Sunday, June 24, 2007

Well.  Whoever invented summer vacation is my favorite person right now.

I've been knitting, and reading, and sleeping, and cooking, and gardening, and staring off into space, and whatever else it is that people do when they're not working.  Lovely.

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The photo from Greenfield Village was, as many of you already knew (wow!), a Jacquard Loom.  This loom used a punched card system to determine which color to use for the weaving, which was borrowed to develop early "calculating machines", which evolved into what we know as computers, and the birth of IBM.  As a former programmer (IBM System/36, anyone?) and a current fiber person, I find this very cool.

Kathy C. sent links to these websites:  here and here for more photos.  And there's always Wikipedia!

There's a book called Jacquard's Web, by James Essinger, that I stumbled upon at my library this winter.  It had a lot of information, but I didn't think it was written particularly well -- it contained a lot of repetition (a LOT of repetition), for one thing.  The reviews on Amazon are all glowing -- so what do I know? 

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My Faith Jacket is temporarily on hold.  I knit one of the sleeves, but screwed up the shaping (like I always do with the first sleeve -- that's why I always knit at least three!), and realized that one of the three yarns in that piece did not go with the rest of the sweater, and most definitely did NOT go with me.  Too turquoisey and yellowy-greeny.  I'm meeting with my buddy Jacquie soon, to beg her to make me some more yarn in a compatible color.

Ruth S. asked how I'm crocheting the strips together.  I was really worried about how I was going to do that, and thought I'd have to expend a lot of brain power figuring out the best looking alternative, but in the end I just went with what the designer recommended, and it looks absolutely fine.  The strips are made with slipped edge stitches.  Sally tells you to crochet together one half of the slipped edge stitch from one strip and one half of the slipped edge stitch from a second strip.  I used the "inside" half of the slipped edge stitches -- the half closest to the knitting, as opposed to the one closest to the edge.  She includes photos of the technique, but I find the details a little hard to pick out in some of her photos -- too many neutral colors.  Anyway, it worked for me!

Did I mention that I also eliminated four of the panels (two from the back, and one from each front)?  I didn't want the sleeves to start at my elbows.  The photos don't really show it, but that's an awfully wide body on that garment.  AND, I don't think the sides are sewn together, but you'd never know it from the photos.  Hmmm.

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My current lack of sleep is due to a large family of squirrels that has been partying in the attic over my bed.  Here's number eight of at least nine:

Squirrels Number One through Five committed suicide by jumping/falling down between two studs inside the front wall of my living room, from which they were removed a week ago (and now I have a little door cut into the inside wall -- should I turn it into a Fairy Door?).  Squirrels Number Six through Eight fell victim to the live trap that hangs on the roof right over my bed (while captive, they have a tendency to scratch at the roof all night long, but really, can you blame them?).  Squirrel Number Nine appears to be smarter than the rest, and has bypassed the trap so far, preferring whatever he/she finds in our attic to the easy-access peanut butter bait. 

And this doesn't count the chipmunk (NOT a squirrel) that Husband Number One managed to rescue from the front wall and set loose into the wild (well, technically, it got loose inside the house and then ran out the front door).

It's always exciting here at the Peasley Wildlife Preserve (or Mortuary, depending on the day).

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I've been working on a lot of little projects, of which I have no pictures (bad blogger!).  I'll rectify that soon.  Meanwhile, here are some more pictures of my students' work:

Little vests from my Introduction to Intarsia class:

Little sweaters from my Beginning Finishing class:

Pretty colors!

Most of the tic-tac-toe vests are Cascade 220 Superwash, I think, as is the bottom sweater in the second photo.  The yellow, green and light blue sweaters are Kona Superwash, expertly hand dyed by Nancy McRay of Woven Art.

That's all I've got for right now.

