Persistent Knitter

This is a small area in the basement that doesn’t really have a door on it, but it has two smallish closets with lots of rough shelves in them, and it has doors leading out to a bathroom, the guest room, my daughter’s room, and the door leading IN to the area from the stairwell. Including the closets that 6 doors to put tape around.

I’m a firm believer in tape when painting because I don’t wanna slow down when I’m painting to cut in edges in that ever so careful way you see ‘professionals’ on TV do it. This room is destined to be demolished if and when we ever get our old house sold, and line up someone to come and do the work. So it’s silly that I painted it, but the walls hadn’t been painted in many many years, and it showed. Plus it could be a year or more before we get the money together to do the remodel. In the meantime, let’s paint!

Here’s a before (standing outside doors to guest room and daughter’s room):

Another before, looking the other direction:

I forgot to take a picture before putting the tape up, it’s covering a probably-needs-painting trim around floors and doorways, but no way am I painting trim down there.

And the after:

The difference is amazing. The color is my favorite, “Shadow Beige”, available at Home Depot. It warms it up just enough, and contrasts really well with the white trim and white ceiling. Having the walls look so clean is awesome too. It’s definately not my best paint job; there are still a few thin spots, and the ceiling to wall area is a little sloppy, but for what I wanted it to do - clean it up and make it look all fresh, was worth the $20 on the gallon of paint (of which I still have at least 1/3 to 1/2 of it left).

Now if I just have energy to do a primer coat in the dining room, plus the two full base coats.

Did you know that you can buy paint on sale Memorial day weekend? I didn’t know that, but now that I’ve got the painting bug, it’s a good thing. I wanted to decide on a color for the dining room. It’s been driving me nuts that it’s still bright yellow; so we put up some swatches:

From left to right:
Clary Sage
Cajun Red
Anjou Pear
Artichoke
Shadow Beige
more small bits of Cajun red

The Clary sage was too washed out, and very grey looking. The Cajun Red is awesome (this is what we picked). The Anjou Pear isn’t too bad, but it’s still a yellow. Artichoke looked good; but when we put it on a pillar in between windows (not shown) it was green on green outside. The Shadow Beige just looked washed out (it’s also on the pillar behind the first bit of Cajun Red). We tested the Cajun Red near the ceiling to make sure it contrasted enough and didn’t bring out too much orange in the ceiling. Winner!!!!

It will be darker in that room once it’s all painted red. There are alot of windows, and two skylights to help combat this. I might feel differently next winter when I feel like the sun is never coming out again; but this red is more “me” than any of the other colors; and I think that means alot.

Of course, if I ever have to paint OVER the red; I’ll be cursing myself for picking it in the first place :)

I have purchased a tinted primer (boooooooooooring grey) and two gallons of the chosen color, Cajun Red. Off to clean up, tape and start painting!

Oh, and if anyone wants a barely touched quart of any of the above colors to try in -their- house, just let me know. You’ll have to come pick it up though! :)

Having moved into a new house a few weeks ago; I have an irresistable urge to paint in some rooms.

The biggest urge comes from the dining room. It’s yellow. Sunshiney overly perky yellow. I have been looking at paint chips for a long time. In my last house I was able to do a really great accent color behind the cabinets, and the rest of the room was a neutral. This kitchen/dining room isn’t arranged quite so nicely.

The only colors that are striking me as correct are a sage green; a neutral (boring) or changing the yellow to something I can actually like. So I went to the paint store today and bought 1 gallon of neutral (for downstairs in the craft room that looks like it hasn’t been painted in about 8 years or more), and 2 quarts; 1 of “Anjou Pear” and 1 of “Wild Raisin”.

I immediately opened up the Anjou Pear, and whipped out a big swatch on the wall:

Colors are so-so accurate. New color on the left (next to the window), still wet, so it’s shinier than it should be, and old color on the right. You can definately see how the sunshiney yellow is really really yellow. In the evenings when it’s dimmer in that room; it’s not so bad. In the morning with the sun, the green in the yellow takes over and it’s overly bright. (Gee, it looks great when it’s dark!)

While I like sage green, I am thinking I want to avoid green, because of all the windows in the room; you’d end up with layers of green; not really what I want. Plus we have a green couch and chair in the room about 4 feet away, and I don’t want to have an ‘all green house’. The ceiling is a cedar ceiling, so it’s very dark on it’s own - a super dark color on the walls would probably swallow the whole room. I painted up a small swatch of the raisin (which will require about 3 coats to really cover well), and it is very very purple. I think that one won’t end up in the dining room; I might see if it’d look good in our master bedroom as an accent wall.

