Stop! Sweater Time!

Yes, gentle readers, I have completed my most excellent sweater. Until (almost) any of the sweaters I have made up until this point, it fits! It fits a person the way it should with arms and torso decidedly not akimbo or even remotely deformed.

All and all, this pattern was a joy to knit. I speak, of course, about Joji Locatelli's Perla. It's a very well-written pattern, very clear. I had a little bit of issue with the sleeve cap on both sleeves but that could definitely have to do more with user error than anything intrinsically wrong with the pattern. While I can and do execute short rows, I am not precisely adept at them. They look well enough without a lot of wobble or unevenness, but I'm still just not at all sure about them.

The pattern comes complete with a little how-to for constructing the adorable little pins depicted in the pattern photos-- how often does that happen, really?

I'd also forgotten that wearing Malabrigo Merino Worsted is like wearing a buttery, velvet cloud. So that's pleasant, especially considering how the weather has turned from warm back to snowy in the last week. A little bit of brightness and warmth is welcome here and now.

I'd also forgotten how much pink there was in this colorway (Sealing Wax). It doesn't really look it in the skein and in the body of the sweater, the textured pattern breaks it up a little, but it's really quite evident in the sleeves. Still, I like it. Perhaps my abject dislike of wearing pink is lessening in my old age.

I'm visiting my parents briefly for Easter this year.

This upcoming Thursday night will mark the first time in almost three years that I've been in California. A very short visit-- around thirty-six hours by my not-very-precise estimates; but I'll see my folks and my house and my dog. I may even see a friend or two while I'm there.

A cursory search of the local eatery options means I'll probably be spending much of that time in and around Encinitas, CA for the simple reason that they have much more vegan-friendly fare than any of the surrounding cities. It also just so happens that there are two rather excellent yarn stores in the immediate vicinity, if memory serves (oh, and I never forget a yarn shop!). Black Sheep Yarns and Common Threads, I'm a-comin' for you.

I don't expect I will be able to do much damage in these stores, but you never know-- I must find something I just have to have.

In the meantime, I'm knitting a little something out of leftovers from my Prairie Drift shawl. I wonder if anyone can guess what it will be (apart from a pseudo-rectangle)?

I'll try to snap some pictures when it actually looks like something, but as the recipient has been known to read this blog, I don't wish to spoil the surprise!

I'm experiencing a strange sense of nostalgia in thinking about visiting my hometown which is not something I expected to feel, frankly. I'm a little anxious, in fact, to see things and how they've changed. I'm worried that my dog won't remember me-- I'm worried that Things Will Have Changed and will no longer be recognizable to me. I spent the better part of eighteen years living in the same town near the sea and although much changed in that time, the broad strokes are still there: same ocean, same pier, same maddening lack of connections to major thoroughfare streets, same strange mixture of socio-economic backgrounds.

I realize, of course, that Things Do Change and there is nothing inherently wrong with that but one's home town, it seems, at least in my mind should be at least partially exempt from this particular form of entropy. I want the same greasy spoon restaurants to be there (even if there isn't anything there any longer than I can/will eat); I want the same landmarks and the same awkwardly shoehorned little downtown; I want the same pier with the same unspoken understanding that there are part of the pier that you do not step on for fear of being plunged into the icy Pacific water.

And I suppose I'll see how much Things Have Changed in the two-and-something years I've been gone.

At least it won't be such a shock the next time I visit. I'll adjust and manage my expectations. Regardless, it was the town I grew up in; the down that -in some ways- will always be home.

And that much, at least, won't change.

Paranoia and Other Everyday Afflictions

Perhaps I'm just new to this but knitting for babies fills me with a sense of dread.

Maybe it's because I'm sort of new to the idea that people I know are having children. Up until this point, all of my parents' friends were too old to be having children, I'm not terribly close to any of my (excessively numerous) cousins, and before recently, my friends were all too young to consider spawning.

It appears that this has changed within the last six months or so. 

Compounding this problem is that because of unfortunate circumstances, I became worried that my knitting might be some kind of horrible jinx. The first baby things I ever made, I knit for a former co-worker only to find out later that his wife had, sadly, miscarried. Which is horrible and awful and I can't even imagine.

So back into my cedar chest the little knit goods went, put away for another occasion. A friend of mine germinated a little girl so, in addition to the toy and booties I had made previously, I knit a little sweater, a doll, and a bib. They were darling, though I don't think they were ever worn or used by said child. Perhaps I underestimated how large a baby is... this is entirely possible as I don't think I've seen one in real life (up close) since I was five or six years old.

