The Kippot Report

Someone remarked to me the other day about the Bat Mitzvah being only 2 months away. I nearly bit their head off, insisting that it's two and a half. I need every minute of that to get ready. I am soooo not ready. I'm getting there though, and I have every expectation that I'll pull it off somehow.

To that end I continue to plug away at making kippot. I like them so far and they're coming pretty easy when I have the time for them. That means when I'm not holding Miss M, working, doing errands, attending meetings (scratch that, I crochet there too), helping the girls with stuff or doing any of the zillion other things I do.

When I took this picture I had 22 kippot finished. Now there are 28. I'm sure I won't get anywhere near the 80 I made for DQ but I really think that 60 is a reasonable goal. It's a loose goal. The real one is to keep going until the yarn or the time runs out. It's not hard to keep going and it's even easier now, after a Bat Mitzvah I was at over the weekend. My friend had a family member make kippot for her daughters celebration and told me that it was inspired by me. Then, at the party I met someone from our congregation who said that he was at my daughters event and kept the kippot because he liked it so much. That felt so good. Appreciation is an excellent motivator.

On Linen

There is one really, really, old UFO in my basket. It's a lacey linen shell in tobacco brown and I pick it up from time to time. Like any reasonable knitter, I consider all my UFOs and I frog those hat no longer make me happy. Somehow this Lacey shell persists. Although its been there for years I still think that I'm going to finish it one day and enjoy it very much. I'm not sure why I don't finish it but I suspect the yarn is at least part of the problem. It's linen and it feels like I'm knitting straw. No fun at all.

Based on this I was surprised to find myself enjoying my current project (long delayed) very much. Yes, after procrastinating for months, I have started the kippot for Stinkette's Bat Mitzvah. I dyed the yarn way back in October but turning it into yarn cakes was a nightmare so I got frustrated and cast it aside. I felt awful putting it off but I was having trouble knitting or crocheting anything at that point. Suddenly, the big event is really close and it's now or never. Never really wasn't an option.

It turns out that crocheting with linen is much faster than with silk. With the silk I set a goal for myself of 10 kippot per month and that was about all I could handle. This time, I can easily do 5 or more a week which ought to be about 20 per month. Good news since I'm starting so late.

So what's the deal? I think it's the extra body that linen has. It's not floppy and it just takes to the crochet so nicely. It also holds the shape well so that these are more head-shaped which is a good thing. I am really encouraged and therefore enjoying this project a lot.

So what about that poor, lingering, linen, shell? Only time will tell but summer is coming.

Dyed

There are very few things that are true for everyone, everywhere but I suspect that the feeling of accomplishment you get from crossing things off your "to do" list is one of them. It seems like the longer the list - the better it feels. My list is about as long as it's ever been so this week has been really good. I've been going through my list and crossing off things that had been lingering - making phone calls and appointments, planting, organizing, straightening and dyeing!



The last time I showed you this yarn it was pristine white, wound up on cones, waiting for my attention. Due to rain, a super busy schedule, and fear this yarn was still undyed until last weekend. That's when I finally decided to suck it up and dye that yarn because it can't become kippot until it's dyed.

I really don't know what I was so afraid of. Yes, dyeing linen is different from dyeing wool but it wasn't hard. In some ways it was actually easier. No need for piping hot water. Even better, linen isn't going to felt! It's one of the few fibers that LIKES to be beaten up.


So I spent my weekend dyeing three skeins of linen in colors that Stinkette and I agreed on. Most of it is purple (seen in the foreground) and the rest is a sky blue (seen in the background). Truly the most onerous part of dyeing the yarn was rinsing it. Now it's dyed, rinsed, and dried. I just have to turn it into yark cakes and away we go. Yay!

It feels really good.

Starting Again

Earlier this week I mentioned that there were signs that I was ready to go back to work. Some of them were things like catching up on calls and appointments. I also started taking over the laundry although that was more a matter of necessity because Bruce was doing his best to destroy all of our clothes. I got back to the business of organizing and planning and generally reclaiming most of the tasks that are usually mine. And then there was the yarn... it should surprise no one that a return to yarn was involved.

It seems like only yesterday that I was planning DQ's Bat Mitzvah and yet here I am planning Stinkerbelle's. Part of the event prep now as it was then is the creation of a set of kippot. Stinkaroonie is a very different girl than her sister and I want every aspect of her event to reflect that. The location and menu will be way different and so will the theme.

With this in mind I requested some yarn samples many months ago so that I could test them out. Since then they sat and sat and sat as I did everything but play with yarn. Finally, as I started preparing to go back to work I took out the samples and worked them up. They are arranged in the order I tried them. First was a cotton bamboo which was really nice. I love the creamy look of the yarn. Next was a bamboo silk which was very much like the pure silk I used last time but a little thicker. Very nice luster. Last I took a bit of Normandy linen for a spin. Really lovely stuff.

