Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun

Christmas Knitting Madness

I have been knitting frantically trying to get all my knitted gifts ready in time for Christmas.  I do this to myself every year. 

First, I think that I'm not going to knit anything for anyone for Christmas.  Because of that, there is no planning ahead, because, after all, I'm not knitting anything for anyone for Christmas.  Then, just after Thanksgiving I get these absolutely creative and wonderful ideas of what I just have to knit for people for Christmas.  It's too late by then, of course, to get everything finished in any kind of sane work schedule... so... the knitting madness begins!

I had started knitting the stranded project Henry VIII November 2 so as to be part of the Ravelry KAL.  Seems like I just got a great start on that and now it's hibernating until after Christmas.

Here is a picture of it.  I actually have a lot more knit than the picture indicates, but I have been waiting for a "sunny day".  Ironically, we have had some sunny days, but the sun is so low on the southern horizon now that in my location, it doesn't "touch" the ground or the floor... only the tree tops are bathed in sunlight. Those if you that live in northern latitudes can empathize. We are reduced to sunrise at 10:04 and sunset at 3:41... a short day by anyone's definition!  The good news is we are on final countdown to winter solstice and then our days will lengthen.

I did finish the first of my Christmas gifts to be knitted.  I knit a series of hats... Ardvey, for all the women in my knitting group.

Now I am working on a sweater for my grandson... a Dale of Norway, Lappland.  My version is red and it's been a really fast knit.  I have one sleeve half done and the body is finished almost up to the shoulders although you can't tell from this photo.  Probably, I won't finish this for Christmas but luckily his birthday is in January so I have a back up plan. 

I will need to stop working on Lappland temporarily, because after I buy some red and green yarn this weekend, I need to knit my grand daughter a Christmas stocking.  That will be a bit of a rush job because obviously I can't wait until after Christmas to finish it!

A Belated Good bye to Summer

We took these pictures on our vacation which ended October 4, but it's taken me this long to get the photos posted.  The photos sure show our Alaskan bias. We felt like visitors from the moon!

We visited the Luther Burbank public gardens in Santa Rosa and spent a couple hours drooling over all the lush, fantastic plant, flowers, and unique trees.  Locals strode by without so much as a second glance but for us, where most of these plants won't grow except perhaps in a greenhouse, they were worth viewing and smelling.  Growing up in California, many of these plants were everyday sights so this was a nostalgic trip to the past for me.  I didn't realize what a bias towards roses I have until I looked at all our garden photos.

 
Flying home the following day was a sudden change of season.  California was still enjoying the end of summer, while Anchorage was enjoying the end of Autumn.  We traveled from 80 degrees to 40 degrees in one day!  All the leaves had already dropped from our trees, but I did manage to find one late fall tree still holding onto it's leaves.  Red trees always catch my attention anyway because most of the native trees; cottonwoods, birches, and aspens turn yellow or gold.  This one, a beautiful Mountain Ash, or Rowan is not native to this part of Alaska, although a shrub variety is.

Now... on to knitting.  It was gloomy, cloudy, and dark this last week so I really made progress on my knitting projects.  Last Sunday I finally finished Inishmaan. That gargantuan project that took an unbelievable four and a half months! Then I  finished my lacy wool/silk blend socks today. Between those two projects, I began Henry VIII and made it through half a pattern repeat... I just need to take a picture of it.

Here are my new lace socks.

They are "posed" on our new snowfall. 

I set Inishmaan outdoors to block to try to get better lighting after I washed it and it froze!  No harm done though... it just got a little stiff.

Ooops... somehow this picture didn't load. I probably forgot to save it or something.

It's so true... time does fly when you're having fun!

I can't believe we have been back in Alaska for a month after our vacation and it took me that long to unpack, get well, and then get organized.  I have used up the "average" adult count of colds per year...  three colds this year.  Unfortunately, I had three colds and/or cases of flu in three months, one of those months being our vacation.

We still had a great time in the Santa Rosa area touring the wine country by bike.  I don't have as many pictures as I would like though.I discovered that once I get pedaling on my bike, I hate to stop; even for a great photo op.  The weather was gorgeous... SUN, SUN, and more SUN!  Best of all when we heard that locally it was bucketing down rain in record amounts.  We saw lots of picturesque vineyards and wineries, tasted lots of wine, bicycled a lot even on Highway 1 viewing the ocean, avoided getting too sunburn, and ate too much... in a nutshell... the perfect vacation.

    

This picture proves that we did have a "rest" day!   Needless to say, I got very little knitting finished, but managed to work on my "travel" pair of socks on the plane home.   Two whole weeks without any knitting... I think that's a record for me.

