Pattern: Tuscany, by Amy Singer from the book, “No Sheep For You” (ravel it)

Yarn: Brook’s Farm ACero 60% Super Wash Wool/20% Silk/20% Viscose, approximately 420 yd/skein. Two skeins used. The company calls this ‘fingering weight’, but I’d call it just under worsted myself. The light outside today refuses to give me pictures that don’t look lavender, but this yarn is pink.

Needles: Addi Turbo size US 6 (4 mm)

Mods/Thoughts: No modifications. LOVE this yarn soooooo much! It was a gift from Evilsciencechick and Grace at SAFF last year and this was one of my Mission: Possible 2008 projects (knit gift yarn into projects worthy of the love.) The yarn has a terrific drape and a bit of luster and it’s a total pleasure to knit with because it’s soft and springy and comfortable. There was a time-long, long ago-when I used to see Brooks Farm and wonder what the big deal was, but then I tried some. And then some more. And now this yarn and this company is still batting a thousand with me. I don’t know if I would have bought the Acero of my own accord, but you can bet I’ll be snapping it up next time.

The pattern is rhythmic and simple and I’m always a little leery of saying this, but I think it would be a good first lace project. The shawl itself is a little bit wider than it is long, which is exactly what I like in a triangular shawl. I’d like to see more patterned that way. It blocked out bigger than I was expecting, which is good because now it’s the perfect size. This took almost exactly two skeins of Acero. I decided to knit this yarn into this shawl because that seemed to be what everyone was doing with their two skeins of Acero. Turns out that sometimes the crowd knows what they’re talking about because this is a case of yarn and project that were meant for each other.

Happy Fourth to the American readers. I’ll be spending mine shopping with a couple of friends who also lack the typical girly shopping chromosomes. Guess where we’re not going? Yarn stores. Take that, stash!!

Stats:
Pattern: Noodle Cozy (free pattern by yours truly!)
Yarn: Malabrigo Chunky [104yds/50g] 1 ball Alpine Pearl
Needles: US Size 9 [5.5mm] Addi Turbos
Started: April 1, 2008
Finished: April 5, 2008
Mods/Notes: Well, since I wrote the pattern as I went, I guess you’d call the whole thing a mod. It’s just a basic 2 x 2 ribbed beanie with symmetric decreases at the crown. And as you see, it took me only 4 days to knit it, which means, it’ll take an average person 1 day. Or if you’re Jen, 1 hour.

I whipped this bad boy up after realizing that my sweet, frail (Ha!) 81-year-old dad had a beautiful hand-made Washburne scarf…

…but nothing to keep his melon from frosting over. With only a few days to make it, I knew simple and chunky was the way to go. And voila!

The yarn is bulky weight without LOOKING like a messy,cheating chunky bulky piece of sh knit. I like that! This is the first time I’ve ever worked with Malabrigo, and I really enjoyed it. Not as much as some of you, who would marry it, and then name all your children Malabrigo because you love it so much. YOU know who you are. But it IS a nice, soft yarn, with good body and lovely colors, so I can appreciate that love, even though I don’t quite share your complete enthusiasm…devotion…OBSESSION.

The pattern is a free download. You can either Ravel It!, or click the button below to be taken to my free patterns page.

P.S. Have you had a chance to enter the contest? July 4 is the cut-off date, so get your entries in soon! Wanna witness a good heaping serving of irony? Read. Watch life have a good laugh at La’s expense!

Stats:

Pattern: Hyrna Herborgar by Sigridur Halldorsdottir from the book Thrihyrnur og langsjol / Three-cornered and long shawls

Needles: Addi Lace, size US 4

Yarn: Habu Textiles Geelong Lamb wool A-98 2/26. I was given this cone of yarn as a gift from Lauren, who no longer has a blog. I used about 2/3 of the cone.

Mods/thoughts/comments: No modifications. There are a ton of SSK stitches in this shawl and I usually substitute the modified type, where you go in through the front leg of the first stitch and then into the back leg of the 2nd and knit them together. After the first rip of this shawl for confusion regarding the center stitch (note to self: LIFELINES, JACKASS) I switched to a regular SSK and it did look distinctly better, I hate to admit it. Oh and yes, I said first rip. The hardest thing about this shawl is remembering to keep your center stitch from wandering, which is easy to do in the mass of double YOs. I ripped it twice. I would call this shawl intermediate, at least. It’s not terribly hard, but it’s not the kind of thing I’d recommend on nervous beginning lace knitters. If you make this shawl, I highly recommend a lifeline on row 51, because the 2nd chart is where it starts to get easy to miss that center stitch.

