Family Temperature Blanket · Knitting Olympics 2006/Williamsro · Knitting-Fibonacci Sweater · Knitting-Parcheesi · Knitting-Safe at Home for Davy · Knitting-St. Brigid · Ten for Ten - An Anniversary! · Twenty for Twenty - Another Anniversar;y · Unraveled Wednesday / Knit & Read

Unraveled Wednesday: Twenty

Vicki8 Comments

On this day, 20 years ago, which was the First Day of Spring, I wrote my first blog post.

In 2014, I managed a pretty epic (if I may be so bold) 10-part series to celebrate my 10th blogiversary.

This year, I thought I’d celebrate by sharing 20 of my favorite knits, since knitting was the #1 reason for starting a blog in the first place. That idea came to me in the middle of the night, but I guess it’s not all that new — I shared 10 favorites as part of the 2014 series (and there are some repeats)!

So, in a bit of a departure from the usual Wednesday unraveling, today I’m joining Kat & the Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday with 20 of my favorite knits! I’m not going to link to individual project pages, but y’all can find anything you’re looking for on my Ravelry page… I am knitorious.

1. Cabled Pullover w/Kangaroo Pockets

aka #11 Turtleneck by Anna Sui in Vogue Knitting, Winter 2003/04. This was finished in 2004, knit with Rowan Polar, a yummy super bulky yarn (now discontinued). Katie wore this sweater a lot back in the day!

2. Alpaca Pure Shawlette

I think this was the first shawl I ever knit… Judy Pascale’s Simply Garter Shapely Shawlette. I knit this in 2004 with yarn that I received in a swap (also my first-ever swap). I would never have chosen that colorway myself, but found a pattern that would work and, lo & behold, it was a favorite/staple of my wardrobe for a long, long time!

3. St. Brigid

I fell in love with this sweater on sight, and it’s the #1 reason I learned to knit cables… and to knit from a chart. At the time, the only place to get the pattern was in Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting, which was out of print. I think copies were selling for $800s or so. Thankfully, that’s been resolved & there’s a new edition. Anyway, finished right around this time of year in 2005, I knit it in Cascade 220. The photo, inspired by one in the book, was taken at West Kilbride, Scotland, on our first visit to the UK in 2011.

4. Fib

I might consider this my first triumph with color, using seven random hanks of Donegal Tweed that my sister Sharon had left over from a kit or two. Alexandra Virgiel’s Fibonacci was the main inspiration, but it’s really more of a Frankenstein sweater… finished in 2006.

5. Williamsro

I knit this as a member of the US Cable Team for the 2006 Knitting Olympics, which was a blast! (I still have my certificate.) Williamsro was designed by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton, and the yarn — Noro Blossom & Cash Iroha — was a real splurge.

6. Cecil Cardigan

This was the cover sweater of Vogue Knitting, Spring 2003. Started in 2004, it languished until 2007 when Kate urged me to finish. I’d realized that it wasn’t really suited for me, but it was perfect for her! It was really fun to knit. I purchased the buttons at Tender Buttons when I visited NYC in 2005.

7. Habu Birthday To You

Knit for my mom from an amazing Habu Kit featuring Tsumugi Silk, it took me two years to make it, mainly because… it was weird (those Habu patterns are often… weird). It was knit in pieces, all going in different directions then sewn together, but they were so small… I remember thinking, This is never gonna work! But it did work, after stretching those pieces to within an inch of their lives. It’s an incredible sweater, which I finished in 2010, and my mother loved it so much — it was 100% her style. She loved telling me about the compliments she’d receive, and that she was so proud to tell people that it was knit by her daughter.

8. Parcheesi

My first blanket, and let’s call this my second triumph in color. Knit in 2010, while my sister Sharon was undergoing treatment for cancer, I finished it just a few weeks before she died in December. The pattern is Parcheesi by the wonderful Janine Bajus. You see this blanket every time you visit my blog, as it’s up there in the header. I will always treasure it.

9. Freestyle Cabled Cowl

Inspired by a couple of other cowls that I’d knit, and also by Fiona Ellis, whose taught a “cables” class at Midwest Masters one year (a long time ago), some of the cable motifs are normal, but others go off willy-nilly. I knit this in 2011 with some Plymouth Galway Worsted that I dyed myself.

10. Wisconsin Wedding Shawls

I knit these shawls in 2013 for Ali’s wedding. Her “Wisconsin Wedding” shawl is a pattern by Julia Trice called Mexican Wedding, and mine is also a pattern by Julia, Frambuesa, from the same collection. I used two different yarns, and dyed them both.