                                                                                 

 

My Favorite Red

No trips out and about this year to view the lovely fall colors. Instead, I've had a miserable cold and sinus infection for the last week.  Just when I was congratulating myself for "missing out" on the terrible cold everyone else in my family already had.  So, I just took the fall colors pictures from my yard... better than nothing, I guess.  I feel a little "robbed" though... all the best views really have to be hiked to, and I'm just not up to hiking yet.

I'm still plodding along on Inishmaan.  I love the way the sweater is going to look, but I can't seem to knit for long without making mistakes that have to be frogged.  If anyone had told me that it would take me all summer to knit this, I would have laughed. 

Three Four months later and I'm not laughing yet!  Usually, I'm a process knitter anyway, so how long something takes is not that important to me, but it's been really annoying to have to keep re-knitting so much that was already finished.

Here is the picture of the sleeves and also a close up of the color that shows all the flecks of different colors that occur in Rosewood. That heathered multi-color effect is what has always been one of the strengths of Jamieson's Shetland Heather besides the superb stitch definition.

Fair Ribbons

The Alaska State Fair opened last week and I had several pieces of knitting entered so I was excited to go on Wednesday to see how they did.  My son and daughter-in-law went last Friday and phoned to let me know that their daughter's baby sweater which I "borrowed back" in order to enter, had two ribbons on it...   "one of them was a really big yellow one".  I had know idea what that category might be so was interested to go see for myself.

We had a great time at the fair.  We didn't get rained on or blown away... at this time of year a gift that can't be taken for granted.  We ate too much, visited all the animals... too few for my tastes... and did lots of walking.  (I don't think I walked of the Denali wild berry cream puff that indulged in though!)

It was so overcast that all the pictures of animals look like were-monsters of some kind with their red bulging eyes, so I'm not including were-pigs, were-sheep, nor were-goats.  Only the chickens and rabbits were in a well lit area, but I'm never quite as entranced by chickens and rabbits, so forgot to take any pictures.

All the knitting, quilting, sewing, spinning, and crocheting is displayed together in a high-ceiling barn-like structure with very dim lighting.  I would have loved to take a picture of the whole display as it was a riot of texture and color.  Unfortunately the lighting is very bad so that made taking pictures a nightmare.  Most of my pictures didn't turn out very well, and several didn't turn out at all... just a blur.

Here are pictures of some of my result:

My grand daughter's Dale of Norway, Bondegard design, baby cardigan

My Seaforth gansey tunic, a pullover entry

 

My Stillwater cardigan, a cardigan entry

 

I had a couple other entries too, but the pictures didn't turn out. 

Of course, now that we had a dark dismal overcast day, today the sun is blazing and it's almost warm outside. All the leaves are beginning to turn and Fall is definitely in the air.

New email address...

For those of you who haven't been reading my recent blogs, I have been more or less off-line since July 1.  That inconvenience necessitated changing internet providers which also necessitated changing my email address and phone number... major pain!

So sorry about the inconvenience, but if you're using any old links, or old addresses in address books, they won't work.  And if this is inconvenient to you... it took me a whole week to change all my email addresses with my favorite groups and of course, now all of those log-ins are still not working properly.

The one standard in my life is still Ravelry where you can find me at:CarolyninAlaska. So, I hope everyone who has been having bounce-back issues sees that problem go away, because I love hearing from all my knitting friends.

I got this sweater vest back too... I knit it for my brother who didn't really like it and gave it to my Mom.  It didn't really fit her so she never wore it... go figure... I mean, why did she even want it?  Now it is back to me and it doesn't really fit me either.  I made the shoulders and arm holes large enough to fit my brother, so now when I put it on, it looks like I'm wearing a sweater with built-in epaulets!  If I had known it was going to be mine eventually, I would have done the ribbing adjustment that Anne did to hers.

Still, I'm not complaining because I'm thrilled to have my knit items back. 

Since I don't expect my shoulders to grow, and this is too small to fit my husband, I guess I will try to snug up the arm hole ribbing with some thin elastic... otherwise, I will have to rip them out and re-fit them... not something I really want to do. So check out these shoulders... I did try reblocking the vest too, and that didn't work.  (Actually, they don't look that big on the woolly board, but they really stick out.) Any suggestions that I didn't think of...?

Too many pictures!

With the internet problems we had been having, I hadn't uploaded any photos for quite a while.  Yesterday, I discovered that my Flickr account was full.  Although I love the fact that Ravelry can take direct uploads now, I have kept my Flickr account since I like the "badge" of my knitting projects that displays on my blog page. First I was only going to remove all the sock photos from Flickr so make room for new things.  Then, I got a little carried away and began some really extensive editing.  Before I knew it and about 4 hours later, I had removed all the sock photos and all the stash photos from Flickr, which meant that I had to upload them to the Ravelry servers.

It was a real time waster... I had planned to do a blog post instead, but at least it's all finished now.  One surprise was the difference in the photo clarity of the Flickr hosted photos and the clarity from the photos directly from my computer.  The Flickr photos appear much more washed out and have less depth of color and detail.

