Tempus Fugit

So Friday I took some time to enjoy the hot weather.

Ajax enjoyed it, too, but I don't think the garter snake he was happily hunting in the brush pile enjoyed it! (He's a lucky dog to live in Michigan, which has only one rare species of poisonous snake.)

I used the good light to take a picture of my caught-up Sampler CM (Sampler M, continued). This is pattern 13.

Pattern 14, which came out back in December, was the last one on the group so far, but I didn't enjoy knitting it half as much. But I did knit it, so I'm finally caught up.

This morning I'm glad I took a picture of the shadblow (Amelanchier laevis) in bloom. The flowers are almost gone already.
That's why I really prefer a slow, cool spring to a hot, fast one: I get a chance to enjoy the flowers instead of having them open and burn up in a day.

Weather Update

Snow has disappeared from the forecast. For now.

(So have 80 degree F temperatures.)

This One's a "Two-Fer"

That is, "two for one," two knitting topics covered by one photo and one post, namely Sampler M and double knitting.

I can't really count my Sampler (C)M as a finished object, since the sampler is a work in progress. But it is now a caught-up object: I finished pattern 9, a brioche rib, pattern 10, and pattern 11, which was a section of knit-side-out double knitting.

We have knitted two brioche patterns in the Sampler M now, and they are really interesting to me, because they can be wrapped and knitted on a double-rake knitting board very easily. I have already tried the first one and figured out how to do it. Now I have to figure out how to do the second one.

In case the caption below the photos in the pattern aren't legible, they say "front" and "back". Naturally since this pattern is double-knitted, the knit side is out, and it's hollow or tubular. It's sealed off at both ends with rows of regular flat knitting, but you could separate the layers onto two needles and stuff that section into a puffy little pillow.

I was knitting this sampler with something you can't buy any more, acrylic "Knit-Cro-Sheen". I had two more balls that I thought were the same, and I wanted to use up the one with no ball band first. But when I joined the new ball to the end of the old ball, I discovered they are different: one is "S-plied" (the plies make a "\\" or left-leaning diagonal) and the other is "Z-plied" (the plies make the opposite "//" right-leaning diagonal). The new thread is also very slightly thinner in size.

But it's not enough difference to make a big difference in the knitting: I joined the two in the middle of the double-knitted section, and in the photo, I can't pick out where the switch is.

One interesting question that I keep getting over and over with the sampler is, "Now what is this going to be?"

I keep having to explain over and over that it's a sampler: it isn't going to be a scarf or a hat or a blanket or a pair of mittens or a thneed. It seems like the whole idea of a sampler, a piece you make to try out patterns and feel how they work, has been lost in the 21st century.

Okay, not totally lost: the 800+ members of the Sampler M Yahoo group have all found it!

Legwarmers Done, Rain, Birdsong

The ragg wool leg warmers I started knitting back in February have finally joined my Finished Objects list. I finished casting off the second one (in progress in the photo) last night.

The first one is over an olive oil bottle standing on a yogurt carton to dry after I dampened it. I call it "Ragg wool as sculpture".

This wool was fairly harsh and stiff dry, but damp it feels soft and buttery-fuzzy. Once they've both been wetted and dried, they'll go back in my cedar drawer until winter.

They took about 66 grams of wool each, and I have 72 grams left from the first original pair that I unravelled to knit them. So I'm thinking about unravelling another original pair and knitting a second pair to fit. Maybe shaped this time with no ribbing except the K1 P1 at the top and bottom.

We actually got rain again yesterday afternoon, nearly four-tenths of an inch. This has been a very dry summer. I think some of the birds that hatched in June and July have never even seen rain.

We got nearly a quarter of an inch between 2pm and 3pm. It's been so dry, you can see the rain pouring down at the end of the rain gutter, running over the surface of the sandy yard and not soaking in in this photo.

Hummingbirds must like damp weather. I had been worrying about the bird I photographed here, because I hadn't spotted her either at the feeder or in the catnip for a while, and it didn't seem like the level in the feeder was going down. (I do change the syrup regularly regardless.)

I finally saw and heard her again yesterday, and got to watch her in the rosebush preening herself with that deadly-looking bill, and scratching the back of her head with her tiny little foot!