Sarah

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

I'm teaching five classes within the next three days, and then I'm off duty until after Labor Day (first week of September).  Well, I'm not technically off duty that entire time, since I've agreed to teach my Knitter's Choice classes in July and August, but that's just one day out of each month.  Other than those, I'll be OFF DUTY, so if you see me, don't ask me any knitting questions.  I'm likely to just smile at you and then go back to gazing unfocussedly (is that a word?) into the far distance (as opposed to the near distance?).  (Hmm.  The brain seems to be starting its vacation a little early . . .)

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For those of you who are/were interested, I think I've added a link to an rss feed over there on the left.  I'm not even sure what I just said, so hopefully I did it correctly and it works -- please let me know either way, if you try to use it (the Queen of HTML is still a little foggy on the rss issue).

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So . . . how about some pictures of the non-blankie variety?

Here are some of the amazing and creative color combinations my students came up with in my latest Introduction to Fair Isle class:

I'm hoping to fire up the new and improved Student Gallery on my "work" website very soon, although I've forgotten who knit what (we're talking five or so years of photos of student projects, for which I didn't keep track of names), so I'm not too sure what I'm going to do about that.

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During the last elementary school field trip I had the pleasure of chaperoning (and I mean the LAST elementary school field trip I will EVER have the pleasure of chaperoning!  Yippee!), we visited Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.  It's a fabulous place, but it was a hot day, and the only thing I was motivated enough to take a photo of was this:

Anyone know what it is?  I'm sure I blogged about another one I saw on another trip at another time . . .

I LOVE these things.  Anybody?

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I've been trying to knit a pair of socks each month this year, but I only knit one sock in April, the matching one in May, and I haven't started any yet for June, although the yarn and pattern are sitting by my knitting chair (as are about a million other projects I want to start RIGHT NOW).  Here is the April/May entry:

I like my socks to fit snugly, but I think I may have pushed this snugness thing about as far as I can.  There's very little breathing room in these socks:

But that's okay with me!  The specs are on my Finished Projects 2007 page.  I'm too lazy to repeat them here.

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Celtic Dreams is on hold until the temperatures get below the 90s so I can try it on for size/length before I add the bottom border.  In the meantime, Sheila Dummy doesn't ever seem to break a sweat.

In the meantime, unlike yours truly, Sheila Dummy doesn't ever seem to break a sweat, so she's currently the keeper of the sweater.

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I've also been doing a bit of secret knitting.  I'm knitting some samples for a designer friend who is having some work published, and I don't feel comfortable saying anything more about that yet.

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I've been distracted, though, by this:

This is Sally Melville's Faith Jacket, from her Color book.  I'm knitting it with numerous skeins of yarn I've collected over the years that were brilliantly hand dyed and handspun by my friend Jacquie Vaughan.  Add to the mix a bag of navy blue Baby Cashmerino from Debbie Bliss, and . . . well . . . I haven't been this excited about a knitting project in quite some time.  It's just garter stitch, but the mix of yarns (each strip uses two handspun plus the navy blue) is making me very, very happy.  Add to that all of the soccer games, baseball games, and piano lessons I've been hanging out at lately, and what you get is a whole bunch of garter stitch strips.  I started crocheting two of them together one night at about 11:30, and the next thing I knew, it was 3:30 a.m. and I had run out of strips.  Yikes!

Here are some close-ups of some of my pretty, pretty strips:

And since I had started Sally's Faith Jacket twice before (once with the ill-fated "red stash sweater" yarn that doesn't seem to want to be ANYTHING, and again with all of the black yarns in my stash -- except that I only have two black yarns in my stash),

Oh, wait.  That was too long of a parenthetical aside, so let me start again.

And since I had started Sally's Faith Jacket twice before, I believe this counts as June's UFO Resurrection Challenge project!

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I've got some other projects on the needles, too, of course, but no photos just yet, so I'll save those for another post.

Thanks for all of the comments!  Keep 'em coming!

Sarah

Thursday, June 7, 2007

HA!!!!!

I, Sarah Peasley, a mere mortal, have conquered the HTML code that will allow my brand spanking new commenting system to actually WORK. 

Take THAT, you stupid computer language!!!!!

I can't top that accomplishment today, but leave me a comment anyway!!!

(Please!  I miss you!)

Sarah

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