Enter the Big Montana Tunic (from IK Fall 2009), which I’ve had on my list of things I would love to make and wear since last year.  I alloted the Cascade 128 Superwash in Lemon, one of my recent yarn conquests, to this project, to be made just for me and no one else.  I stalked the pattern on Ravelry, reading what others had to say about negative ease and finding the right gauge.  I swatched like crazy.  I knitted the gorgeous thing all the way up to the shoulders, then bound off.  The directions told me that to ease the curl of the fabric at the shoulders, I should…. block.

My biggest fear was of shrinking my already-negative tunic.  I haven’t worked with wool much, but I know wool shrinks, right?  Well… sometimes.  If the first thing I had done was to look up the description of the Cascade Superwash yarn online, I would have discovered that it’s even listed as machine washable (in cold water).  If the makers think a machine won’t screw it up, how likely am I to do a poor job?

I nervously looked up blocking instead – specifically, wool blocking.  The primer on knitty.com seemed to indicate that it wasn’t all that hard.  The main advantages were that it would relax the fibers, getting rid of the dreaded curl, making for easy shoulder seaming and a better fit.  I followed the author’s advice to the letter.  I turned my iron on to the wool setting.  I laid out my curly, unfinished tunic:

Then I took a damp cotton cloth and pressed it into the knitting, smoothing down the curl:

I ironed only on top of the cotton cloth, never directly touching the wool with the source of heat.  I moved the cloth over the various edges of the fabric, ironing until the water in the cotton evaporated.  I decided to block the lace panel down the center front and back as well, for good measure:

And finally, I had a lovely, non-shrunken, relaxed fabric that smelled a little bit like wet dog!

I have one WIP photo of me in the tunic, but I haven’t happened to get a photo of me in it now that it’s finished.  I am absolutely nuts about it, though.  The fit is perfect – all that yarn and pattern recon made for the best fitting garment I’ve created to date!  I’ll be sure to edit this post and put in a picture of the final product as soon as I remember to take one.  It shouldn’t be that hard; I wear it like every other day.

My own notes on the pattern can be found on my ravelry.com profile – I’m on the site as La Luna Unita.

Everyone knows Hill Country Weavers – it’s Austin’s big name independent yarn store, in an old house on South Congress.  It’s fun, but a bit overwhelming.  My past visits to HCW have left me reeling – yarn stuffed into every nook and cranny, twists and turns through small rooms and hallways, and ladies (some of them hefty) trying to pass by in a narrow aisle while you try to calmly compare yarn of one weight and fiber against another that you found on the other side of the store in a completely different area.  In a word, I would call it chaotic.

The Knitting Nest

The feel at the Knitting Nest is completely different and I was much more comfortable at this store than at HCW.  The Knitting Nest is Central Texas’ biggest distributor of Cascade yarns.  I bought several skeins of Cascade 128 superwash in a cheery yellow so that I can make the Big Montana Tunic (found in IK Fall 2009).  First thing when I walked in the door, the lady helped me by explaining the difference between the 128 superwash and 128 bulky.  I don’t have much experience with wool yet, but she knew exactly what I needed and also very helpfully explained that the yarn I chose would definitely stretch and get bigger after washing.  The Montana Tunic is supposed to be knit with negative ease, so that’s good to know!

The Knitting Nest had big, clear windows letting in lots of natural light and several couches arranged in a lounge area perfect for group knitting.  The yarn was arranged by brand and somewhat by weight.  There was plenty of open space and there was both two-dimensional (mural) and three dimensional (felted yarn) art on display.  I also bought some Cascade Ultra Pima in Syrah to make a bonnet for my daughter.  She’s hating hats at the moment, but I have hopes that a light bonnet for winter will go over with her.  In total, the service was great and the selection, while maybe a bit short on variety, was great with regards to quantity.  I had a great time chatting about the deceptive habits of wives buying yarn and hiding it from their husbands.

I won’t be able to visit the Knitting Nest all that often, unfortunately.  It’s located in far south Austin, on South Congress.  This isn’t the more central part of South Congress Avenue where HCW is located – it’s 6 miles further south on the same road.  I live on the other side of town, but I’ll try to make it over there as often as I can!

