White Pine Manor

In the housing biz, we joke that the names of housing developments represent what the bulldozers removed – Willow Ridge, Quail Run, Babbling Brook. In this case, the high density high rise next door truly is a White Pine.

If you click to enlarge, you can see the penthouse a bit. It belongs to a pair of red-tailed hawks, who have recently given birth to a pair of downy fledglings. They are sharing the tree with nests of robins, mourning doves and at least three grackle nests. This causes a great deal of conflict. Noisy conflict, especially early in the morning.

Here is one of the penthouse residents. (Please click to enlarge.  I just figure out how to do that after several years.) Thanks to my neighbor for the great photo. He climbed up on his roof to take it and is waiting to get some shots of the fledglings.

As often happens in high density housing, neighbors don’t always agree, and sometimes there are a few who are loud and obnoxious; ones who make life unpleasant for others.  At White Pine Manor, it’s the grackles.  They are driving me nuts. They squawk unpleasantly and constantly. They pester the red tail mother incessantly, until she flies away in search of food. Or perhaps some peace and quiet.  The robins chase the grackles, the doves just wing whistle around and the goldfinches seem to ignore the whole show.  I’m not sure where they nest.  Sitting outside after dinner is like Wild Kingdom.

The red tails are birds of prey, are they not? –I don’t understand why the hawks don’t just lunch the grackles. If anyone has good ideas related to good riddance to grackles that don’t involve pellet guns, please let me know.

Fleegle recently described the results of sharing lurid fun fur yarn with her bird neighbors. I know it repels many knitters, perhaps there is a variety that would repel the grackles?

Felted Lace

This is a sad tale of denial.  Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.  (We’ll come back to the overwhelming evidence.)

In my case, denial has caused me to keep knitting a lace stole, pretending that it is not felting as I knit it.

“The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether.”  This stole is not felted.

“…admit the fact but deny its seriousness.” Yes, it’s felted, but it might look nicer this way.

“Admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility.” It just happened.  Right there in the bag, while I was off knitting something else.  It resents me, that’s what happened.

I started this project nearly a year ago, as a birthday gift for my sister in law.  She asked for a black lace stole, and I figured it would be for her big birthday in late August.  Plenty of time.  I swatched and tried different yarns, stitches, even combining yarns, till I settled on a lovely little 4-row repeat using Malabrigo Laceweight.

The combination was attractive, and  it was a compact enough project to stuff in a little pouch and carry in my briefcase.  I was a little frustrated at how slowly the stole was growing.  I can’t believe how long it took me to figure out that my lovely little 4-row repeat triples the number of stitches in row 1, works the larger number in rows 2 and 3, then reduces down to the original count in row 4.  No wonder it was taking so long to generate a few inches of stole. No problem, I can finish it, I have plenty of time.

I pretty much ignored the slow poke stole for many months, since I have until August to finish.  I pulled it out to work on it one day and discovered it had FELTED.  How could this have happened?  Did my water bottle leak into my briefcase?  (Briefcase is a grandiose term for a giant bag I take to work.)  Well, never mind.  I can probably block it out.  I kept knitting.  Really, I kept believing this would work out.  I spent a whole day at a meeting knitting, and gained about 5 inches.  A week or so later, I discovered that the stole was continuing to felt up as I knit.  I think the Malabrigo couldn’t take the friction of being stuffed into a pouch, and pulled out.  Check out the before and after shots. Or perhaps they are after and before.  Overwhelming evidence.  These unretouched actual real life photos were slightly stretched to demonstrate the difference.  You be the judge.

What sort of person keeps knitting?  What level of denial must you have to even wind a second ball of yarn to keep knitting?  Oh sure, a few people said they thought the felted part looked ‘kinda cool’ -  yeah, thanks for trying to make me feel better.  I was even being greeted by knitter friends with “How’s the mysterious felting lace going?”  I was moving from denial into serious self-deception.  I took Psych 101, I knew I was on dangerous ground.  I finally came to grips with the sad truth.  If this stole is felting as I work, what is going to happen to it when my sister-in-law uses it on a regular basis, which she swears she will?  A felted mess, that’s what’s going to happen.

