Silence Broken

Hi Everyone,

At long last, I am going to try and keep this a little more up-to-date. Mrs. Swank's job has very nearly eaten her alive over the past two years, but the light at the end of the tunnel may be approaching. There will be new photos of the cats (and possibly the knitting projects) up soon ...

Behold the glory of glucosamine chondroitin:

Now working on ...

... the cabled tee! Here's a shot of the finished front, and a closeup of the cable pattern that doesn't have a cat standing on it:



I'm almost ready to start decreasing for the armholes on the back. I'm probably either going to have to turn this tee into a tank top or buy more yarn ... at the very least, it'll be a close call.

So basically, Mrs. Swank has been finding lots of excuses to do anything other than pack (hence the progress on the cabled tee). Abby understands. Packing makes her sleepy:



Jules is less sympathetic. After all, cats LOVE boxes ...



He won't come around until he's bundled into the car. Cats may love boxes, but they hate the car ... and Mr. & Mrs. Swank have no doubt that he will remind them continually of that fact for the entire five hour drive up to Wisconsin.

Moving

First of all, let me just mention that coffee is a thing of great joy. Particularly when the beans it is made from grew up on an island in the Pacific :).

Anyway, non sequiturs aside, Mrs. Swank is really looking forward to living in Wisconsin. Last week, the Swanks put a deposit down on a three bedroom townhouse that everyone will like (okay, so we're just guessing on behalf of Jules and Abby, but there are plenty of opportunities to watch Cat TV through the windows, and the kibble is moving there, so we think they'll adapt quickly).



HOWEVER ... Mrs. Swank absolutely HATES moving. Surprising, I know, for those of you who know her (at one point, Mrs. Swank was averaging a new apartment every year or so). But moving makes Mrs. Swank crabby. She's trying not to unleash all that crabbiness on Mr. Swank, but sometimes it's hard, seeing as he's the only other person in the house who understands English.

Just under four weeks until the Swanks become cheeseheads ...

Mmmm ... Svaaale

I love yarn. I also enjoy stating the obvious, apparently.

In the last two weeks, Mrs. Swank has been working away at her cabled tee. She was a good girl, and actually made a couple of complete swatches to measure her gauge:



Although I know it's hard to tell from the pictures, trust me -- the stockinette portion of this swatch, knit on size 6 needles, measured exactly 4 inches square. Rarely have I been so dead on. Despite this, after I got this far with the front panel of the tee ...



... it became immediately obvious that it was going to be too large. Since Mrs. Swank didn't feel like being able to invite a couple of friends to join her in her completed sweater, she did the unthinkable and ripped out a skein and a half of work.

Fortunately, Mrs. Swank got some good knittin' in during the aforementioned chemistry conference, and this is what she had (in a smaller size) when she got back (it's a little wrinkly from its high-tech storage solution -- a ziploc bag):



Here's a detail of the horseshoe cable pattern (in a different color, apparently -- thanks, Mr. Camera). There's a twisted purl stitch in between the two individual cables:



And, as usual, here is one of the cats checking things out. I am pleased to report that the early stages of the cabled tee get the Abigail Seal of Approval (tm):

Long Time No Blog.

Although it may seem that Mrs. Swank has fallen off the face of the earth, such is not the case. It has just been a busy couple of weeks. In the last fortnight, Mr. and Mrs. Swank have made two trips to Wisconsin and back to search for appropriate housing, and Mrs. Swank has gone to a solid state chemistry conference at Notre Dame. Now it's Memorial Day weekend, and we're leaving Chicagoland for everyone else to enjoy. We're staying home ...

The cats did not appreciate being left alone overnight, and were somewhat pouty when we returned home from the first trip. Jules, in particular, was not pleased with our absence:



After all, he ran out of kibble while we were gone, and was just wasting away ...

He has since forgiven us, and actually deigned to swipe at the silly feather toy this morning:



Please note that this is a Jules action shot, which explains the incredulous look on Abby's face. This doesn't happen often, kids, so we must all appreciate it while we can. Fortunately, Jules is rather impervious to sarcasm. His job is to look pretty, and he takes his work very seriously ...



