2 Sweaters 2 Furious

 I can't believe it's been three weeks since I last posted here! It's been a pretty busy month between work projects and lots of PT to address my longstanding arm and hand issues, but I have been doing plenty of knitting as well! 

I work from home three days a week, but the other two days I need to be in the office, which is always freezing! I have a cardigan I keep there, but some days it just doesn't cut it, so I decided to make a second, heavier cardigan. Here we have some Wool Ease Thick & Quick in good old moss stitch. I have the back and both fronts finished, and just a couple inches left on sleeve number 1. It's been a great project to work on while reading and watching tv, and hopefully it will be exactly what I need on extra-cold office days.

I've also made significant progress on the back of my striped pullover. This month I learned that we have a knitting group in town, and I've managed to go twice so far. The people there are great, and it's been wonderful meeting some people in town after living here for a year and a half. This is the project I've been bringing to knit group with me, and even though I've done more chatting than knitting, it's moving along at a good clip. 

I think I'm going to make lots more progress over the next sixteen days as I sit in front of the television to watch the Olympics. I'm definitely a winter games person, but there are still several sports I like watching during the summer games. 

Sweater Progress

Hello friends! Vacation was exactly what I needed—I didn't end up doing as much as I'd initially planned, but I sure got lots of rest, which is exactly what I needed! I watched a lot of tv, worked on my sock blankie, and read a lot. I did manage to make a loaf of challah, which means that one of my favorite meals (challah toast with tomato confit and melted cheese) is back in rotation.

A couple days ago I finally pulled my striped sweater back out, and it's been great to work on that again. My big trouble with this one is the metal needle (its just not the vibe for this project), but I had a bamboo I was able to switch to for a couple inches before Coleslaw got her paws on it (she cannot be trusted, I have a new one ordered and I swear this will be the last time I leave it in her reach). 

I got the front finished and I ripped out the back (which was originally knit with the wrong stripe sequence), and I got the new back cast on last night. I really like how this is coming out, and I'm feeling pretty good about my yarn quantities. As much as I'd love to bang this out and have a finished sweater, I'm mostly trying to enjoy the actual knitting of it. 

I'm still adjusting to having weekends off. Last weekend I stayed home, but I think I'm going to try and go out on a little adventure this weekend. Despite living here for a year and a half now, I don't actually know the cities very well, since I was working so much, and now that I have weekends off again, I'm working on familiarizing myself with more of the area.

Day by Day and Square by Square

The sock blankie has continued to grow over the past couple of weeks, and I'm still not really working on anything else. I have no shortage of fingering-weight scraps, and it feels good to see the pile ever so slowly start to shrink. Every so often I think it'd be nice to work on a sweater or other more involved project, but this is still all I really have the attention span for, and it's so satisfying to finish each individual square.

This is going to be my last weekend at my second job. Leaving is bittersweet, as I love most of the people I work with, but working so much has really affected my stress levels and my health, and it's time for me to scale back a little bit. I'm taking next week off from my regular job as well, to give myself a whole week to rest and unplug after a year of working nearly every day. I haven't had a proper vacation since last summer when we went to the lake and I am very overdue for a break. Coleslaw and I aren't going anywhere, but we do plan to read some books, do a jigsaw puzzle, do some baking, and hopefully pull out a needlework kit from the bin of future projects to play with.

Speaking of baking, I started a new sourdough starter this week so that it would be ready for my vacation and it is doing super well! He's not quite 100% ready to go into bread yet, but he should be raring to go on Monday, which is just what I want. I'm definitely looking forward to a good grilled cheese! I also remembered to pick up eggs this week so I can make a challah: I usually keep one sliced in the freezer to have toast or to eat with shakshuka, but I finished my last one in December right before I had to do a bunch of traveling, and have never found the time or energy to replenish my stash. 

Even if I spend most of next week napping, it will be a good use of my time off, but hopefully I'll get to start refilling my cup and the next time I check in here I'll have some fun projects to share with you all!

Treading Water

Well friends, it has been quite the month in the Riddell house. I have had an incredibly stressful and difficult few weeks, and I have been doing my best to keep my head above water. 

The biggest change so far is that Annabelle, my beloved steed of the past six years, finally gave out on me. This has been a huge blow—while she wasn't my first car, she was the car I moved out of my mum's house with, and she was the car that brought me to Illinois, and she was the car that I brought Lee Lee and Coleslaw home in. She saw me through so much, and while twenty-four is a perfectly respectable age for a car, I was hoping we'd have more time together. 

I am currently without a car, which is a huge adjustment. I'm relying on the bus and city e-bikes for now, and I'm hoping to be able to get a new car before winter hits, which gives me a few months to save up some. I'm very fortunate to still have transport available to me, even though it is less convenient than having my own car. 