I finally stopped knitting the felted mess stole, and started swatching for a new stole with some black laceweight mystery cashmere blend from my stash.  This yarn has marinated for many years, and hasn’t felted yet, and does not seem to have developed any resentments.  I also started thinking, since this lace stole was for someone who doesn’t knit, sew, crochet or do any sort of handwork, that a stitch pattern which didn’t require severe blocking would be a better bet.  That is rationalization, also covered in Psych 101.  Back to the swatching seat. I’ll let you know what I figure out.

On the one hand, I wasted many hours knitting a project that was never going to work.  On the other hand, the idea of felted lace is interesting.  I may play around with it. After, all, I have about 4.5 feet of it to work with.

MLE

Fabulous Prizes

The winner of the Misti Alpaca is Helena at  Just Another Raveller.  She wants to use it to make up for the handknit baby cardigan she had stolen when her daughter was a baby.  Who knew there was a pattern of theft of baby things?

I forgot to mention that I recently won this cute pattern from Reddog Knits.

She has others on her site, so check em out

Plus,  I won a set of stitch markers from Jen at Knitting Interrupted. And, unless you were an only child, you will really love the Mother’s Day Video on her post.  I haven’t received them yet, but if they look as nice as the picture, I’ll be quite pleased.

MLE

Yet Another Blanche Dubois Moment

Reposted because WordPress is being weird.

Like Miss Dubois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.  In this case, strangers who sent me these:

I made a baby blanket for my newest great-nephew out in San Diego. The yarn, Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran, was a gift from a coworker at the Yarnery staff stash swap. It worked out well and washed up beautifully, quite soft and cozy.

I received a lovely thank-you note from my niece about how perfect it was, and how she was the envy of her new mommy class. A short time later, I  received an email from her. The blanket was so admired by members of the class that someone in the class  STOLE it. Can you imagine?Of course, I promised to make another one, but the yarn has been discontinued and I didn’t have quite enough left. I could have used a different yarn, but I wanted to try to recreate the lost one.   Generous souls on Ravelry shared from their stash, many simply out of the goodness of their hearts. So thanks hockeyme, AimyBamy, joymichelle and Mauri. I finally have enough to make a similar blanket, perhaps a bit bigger to accomodate the growing boy.

I mean, look at this kid, doesn’t he need a blanket?

In order to celebrate the generosity of knitters, I decided to have a little give-away contest. I think my sob-story of the stolen blanket helped me win over the knitters on Ravelry who offered yarn.  So,  I will give away three skeins of Misti Alpaca Chunky in a beautiful dark olive green to someone with a good story.  The color is much prettier when photographed by someone besides me.

Write a comment with your sob story of why you need this yarn and I’ll choose a winner at random. Or maybe the comment that makes me snort the most.

Another Blanche Dubois Moment

Like Miss Dubois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.  In this case, strangers who sent me these:

I made a baby blanket for my newest great-nephew out in San Diego. The yarn, Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran, was a gift from a coworker at the Yarnery staff stash swap. It worked out well and washed up beautifully, quite soft and cozy.

I received a lovely thank-you note from my niece about how perfect it was, and how she was the envy of her new mommy class. A short time later, I  received an email from her. The blanket was so admired by members of the class that someone in the class  STOLE it. Can you imagine?Of course, I promised to make another one, but the yarn has been discontinued and I didn’t have quite enough left. I could have used a different yarn, but I wanted to try to recreate the lost one.   Generous souls on Ravelry shared from their stash, many simply out of the goodness of their hearts. So thanks hockeyme, AimyBamy, joymichelle and Mauri. I finally have enough to make a similar blanket, perhaps a bit bigger to accomodate the growing boy.

I mean, look at this kid, doesn’t he need a blanket?

In order to celebrate the generosity of knitters, I decided to have a little give-away contest. I think my sob-story of the stolen blanket helped me win over the knitters on Ravelry who offered yarn.  So,  I will give away three skeins of Misti Alpaca Chunky in a beautiful dark olive green to someone with a good story.  The color is much prettier when photographed by someone besides me.

Write a comment with your sob story of why you need this yarn and I’ll choose a winner at random. Or maybe the comment that makes me snort the most.

MLE