In Progress...

Thank you all so, so much for your congratulations and sweet comments on my last post.  Moving time is getting close and our last day of work is tomorrow and our house.....ooooooooh boy is it scary right now.  Because Neill's first day as a farmer is officially the 20th (next Monday), we'd hoped we'd be able to move into the upstairs at least, and improvise on cooking our meals until the kitchen was all fixed up.  But, it seems that with home renovations, everything takes longer than you originally anticipated.

So here's the current view of the kitchen...

And the living room...

And the downstairs bathroom (which looks about the same as the other bathrooms, but there was mold in the vanity in this one)...

And everything has a thick layer of dust from grinding off the floor tiles, and there are tack-boards with rusty nails everywhere, and, overall, things are just gross. Sometimes, I walk in and think, "WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?!"  But it's too late now...

BUT, progress is being made!  My mom and I spent the good part of two weekends ago peeling wallpaper and there is now NO TRACE OF ANY OF IT, which makes me very happy.  I meant to take more photos, but was covered in wallpaper paste and bits of paper for most of the process and didn't want any of that yuck on my phone, so I'm left with this lone reminder...

I don't want to be mean, but.....really?  Shell wreaths with pink bows and butterflies?!?!?!?!?! When was this ever not completely dorky?!  (My apologies if you happen to have this exact wallpaper scheme in your house right now.  I'm just bitter that it took me an entire day to take it down.)

The downstairs bathroom was similar - dots above, stripes below, and a runner/border thingy with sailboats (yes, sailboats).  And one of the bedrooms had a border at the top of leaping dolphins and whales (I guess the previous owners REALLY loved the ocean...), which they had GLUED onto the wall. The hours spent scraping that #$@* off the wall were about as enjoyable as childbirth.

Another little project my mom and I have going on is re-texturing the walls.  Well, un-texturing.  Currently, all of the walls in the joint (aside from those previously covered in oh-so-lovely 80's wallpaper) look like this...

And, with some joint compound, we're slowly making them look like this...

(Note: This still needs to be sanded.)

Of course, we thought we'd have the whole upstairs done by now, and we've done...

Most, but not all, of one of the smaller bedrooms.

So, it's slow going, and I really hope my parents are ok with us crashing with them for the foreseeable future....because our house is not safe for children.

Joint compound and putty knives have also replaced yarn and needles for the most part, but I am working on a very, very easy shawl that I'm kind of in love with.  It's worked all in the round, so I don't have to do anything but knit, which is about what I can take right now.

So that's what's up right now.  Some knitting content to come in the next few days...

A Different Kind of Work in Progress

So, I've been holding onto a secret for quite some time now. Neill, Daniel, and I have a major life change coming that has been exciting and stressful and nerve-wracking and thrilling...and has been consuming a huge amount of brain power and it's been killing me not to talk about it! But, now that we've told all the people we didn't want to find out from the internet (i.e. our bosses), I finally can.

In mid-May, we will pack up and move to my hometown in California's agricultural Central Valley - only 2 hours (1.75 with no traffic) from San Francisco, but worlds apart. A new job opportunity for Neill was well-timed with Daniel beginning to outgrow our current city living arrangements, and it all just kind of came together in a crazy way. A lot of people have asked me if it's going to be a harsh change to go from the Big City to Small Town USA...but honestly, our icky commute has made it difficult to take full advantage of San Francisco for years, we're very tired of said commute, and we feel ready for a slower pace. We're excited to take advantage of what our new surroundings have to offer (without having to pay for parking), being close to family, and the amazing fresh produce...and if I never have to carry a 30 lb. child and groceries up 3 flights of stairs again, it will be too soon.

So, what's the work in progress? Well, we are now the proud owners of a new home...

with lots of light and lots of space to run around...

and lots of oak cabinetry and tile.

(And that light box? That was a feature in almost every single home we looked at built before 2005. Why was that ever a THING?!)

The previous owners took wonderful care of this house and left it in great condition, but we are taking this opportunity to make some cosmetic updates and really make it our own. At first it was just the kitchen and painting...then the kitchen, painting, and floors...then the kitchen, painting, floors, and a bathroom...and on and on...and it's, like, half the house now. Anyway, it is a LOT to coordinate and budget with everything else that's going on, and I've been waking up in the middle of the night thinking about tile and carpet for weeks. But, despite all that, and even though we really have no idea what we're doing, renovating a house is a huge creative outlet, and I'd love to share a little of the process here.

Wow....writing it out like this makes it feel even more real.  Three more weeks.  (Central) California, I'm coming home.

Design Process: Eclipse Top

On July 11, 1991, there was a solar eclipse visible from California. I was nearly 11, had just started 6th grade (weird year-round school system) and was obsessed with astronomy. My parents had given me a chunk of welder's glass to take to school so I could look directly at the eclipse...but, my teacher deemed it unsafe and took it away, so I had to settle for the little viewer we made by poking a hole in a piece of paper, which wasn't nearly as cool.