I pulled out my Sock Blankie last week, and the little squares are just what my tired brain needs right now. There's a part of me that wishes I was working on a sweater project, or a design sample, but apparently tiny garter stitch squares are all I've got in me at present. 

I haven't seriously ridden my bike since before I moved to Illinois, so I'm trying to get out on some short rides to get back in shape. I'd love to be able to use my bike to get to the nearby grocery store and both library locations, as opposed to spending an hour on the bus or paying for a city e-bike. I didn't think I was super out of shape, but it turns out that cycling uses very different muscles than the ones that I've been using lately! I did manage to get to the nearby library (just over a mile from home as opposed to almost two and a half miles), which wore me out more than I expected. I was very careful in the library and only got as many books as would safely fit in my bike basket, and hopefully I'll get my cycling legs back soon!

Otherwise, I'm focusing on taking it one day at a time, worrying about the things I can control and trying not to stress too much about the things that are out of my hands. My main priorities are getting enough rest, staying hydrated, eating regularly, and cuddling with Coleslaw, which are, in my opinion, the only priorities that really matter.

Shawl Project, Family Visit, and a New Treasure

Happy Friday, friends! I did not mean to be absent for almost a month, but it's been a crazy spring here at Riddell House. First and foremost, the yellow shawl has grown, though not as quickly as I'd hoped:

Last week I was in South Dakota for my brother's college graduation. I ended up being out there for longer than I'd initially planned, but it was good to see my family, and I got to sit on a pink boulder and look at the river while the rest of my family went hiking:

This week when I went to the thrift store I managed an incredible score. A vintage all-metal Singer, preferably in a sewing table, has been on my wish list for years, but I've had trouble finding one in my price point and within reasonable driving distance. Most recently, there was one at a local Goodwill that they had listed for seventy-five dollars, which is way more than I want (or am able) to spend, but when I walked through the furniture section of another local thrift store a few days ago I found this Singer Touch & Sew for just twenty-five dollars. 

It fits just perfectly on this little wall, and I can keep my Kenmore 12 Stitch on top of it when it's closed up (my Brother LS-2125i lives on a shelf on an adjacent wall). I'm so thrilled to have found it, and I'm really hoping to find the energy and motivation to start a sewing project soon. My mother gave me some fun fabric a couple of months ago, and I have a project planned for one of the lengths, but between work and taking Coleslaw to the park and a string of medical appointments, I haven't even managed to prewash the fabric yet.

I hope you all have a good weekend! I'm back to my retail job after taking last weekend off for my trip back to South Dakota, but I'm hoping to get some good morning cuddles in with Coleslaw and finish my current library book (Otherlands by Thomas Halliday).

A Minor Setback

I finished the body of the chunky cabled cardigan I showed you a couple weeks ago and it is too small. By a lot. I either entered something wrong in the grading spreadsheet, or I am cursed. The sweater is currently sitting in time-out, because I need to get a longer needle to reknit the body.

To make myself feel better, I cast on a shawl.

Assuming it all goes to plan, it will be very charming and a pleasant little knit and just what I need as a little break from the cardigan of doom.

And Now We Are Ten

Good news, I managed to get a replacement needle for the sweater I shared last week, and last night I reached the divide of the fronts and back. It's looking like a large blob right now—the craft store didn't have a 36-inch needle, so I'm making do with a 29-inch one, and I also never move front/back stitches to holders or waste yarn, I just keep everything on the circ. In the meantime, Coleslaw did manage to get a hold of another sweater WIP, but she only managed one or two chews on that needle, so it's still useable. 

I realized as I was sitting down to write this post that this year marks my tenth anniversary of designing. In fact, I blew past the official tenth anniversaries of my first blog post and my first pattern just last month. We were all, of course, very different people in ten years ago, but I do look back at the Kat of 2014 with a great deal of fondness. I certainly wouldn't be the person I am today without her, and I'm glad I took the plunge into designing. 

Anyway, here's some photos from the past week. My mother visited last weekend, which was really nice, and we got me a new Raggedy Ann and Andy at the antiques mall. 

I've also been dyeing some bare yarns I had lying around my stash—this one was dyed years ago with red cabbage and turmeric, but I hadn't used enough dyestuff, so the skeins were very faint. I overdyed these with even more turmeric last night, and they're hanging in my shower to dry now. I think these will become a shawl sample, once I've finished up at least one of the sweater samples I'm currently knitting on.

Speaking of sweater samples, here's the WIP that I managed to rescue from Coleslaw before she did too much damage. I had to rip out and re-cast on this piece eight times because I kept messing up the stitch counts, but I have now made it through all of the ribbing and TWO (2) full repeats of the cable pattern, and I'm smitten. The yarn is a worsted weight mystery wool, and it's lovely and rustic and crunchy—exactly what I'm into right now. 

