I’ve donated my hair twice before, to Locks of Love, and was planning to do it again.  I hadn’t had a haircut since February 2008!  Then I heard from my knitting friend Suzanne that a lot of the hair donated to Locks of Love doesn’t actually make it to the kids – a lot of it is sold or discarded.  It seems that since they are the most popular hair donation charity, they get overwhelmed with donations and can’t handle all of them, plus they get a lot of unusable hair.  Suzanne suggested Wigs for Kids instead, so that’s what I did.  On the website there is a list of salons that give haircuts for free or at a discount when you donate.  Unfortunately, it is not completely up to date – one place I called had been out of business for 4 years already.  But I did find a good place not too far from me.  This is what I had to donate.

This is what it looked like after being chopped – about 12 inches!

And here’s what I looked like.

And here’s my almost-31-week belly!

It turns out the Tilted Duster makes a great maternity sweater!

We had another fun Halloween this year!  Tim asked to be Percy, one of Thomas the Tank’s friends, so Chris obliged with this:

It’s tradition in Chris’s family for Daddy to make the costumes.  And you can’t buy Percy in the stores anyway, only Thomas.  Of course, Tim was thrilled!

He got lots of candy dressed like this.

He also dictated the look of the Jack o’ Lantern this year – he wanted a scary one!

Boo!

I started a second baby project, a blanket made from Lily Chin’s Reversible Cabled Rib Shawl pattern. It’s a little bit insane because it will take forever, but it’ll be cute! Dream in Color Smooshy has been my “go-to” baby yarn recently, and I thought it would look great in a cable pattern, so this is what I got from Webs. It’s the Some Summer Sky colorway.

It came in 4 different shades, as you can see in the picture, so I’m just going to knit them in order of lightest to darkest, and make the gradient a design element. No way am I alternating skeins!

From my swatch and some rough calculations I did 5 repeats across (CO 248 stitches) using size 9 needles – and it is turning out to be about 32″ across which I think should be okay for a baby blanket. Here’s what I have so far:

And a close up:

The pattern and yarn together are making a wonderfully cushy fabric!  I hope baby likes it.

Okay, now that I am entering my third trimester today I should get going on some baby projects, shouldn’t I?  I found the cutest baby bunting pattern, which I’ve started in Plymouth Encore Chunky.

I got a gauge of 3.5 stitches to the inch with Size 10 (6mm) Knitpicks metal Options needles, and the honeycomb stitch pattern is a really easy mini-cable stitch.  Of course, as usual I am modifying the pattern to avoid seaming as much as possible.  The front and back and hood are supposed to be knit separately, then sewn together, which I hate!  So I started the bottom pretty much like a giant t0e-up sock, using Judy’s Magic Cast-on, and am knitting in the round to the point where it divides for the button placket.  What a great technique!  It took me no time to cast on 108 stitches (54 for each side), and looks beautifully seamless.  Here’s a link to Cat Bordhi’s video demonstration of the cast-on.  So this is what I have so far; hopefully in chunky yarn it shouldn’t take too long.

As for my Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl in Sea Silk, it’s almost done.

I’ll just knit until I run out of yarn, and omit the crochet edging on the top edge.  It is taking forever to get across a row now, but still an enjoyable knit.  The Knitpicks Zephyr needles have been lovely to work with for this yarn.  

Maybe a bit too sticky for wool though – I’d have to try and see.

Poor neglected blog..  I haven’t even looked at it since April.  The main reason is that shortly after the last post, I started a new WIP in my uterus – which led to fatigue and not doing that much besides working, spending time with Chris and Tim, and sleeping.  After the first trimester, I did manage to do a little knitting for my niece Lillian, who was a month old in these pictures (about 2 weeks ago).

She is so sweet!  The dress is a little big on her still, but she’ll grow into it in no time!  These two pictures were taken by her mommy and my sister Pat, who took the photo of Tim’s Baby Surprise Jacket that was published in Spin-Off Magazine.

