July Already

Tomorrow is July already, and it means that a half of the year 2007 is gone. Poof.

The first day of the three-day weekend (I am taking a day off on Monday) is over, uneventfully. I did sleep over ten hours though -- I spent all day yesterday at work, looking at my budget and conciliating the expenses, and I was exhausted by the early evening. I went to bed before Mitch, and boy I felt good in the morning. We went to see Ratatouille. It was the first time Mitch has ever gone to a movie theater. It's pretty amazing, because he's been ready since age one. His attention and focus have been excellent. I'm not sure why we waited so long -- I think it's largely my hesitation in going to the theater. I haven't been to see a movie for a long time -- I think the last one was Star Wars I (the little Anakin one), isn't it over ten years ago?

My life has been crazy-busy, and I really didn't want to go sit in the dark for two hours, nothing else to do -- if we watched DVDs at home, I could knit, fold laundry, read, or work on my laptop -- it's all about multi-tasking. I'm going to have to let go of wanting to do so much all the time, as my son really enjoyed the experience today....

I started on a new pair of socks today, using the red tweed yarn I bought in Fort Bragg. This one will be for my mom again. While I was visiting her in May, I saw the first pair I knitted for her -- all worn out and pilled -- well loved. Best compliment and appreciation for the handknit socks, isn't it?

I am thinking about trying Fair Isle. Something simple. The latest issue of KnitScene has a cute sweater with a pretty Fair Isle pattern, and it's making my fingers itch! Colors, though...

A while ago I saw a blog about picking a color scheme for knitting, utilizing a image processing software.

I kept thinking about it when I saw the ice plant all over the side of the hills on the beach.

They were strikingly beautiful -- pinkish deep red, emerald green. It's a color combination I wouldn't have thought of.

Impressionism effect.

Tile effect. Pretty, huh?

So many projects, so little time. Sigh.

Little R&R

First of all, thank you for your well-wishes! I am close to be done with my antibiotics treatment for my strep/ear infection, and although it did take a few days to fix my sore throat, I am definitely feeling better. My painful neck kept bugging me through the weekend, but today it's 90% pain free. I have to think that they were indeed all related. Fellow knitters, beware of nagging neck pain -- it may not be from knitting too much. When in doubt, see your doctor!

We were in Fort Bragg again over the weekend. I enjoyed our trip there in February so much so that I wanted to go back there again. Everyone was still recovering from whatever that hit us last week, but it sure was wonderful to get away. Nothing major on agenda, just a relaxing three-day trip by the beach -- I surely needed that.

I love the sound of the ocean -- who wouldn't? And here, it was the only sound I could hear.

I wish I could do this every weekend! I'd love to plan another trip there in the fall. Oh yes, we did go back to the wonderful restaurant, Mendo Bistro. Mitch fell asleep at the table. A few minutes of peace.

Unfortunately, they don't serve the amazing Crab Cakes in the summer -- if you think about it, of course, it should be seasonal, especially if they are good. When we were there in February, they were not good -- they were great, excellent, and amazing. Here's another reason to go back there.

We also made another visit to the local yarn store, Navarro River Knits. I bought some sock yarn and Kurikol rovings. I'd never heard of Kurikol, but from the look of it, it looks very similar to the natural brown pencil roving Nancy gave me. Can't wait to spin it!

Here are the pictures of the Bunny Socks. It really was a suspense -- when I started the toe decrease on the second sock, it seemed that it was unanimous among the knitters and Charlie that I would run out of the yarn.

The white ring-like object is the mohair I was coupling with Lang BEBE, which, as shown in the photo, just a few meters (not even, maybe) left....

Amazing! I've finished it with less than a meter of Lang BEBE to spare. This is the closest I came to running out of yarn at the end. I actually have another ball of this yarn, so I am going to knit another pair, just slightly shorter! I've bought a ball of light pink Chrystal Palace Kid Mohair to go with it. It'll be mighty girly :-)

Ouch

I've been having pretty serious sore neck for nearly three weeks, and it was getting worse. I was worried, but I thought my being stressed a bit was the cause. Now the major stressors had come and gone, my neck ache moved into my head and was pounding! And then came the fever of 101+.

