Blackberry Jam and Knitting Law Annoyance

Let's start with this post with a very important reminder about the laws of knitting.  Perhaps the most unfortunate law of knitting is this one:  If you start a project with stash yarn and knit the entire frickin' project except for the collar, you will absolutely run short on yarn and it will be a stash yarn that cannot be purchased anywhere in the entire universe.  Not anywhere.  Oh there will be Google Search listings that APPEAR to be what you are looking for and entice you with well-crafted descriptions, but when you pay the most insane price that anyone could think of for that one skein (for which you only need about 80 yards), it will arrive by priority shipping to your mailbox in the EXACT colorway, even the exact fiber content and weight, but will be a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PLY OF YARN!  Take heed. It never fails!

Do I sound like I speak from experience?  You betcha!  I need to do JUST the collar ribbing for the sweater that I have been knitting for 2 weeks in every spare moment for the mock-up for my next Knit Picks submission and, wouldn't you know it, I have been slammed all over the place by the laws of the knitting universe on this one.  I guess I am just going to have to use some stock yarn from my shop, dye it to look like one of the three non-matching skeins that I have used for this project, and not take any close-up pictures of the collar band. If all else fails, I will photograph it and consider it to be art.

And now to something a little sweeter, though no less time consuming ... this year's blackberry jam.  We've been impatiently waiting for the local farm (I say local, but I mean that one and only farm in the region with pick-your-own blackberries that is 45 miles away) to re-grow their blackberry vines for the past 2 years.  That's a long blackberry jam dry spell.  Anyway, on Wednesday I took the kids to pick blackberries.  We picked 3 gallons of blackberries that were about the size of my palm.  See?

Sadly, I think this will be the last year of picking berries with the boys.  The 15 year-old obliged out of obligation, I think, and because he was hoping to get to take a girl to the movies this week on a date, which would be funded by mom, and didn't want to take any chances.  The 12 year-old walked up and down the rows complaining about how boring blackberry picking is and hoping that the berries would just hop off of the vine and into his bucket because bending over to look underneath the bushes for the good stuff involved effort that he didn't want to expend.  The only one to take this annual event seriously was the 8 year-old, who loudly proclaimed that she LOVES picking berries with her mom.  (This is the same kid who abandoned me last year after about 20 minutes of picking blueberries to play on the playground because berry picking was not any fun at all.)  Of course, we are going back next week to pick blueberries while the boys are at camp, so we'll see how long that LOVE of berry picking really lasts.

The end result on Thursday was 11 pints of the best blackberry jam (please let it set up!!!) ever, close to a quart of blackberry syrup, and 3 quarts of frozen blackberries. My own blackberry bushes, which produce the same gigantic berries as the farm where we pick them, are about to give up about a pint of berries.  The vines are still working on "bush" status.  We are in the growing-our-own initial phase for blackberries and raspberries.

 Ahh, summer.

And That's That!

Every year, about January, I begin putting off doing things that just need to be done but that I don't have the time for on the premise that I will worry about it when summer gets here. Things like painting the front door and mending.  The unfortunate thing about putting off things that need mending when those things are clothes that belong to children is that by the time summer rolls around, those clothes no longer fit.  I say "unfortunate" in the "Oh, darn, you mean I can just toss that in the trash after all?" sense of the word.  Anyway, the point is, that mending tasks are sort of like yarn projects.  There are just those projects that, once begun, are better off put away until either you are able to regain your sanity and composure or until they are so old that you have forgotten what you were working on in the first place during that hibernation period and you can just toss them out.

Well, summer has arrived and I have been a busy bee.  Much-needed cleaning has begun (in small doses, however, because I can always clean but once knitting time is lost, it's lost forever), my knitting room has been completely cleaned and re-organized, Honey's office has been cleaned up, the master bedroom has been cleaned and re-arranged, the garden is in full swing and just about ready for a new round of planting, the pool is in and refreshingly ice cold, the deck is 99% finished, the backyard is mostly re-landscaped, AND the mending has been done!  (Still need to paint that front door, though.)

You know what else is done?  That baby doll sheep spinning project that I began so long ago that I can't actually remember when (I tried to look it up on my past blog posts and couldn't find it, either, though I know I blogged about it!).  Yes indeed!  252 yards of 2-ply worsted weight chocolate-brown baby doll sheep is finally spun!  Why is that worthy of an exclamation point?  Well, let me tell you ...

First, these cute little sheep are, well, CUTE!  They look like stuffed animals and you want to squeeze them because they look so fluffy; don't be mislead by appearance.  Their fleece is super short and nubby and course.  To a fairly novice spinner, these sheep are a curse! (Disclaimer:  Well, not these sheep per se, but definitely the sheep from which my fleece came!  These sheep, whose pictures were provided courtesy of the internet, bear no definite fault in my months of spinning distress.) What have I learned from this spinning foray?  Not all wool is meant for me to spin. 

The baby doll sheep spinning project was one of those projects, like the mending, that ended up in perpetual hibernation. After the first bobbin was spun--252 yards--the TINY staple length and the odor of an old wooden chest that emanated from it and the lanolin that made my hands sticky ... these things began to get on my nerves.  Spinning this wool became such a chore that I had to do it in small doses.  A few yards here, a few yards there ... sometimes separated by weeks of spinning neglect, sometimes by months of spinning neglect.  I pretty much stopped spinning altogether over the last 3 months, though I would look longingly at my wheel and contemplate spinning only to be jolted back into the reality that the bobbins were full of baby doll sheep single-ply.  But no more!  I've spun it all and the finished product was, I have to say, worth all of the frustration.  I ended my spinning drama with 252 yards of perfectly balanced 2-ply worsted weight triumph!  (insert WHEW!) It doesn't look like much to you, I am sure, but it's pretty nice to check this project off of the to-do list.  The only question left is, really, what do I knit it into?

6 months worth of mending AND baby doll sheep project finished in the same day?  Sounds like I am on a roll this summer!

Monday Masterpiece: Showing Off

Currently, I have myriad knitting projects in the works, but none actually finished--close, though.  However, what I haven't shown off lately is the gorgeous dye work that I have been doing.  Since this is going to be a week of dying for my Etsy shop, etc.,  I thought today would be a good day to share what I have done in the past few months as custom orders for my Etsy customers.

This order went to a lady who is making a coat for her daughter (and who lives on "Cardigan Street"!  I'm so jealous of her address!). This is 1200 yards of 100% organic merino in a worsted weight:

These next two orders were for custom-ordered pairs of hand-knit socks.  Susan, who makes these socks, is a professional knitter of socks and has an Etsy shop, as well: The Knitting Jeepgirl.  Everyone should stop by her shop to check it out!  She makes gorgeous socks!

This skein is a silk/merino blend that was a gift for someone's mother, I believe.  Originally, this colorway was a BFL sock colorway, but I was able to reproduce it with the silk/merino (no small task if you know anything about dying silk with non-silk dyes).

This final pair of custom dye orders was done for NonasNitting on Etsy.  I can't seem to find the pics of the Blues colorway that I did for Patricia in the mohair, but here is a picture that is from her Etsy shop of the finished, sumptuous product.  I hope she won't be upset that I am promoting her shop and her beautiful sweater (You should purchase it; the yarn she made it with is undescribably soft and dreamy!) by "borrowing" this picture.  The second is my Snapdragon colorway, which I created especially for Patricia, and is done in a fingering weight merino.

So now you know what I do when I'm not knitting or trying to bring order to the chaos of my universe.  Stay tuned for more yarnie stuff later in the week.