I don't know how to put streaming audio in a post. If you click on this, it will take you to a wav file I uploaded.

Bird sounds

The sound quality is pretty poor, recorded out my window with the microphone of my new camera. You'll hear a couple seconds of hissy silence, a towhee, a robin, the towhee again, crows in the background, and a mourning dove.

Today I'm catching up on the last two patterns of my Sampler CM and listening to almost the same sounds out the window.

Sampler CM and Pi Bag

I finished pattern 7 of Sampler (C)M Monday while my Honda Odyssey was being fixed. (I finished pattern 6 last Thursday, same place, waiting for an oil change.)

Just in time, as pattern 8 is now out. I have gotten as far behind as six patterns when we were near the end of the original Sampler M, so I'm trying to keep up with the CM ones.

Here is the Pi bag after a third wash, now down to ten inches wide and ten and three-quarters long.

I am pretty happy with it at this size, especially since I was a little worried I had knitted it too big.

It has turned into a nice soft thick felt fabric. The only thing I might still do is wet the edge and bash it around so it doesn't ruffle. (It probably wouldn't have done that if I had left the plastic out of the eyelets during the second wash.)

That's the nice thing about knitting and felting -- I don't have to be too careful with it.

Q: How did you cast off for your Pi bag?

A: I purled around the edge for several rows so it would roll towards the inside of the bag, then I did a sewn cast off. That's the one in the back of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac called "Casting on casting-off".

I was going to add a photo of the Easter-egg-dyed tussah silk scarf that I worked on at our son's spring concert/talent show (which went much better than last year's). But Blogger has suddenly decided "no pictures!"

Last year I was too frazzled by trying to drag the child to the concert to bring knitting. This year he was calmer about the whole thing, so I brought the scarf and knitted through most of the songs. But I forgot my brand new camera!

Good Points, Bad Points

There are good points and bad points about driving a 1996 Honda Odyssey with 180,000+ miles on the odometer.

The good points: It is lighter than the new Odysseys, and still gets at least 23 miles per gallon of gas, even in the winter. It is paid off, so the "car payment" on it consists of the insurance, the license plate, maintenance, and repairs. It is 11 years old, so I don't worry too much about where I park it or who is next to it.

On the other hand, as a vehicle gets older (even a Honda), I end up spending more time in waiting rooms. I went in for an oil change yesterday, and took my Sampler (C)M along. I finished pattern 6 and started pattern 7.

And while I was waiting, they came out to let me know it was leaking oil from the oil pressure switch, and did I want to get that fixed? I want to drive it for at least another year, so yes. Losing oil is bad.

And one of the CV boots is ripped, so I'll be doing more knitting in the waiting room next week. *sigh*

I hate change, and I never love a new car. I always wish the car I have would just keep going, which is why I get the oil changed and the maintenance done, and probably why our first Honda, a Civic hatchback we bought brand-new, ran for over 300,000 miles.

The hundred-thousands number wheel on that Honda was showing the 4 by the time we sold it. It's a little scary to think that theoretically it could have gone up to 999,999 miles before rolling back over to zero.

But now I have to think about picking out a new (or new-to-me) vehicle again. Yuck!

It's All Too Beautiful

Spring, that is.

I spent some of yesterday outdoors, shovelling the finished compost out of my cinder-block bin and hauling it over to my garden bed.

I was distracted by the rhubarb, which was suddenly big enough to pick, not to mention the lilacs in bloom.

Asparagus is popping up, columbines are racing into bloom, and the hops vines are climbing up the net as fast as they can grow!

I meant to enlarge this net, but I decided I better hang it up before the hops vines started climbing the window screens.

Before I know it, the hops will be up to the roof, and their leaves will be shading our west window from the evening sun.

They also block the dogs' view of any rabbits that come and nibble the grass right outside the window. Argh. Ajax pawed the window so hard at one bunny this spring that he broke the glass!

Luckily for him, he was not hurt (not even by me!). I replaced the pane with acrylic, which already has a couple of dog toenail scratches in it.
I did sneak a little knitting time in, though. I used up one color on the latest Pi bag, and have only a little left of each of the others. I can hardly wait to get this knitted up and thrown in the washing machine.

