yoelknits

Decisions

2012-01-31T22:58:00.000-06:00

I'm going to learn how to ski! Which means, of course, the first thing I did was knit a pair of grey balaclavas for me and DH. Then I decided I didn't want a ginorm balaclava squashing my hair (I already have a hood on my jacket and about 2 dozen knitted hats) and opted to knit a tight-ish cowl that could be pulled up over the face instead.

This presented the perfect opportunity to try out the shorter lace Addi circular needles. To back up... I decide to lose the usual 5 lbs of holiday weight, plus what I refer to as "St Louis weight" and "med school weight" (5 lbs each), and settled on a set of interchangeable Addi circs as the perfect reward for reaching my pre-midwestern figure. However I am quite puzzled by the choices. Online, the regular Addi turbo interchangeable circs are in a silverish (?nickel) finish, usual length needles, 10 sizes, 3 cords. The lace interchangeable needles, are in a nickel finish, 8 sizes of needles 2" shorter (ostensibly because of shorter cords), 4 cords. At the local yarn store, the lace needles come only in a copper finish (the 2010 version, apparently). What a dilemma! While I believe I have knitted with the nickel (or other silverish metal) finish lace and regular Addi's and prefer the lace tips, I was not sure. So I bit the bullet and got a pair of the copper-finish, lace, short needles, for this project. My conclusions:

1) fingers smell like pennies -- copper finish bad
2) it is really uncomfortable/painful to knit with short needles because hands can't "rest" on the needles
3) knitting on a copper finish is slow, not very "turbo"
4) for teeny projects, double pointed needles are easier and faster. The tiny circular cord is ridiculous and inefficient unless I take up socks/hats full time.

So I am 90% convinced to get the regular (not lace) Addi interchangeable turbo needle set, despite the fact that I like the lace tip more than the regular tip. I do want to purchase from the LYS that has taken the time and cost to show me the options. But I wanted to get some opinions from people who have tried out all 3 sets (or 4 sets, if there is a lace nickel finish set out there where the needles are regular length). Specifically, is the finish on the regular Addi interchangeable needles the usual Addi nickel finish? What is the join like? Which set did you get, and why? Help!

FO: I Have a Dress

2012-01-16T18:37:00.000-06:00

Hooray for MLKJr weekend--I was finally able to get a button and finish up this Allegheny dress, pattern by Thea Colman (babycocktails). I didn't use Shelter, the yarn called for in the pattern, because the colors that I really liked were sold out. I subbed Berroco Blackstone Tweed instead, and it worked out great, with bang-on gauge.

I love this cable! The tweediness obscurs the cabling a little bit, but overall the fabric drapes well and the tweediness is of the good different-shades-of-same-color variety, not the bad multicolor-clown-barf variety. And the bits of angora and mohair bloom in the spaces between the stitches but there isn't the puffy halo effect.

Mods included dropping and narrowing the waist, shortening the skirt, and adding a little bit of bust shaping. Since the skirt part is shorter but starts lower, it ended up about as long as the original pattern. It hits about 4 inches above the knee, about as short as a knitted dress can go without being scandalous. So PSA for people with longer legs (ie everyone): the skirt really should be knitted longer, or invest in leggings.

This is one of those patterns that has the perfect balance of easy stockinette in the round, and "fun" stuff like the cable, ribbed waist, and faux belt (so adorable!). Also, it's been a long time since I made a FO garment that was so cute and wearable. It's the perfect weekend dress! Thanks Thea!

Happy Knew Year!

2012-01-05T20:14:00.000-06:00

The knitting group held the annual knitting group hand-made gift exchange again... this is held after the new year to avoid all the holiday hassles. It was a jolly good time!

Kateri received mini-stockings made by Colleen. Anna was elf for the evening and looks adorable.

Colleen received a beautiful knit scarf (?Persepone? Something Greek) from Emily.

Emily received a cabled hobo bag from me--an oldie from 2008 that I made for myself but never used.

I received a lovely silk leafy cowl from Silvana.

Silvana received a gorgeous Rock Island shawl from Christine. She got a shawl last year and the year before too, very lucky!

Christine received a knitting-machine-made ribbed scarf and hand-made jewelry from Kateri.

She has long fingers and knits freaky-fast. She is the only person I know who gets paid to knit. (Don't be too jealous, because she is now knitting her FIFTH Aeolean Shawl. Hole giant pile of guacamole. Just think of SECOND sock syndrome. Could you knit FIVE iterations of the same lace shawl?)

Food was potluck this year, and we ended up with a perfectly balanced and light feast.

Quinoa/sweet potato salad, salad with ginger dressing, garbanzo/tomato/cucumber salad, and grain-free bread. All vegan, hooray!

I made Korean New Year's Soup again this year, this time in veg and vegan versions. It kind of looks like vomitus here, but it tasted good. Notice the new dining room wall color, painted on new year's day! It covered over the really dark orange.

Which is not to be confused with the slightly lighter yet very orange living room, below, still intact.

The sweets, not to be outdone, included vegan brownies, fruit salad, 3 teas from Traveling Tea, and champagne.

We had Christine's cake and ate it too!

What a delight to spend the first bit of 2012 with such a wonderful group of knitters. Thank you knitting ladies!

This kicked off my 2012 New Year's resolution... Until now I've made as many resolutions as I'll turn that year. This year, I decided I'm getting too old. So I was inspired by my dear friend Liz, who picks a word or theme for the year. So, my word for this year is CELEBRATION.

Looking back on 2011, and the 5-10 years before that, mostly all I can remember is all the work I did. Granted, I was in medical training, which turns one into the mistress of delayed gratification, but still. What's the point of living if you don't make the time/effort to drink eggnog (forgot in 2011), don't decorate for holidays, save the champagne for a "special" occasion, never eat off the good china, don't travel the safari, put off getting together with good friends/family for another night, leave the vases empty, or save knitting with the good yarn? So, the goal for 2012 is to live each day like it's a special day, and celebrate all of my blessings now, not later. I'm off to a good start!

FOs for Meows

2011-12-21T20:21:00.000-06:00

Well, surely you didn't expect a ginorm sweater, shawl, or dress as the last 12under43 project! Of course it's a cat toy! Or several of them.

Henry's toy snake is the scary one in the back. S/he is supposed to be a snake, but honestly it looks a lot like a microphone, and it is way, insanely, super fun to pick it up and sing like no-one's listening. There are 60 of these today on Rav so it doesn't count for my project. The top of the head came from Market Cardi, the nearly imperceptibly different crimson came from this Neckwarmer, and the grey came from the remnants of the stripes from this Striped vest. So long, scrappies!

The fishie is designed by Jackie Ziegler. It ended up with bumblebee coloring because the yellow from the beloved Jersey ran out. So the black from Hippocampi pitched in. There are 26 of these so far, so it is officially the 12th and final project for the 12under43 project. Woot woot! The Mousie mousie mouse is from the old, old remnants of the frogged sleeves from a sweater-turned-vest. There are 17 of these so far on Ravelry, so this one counts too, in case the fishies don't.

Last but not least, I just knitted this one free-form. The shaping on the butt is exceptional, and I like to believe the kitty cats will really notice the short-row shaping and the subtle and symmetric lifted increases. Because that's what cats do best, appreciate fine knitting. I overestimated the yarn (still from the Neckwarmer) and ran out, and did the face with the detritus from the Blue Moon Bainbridge-Baltimore-Fair socks. Now it looks like a hedgehog, and I'm torn as to whether the tail and ears should be mouse-like or hedgie-like. It's a hard life, making cat toys.

DH and I are working hard, to lure this gorgeous stray (and pregnant?) kitty into our lives.

I am 100% positive she will like a hand-knitted toy, especially if stuffed with catnip, and give us head nudgies!

So we knit on.

Happy holidays everyone!

FO: Red Bougainvillea

2011-12-19T18:09:00.000-06:00

Yikes, by the skin of teeth! This came off the needles, got blocked in a hurry, and sent off to a lucky gift recipient.

This is knitted from my own pattern, Bougainvillea. I did a few extra repeats because this is a thinner yarn--a merino-tencel blend hand-dyed and sold at A Mind's Eye Yarns, which I got during the Cambridge portion of the Cambridge-Boston yarn crawl a few months ago. The sheen from the tencel works well for the bougainvillea bracts (the colored leaves on bougainvillea).

It was very late by the time it was picture time, so all of them are kinda dark and romantic, especially this one. You can really see the lace detail though!

So this makese #11 of my 12 under 43 projects for the year! Just one more to go!

WIP

2011-12-06T21:21:00.000-06:00

I bid adieu to my old dumb-phone and got a new iphone, which means it's too smart for my computer. So I've been taking a bloggy break while upgrading the RAM and the OS (twice). But now I need to download the newer photoshop and camera software! Arg arg arg. So I haven't been able to show you how little I have been knitting. Then I realized that my phone is smart and can take pictures and stuff, and no need to wait!

Here's the last present I am knitting this holiday season, a red iteration of my Bougainvillea Shawl/Scarf.

The yarn is a shiny and drapey blend that I got during my Cambridge-Boston yarn crawl. Love it, especially because the sheen is so bougainvillea-ey.

In other news, we've been busy repainting. The bright lime green has been muted down to a pale greenish grey. Perfect for cozy winter mornings! The mouldings need to go up now--like everything in this house, it's a work in progress...

Back! With FOs!

2011-11-19T13:11:00.000-06:00

Oooof, that was a long blogging break--many work deadlines (including what is hopefully my last board exam) all fell within a month of each other, and so there was a lot of frizzy running around and no knitting at all. I finished these FO's before the month of craziness, and did not even have time to take pictures or post. But here they are finally!

Pattern is Bridget Cowl, by Elena Rosenberg. I had been wanting to knit a moebius cowl/snood/shawl, and picked this pattern because I thought it was knit in the round as a moebius. Actually, it is knit like a short scarf and then seamed together. I cast-on with provisional cast-on, put the final live stitches on scrap yarn, blocked (this lace pattern grows a lot), then seamed using kitchener stitch.

The pattern calls for 3 rows of ribbing at the end, which I didn't understand and thought it would mess up the lace pattern, so I skipped those rows (also I just hate ribbing!). Otherwise, the only other mod was a slightly longer length. The pattern calls for knitting 30" before seaming. To be able to wear it as a snood and as a shoulder shawl sort of thingy, a few more inches are needed. 34-35" should be good for a small-medium build woman. I was able to use up every last bit of a skein each of Madelinetosh Vintage (worsted weight, 200 yards, in Tart), and Angel's Kiss (worsted weight, 220 yards, in Ocean Tones). The red one (Madelinetosh) is a touch small (32" before seaming) but ok for me, and the blue one turned out about 35-36" and fits better over the shoulders. Overall, this is a quick and versatile accessory great for using up those single skeins of pretty yarn, and perfect for gift knitting!

FO: Hale and Hearty Cardi

2011-10-02T20:10:00.001-05:00

Nothing says happy belated birthday like finally setting in the zipper for a sweater-jacket!

It is just sick that the only local place I know to get zippers (or any notions) in St Louis is 15 miles away, and not open past 5pm (Not exactly catering to the employed crowd). So today, after 2 weekfuls of late work nights, I finally went to a chain store today to get a zipper--20 miles each way! Please, please, please, somebody, open a notions store in St Louis proper! I set in the zipper and then covered the edges with quilt binding tape, for smoothness. A bang up job if I say so myself!

The pattern is East Hale Cardigan, by Alexis Winslow, from the fall 2011 issue of Knitscene. I don't subscribe (yet) but this issue was chock full of fabulous, knittable, and wearable patterns--this is the first of several I plan to knit. The body is knit in one piece with an i-cord and garter stitch border, and goes very fast. The design is very clever because there are short rows on the border so that it is the same length as the stockinette main part, thereby avoiding the bunching and puckering that this type of edge usually creates.

The shoulders are very cool and fit perfectly, with the seam a couple inches back; the garter border expands and wraps around to complete the shawl collar in the back. The sleeves are then picked up and knit top-down with short row shaping for the shoulder cap, which is my favorite method.

All in all, this was a well-thought-out and smart design that was a delight to knit. There were no errors for the size I knitted, and I made no mods except shortening the sleeves!

I used the yarn called for in the pattern, Cascade Eco. It's super sheepy and sproingy, and should hold up well in this seamless garment. Also, it is bulky weight so the knitting goes very fast--a treat after a lot of small-needle lace projects. This yarn absolutely must be wet-blocked, not just steam blocked, because a LOT of dirt came out of the yarn (opacified 2 sinkfuls of water). Here is the sweater before: the shoulder seams pucker all funny and the whole thing looks a little sad.

Here it is after: smooth and happy! DH is quite pleased and gave it 5 stars. The weather is perfect for wearing this, a clear and crisp autumn--look at that blue sky!

ETA: With 17 projects on Ravelry, this is #8 for my 12under43 resolution for the year.

FO: ASH cardi

2011-09-19T22:01:00.000-05:00

At long last! The Apres Surf Hoodie, cast on on March 7th when there was snow on the trees, is finally a Finished Object!

This is a very popular pattern, by Connie Chang Chinchio. The main modification was turning it into a cardigan, and knitting it in one piece rather than seaming at the sides.

The trim/icord edging around the center edges and along the hood really held me up, as did setting in the zipper. A well-matching zipper is hard to find. The separating zipper is from Windsor Button in Boston, and I must say, very well-matched indeed. It didn't come with the top little stopper things that prevents the zipper part from flying off the top, so I sewed on a little bead on each side and they do the trick quite nicely.

This used up less than 3 skeins of Cascade Heritage Sock. Great bang for the buck, and I really like that this yarn is smooth and spoingy and machine washable. All in all, this is the perfect weight sweater for early fall, so it all turned out well in the end that it took over six months to knit.

The crisp autumnal breezes have brought back the knitting mojo...hopefully this means more knitting and less lollygagging!

Smart people VOTE!

2011-09-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

Vote for my friend Elisabeth McKetta for her entry in the Real Simple, Simply Stated competition!

Click HERE.

If you are busy and have no time to read all of the stories, Elisabeth's is the best one by a giraffe's mile. I am happy that I once met the 101-year-old woman in the story. She was a hoot.

KC

2011-09-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

Look at the train!

After the State Fair, we continued onto Kansas City. It's supposedly the hipper little sister to St Louis, which is I think a pretty good description. We went to some good restaurants, and had time for one museum, the World War I museum.

I guess back in those days, Missouri was the obvious location for a World War I memorial/museum. I am definitely not a fan of all the glorification of war and gore, but it was not all that warmongery/gory, plus it was a really well curated museum, and a great history review lesson. Extra bonus, I took pictures of all the fiberarts-related stuff to share!

First of all, the uniforms. Most of the US uniforms had this detail where there is shaping in the upper front chest with darts. I have never seen that on regular clothes, but it makes perfect sense, since people are built in 3 dimensions, not 2. Patternmakers of the world, what is this type of dart called?

I loved that so many of the old clothes, especially knitted garments, showed signs of repair/love. Here is a still-modern-looking crewneck pullover.

(The gun pointing to it is not cool, but it's impossible to crop out without cutting out the sweater sleeve.)

Here's a great schematic of all the patches for the different insignia for the US army. Back then, who made all the patches? Who makes them now? I like to think they are embroidered by hand still.

The French apparently sent back the sacks that held food aid, embroidered and decorated, in this case, with crochet lace.

Close up. Amazing work!

Closer to home, a Missourian woman made this quilt, made of fabric rectangles that one got for sending in coupons from cigarette boxes. Seriously, if there were nothing to knit or sew, woudn't you take up smoking too, just for the fabric scraps?

The most prominent part of the museum is this very tall tower. There is, and always has been, an elevator inside, whew.

This is what is looks like, on the inside. The guides/docents at the museum were all kindly veteran types. One of them stopped the elevator so I could take the picture!

I LOVE this green.

Poppies, one for every 1000 people who died fighting in the war.

Somber, the next stop was a big gigantic pick me up, at a book store!

Holy guacamole! I want one of these in St Louis! Half Price Books! All the time! Inside is like a big chain bookstore, except everything is cheap.

Even everything in the big huge section of knitting and other crafty books.

I came away with a few goodies.