Gauge Knits

Saturday started with a trip to what I thought was a yarn store… the Needle Works, near central Austin, is housed in a building that I watched come up over several months on my commute home.  How exciting, I thought, a yarn store on my way home from work!  So Oli and I trekked over to see the newly open store – and found out that it’s just for needlepoint arts.  I also found out that it’s a store that has been around for a long time and relocated recently.  The person I spoke with suggested that I try stopping by Gauge, located close by.  I followed the route she outlined for me and found a quiet little shopping center in a wealthy area of west Austin.  Gauge had an inviting porch out front with iron lawn furniture arranged casually near the front door.  When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was color!  There was a wonderful selection of yarns and lots of colors on the walls.  Karly, the proprietor, was helping a young man figure out the best yarn for a pattern that he wanted to knit for a girl.  I couldn’t figure out whether it was a girlfriend or a girl he wanted to impress.  I think knitting is the way to go in either scenario. 

I came in with a shopping list of needs – size 11 24″ circulars for my Montana Tunic and size 2 dpts for some slippers I want to work up for Oli (she outgrew her shoes a couple of weeks ago, and I think I can make do with some well-fitting slippers for a while since I have sock yarn in stash).  Everything was out on display and easy to find.  I picked up some Noro Furisode as well, since I’ve heard about Noro for years but never tried it as a knitter.  Technically, my trip was done within about 5 minutes, but it was so nice to just wander around and look at the yarn!  Karley had the yarns arranged in sections by stitches per inch – 1-3 had a set of shelving, 3-4, 4-5, and so on.  I thought it was a great method, since I’m always substituting yarns and I hardly ever purchase the yarn recommended for a pattern.

Beyond the seating on the front porch, Karly also had a back room with a fireplace (knitted socks were hung with care), a table for pattern browsing, more seating, and a two-bookcase library.  The whole store made it obvious that I was welcome as a knitter, not just as a customer.  This impression was furthered by the fact that Karly was actively helping the young man the whole time I was there – checking websites for recommended yarn substitutions, making suggestions for color, etc.

While I appreciate the variety and vivacity of HCW, I think that I’ll be visiting the Knitting Nest and Gauge Knits much more often.  They are open, airy, quieter places and that appeals to me since I don’t really do as well in crowded areas as I used to.  I don’t feel like I need to hurry up and make my decision or that I need to know every single detail of what I want before asking a question.  The people at both places just plain had time for me.  I’m also at a point in my life where I tend to be a bit more isolated.  When I go to a place like HCW, it just exacerbates that feeling because everyone seems to know everyone else and I feel like I’m not a part of the club.  The ladies at the Knitting Nest and at Gauge definitely made me feel like I could (and should) come back to get to know them and their spaces better!

* the images used in this blog entry are copyrighted property of the Knitting Nest and Gauge Knits, respectively.  I’m hoping they don’t get mad that I didn’t ask to use them first before posting this entry.

I got back into my podcast habit, which is easy to do with all the wonderful free podcasts available!  My commute is 30 minutes either way, and I really got tired of listening to the news after a while.  I first found the ever-intriguing Craftypod and followed up with Stash and Burn and Knitscience.  All are available for free through iTunes.

Listening to Sister Diane’s soothing, sultry voice just full of good information on Craftypod got me really fired up to create!  Also, her interviews and insights exposed me to several other awesome sources, the next being One Pretty Thing, a website that publishes round ups of crafts, blogs, tutorials, etc., by category.  It’s an amazing website, sort of a “best of the best” of crafts on the internet.   I’m now a junkie and must check it once a day to see the latest round ups.

One Pretty Thing gave me two more blogs to check out, both of which have inspired future projects. 

The first is called Plain Vest by Pickles.  Olivia will look so cute in this vest!  I have a cotton worsted yarn that I bought for another project, but couldn’t use.  It’s a variegated brown and orange, very mellow, and if I can gauge it right, this vest should be perfect for it.

The next is a free tutorial from Anissa at Two Little Bugs Clothing Co.  It’s for a small blankie to be carried around and loved on!  I have my Blankie from childhood and have passed it on to Olivia, but it’s a bit ratty and could stand to be spruced up/reworked into something presentable.  It’s still the softest and warmest thing I own (or rather, that she owns)!

Nicole and Jenny of Stash and Burn have become my constant car companions and have really rekindled my knitting fire.  I love that they are concerned with exactly the same things I am – namely, how to keep on track to finish things I start and the constant learning curve of how to make sure things fit after they’ve been knitted.  My results in the past with knitting for myself have a fair-to-middling success rate on whether I’ll actually wear the items made.  When you think about all the work that goes into something hand-knitted, it’s kind of sad if it doesn’t turn out just right.  However, listening to the two of them recall item after item and talk about sending things on to Goodwill or gifting people with them actually makes me feel a lot better about my own knitting.

*images are copyrighted by Pickles and Two Little Bugs Clothing Co., respectively.

Hokey format aside, there can be some solid wisdom in a list like that, for example, the notion of picking up small glass shards with a moistened cotton ball to make sure you get them all.  One in particular worked really well for me last night: a recipe to get rid of fruit flies.