I have Sampler CM (the continuation of Sampler M) pattern 6 almost done, and pattern 7 corrected and printed out, ready to knit. I like to put the photo and the graph right into the Word document before I print it out, so I have them all in one place.

I am much more likely to knit a pattern if I have a photo to look at. Rows of typed-out YO's and SSK's don't say as much to me. A graph is a little better, but a picture is best of all.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

I took this photo of the sweet cherry tree in bloom at the east end of the house through the rain-streaked glass.

If I wait until the rainy weather stops, the petals will have fallen and it will be all green leaves. This gnarled-looking tree is nearly all that remains of a cherry orchard that must have been here for decades. Almost all of the other trees have died, and this one is not in great shape itself.

But every other year or so, it still throws off a crop of sweet dark cherries. That is, if we get any honey bees for pollination, and if the raccoons and birds don't eat them all up! (I should make a cherry net.)

Near the other end of the house is a sweet yellow cherry tree in even more precarious health. I've always heard that birds were supposed to leave yellow cherries alone, thinking they were still unripe.

Apparently the cedar waxwings and other fruit-eating birds of SW Michigan have not heard this piece of wisdom, because they regularly feast on almost every cherry this tree ripens.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you've probably figured out that I'm not a weather-hater. I used to work with some people who thought only sun was good. If it rained, snowed, or even sprinkled, they were always moaning about the "terrible weather". I don't think of rain as "bad weather," since I know it is going to bring out the leaves on the trees so it will finally look like spring.

As the cliche phrase goes, there's no such thing as bad weather, there's only bad clothing. Personally, the only weather that I dislike with any intensity is really hot weather, prolonged for a really long time, when all this green dries up. Because while you can dress for rain and snow, once you're down to skin in hot weather, where do you go from there? (Into "the" lake, aka "the big lake," namely Lake Michigan, is my answer. And stay until the weather cools off.)

Fortunately for me, Michigan doesn't tend to get scorching weather. (But I say that very quietly, not wanting to tempt the capricious weather gods, who so hate to be predictable.)

Active Knitting Projects
Blue socks, naughty acrylic socks, ragg wool leg warmers that I hope to finish by next winter, Sampler CM, and Easter-egg dyed tussah silk scarf in brioche stitch.

I ought to take a picture of all my "dormant" knitting projects, all the things I haven't added a stitch to. That would be an entertaining picture. And probably a bigger pile.

Knitting Content

Patterns 1 through 5 from the Sampler CM, and sixteen inches of brioche scarf in Easter-egg-dyed tussah silk.

Although I forgot about the Great Lakes Lace Group's "Spring Fling," fortunately other people didn't. And thank goodness the West Michigan Lace Group has a trunk show coming up on the 14th of May, otherwise how would I get a thread binge in?

This is going to be a busy day, so I'll have to settle for a short, link-loaded post today.

I Had A Lovely Friday the Thirteenth

We had sunshine, and I caught up to the fourth pattern in the new round of Sampler M patterns, the "Sampler CM" ones. There is a link to this Dutch and English group in the sidebar.

That second pattern from the bottom is very interesting. The ribs are pronounced because all the knit stitches on the right side are twisted stitches. Twisting them makes them stand right out.

I love knitting this sampler because I keep getting exposed to fairly simple things that have dramatic effects. I knew about ribbing, and I knew about twisted stitches, and I could have figured out how to make the ribs slant with increases and decreases. But on my own, would I have thought about doing all three at once? Probably not, and how delightful!

Sunshine. We had sunshine all day, although the temperature stayed below 45 degrees F. It didn't matter, because the sunshine made it feel so much more like spring than Wednesday's heavy snow.

One of my brothers visited to test-fire a gun he bought. Truffles didn't much like that! But we live out in a rural area, with no close neighbors other than fields, and my brother lives in the city. He fires at a target with our hill as a backstop.

Afterwards he came in and we talked and caught up for a while before he headed home.

And last night was my local canton meeting, the canton being a division of the Society for Creative Anachronism. We started out with a potluck, and for once we didn't have groupthink on what to eat! (More than once we have all brought the same thing, so we have had dessert meetings, chips-and-various-dips meetings, and the infamous "chicken meeting.")