On the first day in KC, DH and I could not resist and checked our work schedules, and he found that through some hideous glitch, he had patients to see the next day. So, the next morning, we woke at the crack of dawn and drove all the way home. So that's it for vacation photos! Alack. At least I got some knitting done!

A big ocean of stockinette, for the East Hale Cardigan.

MO Fair 2011

2011-08-25T22:24:00.000-05:00

After the ecstatic wins, we sped through the rest of the fair. Well, we lingered in the home ec section for a while.

Handspun yarn. How is it possible there are so many categories?!? There are at least 10 blue ribbons there! In knitting, there are only 5 categories (shawl/stole, sweater, foot, accessory, household).

All of these socks were amazing.

This hand-spun and hand-died (not my spelling, seriously) and hand-knitted stole competed in a separate, hand-everything, category from my shawl. It looks super soft but we weren't allowed to touch.

Kudos to all of the Missouri knitters who competed this year!

Felting is something I don't really understand.

If you're thinking, holy f*ing shite what is that thing, you are not alone. It is, according to the tag, a "felted sculpture." It is a sort of 3-dimensional, hairy, rodent-y Guernica.

The crochet lace section proved much more appealing. This amazing tri-color doily didn't even get a ribbon!

The juniors' jam session. Heh.

Men have a monopoly on weaving at the MO fair, for some reason.

As in every year, sewing takes top prizes. This is an astonishing smocked dress.

A lovely patchwork quilt in old-fashioned fabrics with wee flowers.

I want this quilt! Are you the quilter of this quilt? If so, I will pay you big moneys for this! My halloween decorations will be set for life!

Best in Show went to a quilt this year. Far away, it looks like a regular quilt.

Close up, you can see the unbelivable hand-stitching and detailed quilting, done in color matching the underlying quilt pieces. The curlicue shapes look like they are filled with extra padding too.

This is the view from the back. The back is plain blue fabric, but the super-neat quilting stitches from the front recreates the ornate pattern on the back. We all applauded for the very talented quilter who made this quilt!

After the home ec, we continued to the rest of the fair. Since it was the last day, most of the animals and such were gone. The only non-human animals we saw were these sweet bunnies!

They look sad in their cages, but actually people can take them out and snuggle with them, and the bunnies will sit contentedly, thumping their little tails.

We looked high and low for the angora bunnies.

Yikes. Here is one, cute and poofy. Holy mole that is a lot of hair.

The other usual stops at the fair include the fine arts and flowers.

This was the only fine art that I took a picture of. Very clever, and deserving of the rainbow-colored ribbon, I think.

By the last day of the fair, the flower competition/show is well past the high-stakes roses, leaving room for the dahlias (I think, they might be something different).

Also, an intricately painted ginormous squash.

And chocolate scented orchids.

A rose is a rose is a rose, but this is all 100% awesomeness!

We drove away, got lost, and ended up driving down some picturesque farm roads. Missouri has lettered roads/highways, but they are not in alphabetical order.

Winning

2011-08-21T21:21:00.000-05:00

Another August, another field trip to the Missouri State Fair.

After a delicious and nutritious meal, we made a beeline for the home ec building.

Look! Ribbons! Hooray hooray!! Silvana won in the sweater category, with this beautiful fair isle Ivy League Vest.

We couldn't find my Peacock Shawl for a while, then DH spotted it in a totally different display case.

Yay yay yay! A blue ribbon for the shawl category and a purple rosette for "best in knitting" division!!

I am super excited! And grimy from the long ride. But more excited! Here I am excitedly gesturing at my name on the "Wall of Winners!" Unfortunately my body/arm is not quite winningly long enough; I am pointing about a foot below my actual name. No matter, it's such an awesome idea, a giant sign saying "wall of winners"--everyone should do this at home!

So that's 2 for 2 for our knitting group! I'll let the good news soak in for a day or two, then share the rest of the many pictures from the fair next time.

Hullo hullo? Anybody?

2011-08-18T19:32:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! I wish I could say the 3-week hiatus was due to a fabulous vacation, but really, I've been frantically and barely treading water with work work work. The new version of the kangaroos did not make it to the Missouri state fair because I ran out of yarn and got sick...Jill remains dismembered and unfinished, but minty Joey is all ready to go!

They will go to the fair next year. This year, the Peacock Shawl went alone to the fair. I too am going to the fair this weekend, and will find out if I won anything--the prize money is BIG this year, like six dollars for the grand-poobah-of-home-ec-super-blue-ribbon. So I'll be back soon with more pictures from the roadtrip, and hopefully, a bit more knitting mojo!

Still Life with Kangaroo Body Parts

2011-07-31T20:12:00.000-05:00

Knitting for the Missouri fair continues at a furious pace. Perhaps I should have given myself more than a week to knit a pair of kangaroos. All the body parts are done, but this left only a tiny length of yellow yarn (see picture) so no Jill head/torso can be knitted. The yarn store closed 4 minutes before I realized this. It is closed tomorrow too. The kangaroos need to go in the mail the day after that, to arrive at the fair ~~in style~~ on time. Oh crappers.

In other news, sorry for the sparse updates. It's been busy and hot.

One highlight was getting pretty much an entire side of the house replaced last week. Here it is before the new doors and windows went it--it looks like a dollhouse doesn't it?

Sensing a limited opportunity, Cammy espied the dupioni silk curtains while they were down, and made herself at home. She always knows the baddest/cutest thing to do!

Tags!

2011-07-23T09:46:00.000-05:00

Holy mole it's hot! Too hot to knit, even inside. Too hot to work on the garden...things are dying out there but it's all I could do to pick some things and run back inside.

There's a theft problem in the community garden, and all the tomatoes I've left to ripen have been picked off. While I was out there a random dude came into the garden and asked if he could take the green tomatoes from the other plots! Oh, and there's a day program for mentally ill people nearby, and a certain schizophrenic person snuck in and ate all of the onions! It's so bizarre and funny it's hard to be mad about it. Anyway, with the decimation of the turnips by some sort of bug, and the thievery, there isn't too much to show from the garden.

Thankfully, these are funny-looking cucumbers, so funny-looking that no one else wanted them. Still tasty though.

The hot peppers are also less theft-prone. Here's a jalapeno. The leaves are purple on one side, green on the other--I believe they are Perilla, similar to shiso leaf. It's growing like weeds in the common herb plot, and I think I'm the only one who knows that they are edible. In Korean cuisine Perilla is a common side-dish (in marinated/preserved form), or used as a wrapper, or fried individually like tempura. (It's called kkaenip, which means sesame leaf, but actually is not at all related to sesame.) If there's still giant bushes of it when the weather cools, I'll pick the whole lot and put them up for the year.

The only knitting news: my Missouri state fair entry tags arrived!! Now I just have to send in my entries (oh, and knit one of them).

FO: Bootylicious Pixies; and Loopy Ewe

2011-07-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

There are way too many preggers people these days! That I know, anyway. I'm barely keeping up with the requisite gifts. Tomorrow is a baby shower for twins (come on ladies, give this knitter a break!), a boy and a girl.

No one is getting any knitted gifts made of fingering weight yarn anymore. Also, no more blankets or dresses. No, no, it's time to batten down the hatches and break out the big ass yarn and easy-peasy little accessories patterns. Also, free patterns. And garter stitch.

Four little bootylicious booties! Aren't they cute? The pattern is Precious Booties, free from Bernat. I made mods so all the decreases and increases were on the right side, because I'm a little OCPD like that. I don't think the mods made any difference. The most important thing with baby booties is to stuff them with tissue paper so they look booty-adorable.

The pixie hats are from Small Things Bonnet, by Sweetmama. There is another option to make a rounded bonnet-type hat in this pattern. Don't bother, the pointed one is way cuter.

Is it kind of freaky to stuff tissue paper like little baby heads into knitted hats? It looks a little weird, but it really shows off the short rows.

These gifts were really made last-minute. I got the during a knit-group field trip to Loopy Ewe, less than a week before the baby shower! The yarn is Cotton Supreme, by Universal Yarn Inc. I love this yarn--it's super soft, 100% cotton, big-ass (Aran, to be exact), and machine washable and dryable. I got a skein each of Celery and Orange Creme, and have about half of each skein left. I got colors which I hoped were unisex, to let the parents decide which is girlier or boy-ier.

Our knit-group is a busy group. It took an excel sheet with equations, a big survey, and conditional formatting to sort out which day we would go. My DH upon hearing about this trip:

DH: There's an internet yarn store here? In St Louis?
Me: Yes. They're open late only once a month.
DH: There's an internet yarn store here? In St Louis? And you've never been there?
Me: Yes. They're open this Thursday
DH: There's an internet yarn store here? In St Louis? And you've never been there? How is that possible?
Me: I don't know, and they're moving away, to Colorado.
DH: There's an internet yarn store here? In St Louis? And you've never been there? How is that possible? They're moving to Colorado? Well you'd better go!

So off I went, on a white-knuckled adventure through a truly hideous thunderstorm. Here we are, a little overwhelmed by the weather and yarn-drunk.

The other purchase was some of this amazing colorway from Madelinetosh!

The other quasi-purchase was a through-another-knitter bargain of a little Namaste project bag, that she had gotten previously but didn't need. Woot woot!

Is it loserish to wear a knitting bag around the waist like a fanny pack?

FO: Blue baby sweater

2011-07-03T18:50:00.001-05:00

Pattern is Sock Yarn Top Down Baby Cardigan, and the name pretty much tells the story. This pattern, in addition to being free (whee!), is great for people who like sock yarn but don't like knitting socks. Yarn is Batika, from Schoeller & Stahl (part of Skacel), which I believe is not actually a sock yarn. It's 100% antibacterial polyacryl, which can go in the washer on warm, but not in the dryer. Who knew there were acrylic baby-ish yarns that can't go in the dryer? I didn't even bother to check, back when I got the yarn in Baltimore. Anyway, the long color repeats worked out really well for this pattern, and the fabric is non-itchy and has a pretty sheen.

Sadly, I ran out of yarn and got some navy blue Plymouth Yarn Dream Baby DK to finish the edging. This was in Minneapolis. It was totally not purposeful, but in the end the cardigan looks more polished with a solid color edging, and I'll definitely do it again next time. In total, I used 2 skeins of Batika and 36 of 50 grams of the Dream Baby, which comes out to 416 yards of DK weight yarn. (I modified the pattern to make both the torso and sleeves shorter, so it'll take more yarn to follow the pattern to the letter.)

Finally, for a very well traveled baby sweater, the buttohs are from gather here in Cambridge. I got 5 and made 5 buttonholes, but one of the buttons escaped before it could be attached. It's the one at the top of the neck, and I don't think it would have been used all that much anyway. That's my story and I'm sticking with it, because getting another matching button, or getting and sewing on a whole new set of buttons, is going to drag out the process to the point the recipient is going to grow out of the sweater before it even gets to him. It's a good thing four-button cardis are all the rage among babies these days.

ETA: With 33 projects on Ravelry, this is #7 for my 12 under 43 resolution for the year!

Cooperstown

2011-06-28T22:50:00.000-05:00

Whew, the last trip of the traveling season! For our fifth anniversary, DH and I went back to Cooperstown. We technically got married by the florist-cum-mayor, in her flower shop. Here we are 5 years later, same place.

Usually, we seek out the bookstores. This time, serendipitously, the bookstores found us. The 17th annual Cooperstonian book fair was going on. Oooh, books! We unfortunately came home to hideous silt and badness in the basement due to flash floods, so I haven't even unpacked, but when I do I'll post pics of the great needlework book I found.

Great effort went into trying to go to a local yarn shop. The nearest LYS is supposedly Knitting it all Together, on Main Street in Oneonta. However when I called it forwarded to what sounded like a personal voicemail, and never heard back as to whether it's still open. Does anyone have any news of this LYS?

Otherwise, there was a lot of admiring of green hills

and pretty trees.

I did finish a project, so--promise promise--there will be a FO next time. For now though, the new kittehs (real reason for trip)!

We are Polly (white snout) and Molly (all gray)! We are cute!

By the way, I have never been to that Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Maybe next time!

FO, Minneapolis, and catching up

2011-06-19T21:34:00.000-05:00

Well here they are, at last! This pine tree was the saddest runty little brown softball-sized thing when I planted it 6 years ago. Now it is almost as tall as I am! Which is not saying a lot, but still, the tree/bush is an excellent hobo glove model. DH and I call it the Sleeper Hit of the Garden. Behind it you can barely see the clematis, which is the Runner-Up Sleeper Hit of the Garden.

The tree/bush is the model, because I tried to take a whole mess of pictures wearing the gloves, and it's quite comical how badly/fuzzy all the photos turned out. This is the best self-timed pic, of around 20. If anyone has any great ideas for taking self-timed pictures of their own hands without making impressionist fuzzy blots, I am all ears.

The stitch pattern is from Ivy League Vest, by Eunny Jang, with fingerless glove modifications from Accordionpie (thanks, Julie!) The only mods I made, besides changing colors, is doing the thumbs 5 stitches before/after the end of the round, for the right/left glove. After I finished knitting, I realized that was completely stupid, because there are no decreases or other "edge" aspects to the pattern, ie the thumbs will fit wherever they are knitted. So my mods are quite useless and just mess up the fair isle pattern. These were knitted as a knitalong during a college reunion, along with a college roommate Lizclink, for a 10th college reunion.

I used a leftover yarns from my Flutter gloves (yellow) and Hippocampi gloves (black), and mainly from Silvana's Ivy League Vest. It's funny how fair isle hobo gloves don't use up any yarn. All the yarn balls still appear to be the same size, but I stuffed in all of my similar yarns into the ziploc bag, to pay it forward. How fun would it be to knit these types of small colorwork projects, if you got a big bag of dozens of colors in the mail, knitted, then added 1-2 more balls before passing it along!

In other news, sorry for the bloggy break, I was away in Minneapolis--yes, it's a travel-heavy season. I really liked it there--it's like St Louis, except cleaner, not blighted, and cooler (temperature wise, and hipness wise too). I stayed downtown, where there was a lot of pretty architecture featuring old stone--the most impressive was this Presby church.

Minneapolis has a large African community, so I absolutely had to go to an Ethi restaurant. I went to T's Place, which is billed as Ethi-Asian, but really, just Ethi.

If you are ever there, go! It's very authentic--I was the closest thing to a white person there. The injera is amazing, and you can get Ethi beers too.

Of course, no trip to the Twin Cities would be complete without the Mall of America (MOA).

Yes, I am that dork that takes a picture of the mall map, for reference during the rest of the mall-excursion. Except for the big amusement park with roller coasters and water rides,

this was a pretty typical American mall. The only unusual feature was the Lego store! I took a LOT of pictures. How cool is it that all of these are made of legos?!?!

The whole time, I was singing "MOA, MOA, MOA! How do you like it? How do you like it?" disco-like in my head. Thank goodness I have enough of a filter to prevent this sort of craziness from leaching out audibly. Less-crazy-like, I went hog-wild over the Star Wars Lego stuff and may or may not have spent a ridic amount on plastic crap of this variety. Also, Harry Potter Lego stuff! It's a very happy place.

Notice Hagrid, 3rd from the right on the bottom row. He is big.

And of course, no trip would be complete without the yarn shopping! I went to Depth of Field:

I got a shawl pin, my first shawl pin ever. It's made of rosewood, and looks like a bird.

While I try to get "local" yarn wherever I go, apparently this store didn't have any local or local-ish yarn at all! And then we saw a certain type of winged insect that all knitters fear with the biggest fear; it was a baby one, nestled in a skein of yarn, and we got the hell of out of there asap. I did get a skein of navy blue acrylic yarn, because I ran out of this variegated yarn in the middle of knitting a baby sweater.

I put the yarn in the freezer for a couple of days, just in case.

Oh, by we, I mean myself and Kala, of Vegancraftastic! I have her awesome stitch markers still, and took them to show her. Kala and her husband Shane took me to dinner at Pizza Luce, which was really yummy. They are super sweet and awesome, and they are both vegan to boot! I accidentally forgot to ask for the vegan cheese on my pizza and still feel bad that they couldn't eat it! :( Here's the pic of us by Shane, from Kala's post:

The other highlight of Minneapolis was getting these cucumberry drinks. Cucumbers are my favorite food; I could not resist.

