Hat sitter:

And now, now, now I am in the third incarnation of the Brownie hat, and she is lovely.  Balanced, warm, soft, relatively thin so as to be wearable no matter the weather, even post-felt. And the hat is using far less yarn than I originally anticipated, so it may ultimately be joined by a scarf or gloves or another hat for another head. Who knows. I do know, however, that Scath wants to eat the hat, because he is evil.

Hat eater:

Lit hat:

Scott got a new dresser and finally sorted through the mountain of sweaters that have been living on a table in his office for more than a year. And he weeded out some partially felted sweaters and some just-a-little-bit-shrunken sweaters, and because most of them ended up that way because he liked them, I like them too. And I am going to felt the dickens out of them and make a fantastically warm blanket, yes I am.

I spent last week in an XML intro class at Learning Tree. Which means I spent last week cooped up in a room with 20 other people with long breaks that weren’t quite long enough to leave for lunch. Which means I knitted like mad day in and day out for four days. I finished sock number two on the first day, made quite a lot of progress on Tchula’s scarf on the first, second, and third day.

And then I broke a needle. I’m not sure how this happened. I broke a drawn ebony needle. I’ve never broken a needle. And I don’t quite understand how it broke. It was fine. I stopped knitting at the end of the row and turned away, knitting in hand, to answer a question. I turned back to see a broken needle. I taped it back together and knitted a few rows, but worried I would damage the scarf in some way and stopped. I hope Lantern Moon has a decent replacement policy. If they don’t, then no more lantern moon needles for me.

Friday, I started a hat. In an alpaca/wool blend. I made the pattern up on the fly, and ended up making a lovely hat for someone whose head is bigger than mine. Perhaps my desk-mate influenced my cast-on to force me into making a hat to fit her.  No bother.

Lovely hat one was soon joined by lovely hat two, which is definitely mine. It’s Noro silk garden, and the color-story is gorgeous. One and two are warming me up for the Brownie Hat. Swatch one ended up being too stiff and thick–Virginia only requires felt hats of a certain thickness, after all, and we want this hat to be wearable year-round. So I’ll swatch again with a single strand, maybe on #8 needles.

Saturday brought me to Hunt Country Yarns to pick up a replacement bobbin for Spinny the Wheel and a maintenance kit complete with a scotch-tensioning cord and springs. The hats pushed the spinning aside for a bit, and the new needles are whipping through Tchula’s scarf quite nicely. With any luck, it will be ready when I see her next Sunday.

The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes
Translated by Seamus Heaney
First performed at the Guildhall, Derry on October first, 1990. 

If you have any love of Irish drama or Irish dramatists, you need to read this.  I’ve been kicking myself for years for never having seen the original performance, though I had no idea this translation of the play existed until I was, well, not in high school like I was in 1990. 

Heaney has proved himself a fine translator.  Tackling both Beowulf and Sophocles is no task for a coward.  In this translation of the play, we find Philoctetes as a possible symbol for the injured nationalist Ireland–truly wronged, but perhaps short-sighted in clinging to that wrong and the need for vengeance for far too long.  Heaney is light-handed with his use of local dialects–we get some whinging and an och or two, but we’re not drowning in the peculiarities of Ulster’s speech in this ancient setting.  This retelling leaves the weight of Odysseus’s crime against Philoctetes on the Atrean shoulders, but also calls Philoctetes to account for his own stubbornness. 

Read it.  Savor the language from the simple sweet dedication to the late Robert Fitzgerald, to the painfully apt use of Auden’s poetry as an introduction, through to the redemptive end.  Read it.  It will be good for you.

That woman who was so bad at spinning who posted the other day–I don’t know who that was. She was too scattered and distracted to be good at spinning. Me, I spun a full bobbin of good looking yarn yesterday after work. Slubby, but strong and relatively fine. I was a spinning-fool, soon to become a spinning master.

Well, that’s what I thought, at least. I now know I’m better than I thought after the hell spinning night, but not quite as good as I thought I was this morning. I was feeling rather blue, so Scott (Scooterhead, Skutai, the sudden Mongol, wonder of all bog-kind, who makes me the envy of women who wish I would cast him off so they could have a shot at him) offered to take me out to lunch in Middleburg and then take me to Hunt Country Yarns and buy me some roving.

