Plenty to blog about

I have a bunch of pictures that I wanted to get posted almost a week ago but just haven't had the time. Especially since I had to download my photo editing software again and again trying to get it to work (PhotoImpact 8 and the latest version of Norton antivirus don't like each other, but as long as they are each kept to their own corners of the hard drive (Norton gets disabled while running PhotoImpact) they are finally coexisting fairly peacefully. Then I logged on to Blogger and found that I have been moved over to the new version. It looks diferent, but should work just fine.

Dolly


Dolly has settled in just fine. She doesn't seem to know how much bigger she is than the goats and sheep. We put the hay out and the goats tell Dolly that it is all for them, not for her, and she believes them. So I put hay in another place for her, up a little higher so that it is right at her level. The goats are sharing that too, but not chasing Dolly away from it.

Completed Yellow Jacket



Yes, this has been done for several days and I have been so slow getting the pictures up, but hopefully there are enough pictures to make it worth the wait. Since it is a reversable sweater, click here to see it the other way.

Here are some pictures of grafting the underarms. This is the last thing done on a raglan sweater, since the underarms are left open when the sleeves are joined to the body. It's just like grafting the toe on a sock.

• First you have to put the underarm stitches onto DPNs.
  
• Then with the end of the yarn that was left from knitting the sleeve, on a yarn needle, you are ready to weave the two edges together. The needle goes into the first stitch on the front needle,knitwise, slipping the stitch off of the needle.
  
• Next, bring the needle back through the second stitch on the first needle, purlwise, leaving the stich on the needle.
• The back needle has its first stitch grafted by bringing the needle through it purlwise, slipping it off of the knitting needle,
  
• and the second stitch is entered knitwise and left on the needle.
  

These steps are repeated until all of the stitches are removed from the knitting needles. Tie off the yarn and work it in, and you are done. The underarm will look as though it were knitted continuously with the rest of the sweater. Repeat for second underarm of course. If your sweater is knitted in reverse stockinette stitch, the grafting should be done in purl stitches instead of knit (or you can just do it inside out, looking at the inside of the sweater rather than the outside). Since this sweater is in a pattern stitch with some rows where every stitch is knitted, I didn't try to follow the pattern while grafting. I suppose that I could have (by reversing the direction for some of the stitches while grafting) but who is going to inspect the underarms that closely anyway?!

The Zoo
One of the reasons that I have not been here this week is that I was gone. We went to the zoo on Thursday and Friday. We live 3-4 hours away from the zoo (Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City) so we spent the night in SLC. It was a good trip and there were a few critters in the zoo that I would have willingly brought home with me if they would have let me. There was a llama, some angora goats and Navajo-Churro sheep (okay, maybe I don't need more of those) a bighorn sheep (it would be fun to see how well he would get along with my rams here), bactrian camels (but they didn't look nearly as good as Al's camels that I got to work with for the movie. I know that camels shed their hair for summer, but the camels at the zoo looked so bald. And their humps looked shrunken and bent over. Maybe these were old camels, but they were all that way, and that is a sign of neglect and poor nutrition. They were much smaller too. Well, it just wasn't the same as being able to touch the camels and take them for walks. The cutest creatures at the zoo that I wished I could take home with me were the Golden Lion Tamarins. They were just adorable. No, I don't have pictures of all the zoo animals. I had my camera there but just didn't take very many and what I did take didn't come out really well. You can find much better pictures of these critters elsewhere. Mark might have gotten some good ones, but his are on film that must be developed. If anything turns out really good I might post it here.

We got home and found that one of the dogs, Taz, had decided to remodel the house. He removed the linoleum from the bathroom floor and tore up my llama/soysilk roving. Next time, Taz either goes on anti-anxiety meds (Some dogs get separation anxiety) or goes to a kennel.

While in the car I worked on the Vigdis backpack. It's knitted and I am now working on assembly.



I guess next I start on Ragna.

A New Addition



Say hello to Dolly. We always wanted camelids - besides being really cool creatures, they go along with our "new world livestock" theme much better than angora goats do. Alpacas are beyond our price range for the time being, since a breeding pair still can cost about the same as our house, so a llama will do. Dolly is bred to a guanaco, so we will have a very interesting cria next spring. The sheep and goats are not sure about her yet, but they will figure out that she isn't going to eat them. She is missing her cria that was just weaned this morning, so she isn't particularly happy to be here yet, but she seems to be a sweetie. I want to play with her and give her hugs and kisses and she isn't really interested in that. She probably won't be all that affectionate, as that just isn't the nature of llamas. She is ready for shearing - that may be an adventure.

This week we sold two angora goats and five sheep, so it should amount to a net decrease in feed consumption, which is a good thing.

Knitting Progress



This picture was taken Friday morning, but it has taken me until now to have time to upload pictures. The joining round on a raglan sweater seems intimidating until you do it. No big deal - you just put the underarm stitches on scrap yarn to graft later, then knit the sleeves in their places as your are knitting the next row of the body. Well, once you do it it makes perfect sense. I'm a hands-on learner so trying it brings it all together much more so than reading about it in the instructions or a book. From that point you are on the home stretch - the yoke with its decreases and then the neck. I am actually up to the point now where I am about to start on the neck, and will probably have it done tomorrow. Then all I have left is to graft the underarms and work in the ends and the sweater will be all finished! Seamless construction is pretty nifty.

the friday five

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?
A little bit wavy, except that it is so long that it is too heavy really for its own weight not to pull out any natural curl. It comes down well past my waist. But I braid my hair after washing it, and then it has plenty of wave after it dries.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?
My hair was blond when I was little, but it got darker and is light brown. I have always preferred it long, although my mother was always after me to have it cut short. Once or twice she managed to talk me into it and I hated it short and grew it back out as fast as I could.