Back home, my garden plot is finally producing some edibles! All of the spinach and arugula (rocket!) went to seed in the super-hot weather, but the root veg are doing quite nicely.

This turnip randomly ended up in the carrot area, and it is HUGE! It sits next to the cutest baby carrots ever. I cannot bear to eat any of them.

Karyotype

2011-06-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

And the winner is...

Cindy!

The contest was to guess how many ends there were to weave in, per glove, of this pair, without going over. Basically a wooley Price is Right. I counted up the ends by putting them in a big pile as I wove in the ends, sorted them by size, and paired them up. This is, really for reals, how the human karyotype was described--someone took a picture of chromosomes during a very brief phase of mitosis, developed the picture (this was decades before digital), cut out each one with scissors, and lined them up in pairs by size. Crafty skills come in handy all the time.

Anyway, the answer is 7 columns x 5 rows x 2 per pair = 70.

(Shame on anyone who guessed less than 50, as though I'd complain about weaving in a hundred ends. (I totally would have).)

Oh, and Lorraine, you were the closest, but you were just over, with 73!

So, the prize goes to Cindy, also of St Louis, and I swear there were no shenanigans involved to save on shipping!

Giveaway

2011-06-09T20:48:00.002-05:00

The weaving-in of ends takes a lot longer than the actual knitting! One Ivy League Reunion hobo glove is finished (woohoo), and I thought we could have some fun with the other.

Take a close look. I carried yarns (ie didn't cut them) if they reappeared within 4 rows. Comment with your best guess as to the number of ends per glove, including the cast-on/off ends. Whoever is closest, without going over, will win a gently-used (and unmarked) copy of Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter

The only project I knit from this was a Harry Potter (actually, Ron) sweater for my niece, but there are many other patterns which will be an absolute blast to knit for the upcoming final movie premiere!

ps: if you are not logged into google/blogger, please put your ravelry name or email in the text box, because your email doesn't come through to me

pss: entries will close in one week, on Thurs June 16th, at 21:00 central time (US).

Cambridge/Boston Part 2

2011-06-02T21:19:00.000-05:00

After the Cambridge portion of the yarn crawl, we continued down the Red Line across the river to the Boston side, to Windsor Button.

It is next to this wig shop. I don't know why, it's just funny.

Windsor Buttons, unsurprisingly, had a lot (a lot!) of buttohs for sale! Here's looking one way

and then looking the other way. Hole mole.

But that's just one side of the store! The rest of the cavernous store is filled with yarn,

notions, and everything else you might ever need for any of the needle arts.

I finally found a matching dark orange separating zipper for my still-unassembled apres-surf hoodie. Sadly, it was easier to go all the way to Boston and get this zipper while I was there, than driving 30 miles in to the St Louis burbs just for the off-chance that the one store with separating colorful zippers had the right color.

Also, I got some grosgrain ribbons and vintage buttons (the tan buttons and blue ribbon are from gather here, actually, but I just took all the pictures together). How cute are the little anchors on the dark brown buttohs?

More yarn and samples!

Eventually I chose this pretty quasi-local skein from Shalimar Yarns, a handpainted sockweight yarn in the colorway "Black Truffle." The ballband and website don't have any info about where they are located, but the Windsor ladies said the outfit is in Maryland. (The phone number on the website is, indeed, in Maryland.)

After ginorm yarn crawl, we were pretty pooped, so we plopped on the only chairs in the sad little first-year dorm room where we were assigned, and knitted a while.

It's a real knit-along! The Ivy League Reunion mitts are pretty far along now. Here they are after the flight home.

I'm absolutely dreading weaving in all of those loose ends!

Cambridge part 1

2011-05-30T18:30:00.000-05:00

What a trip! I traveled to Cambridge/Boston for a college reunion, the first time I've been there in 7+ years. Except for the strange profusion of burrito joints in Harvard Square, it seems pretty much the same. Also, thankfully, one of my college friends started knitting, so went on a big yarn crawl! We started in Porter Square, at A Mind's Eye Yarns, located in this sweet pink house.

The house looks huge, but there are only two smallish rooms in the shop. Fortunately they are filled to the gills with yarn.

Some of the yarn is hand-dyed by the owner, and since my goal is to get "local" yarn wherever I go traveling, I had to get some of this pretty merino/tencel blend in a sheen-y red:

It'll make a super drapey scarf or shawl. This store is perfect for spinners--lots of fluffy roving

and spinning wheels.

Apparently, knitting is the gateway drug to spinning. So far I've resisted, but I almost caved in this store!

The next stop was gather here, near Central Square.

It's predominantly a sewing shop, with good sewing machines available for hire by the hour, classes, and lots and lots of gorgeous fabric.

More fabric!

And cute dress patterns!

The yarn was relatively lacking, just one big wall of cascade

and some other scattered little bits here and there. Despite feeling flush because it was a birthday yarn-crawl, I ended up not getting any yarn, but did get some buttohs from this library-card-turned-button-organizer-wonderthing.

Gather here is currently running a Joplin Tornado Relief Raffle. The crafting world is a small one! Please visit and enter. There are a lot of awesome prizes in the raffle!

At this point, very little had been accomplished on the knit-along project for this reunion, and all of this was knitted on the plane there.

Next time, the last and biggest stop on the yarn crawl, and the rest of the ivy league mitt!

Knitalong planning

2011-05-23T20:34:00.000-05:00

It's been a bad season for Missouri. Joplin was utterly devastated yesterday by a tornado. All of my good thoughts are aimed in that direction today. A sizable number of my patients are from there, and two of my former colleagues are there now; one of them has no office/hospital to work in anymore! I cannot believe the pictures of the devastation. What a terrible tragedy. When will all of this weather madness end?

St Louis was spared from the tornado, although a severe thunderstorm with high winds hit today. My peonies, which were on their way to having their best year yet, were decimated. I had taken great pains a couple weeks ago to create a lattice of string so that the flowers would not droop to the ground. Well, that's that. It is a tiny and insignificant loss compared to what others have suffered recently, but it feels big and symbolic to me.

One peony survived, because it got tangled up in the lattice and didn't get completely thrashed.

Here is hope.

Meanwhile, I'm readying for my 10th college reunion/birthday weekend extravaganza. What a combination of events to make one feel old! Of course, no trip-planning is complete without the knitting-planning. One of my college roommates, who is now a knitter, suggested we do a knitalong for the occasion. We were hemming and hawing about what pattern/yarn would be fun for both of us, not too huge of a project, and school/reunion-appropriate. Then we saw the fingerless mitts version of the Ivy League vest (by Eunny Jang, free here), which the ever-wonderful Julie posted as part of her "modification Mondays" series, and both loved it, so that's what we're gonna knit! I bummed a bunch of leftover yarn from Silvana, who knit the actual vest pattern, and added a few of my remnants, and so I'll be able to knit these mitts just from leftover yarns.

Go Crimson!

For mushroom hunters

2011-05-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

Is this mushroom edible?

The mushrooms are thriving in the damp, cool weather. This looks like portobello, but a bit lumpier and bronzed. So, any old-and-wise mushroom hunters out there (for there is no other kind of mushroom hunter), is this edible? Because if it is, there are other ones nearby. [Zoom out.]

Gaah, I love the bright green of the leaves on the lower right!

Also, knitting content: The New York Times found out about yarn bombing, like 5 years late.

FO, and a whole lot of picot

2011-05-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

Finally, a FO! Actually, two FOs! Woot woot!

This is the first of several baby gifts in the next few months. I was aiming for late summer = ~3 months, and I hope the sizing works out. The sweater is my own Peachy Baby Sweater, knitted from Cascade Heritage Sock. The lace turned out very pretty and drapey with this yarn.

Sweater is being modeled by Gourmet cookbook, the closest approximation of a 3 month old baby in the house.

The hat pattern is Sylvia Baby Hat, by Tami Sheiffer, and I chose it because it has open lace and picot edging, to match the sweater. Also, it uses the same weight yarn (fingering) and is free--double bonus points!

Hat is being modeled by balled-up hand towel, my hat-blocking method of choice.

Between these two wee FOs are three types of picot edging. The hat has the knitted hem type, where you k2tog-yo repeatedly on a row, and then fold along that row to get a jagged edge. It's double-thickness, so great for the edge of a hat, as it will stand away slightly from the baby's face.

At the bottom of the lace hem and sleeves, I used a knitted picot bind-off. I like how this looks on the edge of lace, but it can be a pain to block, because each picot has to be pinned down.

Along the neck and center edges, is a crochet picot stitch. It's slightly hole-y so I used it next to the blocks of stockinette. Hrmph, the hole-y-ness doesn't come through well in the photo, but it's there, I swear!

I do love picot edging! It reminds me of beading, not putting beads into knitting (although that's fun too), but little circles along edges of plates, frames, spoons, whathaveyou. It's just a little embellishment that's not too froufrou girly.

The ribbon is a braided ribbon leftover from wedding dress alterations from singleton days. I think I will end up knitting an i-cord though, as the ribbon is not washable. Also, the neck splays open or flops down, and I'm contemplating putting in a hook closure at the neck. Parents and anyone else with an opinon: Is that ok for a baby knit, or is that a huge safety concern?

So far the baby sweater has 45 project on Ravelry (yay!) so that's just over the limit, but the hat has only 33 projects as of today, so it's #6 for my 12 under 43 resolution!

Mt. Washington

2011-05-08T22:46:00.000-05:00

Yup, there's a lot of traveling this spring. The most recent trip was to a conference in Mt Washington, which is near/part of Baltimore. Sadly I didn't get to do any fun stuff in Baltimore like last time, as it was non-stop work-related conference activities. But never fear! I planned in advance for the only 45 minutes open on the schedule--I found the nearest yarn shop, called ahead to confirm hours of operation, printed out a walking map, and ran to change from 3.5" heels to to running shoes (no time to change clothes). And then I got a little bit lost, crossed over a highway, got honked at and almost run over by a moped and SUV (not at the same time), and gulped with fear when the sidewalk ended. Thankfully, exactly where the sidewalk ends on Falls Road, is this.

Woolworks is in this cute little building.

There's a lot of yarn, organized in the diagonal bins so popular among wine bars and yarn shops nowadays. (It absolutely boggles the mind that no yarn store is a combo wine and yarn bar. If I give up my day job that is what I'm going to do.)

In addition to an all-round great yarn selection, there was what is quite possibly the largest wall o' madelinetosh ever.

Since I've never even seen one skein of madelinetosh for sale, anywhere, I was compelled to get a skein of this delicious red "Tart" colorway.

There's a whole room of baby yarns and patterns I forgot to photograph. But I did get some boy baby appropriate yarns for gifts, Batika in a blue/brown colorway.

I was super psyched to get some local yarn! The brand is Angel's Kiss--it's mostly alpaca with some merino for sproing--in a pretty robin's egg blue.

This was a true yarn-and-dash visit--I sprinted back to my conference, a total 3-mile round-trip. Then I changed back into my heels and pretended like I was a normal, professional, academic neurologist, save the yarns peeking out from my purse.

The conference was at the Mt Washington Conference Center, which is now owned by Hopkins but previously was a catholic girls' college/school, according to the priest in my super shuttle, and corroborated by the internets. The campus has gone through a few iterations, and is now a hotel/conference facility, but there are a couple vestiges of its long life. For ex, apparently the dry cleaning/laundry slips have not been updated in decades.

I really regretted not bringing all of my drycleaning! A 2-piece suit for $6.45! A cashmere overcoat for $12.95! If only I had a cashmere overcoat... Thank goodness I remembered my dry-clean only polyester jumpsuit. What a deal!

Slowest FO EVER

2011-05-03T20:17:00.000-05:00

Gaaaah. All lace knitting done on the ASH hoodie cardi. Now it's taking its sweet time blocking (48 hours and counting).

After it's dry, we shall endure the 1) seaming of the sleeves, 2) setting-in of the sleeves, 3) picking-up of a billion stitches around buttonband and hood, 4) knitting buttonband, 5) doing i-cord cast-off on big-ass buttonband, 6) buying matching separating zipper, 7) sewing in zipper, and 8) re-blocking. Le grand sigh.

On a happier note, I started a new project, a purple version of my Peachy baby sweater. Here is the wonderfully relaxing stockinette portion. Strangely enough, it's the same yarn (Cascade Heritage Sock) and needles as the ASH cardi!

You'll be seeing scads of baby-related knitting projects in the next few months. Just so you don't have to ask...I'm not pregnant. But apparently it's breeding season for people I know! :)

Why I hate sleeves

2011-04-28T18:56:00.000-05:00

Also, as proof that Cammy has exactly 1.5 pink phalanges on each foot:

The other feet are coming, when she cooperates.

Aloha

2011-04-20T21:31:00.000-05:00

Aloha! The long blog break was due to a work trip to Hawaii--poor me! I only waited for 4 years, but finally the big neurology meeting was in Honolulu. The strange thing about being an overly conscientious person is that even when on a tropical island, one feels compelled to attend lectures and seminars. So there are really very few photos, regrettably. I did get away for a first-time surfing lesson though! I went with a group of neurologists to a class through Hawaiian Fire, which is taught by firefighters. Due to my swimming skills, nonexistent as they are, I thought I could benefit from the extra lightsaving capabilities. Also, they drive you out to a secluded beach so that you can look like an absolute fool and not bang into/be the brunt of jokes of thousands of people on Waikiki beach.

This is what most of the surfing looked like. A lot of biting of the sea water. Like a super-sonic monster neti pot, the ocean really cleared out my sinuses.

But look, even clumsy people can surf! My fellow neurologist-classmates told me I have a robotic smile and outstretched arms when I am surfing. They are right; I think it is a remnant of Warrior 2 from yoga.

So fun!

Otherwise, the only other pictures of Hawaii are of other academic neurologists (woohoo), and these:

Am I the only person who thinks upon seeing this, "I really wish I had an orange tabby cat and a white cat who were littermates!"?

Pretty orchids. It was very humid and my hair got huge.

After my extravagant and detailed knitting plans, I didn't even start on the new project! (The plan was for baby stuff for a friend.) But you know what comes apres le surfing...the apres surf hoodie.

Unfortunately, the hood was a lot bigger than I had imagined, larger than the torso it seems. While knitting the hood I felt like my head was enormous! I started on the sleeves on the flight back, but you know what they say about sleeves: two sleeves knitted together...take forever!

Next time, hopefully, this will be finished! It had better be, b/c 3 unborn babies are now awaiting handknitted gifts. I say people should really slow down on the breeding, for the sake of the knitters.

Spring slow-down

2011-04-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

Be forewarned, I'm practicing with the new DSLR camera.

After the week-long daily blogging for the 2KCBW, I needed a little break! Things were very dreary for a while. The crabapple tree started to bloom, and then it snowed!

And snowed some more!

This was a bad scene, considering it was spring.

The earthquake/tsunami/nuclear badness in Japan was/is terrible too. All I could do was sit gape-mouthed in front of the internet, then try to distract myself by making an emergency kit. And bought a lot of unhealthy emergency no-heat-or-water-necessary food. In case the New Madrid fault erupts, I will survive the apocalypse on canned ravioli, canned beans, pre-cooked-and-flavored rice, and matzo bread. Oh, and peanut butter and nutella, but those are mainly for trade purposes. The hand-cranked radio/flashlight/strobelight/phone-usb-charger, and tube tent, and first aid kit made with "borrowed" stuff from the hospital, certainly feel like they will stave off the next natural disaster.

So after all that, the past few days have been a relief. Despite the horrible snow, the blooms on the crabapple tree pulled through, and, well, bloomed spectacularly!

Let it be known that if my house ever regains enough value to go on the market, it shall do so during the first half of April. If anyone out there is interested in buying a gorgeous crabapple tree with tons of shawl-modeling experience, with a house attached, please say hello! (Also, if you are a photographer and you know why there is that yellow circle in the picture, please enlighten me.)

One of my favorites, white tulips. Spring really gussies up everything, including ditches next to dilapidated parking structures.

Pretty pink streaks.

You will notice there is no knitting content. That is because knitting exponentially slows in warm weather, even with new Twist and Knitty issues out back-to-back! Thanks to all of your suggestions, I finally made a decision about the holiday travel knitting: I'll finish the ASH (apres surf hoodie) cardi, and take gift baby knits as backup. I am planning to take surfing lessons...so we'll see if there's any apres-surf FO action!