Then, six months later, in January of 1992, I was thrilled to learn that there was going to be another solar eclipse (annular). Finally, my dreams of viewing a solar eclipse directly, not just as a little speck on the ground or on a piece of paper, would come true. My family, along with my most science-y friend, piled into the car and drove over to the Lawrence Hall of Science, where they had scientists and telescopes all set up for some amazing eclipse watching. But, Bay Area winter weather struck, and we were clouded out.

I was grandly disappointed.  The next visible eclipse would be who-knows-when, and the next time it happened, would I even be interested in eclipses and astronomy anymore??  (And, apparently, my about-to-cry expression and excellent choice of faux-leopard attire were so compelling that I landed in two Bay Area newspapers that weekend!)

The answer was that I would get to witness an eclipse one day and, twenty years later, I would still be as awed and excited as if it had happened in 1991. And the annular eclipse of last May is what ultimately inspired my second project from Knitscene's Summer 2013 issue, the Eclipse Top.

Photo © Knitscene/Harper Point

While the annular eclipse of May 2012 occurred, Neill and I set up our own little "lab" and witnessed the eclipse from our roof deck and window. I have several dorky photos from that day, but I'll stick to what ultimately influenced the Eclipse Top design. At some point during our eclipse viewing, Neill and I realized that the sunlight shining through our partially-drawn blinds was creating a very, very cool pattern -- vertical strips of little eclipses that would otherwise be circles of light. Daniel just happened to run through one of these strips in a way that the pattern went straight down his onesie. I had Neill position him just right to take another photo (which he heartily protested...):

And then I had Neill pose so the eclipses were going down his shirt.

I thought this would make such a cool shirt design and, at first, thought about silkscreening it onto tshirts and such (which I still kind of want to do!).  But then I thought about how I could interpret it into something knitted.

The Eclipse Lace pattern featured in the top is based on Feather and Fan and uses just one repeat to create the little half moon shapes, with the eyelets representing sunlight. As you can see, the knitted eclipses face up, not down like in the pattern of light and shadow on Neill's and Daniel's shirts. I liked how the top eclipse pulled in the cast-on edge of the fabric...so I thought it'd be perfect placed at the top of a v-shaped neckline.

I also designed the top to have a little pleat under the eclipse lace, which isn't so visible in Knitscene's pattern photos, but is still there. The top is worked from the top down in one piece with a raglan yoke. The swatch and final piece were both done on larger-than-usual needles in Tosh Merino Light, one of my favorites, and I'm in love with the Pop Rocks colorway used in the final.

If you'd like to find out more about the Eclipse Top, you can check it out on Ravelry here or on the Knitscene webpage here.

Design Process: Saturn Cardi

The Summer issue of Knitscene hit newsstands earlier this week and, as I previously mentioned, I was extremely delighted and honored to be the featured designer of the issue.  Part of being the featured designer means that I got to design a three-piece collection. And now that the issue is out there, I thought I'd spend a little time talking about my design process and inspiration for each piece.  All three were in some way influenced by astronomical phenomena (which I hear a lot about at my day job at NASA), but I wanted to talk a bit about how exactly the translation from cool astro image to knit garment occurred.

Let's start with the Saturn Cardigan, shall we?

 

Photo © Knitscene/Harper Point

In 2004, NASA launched the Cassini mission to study Saturn. Now, I've always thought Saturn was one of the coolest looking planets, what with the rings and all, but when I saw the following ultraviolet image on Astronomy Picture of the Day, I was blown away.

Credit:  UVIS, U. Colorado, ESA, NASA

One of the things this image shows us is the breakdown of what Saturn's rings are composed of. The bluer areas contain more water ice and the redder areas contain more dust. Very interesting scientifically, but it also makes for a really beautiful image. Even though this isn't actually what the rings look like in the visible light spectrum, I no longer saw Saturn as just a bright white object in the sky, but as something with much more life and color. 

Originally I wanted to translate the Cassini image more literally, with bright green or turquoise rings against a very dark background (though in the end, the grey just worked better).

To form the raised rings, I found a cool technique in one of my Barbara Walker treasuries in which a few rows are knit, then folded up and joined together on the next row to form a raised welt. And, to showcase the rings, I thought it best to show them against a canvas of a very simple and wearable cardigan.  Here's the original sketch -- you can see that I deviated very little from the original concept.

 

The sweater is simply constructed as well, knit from the top-down with a circular yoke.

Ok, this post is now going to go all over the place, but talking about the Saturn Cardi like this immediately takes me back to when I knit it.  Back in September, Neill and I took a trip to South Africa with his sister, and this cardigan just happened to be my travel knitting.  I managed to do the entire yoke on the way there, then the body and sleeves followed me around Cape Town, safari, and wine tasting.  

