Knit Sisters

I have one new photo today and it is of Hugo. 

 

Doesn’t he look sweet all curled up in his corner of the living room?  See that little orange thing in the corner?  That’s his favorite toy–it’s a stuffed Garfield refrigerator magnet that I think came in a Happy Meal years ago.  Somehow it has become a dog toy; with dogs, as with children, there’s just no knowing what they’ll take to.  He pulled the plastic eyes off right away, but now he just mostly carries it around in his mouth.

I’m starting to get a little worried about his undercoat growing back in this fall; so far it hasn’t and he’s seeming a bit thin in spots.  I suppose, as with so many things, I must just trust the process.

I could have taken more pictures of Blue Bamboo, but not that much has changed.  I’m still just knitting away on those 21 inches, and every photo looks curiously (or really not so curiously) the same. And I don’t want to bore everyone with the same photos day after day.

I started to get this niggling desire to START SOMETHING NEW last night.  I saw a photo on someone’s blog (sorry, I don’t remember whose) of their recently finished scribble lace scarf.  I’ve been wanting to try one of those for a while now, after reading about the technique in Mason-Dixon Knitting and before that in a Debbie New pattern in Interweave Knits some years ago.  Trouble is, I don’t really have the perfect yarns with which to embark on a scribble lace scarf.  I have some that might come close, but the ribbon I own seems a bit too narrow.  Hmmm.  Maybe a little yarn shopping expedition would be in order.

I started to think about ribbon yarn for scribble lace while lying in bed last night and I had an intriguing idea pop into my head.  What if you made your own ribbon “yarn” out of bias-cut strips of silk or rayon fabric?  There’s a technique that I’ve seen in quilting books where you sew a sort of giant tube of fabric and then cut it round and round on the bias to create your own custom-made bias tape.  Would it work to use that as ribbon yarn?  The possibilities for color would be endless, and depending on the fiber content of the fabric, the hand of your finished “yarn” could vary widely.  You could even hand-dye or hand-paint the fabric first before cutting it to get some interesting color effects.

Man, I need more time! 

Just to prove to you that I still knit, that I don’t just go from desert town to desert town zipping around in red convertibles, drinking whiskey sours, and shooting craps doing serious research on Cold War history, I give you Exhibit A:

Fetal Icarus, made from luscious Alchemy Haiku, color 41a—Vermillion

And isn’t it fitting in a town like Las Vegas to be knitting a pattern called Icarus? Icarus, the boy whose hubris led him to fashion flimsy wings out of $100 bills and fly over to the high stakes gaming tables where he proceeded to lose everything and was subsequently forced to work as a male stripper in the “Bareback” show over at the MGM Grand. His personal humiliation became complete when he was asked to perform in backless feathered chaps.

Or have I got that wrong? I always did get kind of mixed up on my mythology.

Anyway, I’ve been getting accustomed to my surroundings here in Little Egypt:

The Sphinx, looking vaguely perplexed, watches planes land at McCarran Airport.

The Luxor wedding chapel was hopping over the weekend. It is conveniently located right across the way from the food court, which means that you and your wedding party can enjoy a round of Big Macs right before the big event.

No, I don’t want any fries with that, but can I get the Honorable Estate of Holy Matrimony?

The Luxor chapel pledges to organize your dream wedding, to make it a day that you will never forget.

No matter how hard you try.

But seriously, I don’t think a Vegas-style quickie union is necessarily less likely to work out than any other marriage. My great Aunt Mary Frances and my great Uncle Boone were married in Reno at one of these kinds of chapels and they were together for decades. Until he died at an advanced age just a few years ago, in fact.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it must be noted that sometime fairly early in their marriage she threw a massive lead crystal ashtray at his head in an attempt to kill him, but he nimbly ducked and all was forgiven in the long run. And they do say that successful couples need to learn how to fight.

But the best part of being at Luxor over the weekend was watching these two energetic musicians perform at the Nefertiti Lounge. One plays keyboards and the other plays saxophone. They do mostly covers, but they do them with such verve and energy that their performances often outshine the originals. I can’t stop photographing the saxophonist because he’s so mesmerizing.

Here he transmutes into pure energy.

