Month: August 2017

Fabulous, Fully-Fashioned, Fitted, Fuchsia Funnelneck

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

Let’s face it, the original is hard to improve on. Stefanie Japel’s Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest is an awesome pattern. And I’ve made it before and received compliments. So why mess with perfection? Because I’m not perfect and neither is my shape!

I’m a bit crane-necked, small breasted and a bit hippy (or as the lady at the Eddie Bauer store selling jeans says, “Your style is ‘Curvy’”). I also feel that while the Bernat Panama yarn is true to gauge in the stockinette, the ribbing always felt a bit looser than I’d hoped in some places on the previous garment.

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I cast on 96 stitches (extra small is 108 sts) to narrow the neck and only bound off 3 sts each side for the start of the armholes. They I increased following the directions until I was following the pattern for a medium size in the bust (I just kept doing increases until I hit 192 sts). From there I followed the direction (excepting some reductions I hid in the back shaping as I narrowed towards the waist (12 sts) to get it back to size small for the waist (180 sts).

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Pre-blocked, but still looking great!

From there the shaping was done more subtlety—with needle decreases and increases. I knit as directed with the “smaller” needles and then dropped a needle size in the garment just above my natural waist and knit for 1 inch. I switched to the needle requested for 2 inches then increased needle size every two inches after to widen the bottom of the garment it.

And voila! Pleased with self.

The Commute from Heaven?

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

I have my challenges working a more than fulltime job in the city and living on an island. I don’t commute every day (which would be about 3-4 hours each way), I mainly just go home for three days and stay in the city for four days. If the internet was decent (a gripe for a different day) I would probably only go to the mainland for 24-to-48 hours at most and probably not every week. But it’s terrible—and that’s being generous.

This summer one of the Washington State Ferries, our newest, the Samish, had one of the two engines fail (they have for each direction). As a result, more than once, I got left high and dry with my reservation cancelled making everyone a standby passenger. 2560px-mv_samish_arriving_in_anacortes

And after watching my favorite airline, Kenmore Air, ferry the rich and famous off the island while I roasted in the standby lane at the ferry terminal for the second unexpected time in a month, this week I opted in for a treat—that’s right—to fly rather than drive. It’s about a 45-minute flight from South Lake Union in Seattle, though I used to travel via their headquarters in Kenmore. But since Kenmore Air always flies to Seattle to pick up passengers, there just isn’t a reason to drive 30 miles before getting on the plane. Besides, this week the hubby was already implanted, so he could pick me up at West Sound.

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Kenmore Air landing at West Sound on Orcas Island

It was a foggy day, and unlike usual, I didn’t get to ride shotgun (a benefit of starting in Kenmore) so I didn’t get much of a view, but I did get some knitting done on my latest lurid pink version of Stefanie Japel’s Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest

Knitting while flying to the San Juan’s
The cider on arrival at West Beach Resort

More on that to come…

A Day Without a Night – A Night Without a Day

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

Most people will not get the reference the title makes to the movie Ladyhawke where a solar eclipse breaks the curse of two lovers, played by Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer, locked apart from one another unless they see each other during this celestial event.

My husband and I, like so many others seeking the path of totality for the eclipse, converged on various, mostly remote places to view the sun overtake the moon in the day and enter twilight. And while total eclipses happen every single year, I’ve been anticipating this one because it was so close and would be my first viewing of a total eclipse.

It was an amazing couple of hours—starting just after 9:05AM and lasting until after 11:15AM. Totality lasting ~1:38 minutes and in that short time birds cried, newts surfaced on the pond, and there was a general sense of trepidation.

I’ll admit that before this week I did not know there was a Willamina, Oregon or a Huddleston Pond Park, but I must say I’ll never be able to forget the place. Such nice people, mostly locals. “Park over here.” “Get ready everyone!” Cheering at the totality. They were half the fun! Luckily, we had extra ISO certified glasses so we handed them out to those without so we felt like we gave back a bit of their generosity.

But rather than talk, let me show you, …

Looks like a spider… Gold Filter
Sun overtaking the moon
Getting close to complete
The last flash before totality
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Total eclipse with 6X Filter
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The corona with a 2X filter
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Shadows cast by the leaves after the sun emerged from the other side of the moon

 

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A newt!

 

Braids on the Brains

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

Guilty as charged. I have once again exceeded one page on my Ravelry knitting queue. And yes, I’ve got not one, not two, but three projects all scoped, yarn balled, ready to go. I’m sure you know the feeling—the wanderlust of planning a new project. I personally think that this interferes more with my knitting than anything else since it takes up the same cordoned off time.

And here I was, minding my own business, reading others’ blogs and pursuing Ravelry and the Purl Soho site that I hit on a great combination of projects I’m dying to knit as a set.

The first is a shaped braided cable capelet by Erica Patberg in Interweave  and the second is a 2015 pattern from Purl Soho for a braided cowl.

Purl Soho Braided Cable Cowl
Braided Cables up close

Too matchy matchy?

Naming Your Photo Folders to Find Things

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

I take lots and lots of photographs. Let’s face it, in the digital world, “film” is cheap, so I convince myself to take multiples to make certain I get the best possible shot. However, I’m only moderately good about going back and sorting through them and I’m jealous of my husband who somehow manages to get this done (it takes me hours because I fixate on fixing them and deleting the bad ones).

We recently (April 2015) moved to Orcas Island and I have loads of pictures from when we were house hunting as well as just kayaking with our friends from Body Boat Blade who were some of the first folks to tell us (you should live here!).

I was looking for a specific visit—after we moved, but fairly early. I opened my folder for 2015 to find the shot in question. Instead I found a folder naming structure which used to serve me well when I traveled the world for work and hardly ever visited the same place more than once a year.

Year Day Month Location or for longer visits Year Month Location so for a visit to the Isle of Skye it would be 2015 05 Skye and that would be perfectly identifiable.

Living in a picturesque place has rendered the system less than ideal. When I went photo hunting I found in since 2015 I have more than 20 folders all named “Date – Orcas” and even that I have them as subfolders under year, was not as helpful as I’d hoped.

Watson Shrug
Nick looking sunny at sunrise in his sweater

Oddly this does not happen with knitting projects that go into named, rather than dated folders—like “Watson Shrug” or “Fabulous Fuchsia Funnelneck”. In those cases, I rely on the date of the photo to remind me when it was taken because knitting takes time. One folder for several dates of photos make sense—especially if you pick it a project and put it down again as I often do because of my busy working schedule which no longer includes much travel.

So today I spent the morning going through those photos and adding little descriptors like “Funny Nick” and “Lovers Cove”.

What a great way to spend a Sunday morning.

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Kayaking in Lover’s Cove, Orcas Island