Things quickly got back to normal, and Mr. Pants left the feather to his sister. I think he got annoyed with the camera after a while.

Next project ...

Of course, Mrs. Swank couldn't let the knitting needles just sit idly by. The next project waiting in the wings is a short sleeved, lightweight cabled tee that is going to be knit up in some lovely Svale purchased during WEBS recent (and fantastic) sale. How nice of them hold their sale at a time when Mrs. Swank has some birthday money ...



Mmmm ... Svaaale ... it's a 50% Cotton/40% Viscose/10% Silk blend made by Dale of Norway. Those Norwegians, they know about good yarn. It's got a gauge of 5.5 stitches per inch, so maybe this'll keep Mrs. Swank busy for a while ...

And now, let the swatching begin!

Finished Felting ...

Okay, that's it for Mrs. Swank and alliteration. Anyway, here's the Noro bag after two runs through the washing machine:





I originally thought I'd stop after only one wash, but as Mr. Swank pointed out, a knitted bag with an entire cubic foot of space is pretty darn large. So it went back in. Thanks go out to my good friend Erin for the useful tip of adding a teapot full of boiling water to the wash load. It made the cost of felting in the coin-op machines downstairs much more affordable ...

Jules immediately discovered that cats love felted bags. They're an excellent place to take a quick bath.



We can tell that the glucosamine/chondroitin pills we've been sprinkling on his food are working -- he's our Li'l Bastard again ...

Hot Pineapple Action

Here are a few photos of the afghan I crocheted for my newlywed friends Michael and Talia:





The yarn is Wool of the Andes - Natural, from the amazingly priced KnitPicks yarn line. The pattern is "A Pretty Welcome" by Anne Haliday in Book 2 of Afghans For All Seasons. I added an extra pineapple to the width and then had to leave the edging off, because I had enough yarn to either complete another row of pineapples or to do the edging, and, well ... Mrs. Swank can be a size queen from time to time. I don't think anyone will miss the edging, anyway.

And just so you realize the way things are at the Swank house, here's a picture of Abby making sure everything is running according to her fluffy little plans:

First Felting Foray

Behold! The Noro Bag, in all its pre-felted glory:





The pattern is "Misty" by Brooks Jones, available free of charge at the Magknits website.

May I just pause for a moment to extol the virtues of Noro brand yarn? The colors are amazing. I have a tiny bit of Noro left from some previous projects (namely, a Fairisle hat with earflaps and my iPod cozy) in green, yellow, and orange -- NOT Mrs. Swank's colors, btw -- but I can't bring myself to throw it out. Even though it's a tiny little ball of something like 20 yards of yarn. *sigh* I am such a Noro ho. Websites like Wool Needlework don't help, either.

Anyway, this bag was constructed from 2 skeins of Noro Kureyon # 149 (off white/lt. brown/gray colorway) and 3 skeins of # 90 (blue/green/purple/fuchsia colorway) on size 10.5 needles. I knitted it so obsessively that it took me less than a week to complete (please don't try this at home, kids). One cautionary note: although I was pretty close to gauge, I didn't have as much yarn left over as I needed to make the I-cord strap. This was all I could do (i.e., the I-cord on the right) ...



The Noro I-cord is about 30" long. Since I like a longer strap on my bags, I made another I-cord (~ 50" long) with some leftover Gjestall Naturgarn No. 1 in color #205 Mid Grey Heather. Mad props to Jules for helping me document this project.

Now I am going to toss this wool bag into a hot washing machine. Please keep your fingers crossed for me ...

More gratuitous cat pictures

One thing you're going to have to accept about Mrs. Swank is that she's well on her way to becoming a crazy old cat lady. Fortunately, Mr. Swank is on his way to becoming a crazy old cat gentleman, so it all works out nicely. We'll be picking out matching rocking chairs for the front porch of our crazy old cat farm next week. Anyway, here are some closeups of Jules and Abby. Please note that Abby's still a young'n', so it can be difficult to find a photo of her that isn't an "action shot":





... although she has managed to learn a few pointers in the finer art of napping from her big brother (thanks to our good friend Mary for the oh-so-demure shot of Jules):