When she fills it out I’ll post new pictures.  I also forgot to photograph the cute flower button I used for the back of the neck.  That will come too!

• Pattern:  Clara by Karin Vestergaard Mathiesen
• Yarn:  Dream in Color Smooshy, colorway Wisterious
• Needles:  Knit Picks Options (metal), US size 5 (3.75mm)
• Ravelry link here

This is the dress in the Soak ads from a while back.  The pattern is a little hard to find, and it only comes in kit form – from the Ravelry forums I found this source.  You need to call them, but their service is great! I called on a Saturday and received the kit by Tuesday.

The yarn that comes in the kit is alpaca/wool Isager Strik Alpaca 2, quite lovely, but not very practical for a baby. So I’m saving it for myself and used the Dream in Color superwash wool instead.  Smooshy is listed as fingering, while the Isager Alpaca 2 is listed as sport, but the Smooshy is actually thicker than the Alpaca 2. So I used larger needles and came up with a larger gauge, about 5.5 stitches to the inch (I also wanted it looser for better drape, given that it is pure merino with no alpaca).

The pattern is rather sparse and has no lace chart. I recommend a good swatch to make sure you understand the lace pattern, as well as for sizing purposes. I decided to use SSK instead of K2t tbl, since it looks better.

After finishing the baby dress, I started on a project with the Handmaiden Sea Silk that had been sitting in my stash, calling to me for some time.  It’s a 150 gram skein in colorway Blackberry, that I had been wondering what pattern to knit with it, since the colors are quite contrasty and not really suitable for complex lace.  I chose the Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl, since Feather and Fan makes any yarn look great, and I thought a triangle shape would hold my interest more than a rectangle.  I am trying out the new Knitpicks Zephyr needles for the first time with this project – I think the “stickiness” of the needles is perfect for this slippery yarn.  Here’s a photo from the start of the project, along with my baby bun, though this was also two weeks ago.  Both the shawl and my belly are bigger now, more photos to come later!

• Pattern:  Anne Hanson’s Bleeding Hearts Stole, from Interweave Knits Spring 2008
• Yarn:  The Painted Sheep Jasmine, 50/50 merino/silk laceweight, dyed by my friend Kris Gonzalez in the most beautiful, subtle variegated browns
• Needles:  Knit Picks Harmony, US size 4 (3.5mm)
• Mods:  I did not switch to a larger needle size for the bleeding hearts portion of the stole. Partly, I was too lazy, and partly, because I thought that flared ends might look nice.  And I did not knit two equal halves, as detailed in my previous post.
• Ravelry link here

I am completely in love with this stole, partly because it took over a year to knit (with interruptions), but I love the design, and it was fun to knit.

To block the stole, I put it in the sink with some cool water and Soak Wash (I had a sample of the Citrus fragrance, mmm!) for about 20 minutes, then put it on a towel, rolled it up, and went across the rolled towel with my knees.  Then I used blocking wires to go through every little point on the edging – that was really a pain, but at least I had blocking wires!  It would have been much worse with just pins.  Then, I stretched it out and pinned the wires in place on some interlocking foam tiles I have.  At first I stretched it really long and wasn’t able to stretch it as wide as I wanted, so I moved the ends closer together and was able to stretch out the width some more.  Here’s what it looked like blocking – not much, since it’s brown yarn on black tiles..

But it gives you an idea of the process. I didn’t have quite enough blocks for the whole length of the stole, so I had to improvise. This gave less than ideal blocking for part of it, but I don’t think it’s too noticeable in the end.

It took about a day to dry, and then I got this:

Here’s a closer look:

Aaaah..  I love it!

Aah, the return of real knitting content!  I started the Bleeding Hearts Stole over a year ago, and just finally managed to finish the knitting yesterday.  This evening, I grafted the two parts together.  Here’s the “before” picture.