I had heard great things about this shop but never gone in before, because when I’d looked in the window, I thought it was too needle-pointy and not yarny/spinny enough. Boy, was I glad to get in there today. Not only did they have fantastic yarn (which I dutifully almost-ignored, because I was on a mission) but they had piles of lovely roving. Some of it was too smart for me. Some that looked like candy floss. I picked out some blue faced leicester, some dark and medium coopworth, and some gorgeous variegated blue hand-dyed Lorna’s roving. And, thankfully, I chattered with Bob. Bob set me straight. My wheel is not set up correctly, needs to be tightened, and is capable of much more than I knew. Bob is the man, just like they all said he was. Bob gave me a few tasks which can be accomplished in an hour or so and don’t require me to spend any money, but will make my spinning better, faster, smoother. And, importantly, Bob taught me this before anyone other than Scott and the pets saw me spin. I now know why Kayo was looking at me like that yesterday. Damn it, why haven’t I taught the dog to speak? Anyway, I do not officially have to wear an idiot sign out there in fiber-land because I will correct this mistake before my third spell spinning on this wheel, and that is thanks to Bob. Thanks Bob. I hope someone spends a lot of money in your store today.

Spinning wrongs:

In other news, the Plaid Conspiracy has spun off into the Hat Conspiracy. Anubh is bouncing with anticipation over the hat I will make her, and then the madness will spread like that doubling breck commercial from our kidhood, except with zany wool hats covering the breck-hair.

I’ve been learning to drop-spin on and off for a few years and haven’t progressed as much as I would have liked, but my attempts at wheel spinning last night made me feel like a passable drop-spinner. Man, was it bad. Nothing would wrap onto the spindle and I kept breaking the leader. And maybe the drive band isn’t even on correctly. I don’t know. Oh, the shame. Must pick Lori’s brain. I mean, she has her four-year-old daughter spinning. Yes, Winifred is a bad-ass, but I should be able to catch up with her on this skill, at least for a little while.

But, the hats. Oh, the hats. A whole hattery is growing in my head. An an order of hat-havers. Yes yes. And Bran wants to help design, which sounds right to me–after all that mask-making she has good sense about head-geometry.

Watched Frida–it was very pretty. Watched part of the interview with Selma Hayak at the end–that was a bad idea. Those silent-interviewer bits always make the interviewee look self-centered.

I got what I thought was a feather and fan pattern on the web and started knitting up the scarf for Tchula, but there was no feather and fan. There was only a not-particularly-interesting lace staring up at me, mocking me. And in mohair, no less, which is not fond of the frogging. So I frogged, and I apologized to my poor yarn, and then I found a different pattern which was indeed feather and fan, but really wide for a scarf. It fooled me into thinking that I had altered the pattern correctly from 58 stitches down to 46. But no, that wasn’t it. Today I must find or alter a decent pattern. Sometime soon, the winter will wake up and realize that it has been slacking, and then Tchula’s neck will feel cold. No one wants that. No, we all want her neck to be wrapped in gorgeous ink-blue mohair waves of lace. Don’t we?

In other news, I’ve ordered some yarn to begin making strange felted hats with and for friends of mine. The first will be a relatively simple cone with a needle felted design on it. And then perhaps a fez. And then, well, who knows. Certainly a witch hat at some point, but for which bright head? Hmmm. All will depend on what the sweatshop churns out. I have a feeling a clamor will build, and that I won’t keep up with the hat requests.

I also picked up a spinning wheel from Mikele, who was kind enough to loan it to me for the long haul. It was originally her aunt’s, and it’s an Ashford traditional with the double treadle. I’ve tinkered a bit but haven’t actually spun on it yet. Soon, my pretties. One of the lazy kates and a couple of the spindles were clearly delicious to something furry, so I may beg borrow or steal some woodworking tools to clean them up a bit.

Everyone said I would love them. That they would help me knit faster, that they were kind to yarn, that they were light and strong and would last forever.

I hate addi turbos.

I do. I really can’t stand them. I knew I would never like them because they looked so cold in the package, and no nice person in California worked them on a lathe, and no one carved them from bone or antler. But the girls said I’d like them, and they are almost always right. So I bought the hype yesterday, and went to the shop to pick up these uber-needles everyone told me I’d love. They lied. The needles make the most grating noise when they touch each other. Nails on a chalkboard, but every second for the length of every long long row. And they’re cold. And they’re coated in nickle, and I know nickle is cruel to my skin, slowly coaxing it off me in flakes and then sheets. But the knitters said that wouldn’t happen with the needles because the yarn is what you really touch. And it hasn’t, but I can hear the little threat whispering out of them with every stitch. And now they’re in my ruana, laughing at me. Shining in that rude rude way. Flaunting thir not-quite-sharp enough but impossible to sharpen tips. Bumping along with those tiny little bumps on the surface that is supposed to be so smooth. I will admit their one strength: the cord is the nicest I’ve found on a circular needle. But that doesn’t make them worth using. I think I will give them to whatever pour soul is willing to knit those beasts out and my sweet, warm, loving rosewood circs back in.

A reblocked Constant Companion, plus a needlecase.