Finally I got into see my doctor today, and she told me I had a heavy-duty strep throat and ear infection. She thought the neck ache was coming from those two major nasties. I surely hope so -- I'm really tired of this pain. Because of it I had very little knitting done in the last few weeks.

Yesterday afternoon after the fever was gone, I lied on my back and knitted with my handspun -- the back of dropshoulder vest.

It was a bit hard to knit at the beginning, but now I'm loving it. I've spun multi-colored locks just randomly, so I can't predict the order of the colors or how the color blocks would look.

I am mixing in the greens here and there... Brighter pink to come. I'm a bit anxious to see a bigger knitted piece.

Oh, yeah. Girls came over last Friday, and I did finish (finally) my Bunny Socks. Pictures next time!

Demise of Yarn Stores

What knitters wouldn't dream about opening their own yarn store? Yet it's rare to see yarn stores doing well. In my short (second-round) knitting life, I've already seen several local yarn stores went out of business -- Yarn Collection in Mill Valley, which kick-started my stash. Knitting Workshop in Sebastopol, which was Liz's favorite. I heard about a month ago that the fairly new store in Mill Valley called Studio Knit was also closed.

Then today, on my daily visit on DeStash -- I made a sad discovery. They had decided to call it quit. What a bummer!

I did wonder why such site can continue -- the hosts weren't charging any fees, but they were maintaining the site for free. Apparently that became too much. So their reason is obviously very different from the ones that caused the local yarn stores to close their doors. Still, one less place to visit and shop, and I did enjoy site....

Support your favorite yarn store (hopefully local business)!

Today my son turns four! It's also Yarn Harlot's birthday. My son is destined to be a knitter :-)

13,808

No, it's not the number on the visitor counter :-)

Sunday, before we got out to the park, I put a pedometer on Mitch. By the time he went to bed in the evening, the number on the pedometer was 13,808. So, today I put it on me all day. It's less than 6,000! I need more exercise.

Speaking of the visitor counter, now I know who one of two "regulars" is! It's "Hojo" from Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos, the host of the Yarn Harlot event last year. What a wonderful surprise. Now I have to figure out who another one is, from Okayama Japan.... Drop me a hint?

Did you knit in public last Saturday? I surely did, at Wine and Art Festival in downtown Novato. Sadly, I saw no other knitters, and no one asked me what I was knitting. Just an hour or so at the festival and Mitch wanted to go home. What a bummer.... So no photos for this post.

I have had a pretty bad ache in my neck for over a week now, and now it's coming up to the left side of my head and pulsating. I don't feel much like knitting. That's just not normal....
Hopefully I'll have more interesting post soon!

Night Out with Girls

Erin, Huguette and I had a date last night. Guess where we went...

I wish they had planned this event on weekend, but I guess with Yarn Harlot's compressed book tour schedule, it just had to be on a Thursday night. I hurried home, picked up my son (who really wanted to come with me to see Erin), left him with Charlie to watch another Star Wars, then went to get Erin.

Huguette was knitting away saving us seats at the bookstore in Petaluma, just a block away from our yarn store Knitterly. Gosh, a sea of knitters. They didn't say how many attendance they had, but my guess is more than 300...

This is just the view from my seat, which was closer to the front (thanks Huguette!) It was funny to watch knitters with knitted articles (lots of shawls) on in the quite warm room, fanning themselves with the Harlot's books. And the faces of the unsuspecting bookstore customers coming in! Hilarious.

This was our second time to hear Yarn Harlot speak, after our Los Altos date last year. She was as funny as the first time around. She talked about how misunderstood we knitters are.

Underestimated and misrepresented we may be, we have allies. Lots of them.

We didn't hang around for Yarn Harlot's autograph. We each had one from last year, and that was good. What we needed was food and good company of our friends. We were all a bit stressed from our daily grinds -- I sure enjoyed the time with the girls. I needed that.

Tomorrow is World Wide Knit in Public day! I will be sure to knit out at the Art and Wine Festival in downtown Novato!

Visitor Counter Blues

When we started this blog, I didn't think much of it. I always loved to write, and having a place to write about knitting and other things (I wasn't spinning then) seemed like fun. It was, and still is.

I got curious about finding out how many visitors we were getting. So I signed up with the visitor counter. I'm not sure now if it was such a good idea.

