Dahlia

So ok today I was flipping through e-mail only half paying attention as I flipped through the mostly ads, but then, well then I saw an e-mail from Interweave knits extolling the virtues of the Dahlia cardigan.

And I remembered that I had that issue. I remembered that I have DK yarn that wants to be a sweater. I remembered that I liked that pattern when it was first published. And I remembered that I wanted to tackle some lace.

I sense a project coming on.

lace!

So, a while back I was really in a funk. I didn't know what to knit, was having trouble picking a project, and basically feeling bleh about everything. The grey sweater was supposed to pull me out of it, and maybe it did. It at least got me to the socks which continue to just fly off the needles.

However, I have been having the strangest thoughts lately.
I want to knit something lacy.
Something complicated.
Something shawl-like.
I have yarn, because I happen to like to collect lace weight yarn. Laceweight and sock yarn compose a big chunk of my stash

But I am stuck.

Do I knit a triangular shawl or round?
Something fussy or with an easy repeat?

And is a complicated lace shawl something I'll wear?*

Do I really want to haul around a chart all summer?

Will I really have the concentration for that with the kids around?

For now, I'm scrolling through Ravelry, and looking through books ( I have several lace books) which may be the fun part of this anyway.

* I mentioned that I wanted to make a lace shawl on FB and instructed everyone to please stop me. One friend of mine wondered if I was worried about looking too granny like. But I think I might be going for ethereal.

socks

I think that officially I have given up on my gray India print henley.

I had taken it along on our spring break trip back early April and ripped it our because of the stitch count. I started over on April 5th and got the counts right and then joined for the round and.... yes, twisted my stitches. Since I needed to take it off the needles anyway, I tried it on and it was too small.

I haven't unknit it yet, it is still sitting across the room where I threw it.

I think though, that I am done trying to make that pattern fit that yarn. I love the pattern, and someday I will find a yarn worthy. For now, the grey yarn still longs to be a sweater, and perhaps one day it will. For the time being, I have decided to knit some socks.

For my birthday I treated myself to some knitters dream carbonz. I initially got the 1.5 size to replace my harmony needles that broke, but when I was playing with them and this lorna's laces yarn I had I wasn't happy with the fabric. My LYS has trouble keeping the carbonz in stock, but on my spring break trip we visited my mom's LYS. And I still had birthday money left (although not enough--that store was GORGEOUS!) so I bought the size 1.

I did the heel a little differently than I normally do on toe-up socks. And I had some frustration with that (I actually took this sock on a field trip and in the car on the way home, ripped out the whole heel and started over). I'm pretty happy now, although I know the second sock might be a bit different.

I don't think I've said enough about the yarn. I LOVE lorna's laces sock yarn. I believe this colorway is lakeview.

basement

Somehow May arrived and while I have been meaning to write this here entry for a few weeks now, I am only just realizing that perhaps I'll have to write it in stages or something so it will get posted before next September. Two weeks ago our town, like much of the midwest, experienced a period of heavy rain. It rained A LOT. The river, which had gone a few feet above flood stage mere weeks earlier due to heavy snow melt, rose again. And rose, and rose some more. Predictions were that it would crest a full 10 feet over flood stage, beating the 100 year flood by a foot. Everyone in town was told to expect water and or sewage, as the wastewater treatment plat was having trouble keeping up. And so we prepared by pulling everything in our basement off the floor (since we don't live in the flood zone, we were not expecting much). My sewing room and the kids art room is in the finished basement. We spent some hurried time going through things, and I loaded the car with donations for goodwill (mostly had been sitting in the laundry room waiting). I also threw away two garbage bags full of stuff, some I may or may not have snuck away from the children. In the end, it looked a lot like this: That's my side of the basement.
I also got to vacuum which was much needed.

On the other unfinished side of the basement, we store our treasures from days past. My husband got all of those boxes off the floor and then started wondering if he couldn't consolidate them. "Archivists hate me," he hollered up at one point. He did intermingle our high school stuff and got rid of 2 or three boxes. And he found this quilt:

Now, it is his family that quilts so I was sure this was not mine. (My family does yarn stuff, so if my grandma had made this it would have been a crocheted afghan.) It has no label and he asked me if I knew whose it was. I did not. It has written in what looks like sharpie in one corner "1977." I asked my mother in law and she confirms that she did not make this, but my husband's grandma did. AND she hand quilted it. But how sad that she only used a sharpie to indicate date. It isn't the most lovely quilt I've ever seen and parts of it are clearly polyester fabric, so it isn't particularly soft or anything. But still it is an important lesson for quilters every where (including me): LABEL.

And yes, I am guilty of this as I hate doing labels. But you know what, if Grandma G had put a label on this thing we'd know for sure that she pieced and quilted it. We might even know why. Instead, I'm going to make a label for it that says Probably quilted by."

And yes, I said I was guilty of it. I have a quilt on my guest bed that also needs a label. I guess I'd better dig through those piles to get to my sewing machine and get cracking.