I went a little nuts over the weekend...

...and made huge progress on the cardigan I'm knitting for Sylvia. It's the pattern called Mary, Mary...Whatcha Knitting? from The Yarn Girls' Guide to Kid Knits by Julie Carles and Jordana Jacobs. I'm using the yarn that was left over from the Anouk pinafore a made a few months ago, so I'm hoping the result is a two-piece matching ensemble.

The front is on the right side of this photo. I knit the back first, then put the stitches on a holder. I knit the two front pieces and put those stitches on holders, too, then used the three-needle bind-off to attach the fronts to the back. It sort of worked. The stitches did line themselves up nicely, but then I had to bind off the middle by itself, and the edges of the middle section look a little loose. When the whole sweater is assembled, all the edges get trimmed with a crochet chain stitch. I think that will tighten up things and close any gaps between where parts are joined.

I'm also hoping the cardigan actually fits Sylvia. I did a gauge swatch for it, and so far everything looks like it's on target. I'm knitting the 2Y size for the sweater, but I've decided to knit the sleeves in the 3Y size 'cause Sylvia has chubby arms.

My inner monster

I'm not a fan of horror movies or anything scary (even Law and Order reruns give me nightmares). But I just couldn't resist taking this quiz to find out my monster name--especially not when there's the option of choosing such a cute little avatar!

Back in the USA

What with being sick, looking after a very active one-year-old, and visiting family members, I didn't get much knitting done at all on this one-week trip. I think I managed to add about four or five rows to the first piece (the back) of the cardigan I started for Sylvia, and that was accomplished one afternoon while she was napping. Of course, when I was packing my bags for this trip last week, I was overwhelmed with "must not run out of yarn while I'm away" panic and ended up packing all the yarn I'd need to finish the entire sweater.

None of it, however, was mohair.

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Mohair.You are a warm and fuzzy type who works well with others, doing your share without being too weighty. You can be stubborn and absolutely refuse to change your position once it is set, but that's okay since you are good at covering up your mistakes.
Take this quiz!

"These pillows hurt my head."

Now there's something I never imagined I would say.

We are staying with Tante (Aunt) Ali. She lives in Baarn (about twenty minutes from Naarden, where Jan's father lives), in a beautiful and immaculate home on Drakenburgerweg, across the street from a working farm with horses and cows. The A1 (one of the major highways) is just on the other side of the farmfield but, surprisingly, isn't very noisy at all.

Ali is wonderful host--she has really gone to great pains to make us feel comfortable and at ease in her home. I have no complaints at all...except about the pillows. She's given us down-filled pillows that fluff up like nobody's business but then collapse in weird ways as soon as you put your head on them. No, it's not that she has especially bizarre pillows--I've had the same experience with down pillows elsewhere, too. I get a sort of "princess and the pea" syndrome with those things, though: I feel like my head is resting on a rock, and I just can't get comfortable. After a good hour of tossing and turning last night--during which I kept telling myself, "It's a pillow for crying out loud--I shouldn't have a problem with it"--I finally gave up and snagged a throw pillow from a small couch. Ahhhhhhhh...much better. Zzzzzz.

No such thing as Dutch secrets, either

Well, at least not in this family. In this close-knit family, if one person knows something, everyone else knows it, too. This includes news about who's having marital problems, how Jan takes his coffee, and who is sick. Within a few hours after our arrival, I think pretty much everyone knew that I was sick, because it was the first thing anyone asked me about when I saw them for the first time. Happily, I can now tell them that I'm doing just fine--I seem to be pretty much back to normal. Finally.

No such thing as Dutch yarn

Most of the relatives we are visiting live in Naarden, which is a medieval city about half an hour outside of Amsterdam. It has a star-shaped fortress with a double moat, and narrow streets with brick roads. My husband's grandmother (I don't even know her first name--everyone just calls her Oma, which means "grandmother") used to knit underpants and swimsuits for her sons during the 1940s or so (she's now 88!), so I asked her about where to buy yarn around here. She used to get her yarn in a little shop in Naarden, but it closed ten years ago and in its place now stands a women's clothing shop. Actually, Naarden is in the midst of gentrification of sorts, with boutique-y shops and professional offices occupying most of the city center's commercial place. And apparently it's getting very desirable--and thus expensive--to have a home within the walls of the vesting (fortress).

So we ended up going to the nearby--and larger--town of Bussum. The two towns are contiguous and share the Naarden-Bussum train station. Bussum has the big shopping district, which includes a shop that sells yarn, embroidery supplies, and supplies for other handcrafts. Interestingly enough the clerk in this shop was a man--and not only did he speak English (thank goodness), but he also knew his stuff. I told him that I wanted to get some Dutch yarn to take back to the USA for some friends (I'm thinking this would be something fun for my secret pal!), and he shook his head and said, "Unfortunately, there really isn't any 'Dutch' yarn now, since everything is so international." He did have some rather uninspiring worsted-weight superwash wool made by a Dutch company, but that was it. I bought three skeins. It's nothing special, but hey, it says "Holland" on it, so it makes the tourist in me happy.