Rituals

2011-04-03T02:00:00.155-05:00

Wow, it's already day 7 of 2KCWB, and it's been a dizzying festival! This last post is about how and when we knit. In fact, that is the most commonly asked question by non-knitters, "Where do you find the time to knit?" And I always cheekily answer, "I don't find time, I make time to knit." Except for the lucky few who make a living from their knitting, most knitters (even "hard core" ones) have completely unrelated jobs and other demands on their time. Back during residency, I would be able to knit at work if, for example, I was working overnight and on call at the hospital waiting to be called to see someone in the emergency room. But now my work activities are different, so there's no knitting at work. Fortunately, there aren't any overnights at the hospital either!

So my knitting time is always at night after work. I don't watch television (which is, I suspect, why other people badger me about where I mysteriously find more time than they have), but once in a while on weekends I'll knit during movies or shows on netflix/iTunes. Otherwise, I knit while reading books in bed, or while reading the internets at my desk, unless a pattern requires constant reading of chart/directions for each stitch. If a book needs to be propped open, I use this coaster, which is made of remnants of marble tile from the fireplace hearth, but unfortunately got a chip. It is the coaster on my bedside table and gets used a lot as a book holder-opener. Like so:

It's very complicated and tech-savvy.

One solution to the complicated-pattern-incompatibility-with-reading problem is listening to audiobooks! During the past 4 months, I spent a lot of time listening to all 7 Harry Potter books (Jim Dale version). Heck, I listened to them even while knitting easy patterns, it's so fun! I finished the last book a few days ago, and so it's back to regular books.

The ipod cozy got a good workout during the HP phase and is looking gnarly; it's time to knit another one!

I never eat while knitting, except on Tuesdays during knit night, when I eat a bag of salt and vinegar chips, sometimes a sandwich, and usually a beer. True story: Once I was at the farmer's market, and the person who was selling me my veg looked really familiar, and she thought the same of me. After several questions about possible shared workplaces or other activities, I asked if she knitted, and she said, "Wait you're the one in that knitting group who always gets a bag a of salt and vinegar chips!" (She sometimes also worked at the cafe where we meet.) Ha! Anyway, that is my knit night ritual, but otherwise at home I usually knit with a drink only--wine or decaf tea/tisane, but not both. I have never spilled on my knitting (touch wood).

Lastly, I knit when traveling. An inordinate amount of thinking, planning, and energy goes into figuring out what knitting to take and how to pack it. So I'll let you wise readers help me out: I have a 7-day trip coming up, with approximately 12 hours travel time each way by plane. I am planning to take a small carry-on and medium-sized purse. I would prefer to have all the knitting fit in the purse, but would consider putting extra balls in the carry-on, especially if the project is something I can wear back on the return trip and free up space in luggage for souvenirs. I do not check baggage. The destination is a tropical island (ie don't want to knit a big warm weather item). I do not enjoy knitting socks. Here are the choices:

Lace shawl. It would have to be a quite big one (which can be tedious to knit, and also not worn much) to take up all that time, or a small shawl + something else. Shawls are great portable projects, on the other hand I'm kind of sick of knitting shawls after knitting 10 of them last year.
Top. This could probably be finished on the way and during the week, and worn on the return trip. However this would mean another project would need to be packed for the return trip. Also, the only top I have yarn for is one I am designing/editing, and I don't want to do that while traveling. But I could always get yarn for a different top pattern.
Baby stuff for friend's baby in utero.
The 70's dress. This would be fun to finish and wear back, although unknown if I can finish a fingering weight ribbed dress that fast. (It would be sleeveless though.) Also I'd have to update the old pattern before leaving, swatch, and pack a lot of yarn.

Please comment with suggestions, vague or specific! Remember I am trying to knit uncommonly knitted patterns, for my 12 under 43 resolution. And there's no stash yarn I have to use up, so you're free to pick any pattern/yarn combo!

Aspirations

2011-04-02T02:00:00.134-05:00

Is there a pattern or skill that you don’t yet feel ready to tackle but which you hope to (or think you can only dream of) tackling in the future, near or distant? Is there a skill or project that makes your mind boggle at the sheer time, dedication and mastery of the craft? Maybe the skill or pattern is one that you don’t even personally want to make but can stand back and admire those that do. Maybe it is something you think you will never be bothered to actually make bu can admire the result of those that have.

What a treat this week, looking back at past projects and yarns, and seeing everyone else's too! For day 6 of KCWB, however, we are looking forward. In general, I am a pretty proficient knitter in terms of the techniques I tend to use--stockinette, lace, and cables--but recent forays into colorwork have pointed out whole other worlds of knitterly exploration. In general I tend toward monochromatic outfits and projects, and get anxious about being the crazy frizzy lady who wears fourteen shades of purple and a multicolored sparkly shawl/caftan. It seems a slippery slope.

But obviously, there lies, in between, a gorgeous safe middle ground. Blankets and other household items seem like a good start. Here are some sublime examples from Ravelry:

Bklynhandspun's Super Size Hex Blanket

nautilus01's very Klimt-y Babette

(ETA, color scheme is by Harrysmum, click through for colorway/yarn info)

dipsmom's bolster pillow

Oh lovely colors!

For wearable knitted items, I think stranded colorwork is probably the best bet for not sliding down the slippery slope of hypercolored doom. This past year my Nightscape cardi taught me that even when mixing just two colors, you need some contrast in the brightness (on the gray scale) for any pattern to show up. Oops, and lesson learned.

The other thing that really improved my stranded knitting was figuring out how to knit with both yarns in the right hand. I am a "thrower" or English knitter, and actually learned how to knit continental (or "pick") only in order to do stranded knitting holding one color in each hand. But as I did more projects in this fashion I realized that the gauge for the yarn held in the left hand ended up way loose, and the yarn held in the right hand got pulled too tight. Here's an example, the Fair Enough cardi.

So I'd have to spend a whole lot of time jiggling all of the stitches afterwards, ending up with big loose loops on the wrong side of the fabric.

And blocks of the contrast color would end up poofing out kind of funny. (Here, on the Alice mitts.)

Eventually I figured out how to hold the yarns both in the right hand, throwing the highlighted color with the middle finger and the background color with the index finger, and twisting the yarns when needed by pronating the wrist. It's hard to explain, and I'll try to make a video when I get a tripod. The end result is the fabric turns out a lot smoother (like the Hippocampi below), and now I'm emboldened to try a more complicated and color-ful project.

I love the Bohus sweaters, except that they are yoked, and would love to design/knit a bohus-inspired cardi with set-in sleeves. Also, I have been promising DH an argyle vest for a long time, and this seems like a good year to try! Ooh, I'd like an argyle cardi too. So begins the hunt for vibrant but sedate-not-crazy patterns for sweaters/vests.

Do you have any good pattern suggestions?

Now for something completely different

2011-04-01T02:00:00.018-05:00

This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create. There are no rules of a topic to blog about (though some suggestions are given below) but this post should look at a different way to present content on your blog. This can take one of many forms, but here a few suggestions:

Wordless, photographic post
Video blog post
Podcast
Cartoon/sketch of an idea
Write about a subject from a different perspective (for example, you could write about a day in the life of a knitted sock from the point of view of the sock).
Interpretive modern dance (why does someone always suggest this?
A poem or piece of rhyming verse
Stop motion animation

Well, this has nothing to do with knitting, but mother nature is the ultimate performance artist.

Sky before/during a tornado. Cool, eh?

Hand-y knits

2011-03-31T02:00:00.109-05:00

Where are they now?
Whatever happened to your __________?
Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

This prompted a lot of digging around the knitwear drawers and thinking. And in the end I decided that the knitted item that has held up the best and been most useful is:

These Staghorn Mittens! These were knitted in June of 2008 and I wore these almost every day for 2 winters. They still are in good shape without holes or snags, and I think actually fit better than they used to. Here they are today, pretty much looking the same.

Considering this more, it seems gloves/mittens and other hand-y knits are the ones most worn and appreciated as gifts, for several reasons.

1. Fit. No one laments that their hands look fat in mittens, or that gloves aren't flattering to their thumb shape, or other such nonsense.

2. Mittens are worn frequently. In the winter, they are worn daily. Even the most popular sweater can't claim that. Scarves tend to be changed frequently, and besides, a lot of men don't wear scarves period. Hats are also changed quite a bit, and many people, both male and female, will not wear hats for hair reasons. Gloves/mittens are the "lowest threshold" cold accessory, in that they are the first cold accessory to come out when the temperature drops. Even indoors or in warm places, you can wear fingerless gloves.

3. Knitted mittens/gloves aren't "weird." People expect mittens/gloves to be knitted and don't think they are unusual, as they might knitted socks. Sadly, many people would not wear knitted tops or sweaters, and even more unfortunately, most people don't wear shawls as they are a wee bit into "crazy knitter" territory. "Knitted mittens," on the other hand, sounds redundant, because "normal" mittens are knitted.

4. You don't have to worry about washing them. Gross, I know, but how many times have you washed your handknit gloves? Seriously, the yarn care worries me the most when knitting gifts, to the point where I've taken to offering a lifetime service of mail-in cleaning service for gift shawls. So it's nice to give a gift without obsessing over whether the yarn is going to hold up.

5. Comfort. Most people don't find yarn on their hands itchy. This is why knitters surreptitiously rub yarn against their necks when they are yarn shopping.

6. Versatility. Gloves/mittens offer a quick platform to show off a special technique, and an appropriate pattern can be found for every level of knitting, technique (cables, lace, you name it), and style.

As proof, here are some more beloved mittens/gloves.

These are my sock monkey head gloves, which are heads attached to fingerless mittes. I do not wear the heads much because they keep falling off (kinda freaky), but the fingerless mitts parts I don indoors.

DH has worn these fingerless gloves every day this past winter. He keeps them on at work too! However he wears them on the wrong hands so the cables are on the palms, like a special treat for anyone he shakes hands with, I guess!

Here are two pairs of fingerless mitts from the same yarn (Chlorophyll and Bluebell). I keep mine permanently in a drawer at work, and they come out on cold days, and hot days when the AC is too high (in total, almost every day). The other hobo gloves are also worn sometimes I hear, even though the recipient lives in sunny Florida.

These Flutter Mittens are pretty recent, but they have still gotten a lot of wear, having replaced the red staghorn gloves as my daily gloves.

Yay hand-y knits!

Tidiness

2011-03-30T02:00:00.155-05:00

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

I started blogging during a quest to rid myself of all my yarn stash, which I did! So you may be wondering what has reaccumulated in the following 2.5 years. Here it is! (The ruler is a 12 inch or 30cm one--these are "shoe box" sized bins.)

Actually, one contains yarn, and the other contains all the other crapola. Here is the yarn box:

There are only two yarns that are "real," ie have not yet been used for a project. They are an orange yarn for a top and a blue kid linen which was a gift from Rosalia, to be a shawl.

The rest of the bin consists of leftovers . Here's the smorgasbord sorted on one of the bin lids, by weight of yarn. I hadn't realized I'd accumulated so much sockweight recently, from a flurry of cardigan and mittens (these, these, and these).

And then there is a small (~4x6") bag of "small" scraps, which is pretty full and I should probably figure out something to use them all up! (Hello, cat toys).

Onward, to the other bin! This is where all the needles and crap live. As you can see, it is highly organized.

Once in a great while I will arrange the needles by size and rubberband by size the double pointed needles, but soon they get all disheveled. So it ends up being more efficient to dig through like a little mole. I have been putting off getting a nice circular needle case from Etsy because if I were ever to get the beautiful Addi lace interchangeable circular kit, I would just give everything away and bow down at the fantastically organized loveliness of the kit. However if someone wonderful were to, say, give me the circular needle case, or a dpn needle case, as a gift, I would love them forever and be super organized for the rest of time!

In contrast, here are my "regular" single-pointed needles, which reside in a knitted roll-up case.

This is the most faved (178 hearts!) project of mine on Ravelry. So it is too bad I never actually use these needles. Due to non-use, the needles/case still look super orderly. (Angel voices here.)

Plastic bin #2 also contains a pile of plastic bags. I don't have project bags (also hint hint nudge nudge for anyone looking to send me a gift) and instead I organize all of my active projects in "ziplock" plastic bags. I put in the pattern, needles, yarn, notions, any other necessary notions for a specific project into a bag, and keep them all bundled sturdily together.

Like so.

Then all of the active projects (currently only 1, as usual) each in their plastic baggies go into the knitting bag, which is knitted from three different balls of bamboo yarn from a swap.

The other item in the knitting bag is a Le Petit Prince pencil case, which holds all notions.

The needle gauge fits perfectly on the underside of the lid. All the other notions fit inside the case.

Working clockwise from top right...

The little green baggie holds stitch markers; leftover from a pair of earrrings.
Chibi needles--I lost my one needle and then could not get any metal yarn needles that did not come in a set in a plastic case. But the green case is so cute it gets to stay for now.
Cable needles and stitch holders
The 3 wee circles are things which I use as stitch markers, but are actually colorful rings that come with electric toothbrush heads (to mark which one belongs to whom).
The black thing in the corner is a magnetic rock I got in Los Alamos, ostensibly to keep a cable needle from getting lost during a drive. Unfortunately the cable needle (now lost) was made of aluminum and did not stick! However the little rock is really useful for corralling safety pins, little scissors, and the one ferromagnetic crochet hook.
The business card is from Wolcott & Co, a wonderful yarn shop in Cambridge MA, which I used to visit during college, but is now unfortunately closed. I keep the card for the memories, as well as the useful info jotted all over (the card opens up for a needle tracker), like how many yards are in 100g of a various weights of yarn, typical gauge in different needle/yarn combos, etc. I started keeping these notes before one could look up the stuff online, and really it is a lot easier just to pop open the card than sort through the internet.
Row counters, two of them with yarn attached to stitch markers so I can use them to mark between rounds when knitting in the round. I guess I am too cheap to get the row counters made with attached stitch markers.

So that's it! Hope you enjoyed the tour of all the yoelknitting stuff!

Click here to read all the other Day 3 posts from 2KCBW.

FO with a new skill

2011-03-29T08:38:00.000-05:00

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

Not only is it day two of Knit and Crochet Blog Week, it's a twofer today because here's a FO! It has been finished for a long time, but I've been waiting as it is a test knit for a pattern. It's Un Peu de Chance, by Marie Adeline (unfortunately blog-less now, but her designs are available through Ravelry). The pattern is not yet available but hopefully that will change soon!

The skill learned for this cardi was...steeking! The cardi is knit all in one piece, including the set-in sleeves, then steeked. Here's a blow-by-blow, and here are pics of the before and after.

After steeking, the edges are all picked up and ribbing added, then buttons sewn on. The buttohs on this cardi are my favorite type, shank buttons in a pearly color. These were vintage, sold out of a big bin at Paste, a super-fun crafts store in St Louis City.

I have not worn the cardi yet to keep it pretty for potential pattern illustrations, so it still looks pristine. The pattern features bell sleeves, a fitted twisted-rib waist, and most importantly, a pretty eyelet lace pattern on sleeves and torso that becomes less hole-y further up (and creates some shaping too).

The length is a bit long (and I am long waisted), so the main portion of the torso poofs over the waist, sort of 1940's style. Despite the dramatic aspects (lace, bell sleeves, sillhouette), due to the neutral color this will work as a versatile cardi. I dressed the dress form in a dress, but the cardi would look really cute with jeans and ballet flats too, don't you think?

Yarn is Alpaca with a Twist Baby, two ginormous hanks (except for a few yards left, whew!), for a total of ~1098 yards and 500 grams of DK-weight yarn. In retrospect I would have used a yarn that had at least some wool or acrylic, as 100% alpaca does tend to stretch, but hopefully the ribbing at the waist will hold things together.

For the other KCBW posts for today, click here.

Yarns, the good and bad

2011-03-28T02:00:00.167-05:00

Woot woot, it's Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! Hooray for Eskimimi for organizing! Today's topic is "A tale of two yarns," and we are to discuss the yarns we love and hate. However, unlike most knitters, I don't harbor overwhelmingly strong feelings about yarn. Gasp! Shocking! I appreciate some yarns more than others, but I don't go out of my way to seek out rare or valuable yarns, and, since clearing my stash, just get what I need for the next project and don't squee too much about yarns in general. However even in my rather asperger spectrum of feeling toward yarns, some do end up a little lacking or superior compared to the others...