11. TTL Mystery Shawl ’14

I also dyed the yarn for this shawl — my first gradient. The pattern is Algiers by Kirsten Kapur. The MKAL started on June 1st, and my mom was admitted to the hospital on June 4th, then transferred to ICU a few days later. There was a wonderful group of “old gang” bloggers who formed an FB group for this knit-along, and it was a balm each night to check in with them. Mom died on June 23rd.

I’m sure I’ve written once or twice about how knitting has seen me through tough times — loneliness, worry, loss. I truly don’t know what I’d have done without it sometimes.

12. 2016 Rhinebeck Shawl

There was no time to knit a Rhinebeck Sweater in 2016, so I knit a Rhinebeck Shawl, instead. I love the pattern — Close To You by Justyna Lorkowska — and have knit it at least once more, and my sister Ann has knit it a couple of times, too. Also yarn that I dyed myself. As chance would have it, I’m wearing that shawl today! (It looks like winter is going to be making a couple of appearances over the next week.)

13. Making Her Own Arrows

This is a lovely “adventure” pattern from 2017 by Larissa Brown called We Make Our Own Arrows. It was potato chip knitting — so fun to pick it up everyday and see how it would go! Another scrap project, another triumph in color, I knit this for myself but ended up giving it to a friend.

14. Oblique

Oblique! A ten-year project (and not the only one), 2007-2017, start to finish. After 10 years, it didn’t fit me, but Maddy LOVES it! I’d like to knit another sometime. Oblique by Veronik Avery, knit it Cascade 220.

15. Gnomes

No list of favorites would be complete without mentioning gnomes! Susan B. Anderson and Sarah Schira are my designers of choice. I made my first little gnome(s) in 2018, a bunch more in 2020 while recovering from Covid, and a few mystery gnomes… another one to start pretty soon!

16. Safe At Home

Talk about Covid projects… this is Margaret Holzmann’s Safe at Home blanket, highly modified. This was knit for Davy (who’s going to be 4 in September!).

17. Hexie Love

This is crochet, so technically not knitting, and it’s also a WIP, as I have yet to master the border situation. And more color! The pattern is Hexie Love Actually by Greenletterday, which I started in 2021. The colors are Madelinetosh Unicorn Tails, and the background is Tosh Merino Light. I’m pretty sure this is destined to be Addie’s graduation blanket… which gives me another year-and-a-half to finish (I won’t wait that long)!

18. 5 Point Bomber

Last year’s wonderful project for Modern Daily Knitting | I Made It with Atlas! It was so fun to knit this project for the kids — with their input. Designer Holli Yeoh now includes coloring pages with the 5 Point Bomber pattern.

19. A Light in the Window for Mack

A fun little riff on Kay Gardiner’s A Light in the Window, this was knit for Mack’s high school graduation. There’s a lot of play on ONE color — mostly dye test skeins that I’d purchased a few years ago. I think he likes it.

20. Family Temperature Blanket

Another WIP, more color, more riffing… and tonight I’ll knit the last few rows of Ali’s panel and get started on Maddy’s — the last one!! I’ve already been working on this for over two years. I’m excited to wrap it up this summer. (Whatever will I do next…?? ha.)

BONUS MATERIAL

A gallery of little projects…

It’s hard to pick just 20 out of 133 projects! That doesn’t count the multiples… gnomes, dishcloths, hats, etc.

And, of course, THANK YOU!! Thanks for reading, laughing, encouraging, enabling, crying, comiserating, and just for being there. It’s changed in many ways, but I’d have never lasted 20 years without our community.

Smokin' (or NOT)

We are STILL smokin’ the not smokin’

Vicki5 Comments

This post was originally published 14 years ago. I read it again this morning and it all still rings true, so I thought I’d re-post with some updates! (Fourteen years ago, I was still using a double-space after every sentence. Fixing that… haha.)

The Blog Changes Lives

One day, a little over 19 years ago, my then strictly-blog-friend Ann/Purling Swine on Long Island wrote me an email that went something like this: I told my friend that I’d quit smoking with her. You wanna quit with us?

I thought for 2.25 seconds and wrote back: YES!

Then I called up my sister and said: I’m going to quit smoking, you wanna?

And she said: YES!

Then I told my family, made an admission and announcement on the blog, and commenced to plan my strategy. Let me tell you, I still remember how thoroughly I thought through all of the different scenarios and triggers and planned and plotted and made decisions about how to deal with each and every one. By the time Quit Day rolled around, I was very well prepared. The triggers that snuck up on me were the ones way further out — like when football season rolled ’round again and the Packers scored their first touchdown of the season and I actually started out of my chair to go out on the back porch for my usual and customary celebratory smoke during the commercial break. Oh, wait, I don’t smoke anymore! Heh. Wow. That was so weird.