I check the counter several times a day. The counter never goes beyond the single-digit -- a day, mind you, not an hour. I realize that a half of the visitors is me. How depressing.

(My handspun for the vest project -- is it too colorful?)

And then I wonder why it has to be ever depressing. I started blogging for fun and to have a place to write. Even when no one's visiting, I still enjoy it. I am a terrible record keeper for my knitting and spinning, but now I have those on our blog. No misplacing the notes.

But still. If no one comes, why am I blogging? (Sadly, If you build it, they will come wasn't true.)

While I was in Japan in May, I gave the URL to my brother.
My brother and I were close growing up. We went to the same high school, and then to two universities in Tokyo that were in walking distance. We met for lunch sometimes.

After college we went different ways -- very different, indeed. I across the Pacific. Marriages, break-ups, kids. Have kept a very little contacts.

Last weekend, a visitor from Japan came to our blog. It was my brother.
Never thought knowing him coming to read what I had written made me so warm and fuzzy.

(Mitch's cool Japanese T-shirt)

Mitch wants to go see Uncle Jin again. Will plan another trip this summer....

Some More Green

I haven't been knitting much lately. I'm spending all of my (small allotment of) free time carding and spinning.

I've done some counting and number punching, and found out that the Cotsweld I spun wasn't enough to knit the Cardigan-turned-Vest I was planning to knit. I had about 400 meters, but I think I needed about 550 meters. But that was all of the Cotsweld batch I bought.

But from the same Ebay seller, I had bought a bag of (dirty) Romney dyed in shades of green. They felt very similar to touch (and similarly dirty!). So I decided to card and spin it -- the spun Cotsweld has shades of green in it anyway, so it may just go well together.

From the carded fluffs of the shades of green into --

This.

Plied.

Still not sure if this will go well with the pastel pink-green yarn --

... but I will see. It could end up in an awfully colorful vest, but worst case I can always frog it.

Now these skeins are washed and hang to dry. I love the wet sheep smell!

Tomorrow I will try swatching. If I still don't have enough, I'm not sure what I'm going to do though!

P.S. We were watching Star Wars this morning -- One of Mitch's favorites -- and noticed that Chewbacca is very spinnable (and hence attractive)!

Memorial Day Weekend is Over

Unfortunately we were all down with a stomach flu. Mitch remained relatively frisky so he was pretty bored with the parents' inactivity. Of course as the long weekend comes to the end, we are feeling better...

Before this thing hit me full force, I managed to ply up the superwash. It's a little more green -- mint green -- in reality. It's very soft and silky, and I love it. I have two hanks of about 100 meters, and some more, so I am planning to knit a pair of socks.

My plying technique is still uneven. Most of the superwash was plied a bit loosely than I would have wanted it to be. So the third, smaller hank, I tried to ply much tighter.

Looks just about right.

Here's the pattern I am planning to knit from the Japanese pattern book I bought.

Isn't it cute? I am thinking of using the Bubble Gum Cotsweld I spun. I'm going to change it a bit and omit the sleeves at the arrow in the picture -- it'll be a cute drop-shoulder vest. I hope I have enough yarn for this. Some serious swatching and calculations to do...

My Bunny Socks is slowly progressing. And oh darn, back to work...

I'm Back...

... from Japan.

A view from the office in Harumi, Tokyo. Busy, busy four day trip, two days out of four visiting with my mom and brother.

The Kabuki-za (Kabuki Theater) in Ginza, Tokyo. Bad angle, but it was the best I could do with my suit case and laptop in tow.

Of course, eatin' was wonderful. Contrary to the popular belief, great food isn't always expensive in Japan. This sushi bowl, two of them with soup and two beer for lunch with my mom, was about $20 total! And it was great.

The trip was too short for the long flight that was required -- but I needed to be home for Mitch's dance recital, which was held this evening! It was all worth it though. There was no knitting related fun, except for a pattern book I bought. I do have a project I am planning to knit out of this book. In fact, with my handspun -- I will post the picture of the design next time.

Boy, no knitting or spinning pictures on this post! I'm thinking about joining the Knitlist ring, but this isn't going to qualify!

Bunny Socks

I rammaged through my stash and found the yarn I wanted to use for my next pair of socks (number 5 for the year). As soon as I started knitting, I knew they were going to be for me, nobody else.

