Some details:

*sheep-approved*

The Facts:

Yarn: about 3 oz. of superwash Merino two ply from Spincycle Yarns and about 11 oz. of handspun natural brown 2 ply mystery wool, both DK-ish weight
Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Seamless Yoke Sweater, as found in Knitting Without Tears, with waist shaping added
Wave Chart: Here you go.
Needles: Size 7 Addi Turbo for magic loop
Gauge: 4.75 sts. per inch
Size: 42″ bust (2″ of ease)
Started: Not including planning, about Sept. 20, 2006
Finished: October 19, 2006

Thoughts:

I’m sorry about not posting many progress reports on this, Monica! Most of it was done on the plane to and from Kansas. It was excellent plane knitting. Kept my lap warm and entertained my neighbors, as it looks like you’re a bat out of hell when you’re knitting stockinette in the round.

This was a simple pleasure to knit. All the fun is in the yarn. The colors in the blue yarn entertained me without pause, and the brown woolly stuff was a total tactile pleasure. It’s not baby soft and it’s not harsh. It’s just right.

The pattern is is about as clean as they come. Cast on in blue, knit a row, then switch to brown and knit in tubes up to the armpits, join together, and decrease to the neck. I decreased pairs of stitches at each side for the waist, then increased at the same rate, resulting in the same stitch count as the beginning. After all the ends were woven in, I went back and picked up from the back of the cast-on edges for the hems in blue, switching back to brown for the final rows. I then tacked down each individual stitch to the inside of the sweater. This took an hour for the body hem, mainly due to the fact that the brown wool sticks to itself like crazy, but it’s so stretchy and lovely and without ribbing that it’s totally worth it.

Since I was hemming it at 11 pm the night before I headed off to Rhinebeck, it wasn’t wet blocked, but ironed through a wet cloth. The blue yarn (not mine!) bled and ruined one of my nice tea towels (that’ll teach me for grabbing the one on top of the pile without thinking). I am so, so glad that the rest of the sweater wasn’t a pale color, as it could have been stained. I’d have thrown the iron through a window. The dye didn’t stain the clothing I wore under the sweater, thankfully.

Now I’ve got 2 more similar handspun sweaters brewing in my head. It’s too comfy and toasty not to want a few more!

First, though, Fugl. I cast on in Cascade Eco Wool last night. For a moss stitch bottom band, it’s looking nice.

That’s what Rhinebeck was. Just lovely! My hostess Carolyn (in the red coat in the photo below) made sure I was comfy and very well fed, served me delightful beverages and snacks, and introduced me to the happiness of Dexter, that TV show about the serial killer with bad hair. After all the walking of the first day (we were there from 11 until 5), we still managed to haul our carcasses back for the second day.

So. Much. Wool. This is how happy it made me:

photo by Jennifer
That’s me with a 12 lb. Rambouillet fleece. Thankfully, Jennifer split it with me, because 12 lbs. is a bit much, don’t you agree? This is especially true since I bought Romney and Shetland rovings, more amazingly colorful stuff from Fantom Farm, and a beautiful skein of handspun wool/mohair for a yoke on a sweater. Between all those purchases and yarn left from the wave yoke sweater (I finished it in time to wear it! I’ll post the details of it tomorrow.), I have 2 sweaters I can’t wait to knit.

There were so many friendly faces in that sea of people. Putting my photo in the last post did the trick. I braided my hair just like in the photo and people introduced themselves left, right, and center. Cara’s blogger meet-up and Debbie’s bingo were genius plans to get us all together and talking. I finally met Amy and Stephanie (we walked into the blogger meet-up with the latter and it was amazing to see the heads turn. People were taking her photo like crazy and I was literally pushed away from her by people wanting to be closer.)

There were locals like Debbie of Stitchy McYarnpants (L) and Maryse of Bag ‘n’ Trash (R) above, Vanessa from Spinning My Life Away (her sweater!!), Pippi was easy to spot despite her hair change, Jenna from cinemaknits with her mom, Fig and Plum’s Jessica, Carole, who succumbed to at least one fleece (it happened to the best of us), sweet fiber-obsessed Monica, sporting her stunning shawl, and Laura, who I swear did hand knit costume changes and put us all to shame. I know I’m missing some and if others have blogs, I don’t know about them, so please speak up so I can read your blogs from now on.

A highlight:

My first sighting of a pirate hat in its natural habitat. Becky is sporting the hat, which her friend Jeni knit it for her. (Thank you for the help, Kristi!) In my excitement I forgot to make the knitter get into the picture. Eek. We also a little boy who informed me that both his mom and dad have knit the Irish Hiking Scarf. I love kids who know about knitting!

I took very few photos, but you can see them here. You can look at Flickr for more from other attendees.

What a weekend! Yarn School was action packed, that’s for sure. There was so much to do and learn that people had to take naps to recover. We spun, we dyed, we washed and carded fleece, we visited an alpaca farm, and we went to the circus. In between all that, we talked each other’s ears off and ate and drank our faces off. Nikol cooked her little heart out and provided meals that made me do a happy dance (I think it was all the cheese!). I was nervous nervous nervous at first, but soon we’d all talked so much it was like being at a party and everyone was so kind to me that I felt just fine chatting away in front of a room full of people. Jennifer from Whirled Handspun was lovely and not anywhere near as uptight about methods as I am, which was so refreshing. She’s very relaxed where I am careful. I could learn a lot from her!

I don’t think I even embarassed myself (except that I tend to have the vocabulary of a trucker sometimes) until on the plane home when I walked from the front of the plane to the back dragging a sweater, the attached ball of yarn, and my iPod, all of which were wrapped around my waist. A kind man wearing far too much gold jewelry yelled “Girl, you’ve got yourself all hung up!” and I got to retrace my steps, picking everything up with a plane full of people watching.

Want to see pictures?

*these are mine*

There’s a Flickr group, as well.

The plane ride provided some serious knitting time, so my handspun wave yoke sweater is almost complete. There’s just some hem knitting to do.

Keep your fingers crossed that the yoke lumpiness blocks out! Other than that, it fits like a glove. Waist shaping is my new best friend. The back of the neck shaping isn’t so bad, either!

Would someone like to unpack my clothes and wash them so I have something to wear at Rhinebeck?