Anyway, there was so much blog love and encouragement, it was incredible — and, gulp, that meant there was gonna be no turning back, not with all those eyes on me from near and far! I have fallen down on a few other things over the years, but there’s not much riding on whether I finish a knitting project by a certain date or post a photo-a-day.

One bright star in the galaxy was my then strictly-blog-friend Cara/January One. She and Georgie went shopping and sent me a box full of quit-smoking aids — gum, sunflower seeds, little stir straws, Dum Dums — there was so much that I felt I needed to share and sent a portion of it back east to Ann.

Cara and Ann were then completely oblivious to each other, blog-or-otherwise. I remember talking to Ann about celebrating at some point — maybe at the five-year-mark — by meeting and getting together for a weekend someplace in between Wisconsin and New York… like, maybe Ohio.

Well, as luck would have it, DH (haha, y’all know him better now as RUSTY) and I had an opportunity to visit New York City in June of 2005 — just three short months into the quit — where I was able to meet up and spend some time with not only Ann and Cara, but also with Kathleen/Katyknits, Nancy/Bronx Girl Knits, Cassie/Too Much Wool, and a bunch of other bloggers, many (most/all?) of whom are no longer blogging. It was a memorable and magical trip. I’d only been to NYC once before and the circumstances were so different. Now, of course, I’ve been there… quite a few more times.

I can hardly believe it’s been 19 years. The first days, weeks, months were hell… But since then? I really can’t believe, after having smoked for as long as I did, that I haven’t missed it more, that I don’t have more urges than I do… dare I say it? …that it’s been so easy. I stayed far, far away from anything smoke-related for a very long time — just removed myself from anything, -place, or -one that could lead to temptation. It’s almost like I’m indifferent now. I was in close proximity with someone who was smoking recently and it registered, but I barely had a reaction — it smelled neither good nor bad, didn’t make me want to have one, whatever; I was a little happier when it was finally stubbed out, though. I’ll tell you my story, talk about my experiences, probably tell you more than you want to know, but I won’t lecture or preach; I make my choices in any given situation, other people make their choices.

The Stats

As of this morning (18 Mar 2024), my best estimate of the stats to-date:

  • Smoke-free for 6,941 days
  • 138,820 cigarettes not smoked
  • That’s 6,941 packs not purchased, saving me $41,646.26
  • I’m stayin’ alive for 1 year, 3 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 24:18 minutes longer

I’ll admit that the “Lifetime Saved” figure was never all that impressive or encouraging, but it’s adding up, gathering momentum, and is starting to mean something. A YEAR+! Also, the money saved? I doubt that’s reflective of the fact that the price of cigarettes has at least tripled here since I quit, thanks in part to hefty cigarette tax increases in Wisconsin. I think a pack of smokes is near $10 now (I don’t pay close attention), I used a conservative $6/pack in calculating. I can’t imagine how I’d have kept cigarettes in my budget.

Anyway, Yay us! We are AWESOME!! Congratulations girls! And thank you.

A photo from the weekend — had the kiddos overnight on Saturday & this is just as they were heading out on a little hike. Only two children came home with wet shoes/socks/pants. Not bad. Junah made his “camera” with K’nex! Ginny didn’t actually solve any Sudoku puzzles while hiking (or any other time). They all enjoyed some fruit snacks on the trail, though! It was a great weekend.

Uncategorized

Tuesday

Vicki5 Comments

Luckily, I was able to take a shower yesterday morning with no issues, because barely an hour later I had a call from Rusty about a ruptured water heater!

Long story short:

  • Water heaters don’t last long with our uber-hard water — this is at least our 5th in 30+ years, maybe 6th
  • Almost 5 years to the day since the last time (memorable because our 2nd-ever Airbnb guests had just arrived)
  • There was still a year left on the warranty
  • Kate was around & able to assist as needed
  • It took all damn day (poor Rusty) (but he wanted to do it himself)

The weather was awfully nice, and there is, of course, no snow, which made getting the old one out & the new one in much more “pleasant.” We even sat on the pergola for a while!

I assisted just a little bit to get the new water heater positioned, and took out a bunch of packing to recyling/trash. I discovered a few things along the way:

Tulips outside the back porch door, allium & bleeding heart in the backyard.

Ready or not, spring is springing!

Weekending

Slow Weekending

Vicki5 Comments

I did a little running around on Saturday morning — an estate sale, stops at Home Depot & the grocery store, helping Kate load a table into the car for her new office — but the rest of the weekend was very C.H.I.L.L.