Lang BEBE yarn -- fingering, superwash wool -- and white Chrystal Palace Kid Merino mohair together. Lang BEBE is so cute but too soft and kind of flimsy to be knitted by itself -- maybe good for babies, but I'd put a hole on the socks right away.

By pairing it with the mohair, it's very cushy and substantial. Hopefully more durable too.

The relaxation factor of hand-knitted socks is amazing. But these will be super-decompression, unwinding bunny socks. I can't wait. I'm taking this on my flight to Japan tomorrow.

I'm itching to start a summer sweater, but I haven't been able to decide which one. Oh, I've added the Lotus Blossom Tank KAL button and links to the side bar -- there has been a number of visitors to this blog from my post on the KAL. The KAL activity has slowed down after the summer, but there are still visitors from it -- a nice surprise.

I haven't been to Japan for business for a long, long time. Strangely, it makes me nervous. I'm not prepared. It means that I won't be knitting all the way there -- some work to do :-(

Shades of Green

Chartreuse --

Did I spell that right?

We had a beautiful weather here in Novato last weekend. I spent some time in the backyard, tending my plants, then I looked at the rosemary trimmings -- oh yeah. I can dye with this.

Strangely, any of my natural dyeing books mention rosemary as a dye plant, but I have seen this site before, and wanted to try it. Since it was a hot day, rather than subjecting my family to hours of rosemary soup cooking in the kitchen, I decided to use the grill outside.

If you want to try dyeing on the BBQ grill, note -- it's better to remove the grates and put the pot/pan closer to the flame. It's also a good idea to have a thermometer handy -- this is in fact the first time I checked the temperature throughout, and because of it I may discovered one of the reasons why I keep failing with dyeing. What I needed may have been -- more heat.

I've neglected to take pictures of the process, but here's what I did --

Cut sprigs of rosemary into stainless steel bowl -- small pieces -- about 300 grams. Cover with water and simmer, 140 - 150 F, for a little over an hour. I mordanted 60 grams of wool with 10% alum + pinch of cream of tar tar, and cooled it down, and washed it. The rosemary soup is now yellow-greenish brown, or brownish yellow-green -- depending on how you take it. We leave to Josh's baseball game, leaving the soup to cool.

After we come back from the ball game, I filtered the soup, then added the mordanted wool in it. Again, making sure that it's heated slowly to around 140 F, I left it simmering for an hour -- catching a quick nap. Took it off the heat and left it to cool.

I really like what I got -- it's yellow-green, yellow stronger than the shade of green. The photo just didn't capture the color, although I took it in the natural light. Chartreuse? I was supposed to get much darker, stronger hunter green though -- like the third one from the top on the color swatches on the link above (see near bottom of the page). The result was completely different.

The wool smells wonderful, even after it's washed and dried. It's much sweeter, complex kind of fragrance, rather than the pungent, culinary rosemary aroma.

I'm disappointed that no matter what I tried I couldn't take a picture that showed the true color of this dye project. I will try posting some more pictures as I spin this.

I've finished socks for Tomoko. She's my friend at work, and she had requested a pair of "sage color" socks.

It's getting too warm for a pair of cushy wool socks, but since she lives in San Francisco, I hope they are still somewhat appreciated... Summer in the city can be freezing sometimes.

I bought this yarn in Montreal in March, with Tomoko's request in mind. Is this sage? Maybe it's more like wasabi. It's made in UK -- very cute label.

Mitch had a good weekend, playing soccer, playing with Erin's boys, and enjoying the weather. So did I -- the problem is that weekend is too short, and now Josh has a bum thumb, and Warriors lost!

Wish I Were There

Worriors beat Dallas! I still remember watching the last playoff game they won in 1991.
I'm hoping to finish the socks number four of the year before the next match, because I don't get much knitting done while watching the games.

No Pink

I was hoping that after several sessions of shimmering, the apple bark dye would saturate the wool and turn into pink as my book said.

No such luck. See the pretty muted pink swatch? This was what I was hoping for, and what I was supposed to get. See the wool next to it? It's just another sad pale tan! I don't think I made a mistake on the dye stuff - fiber ratio. I had 154g of bark, and I dyed 65g of wool -- considering that the book recommends 1:1 ratio, I was pretty conservative.

