Purls O' Wisconsin

A pile of bags and zippies and a needle case and box bag all to be listed today.

I've been busy sewing! FYI, the feed dog is the crunchy metal bit that comes up out of the sewing machine to feed your fabric through. Putting your nose to it would actually be quite horrifyng as it would be getting pierced by the needle...bleargh. Then I was busy cropping photos and today I will be busy updating Etsy and then I will be going upstairs to start it all over again!

I have been knitting as well, I have one sleeve done on mky Bohus sweater, I am now in a sea of stockinette for the body. Hopefully this evening I can take some tine to chill out and just knit knit knit on the deck for a while. Ahhhhhh.

Oh, we dd not get basement water after all. Knock on wood. The heaviest rains skirted around my corner of Milwaukee, so we were good.

Speaking of Milwaukee, our mayor kicks ASS.

Oh and I ordered a spinning wheel......
 

I am back to the point where I was last week when I had to rip out my sweater. Nice! Now I need to begin on a sleeve to avoid getting the dreaded sleeve burnout syndrome. I figure i will whip through one sleeve pretty fast, knit on the body a bunch and then do the other sleeve. I would like to have this sweater done by early September, but given my best laid plans always go to shit, we'll see how that works! I want to be wearing this sweater this winter, though!
It was a fantastic morning to do a bit of knitting out on the deck, warm but not too warm (yet!) and very breezy and not too sunny. I listened to  podcast and enjoyed a strong mug of PG Tips tea. Ahhhh.

With these shoes:

and some sweet handknit socks!
I scored these in a sale last week for $13.19. They are selling at Zappos right now for $51! And I love them. the price of Payless, but actually good for feet, not bad at all! I have knit several pair of socks this year and plan to crank out many more before the end of 2009, so I will hve plenty of choices to wear with these!

And yes, that is a BIG HUGE GIGANTIC mistake on the front. The sweater body is taking a time out while I work on a sleeve. I know how I made the mistake, it involved knitting after 2 am. I don't want to talk about it. I am on the fence about ripping it and beginning again or living with it and loving the sweater anyway.
I would really like to live with it, but dammit if it's not already bugging me a little bit.

And it's off the needles.
I was also knitting the wrong size, and superwash stretches out like crazy, so will be casting on for a smaller one.   So it's good that it bugged me since how upsetting would it have been to finish it and make peace with the wonky cable rib fuckup and then find out the sweater was all schlumpy and baggy? SO UPSETTING.

So there is a sweater I have been lusting after., and I do know it is pronounced "bo-hoosh" but I could not think of a work to rhyme with -oosh. Well, except douche. And this post will not be involving douche. My life actually does not really involve douche.....but the word cracks me up. Because I am 12.

So the sweater, yeah, back on track. It's here:
Bountiful Bohus

and isn't it glorious? I have the book, I have been threatening, umm, planning to make this sweater for quite some time.
But what yarn to use?! I have a couple of options, all in the stash so in theory, no additional monies need to be spent. This is an option that appeals to me as I am saving up for a spinning wheel, a new deck and possibly a car.

I can do a chocolate brown kettle dyed for the body with two shades of pink for the color work. or pink and cream for it. Or lime and cream against brown....

Or I could do the body all in a muted lime and then do the two shades of pink for the yoke...
When I say muted I just mean not day-glo. it's still quite a perky lime green. Leafy spring green.


My original plan was to go for the green body and pink accents. I have 17 balls of Nashua creative focus superwash ready to go.
But then there are 10 skeins of glorious 100Purewool merino.....
here are my options:




And option 2:




The Nashua is superwash, so less worries about felting.and I have over 3500 yards of it, so I am sooo good to go on yardage.
The 100PW is oh-so delicious, though. AND this sweater is steeked, which means I will be knitting it all in one piece and then...sit down...I will be cutting it up the middle. I know, it makes me catch my breath, too. But the grabby non superwash wool might be better for my first steeking project. I am close to the limit on yardage, though, but I think i should have enough. i could alwys cheat a bit and do a band of the pink around the cuffs and hem if I had, too. I cannot get more of the 100PW as their colorways are a bit of a crapshoot on the best of days since it really is all done by hand, and I don't think it is always the same hands and it can REALLY vary.


