Living On The Edge

I ended up ripping out the sweater up to the pockets and reknit it with the correct number of stitches. I also put in the pockets, which had it's own set of issues. But they are in, and it is good.

The question now is, will I have enough yarn for a hood and both sleeves?

Who knows. It seems that I like to live on the edge when it comes to sweaters.

Scooter's Favorite Game

Scooter has a new favorite game.

It's called, "Find The Treat In The Grass." It involves me throwing a treat into the lawn. Then he snuffles around until he finds it.

Scooter then runs back as fast as he can and waits for another treat.

He isn't very patient though. If I take more than a few seconds he lectures me a bit. The faster I throw, the less he barks.

If I take my eye off the treat pot to, let's say, focus my camera, he creeps closer. And if I really don't keep an eye on him, he sticks his face in the treat pot and gobbles down as many treats as he can before he gets yelled at. He's quite sneaky.

Berry Creek Falls

Yesterday I went on an 11 mile hike at Big Basin, Berry Creek Falls.

We saw 5 falls, four of those being water falls.

The fifth one belonged to my Mum. She and Natalie decided to do a jumping picture. My Mum doesn't usually like being in pictures, but she was game for clicking her heels in front of the camera. What we could never have predicted is that the bridge railing would give out. (Or that I would manage to take the picture as the railing fell) Note the position of her right hand. It had been cupping the railing.

Mum ended up being fine, but she didn't feel like doing anymore jumping pictures after that.

Stop, Sweatertime

The other night I was enjoying a beer and knitting my Émilien sweater. I got to the last row, did the fancy "decrease x number of stitches evenly" bit and somehow ended up with 50 extra stitches. I checked my math, had my Dad check my math, and still had extra stitches. Weird. So I counted my total number of stitches and found out that I am an idiot.

When I worked on the pocket modification, where you increase stitches and put them on some sort of stitch holder, I managed to knit those stitches too... somehow. Note how the fabric is smooth above the orange yarn and puckered underneath. A tell-tale sign that there was a rapid increase. (Also a tell-tale sign that I'm dumb) I was thinking that rows seemed to be taking longer and that there was less room on my circular needles. The good news is that I won't have to buy extra skeins of yarn like I thought.

Has anyone else had any "Why am I dumb" moments lately?

A Knitter And Her Money Will Soon Be Parted

I seemed to be very determined to spend all my money this week. I picked up some more yarn (for designs... really) at Yarn Dogs. It was pointed out to me that I managed to match my shirt pretty well. The yarn is a skein of Madelinetosh Sock in Graphite and a skein each of Malabrigo Worsted in Bobby Blue and Natural.

I also picked up Wicked Bugs. I've wanted to read the book as soon as I heard it had been published. It's quite excellent. I also enjoyed the previous book by Amy Stewart, Wicked Plants.

And as usual, I couldn't resist buying a knitting magazine.

Yarn Addict

Let's start with the loot shot. I picked up 3 skeins of Tosh sock in the Fathom colorway and 3 skeins of Canopy in the Quetzal colorway for future designs. And just for fun, I picked up a skein of Ella Rae merino lace in the 116 Denim/Teal/Violet colorway. (I rarely pick up yarn that hasn't got a design idea attached to it, so this is a real treat.) I also got a copy of Rowan's Homestead Classics and US size 5 and 7, 16inch addi circular needles. Boy do I love those circulars.

I read about Monarch Knitting & Quilts online. I think it might be my new favorite yarn shop. The selection is excellent, the atmosphere is inviting, and the prices are competitive. One customer there referred to the shop as a crack house for knitters. I think that is a pretty accurate description.

While we were in Pacific Grove, Mum and I decided that we would bike to Carmel and back. She said it would be an 18 mile ride, so I wore jeans thinking it wouldn't be a big deal. It turned out to be a 26 mile ride round trip. I learned that it's rather uncomfortable to bike 26 miles in jeans.

We stopped to look at the famous Lone Cypress Tree. It was hard to miss some of the well carved graffiti. They almost spelled my name right...

Fibershed

I was surprised to see an article about Fibershed on etsy today. Fibershed is Rachel Burgess' project to wear clothing that was made within 150 miles of her house. She happens to live within 150 miles of the Yolo Wool Mill, and I remember her coming through. The article even gave a shout out to the mill.