The only times I feel compelled to buy yarn is when I am traveling--if I visit another town's LYS, I do try to get something "local," or at the very least something unavailable at my own LYS. So when I was in Boise, I got some Jojoland Melody.

Soon, they became these Knotty or Knice socks, way back in October of 2008.

Cute, eh? Check out the detailed twisted-stitch cables.

Unfortunately, this yarn did not hold up well. At all. They have been washed cold twice in the machine, and flat dried, and in the process they have felted and fuzzed terribly. I should have known about the fuzz, because the yarn shed fuzz that got formed into a "donut" around the yarn while I was knitting, but who knew it would become so, well, scraggly-beardy?

These socks don't stretch anymore, and now they are teeny little boots. I have small feet, and even so, it kind of feels like my feet are bound, and subsequently I have not worn them in a long time.

Saddest of all, the pretty (and tedious) cable pattern has been obliterated by the fuzzing and felting!

In the end, this yarn disappointed terribly, and taught me a valuable lesson: don't be tempted by the colorway no matter how pretty, it's the base yarn that's important!

As for good yarns...the longer I knit, the more I graviate towards sock/fingering weight (I believe that's 4-ply for the Europeans/Brits) yarn, even for non-sock items. Many sweaters and tops knit with heavier yarn have started to droop (or just make people look bulky), moreover a lot of fun vintage patterns are written for fingering weight yarn. Besides, sock yarns, specifically, are (supposed to be) designed with additional qualities that make them good for socks, but are advantageous for other garments as well. They are 1) non itchy, 2) sproingy, and 3) machine washable (and sometimes dryable). Also, except for uber-high-demand brands/colorways (madelinetosh and wollmeise, I'm looking at you!), they tend to be inexpensive and get good yardage. I've made a lot of sleeveless tops, as they are my fave thing to knit, and the only two I wear regularly are the ones knitted with sock yarn: Golden Poplar and Jersey.

Both are knitted from "sock" yarns which have held up nicely in shirt form. First, about Golden Poplar. It's knit from nice, cheap, Knitpicks Stroll (way back in the day, in 2009, when we walked uphill both ways and only like 1000 people were on Ravelry, it had the less sexy name of Essentials).

It is 75% superwash merino wool and 25% nylon, and the nylon helps it keep its shape. Here it is almost 2 years later (this was finished in July 2009), looking pretty much the same! (Sorry about the weird shadow; that is the biggest patch of sunlight today.)

Even the underarm portion, which tends to be the first area to get felted and icky, looks pretty good, after an estimated 10-15 wearings.

The yellow Jersey is knit with Spud and Chloe Fine, which is 80% wool and 20% silk. The wool itself is tightly spun for sproingines, and the silk gives it a lovely sheen.

This yarn knitted up easily without splitting or fuzzing, and, while this top is only 6 months old (done in Oct 2010), it has held up through several washings and bounced back to its original shape. Oddly enough, it is a hand-wash but machine-dry yarn (!). This yarn was a souvenir from a trip to Denver, and I am wishing really hard that a LYS starts carrying this yarn soon!

So there you go, one "bad" sock yarn and two "good" sock yarns, with lessons learned. I am working out the math to knit up one of the great 70's dresses from the vintage patterns that Betty sent, and I'll be using one of these "good" sock yarns for sure!

PS: To see all other 2KCBW posts of this topic, click here.

WIP: ASH

2011-03-20T20:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who suggested patterns for a lace or eyelet fingering-weight cardigan! I have a sweater's worth of this cascade sock yarn,

and at first I tried to (again) knit Honeybee, by Laura Chau (cosmicpluto). The last time I tried, my row gauge was waaaay off. I had the same problem again, so I suspect I am doing something differently, maybe doing my yarn-overs the wrong way or something. (I knit a couple more inches of the swatch after taking this picture, and the gauge just got worse.)

In knitting, two strikes and a pattern's out. (I love her patterns but for no one will I knit a third swatch.) This yarn is a red-orange, too peppy and energetic for a lot of the frilly or overly-precious cardi patterns out there. In the end, I case on for a pattern that had been in my queue for a long time, Apres Surf Hoodie, an Interweave Knits pattern by Connie Chang Chinchio. I don't like or wear pullovers, so it'll be a cardi instead. The lace pattern is not too flowery or girly, and the jaggedy pattern looks great in the orange!

I am a little worried about the i-cord edge, as it is rolling up like crazy. It may need some crocheting-down later. For now, some new spring shoes are holding it down. And oooh, I know you can't tell at all, but this last picture is from a new camera!!! I finally saved up enough bonus points on my credit card and got a DSLR for free! It is a pretty basic camera, as far as DSLR's go, a Canon EOS Rebel XS, but it is already kind of overwhelming with all the different buttons and options. I am just using the total-auto mode, but even so it's a swell time! The camera arrived just in time for the spring bloom:

What's that black and white fuzzy blob down there? Why, it's only the subject of 20+ pictures already!

Cammy is enjoying spring immensely, and has resumed her throne on the patio chair. The shadow of the grid from the table makes her look a bit like spider man. What a cute spider-kitty!

Snow peacock chart

2011-03-15T21:47:00.001-05:00

Remember snow peacock?

Cammy does!

It's been 9 months, but spurred by a request through Ravelry, I updated the chart I made to knit this shawl. Here is the PDF, free!

The original shawl is available online (also free) as Snow Peacock by Tonks, which is pretty much the same thing as Panache by Lankakomero. However I changed all of the decreases to lean symmetrically and in the correct direction, added beading in a peacock feather pattern, and just plain redid the outer rows so the shawl would drape better.

You will need to know how to read a chart, bead using the crochet method, knit lace, and bind on/off. I did 12 repeats of the chart, but 8 would probably be sufficient for a semicircle. Cast on the same number of stitches as the number of repeats you want to do, plus 1-2 selvage stitches at the edges, and go to town! Markers are strongly recommended between repeats. I chose peacocky yarn and beads, but this would be very pretty in white with white/silver beads!

If you find any errors please comment or contact me, so I can fix straightaway.

FO: Hippocampi mittens

2011-03-09T20:07:00.000-06:00

Done! Just in time to switch over to spring and summer knits. These are very cute and soft, but probably won't get much use until next winter. The pattern is Hippocampus, by Toritot Design, which is free (wee!) and comes in French, English, or Portugese.

I knitted the small size, but used size 1 needles (pattern calls for US 1.5), so they are extra-small. I have extra-small hands and they fit like, er, a glove. I also changed the yarns--the pattern uses two different color-changing yarns (actually, I think the designer took a single color-changing yarn, then cut/pasted all fragments into two balls of the same color family, which seemed pretty ridiculous), but I used a solid black for background, and a slow-changing yarn for the foreground, for a sort of stained-glass effect.

The color-changing yarn is Crystal Palace MiniMochi, and the black is Schachenmayr nomotta Regia 4-ply. (Totally had to copy and paste that second yarn name.) The whole pair used up less than half of each ball. Both are very soft and easy to work with, and the MiniMochi colors change at the perfect rate for this pattern--I went through just over one color repeat over the two pairs.

I followed the pattern exactly, except I striped the cuff to make it more fun. The only beef I have with this pattern, and most glove patterns, is that the thumb is not where the real thumb is. Many glove/mitten patterns with thumb gussets have the thumb too far on the side. Others have afterthought thumbs that are entirely on the palm. This one, although there is a gusset followed by an afterthought thumb, is entirely on the palm. Very strange!

For those who are wondering, hippocampi are indeed brain structures. They are located on the medial surface of the temporal lobes, and play a huge role in memory formation. One of the most famous neurology patients, H.M., had both hippocampi removed when he was young and subsequently could not make new memories. The brain hippocampi (singular = hippocampus) are named for the animal hippocampus (sea horse), because the cell layers curl around each other and look like the tail of a sea horse. (See purple picture at bottom of this page for a demonstration.) A brain hippocampus is not named for hippopotamus or Hippocrates, although those would be fun too! In any case, I think this mitten pattern is quite suitable for a neurologist!

Checking in

2011-03-03T19:21:00.000-06:00

The second hippocampus glove is finished, and I was going to be all fancy and do a time-lapse movie of the afterthought thumbs being knitted. But the REAL afterthought is "maybe I should find the camera first." Backing up...A few days ago there were some nasty tornadoes in the St Louis area. And of course, not being from here or anywhere with tornadoes, I didn't quite know what to do when the sirens went off, followed by a completely incomprehensible "Wa wa wa, wi Wo, wa Wa wa!" broadcast through the city via apparently invisible but very loud speakers. Giant snowstorms, earthquakes, fires, and monsoon rains? Check! Tornadoes, the only frequent natural disaster in the area? Er, no check!

So in response to the sirens and tornadoes, DH and I got the camera out to record the crazy sky, which was purple on one side of the house, pink on the other, with continuous freaky lighting! During the making of this magnificent movie, my hippocampus (the one in brain, not knitted one) dug up an old memory of hearing the same siren going off a couple years ago when I was working in a children's clinic, and we had to go sit in the basement/hallway forever. At this point we realized our foolishness, went downstairs to the basement, and somehow in the process lost the camera.

All this so you know why there aren't any pictures or updates! Anyway, after the gloves are done I will need a pattern to go with some fingering weight yarn in cardigan quantities. Does anyone have any suggestions? You would be utterly shocked at the dearth of 1) fingering-weight, 2) lace/eyelet fabric, 3) cardigan patterns, 4) that look nice (ie no frilly fringe or other granny touches).

Also, a heads up about the 2nd annual knitting and crochet blog week, organized by Eskimimi!

One hippocampus

2011-02-24T20:54:00.000-06:00

No thumb yet; it's perfect for that Caravaggio character from English Patient, if he had his right hand chopped off too. So excited for the other colors in this ball of yarn to show up on the second glove!

I used the Amana hot water bottle for the first time! The weather was so temptingly warm and balmy, that I forgot that I don't run (knees, ankles, boobs, tendons, everything hurts) and went for a run in Forest Park. The running paths aren't orthogonal, and wind in funny ways, and eventually I ended up running over 2 hours! The next day my legs were freakishly sore and I was hobbling around, so I filled up the hot water bottle. How amazingly soothing! I have never used a hot water bottle before and thoroughly read the English portion of the directions before use, but I'm not sure about some of the guidelines. Brits and other hot water bottle connoiseurs, help!

1) Directions say to fill up only from the tap, never to put in boiling water. Is this total BS, like Qtip directions saying not to put in your ear?

2) Directions say it can't be microwaved. True or false? I would think it is a good way to sterilize the thing.

3) How do you clean out the inside? Is there a special brush? Does it get moldy?

4) I was afraid to put any weight on it, like feet. How much weight can a hot water bottle (with a screw cap) bear? Has anyone tested this out?

I realize all of these questions seem quite stupid, but (obviously) I could use your help!

Also, with just the hottest tap water, the bottle was not that hot, ie a lace-weight cozy would be fine. I used a thin towel and felt like it was way too thick. But any hotter and I think at least a DK weight yarn cozy would be needed. Life's lesson learned!

FO: Cilantro

2011-02-20T19:19:00.000-06:00

This is a little spring-y hug for the poor naked crabapple tree (aka shawl model). This knitted up very quickly, because the lace pattern is the same on every row, and the wrong side rows are all purled back. The shape is unusual--a right triangle--and is achieved by increasing just at one end, again making the knitting simpler still.

The adjacent side features a different edging like shark teeth.

The opposite (short) side is the bind-off edge, and the lace pattern (and pinning while blocking) makes it curve like so.

The yarn is Crazyfoot by Mountain Colors, in colorway Apple Green, and was a souvenir from a trip to Phoenix. I'd argue with the colorway name because it is much too dark to be apple green, it is much more, er, cilantro green. It's a sock-weight yarn that is too vibrant and pretty to be knitted into socks, and with US 6 (4mm) needles, the lace came out just right. Before blocking, the fabric rolled up like crocodile skin, and after blocking, the lace fabric still has a gently rippled texture.

Cilantro (by indigirl) has an error: it says 20 stitches are added for each pattern repeat, when in fact only 10 are. But it is pretty obvious that the shawl is way too small with the recommended number of repeats, and the pattern is so easy to just keep knitting until the yarn runs out, that it's not a big deal. In the end I did 13 repeats, and had about 3 yards of yarn remaining.

Today, there are 22 of these on Ravelry, so this is #4 of my 12 under 43 projects for the year!

Souvenirs

2011-02-16T21:29:00.000-06:00

It is a weirdly and wonderfully warm winter day, 70+ degrees in the middle of February, a good day to look back at vacations without too much wistfulness. I am terrible about getting souvenirs, so from Tulum I just have the other photos and videos. Well, I also got bottled hot sauce and mole, but that can't be shared over the internet.

The best part of this trip was an excursion to Sian Ka'an, a biosphere reserve right next to Tulum. Several tour groups lead trips there, but CESiaK is the non-profit that runs the reserve and also runs the best (and least expensive) trips. There are several trips, like bird-watching, canoe-ing, etc, but we went on the lazy boating one. A long skinny mini-peninsula extends from the Yucatan peninsula, and protects the opening to a natural canal that leads over a couple miles to freshwater lagoons, which, further inland, connect to canals dug by the Maya. The first 1/3 of the video is the view from the main CESiaK building, where you can see water on both sides of the mini-peninsula. I'm the one in the pigtails.

The water goes from brackish to fresh (and clean, though minerally) as the boat goes further inland. The second portion of the video shows the jungle-y look of the more brackish portion of the canal. The banana orchids are especially magnificent! Our tour guide was amazing, commenting on all the flora and fauna (he is an ornithologist and usually leads the birdwatching tour) in English, Spanish, and French. The third portion of the video shows the freshwater portion of the canal, and the vegetation at this point is called "savannah." All of these plants grow on top of mangroves and old mangrove roots, so although it looks solid, the "ground" is a mushy tangle of roots. We made it to the end of the canal, then got to hop in the water and float back, propelled by a very gentle current out to sea. Unfortunately there is no video of that, since the camera is not waterproof, but believe me that it is one of the most quiet and peaceful and relaxing things one could do in a lifetime! At the end there was a very yummy lunch included, plus a couple hours at the pretty beach, before heading back to the hotel. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone visiting the Riviera Maya.

On a completely opposite note...I realized I forgot to tell you my "secret" souvenir from my visit to Amana. It is...

drumroll...

a hot water bottle! Ok, that may not be very exciting to you, but I've never actually seen a hot water bottle for sale, and I have been pining for one for a long time. Pining for one, specifically so that I can knit a hot water bottle cozy (HWBC)! A HWBC would be such a snuggly combustion of my knit-o-philia and anglophilia! (Hot water bottles seem very British, although I must admit this brand appears to be German.) Now that it is so warm though, my enthusiasm for this project has cooled (heh) somewhat. Also, I'm having trouble finding a nice HWBC pattern that will use up my laceweight leftover yarns. Any suggestions?

I'm likewise unenthusiastic about knitting mittens in balmy weather. Here is the Hippocampus mitten so far.

When I start the second one, name will change to Hippocampi mittens.

FO: Flutter mittens

2011-02-12T16:22:00.000-06:00

These mittens are simply delightful! I guess handfuls of yellow butterflies are just like that. The backs are the same, with the butterflies getting larger and more complex from wrist to tip. There's a big mistake (mine, not the pattern) in one of the smallest butterfly rows, but I couldn't be bothered to tink back by the time I noticed.

The palms have a tight diagonal grid pattern, and the right palm has a superimposed large gorgeous butterfly. So it looks like one is holding a butterfly in one's cupped hands.

(Lesson for the day: It's really hard to take pictures of your own hands in mittens.)

The pattern is Flutter Mittens, by Eskimimi. Click through to read about the literary inspiration for the mittens! To get the right colors I used two different yarns: New England Shetland by Harrisville Designs (colorway Marigold), and Shetland Spindrift by Jamieson's colorway 727). They are similar "sticky" loosely-spun yarns, good for colorwork. They are (after blocking) on the thick fingering to light sport weight yarns, but because I wanted a really tight fabric and because my hands are freakishly small, I used size 0 needles. Not only did I break a needle on the last row of the first glove, I broke another needle on the last row of the second glove! So yeah, maybe it wasn't such a great idea to use such thin needles and do double decreases with them, but on the other hand (hee), the fit is great.

