Bliss

A fresh cup of coffee on a pretty coaster.

A fresh stack of magazines just delivered.

Madeline Tosh yarn...

A morning of uninterrupted knitting time. Bliss.

What my knitting needles have been up to

A couple of friends commented fairly recently that they still read my blog. I track back to my last entry and am ashamed. It's been 9 months and my knitterly buddies haven't thrown their hands up in exasperation at me?? Instead, they are STILL reading my blog..? Wow.

On the knitting newsfront, small quick projects that don't require much brain power have ruled. Hats, scarves, hairbands, more hats. Oh, and a cardigan for my not-so-little-one who has outgrown her pretty pink BSJ with the gorgeous buttons!! How dare she!? :)

Little one said 'mommy's yarn', and 'knit like mommy' the other day. I am one proud knitter mommy. So since there is so little action on the knitting front, you would assume that my needles have been sitting idle? No sirree... This is what they have been up to.

They have been pretend pencils for little one to draw with. They have been sticks for her to collect and wave around (while nearly poking out her own eye). They have been treated like music instruments, been arranged artfully in yarn cakes and in my knitting. Initially, I was horrified, then (like everything else when it comes to dealing with a toddler), I gave up and just went with the flow. At least I got a chance to touch my pretty knitting sticks.

The garter stitch scarf in the pictures above are my current knitting project. Using Noro Iro and 6mm needles (a la brooklyntweed's version). It's pretty and it's a fast-ish project but I am soooooo bored with it. But little one says it's 'nice' when I told her it was for her 'gu-gu' (auntie in mandarin), and gently patted it, so I guess I might persevere.

When oh when can I knit lace again?

Knitting Wishes

I tend to  be really bad at making and keep resolutions, so for this year I have decided not to make any major resolutions (since I forget it all the next day anyway).  However, as a knitter, it helps to keep my knitting in focus so let's just call them 'Knitting Wishes' shall we?

1. To have a ready pile of luxurious scarfs, hats, little gifts ready for the invariable last minute birthday, baby shower etc.

2. To only use beautiful yarn that doesn't make me itch or sneeze. 

3. To de-stash.  (ok stop laughing, seriously...).  I probably have enough lace yarn to knit 20 shawls so this is a serious problem.  Not to mention enough cotton to knit another 20 blankets. So to show how serious I am, I'm declaring that I will only buy new yarn after I've finished 5 projects using yarn from my stash.  I would make it more projects but at the rate I'm knitting, 5 projects could very well take half a year, so quit your sniggering.... 

Actually, come to think of it, de-stashing is also really relevant in other parts of my life.  Living with the minimum, trimming away excess clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and just stuff.  I could probably come up with really meaningful reasons for why we should learn to live with less stuff (world economy, going green and so on) but there is just one shallow reason - mess makes me grumpy and itchy.  So here's to a clean & neat 2009!

P.S. Gift yarn doesn't count as buying yarn right...?

A Christmas Dress

The holidays sneaked by me with minimal knitting this year.. but I did manage to finish the Rainbow Dress just in time by Christmas eve. Didn't have time nor energy to sew in the ends though, so the little girl wore it around the house with a bunch of ends trailing around her. It's a tad too big (hence the sexy off-the-shoulder look) but I absolutely love it.

Pattern : Rainbow Dress by Tikki

Yarn : Sublime Soy Cotton in Pomegranate, and RYC CashCotton in Apple

Needles : 3.5mm

Here's a picture of her guzzling down Bucks Fizz to end off the year. Happy Holidays!

A Day at the Beach

Pattern : Children's Cotton Hats by Kim Hamlin (Last Minute Knitted Gifts)
Yarn : Rowan RYC Silk Cotton (Cucumber)
Needle : 4.5mm
Size : Toddler


A cool refreshing drink.

A straw.

A little summer hat knit out of luxurious Rowan Silk Cotton, with a yellow ribbon fluttering in the breeze.