Swatching At The Snuggly Duckling

Today I was offered an exciting opportunity. I'll wait until things have progressed a bit more before revealing what it is, but I will show you what I ended up doing as a result. Swatching. Lots of swatching. I watched Disney's Tangled while doing all the swatching.

I've seen Tangled before, but I don't remember there being so much knitting in the film. Not only does Rapunzel knit....

But so does one of the shady characters at Snuggly Duckling. And he's more advanced than Rapunzel. I'm curious about his sock construction. It kind of resembles the Elizabeth Zimmermann's Moccasin Socks from the Knitters Almanac. Or maybe it is a baby bootie.

He's even wearing a knitted sweater! It looks like the basket weave pattern with a garter stitch collar.

Wild Thing

Hey Scooter, do you know what today is? It's your 9th birthday!

Today we are going to feed you extra treats. No one is going to brush your teeth.

You can rub yourself on whatever you feel like and we aren't going to tell you to stop it.

You can even bark a bunch if you feel like it.

You are just as wild as when we first got you and I wouldn't have it any other way. Happy birthday little bud.

Blue Footed Boobys For Boobies

At the beginning of July I released the Blue Footed Booby hat pattern. So far we've raised $15 from the patterns towards Kenna's goal for the Susan G. Komen Walk For The Cure.

Kenna has to raise $432 more to reach her goal. I'm super excited for her! If you feel inspired to donate to her cause, you can either buy yourself a copy of the Blue Footed Booby pattern on bearears.com (or ravelry), or if you'd rather, visit her Fundraising Page to donate.

But even if you don't have any spare change around, it would be lovely if the word was spread. You can tweet, facebook, or blog about it. (If anyone chooses to blog about the pattern, feel free to use any of my images from this post, or the July 1st post.)

Kenna has less than a month to reach her goal. I'm really rooting for her!

Sock It To Me

I would love for this to be a post about how I finished knitting a pair of socks. What I'm actually going to be talking about is how sock inept inexperienced I am. There I was, merrily knitting along, no care in the world. Then it hit me.

After turning the heel, I hadn't done the pattering around the circumference of the sock. I was just knitting the pattern on one side, like you do for the foot. This, of course, is the second sock of the pair. I knit the first one just fine. But the second one has given me nothing but trouble. I had to knit the toe three times before I managed to end with the correct number of stitches, and now this.

At least I've managed to keep both socks me-sized rather than Sasquatch-sized. I imagine that Sasquatch might be a bit disappointed about this. His sock drawer was starting to become quite lovely.

Yarndogs

I finally made it over to Yarndogs. It's a local yarn shop, but it's a bit out of the way from the places I normally go. It's totally worth the detour though, the shop is absolutely fabulous! Great selection, great atmosphere, and two cute shop dogs.

I almost left without getting anything (the horror), but Mum saw something she liked, so she bought me the supplies.

Mum has decided that she wants some mini socks for Christmas. I told her that I didn't have the right needles or blocker, so she remedied that.

I think that I might make Scooter a pair of socks as well.

It looks like the pattern is for socks in just his size.

Buttons Before Plastic

I was recently given the opportunity to go through a big metal tin full of assorted buttons. The person who had previously owned them had recently passed away at a ripe age of 96. (or 98... it was up there) I don't tend to be a button person, but this tin had many old and interesting buttons. And one buckle.

I find buttons that are made of things that aren't plastic really appealing. So I picked through and separated out what I consider "the good stuff". I found bone buttons.

And leather buttons. In my head I refer to them as grandpa buttons. I always imagine leather buttons on a grandpa's cardigan.

There was a large grouping of carved shell buttons.

Then I picked out an assortment of other buttons. There are a few plastic buttons in there. But for the most part there are wood, fabric, and metal buttons. I also found two buttons made of antler. They are at the bottom of the picture.

In the tin, there was also a newspaper clipping about the lost art of button making from 1975. Fascinating.

Does anyone else ever wonder what we did before plastic? I'm a little sad about all the neat artisan things that plastic replaced. Buttons being one of those things.