We talked about demos that are planned for this summer and other upcoming events. Afterwards I managed to find our way home in the dark, even if it was Friday the Thirteenth.

So all in all, an excellent day!

insert catchy title here

I'd like to say, "Look, I've finally started the new Sampler M patterns!" but I know the real news is this:



Can you believe it? Yes, it is snowing again in beautiful SW Michigan!

WINTER WEATHER ON THE WAY
Low pressure in Missouri will spread snow into the region today as it heads toward the Great Lakes. Several inches of snow along with blowing snow is expected this afternoon through tonight.

The National Weather Service in Grand Rapids has issued a winter weather advisory...which is in effect until 6 pm EDT this afternoon. Snow will be heavy at times this morning. Rain is expected to mix in with the snow this afternoon. Accumulation rates of an inch an hour are expected. In addition winds will gust to around 35 mph at times. Snow accumulations of 3 to 5 inches are expected by Wednesday evening. Near whiteout conditions will be possible this morning.

Sheesh. Well, I still have plenty of firewood, even if I don't have enough daylight to take a decent knitting picture even with the flash. My plan is to take advantage of the "knitting weather". This is the regional satellite loop I like to check to see what's coming.

I'm snow-verwhelmed.

Out Ruining My Hands

Yesterday the weather was beautiful, so although I printed out the second new Sampler CM pattern, instead of doing any knitting, lace or otherwise, I went outside and worked on ruining my hands for knitting.

The high temperature here in SW Michigan hit 71 degrees F. Monday and 66 yesterday. That brought out a carpet of scented purple and white violets under my old sweet cherry tree.

I walked around with the camera for a while, but then I found myself ripping away at the invasive myrtle or periwinkle that took over part of my lawn a couple of years ago during a very dry, hot summer.

Naturally I was bare-handed. The gardening gloves were inside. I very often start out wearing cotton work gloves when I garden, but just as often I lay them aside for one reason or another, and find myself later with completely black fingernails.

In the case of ripping up the myrtle vines, I end up with a sore, dirt- and plant-stained spot on the side of both my index fingers and the pads of my thumbs, where I work my finger under the vines and pull them up. This is exactly the spot where the yarn or thread I'm knitting runs. It takes pumice soap to scrub my fingers clean when I come in!

I won't take a picture of the myrtle, because it doesn't deserve it. But I did stitch together pictures of the columbine leaves coming out, a patch of the white and purple violets growing together, my double daffodils, and a couple of the last crocuses.

Luckily for the knitting, today it is only 44 degrees and I've built a fire in the soapstone stove.

And the taxes, which have been hanging over my head, are done, hooray! Now I can play and not feel too guilty.

Sampler M, Beginning and End

Although I knitted the last pattern on my "Sampler M" a couple of weeks ago, it has been waiting on the needle for me to cast off. I decided I wanted to make a picot-point cast off like the beginning, so I knitted the picot points, but then I realized I would have to sew the last row down.

I knew that was going to be some work, so the sampler sat and nagged at me until finally yesterday I got out a piece of foam and some pins and pinned it out to graft the end down. I used the picot-point beginning to help me see what I had to do. Above, on the left, 32 stitches left to go, and on the right, only 4 left!

After I grafted the last four stitches, I gave it a wash with Orvus (Orvus WA paste, mostly sodium lauryl sulfate) and a couple of rinses. I hadn't noticed as I was knitting, but in my white sink it was very obvious that the thread at the end of the sampler was a darker ecru than the beginning. It was knitted of all one thread off the same ball, so I suspect the discoloration was from the cardboard center.

After I saw that, I started to think I might give it a second wash, so I am letting it dry without blocking. Tatt3r's sampler was knitted from about the same weight of thread, but while I used the Susan Bates gold US size 0 needles, I think she used the greenish-silver US size 1's.

The other thing I could see while it was wet in a white sink was "foreign fiber discoloration", where I accidentally knitted other fibers into it. Usually in our house that means Truffles' very fine, light, floaty black undercoat hairs, but when I tweezed one of these out, it was blue!