So here is where I am:
NASHUA:
PROS:
machine washable
pretty green
I have 2 shit tons of it
nice, basic yarn that should give me a sweater to last for years
less pilling
already wound into tidy balls
pink and lime is my favorite color combo
It probably won't itch because it is superwash

CONS:
not as sticky as regular wool for the steekage
it's a LOT of green on a fat girl
A fat PASTY girl, the green will reflect on my face to some degree and could make me look....greenish. Or act as a concealer for my pink cheeks in winter. oooh this could be a con and a pro...



100PUREWOOL:
PROS:
it feels like malabrigo
really pretty semi solid brown loveliness
The color name is chocolate lace. Wearable chocolate!
probably more practical than lime green and will last for years, but I'm also probably going to still love green and pink for a long time.
I just freaking LOVE this yarn.

CONS:
It will pill like 27 bitches
the variegation might be just a bit much for the sweater
I was eyeballing the chocolate lace for a second Lady Sweater because I have way more than enough yardage for that.
I really really like the green and pinks together!

I need to figure this out and then I want to cast on!

random postapalooza!

I have been sewing like a mofo for the past few days. it's good, but draining the rest of m creative mojo. But is stocking the Etsy shop pretty nicely! I have aother pile of bags cut out, pressed and ready to assemble this week.

I opened the dishwasher today and i swear it smelled like Jeffery Dahmer's apartment in there. Jay. Sus.  I thought it was clean. I was wrong. So wrong. The man ran it last and emptied it immediately and then reloaded the hot dishwasher and then shut the door. That is a really, really bad idea. I could not even stomach it long enough to shove more things in. I tossed in an electrsol tab and ran it. Sorry, environment. :(

I finally finished my Speedway Socks!


wheeeeeee!

And I cast on for a new pair today:


I am nearly ready to work on the heel already! yay!

I also dyed up a pile of yarn for a Kool-Aid dyeing swap:


I just want to swim in that! But it's not for me, though I did do up an ombre skein in sky blue to keep for myself! That yarn will be packed up with some treats to go.....somewhere outside of Wisconsin! ;)

Did some yarn dyeing and some knitting at Alterra:

The pattern is Speedway from Anni Designs at Etsy and the yarn is Kraemer Sterling and I call the color Peony after the Indiana state flower. I dyed the yarn yesterday using Wilton's gel color and citric acid. You know what is a dumbass thing to do? Pull a lot of miserable Canadian thistle around 6 thorny ass rosebushes and then stick your hands in water full of citric acid. That will put you right on your horse! i was still too lazy to grab gloves, though so i just kept sucking air through my teeth every time I stuck my hands in the water.

I cast them on in honor of the Indy 500. I don't watch it, but since I am a Hoosier by birth I wanted to do something silly. The coffee shop was nice today, but they were playing some odd music that possibly involved zithers. It was more atmosphereic than catchy, or even, um...enjoyable. I thought someone might ben playing a computer game for awhile until I realized that was really the music today. interesting. They usually have good music there.  And I refrained from writing "douchelord" in cursive in the dust on the back of the Range Rover that nearly plowed into us when we were parking. We were backing up to pull into one of two side by side spots when he whipped in and got the spot next to us. Dude, it's a Honda Civic, we only needed one spot  so there was no need to get all parking bajiggity about it and rush in there. You could not have waited 10 seconds? Really? I know you were driving a seventy thousand dollar car, but there is no reason for such staggering dicketry.


I pulled a ton of weeds yesterday, put down newspaper and laid down mulch. On Saturday I did stuff, but I can't remember what! I think it involved a lot of knitting on my Clapotis, or The Clap as it is known to me. The man spent a lot of the day playing games on his laptop because I installed 4 gig of RAM for him on Friday afternoon and he was thrilled to bits.

Marge is feeling much better, see:

He was quite poorly on Thursday and Friday, I thought it was just spring hairball issues, but their food was recalled this week. It was Nutro, by the way. Check the list. if you use them.  However, the exact type we opened up for them last week was not on the list and he was the sickest he has ever been in seven years and none of them wanted anything to do with that new bag of food. And they LOVE nutro. Well, they are little pigs and love most food...but they really love Nutro. And would not touch it. Marge was the only one who was sickly, though.
Here is a bonus shot of his Margeness, I know he has many fans:

His ears get folded back sometimes when I give him head scritches and he doesn't seem to mind it, they stay that way for a while. It looks hilarious. He was half sleeping here, no flash was used since I try to not blind him at close range.