I knew which sample I wanted to use almost immediately but I asked Stinkerbelle and Bruce for their opinion anyway. Happily, they totally agreed. Can you guess which one we chose? Which would you choose? I'm really curious to hear you opinions.

Circle Of Life

A week ago, as I was watching the late news, I heard a report that made me stop in my tracks because I recognized the name. They were talking about a cousin of mine. He wasn't a close relative - I hadn't seen him in years - but he was family. In fact, he and his wife were the only family we had in the area when we moved here and they were kind and welcoming. As time went on life got in the way and made the distance between our homes in Virginia and Maryland seem to grow but I still thought of them and hearing what happened to Rickey was awful.



Rickey's death would've been upsetting even if I didn't know him because I too am a Metro rider. Every day I ride the Metro and over the past week I've felt acutely aware of just how alone we all are as we commute to and from work which is weird considering how packed those trains can get. People get on and off immersed in a book, watching a video on a handheld device, checking their e-mail on a crackberry, or listening to music and never even notice who is next to them. It's kind of sad when you think about it. A man died on a train that was full of passengers and nobody even noticed. What does that say about us?



Anyway, on Sunday I went to pay my respects to my cousin and her sons. It was a hard visit but nice to reconnect after all that time.

Fortunately, the very next day the circle of life expanded once more as a close friend had a baby boy. The kippot in this post are the ones that I expect will be worn by Baby "J" and his big sister Miss "B" at his bris next week.



Unlike the kippot I made for the Bat Mitzvah, these were made from cotton embroidery thread (#5 I think). I love colors that were available and the feel of it - nice and thick and soft. It's kind of hard to see in the pictures, but I incorporated a bit of gold thread into the yellow star on the blue kippah. I hope that they make the guest of honor and his big sister feel very special.

Still Going

I am so happy to say that today is my last day at work until the New Year. We have no big plans aside from the afore mentioned trip to NY to celebrate my grandfather's 90th but I'm so happy just to have a little bit of quiet time. Hopefully I'll use most of that time to work on party details and start some projects for me because two (hopefully three) big projects will be completed.

Grandma's sweater is the real focus right now. It's been giving me fits because I just can't seem to measure properly. I bound off the body the other day and started the first sleeve. These sleeves are big and it took me 2 trys to get it just right. In the end I wound up decreasing twice in the garter border. In the first round of knit in the garter border I k5, k2tog all around and then in the 3rd round of knit I k4, k2tog all the way around. It left the sleeves nice and full but they pull in at the wrists now. I like it and I hope my grandmother will too.

Finishing the first sleeve provided a bit of perspective on the body of the sweater and suddenly it looked really short. Grandma wants it short but not like this. I took out my tape measure and sure enough it was about 1.5-2 inches too short. Thankfully it wasn't too hard to undo the bind off and I have plenty of yarn so it's back on the needles now and nearing bind off for the second time. That just leaves the second sleeve and 3 buttons. I'm pretty sure I can get this done.

The other thing that's nearing the finish line is Kippah Quest 2008. Number 74 is complete and I'll start number 75 later today. It hasn't been totally smooth sailing on this project though. The past week has been really bumpy. As I started number 72 I noticed that there wasn't much of the blue yarn left. I expected that I'd have to dye more at some point and I was prepared so I pulled out the dye pot and got to work. In the picture above you can see the initial unskeined result. I'm not sure that you can tell from the picture but the color was way off. It's much too even and more aqua than it ought to be. Thankfully I had more undyed yarn in reserve and I tried again. The second effort is seen in the ball of yarn with the partial kippah resting on it. It's a little lighter than it ought to be but it's more in keeping with the rest of the kippot.

The other bump was kippah number 72 itself. Since 72 is a multiple of 18 I decided that this ought to be the one for me. I had some modifications in mind but it took tons of research and lots of frogging to get it to work. I'm happy with the results but I have no pictures yet. Soon.

Tonight we'll mark Christmas according to Jewish tradition - Chinese food and movies. To those of you who are celebrating for real I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

60% and Then Some

When I started my kippah project I figured that it would be good blog fodder when my brain was fried or empty. Although it wasn't the reason for doing the project it sure did seem like a great by-product. Little did I know how productive my needles would be. It turns out that even the milestones in this little project have been hard to squeeze in.


Number 40 is one such milestone. That was the halfway point in this project and it would've been really cool to mark it with an obnoxious, self-congratulatory post that included great photos of a huge pile of completed kippot. Can't you picture it?

Well... I passed the halfway point September 28th and I was too busy to mark the occasion. Besides, most of the kippot are still in NY with my mom having their labels sewn in so I can't show the mountain of kippot. So much for the grand show.



The kippah seen in this post is number 50. I decided that the sister of the Bat Mitzvah girl needed something special too so I let her choose some glass beads to spice up her kippah. I love the result and so does she. Yay!

N is for...

Numbers.

One is a good number in just about every instance. It means that you are first, the best or the fastest. Those are all good things of course and we'd all love to be recognized as the number one something or other.