And then another friend of mine turned up pregnant and I knit her a baby blanket... and her baby ended up born incredibly early in emergency circumstances and had to stay in the NICU for ten weeks. Fortunately, she's alright now but I'm a little paranoid about giving her the blanket, lest I actually prove to be a jinx.

Now, I know logically that my knitting has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this instance. But it's still sort of nerve-wracking and unsettling.

So when a co-worker announced that she was pregnant, I felt two things: 

1) An obligation to knit her at least a little something

2) A sense of doom

So I'm waiting for her to announce what the baby's sex which, fortunately, extends the amount of reasonable procrastination I can allow myself. Knitting tiny baby things isn't exactly time-consuming in most instances-- fiddly, yes, but it generally doesn't take long to cast on the ten stitches around most baby limbs are and work up something nice.

In other news, I've been knitting quite a bit in the last week or so. I started a sweater for which I made a -gasp- real gauge swatch. That's right, gentle readers, I knit a swatch and then washed and blocked it.

Not that my project pictures particularly illustrate it, but my sweaters have always been a little... off. Not all of them, granted, but of late, it seems like I've forgotten that knitting tends to change gauge once it is blocked. I have several sweaters knit from gorgeous yarns from brilliant patterns that don't appear to be made for human beings with a normal distribution of limbs. 

But this one, knit in the most buttery of Malabrigo Worsted in Sealing Wax-- so perfect. At least I'm hoping it is. It's still on the needles so it's somewhat difficult to tell, but it's looking alright.

Also, I finished my Prairie Drift, for all interested parties... it's a bit small. It's lovely, but I could have knit another half-dozen or more pattern repeats for it to be a proper shawl size rather than a somewhat wide shawlette.

 I'll wear it but I'll be grumpy about it. Imagine Grumpy Cat wearing a shawl and you'll have a pretty good mental image of what I'll look like; a well accessorized grouch.

Old Things, Tiny Seeds

I've been giving a lot of thought to quality of life of late.

My conclusion on this topic is that I have rather an excellent life. I have the luxury of being able to afford a nice apartment in a nice part of town and even though it's not very big, it is a vast improvement over the matchbox that Tim and I had been living in previously. I have a car that is, more or less, in good repair. Within reason, I can afford my hobbies and I have some free time to pursue interests outside of my mostly-adequately paying job.

Now, there are some luxuries that are simply out of my reach: travel (for non-work-related purposes), specialty tools (I'm looking at you, spinning wheels), a meaningful amount in my savings account (well, I'm working on it, but it's slow-going), and God forbid anything ever happens to my car-- I am completely up a creek in that regard.

I have been thinking on the impossibility of owning a home in the foreseeable future with a twinge of sadness. In some regards, this hardly matters-- but the idea of having one's own home is just so compelling. No one could tell me that I couldn't paint the walls teal, for example, and I could live in a house with walls that are all different shades of teal.

Not that I necessary long for a teal-walled house, but you get the idea.

So I have been working on contenting myself with the things that I do have and ridding myself of those things that make me less than happy.

Which bring me to this:

I frogged my Hanging Leaves shawl. That last picture I showed you all of it was about as far as it ever went, give or take a few rows. Every row was profoundly boring agony and I've just no time or inclination for such a thing.

Instead, I cast on a Drift Shawl with the yarn I brought back from Montana. It's a gorgeous thing so far and although I have no doubt that I will have to block the ever-living heck out of it to get it to tolerable dimensions, I'm looking forward to wearing it.

The yarn is lovely, though it has some vegetable matter running through it and it appears to be rubbing some orange-red dye off on my hands and the inside of my project bag. I suppose as it is dyed with natural plant dyes and is, in fact, organic wool that I shouldn't be too worried about it, despite how disconcerting I find the leeching pigment.

This shawl will require a long soak once it's off the needles and probably a bit of a wash to rinse out the excess dye.

In the arena of "new things that are making me happy", Tim and I are bringing new, chlorophyll-based life into the world. Behold!

Tiny baby seed starts! With the help of a few friends of ours,  we're starting a little vegetable and herb garden. It's quite exciting and given the amount of produce we go through, while it likely won't defray our cost of living, it'll certainly supplement the all important tasty-factor of our meals.

So that's what I've got-- getting rid of old things that I have not the mental fortitude to keep schlepping around with me and emphasizing those things that are good and best.

Also, tiny, baby vegetables. So there's that.