Here's what $45 will get you at Knit Picks

Okay, it was $46 dollars and some change, but you get my drift...


Clockwise from top left: 4 Wool of the Andes (1 each in daffodil, fern, pumpkin, holllyberry); 3 Wool of the Andes Natural (for Kool Aid dyeing); 2 Crayon in Blue; 3 Crayon in Light Blue; 1 Shimmer in Happy Dance; 4 Andean Treasure in Sunset
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I'm so pissed! I just went to their website and discovered a couple new yarns out! What the hell?! They just sent me a catalog in the mail last week with no mention of this. I've already announced that I will have to place another order. Good thing the free shipping is for orders over $30. I like free shipping.

Success or not?

I'm a perfectionist. If you don't plan on doing it right, don't do it at all. That's basically how I operate. No wonder I'm a stress case.

But when it comes to knitting, felting your knit goods means you have to throw a bit of caution to the wind and just hope it all turns out. Not something I'm used to doing, but the felting process has some really good upsides - you can be a bit sloppy since it all becomes one smooth fabric.

Before I felted the Canteen bag, both the front and back pieces (rust and red) were exactly the same size, and of course were the same number of rounds and stitches. Somehow, though, the back ended up shrinking waaay more than the front. I haven't decided how much that bothers me.


Front of Canteen bag
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Flap up view
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Back view
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I have two theories about why this happened. Theory Number One - when knitting the side (green), you simultaneously join the front and back pieces to it by picking up stitches and knitting them together with the side. I think that something in this process contributed to the back side being more tightly felted together with the side. You can sorta see that there's a bigger ridge on the back side where they meet, as opposed to the front.

Theory Number Two - since I used two different colors for the front and back, perhaps the red just shrinks more than the orange? I'd be interested to know what would happen if I tried this again using the same color for front and back.

Specs: Canteen bag knit with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky, colors Loden Leaf, Medieval Red, and Rust (1 skein each); needles US #11 (Clover bamboo); gauge 3 sts/inch

A couple surprises

Let me start by reiterating how skanky our current place is. Here in CA, there are a lot of places with old and weird floor plans. For instance, our laundry room is outside... and it's in the FRONT of our house! How messed up is that?!

When I do laundry, I'd prefer it to be in a relatively clean environment. But since ours is in a weird outdoor room, I often find moths in the cabinets. When they die and fall on the floor, the ants come and feast. Then they get thirsty and decide to crawl all over our washing machine. You have to wipe them up before doing a load.

Then today, I went out there and I found a few friends waiting for me. A spider decided to have babies under the cabinet. Lovely.


I love where I live
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Ok, on to better things. I was browsing the latest Interweave Knits magazine and decided to try knitting the Canteen Bag by Rachel Battaglia Nissen using some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky I had in my stash. I was truly surprised at how fast this thing knit up! I'm a super slow knitter, and it only took me about 2.5 evenings. I'll post pics after I felt it.


front of canteen bag, before felting
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Back of canteen bag, before felting
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Another side project I'd been working on is a little cardigan sweater for our new kid, Jake. We got Jake in Arizona and he'd been complaining since arriving in California that it's too cold here! So, I took his measurements (which was easy since stuffed animals have seams you can follow), and grabbed some Andean Silk from Knit Picks in the color Yarrow. Since he's sort of triangular-shaped, I knew I'd have to make it a raglan sweater. The back photo really shows the raglan decreases, and the moss stitch edging. Of course, now all the other kids are jealous.


Jake in his new sweater
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Back of Jake's sweater
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