will be possible to beat my current number of 15 hats before the deadline of October 13, I have promised not only to NOT knit premie hats until September 22 (come on, you don't really expect me to follow something with a pattern at OFFF, do you?) but also to add to the prize bag periodically between now and deadline.

Come on, people! I double dog dare you to beat me at premie hat knitting.

Back to school . . . .

Remember when you were a kid and every night at dinner your parents would ask you what you did in school today?

I took this out of the bag I got from Chrispy:



And I used these:



and this:



and I made this:



And that's what I did today.

Peek-a-boo!

Here I am! Yeah, okay, it's been over a week since my last post. Blame it on the trip to Woodland WoolWorks last weekend; I mean weekend before last (Sorry!). Since then, I've been completely obsessed by spinning. In fact, I've hardly knit since then. Can you believe that? So, MonicaPDX says my first yarn wasn't as lumpy and bumpy as I claimed. Well, Monica the proof's in the pudding; and here's the pudding.

Here's the first batch I spun and plied:



Looks pretty lumpy and bumpy to me.

Then I read about "pre-drafting." Aha! The light bulb went on! This is the second batch I spun and plied.



Not at much to show, but much more even. Except for the one little extra boucle where I over-twisted the single.

Once I felt like I had the hang of it, I went to town and made this:



Still a little thick and thin, but definitely better. I did manage to do a better job of plying this time, so I went ahead and set the twist on this one. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, if anything. For right now, I'm just enchanted with the making of yarn.

Now, as if this new addiction, er . . . hobby, wasn't bad enough as it is, Chrispy offered the loan of her spinning wheel. Did I mention that she's an enabler? In fairness, I had offered her some of the fabric stash I acquired way before I started looking over the cliff of spinning. But her offer really did push me over the edge. So last Sunday, Tool Man and I drove up to her house. She and I talked fiber and knitting and measured out a goodly amount of fabric for her while Tool Man and Churchable got to know each other and petted dogs. Then she carried her wheel out to our van and strapped it in the car seat. I promised to take good care of it and share nicely with Cindy, who's also been bitten by this bug. However, not every family member was quite as happy to have a spinning wheel living in our house.


Make a choice here, Mom. It's either her or me.

Andy Rooney is usually offended whenever Tool Man or I (or anyone else in the house for that matter) gives less than our full attention to him.

Ellen says her dog, Shelly, has been hoarding windfall apples from their yard. Well, she's got nothin' on The Roon. He's always hoarded his toys, as evidenced by his basket.



Just for the record, that basket is 22 inches wide by 28 inches long by 10 inches deep. That's a LOT of toys. And yes, every single toy has a name by which he knows that toy. Every. Single. One.

But lately, he's been stashing for winter, so he's been "burying" biscuits all over the house. There's one in the family room.



And there's also one in the lower hall.



And one in the living room by the fireplace.



And one at the bottom of the living room stairs.



And one in his bed (where he never sleeps) inside the master closet.



And one at the foot of the bed.



And two on the bed (where he does sleep).



And we're not allowed to touch any of them; in fact, we can't even mention them. If we do, he has to grab it, growl, and stalk off to find a new hiding place. I have no idea where he gets this stashing thing from; must be from Tool Man, 'cause it certainly can't be from me.

Curiouser and curiouser . . . .

Ok, for starts, I didn't make it to the KATU "Meet the Bloggers" shindig. It proved to be just too hard to get there from where I work on a weeknight on short notice. I know several knit bloggers did make it and some have posted about it, although no is sure what the whole thing was about, anyway.

Then, I woke up on Thursday morning with a raging headache, so I called in sick and went back to sleep. As it turned out, I'm glad I didn't go to work that day. One of the girls from my old office called to say our boss was intending to leave the next day. So Tool Man and I went over to see her and her SO one last time before they leave the country. She asked me to tie up a few loose ends for her, and I reminded them both to email and send pictures frequently. It was very sad seeing her this time; she's no longer the person I knew and loved. Oh, she knows who I am and who she is, but it's like someone took the core of her out. Her personality is subdued; as if the "thing", whatever it is, that made her who she is, has been removed. But I'm very glad I saw her one last time and gave her some big hugs to take with her.

I had intentions of getting this pile of fabric straightened out, inventoried, and photographed. Tool Man has been grousing about how the guest room looks. And I told Kathy and Chrispy that they were welcome to whatever is in here they can use. This is wonderful fabric from the boss, as she was cleaning out her house. I'll use some of it, but there's so much here and it's such nice stuff, I hate to have it sitting in boxes unused. There are wools, silks, linens, challis, suit weights, lining fabric, etc. in there. Enough to keep us all busy for quite a while.

I told Kathy and Chris there was a lot of fabric! We'll have to plan a day to get together and split this stuff up. Like I said, I intended to get this inventoried But, then . . . .

On Saturday morning, Tool Man suggested we go out to breakfast and drive to Carlton. You know what's in Carlton, don't you? That's right, Woodland Woolworks. Or as Duffy calls it, "Medina for fiber addicts." What could I say? It was his idea!

Tool Man wanted to look at the vertical reels.



He's plotting how to make one for me. I, of course, went straight to the stash room.



Then, I went to the weaving room to look at more yarn.



This place requires a strategy when visiting. Do not go directly to the yearn (er, yarn) sales room; it can cause sensory overload and lightheadedness. Instead, you must approach it cautiously and carefully, lest you become delirious from the fabulousness that is WWW.



So much yarn, so little time and money!



Hmmm, these drop spindles are really interesting.



Ahhh, look at the pretty colors of roving! Red and blue and purple and green, oh my!



Uh oh; I am almost overcome by fiber fumes! This is when one must depend upon their trusted companion to rescue them from certain destruction of the ol' credit card.

I retreated to the spinning room.



Which turned out to be not such a good idea. Because I found this little one that seemed really "cute." Then, I took my shoe off an tried the treadle. Bad, bad mistake.



It was as if my body had been invaded by some evil entity. I said, Look, it's scotch tension, and has several ratios. And a built-in lazy kate." Honestly, I don't know where that came from!

Tool Man looked at the price tag; then he looked at me like I had three heads. He gently suggested I might want to start with learning how to use the drop spindle and roving that I had been carrying around for the last 30 minutes. Later, he could probably build one of these for half of the retail.



Then, if I liked spinning (and was a very good girl) Santa might bring me a bigger one for Christmas. So, these came home with us:



A Schacht Hi-Lo Spindle with a 4 inch wheel, weighing 3 ounces; an ounce of purple merino top, combed 64s; and 3 ounces of navy heather top, combed 56s. Not that I understand what ANY of that means. I just bought these things because they spoke to me. Now, I just had to figure out what to do with them.

I did manage to restrain myself until I got the laundry done, some chores taken care of, and some resumes sent out. So, on Sunday afternoon, I read some stuff on the Internet and decided to try the spindle out.



Andy Rooney wondered, "What the heck is Mom up to now?"

People don't believe it, but I tell you, that dog talks up a blue streak when no one's around.



"Hmm, it seems to not be going very well."



"It looks like this might take a while. Better just settle in with a cold drink and a snack."

After several fits and starts, I made yarn! And even figured out how to ply it!

Cost: approximately $25.00

Product: approximately 10 feet of very uneven 2-ply yarn

Time spent: 2 days

Satisfaction: priceless