Reason #52 to love summer

Lychee season!
Even if summer here does mean dense chilling fogs and scarf-snatching winds that match the worst winter has to offer, there is at least a surfeit of these fragrant summer fruits to make up for the decidedly unsummer-like weather.


Not only are they absolutely delicious, I think they make for some of the prettiest and most charming fruits around, what with their daintily scaled shell that delicately shade from khaki to green to red as the berries ripen.


And as an added bonus once the crystalline fruits are gobbled up (and hence not, um, presenting an opportunity for photography…heh), even the inside of the shell is pretty.


What makes you happy about summer?

(Now, fingers crossed that this post shows up in Bloglines, unlike the previous one…grr.)

Out of the tangle

Many hours and one pained scissor snip later, lace at last!



I don't know whether it was the pent up frustration from the untangling process, or this particular mix of the lace stitches, or the many month I have waited to knit this pattern, or the brazenly colorful sea silk, or some magical synergy of the four, this swallowtail started flying off the needles from the very first stitch.


It's only been three days since I cast-on and I've already found myself almost at the edging chart. Even more amazingly, no boredom with the charts, no sudden yearnings to knit a plain square of stockinette – just a happy contentment with yarn-overs and ssk's and k2tog's. And nupps, have I mentioned the nupps?
Hark, nupps!


Squee!

Sometimes all you need is a little sun

Nothing like a gloriously sunny day to cheer things up. And some sun-basking hand-spun in happy colors, of course.



Yup, same fiber as I mentioned here. I just couldn't resist taking a few more photos now that all of it is spun up and plied. It's not a terribly even spinning job with the final yarn ranging from a puffy worsted (earlier on) to a more even DK (by the last few spindle-fulls) but a great lesson nevertheless in spinning a more consistent single and plying a balanced yarn. All told, I got about 150 some yards from four ounces, pending a final wash. Perhaps a destiny as some simple lace is in order to show off the colors (which I attempted to spin for gradual shifts from one shade to another) and make the variability in grist less obvious?

Arggghhhh!!!

Absolutely impervious to two hours of gentle tugs and shifting strands. Worse yet, there's still this pass the tangle.


And all I wanted to do was knit some lace...

You know you're completely hooked when…

...a loud noise startles you awake at 7am and your first thought is “oh goody, I can spend some time spinning before I head off to work!” And then you actually get out of bed. To spin.



But then again, this is some Ashland Bay merino and silk blend that shifts in color like opals and makes the soft wool I was spinning last week feel like a Brillo pad in comparison.

(Anemoi) Mitten the First

Finished!
While I expected to find color-work interesting to knit and the end results obviously pretty to look at, I never expected to find the wrong side of the fabric so utterly delightful. It’s a happy surprise that gives a thrill like finding that last chocolate hidden amid all the wrappers when you thought you had finished off the whole box (there, finally thought of the proper analogy. Hee.).



Now, fingers crossed that that I escape second-mitten syndrome to make it a pair. I'll just keep looking at Mitten One for motivation.

Spinning a sunrise

What better way to get out of a mid-week slump?



(Spunky Eclectic Fibers, Tahiti colorway, wool blend, 100% bouncy yumminess)

Post of gratuitous cuteness, now with hat and mittens!

(Or, spicing up ordinary FO’s)

Look what just sprouted!



Hello.



More hamming for the camera

Uh oh, he’s a wee bit attached.



Yes indeed, I’m easily amused, but he’s just the perfect size and shape to model a toddler’s hat. How could I resist? Just to show that I don’t spend all my time making posed shots with stuffed animals, here are the mittens, sans owl.



Hat and mittens for I’s one-year-old niece, in plenty of time for next winter!

FO details:

Pattern
Hat – generic ribbed hat to leaves, Ann Norling kid’s fruit cap for leaves and stem
Mittens – improvised with help from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, by Ann Budd; freehand embroidery with green yarn

Yarn
Knit Picks Swish Superwash, MC wisteria, CC dublin, approximately 1.5 skein MC for hat and mittens, teeny amount of CC

Needles
Brittany DPNs US 6/4.0mm

Thoughts
Teeny tiny thumbs – not so much fun to knit on long DPNs, but otherwise, both hat and mittens made for satisfying small projects. I’m rather impressed at how well the KP Swish stood up to ripping and reknitting despite how soft the yarn feels. No pills or loose fibers after much wrangling of the yarn. It is a tad splitty so I had some trouble with catching the odd strand out of place but if you pay attention, it’s not so bad at all, especially given the low cost of the yarn.

Post of gratuitous cuteness

Not at all fiber-related but how could one pass these by in the shop?



Hmmm???



Hi, I’m Marie and I’m a stuffed-animal-holic.

Abracadabra

Now you see it…


Now you don’t.



Knitting magic! Albeit not the sort generally enthused about on knit blogs, but there is something to be said about the particular allure of ripping back. Yes, allure! Once the agonizing final decision is made that nothing else can be done to rescue the knitting, there’s something incredibly satisfying and freeing in the soft rrrrr’s of stitches popping apart to gentle tugs. A fresh start. A brand new chance to make it all perfect. What’s more magical than that?
Of course, the decision to rip is the not quite so magical part. It’s amazing how much my brain will twists itself into knots rationalizing errors to avoid any consideration of the dreaded act of ripping back. In this case, it took more repeat trying-ons of the Anemoi-in-progress and more continued knitting-in-denial than I’d like to admit for me to succumb to the attractive notion of ripping it all back to the cuff. Never mind that the mitten was obviously too large, or that the stitches were definitely too loose, or that for several rows, the palm bore more resemblance to abstract art than the precise diamond lattice design charted on the pattern, my brain kept insisting that it’ll all be fine. It took until a handful of rows past the completion of the thumb gusset for the realization that since this was to be a pair of matching mittens, it would be rather stupid to invest all that time to knit not just one but two mistake ridden, ill-fitting hand-coverings rather than negating a tiny bit of work by ripping back to knit a better version.
So, hello new path to perfection!*



*Actually more like the road that meanders near Perfection. Teeny stitch color error, you see. Sort of inevitable...