A great way to spend the afternoon.

The Joy of Giving?

My 10 month old (who suddenly has more friends than I do) has a little friend who is turning one.  So I cast on for this halter top, as that little girl will be spending her holiday in a beachside resort and I could just imagine her playing in the sand, looking cute wearing this.  I even chose a machine washable yarn so that her mommy wouldn't have to handwash it. Checked and rechecked the size, debated on whether she would look good in the colour - my usual paranoia when knitting gifts.   Hated the yarn, it hurt my fingers and was uninspiring to work with.  But I had a ton of it in my stash, so I persisted.

Pattern : Katja Halter from Knitty

Yarn : Butterfly Super 10 Cotton

Needles : 3.75mm

Mods : Used a DK weight yarn instead, so cast on for the largest size.  

It was worth it. The final effect of the mercerised cotton was awe-inspiring.  After a good soak, the cotton evened out and the subtle sheen of the cotton and the slightly heavier drape made this a truly special project.  I couldn't resist getting my little one to model it.  And then someone asked me 'why don't you keep it for her instead?'

Why not indeed.. I have had so many mediocre reactions from gifting my knitted items away. Items that I've spent weeks labouring over, endlessly thinking through every little detail, only to receive the same reaction as the next pile of store-bought toys.  I guess that's why it's called 'the joy of giving'.  But (I whine).. I would like a little phone call thanking me for that special special present!!! 

Which brings me to the moral of this little story - I am simply not a 'giving' type of person.  I am pretty sure that this time, the recipient's mommy will appreciate it, but will she ever know how much thought went into this?  Hence my dilemma, do I give this away?  or do I keep it for my own special little girl?

The lone bootee

As many of my friends know, I've not knitted (much) for the past 7 months. Recently, I found myself pondering baby socks - why is it that they can never stay on my baby's foot for more than 5 minutes before she yanks / chews them off?  Then it occurred to me that I can knit bootees that will stay on her feet and still keep her toes warm in air conditioned malls.  So I started looking for patterns - and that's when it hit me.  The pattern sizes indicate '0-3months', '3-6months', 6-9months' and '9-12months'.  Without realising it, my baby had already graduated to the 2nd largest category!  And I have not knitted her ANYTHING at all since she was born. Horrors. And I call myself a knitter! 

So here's a bootee that I knitted for her - it took 2 weeks - 1 week to look for a pattern, 2 days to locate the yarn for it, 1 day to locate the needle, 2 days to locate my knitting bag, and 2 days to cast on (cos she thought it was a new game and kept pulling the yarn).  

And while I'm at it, here are some pics of my baby wearing stuff that I knitted for her, for public record, so that she can't call me a lousy mom in future.

P.S. Thanks my dear knitting buddies for sending me knitting news and yarn, and generally keeping me sane during these months :)

The toughest WIP of all

Dear folks,

A new post (finally!) after a 1.5 month absence, and this is not even about knitting! I'm working on the toughest WIP of my life - our little baby gal was born on Feb 10th, and she has managed to turn our lives upside down in just 5 weeks.

This has been the most dramatic roller-coaster ride 5 weeks of my life. People tell me they fall in love with their babies on sight. Welllll... Our little one turned out to be a bundle of contradictions

She looks like an angel when asleep but turns into a little banshee when she's hungry
She head butts my breast for food but squirms, kicks and cries when she gets it
She falls deeply asleep in my arms but wakes up wide-eyed the second her butt touches the bed/rocker
She cries when hungry, cries when full, cries when her diaper is wet, cries when we try to change it

I was emotionally drained. There was just no pleasing this little one. All my carefully laid out plans and coping strategies were steam-rollered under the force of her cries and whimpers.

And then, she got sick with the usual infant problems, one following the other : reflux, thrush, sore throat, diaper rash, cold... I became paranoid mommy, surfing the web and forums while nursing her to find out what I did wrong to cause her little body so much damage.