Another Mission: Possible 2008 knit, as this was in my gift yarn stack. I’m on another one right now, Tuscany from No Sheep for You, knit from Brooks Farm Acero which was a gift from ESCknits and Grace at last year’s SAFF:

I love this shawl. It’s everything I envisioned. I can’t wait to wear it somewhere.

*Might be considered “Not Safe For Work”

Email your entry to Jenla(dot)contest(at)gmail(dot)com by midnight Pacific time on July 4, 2008. Please include your Blog URL, Ravelry ID and your name in the body of the email. Please do not leave your contest entry in the comments section. Why would you want someone else to benefit from your cranial calisthenic? And again, only entry per person, please. Don’t forget to hit Fibercrack’d for the bonus clues, and check the contest page for the recap. Good luck!

eta…Andria just reminded me of something: The winner will be announced some time after July 4…duh. (Probably the 7th or 8th) And also, SOME of you have guessed spot-on correct, down to the city and the occasion. Others got the country right. Andria may or may not have been one of them.

Now the joke would totally be on me if the whole thing was canceled wouldn’t it? Well, we have still to receive final itineraries from the powers that be who are arranging the entire thing. And I’m all over here…I GET TO GO TO THIS FABULOUS DESTINATION AND I’M SO EXCITED ABOUT IT I’M HOLDING A CONTEST!!! And it would be just my luck, come Monday morning, to get a big old “sorry” in my inbox. So I guess we shall see what we shall see. Come Tuesday, if you see me logged in to Ravelry or online in Yahoo IM, you’ll know I’m hosed. Cross your fingers, will ya?

Of course, Mama M doesn’t like the rehab facility. Well, who would? “It smells bad, the food is awful, and the bed’s uncomfortable” are the most prevalent amongst her issues. Whew! If she’s feeling good enough to complain, then she’s definitely on the mend! Our response? “I guess that gives you even more incentive to work really hard at physical therapy so you can come home even sooner.”* I certainly hope she’ll be home soon. We all miss her terribly. SIL and hubby will be arriving Friday from Cocoa Beach, FL, so my workload should lessen then. I may actually be able to get to bed before 2 am. It’s been pretty much up to me and the DH to keep things up and running. Junior’s been no help whatsoever, but then again, that doesn’t surprise me.

eta - *OR she can just check herself out tonight without a single thought to her health…

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Also, Mama M won’t hear of us canceling our trip abroad, even though it’s less than 2 weeks away. She’ll be home by then, and we’ll get home care for her for the week we’re gone. So, to celebrate the fact that Mama M’s on the mend and the fact that we don’t have to cancel, here are the next clues!

9.

All of these pictures are of points interest in the mystery country, 2 of these are in the actual city.

10a. The country to which we are traveling has Europe’s second longest river as one of its borders.

10b. The city to which we are traveling is directly on the banks of that river.

Pretty certain you’ve got the right answer? Then email it me at JenLa(dot)contest(at)gmail(dot)com. If you’re not quite sure hold off guessing. You’ll have until July 4, and you only get to enter once, so make it count! Need more clues? Check out Fibercrack’d, my design/yarn blog for bonus clues, and visit the contest page for all the rules and clue recap.

In the meantime, I shall tease you with yarn…

Pattern: My own.

Yarn: Dale Baby Ull in sunny yellow and chambray blue, 4 balls of each.

Needles: Size US 3 knitpicks harmony circular.

Mods/comments: Well, no mods obviously. I just wanted a super simple blanket in colors that I knew the mother would like. I have an extreme bias toward very simple knits when they’re for babies. I broke up the monotony of stockinette with bands of ribbing and that’s the extent of the complexity. Oh and I actually finished this projects weeks before the baby is due, go me!

The llamas got their haircuts yesterday and it wasn’t a moment too soon with temps in the triple digits lately. They have been enjoying a kiddie pool under the shade of the persimmon tree to help cool off, but I imagine having a couple pounds less of warm llama fleece must be an advantage as well.

The lambs are growing so fast. They’re nearly as large as their mothers now. Absinth is becoming impressed with his own superior rammy-ness.

And even the littlest girls are nearly as big as mom now. The one on the far right is Anemone, who was the cutest baby and is turning into the ugliest sheep:

Eh. As long as her fiber is nice who cares?