I was out early on Sunday morning for a run on The Strip, which turned out to be a nice way to get some time to myself. Note the general scarcity of people in this photo:

I reckon everyone was at church.

Unfortunately, cell phone reception is not that great in my hotel room. But what do you expect? I’m smack dab behind the Sphinx and one of the great pyramids. There have to be some trade-offs.

So I’ve taken to calling Alex from the outdoor pool area, which has given me the chance to say something that I’ve wanted to say all my life:
“Hey, baby. I’m calling from the pool.”

Living the dream, living the dream.

More news and, with any luck, more Icarus, on Thursday…

Last Tuesday evening, seized by a wild and restless longing, I started a new project.

 

This is the Nicola pullover from Simply Shetland, and I hadn’t even really been contemplating making it.  So, I found some likely yarn in the stash (that I had already swatched in stockinette) and cast on.  Of course, being constitutionally unable to leave well enough alone, I turned it into a cardigan and made a few other changes to the pattern:  set in the sleeves a bit more, included short row shoulder shaping, changed the neckline shaping, and naturally I plan on knitting the sleeves from the top down.  Other than that, it’s just like the picture.  (Except for the color and the yarn.)

Here’s my progress as of last night.

 

I started the first sleeve last night while watching The 4400.

Here’s a detail of the stitch pattern.  Simple, yet effective.

The yarn is Neveda “Alpaca,” 70% wool, 20% acrylic, 10% alpaca, which I bought several years ago from Elann.  Some while back, I tried to coerce this yarn into becoming an Alice Starmore Aran sweater, with somewhat limited success.  Alice Starmore, knitting genius notwithstanding, knits everything to a stunningly tight gauge, and this yarn, while making beautiful cables, had approximately the hand of cast iron at her gauge.  Plus, my hands cramped so bad from knitting to that gauge I could scarcely hold a pencil.  I ripped it out.  Now it is becoming the Nicola cardigan with very good grace.

And, because I spent a good portion of my weekend outside in 1 million degree heat watching Rob play tennis in a local tournament, (and he kicked some booty, I might add!) and one cannot reasonably knit a woolly sweater in 1 million degree heat, I also started a new pair of socks.

 

Isn’t this just the prettiest, girliest sock cuff imaginable?  Even Rob, secure in his masculinity as he is, has not been tempted to say “Are those for me?” 

Despite my stated and published objective of working on a new sweater design, what I have actually done over the past few days is this:

 

 

Yes, indeed, that is not one but two new scarves I have started.  The first is out of Classic Elite “Imagine,” 53% cotton, 47% rayon; I purchased a somewhat meager 4 skeins of this yarn at (now brace yourselves) Tuesday Morning.  Since I have been looking through the stash a bit (see Monday’s post), I re-discovered this yarn and thought it would be nifty to just make a little something out of it.  And what better kind of little something than a scarf?  See how it’s making those stripes?  Cool, huh?  Well, I thought so, and so did this man (shown here with our son, Harvey):

 

Who happens to be my husband of 15 years, Rob.  The thing about Rob that you must understand is that, though he has the deepest respect for my knitting, he doesn’t really get it.  That is, he doesn’t truly appreciate the more knitterly aspects of the craft.  A complicated and beautiful lace pattern gets this response:  “Neat.”  A complicated stranded project:  “Neat.”  A large lace shawl that I have devoted hours and hours of my life to:  “Neat.”  This scarf, which I have spent about 2 hours on and relies completely on the yarn for its effect:  “Wow!  That’s cool!  Is that for me?”  Huh.

So, maybe it will be for him.  Who can fathom the masculine mind?

The other little project up there is out of some handspun fingering/laceweight wool that I spun up earlier this year.  I’ve had my eye on this stitch pattern for a while:

 

This is from a German stitch dictionary entitled Omas Strickgeheimnisse which I purchased from Schoolhouse Press, and it comes with a handy-dandy cheat sheet/translation which allows one to actually recreate the stitch patterns.  (They are all charted, so it’s not that hard.)  I have a germ of an idea that this pattern would look good as a large stole/shawl, so I decided to try it out as a scarf first and see what I thought.  So far I like it, although it’s really too early to tell.

And, I’ve been hanging out under the piano with Hugo, ’cause it’s hot here.