The lichen dye has been sitting for more than four months. No pink there either. It's supposed to take 120 days to develop the deep burgundy color. Mine is just sickly greenish brown. I just learned from one of the Japanese fiber blogs that I visit that I'm supposed to open the jar lid to let the air in. I didn't do that -- being afraid of the ammonia odor. Come to think of it, I'm supposed to shake the jar daily to incorporate the oxygen into the dye, so it only makes sense to let the supply of oxygen in. So I've been braving the smell to open the jar every day, but no luck.

OK -- three failures (Black-eyed Susans, apple bark and lichens) out of six (dandelions, turmeric and hibiscus tea were successful) isn't that bad. As much as it's been discouraging and disappointing.

Oh, by the way -- Mitch says "Hi Grandma!" to his Grandma Eunice. What a goofball!

Weekend in Texas...

Hello everyone, Erin here. Just thought I'd announce myself as Tamami is usually the one that does the posting.

First of all, let me give kudos to Tamami for making our blog beautiful and for keeping up the posting. I swear this blog would be dead if it were left up to the rest of us to post!

I thought I would post a not so knitting related update. Yesterday I returned from a long weekend in Austin, Texas with my son, Austen. We went for my brother's wedding, and we had a great time. However, I'm a bit tired since I wasn't in bed before 3 am any night that I was there. I spent a lot of time with my uncle seeing the city and shopping at WalMart at 3am. Do you know how many people are at WalMart at 3am? Exactly 5 (not including us). - 4 people stocking shelves and one checker. It was a bit surreal.

Here is a picture from the wedding. The ring bearer is my son.


I had hoped to get more knitting done on the trip, but not much knitting except on the plane. I travelled with 3 different projects and wasn't asked once at the airport to open my bag. I guess that the screeners are used to knitting needles.

Knitting update:
On the needles: Plain sock (2nd one) in Socks that Rock January One colorway, Feather and fan shawl in KnitPicks Andean Treasure in purple, and Meida's socks from Favorite Socks book in Chasing Rainbows pansies colorway.

I need a break...

It's been pretty tough. Just way too busy at work. Too many problems. Yuck.

It means not much time spent on my wheel -- even though I'm completely in love with it and what it produces.


Even if my mint green roving and the spun yarn on a bobbin reckons.

My modified Boogie vest still awaits to be completed. The mystery of three missing stitches on my sock remains to be a mystery. I have never kept a sock on needles this long, untouched.

I've been trying some more natural dyeing -- I started to make a dye bath with apple tree bark before I left to Toronto. Finally yesterday I bathed wool in the pretty pink bath. It looks pretty when it's in the bath, but when I lift it up and the dye drains off, the wool is just pale tan color. Reminds me of the Black-eyed-susans failure. Bummer.

My baby has a bum thumb. He fell with a drinking glass in his hand -- although, very fortunately, he didn't cut his hand, he bruised his thumb to the extreme, and his thumbnail is about to peel off. I can't bear to even look at it(hence no picture) -- I just have to cry every time. The doc says: "You have a boy. This isn't going to be the last time." Oh, thanks for the reminder.

Mitch (before his bum-thumb incident) had a great time at his first soccer practice.

It was raining and cold, but he was still fully engaged and loved everything about it. He didn't want to leave the field after the fun session.

Lucky kid -- the poor bum thumb aside -- I never had such opportunities to play sports or do anything when I was growing up, outside school or what my mom could teach me. Like knitting and sewing that I learned from my mom.

I've been trying to plan a business trip to China and Japan since last year. It's becoming clear to me after three cancellations and re-booking that I just have to give up on China -- just fly to Japan, do my business and come right back. Alone. BUMMER.

This is so wrong.

I think I have to give a long and hard look at what I'm doing. The little guy at the soccer field agrees with me.

Like It?

Yeah, a new look of the blog. Let me know what you think.
Today is the first soccer practice for my 3-year-old son, but it's gray and chilly here in Novato. It's supposed to rain.

What a Week

Boy what a week. I feel like I was all over the place! As the week comes to a close, I'm feeling good about my accomplishment.

I was in Toronto from Sunday to Wednesday. The first two days were very cold, with freezing wind. But it was warming up as I left.
I took my extended team out to lunch, for a celebration for the end of a successful project. Yum... Oysters were great! I got to know many new people on this trip.