Two is nice because it's even. I was a lousy math student and learning the times tables was a huge pain but I still remember feeling relief when I saw a question with a 2 in it. At least I could rely on getting those correct. Maybe that is why 24 is my favorite number.

Although many of us like the symmetry of 2's, three is a much better number from a creative standpoint. Three pictures arranged on a wall, three shrubs in a landscape or three buttons on a sweater tend to be more pleasing to the eye. There's and edge to the uneven-ness. Three is also noted in other arts like writing and photography which have rules dedicated to the number.

Some people favor 7 and call it their lucky number. I guess that it was pretty lucky for me when I took this picture while crossing the street. I made it across and got the shot. Woot!

Numbers are everywhere we go. On buildings, recipes, patterns, etc. I am dismayed to find that the teachers were right - you really can't escape math!



While the relevance of some numbers is simple and straightforward, others are deeper. In Judaism, the word Chai means life and the Hebrew letters that are used to spell it, het and yood, add up to 18 which makes 18 special. It's found on jewelry and in art. For weddings and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs monetary gifts are often given in multiples of chai.

Because 18 is an auspicious number, when I got to the 18th kippah I decided to do the special one that DQ will wear at her Bat Mitzvah. I embellished the white band with clear class beads and added a series of Swarovski crystals in shades of blue to surround the star in the center. when she stands and the light from the skylights hits her just right the crystals will sparkle and shine.



While we're talking about numbers, I'm just about to complete kippah 27 so I have finished a little more than one third of the kippot. I set a pace for myself of 10 kippot per month and I'm currently ahead of where I need to be to keep up. Anything can happen but right now I'm feeling like I may finish early. Hooray!

A Weirdly Quiet Weekend

Thank you to everyone for your healing thoughts. I wish I could say that all is well now but, unfortunately it isn't and my husband flew to NY late on Saturday to be with his father. Right now we're just praying for a miracle and giving thanks for the fact that my girls are away at camp unaware of the current drama. At a time like this, ignorance is bliss and that's the way we intend to keep it.

With my girls at camp and Bruce in NY it was weirdly quiet at home this weekend. A friend said that she was jealous and that I should enjoy the quiet but it wasn't a comfortable thing. The house felt empty, as if something was missing.

I knocked around the house doing little odds and ends but mostly I chilled out and knit. I also worked on my big crochet project. I finally received the ribbon labels and they're perfect - silver writing on a blue ribbon. I sent them and 13 finished kippot to my mom in NY and got back to work. The tally is now 16 which means that I've finished 20% of the kipppot.

A funny thing happened on Saturday. I brought my car in for work and there was a glitch that caused it to take way longer than expected so the dealership gave me a car and, with nothing else to do, I went to With Yarn in Front, the new LYS that wasn't too far away. Once there I sat and worked on more of the kippot and one of the owners recognized what I was working on. She said that someone came in asking about making kippot recently so they googled it and my blog came up. I thought that was pretty funny.

With so much time on my hands I worked on socks and I started something new. What do you think of this? I can't say too much about what it is but I can discuss the yarn. It's Katia Mississippi 3 which I've used many times before with success. It's a cotton/acrylic blend which washes well and wears well too. The colors are a concern though. I let my girls choose them and now I'm wondering if that was wise. In the store I thought that it was a strawberry red, grass green, and a lighter celery green. Now that last shade looks nearly fluorescent to me certainly not green. At turns it scares me and then I look at it again after a few more rows and I think it's not bad. At this point I'm quite a bit beyond what you see in this picture and I'm no longer certain that I trust my eyes.

Ten Percent

A little over 3 weeks ago I posted my K is for kippah and the response to it was more than I ever imagined. It's ironic that a post that I almost didn't do would be the one to hit such a nerve. I'm so happy to have all of the support and encouragement.



Many expressed interest in watching the project progress so here's where I am so far. I've completed 9 kippot and there is one more on my hook. As a percentage I've completed just over 10 percent and once the 10th is completed later today I'll have finished 1/8 of them. If you state it in either of those terms it sounds so good but, in reality, I still have 70 more to make. Seventy still sounds like a huge task and it is but I'm feeling good about the progress I've made and the odds of my finishing on time are pretty good if I can maintain this pace. Even better, I finally ordered the labels for them - royal blue with silver writing - so once they arrive I can start sending them to my mom to be attached. Yay!


So far they are turning out well and I'm happy with them but there is a small issue with the edges. The pattern calls for theedges to be finished with French single crochet which is actually a backwards single crochet with a twist. It makes for a neat and finished looking edge but they are rollong a little. I can smooth them out but they go back to rolling if I leave them alone. Anyone know anything about this?

Some have inquired about grandma's pattern. I need to look at it and see if I can share it. I'm not sure that any of the copies she made has any attribution and I suspect that my grandmother would've been fine sharing it with anyone that asked.