Check it out checkitoutcheckitoutcheckitoutcheckitout I’m done with the hard part of the first sock ever. Ok, it’s a bit of a wussy sock, in that the heel is stitched rather than worked with short rows, but still, it’s a sock. And socks are what it’s all about.

And look at all the future socks . . . what have we got here . . . the ball in the center top is some great sock yarn that came in that huge ball. The tag skeedaddled last week between frogging incidents, before those would-be socks begged to be made later by a calmer, better me. Next is some gorgeous yarn from Tintagel farms called Korea. Deeelish–it’s a wool/mohair/silk blend That may be too fine for even my feet. Then Lorna’s shepherd sock in baltic sea, next to Mountain Colors Mountain Goat in thunderhead and Bearfoot in evergreen. Below that, Handpaint originals in ink blue and chestnut, and some decadent alpaca in glacier from Marion alpacas. Ok, so that last one is not really for socks. I mean, either one of the girls or my Mom will kick my ass if I make that into something for my feet instead of something for their necks or heads. But a girl can dream, right?

What else . . . here is a photo of my almost Constant Companion. I decided it isn’t stiff enough yet, so it’s going in for further felting. I feel like it should stand more proudly, and if boiling and beating and harsh cehmicals are what it takes to make this bag behave like a man–uh–woman–uh–righteous bag, then so be it.

Here is my take on the ruana from Folk Shawls. I’m using leftovers from weaving and knitting projects. I like all but one half of a row so far, and the offending stitches will soon disappear.

Finally, meet the bane of my craftiness. I wove this string skirt to use as a demo. Well, I wove most of it, and then lost all steam. Some of the fringe is integrated into the weave, and some is worked in post-weave. Adding that linen yarn in and plying it is monotonous AND painful–what girl could ask for more from her hobbies? And, it’s costing me an arm and a leg to finish it off. It’s made of wet-spun linen yarn, which is quite pricey. And, when it’s all said and done, I won’t even wear it. Nope. I’l probably give it away.

Apart from working on these lov-er-lee items lately, I’ve spent time reading first The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, and the getting well into A Dog Year, both by Jon Katz. So, yeah, I’m reading them out of order. I got Bedlam for Christmas and read it immediately, and then rushed out for the first book upon finishing it. Really Dog Year is the second book, or maybe the third. Anyway, good writing, charming dogs. And I’ve been listening to a lot of Hank Williams (senior, of course) at work and home, so I may be either very happy or very likely to jump from a great height, depending on how the dog-loss and heartbreak build up in my system. Pleasureable heartache, indeed.

After several false starts, my first sock is well underway. I’ve completed the cuff and am knitting the heel flap. I’m using peace fleece worsted in Kamchatka Seamoss, which has been great to work with. I think some mountain colors socks in thunderhead are next for the feet, my cold cold feet. And then maybe the Very Tall socks from winter Knitty.  And after a friend kicks my ass/bats eyelashes effectively and takes them, maybe I’ll make them again.  And somewhere a felted witch/gnome hat is trying to make it onto the needles, because, well, who doesn’t need one of those. Nina’s folks brought one home from Finland recently, and the oohing and ahhhing was deafening. Just about everyone at its unveiling ended up wearing it and perching in a tree for a photo.

I’ve felted my Constant Companion, but think I will give it another trip to the sauna–it’s not as stiff as it could be, and it’s still pretty huge, but looks darn good.

I need to wind the yarn for Tchula’s scarf, and then I can get knitting. Feather and Fan it will be, in handpaint originals ink blue. And then, another for another lucky girl.

More knitting books appeared over the weekend–Stitch and Bitch Nation and the Twisted Sisters’ Sock Workbook. I’m also expecting a loaner spinning wheel to appear soon, so the floors will be unswept and the cat will be pissy, but yarn new will appear without a trip to a store. Our yearly New Year’s celebration was great, though certainly subdued in response to the tsunami. Many good friends, much hilarity, some sparkles, lots of sore feet. Good stuff.

It’s the Winter Solstice. I love the Solstice, because I know we’re going to get some longer days. I have rarely seen the sun the last couple of weeks and it’s making me itch. So tonight, good wine, good shepherd’s pie, some knitting, some anniversary wishes to near and dear ones who have a good sense of symbolism, and some begging and pleading with the kind kind sun, who we really never meant to offend in any way, and who is so nice and toasty warm.

I finally got around to posting some photos . . .the two below are of a piece of embroidery I did a while back, and of one of my inkle bands. Both are cotton, both are rather nice. One took a couple of hours. One took a couple of hundred hours–you guess which is which.

And the bag’s sides grow taller. My Constant Companion has reached a whopping 14 inches in height, which means three measly inches to go before the pattern throws me something more interesting to do.