Here is one of the other sweaters that "returned" to me.  It is the second Larvik I knit... this time from Tiur rather than the red and black one I knit for myself from Heilo. I loved knitting this pattern... well, except for the embroidery.

Old, But New Sweaters

After my Mom passed away this spring, I had some of her belongings shipped to me.  I didn't unpack them right away because looking through her belongings made me sad.  Last month, I finally unpacked most of the boxes "liberating" the sweaters that I knit for her; at least the ones I could find. A few disappeared?

 As much as I really miss her, I have to admit that it is nice having my sweaters back... they seem like old friends.  Also, because they were knit before I owned a digital camera and sent straight to Oregon, I never really got any pictures of them.  So here are a few pictures of my new, old sweaters.

Looking at Tucumcari is a history lesson of how my knitting evolved.  The size and shape is a little weird... I'm not even sure what happened it's been so long, but I definitely didn't quite follow the directions.  I thought I knit a size small, but it's a medium and it's really short and wide.  Also, I think I did the neck decreases wrong, or maybe not as frequently as the pattern called for because the arm holes and the V-neck are both really deep.  I still love the colors though, and for my first Fair Isle experience, the tension is surprisingly even. I don't think Mom wore it much because it looks brand new.  Maybe she just liked to show it to her friends. Not the best fit on me, but I still love the colors!

 

Only my internet was dead...

I knew it had been a long time since my last post, but I didn't realize it had been over a month!

We have been having internet connectivity problems just like we had last summer.  This summer we decided to take action and dump the one provider and go with the other provider after 3 weeks of 30 second-5 minute outages about every 10 minutes when it was "working" or no connectivity at all for hours and hours.  After many calls with them saying, "but everything is working fine on this end", we just dropped them.  Of course, that necessitated changing phone numbers and email addresses... why couldn't the electronic age just be simple! 

I never realized just how many web-sites I used until I had to navigate all their account changing processes.  I probably still missed a few, but I am now back online and not only able to read... but leave comments on people's blogs!  (After I lost so many comments I was trying to post... I just quit trying!)

I have been doing lots of knitting and lots of bike riding.  My biggest July accomplishment was to take part in the Fireweed 400 ride; although I only rode the "short" distance... 50 miles.  It seemed long enough to me, though!  We have been having gorgeous sunny weather, mostly.  And although we just finished 2 weeks of rain, here is a photo of the lovely weather we had this week-end.  Everyone who lives in Alaska, will probably recognize this location, but for those of you in other states... this is a picture of one of the "sunken forests" which was caused by the great Alaska earthquake of 1964.  The land dropped vertically by 3.6 meters causing this forest near sea level to be inundated by salt water.  Luckily for me, I lived in California when it happened... I don't think that would have been something I would want to experience.

It's Not the Solstice!

I had planned to do a post on the Solstice because that was my blogiversary and our 40th wedding anniversary, so it seemed like a very meaningful day.  Unfortunately, our internet provider didn't cooperate and we were offline most of the time from last Thursday, June 18 until yesterday, June 24.

We went through "rolling" outages last summer too, so now we're going to be changing providers.  We had only procrastinated changing this long because connectivity improved for awhile and because it's a pain to change all our email addresses and log-ins. So, if you haven't heard from me, or can't get in touch with me via email, you can always find me through the Ravelry message system.

I have been knitting on Inishmaan and making sporadic progress.  (Lots of frogging due to an over absorption with the movies we were watching!)  I have since discovered that not only is it important to track horizontal patterns every row, it's important to check for vertical mistakes!  It's finally looking pretty good. After trying to fix multiple mis-crossed cables that caused really loose spots in the tension,  I just decided to frog it back.

It's a chameleon-like color that is really hard to describe. Sometimes it looks like a blueish grey; sometimes it looks like a brownish blue. So here are two pictures taken in the same lighting and same position and it looks like two different pieces of knitting.

Now onto another more troublesome subject...

I modeled my new Seaforth and then looked at the pictures... what a disappointment.  Not with the sweater, which turned out great, but with how I look in it.

I have been trying to lose weight now for over a year with only limited success.  I've been careful to exercise and diet but I've only lost a little weight, which is discouraging.  Last summer when I trained for the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon, I thought for sure that I would lose... after all, I was walking around 20+ miles a week.  Then I added biking to the mix... I'm still over-weight.    Most of the time I feel OK with the inability to lose... except when I see a picture of myself.  I never quite realize how heavy I look until I see a picture.  Having the camera add about another 20 pounds is not very helpful either.

So my goal is that I'll model this sweater next summer and look slimmer in it!

(I'm holding my arms straight out to show off the "exotic" gansey sleeves... patterned on the top and plain on the bottom!)