Holl-iday

Before I show you pictures of my finished vacation-knitting-project, a few quintessential SoCal scenes:

Oranges

Beaches

Succulents

Footprints of the Stars (were Rita’s feet really so small?!)

the Garment District

It’s been a super sunny and relaxing vacation. Even the LA traffic was tolerable since I was always a passenger and always had my knitting in hand. Today I finished Holl – the structured but slouchy pullover made from di.Ve’ Zenith.

I love it. It was really hard to frog the pretty little Vignette when I’d just finished it, but it was the right call – this pullover is more my style and the batwing sleeves keep my pits from sweating.

Following the advice of Meganimal, I did a provisional cast-on. This allowed me to initially add an extra band to the body of the sweater and then decide later whether I wanted to keep it (I didn’t). It also allowed me to join the front and back and knit the bottom band in one continuous loop.

There was just barely enough yarn….here’s a picture of everything I had left over after seaming:

Details
Pattern: Holl by Kirsten Johnstone
Yarn: di.Ve’ Zenith
Size: I had a diff gauge so I knit a Large – it’s more like a Small
Mods: none, just the provisional cast-on
Ravelry link 

And then randomly at the end of our photo shoot, a chicken walked into the yard. I fed him some apple.

from the dogsitters

We are finishing up a week in sunny southern California.

Our friends emailed this picture of Sam, captioned: “You can take the cat bed home with you, if you want…”
Aww. I miss that dog.

The ghost of the better knitting pattern

Today I am struggling with what I’ll call “the ghost of the better knitting pattern.” It’s a powerful nagging shadow that haunts nearly all of my projects, appearing about 75% of the way in and lingering until the end. In the beginning it manifests as seemingly practical questions: Do I already own too many cardigans?; What could I wear this sweater with?; and Is this the best use of this yarn? If things are really bad, I start cheating on the pattern before the garment is even done…running searches on ravelry and comparing. Sometimes when the piece is done I love it after all. Sometimes not.

Yesterday I got to the last seam in the Vignette Cardigan and the ghost was telling me to frog it. I went to sleep thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, tried it on again:

: and ultimately decided to not decide for a while.

The pattern I was cheating on Vignette with is this:

The Vignette is a cute sweater. The pattern’s well written  and there’s nothing obviously wrong with the fit or size of what I made. But I forgot how much fitted wool sweater sleeves make my armpits sweat. For real! That’s why I had to give Neulottu Naisen Jakku to momser who is always cold. And sadly, it’s why I made need to unravel sweet little Vignette and turn it into something else.

For now I’ll set it aside and work on one of those poncho patterns.

Ciento Uno Kamis

See that there? I’m applying my Spanish skills.

According to ravelry, 101 Kami Hats have been knit! When I put up my first knitting pattern this fall I didn’t know if anyone would see it, much less knit it, so watching the number of projects slowly climb has been a thrill.

Here are some of my favorites…

(left-right, top-bottom) dipgirlflesh, MsAnnaLisa,  jieuenne, kijibaji, brakenfern,  cerebralneedles

 

Vignette Cardigan

Today is Super Bowl Sunday but unlike the rest of New England, we might not watch the game. Whether we do end up watching football or International House Hunters (my new favorite…I’m inspired by all the people picking up and moving to provincial France), I’m going to be working on the sleeves for my vignette cardigan.

The pattern is easy to follow and has clever details. I don’t have much torso curve, so I removed some of the hip and waist shaping, and I don’t think I’m going to flare the sleeves. It’s too bad the di.Ve Zenith yarn was discontinued – it’s soft and squishy and has great stitch definition.

DIY cat perches

Since the start we have struggled with how much to let our cats outdoors. Our laissez faire approach worked just fine in Oregon – they meowed  to be let in and out, and mostly sat under bushes in the backyard and watched birds. But then in Boston things got trickier. There’s no backyard fence, and Edith started getting scared of dogs and pedestrians and refusing to go out. Teddy kept up his long outdoor adventures but then he got beat up. Twice. We didn’t have the heart to confine him to the little apartment 24/7, but his outdoor time has been restricted to a few morning hours.

In an effort to keep them entertained, Read started researching cat toys and cat towers. One day I came home and this picture was up on my computer screen:

HAHA! That thing is huge! And expensive. I pointed out to Read that these people have what appears to be a nice basement for their behemoth feline castle. We can’t really spare the floorspace for such a thing. But our cats do like sitting up on bookshelves and windowsills…they’d love some kind of high perch.

I went to one of my favorite sites – Ikeahackers – for some ideas on how to build cheap modern-looking cat furniture. I found a cat ladder, a cat tree, and links to this super-sweet perched bed:

IKEA is a long drive, so we just went down the street to Home Depot to see what we could find. Twenty minutes of wandering and we came home with:

There was much deliberating on the whole “one bracket or two” matter. Ultimately we decided (with the help of Brad at Home Depot) that one bracket per perch was enough because; our cats are petite, the perches are only 8″ long, and the brackets are really heavy duty.

The whole thing came together quickly. We cut the carpeting with kitchen shears and glued it to the boards, then screwed the brackets to the boards with a cordless drill, and screwed the perches to the wall. Here are a bunch of photos of what we made, all for under $30!

Company

Read is not able to sit at the table and type without a lap mate. Usually one hops up, but last night they squished in and made room for two.