As I diligently syringed medication into her little trusting mouth, I kept reminding myself that this will be over soon. "She'll stabilise in two weeks and then we can have a normal life".. I told myself. Two weeks passed, two more... and still I kept waiting for the day when she won't be so 'sick', when I'll have an ideal little baby to bring out, when I can spend hours knitting with her coo-ing happily next to me.

Then one day, as I stared at her willing her to stay asleep, I realised that her lashes were growing longer and curlier daily (they are longer than mine now.. so jealous). And that her nails which we trimmed just a few days ago, are long again. That's when I realised that as I was waiting and plotting, she has been growing up. There is no 'waiting for normal', cos she is normal now (albeit a tad cranky). And if I didnt start living my life with her as a part of it, I was gonna always be saying '..someday..'

So, instead of seeing this as a perpetual WIP and waiting for it to be finished, I have decided to enjoy her as an FO - finished, perfect, normal - just as she is.

That Four Letter Word

I found 5 of these things in my home recently. There were only 2 steps away from my yarn storage room. Never paid them much attention previously but somehow when I saw them crawling slowly towards my yarn room, all the little hairs on my neck went on alert. A frantic google search confirmed my fears. M-O-T-H.

The household casebearer, Phereoeca uterella, is a moth in the Tineidae family of Lepidoptera. Many species in this family are casebearers and a few are indoor pests of hairfibers, woolens, silks, felt and similar materials. Most people know this species by the name "plaster bagworm."

The larval case is a slender flat fusiform or spindle-shape case which resembles a cantaloupe or pumpkin seed. It can be found under spiderwebs, in bathrooms, bedrooms and garages. Cases can be found on wool rugs and wool carpets, hanging on curtains, or underneath under buildings, hanging from subflooring, joists, sills and foundations; on the exterior of buildings in shaded places, under farm sheds, under lawn furniture, on stored farm machinery and on tree trunks.

Regular cleaning practices, increased use of air conditioning in houses, and reduced number of woolen goods, along with pesticide application in cracks and crevices for household pest control, have decreased the incidence of the household casebearer. Manual picking or vacuuming of cases and spider web removal should be enough to keep this species under control.

And then I read this line and nearly fainted :

"....when woolen threads and woolen cloth were offered to the larvae “they ate eagerly”. "

I spent the next few days crawling on my hands and knees, and peering underneath sinks, scrutinising door frames, and combing all corners and cracks of doors, in an effort to find more of them. I did find more, and I also found 2 x dead mama moths, and lots of little old spider webs behind chests of drawers, behind the fridge etc.

Lest you think we're a dirty family who don't clean their house, we do have cleaners over every week, and they vacuum and wipe and mop. It baffles me as to where all these things come from, and how I'm supposed to regularly move the fridge & heavy furniture to vacuum away those old spider webs which the moth cases feed on!

At any rate, I ziplocked up all my yarn - praying that there were no eggs in the existing yarn stash... and put cedar blocks in my yarn storage cupboards. I did try to shake the yarn to see if I could identify any 'eggs' or moth-like tendencies, but not knowing what exactly to look out for, I hoped for the best.

This is my yarn storage area now... the stash still looks kinda naked and vulnerable, even clothed in their protective ziploc bags. Maybe I should revert to plastic bins - what do you think?

Cables & Lace Update

I've been good and knitting away on the Cables & Lace Kimono Cardy.. it's a really fun knit and now that I've done something like this I don't think I can ever do a stockinette-only sweater/cardigan.

It was kinda scrunched up and tight-looking at first, but after a light steam blocking, the lace opened up and the yarn kinda 'relaxed' - this is pretty typical of Sublime yarn, I think, maybe because of the silk content?

Here is where I am as of today, I have to finish off the belt/tie (which is like 200+ rows of 7 stitches!), and then pick up and do the ribbing around the neck area. Glad that this should be done before baby is due!