3. How do your normally wear your hair?
I always pull it back or put it up in some way (otherwise it gets in my face and I can't do anything) but I do it so many ways that there isn't one way I normally wear my hair. Being a fiber artist, I like to get creative. Hair counts as fiber too!

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?
I am truly happy with my hair the way it is. I like the color and the length and the flexibility of being able to do it however I like. It's not permed or color treated and is in good condition. Nope, I don't want to change it.

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?
The only thing that comes to mind is occasionally I have gotten it put up in a way that the weight was not evenly distributed and it causes a major headache. Still looked good though.

Not a lot going on

The second sleeve for the yellow jacket is progressing little by little. Ashley has been knitting on it a lot, and I want to say that I am proud of her. The more she does, the better the tension matches and the fewer mistakes I have to correct. She's doing good! Other than that, I haven't gotten any new knitting projects started yet, but that will soon be remedied. I have the Vigdis backpack to knit, as well as Ragna, and there are always smaller projects that I want to do. I have baskets and bags of yarn that call to me constantly to make them into something. For some, a skein of handspun is a finished artwork unto itself, and while I understand that point of view, I like to be warm, and even through the summer I dread the cold that always returns in a few months. And no, I don't mind working on sweaters and other large projects during the summer either. I enjoy the comfort of my knitting spreading over my lap on cool summer evenings, and have even been known to wear the Vigdis sweater when Mark gets the swamp cooler going.

The lambs are growing up.



These guys need a home. Anyone need a Navajo-Churro herdsire? Write to me for details.



There are always more where those came from.

I want to tell you about this book that I have been reading.




Don't hate me for using this space to sell things, but when I picture a book it is a link to Amazon (I am an affiliate) and if you click on it you will be given the opportunity to see all the information on it and buy it if you like. Hey, a girl has a right to try to make a living, right? No, I don't make a living at this - actually a few cents here and there but you have to start somewhere.

I found this book in the library and I can't stop telling everybody about it, and it's not related to my usual topics here but I just have to tell you about it anyway. As I mentioned a few posts back, I have been struggling with the idea of going back to school (and can I really take the time and money away from my family to do that), and reading this book has helped to convince me that it is something that I need to do. The details are still way up in the air and there will be some major obstacles, but at least I have a direction. The book is about figuring out what it is that you (your true self) really want and need, exploring the things that are holding us back, and overcoming the obstacles.

Vigdis, as promised



So, here it is! I did make the hood from the book, but I don't like the way I look in the pictures modelling that. I also made this coif from knitty, since it will also keep my ears warm, and sometimes my hair is too bulky to wear the hood. I think it goes with the tunic very nicely, and it was so easy and fast to knit. I may have to make one to go with every sweater I make from now on! I will be knitting the backpack also, but haven't started on that quite yet.

Those little short (30 cm?) knitting needles are very nice and good for more than just necks. Although I did the ribbing at the bottom of the sleeves with dpns, the circular needle made it all the way down to that point without the knitting having to stretch too much. Here and here are a couple of pictures of Vigdis, almost finished, and you can see how the sleeves were done.

Yellow Jacket is coming along also.



As you can see, I have just barely cast on for the second sleeve. Then I get to attach the sleeves and start the raglan decreases at the top of the cardigan. This is my first raglan, BTW. Well, I have done raglans for dolls, but I did them from the top down, so this is a little different, and it is my first human sized raglan.

Where have I been?

It's been a while since I posted. Sorry about that. All last week I was working on my test for the Viking class. One of the items on the test was to identify artifacts from pictures. Some of them were a challenge and I'm not sure how many I got right. Are you interested in some current excavations of Viking sites? If so, you will like these links:
Fröjel (This site is about the excavation project the Viking Society class teachers are working on.)
Kaupang (In Norwegian, but you will find the pictures interesting.)
Uppåkra (A Swedish site, in English, mostly.)

Of course, I have been knitting. Vigdis will be finished tonight and I promise that I will post pictures tomorrow. When I got to the sleeves I abandoned the directions, which had the sleeves knitted flat and sewn on, and instead picked up stitches and knitted in the round. You might think that this is an awfully big sweater to be dragging around the kneedles while working on attached sleeves, but it really wasn't a big deal and I much prefer the result - seamless sleeves with a neat row of decreases along the bottom edge instead. I know the length is correct because I could try it on as I went, and when I finish knitting the second sleeve I have no sewing to do - just a couple of ends to weave in. The only scary part was knowing how long to knit at the top of the sleeve before starting the decreases. I could have estimated it on the basis of the stitch gauge, but actually, since I was talking to somebody while knitting that part of the sleeve, I just knitted until it looked right to me. I overestimated by about an inch, but since I could try on the sweater in progress I just ended the sleeve when it fit the way I wanted it to, and I am quite pleased with it. Well, you will see it tomorrow.

Now that I should finally have some time, I will be adding some pages here also. There will be a links page (I have so many more links that I would like to share with you than I could cram onto my main page), and a finished objects gallery, and some patterns, and even some recipes. I get a sourdough culture going usually every summer (it doesn't always keep going through the winter, unfortunately), and so I'm turning out some nice whole grain sourdough breads, even developing some of my own recipes. Sourdough doesn't need to be intimidating - all it takes is a little patience. I bake a lot more when I have sourdough because the culture needs to be used, and because it isn't that hard to start the bread before bedtime (just put some sourdough, flour, and water in a bowl), so then I am committed to baking bread the next morning (otherwise I spend all day thinking I am going to get around to it, but usually don't quite get there). We are entering the cheese making season also, and I will share some cheese recipes as well.

Okay, so don't give up on me - I'll be posting more often, so keep checking this space!