Other possibilities - going back to a green, and a medium sage green (not too dark, not too light); but I don’t think it’d look good in the actual kitchen. Or painting it all a neutral, my ever favorite Shadow Beige. I have enough for the downstairs room that I can do a sample in the dining room/kitchen to see how I like it.

Sometimes you just gotta do something quick and small. After endless hours knitting on a pink blanket, I decided to do this instead:

A slight variation of the mason-dixon Ballband Dishcloth; (I added an attached i-cord edging) it was super quick to knit. This dishcloth is much larger than my standard garter stitch dishcloth, and I’m not sure I’ll like that. Gotta wash a few dishes with it and see.

Yesterday this arrived in the mail:

It makes me think of Orange Creamsicles you eat in the summer time. It’s a Merino Tencel blend; supposedly superwash. It’s very very shiny. Not sure if it’ll make it into the spinning rotation any time soon; but it sure is pretty stuff.

This is a horrible picture. It was the only one i took - I wanted to show how full my bobbin was. I used my WooLee winder to pack it on - and I weighed the skein once it was done. 4.8 ounces. I dare Marie to try and put that much on her Lendrum bobbin :)

I could have put a bit more on the bobbin; but I had 8 ounces total and didn’t want a huge skein and a small skein by too much. Also one of the bobbins with singles on it was emptying faster than the others. Harrumph. So, once off the bobbin, onto the niddy noddy**, the yarn comes into focus so much better:

I love the coloring of this yarn. I’m surprised because it’s got more yellow and green in it than I would probably pick out for myself; but it comes out Ok here. Remember when I was worried the colors would muddy up once plied? (Also click there for picture of the roving pre-spinning) No worries. It’s all good. Here’s a semi-close up:

Ahhhhhhhhh… yarn.

Now, what do I make with it?

(Sorry Marta, I do not know what the WPI is. I think it’s fingering weight; probably on the light side of fingering weight. I also don’t know the yardage as I always forget the to count the number of loops around the niddy noddy)

** The gorgeous Niddy Noddy is a Cherry Frilly Milly from Niddy & Things. Available through The Knit Foundry; send us an email!

Last night I was unable to go to my spinning group; so after the fun nieghborhood get together, and getting the extremely cranky and tired kids to bed, I did some spinning (or rather, some plying):

A close up (click for bigger):

I’m using a slightly different method to ply this yarn. So far I like it! Normally I use my left hand to feed the singles in, using a finger to separate them, and help control the tension on each individual ply. Then I use my right hand to control the twist, and walk it up the yarn as I treadle. This usually works pretty well; but for some reason I was playing around with a few different techniques. I came up with this one.

I use my left hand to hold the two singles as they come off the bobbins. I don’t separate the plies with a finger; I just let them lay in my palm. I don’t use my right hand at all. I open/close my left hand to stop the twist going back into the two singles farther than my hand, and move the left hand toward and away from the wheel while I’m feeding on the yarn, or pulling back to allow more twist into the new yarn. It has economy of motion, is fairly rhythmic, and as long as the two singles are roughly the same size, it allows the strands to wind around each other easily. (Sometimes you can end up with one strand under more tension than the other, and the 2nd strand winds around the first, so you don’t have an ‘even’ ply).

Hopefully I’ll remember how I was doing it, as i’m probably only 1/4 of the way through plying the whole 8 ounces.

(pink blanket update: I’m over halfway through the 3rd ball of yarn; which means I’m almost halfway done with that half of the blanket. So that’s barely a quarter of the way done with the blanket. A lot of quarters going on here…)

Even amid unpacking chaos - I’ve completed the castle!

So how big will it be? Well, that depends.

This part measures about 29″ across. In theory, this is only half the width. How long? I have 6 balls of pink, and I’ve used not quite 2 for this much length (approx 14″). I measured before I started ball #2; and it was around 8″ long then. If I use all 6 balls; and I’m accurate with that 8″ measurement, I’ll have a 48″ x 29″ pink piece of fabric.

If I proceed with the 2nd half as planned, and cast on as many stitches on that side as this side (to make them even); then it’ll be 58″ wide. Do I want it wider than long?

I can always go buy another ball of pink (I’m pretty sure the store won’t be sold out of them yet). Or I can cast on less stitches for the other half, making it more pink than the other colors.

I also don’t know that I want to be knitting on this thing that long. I’ve got a long way to go with the pink (and if the rest of it is just basketweave… boooooooring). Any thoughts or suggestions from the crowd?

Jill demands a blanket update, so here we go.

Never one to knit a pattern just as is, I decided to add a castle to Katie’s blanket:

The castle is from one of the Barbara Walker books (I think #2) and called Gingerbread Castle. I charted it up in Knit Visualizer in about 15 minutes one night and voila - chart to knit from. I’ve only knit the bottom two rows so far; but i think it’ll look really cute when it’s done.