Cammy likes the big butterfly too.

As of today there are 13 other Flutter mittens on Ravelry, hence these are #3 of my 12 under 43 projects.

Yay 70's

2011-02-09T20:00:00.000-06:00

What a treat to come home from vacation to a big package of knitting patterns! Betty from Binding Off was giving away "old" patterns from the 70's, and I was thrilled to get them! There's a large stack of pattern books, so I'm sharing just the juiciest photos. The patterns that drew me most were all the dresses and tunics. So adorable! And if knitted top-down, if you get sick of knitting (or run out of yarn), you have a swell sweater.

All of these make me want to have longer legs. Also, knee-high silver boots!

The shaping of this one is done just with the stitch pattern and cables. The flared skirt is so fun, and this will probably be my first 70's project, except without sleeves.

Fun cabled dresses.

love that scarf used as a belt

This one reminds me of the emergency broadcasting system testing screen on TV's. I'm not sure if that still exists since I don't have TV anymore, and also I never wear horizontal stripes, but still I might have to knit this dress.

So sleek and mod, both of these.

Many of the patterns would look up-to-date, except for the hilarious styling. The models, especially the one male model (also see above), posed so ridiculously, that one can't even see the knitwear.

(Why are they touching their teeth?)

What I appreciate most about older patterns is that they are for all clothing (and non-clothing) items, not just sweaters and accessories, which most modern patterns tend to be. So there are pants, shorts, tabbards, weird headdresses,

(wtf)

and swimsuits!

There are some awesomely-awful 70's-bad designs, but they are so fun to look at:

(might be crochet, not knit)

I may have to go whole-hog (or whole-cougar) and make this in a variegated yarn that turns out cheetah-print-like.

After taking these to knit night to share, I managed to leave them all at the cafe! Thankfully the cafe folks know "the knitters" and saved them for me for next week. Doh!

Thanks Betty!

Tulum Too, Electric Boogaloo

2011-02-05T13:22:00.000-06:00

Last year's trip to Tulum was so fun, I went again this year!

We wanted to do the stuff we didn't get to do last year, like go to Chitchen Itza.

(I am about 10-15 yards in front of this structure, so it is actually about twice as tall as it looks in this photo). It is completely overrun with tourists and people selling tchotchkes. It was shocking to me that hordes of trinket-sales-people are allowed to set up shop among the ruins! I do terribly with crowds and especially with people trying to sell stuff, so in retrospect it might have been better to go to a less commercialized place like Coba (which was great last year) or Ek Balam. Also, you're not allowed to climb the tall pyramid anymore! Still, all the Maya buildings and statues are a pretty amazing sight!

Thanks to the many hours on buses, airports, planes, etc, the Flutter Mittens(*) are well on their way. There were some epic near-fails with the first mitten. On the last row of knitting, the needle broke in half! After picking up all the stitches that got dropped during the breakage (total pain, with size 0 needles, stranded knitting, and navy blue yarn) and changing needles, I was in the middle of kitchener-ing the stitches to close the top, when the yarn snapped. Arg! So then I had to un-pick all of the kitchener stitches, again pick up the stitches that had been dropped, and put them back on needles. I didn't have the heart to try finishing this mitten again so soon, and started on the next mitten. Actually the two near-fails worked out, because I could use the two broken halves of the needle to hold the live stitches, so that I could get going on the other glove. (When life gives you lemons...use them as stitch holders.) The palms of the gloves have a cool grid pattern, and one of them has a big, gorgeous butterfly superimposed...It's so pretty I'm going to save it as a treat for the FO post!

Many gardens in Tulum include this plant, which is Tradescantia spathacea (aka boat lily) from what I can tell from scouring on-line sources. I love how the leaves are purple on one side and green on the other, and I'm cooking up a double-knitted scarf design in the same vein.

The departing flight narrowly preceded Snow-pocalypse 2011, and the return flight also narrowly preceded another batch of snow last night. So it was all-round perfect timing, and of course, it's always wonderful to get away to somewhere warm and make some vitamin D. It's a shock to return to this:

It's a good day to stay indoors. I still need to sort through all the photos and videos, and will be back with more sunny pictures!

*Eskimimi is having a big sale/giveaway right now, so hurry over there!

WIP: Cilantro

2011-01-29T20:37:00.000-06:00

Cilantro + this yarn = best pattern-name-colorway combo ever!

People really split over cilantro, and either love it or hate it with a freakish fervor usually reserved for politics, religion, and other people's children. I am among the lovers, and might make a T-shirt (or knit an intarsia sweater) with the logo "I heart cilantro." Anyway, I am not quite sure why this pattern is even named cilantro because the lace pattern itself doesn't look very cilantroid and the sample is knit in orange. In fact, I believe it is the same Checkered Acre pattern which was in the Cameo Blanket. Right now, prior to blocking, it is quite crocodile-y and lumpy-bumpy.

The shape of the shawl is a right triangle, casting on with just a couple stitches and increasing every other row on the hypotenuse edge, and keeping a jagged leafy edging along the opposite (long) edge, and binding off on the adjacent (short) edge. Right now the lace curls up along the hypotenuse like challah bread.

I've done as many repeats as called for in the pattern, but it is comically small (see how it compares to the paper the pattern is on) and there's lots of yarn left.

From what I can tell, there is an error in the pattern: it says 20 stitches are added for each repeat, when actually only 10 are. So I think I should do 16 repeats, not 8. In any case, the proportions look ok, and I'll just keep knitting until the yarn runs out.

I'm going to Tulum (yes, again) soon, and Cilantro would be a perfect travel-knitting project, especially to Mexico. but after a traumatic Addi-circular-cision last year in airport security on the same trip, and being a devout carry-on-luggage-only person after my knitting was lost in checked baggage, I've decided to play it safe and take a project that uses double-pointed bamboo/wooden needles. (When packed with pencils/pens, they get through security without a hitch.) I'm sick of socks, and would knit them 2 at a time on circular needles anyway, so that leaves gloves and hats. My knitted gloves get worn a lot more frequently than my knitted hats, so I figured gloves are so much more sensible. After knitting the Alice in Wonderland gloves recently, I'm hankering to knit more gloves with colorwork, and after a looooong search for patterns, could not decide between the last 2 contenders. So, in a rather in-sensible manner, I decided to knit, and got yarn for, both.

These are for the Flutter Butterfly Mittens by Eskimimi. Not only are her blog and knitting delightful, these gloves are inspired by the Meme subplot in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Eskimimi's explanation is heart-achingly beautiful.

These yarns, Crystal Palace MiniMochi and Regia Silk, are for the Hippocampus mittens, by toritot. As a neurologist, I could not resist this pattern! (The hippocampus is a structure in the brain responsible for memory formation; it is named after the sea-horse, aka hippocampus, because the cell layers are whorled similar to the tail of a sea-horse.)

Now for the hard part: which mittens should I take on this trip? Help me decide!

FO: Damsel not in distress

2011-01-23T13:18:00.000-06:00

Oh what a difference a blocking makes! Here's Damsel before,

And here she is after!

The pattern is Damsel, by Oceanwind Knits. With only 14 others of these on Ravelry, this is #2 of my 12 under 43 projects for the year. The only mod was changing the weight of the yarn--I used Alpaca with a twist Baby, which is a DK or sport weight 100% alpaca yarn. Instead of the full 5.5 repeats of the main lace, I used one of the suggested smaller sizes and did just 4 repeats. There's only a plum-sized ball of yarn left, so the yardage worked out great (there are 549 yards in the ginormous 250g skein).

The main lace is similar to the one in Aphrodite. It's easy to memorize, and the wrong side rows are all purled, so overall it's a relaxing lace pattern to knit.

The edge lace is really unusual, and it's cool how the designer did the math so that 3 of the diamonds of the center pattern flow into 1 of the edge motifs. The edge seems spidery to me, with web-like pointy bits

alternating with doodads that look like fancy spiders.

If you are wondering what all the little white specks are, that's snow! On top of a big (~6") snowstorm a couple days ago which has not melted at all, a couple more inches fell last night, and it's still snowing! I had to dig a path to the crabapple tree (aka shawl model) through the snow. I worked fast, but even so, the flakes cling to the downy alpaca:

The shawl turned out quite large, 24" down the spine and 55" winspan prior to blocking, growing to 31" down spine and 74" wingspan afterwards. It's big enough to wear like a cuddly babushka-hood-cape. This is part 3 of the fairytale-themed gift, along with the Beanstalk blanket and the Alice mittens. The other parts were shipped off earlier, so Damsel-not-in-distress will travel on her own.

Amana

2011-01-20T20:41:00.001-06:00

Two other knit-group peeps and I visited Amana last weekend, a cold but delightful trip. This is #2 on my long list of former utopian colonies to visit. (#1 was Oneida.) It is actually a collection of 7 villages in Iowa, each a couple miles apart, all settled by a group of pious Germans by way of upstate New York. Like Oneida, the Amana folk were economically successful, and disbanded their communal ways only recently (1930's). Many of the old buildings are standing, the religion/sect lives on, and some born during communal times still live in modern-day Amana. They didn't have to do anything too nutters (like lots of sex like the Oneidans, be celibate like the Shakers, be teetotalers, etc) and so except for having to attend church 11 times per week, it seems like a pretty simple and good life!

We stayed with some wonderful people who live in a converted portion of one of the old churches. All the churches have these spare hand-made benches only, no other decoration.

The blue on the walls is Amana Blue, whitewash mixed with indigo from the mill. Whaaaat? Did you say woolen mill?

Yes, indeedy! Currently they don't make the yarn, but do have giant weaving looms that hook up to dozens of cones of yarns at a time.

Lovely woven blankets, available in both cotton and wool. I couldn't pick one and ended up blanket-less.

The only yarn for sale is non-local stuff that one could get anywhere, unfortunately.

However they do sell these little sheep models, which are adorable!

Another industry was wine and beer-making, and most of the old buildings are covered with these vertical trellises, for grapevines. We tasted local wines and beers, and I forgot to take pictures. I like the trellises so much, I'm going to put some on my next house.

One of our hostesses obtained keys to the museums, so although they are closed for the winter, we got a private tour. One of the displays was about the children--they were educated up to 8th grade, including instruction in knitting.

Notice the label to the lower right of the teeny-gauge gloves knitted in moss stitch. This pattern was used to teach children how to knit items for sale! Yikes, they were good!

These lacy gloves were knit in such a fine gauge that you have to squint to see the stitches (similar to the gauge of modern-day T-shirt fabric). It's still not clear to me where they would get needles thin enough to knit at this gauge. Wood needles that thin would be too bendy, and while they had their own tinsmiths, tin seems like it would be too floppy as well. Oh the mysteries of old utopias!

Filet crochet seemed popular as well.

Here's a little domestic scene, with knitting on a bed. (Procreation was tolerated but discouraged, hence the single beds.)

This is one of the bonnets that the Amana women wore (and still wear) to church, all black with a big crocheted bow over the forehead. Very chic, in a minnie-mousey-nun sort of way.

Cute booties with leather soles!

And proto-amigurumi!

Our hostess is the boss lady of one of the general stores, set up as it would have been in old times. Again, we got to have a personal rampage since it was otherwise closed for the season. We admired all of the wonderful old and new goodies lines up on the shelves,

oohed and aahed over the tin ceiling,

and came away with Amana brand canned veggies, jams, and mustards. All of mine have been very tasty so far! I also made another purchase which is so special it will have to wait for its own post!

The other big industry the Amanas had was woodworking, and this continues today. You can get hand-made furniture and clocks--they aren't cheap, but worth it for something local, handmade, and will last for generations. The hand-rubbed finish on all of the wood furniture is unbelievably smooth, especially unbelievable if you have ever finished wood yourself and ended up with a hot gritty mess.

There were some smaller wooden items as well, like little clocks and rolling pins. I especially love the ridged rolling pin, presumably used to cut sheets of dough into long noodles.

While it was freezing(!), the snow highlighted the simple and orderly Amana aesthetic. All of the old buildings are plain and built with the same somewhat unusual proportions. This example is built from the local sandstone that they quarried.

Even the graveyard is spare and beautiful. Everyone got the same type of headstone, and was placed the same distance apart, in order of death (ie not next to immediate kin).

This wee building is one of the few old Amana buildings not built to the same slightly squat proportions--I guess whoever built it decided it was ok to get all fancy since it was a chicken coop!

The farmland is now farmed by hired hands, producing cows (for meat) and corn. With the snow blanketing the fields, it wasn't hard to imagine how things would have looked 100 years ago.

We had a marvelous time, and I think I wasn't the only one who didn't wistfully yearn to join the old communal Amana.

Thanks to the 10 hours as a passenger during this trip (thanks Colleen for driving), and some cozy knitting time with our hosts (thanks Anna and Brandi! (click through, they make amazing things)) there's another FO! Here is Damsel, pre-block. Next time, she'll be all blocked and purdy!

FO: Gobi cowl; and knitting Phoenix

2011-01-13T22:06:00.000-06:00

Gobi Cowl, designed for the yarn, Gobi Bijou Spun Limited Edition, from Bijou Basin Ranch. This kit, including yarn, pattern, and buttohs, was a wonderful christmas gift from my niece! The yarn is sooooo soft, a combination "70% Pure Yak Down" and "30% Pure Camel Down." (The word "Pure" seems funny, as though anyone might sell "Impure" fiber and label it as such. Plus the "Pure" is a bit tempered by the percentages in front.) We passed around the yarn in our knitting group and had a swell time fondling it. This pattern was the perfect travel-knitting, small, easy, and quick. I cast on at the airport on the way to Phoenix, and was about 90% (Pure) done at the end of the flight. (Don't be impressed--it is a big lace swatch rectangle.) The only mod was that there isn't enough yarn to do as many repeats as it calls for; there was some ripping back and super-tight binding-off, and the yarn tail was about 2" long. The cowl blocked on one of the hotel towels quite nicely. Meanwhile, I ventured out to a nearby yarn shop.

Arizona Knitting and Needlepoint, is located in its own colorful and adorable bodega-like building in Scottsdale. So cute!

Check out the palm tree and blue sky in the background. Oooh.

Inside are two large rooms filled to the gills with yarn.

There's so much yarn that some of it hangs from the ceiling.

Also, lots and lots of buttohs!

Whenever I am greeted with a sight like this button display, I just choke at having to make so many decisions, that I end up getting nothing. Which is really stupid, because good buttons are hard to find!

I wanted to get some local yarn, but other than locally-dyed yarn, there wasn't anything. Apparently because it is so warm, the sheep (and similar) don't have good wool in the area. So I cast the net a bit wider, and got this gorgeous green skein of Crazyfoot sock yarn, from Mountain Colors (Montana, close enough, right?).

The color is far too vibrant and wonderful to be hidden as socks--this yarn will be a shawl or scarf!

Back to the Gobi Cowl...After it finished blocking, it was even smoother and drapier, and I even enjoyed sewing on the buttons. Aren't they awesome? They are speckled with goldish and silverish bits and coordinate with the yarn wonderfully.

And then I put the cowl on. Alas! It's sneaky-itchy! It is so ridiculously soft and downy in the hand that it hadn't even occurred to me to try holding it up to my neck. I don't know whether it is the (Pure) yak or the (Pure) camel or (Pure) both, but it is immediately started prickling at the neck. I took some modeled shots but found I was grimacing in all of them! However this seems to be an idiosyncratic reaction (as we would say in medicine), as when the FO was passed around at knit night, only one other person found it similarly itchy. So this FO will be flying the coop, to a distant relative I've just met who is also a knitter, and fingers-crossed that she won't find it itchy.

As of today, there are 14 other iterations of this pattern on Ravelry, hence, this is my first of my 12 under 43 resolution projects for the year!

A fascinating tale of Phoenix

2011-01-10T22:27:00.000-06:00

I visited Phoenix this past weekend, and something there completely restored my faith in the goodness of people, crafters especially. To take a step back...I like fascinators. Fascinators are the feathery head-dresses that Brits wear to weddings, and I, being an anglophile who likes hair/head decorations, follow suit. So for this wedding trip, I ordered a very cool custom-made kanzashi (art of folding fabric tightly to make a shape) flower fascinator, with red feathers, from a local (St Louis) person on Etsy, ScarlettandMaria.