I am a real novice at Kitchener stitch, since I have only done it for a couple of socks, and I prefer to do toe-up socks in order to avoid it..  Because I was not confident in my grafting skills, especially in lace, I moved the graft off-center so it wouldn’t be featured so prominently on my back – I did 14 repeats for one half, and 6 repeats for the other, instead of 10 and 10.  For guidance on Kitchener stitch, I used this Knitty.com article, which has excellent step-by-step photos.  The grafting itself went rather easily, but the hard part was evening up the tension so it would look nice.  What made it harder was that in this lace pattern, the graft line is zig-zagged!  Here is part of my graft, done losely at first:

With much effort and strain on the eyes, I managed to get it looking somewhat even.

Below is the “after” picture.  The grafting turned out better than I thought it would, but it’s still obvious, so I’m happy with my decision to move it to the side, where hopefully my arm will be covering it somewhat.  

Tomorrow, blocking!

After my last post about Mouse Guard, I got the okay from David Petersen to post pictures of Sadie!  My husband bought this original page from him for my birthday, and my dad blew up the colored page from the comic to the same size, then framed them side by side.  This is hanging on our living room wall.

Isn’t she gorgeous?  I love her!  Here is the sketch he did for me in my hardcover book, while we were chatting at the New York Comic-Con.

This is why I was clutching the book in my arms in the picture I took with him!  Brilliant.

Speaking of small rodents, we had a pair of real mice for almost 2 years, but they both passed on recently.  Unfortunately their life spans are pretty short.  They were very darling, but were more afraid of us than interactive with us.  So Chris decided on rats instead (we would love to get a dog, but don’t have the space or the time to raise a dog right now).  I know that most people think, “ewwww, rats!”  But we had a friend in college who kept a rat which was quite smart, clean, and cuddly, and Chris read a lot to confirm that pet rats tend to be that way.  So when the Paper Heart Rattery had babies available, we put together a rat home and went to pick up a pair of new rats! Here they are:

Here’s Tim meeting them for the first time:

He did manage to be gentle.

Even so, they were pretty scared, especially in the travel cage.

Here’s the new home we had ready for them. Pretty sweet for a pair of rats, if you ask me.

During the car ride home, we decided on their names. I’ve always found human names for pets to be funny, so that’s what we did. This little guy we named Steve.  Pretty darling!

And this one we named Joe.  He’s a little bigger and bolder than Steve.

Already, they’re settling in and starting to get used to us. Here’s Joe getting acquainted with Daddy Chris.

They like to climb around on us, and when we go near the cage, they come up and try to snoof us through the bars.  Pretty cute!

I have always considered myself somewhat geeky, since I enjoy sci-fi, comics, video games, and other geeky things, but I never thought I’d find myself at the New York Comic-Con!  Chris convinced me to go because we’d be seeing an old college friend, and because we’d get to meet David Petersen, the creator of Mouse Guard, which I love and have mentioned on this blog before.  It is a comic world set in the 1100’s, with mice that are adorable, yet fierce, resourceful, and fearlessly determined to protect their society.  How can anyone resist that?

We got to the Javits Center early, and went straight to David’s table, so we had a nice long chat before he got too busy greeting fans.  Our friend Jason Liang snapped this photo of us chatting with him and his wife, Julia.

Chris started off by telling them that he bought one of the original Mouse Guard pages for me.  It turns out that it is one of their favorites, and one they did not intend to sell, but we managed to get it due to a miscommunication between the two of them.  So I feel guilty, but very fortunate to have it.  He did reproduce it in watercolor for her later, which is so sweet.  I don’t think I can post a photo of the original that we own, but here you can see it on a T-shirt.  Of course I have ordered the shirt and will be wearing it all the time when the weather warms up!

As you can see, I was wearing my Malabrigo sweater that day.  I don’t remember how it came up, but Chris mentioned that I made it myself, so Julia told us about a scene in David’s upcoming children’s book that involves some porcupines who knit with their quills, and a bunny who tries but has a really hard time with it!  You can see a preview of this on his blog and it is delightful – I can’t wait for it to come out!  I told them they would have a large built-in audience of knitters looking for the book.

