Latest circus recruit

Our mouse circus is finally complete with the addition of a girl...er...female clown. Her male partner has been waiting for her patiently for many months.

There are actually twelve mice in the Cirque de Souris designed by Alan Dart but our troupe is complete at ten because we decided not to have the trapeze artists that would require extra rigging.
   Here is a group shot of the entire troupe. Some of them have appeared in previous posts and if you want to see them in greater detail, click on the tag for toys on the right side of the screen.

In case you are wondering, the circus mice travel in Airstream trailers.

I've been asked how big (or small) these mice are. They are just over 5 inches/12.7 cm.

This female mouse towers a 1/4" over her partner, but he is so secure in his masculinity that he doesn't care one whit. The yarn is either Kauni Wool 8/2 Effekgarn or Shetland jumperweight.

Button happiness

A popular Irish blessing begins "May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back." I have a new blessing for knitters of sweaters: 

May your buttons always be evenly spaced. 

I've always found that very challenging, until I discovered this phenomenal tool: the SimFlex Expanding Sewing Gauge. 

Believe me, the rather hefty price felt completely worth it the very first time I used it to space some buttons and button holes. Even using the metric system rather than our ungainly system of inches and fractions thereof, I always had problems with the arithmetic of spacing seven objects evenly.

    With the help of my handy tool, I have finally finished my Mayan Dreams sweater by sewing on clasps. (If there's anything I dislike more than getting spacing even, it's making buttonholes.) I will make buttonholes if I feel the sweater demands them but these clasps from Schoolhouse Press are just so lovely and go so well with this sweater. 

The nitty gritty: The sweater is my own design and knit with Kauni Wool 8/2 Effekgarn in color ways ET and EZ. I needed to edit out some light grey and dark turquoise yarn to get the amount of color contrast I wanted. Start time to completion was one and a half years—it lay dormant for quite a while. I finished it just in time for some lovely crisp autumn weather and I have found it a joy to wear.

Fear not the steek

One of my Unfinished Objects (UFOs) has become airborne again. One reason I put it aside is that before I could continue, I had to take my scissors to it. Cutting into something I've spent months knitting still makes me nervous even though I've done it quite a few times. However, I no longer hyperventilate (much).
 A steek is a vertical set of stitches that are inserted in stranded knitting as a place to cut later. Since my Mayan Dreams sweater is to be a cardigan with sleeves, I had a steek the entire length of the front and steeks on each side beginning at the underarm.

 The advantage of a steek is that one can knit around and around, always looking at the right side of the pattern. Doing a complicated two-color pattern back and forth would be mentally challenging as the pattern is difficult to see on the purl side.  (Interestingly enough, most Peruvian stranded work is done from the purl side so they probably would think I do it the hard way working from the knit side.)
  Many people sew along each side of the steek with a sewing machine before they cut it. Some add a crochet chain before they cut to stabilize the edge. But since I am very lazy, I do no preparation. This works for both Shetland yarn or the Kauni yarn I am using for this sweater because these yarns are so sticky they don't want to unravel. I proved this to myself by cutting a swatch and pulling at the edges. It's also the method recommended by Alice Starmore. By the way, I am so pleased that Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting has been reissued by Dover. It's the best book I've seen for both techniques and inspiration for Fair Isle knitting. Considering that I paid $24.95 in 1988 and the list price is again $24.95, it's quite a bargain.

I always make my steeks in alternating colors. That is, one stitch of color A, one stitch of color B, and so on, repeated until I have 8 or 10 stitches. Having these narrow columns of color makes it much easier to see where to cut. Once I have measured many times to make sure my armhole is the right depth, I cut. I am very careful that I am only cutting one layer of the sweater by holding some fingers under the top layer. In the picture, I'm using embroidery scissors but you can use any sharp scissors.

In the above picture I have paused to admire my neat cutting. After I cut the steeks I grafted the shoulders and picked up stitches around one of the arm holes. I pick up every row for 3 rows and then skip a row.  (Most people have stitches that are slightly shorter than they are wide.)

Now I am knitting down on the first sleeve. Later I will trim my steeks to be two stitches wide and sew  them with stitches on the inside that make Xs over the raw edge. This is an example on my Obsession sweater, also knit in Kauni. I've worn it a lot and washed it a couple of times with no problems with raveling.

  Using steeks is a technique well worth learning if you want to do Fair Isle or other stranded knitting.

Visa Vacation: Mexico

Because we are in Costa Rica on a tourist visa, we have to leave the country at least once every 90 days. When we re-enter the country after at least 72 hours we get a new tourist visa. This means we take one "visa vacation" a season. It's a good thing because we enjoy it so much here we might never explore other places otherwise. Past vacations have been to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, and Peru. Twist my arm, I need to take a visa vacation! This year we went to Mexico for the very first time. We took an Exploritas trip -- the organization was formerly Elderhostel. Now we like to call it Exploritis because if traveling is a bug we definitely have it.

The theme of the trip was birding the Mayan ruins of the Yucatán and we had a marvelous

time. We saw almost 200 species of birds but we liked it that our fellow travelers weren't fanatical. Most of the species we had seen before but we did pick up a few new ones that are endemics to that area. Now if one of us would just organize our various birds seen over the years into a life list....

Mr. Rududu managed to get lots of terrific bird photos even though he had to

keep up with the group. My favorite photo is this one of painted buntings.

Of course, we also really enjoyed seeing lots of Mayan ruins and learning about them from our excellent archeology guide. (We also had a birding guide and driver to take care of 14 people in the group.) There is incredible variety from one site to another. There was a lot of ornamentation on some of the buildings like these at Chichén Itzá or the facade of a huge building at Kabah.

Another real surprise were the colorful murals at Bonampak. Exactly how they made beautiful and durable blues and turquoises is not understood as far as I know but it did involve using vegetable dyes like a kind of indigo.

It was quite hot most of the time and one day it got up to 41C / 105 F. That's really hot for visiting archeological sites. Thank goodness for our air-conditioned van. Mr. Rududu bought a very nicely made Panama hat. It's called a jipi-japa. (Sounds like hippy-happa in English.) It stays on well even in a fairly stiff breeze. I

bought the first hat with a brim that I found, which isn't nearly as elegant but served very well its purpose of keeping me from keeling over in

the heat.

Of course, I pursued my interest in food. My favorite food experience of the trip was buying a roll from this vendor with his wares on a bicycle. the variety struck me as typical of a certain exuberance. On the right are a some chicken specialties of the area, which are wrapped in banana leaves and baked in a hole in the ground. Our group had that for lunch one day, except me because I don't eat chicken. I got a very good fuss-budget's special.

Our trip was well organized and very educational as well as fun. Our traveling companions were easy to get along with. In honor of what I saw I am naming my latest knitting project Mayan Dream. The stitch pattern, although I created it before our trip, reminds of the ornamentation on the buildings we saw and the turquoise reminds me of the Bonompak murals. I'm knitting with 2 colorways of Kauni yarn.