Sampler M and my blue waffle scarf often travelled together in the same knitting bag -- it looks like the sampler acquired quite a few very fine dark blue fibers. When the sampler was short, I would roll it up and put it in a hard case with the knitting needles, but the ball of thread didn't fit and was out snuggling up to the scarf yarn.

Fortunately it isn't going to be entered into any competitions where it would be downgraded for foreign fibers. Instead it is going to stay with my notebook of printed-out sampler M patterns and be used to remind me of them. Its most current use will be to help me pick out a pattern or two for the West Michigan Lace Group's March bookmark exchange. The next meeting is coming up in about two weeks.

Tatt3r has already finished some bobbin lace ones. (She is getting a lot done, and raising a sweet Airedale puppy!)

Pi, Dry

Although I have a nice, fairly new dryer, I don't use it much. In the summer, I prefer to line-dry clothes (I love that sunny smell!) and in the winter, I have a nice folding drying rack that I put up in front of the soapstone stove. Given the low humidity in the winter, plus the radiant heat from the stove, everything on the rack dries very fast and adds a little moisture back to the air.

For scale, the rack is 36 inches wide.

And here is my husband acting as my mannequin. I think I said I wasn't sure at first if I liked the moss stitch border, but it did grow on me. I think the horizontal line across the bottom gives it a nice finished look, and some contrast to the textured fish-scale points of the lace.

In this shawl, the lace is more of a texture than a pattern (if that makes any sense). I think it makes the shawl warmer. I'm wearing it right now, with a shawl pin at the neck. It turned out just the right length, so I'm not sitting on it in the back and yanking my throat. In the front it drapes over my forearms and ends nicely at the bend of my wrist.

I am 5/6ths done knitting the very last pattern, pattern 28, of Sampler M!

Carla has given us the option of continuing the sampler with other patterns, but I included the edge of my ball of crochet cotton in this photo so you can see why I will be casting off after one more repeat of pattern 28.

Once again I have struck cardboard, and so I'll be finishing the sampler, and finishing another ball of crochet cotton from my stash at the same time. I will probably knit up the new patterns using yet another ball from my stash.

Pattern 28 used crossed stitches, or small cables, with one stitch passed behind three stitches. I also tried it with two stitches passed behind two. I've never done any cable knitting before, so it was a challenge. Since I didn't have a cable needle, I hung the waiting stitches on a crochet hook behind the work, and that worked fine.

My netmaking class went well. I am always so nervous before a class, it's a wonder I ever teach anything. But my students picked it up enthusiastically.

My philosophy of teaching is that the best place to make mistakes is during the class, while the teacher is right there to help you. I view making mistakes as a good thing, so you can see how a successful netting knot looks, and an unsuccessful one. It's important to know what the slipped knot looks like, otherwise how would you know to avoid it?

And in the end, it's only string!

Overcast Days

Although the snow makes it seem a lot brighter to my eye, my camera says it is too dark and dim to take a good photo of my Sampler M progress.

Last night I finished pattern 26, "Sugarscoop" and two rows of pattern 27, "Lily of the Valley," an interesting lace knitting pattern that uses a K2tog on the purl side.

We are getting plenty of snow again. When I was a kid, we called this kind of feathery snow "angels having a pillow fight".
It's not bright enough out there for the camera to use a fast enough shutter speed to catch those feathers in mid-air.

The forecast says another 1 to 4 inches today, more roof-raking for me.

In other news, the Knitty.com "surprise" articles are up, including Julie's article on color theory. This is the kind of handy info that a color challenged knitter like me can really use. And the photo of the Bohus sweater sent me off the the library website to put a hold on Wendy Keele's Poems of Color.

If Bill Watterson only knew, one of the reasons I still miss "Calvin & Hobbes" is that what other comic artist is dressing their characters in Bohus sweaters?

Snowing So Hard

It was snowing so hard yesterday evening that I couldn't see across my yard. There's about a foot of snow out there. It took a lot of brushing to clear my van off to take our son to school this morning. (School was open today, much to his disappointment.)

I used my time indoors to work on catching up on my "Sampler M". I finished pattern 22 "Scales", pattern 23 "Brioche", pattern 24 "Cloche", and I'm almost done with 25, "Torch".

