slow beginnings
Joining Ginny for Yarn Along (Yarn and pattern info below)
* Yes, that is a dung beetle rolling deer poop. My kids think they are hilarious and insisted that I photograph one in action.
I wish I could say a lot of knitting has happened between now and my last post but that would be quite the lie. I haven’t touched my Rose City Rollers in over a month (despite the heat) and instead of tackling the the cowl and (another) pair of socks that I have on the needles, I decided to cast on a new project because, well, that’s just more fun. I decided on the Campside Cardi by Alicia Plummer and I am just SO thrilled with how it’s turning out. The body has so many yarn overs and K2tog’s that it took no time at all for me to knit the body. I’m just finishing up the bottom ribbing and then I’ll have the sleeves (sigh) and collar to finish and that’s it. The yarn is by Olann, a DK weight merino superwash, hand dyed in Ireland. The colorway is called Cognac, but it reminds me more of the burning embers you at the bottom of a fire pit the night after a good bonfire.
As much as I enjoy the color, I’m unsure as to whether or not I will actually knit with this yarn again. It has this awful detergent smell to it. Every single time I pull it out of my project bag, I wrinkle my nose and my husband asks if one of the kids got into the cleaning supplies under the sink. It’s that bad. It also feels..squeaky…like it doesn’t move smoothly onto my needles, if that makes sense. I would say that it feels like I’m knitting with acrylic rather than wool. I suspect that whatever soap was used to clean the yarn after the dying process left this awful smell and stripped it of every molecule of lanolin. The squeaky sensation I can deal with, but the smell…wow, it’s bad. Has anyone ever had this experience before? I hope that rinsing it with a lanolin-based soap during the blocking phase will solve this problem for me, otherwise I’m going to smell like the cleaning supplies aisle of the grocery store every time I wear it.
I was going to take some pictures of a few FOs that I finished in the beginning of summer. I made two linen tops out of Quince and Co Kestrel and one cropped tank out of my own hand dyed fingering weight superwash, but I haven’t had the chance to take photos…so, yeah. I’m hoping I can get a chance to do that this month; maybe when the evenings cool down a little more.
Last Monday we flung ourselves into the school year with great abandon. That was only a week ago, so while I would like to say things are going well, it may be a bit premature to make that assessment. Sam is in first grade (number grades are so much scarier to me for some reason…perhaps greater potential to fail?) and he is adjusting to the longer school hours. Last year we would only do about an hour. This year he will be doing school anywhere from two and a half to three hours a day. Compared to kids who go to pubic school, this is nothing, but for a kid that likes to build legos in his underwear all day, half days are taking some getting used to.
Max is crawling everywhere, and so we are back into the “Get that off the floor before the baby chokes on it!” phase. This is harder to manage this time around, because as anyone with slightly older children can tell you, toys become smaller as children age, and Sam and Eddie now play with (and leave scattered around the floor) little legos/soldiers/doll accessories that in my mind were specifically designed to fit snugly in the windpipe of a seven month old. Oh, and Caleb is constantly handing objects to “Baby Mac” to play with, and it almost always comes from a kitchen drawer (HOW DOES HE GET PAST THE CHILD LOCKS?!) or the office, which is off-limits to all children, but Caleb doesn’t seem to care.
Gabe went to check on the land yesterday and install security cameras in some trees so we can keep an eye on the place. Construction site theft seems to be a common occurrence here so we thought cameras might be a good idea. The land has been cleared some more and leveled out. There are even more test holes in the ground for the septic and well. We’re not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. I’m just eager to break ground. Living in a rental surrounded by boxes, with my knitting stuff piled in corners and my gardening tools shoved in a box somewhere…it just feels like our lives are in limbo right now. I can’t wait till I have a little knitting studio to call my own, and some dirt to dig in!
Rose City Rollers by Mara Catherine Bryner
Campside Cardi by Alicia Plummer
Olann (DK Merino superwash hand dyed yarn)
Quince and Co Kestrel (organic linen worsted weight yarn)