(picture taken from scarlettandmaria's listing)

Then I went clothes-shopping, which I intensely dislike, and bought dresses for the various wedding events. Then I came home, and thoughtfully put together dress-and-fascinator combos (yes, plural), which made buying the dresses so much more bearable. Then, I anal-retentively made a list of items to pack, fascinators listed just above knitting. (I later realized I actually listed knitting twice.) And I put everything on the list together on the bed including the tissue-wrapped fascinators, got out the bag, and packed. Usually, I take great pride and comfort in my list-making and packing skills; they are some of my best talents.

That is, until I arrived in Scottsdale at the hotel and unpacked. No fascinators in sight! I dug through both bags (now empty--I also take pride in my un-packing skills) several times, and realized with horror that the fascinators had been accidentally left out, no doubt in my urge to leave them to pack at the top of the bag so they wouldn't get smushed. Oh sadness and rage! After seething at my own stupidity for a good long while, a light bulb came on. You can search by location on Etsy! So at 3pm on a Friday afternoon, I sent a desperate email to the maker of the only fascinators listed for Phoenix, asking if she could deliver it to my hotel the next day the same time.

In the meantime, I went to other wedding events (sans fascinator), went to a yarn shop (more next time about this), and ate huevos rancheros at David's Diner in the Scottsdale arts district (very tasty, no website though).

All the while, I was a nervous twitchy wreck, not knowing how I would survive this event without a fascinator!

So I went to a book shop Guidon Books

with funny-creepy civil war figures sitting out front,

where there is at least a shelf dedicated to each army regiment or person. Lincoln, Lee, Grant, and similar each get a whole wall practically. There were no knitting books (yes, I asked), although there were a few books on weaving blankets.

Despite the comforting scent of old books, I worried and fretted. I distracted myself with the cacti which look totally fake, like cartoon cacti, and are super-tall!

Unless they are the squat kind.

Finally, a couple hours before the big event, spacecadetjewelry called to tell me she was near the hotel. And in quite possibly the strangest and most fascinating hotel-driveway hand-off, she gave me this:

(picture is shamelessly taken from her listing because she did a much better job that I would)

A hand-made, hand-delivered, upcycled, local, beautiful fascinator, at the last minute on a weekend in a strange city! Hooray for etsy angels! Thanks Space Cadet! (Not her real name.)

Fascinator, DH, and I had a great time!

FO: Alice mittens

2011-01-05T22:27:00.001-06:00

Oh, I love them! The pattern is Alice in Wonderland mittens, by Jennifer Lang of Sadie & Oliver. These took a while to knit up, as there are quite a few fussy bits, including long cuffs with a cast-on picot edge, sewn buttohs with buttonholes,

the colorwork of course (palms shown here),

and the lining! In the end the lining was the hardest part to push myself to do--it was basically knitting two whole mittens (lining turned inside out):

But in the end the lining was totally worth it--the mittens are a hundred times warmer, it's so smooth inside without any floats to catch fingers/rings, and the mittens are just poofier and cozier and mitten-y. See the poofiness?

Also fiddly was the embroidery, but this really makes the pattern. Since my piss-poor embroidery skills can't convey what they are: the white rabbit is holding a pocket watch,

and Alice is holding a key. If you don't know why those objects in particular, or why there are roses all over, you should read the books!

The yarn was Silk & Lambswool by Simply Shetland; it contains the fibers mentioned in the name. I reversed the colors on the second glove in case I ran out of the "main" color, but in the end I think there's about half of each ball left over. (My scale's battery is out right now so I can't measure exactly). The lining was the leftover Estelle super alpaca lace paints from my Toronto Shawl, 100% alpaca. Finally, a great use for leftover laceweight yarns!

My mods were to reverse the colors on one glove, and to add the key to Alice's hand. Otherwise, this is a very well-written pattern, and a true pleasure to knit up!

These mittens are off to their recipient, brand new mama to the Beanstalk blanket-recipient, with many wishes for a good fairy-tale life!

Happy 2011; FO: Five-day Ishbel; and resolution

2011-01-01T20:10:00.001-06:00

The knit night knitters assembled for a hand-made holiday gift exchange today. We ate lots of yummies including Korean New Year's Day soup, knitted (duh), and exchanged prezzies. I got a huge bundle of sweet tribble tawashi from mlledefarge. We had recently been discussing the people on etsy who sell little scrubbies (or tawashi), except really teeny quick ones that are to be used instead of disposable face scrubbies, and how fun it would be to make cute animal ones and call them tawash-a-gurumi. And today there were two sets of scrubbies exchanged--we've started a knitting revolution!

I started an Ishbel (by Ysolda Teague of course, I lurve her designs!) knit-along with one of my college roommates, lizclink. (Seriously, 90% of my friends in college are named some version of Elizabeth. I blame them for my difficulty with names.) We cast on on Boxing Day...uh, so yeah, in my apparently poor planning I gave myself 5 days to knit a shawl. Plans to knit the large size were rapidly scrapped to make do with the smaller size. Then I forgot to block it last night, so this morning was a frenzy of wet-blocking and cranking up the fan really high and wishing fervently to the knitting gods that they would speed evaporation. And really, if you wish for something really tedious like slightly expedited evaporation, and you have been good all year, the knitting gods take pity on your boring-ass life and grant your wish.

That is Silvana modeling it--she got a shawl from me in the last gift exchange too! This was knitted from Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Lace. This used up about half the skein, so now there's another random laceweight remnant ball rolling around in the bin o' yarn. This was an easy and well-written pattern, except that the bind-off as written turns out too tight. There isn't much else to say about a pattern that has 8534 projects on Ravelry as of 1/1/11. Surely someone has said it before.

Which leads me to my knitting resolution for the new year: 12 under 43. Last year I did the 10 shawls in 2010 thing. Technically I did knit 10 shawls in 2010

Annis
Aphrodite
Bougainvillea
Citron
Deep Forest
Echo Flower Emily
Emily
Ishbel

Peacock
Vernal Equinox

but two don't count officially because they were cast-on in 2009. And really, that was kind of a lot of shawls, to put it mildly, and I want to avoid knitting way too much of one thing this year. Instead, I want to focus on knitting patterns that have not (yet) gone viral. There is such pleasure in seeing how a design comes together, which is lost when one can see how hundreds, or thousands, of people have knitted it before. Obviously, this problem can be solved by not looking at Ravelry anymore, but that's not going to happen. So for 2011, my goal is to knit one pattern a month (ie 12) that has less than 43 projects in Ravelry--hence, 12 under 43. (If you do a little math, you can figure out my age.) Hopefully I can finish each one before the count gets above 43!

FO: Cameo blanket

2010-12-21T22:31:00.000-06:00

There are 15 different stitch patterns, all from various Barbara Walker Treasuries, each making a brief cameo in this blanket. Also, I am starting to get obsessed with cameos (like in rings, necklaces, and the like) and the 3-D nature of stitch patterns are reminiscent, at least to me.

This took just a few yards over 12 balls of Spud and Chloe Sweater in Root Beer. It fuzzed (or fizzed, ha!) minimally, and all in all was a good yarn for knitting up something this big. And it's organic! And it's machine washable! And in the machine, it grew quite a bit, from 46" x 70", to 52" x 78". I machine-dried it for about 15 minutes then blocked it to even out the squares a bit (not too successfully). It dried in a few hours and for a too-short period, I got to enjoy the drapey soft warm goodness! Then I sticky-rollered all the cat hair off and shipped the blanket to California.

The blanket is in stockinette, with a garter stitch border, and ~8"x8" panels of a different stitch pattern, 3 to a row x 5 rows. It was knit all in one piece, and I had to get a whole travel bag out to transport it. I tried to choose all grid or diamond -ish patterns, but in a variety of techniques--knit-purl combos, cables, twist stitches, lace. Also, I snuck in a couple nature-related patterns, for fun. Most of the patterns are attractive on the back side too. Here they all are, before their big trip to my sis! (As always in the winter, these photos were taken in the basement with the CFL overhead lights, so the colors are wonky. The true color is in the picture above, and in the lace patterns for some reason.)

Eiffel Tower

Heraldic

Basketweave

Squared Check Pattern--I thought this pattern contained the ONLY error I have ever found in a BWT. Then I realized I was comparing the back side of the fabric with the picture.

Hearts of Oak--my least fave. Also, why not just call it "Acorns?" The back side is cool, it looks like little conch shells, but the pattern pulled together too much for this blanket, and it looks kinda messy.

Openwork diamonds--the Ur-lace, if there ever was one.

Checkerboard Mesh

Exploded ribbing--so fun, like vintage "onion" glass christmas tree ornaments

Moss Diamond and Lozenge--I know I will regret confessing this, but this was my fave of the bunch. It didn't pull in at all, the pattern is MC Esher fun, and, once in a while I'll admit, moss stitch has a great texture.

Candle tree--yay cables and leaves!

Bramble--I made a mistake that was hard to spot until many rows later, and left it in for good luck. Oops. Love the bumpy fabric though!

Knit-twist lattice--Runner-up for best cameo.

Puff Diamond

Checkered acre--grid AND nature-related! It is a derivative of ploughed acre, which has all the eyelets lined up like the tops of wheat. This one is just checkered, not much acre.

Seaweed

Cast off haiku

2010-12-16T22:59:00.000-06:00

Blanket. In one piece.
Bound off at last, tonight.
Oh my aching wrists.

More to come, after blocking!

Purplefest

2010-12-04T11:57:00.000-06:00

Didn't you know it's purplefest? It must be, otherwise how did all the purpliness suddenly appear in my knitting basket? Apparently, I didn't get enough purple-and-gray colorwork with my nightscape cardi, as I am halfway through these Alice in Wonderland mittens in the same color combo.

Knitty Couture, a LYS in St Louis, is closing (boo). I picked up a little something at the closing sale. Actually, it is a little something huge, one of the ginorm (549 yards) skeins of Alpaca with a Twist Baby Twist, in more purple. When wound, the ball is the size of a 2 or 3 year old's head.

If there is anything more dangerous than the free shipping for $50 through knitpicks, it is the 20% off for $75 through webs. Which is how I ended up with even more purple alpaca, this time from Plymouth yarns.

I have my (purple) work cut out for me!

Knitwear and knitstuffs seem to be everywhere this shopping season. Despite my best efforts to reduce mass mailings (through Catalog Choice, do it, it really works!) there is still a stack of catalogs in the recycling pile. At the top, a pic to make every knitter say, "pah, I could do that!"

Wow, $18 for something I can make out of my laceweight yarn scraps! Of course, the hand-made version would have a heatable inner part made of non-toxic, non-plastic, all-good scrap fabric and rice. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That's right--visions of piles and piles of purple alpaca handwarmers!

And we're off!

2010-11-29T20:09:00.000-06:00

30 knitting days from thanksgiving to xmas this year! TG was a staycation for me, filled with lots of knitting and Harry Potter. A visiting friend brought all the books on tape (audiobooks on itunes, whatev), and I have already finished the first book and started the second. I sat in the basement (best light, also has comfy leather couch) knitting, listening to HP, cat sitting adjacent, drinking a glass of wine (I was doing the drinking, not the cat). Here's what I have to show:

My sister wants a blanket, and it is about 20% done! She wants something "minimalist" so I am inserting what are hopefully-subtle small panels of happiness--wee lace, sly twisted stitch patterns, subdued knit-purl patterns, and just one out-and-out luscious cable--in an ocean of stockinette with a border of garter stitch. As she is "green" (really, she is greenlagirl) I searched high and low for an organic, machine washable (b/c no blanket is hand-washable) yarn. The only remotely affordable option was Sweater by Spud and Chloe, and so far it is knitting up a quick and squishy-fun way.

The only other holiday knitting consists of a pair of mittens. Oh, and I have 3 more shawls to knit for the 10 shawls in 2010 thing before year's end, so I have a sneaking suspicion one of those will be the same as my contribution to the <$10 hand-made gift exchange with the other knit night ladies. Yikes! Must every year end with a knitting frenzy? Despite the abbreviated knitted gift list this year, the answer is still an overwhelming Yes!

FO: Night cityscape

2010-11-21T18:37:00.001-06:00

Yay! It's finished!

It's a night-time version of Cityscape. I couldn't find the exact buttons I wanted, but I think these work pretty. After a lot of manipulating and blocking, the cityscape portion looks a whole lot better. Still, it does not photograph particularly well and I have to loiter in bright light to appreciate the pattern. Lesson learned!

The yarn is Dream in Color, the purple part is Smooshy and the gray sparkly part is Starry--both are heavy sock weight except the Starry has little bits of sparkly metal spun in. As with another Dream in Color cardi, the yarn has really bad skein-to-skein color differences, even in the same dye lot. The sleeves and yoke are a lot lighter and stripe-ier than the main torso, grrr. As gauge wasn't possible with this yarn (pattern is written for DK weight yarn), I just went up a size and it seems to have turned out fine. The only mods I made were making the torso and sleeves a bit shorter, and knitting back-and-forth instead of in the round, since this is a (non-steekable) superwash yarn. Oh, and I did more waist shaping, and moved half the shaping stitches to the back, instead of having them on the sides.

Sorry for the rumpliness, it is hard to take pictures with the self timer.

All in all, this is a super-cute pattern, and I love it! I just wish the colors had been more different so that other people could appreciate the cityscape too...

Jiggling and joggling the fair isle

2010-11-15T19:29:00.000-06:00

That's exactly what it sounds like. The night cityscape cardi knitted up very quickly, and I even did all the blasted ribbing for the neckbands and buttohbands without complaining. Sadly, the cardi is not ready yet!

The two colors ended up being much closer to each other than I had anticipated, and since both are slightly variegated, it gets even harder to see the cityscape pattern. But the real reason it looks kinda crummy is that I am not good at fair isle. And since I knit this pattern flat (instead of the round) because of a non-steekable yarn, the purl rows in fair isle are particularly, well, wonky. I wove in the floats while knitting, but I guess I held the "floating" yarn too loosely, so many of the stitches are loose and malformed. Thankfully, there's a knitting trick/cheat for almost everything. In this case, it's manually jiggling and joggling the stitches and pulling the excess yarn to the wrong side. It is messy and tedious, and the wrong side of the fabric looks godawful. (The left half has had the jiggling done, the right half is about to).

Still, the post-jiggle-and-joggle pattern is just delightful! I can't wait to show you the end result! Does anyone have any good online buttoh store suggestions?

Two things I've never done before

2010-11-04T20:24:00.000-05:00

It's always good to expand your horizons and do something you've never done before. For me, one was steeking. Steeking is one of those things so antithetical to knitting--after all the effort spent to avoid any dropped or wonky stitches, to suddenly cut knitted fabric seems so awful and cruel! But for a test knit, I may have put this off forever.

I started off by basting where I would ultimately cut.

I followed Eunny Jang's instructions for the crochet method.

Then I got fraidy-cat and did the sewn method too, for insurance. (Sorry for the awful contrastiness, this whole shebang was done in the basement at night.) I used a peach thread, which I thought was different enough from the cream yarn that I'd be able to take it out if needed, but not dark enough to see it through the fabric. I'd just use a matching yarn, in retrospect.

Then, the cutting! A lot of knit-bloggers seem to take a swig of something alcoholic beforehand, but I was so afraid I'd mess up I went in sober. I followed along the previously basted yarn, removing it as I went along. Scary!!!

(Can't cut and take pictures at the same time, so I must have put the scissors down out of view!)

Voila! Steeking = amazing!

#2 thing I've never done before: grow tomatoes. If you recall, I had supermodel infertile tomato plants. Suddenly, in October, they began to bear fruit, inexplicably. It was a long summer so I held out hope that they'd ripen on the vine, but alas, had to harvest them before a below-freezing night.

One reddish tomato, 14 others very green! I am suddenly inspired to try out fried green tomatoes...