We had one incident where Apricot was crying piteously and appeared to be blind and disoriented, though otherwise still in perfect health. Though I have no freaking idea what caused it, she did recover fully and additionally developed a further fear and aversion of me since I had to catch her and give her injections. I was fearful of sheep polio, though she exhibited only one symptom. We’re very glad she recuperated quickly as she’s a cute little thing and I didn’t want to put her down. Another incident involved a complete and total jail break. A neighbor stopped by at 10 pm to let me know my llamas were running down the highway. As it turned out, all animals had left the pasture through a gate that hadn’t been adequately latched. Luckily the people stuck around and helped me round them up, though the llamas were annoyed to be curtailed in their late night raid of the neighbor’s garden. Ouach wouldn’t be caught, but he at least followed all the other animals home. The sheep were merely waiting for someone to open a gate so they could pass through it again. For them, it’s about walking through gates, not the destination. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that someone stopped to tell me and that everyone was safely and quickly recovered. And that my neighbor wasn’t mad about the trampling and munching of his vegetables. Somehow I don’t think I’m missing a lot by not having children. The lady into whose hands I thrust leads full of llama as I caught them was quite shocked but handled herself well. She referred to them as “those things”, so I appreciate her all the more for doing it even though her hair might have been standing on end.

I don’t knit much when I’m stressed out, and lately I’ve been a bit on the worried side about things I don’t care to discuss at the moment. I’m working on Hyrna and though I’ve ripped it once it’s now going fairly well. I just don’t knit every day anymore and I haven’t touched my wheel in several weeks. My head clearing activity in warmer months is gardening and I’ve been hard at work out there. The area around the little pond is beginning to come to life and there are seven fish in my pond who will come to the top and look at me when I can tolerate the heat enough to sit on the bench out there. I didn’t name any of these fish this time. Slip and Slip joined SKPO in the fish pond in the sky just days before the weather warmed up enough for them to go back outside to live in a bigger, sunnier place. One of my new fish is a little sliver and black koi who swims really fast and likes to jump. I was thinking of naming that one Addi, but it hasn’t stuck yet.

All right, I’ll see you when I see you. It’s the best I can manage right now unfortunately. I’ve gotten several emails from people wondering what became of me so I knew it was time to poke my head in. Rest assured, it’s not just blog silence, I haven’t been to knitting group in months, either, because gas is way too expensive to make the trip down and my one day off a week where I could go is filled with desperate and fruitless attempts to catch up on chores. I’m MIA all around!

I’m a bit overwhelmed, as I’m taking on the responsibility of inter-familial communcation, and have been up on the phone since 4 am. (Dang Floridians gotta be 3 hours ahead of us!) My knitting sure has proven its as the soothing and meditative reputation 10 times over this weekend, and has helped me be the calm in the storm, and able to be there for everyone to help hold it all together. The DH is holding in there, the Sister-By-Marriage will be on a plane tomorrow. It’s the Dh’s father that has me concerned. He’s putting on a brave front, but I know he’s severely rattled. They’ve been married over 55 years now, and ARE each other’s life.

Thank wool I was able to find more of the yarn here, because my LYS no longer carried it. And since my discovery of magic loop, I was able to whip these puppies out in record (well, record for me, that is) time.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t La-ify them. You see, on close inspection, I knitted one of the socks in-side out. And when did I discover this oh-so-shining moment of brilliance? After I had cast off both socks and was weaving in the ends, of course. Not gonna tell the DH though. He’ll never notice, and after another year’s wearing during Roman reenactment, I won’t either. Can you say dumbass? Sheesh.

What’s next? Glad you asked. Remember that Mission Possible thing I signed up for, but haven’t posted about in a long time because I haven’t really done much of anything on it? Well, that’s because all the fast and easy shit is done. Well, almost. All I have left on #7 is the shaving, the setting the grommets, and the attaching of the handles. Then it’s getting shipped to it’s new home. But while I’m procrastinating on that, I’m going to start tackling the bigger stuff, starting with…

12. Use up, throw out, burn (with video footage) or otherwise cause the scrap heap unexist.

(crap, I’m still missing a pic of the leftover superwash sock yarn…oh well…note to self)

The top row is all feltable, therefore the sock yarn, doubled on 4s and the worsted on 8s should make for some rather quick knits in the form of bags and pouches of indeterminate ugliness…pouches and bags that would be used to hid modern-day necessities at, say…a Roman reenactment event…happening in a country other than the one in which we live and the heart of the current contest I’m running here.

CLUE BY FOUR Why, yes folks, that was indeed clue #7 to the contest.

Anyhow, I’m gonna start with these yarn cupcakes…a nice baker’s dozen, and see just how many I can turn out before we leave.

Here’s clue #8

Email your entry to Jenla(dot)contest(at)gmail(dot)com by midnight Pacific time on July 4, 2008. Please include your Blog URL, Ravelry ID and your name in the body of the email. Please do not leave your contest entry in the comments section. Why would you want someone else to benefit from your cranial calisthenic? Only one entry per person, so make it count. Don’t forget to visit Fibercrack’d for bonus clues and for contest clue recap.

Have a great weekend!