A knitless flight

I've just arrived in the Netherlands, where I am spending a week with some of my half-Dutch husband's nine million (okay, maybe not that many) relatives. I packed a new knitting project to bring with me, one that uses a fairly fine yarn and fits nicely into a small bag. My goal was to get lots of knitting done on the nearly seven-hour flight, but two things got in my way. (1) I was hit by my first-ever case of food poisoning on Saturday night and am still in the middle of it, so I'm feeling pretty terrible. And (2) I underestimated how demanding (not in a bad way, but in a to-be-expected-from-a-one-year-old way) my daughter would be during the flight. Hard to believe but true: I actually spent about seven hours straight doing nothing much at all. Thank goodness that's over!

The perils of gaugelessness

I've just started the decreases for the Medusa hat, which means I'm nearing the top. I tried it on my own head for fun this afternoon...and it fit pretty well. Ack. Looks like this hat is destined for an adult, rather than for Sylvia. I sort of did a gauge swatch for this--just in stockinette, not in pattern (those little snakes, though simple, are a little time consuming to make)--and things were looking good. I'm not sure how I went so astray...

Weird facts tag

This is my first time participating in a blog tag or meme or anything like that, so I hope I don't screw it up. It's not properly knitting related, unless you count being tagged by my friend Katie, who is a fellow knitter. But hey, even though Marsha Knits, she also does lots of other things, too!

So here goes. Six weird facts about me.

1. I can bark like a chihuahua. (Does this have a practical use? Absolutely not--at least, not one that I've discovered.)

2. Not only am I one of those rare southpaws with legible handwriting, but I can actually write backwards (and that is legible, too!).

3. I am militantly anti-olive and anti-pickle. I do try an olive every once in a while, just to see if that's changed, but I really see no reason to give pickles a second chance.

4. I've been to every state in the United States.

5. Although I've been a vegetarian since January 1993, I really really really miss seafood. If someone can figure out how to make believable and affordable fake seafood out of tofu or seitan, I will personally write to the pope to ask for sainthood for that person.

6. My husband and I met via the Internet, while I was living in Oregon (talking to environmental activists and loggers and looking for someone to go backpacking with) and he was living in Pennsylvania (trying to avoid meeting more vampire wanna-bes--who, curiously enough, liked to meet for coffee in the middle of the day).

Yarn rant

Last month's rant made me feel a bit better, so I figured another one might be in order after this afternoon's outing. Sylvia and I headed to our local yarn shop (about a fifteen- or twenty-minute drive from my house) to pick up a birthday gift for our friend Gina, a fellow knitter (she's recently taken up crocheting, too). My first thought was to get her some ridiculously luxurious yarn that she would probably never buy for herself, but then I remembered that she already has an amazing (and extensive) yarn stash, so I nixed that plan and got her some nifty knitting accessories, which I won't describe here in case she reads this before she gets her present.

While I was in the shop, I took a look at some of the ridiculously luxurious yarns there, thinking maybe I'd splurge and get something for myself. This shop is beautifully laid out and well organized, but one thing I dislike about it is that it stocks only high-end yarns--nothing for the budget conscious among us. I nearly gagged when I saw some of the price tags. Twenty bucks? Thirty-seven dollars? For one skein of yarn--and an amount that's not even enough to make a short, skinny scarf? Holy cow. Don't get me wrong: this stuff was beautiful. But I just can't imagine spending something like two hundred dollars on enough yarn to make a sweater. If I were filthy stinking rich, yeah, sure, I'd buy oodles of that stuff and knit ridiculously luxurious sweaters for everyone I know. Alas, I'm not filthy stinking rich.

Secret Pal 8 questionnaire

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I've liked nearly every yarn I've tried. My knitting has been limited to fairly inexpensive yarns so far (e.g., Lamb's Pride worsted and bulky, Wool of the Andes from KnitPicks, various wool yarns that I've found at A.C. Moore), though I did buy the Cascade Yarns Pima Tencel that the Anouk pattern called for--and I really enjoyed working with it.

The only yarns I've really disliked working with were the cheap-o acrylic ones I bought at A.C. Moore to make dog blankets with. Itchy! Uninspiring! But apparently just right for a dog.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
Straight needles are in one cloth roll-up case with ribbon ties (a gift from a good friend who's a fellow knitter). Circular needles are shoved in a gallon-sized ziploc bag.

3. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I started knitting in February 2004. I think I'm somewhere around beginner-intermediate. Definitely nowhere near advanced!

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I have an Amazon wish list under my name.

5. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)
I love nature and woodsy scents like sage and cedar.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
A sweet tooth? I have a whole set of sweet teeth! Chocolate is always a hit with me.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I've never tried my hand at spinning (though it does look like fun!). I have some books on soapmaking and am hoping to give that a try this summer, but for now my craftiness is mostly limited to knitting and photography.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
MP3s are no problem for me. I like lots of different kinds of music, including folk, "world," classical, Argentine tango, and swing and big band--though these days (see my answer to #10) I often find myself listening to kid-friendly fare like the Putamayo series, Pete Seeger's recordings for children, and (I never thought I'd say this) Raffi. I draw the line at big purple dinosaurs, though.

9. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love the earth tone family: browns, greens, some of the medium-dark blues. Autumn reds and russets are nice, too. Neon and bright pastels are to me the visual equivalent of fingernails being dragged along a chalkboard. Ewwww!

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I'm married (to someone who's recently taken up crocheting--so now we both work with yarn while watching DVDs from Netflix), and our daughter just celebrated her first birthday three days ago. We have two cats who are, according to our vet, senior citizens (they even get a discount on their checkups!). They alternate between being sweet cuddle-monsters and crabby old ladies.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
Yes, yes, yes, and no-but-that's-just-because-I-haven't-gotten-around-
to-making-one-for-myself-not-because-I-have-anything-against-them.

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
Baby hats and baby sweaters are high on my list--partly because I like making stuff for my daughter to wear, partly because they knit up quickly and give me that wonderful sense of project-completion-satisfaction!

13. What are you knitting right now?
My current project is a Medusa hat for my daughter. After that, I'm going to make a cardigan to go with her Anouk pinafore, using leftover yarn from that project (I ordered way too much, just to be sure!).

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
Yes!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
Definitely bamboo, and only a slight preference for circular. When I first started knitting, I bought only straight needles, but now I usually buy only circulars because they are so versatile (and needles aren't cheap!).

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
Nope and nope.

17. How did you learn to knit?
One of my coworkers at my last job taught me. She got me started with my first project: a simple garter-stitch scarf in Lamb's Pride Bulky yarn. Since then, I've learned other techniques from books (especially Sally Melville's series) and gotten pointers from knitting friends, including members of my local knitting group.

18. How old is your oldest UFO?
A little over two years old. But I'm nearly finished with it--just need to weave in the ends and tidy it up!

19. What is your favorite holiday?
This is a tough one, because I both like and dislike most holidays. I'd put Christmas at the top of my list--not for religious or Santa-related reasons, but because I like the coziness of contrasting warmth/light with snow/cold/dark and because it's fun to give people presents. And I love the baked goodies that abound during this season.

20. Is there anything that you collect?
Refrigerator magnets! They are small (very portable!), ubiquitous (found nearly anywhere!), and inexpensive. I prefer the tourist-y magnets--the tackier, the better. I always get magnets as souvenirs when I travel, and my close friends and family usually try to pick some up for me when they travel, too. Right now I have well over a hundred magnets, and I actually do put them on my refrigerator. (They aren't all on display at the moment, though, because the bottom half of the fridge is within the reach of the baby-who-still-likes-to-shove-everything-in-her-mouth. So the magnets that usually reside there are temporarily in storage.)

21. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What
knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
Since examining a set of Denise interchangeable needles at the kntting group meeting recently, I've been hankering to get a set for myself. I'm also eager to try working with some really decadent yarn--but only if I know exactly what project it's for. I have no magazine subscriptions and only a few books (all three of Sally Meville's Knitting Experience books, the first two Yarn Girls books, the first Stitch-n-Bitch, Debbie Bliss's Baby Knits for Beginners, Knitting without Tears, Knit Hats, The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, Felted Knits, Cotton Knits for All Seasons). I'm hoping to add Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers and some of the Minnowknits books to my library soon.

22. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
Right now, I can confidently knit, purl, cable cast on, long-tail cast on, regular bind off, three-needle bind off, yarn over (but only if I look up the instructions each time), increase, and decrease. Pretty much anything else is a new technique I'd like to learn! I recently got my first taste of color knitting with the Anouk pinafore, and I'm looking forward to trying more of it.

23. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
To date I have knit one and a half socks. That unfinished sock keeps giving me dirty looks whenever I come across it, so I am ignoring it as payback. Take that, you silly sock.

I have no idea what my foot measurements are (and if I go look for a tape measure right now, I will surely get sidetracked and never finish this questionnaire), but I usually wear size 7.5 shoes.

24. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)
May 8

Secret Pal 8

For the first time ever, I am participating in a Secret Pal exchange for knitters and crocheters. Sign-ups for Secret Pal 8 were during the month of April, and according to the official website, there are over 550 participants this time. The whole thing is organized by a group of volunteer "hostesses"--I can't imagine the logistics involved in doing something like this!

So now I have to finish writing up my responses to the SP8 questionnaire so my secret pal can learn a little bit about me!

Medusa

Even though one sock remains unfinished and I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do about the cardigan, I've started a new project: a Medusa hat for Sylvia. I started it last week--actually, I started it three times last week, because I kept twisting the stiches when joining the first round. (Grrrrrr.) Right now, the stitches are delightfully untwisted, but I seem to have gotten off on my stitch count. So I'm just winging it. I don't think the placement of the little snakes has to be that precise. Heck, a bit of randomness and uneven spacing is probably a good thing!

This hat is really easy to make, as you'll see if you read the pattern. I'm using a lovely fern green worsted wool yarn from Knitpicks ('cause I already had it on hand), but I'm thinking that future versions of this hat might be really fun to do in some variegated yarn. I'm only a few inches into it--not yet to the where I need to worry about decreases. The snakes are simple to knit but I'm a little slow with them. Good thing spring is here and Sylvia won't need a warm hat for several more months.