Category Archives: Nieces

What I Want It To Be

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(The original sale yarn ready for dying.)

Here I go again . Ripped out what I had started on my second niece’s sweater, I just couldn’t handle the ‘bug guts green’ color any more. (see over there, in the sidebar, under the text entitled “On My Needles”)   The yellowy bug-gutsy green which was so neon that it scared me,  from overdying ‘bright yellow’ over ‘sky blue’ in a very saturated dye bath. What was I thinking? One Autumn Sweater named “Berry Smoothie” for it’s likeness, the other I couldn’t not call  “Bug Guts” .  Also, the deep grey overdyed with spruce is a little too sophisticated for the colorway “Nine Year Old Kid” that I had in mind.

Changing course is good.  It just has just got to be work sometimes.  And that work not always accepting It being what It Wants To Be, nay, sometimes, this year, this lesson learned, the work will be in making it right,  of it being what I want it to be. A mountain of work to save a few dollars from some sale yarn. Risk factor high. I may have to go buy new yarn , in the end, but, I’m giving it my best shot.  Oh, and in the process of taking dye out of some yarn the first time around,  the bleach bath absolutely ruined the yarn, and it seized up… like melted chocolate getting cold water poured into it. After rinsing all that mess out,  the yarn was hopelessly tangled, and I threw it in the waste basket.  However, after a short talk with myself I realized that Waste Not Makes Want Not, and I took it out of the waste basket, dried it out on the line, and then promptly hid it somewhere not to be seen,  in order to avoid embarrassment of my bad impulses.

So here I am now,  untangling that whole mess of yarn.  I will soon be winding into new skeins on the niddy noddy and dipping into a fresh bath of dye, on a Saturday morning, while watching the fog rise from the valley and drinking really good coffee.

Autumn Approaches

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Beautiful cascades of yarn I’ve over-dyed  plum and purple, to Eldest Niece’s specifications, for Autumn sweaters.  Jacquard acid dyes : pink dyed over light blue yarn, and then lavendar over heathered grey.   The over-dye and the original colors will make a lovely subtle  varigation in the stockinette fabric that I just can’t wait to see, and since there are two nieces, there will be Autumn Sweaters  (x 2) .  Take a look at the  other colorway  overdyed from the same yarns which I bought a boat load of in a closeout sale.   Superwash 100% Merino wool.  Drinks in the dye, and exhausts the dyebath so nicely ! But committing to overdyed colors , I have found,  is strenuous at times, because there’s no “I’ll just exchange these 5 skeins for another color” sort of thinking. Nooo… I have to make it work, in a sort of determined marriage to the yarn.  So far I’ve casted on after switching needle sizes and swatching four times !

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Meanwhile,  Classic Socks pair number two continues to grow.

(Yes… more purple.)

Sneak Preview

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Unlikely colorway?

Yes, but of course ! I want to think that somehow these colors are destined to match up, perhaps something more like disagreeable neighbors, but I have faith that it will finish harmoniously.   A stretch of my imagination, maybe, but to be an Intentional Dyer is beyond my ability, and ‘I’m okay with that’.   I often settle with leaving colorways up to the Sisters of Fate, and to just let the sweaters be what they want to be.

I managed to find some one-hundred-percent superwash merino wool yarn in DK (double knitting) weight, on close-out discount, and bought a lot of it.  Light blue and a heathered medium grey.  Over-dyed dramatically,  to create one-of-a-kind colorways in my nieces’  favorite colors, for what will in a couple of months’ time ~ my nieces Autumn Sweaters.  There’s actually really nice and subtle varigation from the original colors and the over-dyed colors… exciting !

What you see draped over the chair is for one of the sweaters, the younger of my two nieces. The other will make an appearance later, in a second colorway, in a second sneak preview. So here I go, winding off a gazillion yards into balls…

Spring Sweater Tee’s Finished

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Finally finished with another epic sweater duet for my two nieces, which started back in January in this post.

Done and dusted !

I’ve been experimenting putting the rather crisp charm labels in the back near the bottom band.

Time for the Spring Sweater Tees to arrive into the arms of my smiling nieces tomorrow,

 as they’ve been waiting patiently since January.

It has been raining all day, and weather will undoubtedly *not* give us a daffodils-and-blue sky photo session.

It will be cold, it may even snow …

(insert disappointment here)

… but that’s okay.

I will take photos of them regardless and then post here very soon. Stay tuned !

(((Oh, and this is my second post of the day, crazy obsessed with this business of knitting and sewing on charm labels !

 Have I gone crazy ?)))

Endless Yards

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Starting a new thing ~ for Nora. Soon it will be her 1st birthday !

Emma wants to inspect my nieces’ *unfinished* Spring Sweater Tee’s …

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Coming up next ~  something for a newborn too, and if there’s enough, another little thing for  Nora’s birthday.  Then hopefully by the Vernal Equinox,  I will have used up the six 100-gram hanks of hand-painted fingering yarn !
Winding off a gazillion yards of very fine yarn !

My Knitting Companion

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Emma curls up while I knit.  How sweet.

As is her way, she naps on this particular bed in a slightly guilty slumber, because not only has she only recently been allowed up on this bed ~ which was mine before moving in with Jeff ~ but it’s the only piece of house furniture she’s allowed on. Well, wait, that’s excluding her own chair in the main room, (and mind you , she has three full-sized dog beds in the house as well ! )  There seems to be a theme elsewhere in the knitterly community in which I virtually pack around with, as I was reading another knitter’s blog I found a coincidence that a very similar beast was keeping company somewhere up North, the companion of Celtic Cast-On !