I brought my copy of the first Mouse Guard series collected in hardcover for him to autograph, which he signed with a little sketch of Sadie, the mouse in the artwork that we own.  I was going “squeeeeee!” on the inside the whole time.

I don’t normally do the ga-ga fangurl thing, but Mouse Guard is really worth it!

After that, I didn’t really care what we did for the rest of the day, but it was enjoyable.  We ran into characters like these:

Princess Peach from the Mario games – she was actually being interviewed for a cultural anthropolgy study.

A mother and daughter duo, not matching, but cute.  

And of course, the requisite Stormtroopers!

We even got to meet Colin Baker, the 6th Dr. Who.  As we were standing on line, I felt highly unworthy of even being there, because the women in front of us were totally geeking out – reciting what TARDIS stands for, debating over what will happen after the 13th Doctor, and fawning over a guy who was dressed like David Tennant, but didn’t look anything like him.  I never saw any of Colin Baker’s TV episodes, which apparently were pretty bad, but Chris and I really like the work he’s done in the Big Finish Dr. Who audio dramas. He was pleased to hear that we like them and said, “they are well written,” implying that the TV episodes were not..  Anyway, he signed a CD for us, and posed for a photo:

He actually said, “a rose between two thorns.”

After that, I almost fell asleep a few times at the DC Forum, where Chris was eager to hear the latest about Green Lantern.  Then we left the convention and went for dinner with Jason.

It had been forever since our last meeting.  He published some comics in college, and Chris contributed a couple of pieces.  Chris also commissioned a piece of artwork from him for my birthday many years ago:

Talented, indeed!  It was great to see him again, and a great day in general, geeking out with the best!

Of course, I didn’t finish the Reid cardigan for Annabelle.  I told them, it’s a spring cardigan anyway!  Here’s what I have so far.

I did manage to hold up the pieces to Annabelle, and think it will work out. It will just be longer than the pattern calls for. We had a nice time with her family for Christmas. Here’s Tim and Chris with Grandma and the cousins:

Tim sampling Santa’s cookies that Uncle Nat made on Christmas Eve.

Two excited cousins on Christmas morning!

Checking out their stockings.

Tim loved this Christmas light necklace!

Princess Palooza!

Baby Ryan, just happy to be there.

It was a great Christmas!

Oops!  Long time no blog, due to technical difficulties.  I’ve gotten some knitting done.  During a conference in October, I finished the feather and fan scarf I knit from my fractal stripe handspun.  I had reversed the pattern front to back in the middle of the scarf because I was knitting during a concert and messed up, but decided to leave it that way.  It turned out lovely.

You can see that one half of the scarf has slow color changes, while the other has more frequent color changes.  I love it!  However, when I was blocking it, I discovered this:

Aaaaaaaaugh!!  I hate dropped stitches in lace.  As you can see, I salvaged what I could and put a safety pin through 3 stitches that seemed to prevent any further damage.  I am not sure how to pick these up again, and may just have to fudge it.  This was going to be a gift, but I don’t want to give something that I messed up.  So I may end up keeping it for myself – it depends on how well the repair goes.

So instead of working on that, I started a new project – the Reid lace cardigan, from Knitty.com.  This will be for Annabelle, and hopefully in time for Christmas.  But in trying to be clever and avoid seaming, I managed to mess up in a few different ways.

First off, I decided to knit the right and left fronts together with the back up to the armhole shaping.  Once I got there, I realized that there IS no armhole shaping – it’s a drop shoulder design.  Duh!  So basically I knit in one piece up to the neck shaping.  It really didn’t look that big to me.  Instead of frogging, I started on a sleeve.

I’ll see how it looks as a longer cardigan.  One of the ladies in my knitting group suggested putting a ribbon through the waist – I think that would look cute!  We’ll see how it goes as I fudge it up.