One of my favorite memories from the trip actually involved this sweater.  When a member of our party lost her passport (not me), we had to take a little detour and spend half of our second day at the US Embassy.  I elected to stay outside on a bench and knit.  Well, the outside of the embassy was heavily guarded by fit young men and women carrying around huge guns and speaking in a language I did not understand.  One of the young guys kept looking at me, then frowning, speaking to his colleagues, frowning again, and looking back at me.  I'm not gonna lie, the presence of the large firearms combined with the frowning made me a bit uneasy.  Suddenly, the guard was approaching me.  Ugh.  I just knew he was going to tell me that the embassy was one of those places where knitting needles were considered a weapon and I was going to have to put them away.  But when he was just a few feet away and we made eye contact, his face completely softened.  He smiled, started making knitting motions with his hands and pointed to mine. "What you're doing...this reminds me of my mother!  All day, every day, she was knitting, knitting, knitting!"  He went on to tell me about all of the amazing things she had made for him, hats and sweaters and the like, and how proud he was to wear them.  I told him that he was an amazing son, and that if my own son ever expressed half as much enthusiasm for my knitting, I would just about explode with happiness.  He then said that sometimes he would take over household chores when he was growing up so his mother could take a break and knit. (Right?!) He said, "We all have things we do to get through the day...for my mother, it was knitting."  And in that moment, that statement just seemed so wise, and I was so jet lagged, that I almost started crying.  Here were were, this young guy and I, from two places as far away as is earthly possible, brought together by knitting.

Anyway, for more information about the Saturn Cardigan, you can see its listing on Ravelry here and on the Knitscene website here.

Mid-week Inspiration

Buildings....somewhere.

I might be crazy, but when I look at the building at the top of the photo, all I can think of is: shawl.

The Winner...

...of My First Cardigan Workbook...

  ©  Annie's

...is...

Chelsea @ Garden-Me.com!!

Congratulations, Chelsea!  I hope this book helps you make your very first cardigan for yourself!  I'll send you an email shortly to find out where you'd like me to send your new book.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

Book Review & Giveaway: My First Cardigan Workbook

When I started knitting "seriously" about seven years ago, I was pretty adventurous. I ignored the experience level listed on the patterns I found and just jumped right in. When choosing the pattern for my very first sweater, I didn't really care what it was going to teach me or what skills I should know before starting...I just wanted to make something I wanted to wear. And it turned out ok.

But.

I felt completely lost.

When I went to my local knitting shop (the dearly departed Noe Knit :( ) to pick up the pattern, I was so embarrassed of my newbie-ness that I was terrified to ask the shop ladies any questions -- I just kind of threw an old, on-sale issue of Interweave into my bag, grabbed some yarn, and ran to the cash register.  I *did*, however, ask if the i-cord called for in the pattern was something I needed to buy. (Ha!) And the ladies who were working the desk were very nice in pointing out that no, no I did not.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is that as a newbie sweater-knitter, I probably could have used a book or a pattern that really broke things down for me. It would have cut out much of the deer-caught-in-headlights look I had the entire time I was knitting, and I would have learned a great deal. And, had my first sweater been a cardi, I would have greatly benefited from the book we're going to talk about today.

 All photos ©  Annie's.

My First Cardigan Workbook by Georgia Druen is a new Annie's book that breaks down cardigan knitting into its simplest form. A "self-guided tutorial", it includes 8 patterns for very simple, top-down raglan cardigans and loads of great information for beginners about the importance of making a gauge swatch and blocking, techniques, etc. The clever thing about this book, I think, is that the 8 patterns come in four sets of two, with each set containing both a baby cardigan and its adult-sized counterpart. Each set includes a different and slightly more complex technique, such as cabling, fair isle and lace. What's fantastic about this is that you can "practice" on the smaller baby version, gain some confidence, and then move on to the adult version. Because of the simplicity of the designs, the adult versions are really not more complex than the baby versions, just a little bigger.

And the designs are pretty cute.  (Speaking of cute, the little girl modeling the baby sweaters is killing me!)

The beginner sweater - Baby Blocks...

And its adult counterpart, Basket Weave Basic...

Kisses & Hugs, which throws in some cabling...

 

And its grown up version, Classic Cables...

 

(Also note that many of the designs are unisex, with instructions on how to change things up to make them more suited to male or female recipients.)

And, I think Baby's First Fair Isle is particularly sweet...I love the color combo they used.

As has been my experience with all Annie's books, the layout, technique instructions, and length are just perfect. This particular book is spiral bound and also features a format that allows you to write in the stitch counts for your size, making it truly workbook-like.

You can find My First Cardigan Workbook on Amazon here and on the Annie's website here.

OR, if you'd like to win your very own copy of this book, either to try your hand at cardigan-knitting or, if you feel like you're a master already, give it to a friend who's just starting out, leave a comment here telling me a) how many cardigans you've made (an estimate is ok :) ) and b) the best way to contact you.  You have until 11:59pm Pacific time next Friday, April 5th, and I'll draw a winner on Saturday afternoon.

Happy weekend, everyone!