That’s my nap-time view to the Garden Room — one I enjoyed, at least momentarily, on both Saturday & Sunday. I slept for a solid & surprising 2.5 hours on Saturday afternoon… one of those where I don’t think I moved a muscle the entire time… still recovering from the bug I had earlier in the week, I guess.

I putzed & puttered the rest of the time. Chatted with Annie. Knit.

And enjoyed some video & still dispatches from Ali of a proud Ginny — who is starting to figure out the Rubik’s Cube! It was fun to watch her puzzle it out.

I’m doing okay with the time change, probably with thanks to the naps! Even so, I was glad that the Oscars started early. Did you watch? I think my favorite part was Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” spectacle!

I have one of my long weekends coming up… and I look forward to it all the way from Monday! My new living room light fixture will be installed on Friday, along with a couple of other lighting upgrades & consulting about a couple of other things. I’m thinking the rest will be filled with kiddo time, continuing with taxes & cleaning out/organizing my workroom, and whatever else comes my way… there’s always something else!

#whirlwindarttripwithkate

Five on Friday

Vicki5 Comments

ONE
I tagged along on a #whirlwindarttripwithkate to Minnesota last weekend. The impetus for the trip was a visit to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona to see a show by Karen Goulet (Ojibwe) and Monique Verdin (Houma) titled Aabijijiwan / Ukeyat yanalleh (It Flows Continuously) for an article that Kate is working on for Arts Midwest. (Click that link to see her pretty face, then scroll down to peruse the articles she’s already written for them.)

We visited MMAM for the first time last year to see two other shows: Liz Sexton: Out of Water and Courtney Mattison: Undercurrent.

All of those shows are mind-blowing. I took photos but, seriously, the museum does a much better job and visiting those links is well worth your while… and there is much more to entice. I am certain that I’ll be visiting that museum again!

From Winona we drove north along the Mississippi to Minneapolis. We stayed at a very fine hotel downtown, enjoyed some lovely meals & drinks… fancy digs for visiting thrift shops & used book stores! It was great.

I picked up a bug on the way home, though, and was pretty sick on Monday/Tuesday. I’m finally feeling close to 100% today. Thank god, just in time for the weekend!

TWO
I brought knitting along, of course. I even brought Ali’s blanket panel — determined which colors I’d need, so I wasn’t schlepping more than necessary — but, of course, I didn’t knit a stitch of it. I did do a little looking ahead to Maddy’s panel, though, and put in an order to replenish some colors that are running low, along with more black for the border. It’s amazing to actually be contemplating knitting the border!

THREE
That’s not to say that I didn’t knit! My current Musselburgh isn’t suitable for travel — I’m still figuring it out, so it’s neither mindless nor relaxing at the moment. Instead, I cast on a Garter Yoke Baby Cardi (Rav) for a coworker’s new baby girl, and I made some progress.

I had just sorted through a bunch of yarn, y’know, and came across this crazy hank — some bright blue, a little light pink, and quite a bit of purple. Purple : Amethyst : February Color (birthstone). I’m sticking with that. I added a slip stitch every 10 stitches in an effort to minimize weird pooling/flashing, and I like it… I also like that, by some stroke of luck, the pooling is happening in a pleasing & pretty symmetrical way!

That photo was taken a couple of days ago. I began the garter stitch border at the bottom edge of the cardi last night. I should have a finished sweater next week!

FOUR
Everyone’s summer schedules/plans are on the calendar and I’m already exhausted! Kate’s heading west for work in mid-May, Rusty’s joining her in early June for a West Coast road trip, they’ll return in time for Maddy’s arrival, at which time Ann & fam will be wrapping up their month-long visit, and Viv will still be due to arrive!

There’s also a temporary change at work coming up this spring wherein I won’t have my lovely long weekends, but, in exchange, I will likely grab an extra day here & there throughout the busiest part of summer when I’ll need it most.

FIVE
With all that in mind, Rusty & I took a good look at the calendar to plan a last-long-weekend-get-away… while we still can! So, last night I booked a sweet motel in Escanaba, where we’ll stay on a Friday night next month as we get a head start on our way to Sault Ste Marie! I originally looked at doing some of the Lake Superior Circle Tour, but really would like to just do a little exploring here & there while I mostly sit & watch boats go by. I found a sweet Airbnb for three nights on the Canada side, only about half-hour from Soo Locks, that looks perfect!

I would like to drive up the east side of the lake to Wawa… a little nod to nostalgia. My dad took us on the Circle Tour in about 1970 (don’t do the math — that’s an unfathomable number), which is the last time I was in that area. I’ll have to queue up Gary Puckett & The Union Gap for the drive…. that was the soundtrack of that trip! Have a great weekend!!