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So the finishing is taking place ( binding off here) with Nieces’ Spring Sweater Tee’s.

How unlikely for me, this near neon mass of knitted color !

But kids, you know, they love color and they love intense shades.

Learning curve: Absurdly it’s taken me three times (each) to knit the neck applying a new technique of short-row shaping around the whole neckline,  2/2 rib , and  binding off , to get the ‘tee’ neckline shape that I want.  It didn’t help that I  just kept changing my mind.  Learned plenty, and made notes !  Just have to weave in the ends and wash & block.  Then I can take photos of them modelling the sweaters, which is by far the best part of the whole thing.  This year they’ll be ready ahead of time !

Winding Off

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Taking literally hours to wind off the 100g skeins of fingering weight yarn, 6 skeins at 462 yards each, and in the time I’ve done this, my creative ungenius has been tangled in the briar. I have changed course three times; first thinking “what was I thinking buying fingering weight for two spring sweaters to knit by the end of March ?!”  I then derailed and set the yarn aside, consider returning, buy new DK weight or …. or what the hell.

Then I decided that I can get past this obstacle.  I thought it a brainstorm of genius to just ‘duh’,  double up the yarn and go double-knitting style.  I then knit up a swatch. Big diappointment, whereas a yarn which is too fine to knit up a sweater, when double’d up becomes too thick. Frustration sets in, derailing again, and all right before bed (after a previous night staying up late for a Burns Supper in Yountville).

I decided once more to give my original intention a better chance,  wondering “can I really knit off two  six-plus-stitches-per-inch sweaters for each of my two nieces by the Vernal Equinox???  I rationalized in another ‘duh’ moment, that not only will they be springy  little sweater tee’s,  that means no sleeves, saving me nearly half the knitting time.   The brilliance was coming back into my vision, remembering loose gauge , light, feathery fabric ~ what I call seasonal gauging ~  so why not swatch on size #6 needles for fingering weight?  Nice, it could work.

Then I begin to realize that a sleeveless seamless yoke type sweater is really already a complete ‘sweater tee’ on it’s own , just add arm bands, and I might get away with not even havign to graft at the underarm join! Rapturous epiphanies of all these corners cut, I went to bed with edgings of a very light and airy sweater tee , and dreamed through the night about vikkel braid stitches and i-cords and even picot turned edges.

I’m back on the using singles , and winding off skeins.  I will cast on this morning for sure, mark my words, and I will let these little spring tee’s be what they want to be. 

“Mostly Green” & “Mostly Blue” Pullovers

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We met in Calistoga for Our Little Tradition of sweater gifting & photo shoot. This time a seriously awesome feature ~ right next to the Calistoga Coffee Roastery where we usually meet was this amazing alley way, with newly painted murals on each side ! Here my adorable, clever, and theatrical nieces seemed to step into a netherworld of characters and places of long ago. We then always always always get icecream, our tradition for four equinoxes running ! I hope you enjoy the little slideshow of them posing in front of the murals while wearing their sweaters for the first time, each very delighted.

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Fare thee well  sweaters,  I’m happy to give you to your new happy homes. You were fun to knit, we thought…

“Mostly Green” and “Mostly Blue”

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These Two Little Bears , though very simple pullovers with stripes,  were lengthy projects, at 6.5 stitches to the inch. Finished the knitting on the Mostly Green pullover, below, and now I’m midway through the yoke decreases in the Mostly Blue pullover, and will have the Autumn Sweaters ready to gift to my two nieces and photograph this coming Sunday. As Spring was incredibly late this year, our Autumn characteristically is always. Leaves are just now starting to turn and flutter to the ground. Our Northern Californian Indian Summer I think is about to end, and to put these winter-worthy pullovers on my nieces to model this weekend!

Autumn on its way

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This is the (mostly) Green Autumn Sweater for my younger niece. I had bought one of each color of green, and of blue, from KnitPicks Swish.  I thought I’d be lucky to find any combination of a few shades,  but I ended up loving the mismatched hues, and I bought more!  Blueish Teal with Olivey Mossy Green? You bet! Reminds me of Amish Quilt color combinations. ( Oh, and the row marker charm was made and given to me by Morrie. )

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So we returned from the “Out-and-About” Treehouse Village in Oregon, as last mentioned in this post .  We stayed for two nights and two days, and I knit most of the time. This was my upstairs little knitting nook…

…and from within, this was my view of the rest of the place. There are catwalks up in the trees , between some really high-up treehouses, all interconnected in a web of rope and wood walkways, seeming to be about 50 feet in the air !!! But we stayed in one of the separate ones, which had steps up to it, called “Serendipitree”.


Here is a photo of the outside .  My knitting nook was the tiny room above.

Spring Vests Progress

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Nearing the finish of the two bodies of vests for nieces. Can you see the steeked front and sleeve holes? (For those of you who are wondering, steeks are extra stitches made into the round of stitches, to be cut open later, allowing the body to be knit uninterrupted in knit or patterned stitches). So far , this is my 3rd project involving steeks, and I am only now *just* getting the hang of it.

Note: After this project for the nieces, I think I will be quite unlikely to knit self-striping yarn for a while, it’s just so ‘been there-done that’ kind of experience. Vivid, cute, in their favorite colors, but I won’t be in a hurry to knit another self-striping yarn project.