KOTOTW Book Giveaway, Legos, and Some More FOs!

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

FIRST THING –it is time to give away a copy of Knitting On Top of the World, the book upon which this blog (and my entire knitting life, lately!) is based!

Nicky even sent me some autographed book plates, so here is a chance to win an autographed copy of KOTOTW for your very own!  I’m going to be giving one autographed book away each month for the next few months, so you’ll have plenty of chances to try.

To enter, simply reply to this post; and if you can’t get it to work for whatever reason, just email me at maryp55124 at yahoo dot com. 

Good Luck!

A Double Ta-Daaahhh!

First of all, there is nothing like a little travel time to really accelerate the Knitting on Top of the World knitting schedule!  I have finished both the Fair Isle Tam Capelet, Project No. 20, and the Galway Shrug Shawl.

The Fair Isle Tam Capelet was a fun knitting project; each of the giant tam tops is knitted from the outer rim to the center.  (I always like making things that go faster and faster as you finish!)   The picture in the book isn’t very flattering; for some reason the model was pictured with the tams directly over her breasts, which is NOT how it was intended to be worn!  (Nicky recalls the photo shoot and having three teams doing photographs at various locations in this mansion, and trying to run from one to another, but she couldn’t be everywhere at once!  She wanted them to use the second photo of the Capelet in the book, picturing the back view, instead.)

I think it is quite elegant and will look great over my black or tan coats this winter.

And I also finished the Galway Bay Shrug Shawl, Project No. 21!

(These pictures are courtesy of my (impatient) son; I will try to get some better ones at my next knitting night.) 

The Galway Bay Shrug Shawl was knitted on HUGE needles – unfortunately the ones I brought to Chicago weren’t quite large enough for me to get gauge, as I knit so tightly, but I sort of knitted on like an irrational person.  I realized that I was working so many more rows to an inch, I would never have enough yarn to finish, so on Sunday night I unraveled one whole half of it and started again from scratch.  I also was still concerned that I would run out of yarn; I almost always buy extra, for lengthening purposes, but blew it this time, so I didn't alter the pattern at all.  Luckily, I checked out the "search in stashes" function on Ravelry, and a very kind Raveller (Ravelry ID “modell”) sold me two extra skeins she had in her stash of the very same dye lot, which helped me sleep at night – after already unraveling one half of it, to find out I wouldn’t be able to finish and have to start again, after having knitted almost the whole thing already 1 ½ times, would  simply have done me in!  I ended up JUST squeaking by with the yarn I had, with less than 10" to spare, but at least I was able to finish without that panicky, doomed feeling. 

I almost always buy one or two extra balls of yarn for whatever I'm making, both because I'm tall, and because sometimes so much time passes before I actually get to that particular project, that there would be NO WAY to find any extra matching yarn, should I run short.  Everyone knits a bit differently; yarn amounts are really more of an art than a science.  And even though you could theoretically figure out how many yards a particular yarn has per ounce, and then weigh the finished project, even this wouldn't give you an accurate yardage measurement, because it wouldn't take into account the yarn ends as you change colors or start new balls, etc.  For me, the extra expenditure for a bit more yarn, pays off as a worthwhile investment in peace of mind.

Both of the above projects are made out of yarns (Harrisville Designs Orchid, and Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky, respectively) that consists of just a single ply of roving, instead of multiple plies twisted together.  This makes it very hard to use for sewing projects together, as the single, untwisted ply is fragile and pulls apart easily.  I coped with this problem just by using shorter lengths; it wasn't so bad, because there isn’t much sewing in either of these two patterns. 

But you do have other options; when you need to sew together a project that calls for a single-ply yarn, or for a bulky or slubby yarn that just isn't usable as sewing thread, I sometimes use needlepoint wool such as Paternayan (after all, it is meant to take a beating, as it must be pulled in and out of those tiny squares of needlepoint canvas, sort of like rubbing up against a cheese grater.  You can almost always find a color close enough not to be noticeable.  However, I also read somewhere that you can “toughen up” a single-ply yarn strand by wetting it and rubbing it vigorously between your palms, sort of felting it into a more stable sewing thread. 

The Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky used for the Galway Bay Shrug Shawl is incredibly thick, almost the circumference of a No. 2 pencil.  It felt really funny to me, to knit and sew with such a thick, ropy piece of yarn; far more exercise for the fingers, with big, exaggerated motions required to manipulate the stitches for cables, etc.  I tend to gravitate toward finer yarns almost always; I think my favorite weight might be fingering yarn, generally.  But I am really happy with how this shrug came out.  It is really light and cozy, incredibly soft and warm, and will be a welcome addition to my icy morning office during the next Minnesota winter!

 Roman Holiday Shrug - Project No. 22

Now I'm working on the Roman Shrug Shawl, Project No. 22; I started with the embellishment bits that you sew on afterwards.  Below you can see one completed flower, as well as a couple that aren’t stitched together yet, and the mass of bobbles that will be used to create the bobble flowers along the edges of each sleeve.

And here are some pictures of the bottom of the end of one sleeve – I really like this holster stitch pattern.  You cast on 8 stitches, knit 4, cast on 8 again, and so on, then do 8 rows where you do the 8-stitch parts in stockinette, and the 4-stitch parts between in reverse stockinette.  And then you cast off just the 8-stitch parts, and in the following row purl straight across, which skootches all of the little extra 8-stitch bits together in these cylinders.  Too much fun – I look at Nicky’s patterns and the clever way she uses stitches, and am always surprised that (1) it is easy to do these knitting “special effects;” and (2) that she comes up with them in these surprising combinations that are so effective in her designs.

 The rest of the Roman Holiday Shrug should be done and ready to show you next week; and then the it will be time for the Parisian Entrelac Wrap! 

I’ll have to show some pictures of how entrelac knitting works; you sort of start with a row of base triangles, and from that base you knit rows of squares on their sides, like diamonds, adding rows (with triangles on the edges of alternate rows) to build the fabric.  Anyway, it is the coolest thing ever, one of those wonderful knitting inventions like Aran knitting or Fair Isle brought down to us from clever knitters from the dim, misty past who just got bored with stockinette stitch, I suppose.  (Or didn’t have books to read, or the internet to keep them distracted.)   The colors I have chosen for the wrap are really lovely.

And then, on with the Black Forest Mitts; when those are finished, I will officially have made it HALF WAY around the world!  We will have to do something special to celebrate.  I’m thinking it might be time to go to NYC and visit Ms. Nicky herself, this time when it isn't so cold outside!

Brickworld in Chicago

My son, Nathan, who is almost 15, and I had a blast last weekend on our whirlwind drive to Wheeling, Illinois, for the Brickworld 2011, a Lego convention held at the Westin Hotel (which Nathan once pointed out “smells like rich people,” thanks to their signature white-tea aloe candles, shampoo and soap!)  We left late on Thursday, and almost didn’t go at all, as one of my dachshunds, Madeline, was suddenly quite ill (more on that later.)  But Aaron the Wonder-Neph stepped in to house- and dog-sit, and I knew she would be in such good hands that I decided to go after all.

We stayed the night in LaCrosse, WI, and then finished the drive to Chicago in the AM, getting there just after lunch.  At usual, every hotel conference room and ballroom was filled to the brim with amazing creations made out of Legos, running the gamut from pointillist impressions of famous photographs and paintings, spaceships and steamships, Calvin & Hobbes, a cuckoo clock, and even  Kanye West accepting his Grammy  – see the gallery below!  The boundless creativity of what people can make with their hands never fails to amaze me.  I know that for Nathan and for these folks, Legos are exactly what yarn is to us - the medium for expression, and such a source of endless fascination, pleasure and joy.

 

Madeline

Besides taking a trip, another reason for my longer-than-usual silence, is that I've been caring for a sick doggy.  Just before we left for Chicago, Madeline, my little black and tan dachshund, became quite ill.  She wasn’t hungry at all, and just seemed so worn down and exhausted, and sad.   Although I was supposed to get in the car and take Nate to Chicago for the Lego convention, instead at I was at the vet's office, waiting to hear what was wrong.  I was expecting maybe a stomach virus, but it turns out she has developed an unusual disease called “Immuno-Mediated Thrombocytopenia,” which means the immune system has gone off the rails and is attacking her own red blood cells.