Coleslaw Strikes Again

While I am fortunate enough to work from home about half the week, I do have to go into the office a few days, and my office is, frankly, freezing. I've been re-evaluating my sweater collection lately, and I decided I could use a big, chunky, cable and moss stitch cardigan, and I figured that it wouldn't actually take me too long to knit. So I picked up some Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Oatmeal and cast on in mid-February, thinking I'd be just a week or two away from a new layer in my office arsenal against the cold.

Enter Coleslaw.

She is the light of my heart and an absolute menace.

This was the third set of needles she's eaten from this sweater, so it's on hold AGAIN while I wait for a new set to arrive.

She's lucky she's cute.

Tale of a Sweater, or, Kat Can't Count

Last summer I started knitting a pullover out of some vintage wool I'd picked up at a church bazaar a couple of years ago, and back in October I finally finished the back and almost immediately realized...I hadn't counted the stripes correctly. 

I have one skein of the brass, two skeins of the orange, and five skeins of the yellow, which means I need to use twice as much orange as brass and twice as much yellow as orange, and then use the rest of the yellow for the ribbing and collar. Pretty straightforward. So I thought and thought and thought and decided that I could do two rows of the brass on either side of four rows of orange, because four is twice two, and then twice four is eight rows of yellow (except for some reason I decided to do twelve rows of yellow?? I don't know what Past Kat was thinking).

Except if I'm doing two rows of brass on *either side* of an orange stripe, then that's actually four rows, and the orange stripe needs to be eight rows. Which means the yellow stripes need to be sixteen rows. 

(I am famously bad at arithmetic. One of my sister's favorite things is asking me things like "what's eight plus five" and watching me get more and more flustered.)

The good news is, I am much happier with how the new back looks. I love the wider stripes, and it's really matching the vision that I had in my head when I first came up with this sweater. 

In non-knitting news, I finally got a spot in the Rancho Gordo Bean Club after about two years on the waitlist, and I am thrilled. I eat a lot of beans, and while I've ordered Rancho Gordo beans in the past, they've always been treated like a special treat instead of a pantry staple, because I absolutely cannot be counted on to remember to place a regular order. 

Upon securing my spot I immediately dove into my remaining stash of beans to make a batch of red beans and rice and a batch of white beans with diced tomatoes, roasted garlic, and Italian spices. Truly, I have been eating like a king for the past week and a half, and earlier this week I got my first Bean Club shipment. I am so excited to try some new beans and explore some new recipes!

Antiquing and Heirlooms

Last week my dad came for a brief visit. It was good to see him (and great to see him give Coleslaw lots of loving). As it was a short visit, we didn't do a lot, but we did make it out to an antiques mall that a former coworker had recommended to me, and we had a blast looking through all of the treasures there. I am, of course, powerless in the face of antiques, so of course I brought some things home.

My first find was this dimetrodon figure. I love dimetrodon, and I have a small herd of them on the kitchen counter in my beverage corner. 

 

My second find was this raccoon hand puppet. I have a fondness for puppets, and I think this guy has a lot of personality!

I also found two new dolls for my doll collection. They are porcelain, which I usually don't collect, but they really called to me, and I'm excited to add them to the family.

Aren't they just darling? I hope they'll be happy here. 

My final find was this beautiful antique crazy quilt. I love crazy quilts, and I was so pleased to find this one in my budget. It's certainly seen better days, and I've found a couple spots where it's already been repaired at least once. I really love repairing old quilts and extending their lives, so I'm excited to get this once cleaned up and back in snuggling condition. 

You can see one of the old repairs here, though this patch clearly needs more love. A lot of the big holes I've found so far are in this blue fabric, which appears to just be weaker than the other fabrics—most of the other patches are in great condition and I haven't seen any major weak spots yet. I'm also obsessed with the fabric used for the back of the quilt, and I'm thrilled to report that so far the backing appears to be in excellent condition! Of course, knowing more will have to wait until I can get this thing in the tub and cleaned and spread out for closer examination. It'll certainly be a big project, and I hope that I'll be able to find the time to start before too long!

 

My dad also brough me several boxes of things from his side of the family, including a baby quilt that had belonged to his sister and several figurines, but the main thing he brough was an incredible collection of glass that had been displayed in his house growing up.

Yes, that's Federal Glass. Yes, I cried when he first told me about it. 

The purple/mauve glass pieces are Fenton, which I have a small collection of. I normally focus my Fenton collection on amber hobnail pieces, but I did love these pieces when I first saw them, and as they're family pieces, I'm glad to give them a home. The crystal jar in the front of that bottom photo is actual crystal, and it has my aunt's initials etched on it. 

I've known this Federal Glass collection was coming to me for a couple months, so I ordered a shelf from IKEA a few weeks ago to display it in a manner worthy of its status. 

I mean, just look at how beautiful it is! Look at how the light passes through them!

I'm so pleased with them. Someday I'll have space for a proper display cabinet, but for now I'm thrilled to have them out and able to be enjoyed, and I think having them on display here really ties that corner together!