I printed out 26 and 27, and I believe there is one more pattern yet to come. I have learned a lot knitting all of these different patterns, and I've tried many things I had seen in knitting books and thought, "I should try that someday", like the picot-point edge, and the brioche stitch.

The brioche came out surprisingly light and fluffy even considering that I am using size 10 crochet cotton thread and US size 0 knitting needles. Mary Thomas says it is also known as "shawl stitch", and I think it would be a great stitch for a scarf, a shawl, or a stole. It's very lofty, and in the right yarn it would be light, lacy-looking, and warm.

As if I didn't have a large enough project backlog already!

[Edited to add: If you were looking for a Pi shawl, go admire Tatt3r's Pi in its almost-finished state!]

Sorta Winter

We've been getting little sprinkles of snow, just barely enough for my husband to take our son sliding on the hill in the neighbor's hayfield, but not quite enough to cover the tall grass.

Outdoors, it looks like winter is just starting. If we are lucky, the cold weather will hold the fruit trees back and keep the flower buds from swelling and freezing. The newspaper said so far, it looks like only peach trees were advanced enough to lose buds.

It was beautiful weather for knitting on the Pi shawl. I decided it was long enough after 11 repeats on the outer ring, and cast on 15 stitches to knit the seed stitch border.

You can see the start of the border on the left side of the picture. Although I wanted a wide border that would lay flat and not curl up, I was not sure I liked the strong horizontal lines of the seed stitch, and worried that it would contract the lace knitting too much. But I think it is growing on me as it grows, and after three repeats in the lace portion, it doesn't seem to be pulling in.

I knitted 3 rows of seed stitch across the bottom before I cast on for the knitted-on border. Border and all, it is about 23 inches long. I wanted a shawl that would be just short of my sitting on it, because I didn't want to sit on the edge and yank it off my shoulders. This looks about right.


I finished pattern 21 and started pattern 22 of Sampler M, and I worked a couple more rows on the Valdani bag. I wasn't at all happy with my eyelets in pattern 21, but after frogging them a couple of times, and trying about three different ways of knitting them, I decided I had learned enough about eyelets made on six yarnovers, and went on to pattern 22, "Scales".

No Clever Title

Winter finally came back. This snow dog would be happy, if I could get rid of the tickly sore throat I woke up with.

I tried about sixteen times to get a decent photo of the white-crowned sparrows that have been mobbing my bird feeder. I have counted up to eight at once. I've never seen so many at my feeder before. House finches, yeah, in flocks of tens and dozens, but not white-crowned sparrows.

I thought I would have a picture of the big eyelets in pattern 21 of Sampler M to post today. I did one repeat and was not too happy with them, so I frogged them out again. I dug out Mary Thomas's Knitting Pattern book and am re-reading "Grand Eyelets" and the posts on knitting pattern 21 without cutting.

And the urge to knit seems to have come back with the cold weather, because I can hardly sit still to type this for wanting to go take another stab [yuck yuck] at them. Plus I hear the Pi shawl calling me again.

Procrastinating. With Sprinkles.

I finished up Pattern 20 from Sampler M yesterday, even after discovering I had repeated the first row three times and frogging it out. This is a nice textured pattern, but hard to photograph.

Although I purled it the way it was written, I think many knitters would prefer to knit it. The back looks like garter stitch, and the front is sort of honeycombed. Since it's basically garter stitch with *sprinkles, it lies perfectly flat.

I tried to get a picture of it against the light to show the fishscale effect of the slipped stitches,
but it doesn't really show up.

The next pattern, pattern 21, creates giant eyelets. It says to cut the thread! [shudder] I don't know if I can bring myself to do it! Some members of the Sampler M group have discussed other ways to create the eyelets without cutting the thread. I will have to re-read their messages and see if I understand what they are doing with no pictures.

Meanwhile, I have a couple of deadlines I have to meet. I said I'd teach a class on basic netmaking, which means I have to order netting shuttles, write up and illustrate instructions, and make gauges. So sitting around blogging is just another way of procrastinating. With sprinkles.

