I hope Felix’s parents aren’t reading my blog because here are the booties I made for him.

These little beauties are made out of naturally colored, organic cotton. I boiled them for 30 minutes and when that didn’t bring out the color as I was told it would, I boiled them for 30 minutes with baking soda. That didn’t do anything either. So, with this cotton, boiling did nothing for the color. But they are a light green and are very soft. I hope his little feet enjoy them.

BTW, the I cord is now laced into the booties, but the booties were still damp when I took the picture.

Welcome to the world Felix!

I’m almost back from the dead. And, not the Grateful Dead either.

I haven’t done much over the last two weeks, with the flu and a cold one after another. You know that you’re life is sad when anti-nausea drugs make you joyful. And, when that was done I became enamored of faux-sudafed. I’m better now. It’s tough to attend two town budget meetings and a Planning Board meeting all in one week, while taking drugs, but I survived!

Additionally, I worked a bunch of days (and more in the coming two weeks, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute), found a great new tv show, and did some knitting. I’m behind on dyeing, but, hey, I couldn’t stand the smell while I was sick.

First, here are the Great Adirondak socks I’ve been working on. Please note the way the colors “pooled” or swirled.

Please note that this project is 100% complete in my progress bar. I’m very proud. I love this yarn and have started another pair.

Next, I continue to work on the cowl for the store. I love the way the colors play. No pooling in this yarn, but I think the colors are lovely.

The continuing saga of my very own handpainted socks continues. This is the third sock from the same skein. This is the yarn I’ll be using to teach my rainbow dyeing class next month. Email me for more info (the yarn and roving has already been ordered!)

Because I never have enough to do: I heard through the grapevine (specifically, one of my sisters got a message through her husband, from our cousin that his sister (also our cousin) had a baby boy on Saturday). Given that the message passed through two men, neither of which is the baby’s father, I have no further info. No name, weight or anything else. But, in celebration of the big event, I’m making organic cotton baby booties for said baby. Ecoknit cotton in light green knit in a generic baby bootie pattern.

I’ve been told that boiling the cotton will make the color deeper. Here’s the first bootie, pre-boiling:

To make sure I’m busy enough, Unique One is having two back-to-back knitting weekends here in Camden, ME. Three days each of knitting, knitting classes, shopping in Camden, great food and a discount at the store. Because we’re hosting a bunch of nice people from all over the country, it’s all hands on deck and I’ll be working full days Friday, Sat, Sun and Monday for the next two weeks. In case you want to join us for this fun-filled weekend, give the store a call at 1-888-691-8358 and/or check out the info page here. There are a few spaces still available.

Now that I’ve rambled about knitting, I’ll move on to tv. I watch a lot of tv. Sometimes it’s more than others; lately it hasn’t been much. I tape what I can and download other things. Here are some things you should catch (if you don’t already):

Rome–It’s nearing the end of the second season, so I bet it’ll be out on DVD by summer. It’s a short (12 ep) season and the first season was especially good. The second is ok, but not as spectacular. I’ve heard that in the name of authenticity they considered having all the costumes handspun. They couldn’t afford it, but the production values are spectacular.

Blood Ties–It’s a brand new show, available by the ep on iTunes. The two hour pilot was excellent–great writing, acting and production values. There’s enough depth to the characters to keep them interesting for a long time. Oh, and there are vampires, though that wasn’t why I found it worth watching.

Tonight I will sit and watch the second ep of Blood Ties and knit. The wind is whipping tonight, but I’m snug and happy!

I completed my machine knit sweater!  Here are the specs:

Tahkai’s Donegal Tweed in red, about 3.5 skeins
Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, child sweater, 4 stitches/inch
Knitting machine gauge set at 7

Because I wasn’t ready to deal with the ribber, I made I-cord (a dream on the machine!) for edging.  I tried fake rib, but on the bulky machine it looked weird.  I will attempt to put the ribber into service before my next sweater.

I followed the pattern pretty faithfully, but before the second sleeve it was clear they were too long.  The pattern called for 14" before decreasing for the cap sleeve.  I made it 13" and (note the rolled up sleeves) it was still too long.  I hope that means he’ll wear it longer.

During finishing Peggy noticed that the neck was too small.  So, I put two buttons at the neck and T3’s big head fits just fine now.

All in all it was a good project to get started on the machine.  I did a gauge, I-cord, increases, decreases, and bind-offs.  If I had worked all the way through and not re-done so many pieces I could have easily completed the four pieces in a day.

Much to the surprise of my fellow knitters, Beth and Peggy, I had never sewn a sweater together.  For seven years I’ve always bought patterns that didn’t need finishing or re-wrote the patterns so I didn’t have to put them together.  The most I’d done was three-needle bind-off of shoulders.  So, Peggy showed me how–she even offered to do it for me!–but I persevered.  I’m proud of myself.

Here’s a picture of T2 and T3, each in Donegal sweaters.  T2’s striped sweater is at least two years old.  I just fixed the cuff again (he keeps wearing it out).

Thanks to Beth, Peggy and Susan for getting me through this project–the support and inspiration was much needed.  It’s fun to do something new, but this was a bit too new for me.  Now that I’ve had success, I’ll give the ribber a try and then jump into another sweater (for the DH maybe?).  I know an essay on machine vs. hand knitting is going to come up soon as well.

Lack of a computer has kept me a busy gal.  I completed some socks last night:

Using my favorite Yankee Knitter pattern these socks are Briggs and Little’s Durasport (which we have at the store, but isn’t on the website).  It’s wool and nylon, but only comes in four colors.  My itchy dyeing fingers put an end to that!  I actually dyed two skeins in this "colorway".  The first was "typical" dyeing–putting out the skein (tied in the two yard length it came in) and carefully applying dye.  The second (this one) was put out in a 40 foot skein, then dyed in stripes.  I had estimated that it would take six to eight feet of yarn to knit up into a quarter inch of sock stripe on fingering weight yarn.

I was right, but getting eight feet of one color was a bear.  It worked on the hot fuschia, but the turquoise wasn’t as clear.

Here’s the "typical" sock, that was completed a few months ago.  It’s wet in this picture, having been just taken out of the washer.  It’s got a few months of wear (hence the fuzzy halo), but you can see how the stripes are different.

One more comparison:

Note that the ball of yarn with the pair of socks is the leftovers after two socks were knit.  From weighing them I know I can get another sock out of each ball.  So, in the end I will have knit six socks (three pair) from two skeins of yarn.  Oh, and each skein is $5.95.  The best deal in town.  Just add dye.