Dachshunds are supposed to have a red blood cell count of 37%; hers was down to 12.2%, which explained the exhaustion – red blood cells carry oxygen around to muscles and organs, and she wasn’t getting nearly enough.  Even scarier, her blood sample revealed no platelets.  Apparently, the odds of surviving this disease are about 67%; a third of the dogs who come down with this just don’t get better, another third have an intense round of drug therapy and then revert to normal, and a third have to stay on medicine for the rest of their life, which ends up being shorter than usual due to side effects of the drugs.

I was so shocked – but luckily my vet, Dr. Pam, was familiar with this illness.  Her own dog had acquired it just as she graduated from vet school.  She put Madeline on an antibiotic (just in case some foreign antigen started this ball rolling) and high doses of prednisone, and I bought some extra-special irresistible canned Prescription Diet A/D food to coax her to eat again.  The prednisone suppresses the immune system to get it to stop killing red blood cells; the idea is to give the bone marrow time to kick in and increase the rate of red blood cell production to compensate.  If this doesn't occur, or doesn't happen fast enough, blood transfusions are an option, but that would involve taking her to the University of Minnesota animal hospital, lots of trauma, and great expense, so I was hoping not to be faced with that scenario.

Then we entrusted her to the loving care of Aaron, the Wonder-Neph (who as you might recall used to live with us, so he knows and loves the puppy girls), who had agreed to house-sit and puppy-sit while we were away.  And then we hit the road.  It felt terrible to drive away from my sick doggy, but I didn’t want to let Nathan down, either, as he had been looking forward to this trip, and had really earned it, having graduated from middle school.  We returned Sunday night; her condition hadn't changed.

We had a really tense week of it; on Wednesday I thought we might lose her.  She was panting, taking three breaths for every one that Libby took, and her heart seemed to be beating really hard.  She was so tired, looking at me with those big eyes; I just held her while she slept.  But she seemed to turn a corner on Thursday, and woke up with a bit perkier, ate a whole can of dog food, and wagged her tail a lot, more like her old self. 

Each blood test has shown a slight rise in her red blood cell count, from 15.5%, to 17.4%, and yesterday we were up to 22.2%!  Not nearly enough, I know, but she is definitely perkier, eating well, and seems more comfortable.   So, I don’t know yet if we are out of the woods; she will be on the prednisone for a minimum of 4 months, and we will start stepping her off of it if we can get her blood cell count back in the 30%'s. 

Madeline is only 6; seems way too young to get sick like this.  After all, dachshunds have a normal life span of 10-15 years.  Libby, my red dachshund, who is 7, has been on prednisone for at least 3 years now. We were warned that eventually, this might lead to Cushing’s disease, which destroys the kidneys, but decided that it was the only option for her, as otherwise, her skin issues were so bad that her constant scratching resulted in her making holes in the skin over her ears and stomach.  (My theory is, better to have a happy, comfortable life that is a bit shorter, than a miserable long one…) 

So, in the back of my mind, I have sort of been expecting that Libby will die young.  But Madeline has been such a healthy, trouble-free little thing, this was completely out of the blue. 

As I write this, she is snoozing in the closet, behind me. 

I’m so grateful that she is feeling better.   (And I think Maddie herself is grateful that my hobby of choice necessitates lots of lap time, making me perfect company for an ailing little pup!)

XOXOXO, Mar.

Comments

[katebee]

Aw, your poor wee pup! I hope she feels better soon. :(

On a happier note, your shrug shawl is fabulous on you! Love it!

[Silverlotus]

Oh dear. I hope Madeline feels better soon.

Your knitting, as always, is fabulous. You are very inspiring.

[Patty]

Your Fair Isle Tam Capelet looks very nice. You are right about the photo in the book. When I saw that, I thought "What in the world is that?" But your creation of the pattern looks very nice.
Give Madeline some kisses for me and I pray she is better soon!

[judy]

Hope that Madeline keeps improving quickly.
Those lego creations are amazing!

[Steph]

I hope the puppy is better soon. I'm sure she be taking away a lot of your attention but keep us updated.

And I'm very jealous of your Lego trip!