St. James Church, from my hotel window -- early in the morning.

Saturday night before I left to Toronto, I plied the single from the brown pencil roving and the hibiscus-dyed single.
I love the way it turned out. Amazingly, I had perfect two singles length-wise. I only had about 10 cm of brown single left after I finished plying. It was meant to be!!

I resisted the urge to spin the mint-green superwash wool before I left, but now that I got some new bobbins, I did spin some last night. It's heavenly. I will post the photo next time.

I'm not doing so well on the knitting front. I started new pair of socks on the way to Toronto, and now I'm on the toe decrease for the first sock. I'm missing four stitches from one of the four needles. I can't figure out what happened! It will take some serious decoding to find out where I went wrong. My weekend project.

I finished the front piece of Boogie vest before I left, but I was utterly disappointed. Right before I finished it, I finally realized that it wasn't the design I was envisioning. From the only photo on this pattern on Knitty, I thought it was a V-neck (and that's what I wanted). But it's actually like a Henry neck, not a V.

I just couldn't tell from the picture on the pattern, as the shirt collar was obstructing the vest's neck. But if I actually read the pattern to the end, it was quite, quite obvious. Sigh.

So, now I frogged the neck shaping (or lack thereof) and now I'm working on making it look like a V, decreasing toward the shoulder seams. I am not sure how it's going to go, but I'll see... I just don't want to end up not liking it, as it won't do justice for my 20 + year old yarn!

I'm starting to realize, despite my denial and effort to ignore, that I am not a good knitter. But I think I'm pretty good at spinning. Yes, it does help.

Enhansing Stash

I really shouldn't go browsing on Ebay. I bought some mill-ends roving from this seller called yarn1merch2 in February. Her fiber was wonderful and the price was great, so I kept going back to her store -- and here's my second purchase, just arrived today.

It's beautiful mint-green superwash wool. I bought six four-ounce rovings. I love this fiber, and I love this seller. She's very honest and transaction is fast! Nice to find a seller like this. I hope she does well on Ebay.

I am out of empty bobbins, so I'll have to wait until another batch of bobbins to arrive from Yarn Barn of Kansas. I can hardly contain myself.

Here's my boogie vest, almost done with the front piece.

See how wobbly the stitches are? It's because the yarn is wavy from being frogged from a 20 + years old UFO. I probably should have either washed or steamed the yarn after I ripped it, but I actually like this "textured" look. It does look very hand-made. It's looking like the yarn is finally being worn!

I am leaving to Toronto Sunday afternoon. I am hoping that I'd get to go to Lettuce Knit while I'm there. But I don't need more yarn or fiber! I mean, I want it, I need it, but I shouldn't.

Spring Full Swing

Spring is ...

Here in full bloom. The fragrance is mind-boggling. Bees buzzing around.

And here. Just the prittiest season in our backyard.

I finally got up enough courage to spin the brown pencil roving my spinning teacher Nancy gave me last year.

The fiber is fairly short, and very curly, making the spun yarn amazingly springy, stretchy and lofty. It amazes me every time I spin new fiber -- the fact that each one requires different way to spin, and different yarn it produces. For this one, I needed to put in a lot more twist. Almost no predrafting was needed.

I'm pondering now what to do with this single -- I can ply this with the dandelion yarn, or ply it with the hibiscus yarn. All of these are about 20 - 30 grams, so by plying them together, I can have a longer yarn... If I tried to ply them with its own kind, the length will be 1/2. I really need an idea on how I can use these small skein of hand-dyed handspun. Any suggestions?

I've dyed more wool last week with just dandelions only. It went really well, and I have those now to spin. Or I might wait for another Little League baseball game and collect more flowers and dye another batch. Too bad that you have to use fresh dandelion flowers -- they can't be dried.

When I was picking dandelion flowers, Mitch asked, "Why are you picking them?" My reply; "Oh, I'm cooking dandelion soup." Mitch: "Again!?" Hope the other parents didn't hear our conversation.

My boogie vest is going well. I hope it's big enough for me though! I'm going to Toronto again soon, and it means that I should start a pair of socks. I know which yarn I'm going to use, but which pattern?