We have until recently been keeping a small compost bin in the house, to be sent into the backyard bin when it gets full.  Neither of us keeps up with the rotation, so it naturally became the home to a hundred or so tiny fruit flies that have been clouding my kitchen for a couple of days (we decided to nix the bin after this last infestation).  The email suggested a small dish with about a half inch of apple cider vinegar and two drops of dish soap, mixed well.  I set one by the trash can and one on the kitchen window sill.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that they each had a decent number of dead flies floating in the mix after about four hours.  Hey, it really does work!

Another fun idea that I gleaned from babycenter.com is for a toy “shower” that Oli can use in the tub.  Very simple – use an empty plastic yogurt or butter tub, poke holes in the top, then fill the tub with bath water and snap the lid on.  When Oli holds it upside down, she can see little rain drops fall out and splash into the bath.  I can’t wait to try it tonight!

The last idea was one I suddenly decided I needed last week – an online meal planner.  I hit up Food On The Table, which offers a free login.  It narrowed down three meals for me based on 1) my usual grocery store, 2) the things I checked off that we normally use as ingredients, and 3) what I felt like eating next week.  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and it came up with three dishes for me to try out, including a comprehensive grocery list for what I would need.  I just crossed off the items I already had and appended the rest of my grocery list to the bottom, and was able to hit the store with no fuss.  I’ve made two of the dinners so far; the recipes are really easy.  They are also new to me, so we’re branching out a little bit from the regular chicken and rice/pasta and meat sauce rut.

Has anyone else come across a few good ideas lately?  Just one or two little things can make such a difference in how much time we spend on the necessary versus the fun!

It turns out that most of my diet already is the reward to my liver.  The typical rainbow-colored fruits and veggies that are recommended for our health are also recommended for our livers, to help them detoxify, produce new cells, and continue to be all-around bad asses.

Here are some stock photos of my very favorite liver friendly foods:

I also found a recipe for “Liquid Green Drink” which is supposed to regenerate your liver… I don’t know if that should be regenerate or rejuvenate, but it still sounds neat.

Ingredients:

1 lemon’s juice
1 tbsp chlorophyll
1 tbsp aloe vera juice
8 oz water

I would add to that 1 tbsp agave nectar, unless the aloe vera juice is pre-sweetened.  Sounds fairly inoffensive to me!

First of all are three nursery photos that I ran across while checking out punkymoms.com today.  I’ve been feeling a bit run down and isolated from working full time and caring for Oli… not to say that I don’t have support, because my family is 2 miles away and they and my husband are great!  However, I don’t feel that there are many people I can relate to right now, and those that are going through the same life challenges as I am are all too busy to meet up with me (and I’m too busy to meet up with them).

I’m not so sure that punkymoms is the place for me, but it’s a start.  I’d love to hash out some of the day-to-day questions I have with some other mothers who are either experiencing their first infant right now, or are near enough to the experience that they haven’t forgotten all the cool stuff they figured out!  Most of the moms in my life have kids 10 and up, so they aren’t very recently practiced at breastfeeding, teething, planning a nursery, etc.

While I know that I am a punkymom at heart, I don’t have some of the issues that I often listen to in the counter-cultural crowd.  Most common among them: I don’t assume that people are judging me based on how I look.  Sure, it can be likely depending on where I am or who I am talking to, but I’ve noticed that there is a pervasive perception among those who collect tattoos and piercings to assume that people won’t treat them like equals or that they are being scrutinized closely by a disapproving and prejudiced public everywhere they go.  Maybe this is too honest, but I find it tiresome.  I’m interested in collectives of moms who uplift each other and share mothering experiences without judgement, not forums in which women bitch and moan about a soccer mom turning up her nose at them in the grocery aisle.

For Oli’s nursery, I have so far found an old chair in the trash of my sister-in-law’s neighbor and a small wooden wall hutch.  The chair, which is child-sized, needs to be completely taken apart, sanded, glued back together, and then screwed back together.  It is probably made of oak, or something equally sturdy, and it obviously sat out in some inclement weather for a while, but it’s really fixable.  I’m going to paint it red – that slightly light red that’s very popular right now.  Not cherry red, not fire truck red, but just a shade bluer and whiter than regular old red.  The hutch will be perfect for a few small keepsakes and books, little treasures that Oli likes but that need to be kept out of the way.  I’m painting it a bright sunny yellow.  (Her nursery walls are pale green, by the way) 

Beyond that, I need to figure out what I want to decorate the walls with!  I tried to recreate the lovely birds on a wall from Curious Bird, but so far my little tweeties turned out kind of like blobby pincushions (I made my own pattern – not a good idea).  If you’re wondering why Olivia has gotten to be seven months old without a completely decorated nursery, the answer is that we moved in only three weeks before she was born.  I had to seriously stifle my nesting instinct while we bid, then closed, then paid up down payment for the house over the course of a month.  I feel pretty darn lucky that the walls are at least the color I wanted!