*sprinkles: You know, hagelslag, sprinkles. I mean "garter stitch made fancy", the way the whipped cream on top of hot chocolate is sometimes fancied-up with sprinkles.

Home Alone

My son and husband are finally back to school and work after a couple of days home. They both had Monday off, and both took Tuesday off sick.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we had brilliant sunshine and cold weather. It got up to about 31 degrees F. Some of the ice melted, but not all of it. I took a picture when the sun finally climbed over the red pines at the top of the hill and hit the ice-covered branches of the sweet cherry tree outside my studio window.

Overnight the temperature dropped down into the teens, and the optimistic leaf buds that had started to break on my rosebush froze.

Knitting News

Getting the blue waffle scarf off the needles inspired me to pick up my Sampler M, which has been languishing since it got put down in the pre-Christmas rush.

These are patterns 18, finally finished, and 19. Pattern 25 has just been put up at the Yahoo group, so I have to get knitting to catch up!

Once again the pattern repeats are separated with purl ribs within a pattern, and purl welts between each pattern. I like the stability this gives the Sampler. Although my knitting is not always perfect, I am learning a lot!

Blue Waffle Scarf Pattern
On a knitting board (=double rake), use stockinette wrap. I used a total of 32 stitches, equivalent to 16 on each side of the knitting board. My scarf used 74 grams of Red Heart Symphony yarn.

On knitting needles, cast on a multiple of four stitches. The scarf was knitted on US size 11 (8 mm) needles. It would have been faster to knit on a knitting board, but right now I don't have one with thick enough pegs.

Knit each group of four as follows, passing the yarn between the tips of the needles after every stitch, as if you were knitting a K1-P1 rib or single moss stitch.

1. Knit one
2. Purl one
3. Slip one with yarn in back
4. Slip one with yarn in front

Stitch 1 is the front layer, 2 is the back layer, then you skip (slip) the next front and back layer stitches. You can see the yarn zigzagging back and forth in the purpley-red sample on my earlier post.

Odds and Ends of Knitting

Although I didn't get as much knitting done yesterday as I might have liked, I have been getting in a row here and a row there.

I started another frame-knitted potholder to use up some odds and ends of dishcloth cotton. I started it with the Magic Cast-On, but this time I turned it so the purl side was in. That makes the knit side wrap around the bottom. When I use the tubular or grafted cast-off, both ends should look very similar.

I've been doing a row here and a row there on my blue scarf, too. It's about 21 inches long. I like a fairly long scarf that I can wrap around my neck and have one end in front and the other down my back, so I have quite a lot more knitting to do on it. I could have used it this morning: it was 32 degrees F., brrrr.

Then I realized I hadn't posted a picture of my Sampler M in a while, so here is the current one.

From bottom to top, patterns 15, 16, 17 (yes, it does appear to be one repeat of pattern 14) and 18.

I've only done one of the four repeats of pattern 18 so far. This is the first pattern to feature lace rows in every row, without a row of plain knitting between. It would be pretty easy in the round, but in a flat sampler you have to do "p2tog bl", purl 2 together through the back loop.

On the Sampler M list ("Join" button in the sidebar), someone suggested purling the first stitch, returning it to the left needle, drawing the next stitch over, and then sliding the stitch to the right needle. Although this is pretty cumbersome to type out, I find it a bit easier than the p2tob bl.

The guy from the LP gas company came and took the empty tank away yesterday. My husband got the chain link fence back up when he came home from work, so the dogs were able to go out and sniff the spot where the tank sat. I had pruned out the mulberry sprout, but there is some shaggy long grass that was under the edge of the tank, out of reach of the lawn mower.

It was sort of warm (meaning not windy, around 40 degrees F., and the sun was shining), so I got inspired to prune back the scraggly rose heap. I took our garden cart out there and snipped myself a path along the chain link fence, so I should be able to mow along it next spring.

The rose heap is some kind of climbing rose that throws out long canes, with nowhere to climb. The long canes just flop over into a dome shape. I haven't dug it out because it provides thorny cover for the birds that come to my bird feeder. Once I saw a hawk try to chase a bird into it!

But it certainly has wicked, backward-curving thorns, as all the little pricks and scratches on my fingers will attest.