As another source of inspiration, I recently read the first half of a book titled Math and the Mona Lisa about the connections between science, art, and nature.  One crossroad of these three subjects that really fascinated me is the logarithmic spiral.

It is both a natural and mathematical phenomenon!  I decided to explore it using art and started a meditation piece for my brother-in-law’s birthday based on overlapping spirals.  The execution hasn’t been quite as profound for me as the concept, but it has been a stimulating exploration into being present.  Since it’s a drawing designed to aid meditation and calm, it seems only right to really take my time and be completely within each penstroke as I work on it.  That kind of quiet time is really good for me.

I am always thinking about making clothes for Oli, no matter what else I am up to.  I’ve been slow regarding the projects I already purchased patterns and fabric for.  This is mostly due to working during the week and then her lack of nappage on the weekends.  She’s stopped taking those lovely two hour naps that were so good for her and daytime sleep has devolved into 20-45 minute naps at a time, usually, about twice a day if we’re lucky.  She is one tired girl by bedtime!  I don’t get a lot of “me” time for projects, etc., but I will try to get on that stuff before she outgrows the patterns.  I saw a really cute bootie pattern today (I’m always scoping out cute booties):

They are easy to make, small, and she’ll still need them come winter.  She might walk early, but she likely won’t be walking well by the time cool/cold weather makes its way back to Texas.  Being functionally shod will not be an issue for a while yet.

Podcasts have also been great inspiration lately!  I have several mothering-themed ‘casts on my iPod, as well as the very cool Craftypod, which gave me some great blogging pointers and got me to thinking about organization for this thing.  That’s great, because it means I’ll probably update more frequently.

I also discovered www.scrapblog.com! It has been great for me since I knew I would never, ever be able to actually sit and cut and glue and arrange pages of photos. Now I can do it digitally without the mess and then order prints when I’m done. Even better, I can publish it for family to see and they can order prints of the pages they like!

The calla lilies were a Mother’s Day gift and thank goodness I managed to get them in the ground before they wilted and died.  I want a garden, but don’t have much of a green thumb so far.  I also potted the moss rose just a few weeks ago and have so far managed to keep it alive. 

The lilies were put in by the previous owners and I don’t know that we would have really seen them for what they are except that we’ve had so much rain this year.  They have been amazing!

I got the chance to make new friends and purchase a ton of fabric for next to nothing today… I’m not sure what projects I’ll use everything for, but it’s all so useful!  Some gentlemen in town posted the fabric sale on craigslist, so my friend Mel and I went over (with Olivia and Ashton, our daughters, of course) and ransacked the fabric stock.  I ended up with some great patterns, buttons, and ribbon as well.  Benson, who was selling the fabric, even gave some of the buttons to me, since they were for Oli!  I’m determined to make a few things for her this summer, so now I’m feeling much more equipped.  I just need a couple of nice patterns to round everything out, and once my sewing machine is back from repairs, I’ll be able to get started.

I also received free fabric from Mel last night.  She brought it over for our first stitch n’ bitch, which went so well that we’re going to make it a weekly gig.  My sister in law Marcia joined us too.  She’s been working on an order of dream catchers for a lady she met at a craft fair.

She’s starting to grow a lot of personality.  She’s a very laid back baby (she gets that from her dad).  She likes to laugh all the time (she gets that from me).  As I told my cousin the other day, if I’d had any idea kids were this fun, I would have had one years ago.

Here she is in a onesy I embroidered for her (inside joke with her dad):

I embroidered a little towel for her last week with her name on it.  I learned the joy of project planning with this project and I think I’m going to continue with the same process for future projects.  I discovered that planning with a sketch book is nearly as much fun as the actual project!  I also felt much more confident working from something I had written out, rather than making decisions right on the spot.  The finished product does not exactly match the towel envisioned in the planning stage.  However, I felt confident about making changes as well, since I had had time to reflect on my original concept.

You can see that instead of the “heart” flowers I originally chose, I embroidered a different style of flower that I found on a scrap of fabric from another project.  I also nixed the second line of ribbon and went across the top with a line of herringbone embroidery in green instead.  I let Lyndon pick the color for the herringbone line.  Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased with the result and I’m already envisioning a little 3 year old Oli using it to dry her hands in a few years. *happy sigh*