Knit crush

2010-10-28T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've been knitting off and on for most of my life, so after a brief frisson of excitement about a pattern or yarn, I churn through knits with solid fidelity and subdued enthusiasm. So it is rare indeed that I have such an intense and endorphine/dopamine-laced crush on a pattern/idea! It has been so exciting that I've bought the yarn at full price at 2 different stores, had it all wound without even checking gauge, bought the pattern, and cast on before reading the pattern. And then I swatched, didn't get gauge, and thought, heck, I'll just make a different size. Some knitter-knit pairs are just meant to be.

The object of my affection is Cityscape, by cosmicplutoknits, from the last Twist. Except, it's gonna be a nighttime cityscape, with a sparkly dark grey Dream in Color Starry for the sky, and a dusky violet Dream in color Smooshy for the main body/buildings. I absolutely adore cityscapes and townscapes, and outlines of buildings in general. (This is why I have to limit my Etsy escapades to once a quarter.) Cityscape + yoked sweater + night scene + yummy perfect yarn = mad knit crush. Be still, tachycardic heart!

PS: Also, I would love to crochet this brain hat by Flint Knits, or two of them...when two neurologists marry each other, surely there is some space in the hat drawer for brain hats! Alas, it is a bit too late for this halloween, esp with all the sweater-knitting and all.

FO: Beanstalk

2010-10-26T19:55:00.000-05:00

Gaaaaah, baby knits are so quick and satisfying! Here is Beanstalk--the original pattern is Sprout (by Hanna Breetz), but really there are too many leaves for the plants to be sprouts, and seeing how the baby-mama is an academic aficionado of fairy tales, among other things, this is Beanstalk. It will be sent along with a Jack (or Jill/Jane) and the Beanstalk book, and a non-preg knit for the mother. (One is pregnant for 9 months, and non-pregnant for the vast majority of life.)

I put a matching green glass doo-hickey to show the scale, then realized people may not know how big a green glass doo-hickey is. But still, you must admit the poofy leaves are poofy indeed.

This knit up very quickly from 2 skeins of Cascade 220 superwash that I got from Looped during the DC trip. There were maybe 10 yards of yarn left. Whew. Next time I will get a 3rd ball of yarn and knit a taller/rectangular blanket by repeating the 2nd chart 5-6 rather than 3 times. This is a touch small, apparently the "perfect" size for strollers and car seats. It depresses me that anything would be made to fit a car seat, and I sincerely hope this blanket is dragged around by a toddler on foot/bike until it disintegrates. Anyhoo, this was about 20" square before blocking...

It was machine washed, then machine dried for about 15minutes. Superwash is superwonderful. It was a tad damp when I laid it out to block. I have a rug (and tiles underneath, incidentally) that has exactly 1-foot-squared squares. It is most useful for blocking.

Afterwards, the blanket ended up about 24" squared, and very drapey and soft.

Climb to the top, little foetus!

Hanna Breetz (evergreenknits) has also designed the best dog toy ever, and a couple of these will accompany Beanstalk in the mail (there are 2 doggies who live with foetus currently).

DC

2010-10-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

It's been a week of 2 whirlwind trips--good for plane knitting, but bad for keeping one's head screwed on straight. One trip was super-packed with nothing but work stuff, but the other was to DC and I was able to get out for some sightseeing. Which, of course, means yarn shops and book shops. (The memorials and the white house and the mall and whatnot, people can do on their own time.)

Looped is in Dupont Circle, just a couple blocks and one flight of stairs up from the train station. The shop ladies were super nice, even when I called ahead of time and asked them for subway directions from Maryland.

It's sort of like a floor-through apartment, except filled with yarn, ie two big rooms on either end connected by a wide hallway-type dealio. One side has the lace-to-DK weight, including the wall of silky malabrigo, yum.

And the other has the worsted-to-bulky weight, plus the swift.

There's a great selection of buttohs, needle holders, needles, and other notions in the in-between part. The shop was fairly buzzing with lots of customers wearing quite a few handknits--a good time for all I think! I got just 2 balls of yarn for a baby blanket, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to fit all I wanted into my carry-on.

Nearby, there's a bookshop (Kramerbooks) that also serves wine/beer and food! Delicious wonderful veggie foods like root vegetable terrines and mac & cheese! This is officially the best idea, ever, until someone combines it with a yarn shop with big comfy couches. Obviously there would have to be a "you spill it, you buy&dye it" policy, but still, how great would a combo yarn/wine tasting be?

I read a fun little book (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) at the bar and talked to people who claimed to be foreign service students but I am quite sure were spies. All in all, quite enjoyable, and definitely worth another visit!

Group FO: blanket

2010-10-17T18:30:00.001-05:00

If you're a regular in a knitting group, and you decide to get married, you can expect a knitted present from the other knitting group ladies. Like a lap blanket! We used all our subterfuge skills to keep this secret, made easier by the fact that the bride-to-be just started working crazy hours for (medical) residency. We planned a cabled blanket in panels, with each person choosing whatever stitch pattern she wanted.

Silvana's choice was a heart cable pattern, with plain cables on either side. (Sorry, I realized too late that all the pictures were upside-down!)

Emily chose a sculptural braid cable--very chic. She was also the only one of us who ended up with the correct width panel.

Kateri actually did two strips of "arch" lace, in homage to St Louis (Again, sorry, upside-down). This was a great idea, because then the blanket could be laid out symmetrically with the lace panels dividing the cable panels.

My panel was in a "loose double knot" cable pattern--in reference to "tying the knot," hee. On the sides are some open cables that look like DNA.

Tina (Knitting Contessa) took one for the team and did all of the seaming!! The different gauges and cable patterns meant that they all pulled in vertically and horizonally to different degrees, so while each of us swore we knitted to 48", the panels ended up being different lengths. Oops.

After frogging down the necessary bits, I crocheted around the edges first in single crochet, then double crochet, then double crochet every other stitch, then single crochet, then I got impatient and stopped.

After a bath in the washing machine (this was in Berroco Comfort, so it is machine washable) and blocking, it turned out to be more of a square than a rectangle, about 3.5x3.5 feet. It is very cuddly and soft, and more importantly, knitted with lot of love and well-wishes!

FO: Jersey with a soft bow

2010-10-09T21:01:00.000-05:00

Mother nature took back the early winter and allowed one more summery, clear, perfect weekend! I hope the weather lasts so I can wear this into work.

The pattern is from this book, but modified quite a bit (see all mods on rav page). There wasn't enough yarn for sleeves so I just crocheted around the armholes, and ended up using all but ~5 yards of 3 skeins of Spud & Chloe Sock (about 740 yards total). I was super bad and didn't swatch! All the comments I found were about how gauge was impossible, so I just used thinner yarn and smaller needle size than recommended, and hoped for the best.

Love how this turned out! Feather and fan lace is really very forgiving of sizing. This size supposedly fits a range of 30 to 36 inches. I bet it could fit 28-40 inches. There is no shaping, just the lace and then the godawful, neverending 1x1 rib everywhere else. Including the 40" neckband/bow, which then had to be seamed onto the collar. Holy effing mole!

This yarn seemed a bit scratchy when knitting, but after blocking grew up nicely and ended up with a a lovely drape/hand. Blocking is like puberty for yarn! The lace section streched to a bit longer than it needs to be, so the waist/bottom ribbing doesn't hit at the waist (and I am long-waisted), and the ribbing isn't tight enough to keep it at waist level. Other than that, this top turned out great! I wish I had a 40's hairstyle to match...

I enlisted DH to take pictures and he was much more interested in Cammy, who was much more interested in my new purple suede be-flowered heels which I got specifically for job interviews. No matter what, it is good to have kick-ass shoes, and a hand-knit top.

Cammy doesn't need kick-ass shoes, she is resplendent as is.

FO: Striped vest

2010-10-02T13:49:00.000-05:00

A slightly late birthday vest for DH, tardiness forgiven by the snazzy stripes! Isn't DH a handsome fellow?! And didn't I do the most awesome bang-up job on the striped ribbing?

A close-up of the V-neck just cause it's so pleasing. The ribbing at the neck, armholes, and the bottom were all done the same way, except the bottom has a couple extra rows of white so it is a bit thicker.

The yarn is Smart, by SandnesGarn, which is a 100% wool DK or sport weight yarn. It is sort of a superwash wool, but only at cold or lukewarm temperatures, which to me means actually NOT superwash at all. Superwash should be like pregnant, an all-or-none state of being. Anyway, it does not have that plasticky coating that a lot of superwash yarns have, and has a nice sproingy, sheepy hand. After reading comments saying that it doesn't look so good knitted into a loose fabric, I decided to use US 4 (3.5mm) needles for a pretty tight fabric. Overall, I'm pleased with the fabric, which is a good weight for cool weather but not too stiff. I was careful to get all the same "dye lot" for the white/cream yarn, and was bummed to find that there is actually quite a lot of difference between the balls. It is not that obvious in the pictures, and the worst of it seems to have gone away during blocking (inexplicably). Everyone loves the gray tweedy colorway--it's definitely a contender for a leading role in another project. I almost finished one whole ball of gray, and used 4.5 balls of the cream, so in total about 550 meters.

I forced DH to pose like this so that the seamlessness and the jogless stripes are visible. He is a good sport. He also chose the width, spacing, and location of the stripes, and they turned out just right.

The pattern is my own, using schematics from all of the other prior vests. The V-neck is slightly wider and shallower than a lot of (old) patterns, and there is some shaping so that it is not so boxy and bulky. Would anyone be interested in seeing it written up?

A day late and some ribbing short

2010-09-26T20:51:00.000-05:00

Hey, I'm still alive and kicking, just crazy busy. Like going to Pittsburgh for a whirlwind trip.

There are other photos which none of you will find interesting, except this one, of yet another building being demolished by a wrecking ball. The closed doors in the middle of the sky, now enclosing nothing, are especially strange and sad.

I knitted really really diligently to finish DH's birthday vest in time. This is where I ended up on his birthday, so close, done except for the armhole and neck ribbing!

Damn ribbing! It gets me every time.

Hot chili pepper paste

2010-09-13T20:41:00.002-05:00

Did you know, midwesterners are super-nice? Even if your lack of green thumb turns all of your plants into infertile/tall specimens (the plant equivalent of supermodels), random co-workers will share the bounty of their, apparently much more fecund, gardens. DH's co-worker gave him "some" peppers:

Yikes! And this is after about 10-15 or so had been used up for various purposes. An internet search for hot chili pepper pastes and sauces wasn't particularly useful, as most of the recipes used up 3-4 hot peppers at most. Are these people out of their minds? What are you supposed to do with the remaining 372 peppers? Well, I got out the food processor, and you know what that means...

Hot chili pepper paste
2 c hot chili peppers
2 t salt
1 T sugar
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
10 cloves garlic

If you want less spicy paste, use more green and less spicy peppers:

If you want spicy paste, use more red and spicy peppers:

This is not rocket science.

Directions: Boil large pot of water. Cut tops off peppers. Put peppers into boiling water, turn off heat, and let sit 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put other ingredients into food processor. Transfer peppers with slotted spoon into food processor (it is ok if still a bit wet). Whizz all in food processor for 30 seconds, scraping down sides halfway through. Pull a Clinton and DO NOT INHALE when you open the lid!
Place into clean jar, and store in fridge for up to 1 wk or in freezer indefinitely. DO NOT TOUCH EYES for the rest of the day. The beauty is that if you make multiple batches, you don't have to wash the food processor parts in-between batches.

This paste tastes a lot like Sambal Oelek initially, but over a few days in the fridge it will get less and less spicy, and taste more like a tarty, hot relish at the end. Surely there is a good food-sciencey explanation for how one or other of the ingredients breaks down the capsasin so that it gets less spicy with time. For the layperson, there is much pleasure in matching the changing hotness-level with appropriate foodstuffs. This tastes good in/on/with:

-quesadillas
-mixed into chili
-mac & cheese!
-sandwiches
-soy dogs (also, I assume, hot dogs)
-crudites, esp mixed with sour cream or mayo
-fries/chips, esp mixed with mayo
-eggs
-fresh spring rolls
-pizza, hot or cold, deep dish or regular
-cheese & crackers
-gazpacho
-mango or other fruits
-asian noodle bowls or ramen
-burritos
-ok, this list could go on forever with all the foods I eat...

Hope you enjoy!

eta to add measurement units for vinegar

WIPs in waiting

2010-09-08T20:05:00.000-05:00

Aaaah, autumn is here, the dreadful humidity/heat has departed (knock on wood), and the knitting is back! There has been lots of secretive knitting, but here's some non-secret stuff.

This is the ginorm amount of ribbing for the bottom of Jersey with a soft bow, from the book A Stitch in Time. That's 4 inches with size 2 needles, 240 stitches per round! This officially absolves me of all knitterly and non-knitterly sins for the next 2 years!

I love the happy yellow Spud and Chloe Fine (sock) yarn in the sunlight. The pic from the book is on the right--it's a fun book, lots of original patterns from the 20's-40's with modern-day "translations." Sadly, the modern-day models are truly unfortunate-looking, made even worse by terrible styling and lighting. It's the most bizarre part of this book, how people who could produce such a huge and great book managed to include the *worst knitted FO pictures in the universe*.

The bodice is actually almost done now--it's a quick feather-and-fan lace pattern--but has to be set aside for another vest for DH's upcoming birthday. This time, he wanted a sweater, but changed his mind in the yarn shop that he wanted a vest after all, this time in cream with gray stripes. During discussions of what type of vest he wanted, he rummaged through his drawers, then asked with a light bulb over his head, "Did you know you've knitted four vests for me?" Nah, no way, I answered, no one would remember creating garments one stitch at a time!

This is a lot of sheepish goodness, in Smart yarn. The swatch is done and blocked (I feel smart already!), and now I just need to figure out the exact locations/nature of the desired stripes before casting on. Oh, poor Jersey with a soft bow, you will be a WIP in waiting for a long while!

FO: Emily

2010-08-29T16:41:00.000-05:00

Wow, this this is really warm on a 93 degree day! This is another Ysolda Teague design, Emily, a cute capelet/shawl with short rows to create a half-round shape. The sizing is done by doing more or less repeats of the same pattern, and I did 15, which is all I could get out of the yarn. I wanted to do one more, to decrease the amount of splay in the front, but oh well.

The yarn is Indigo Dragonfly in My Name is Indigo Montoya, and I used up all but ~5 of the 375 yards. It's a tightly spun, squishy sock yarn, pretty different from the yarn called for in the pattern (something with more fuzzy halo), but it knitted up into a nice loose fabric with a larger needles (US 7).

The buttohs are from Paste, a fairly new craft store in St Louis. (I call buttons "buttohs" in my head, kind of like how lolcats say "kitteh" instead of kitten.) It's super cute and has a great selection of all sort of different craft supplies (beading, scrapbooks, clay, roving, some yarn, etc), as well as goodies made by local artists. Oh, and there's a giant bowl of buttohs! I am partial to plain shank buttohs, so I fished them all out, and used three for this capelet.

The edging is a cable and lace combo--always a good idea!

Hopefully the worst of the summer is over--the heat has been terrible for the knitting mojo. Now I'm on the lookout for the perfect autumn cardi pattern, to help me get the mojo back!

State Fair, 2010

2010-08-17T21:12:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's been a year since the last trip to the fair! I was psyched up to enter something to the fair, but in the end, I didn't submit anything, because I thought I had to put my social security number at the top of the entry form. It turns out that's only if I really want the prize money, so next year I'll enter, although I'm still not sure about one's name and home address being displayed on the tags. I have tried to blur all names/addresses out of the pics, so no worries, Missouri knitters!

Again, like last year, quilting was top dog. Here is one incredible hand-quilted quilt.

The lights fortunately didn't go out, but it was still pretty dark, so sorry about the wonky photos. The knitting was better quality than last year, and there was a lot more lace, and nupp-i-tude. First prize for shawl went to this white nuppy lace.

Third prize to this tan nuppy lace.

This one won second, even without nupps. All were gorgeous! The tatted lace doily to the right is impressive too, but didn't get a ribbon. There is a lot of fancy-looking tatting at this fair!

There were 2 colorwork items, both lovely, but neither won.

Here is an entry from Rosalia, which should have won!

Alas, this, and most of the knitting in general was not displayed in a way to appreciate the items--they were scattered throughout the home ec building, and were folded up, obscuring all the best bits.

Except for the inexplicably purple-ribbon-winning (like the grand poobah of home ec) crocheted blanket. Ho-lee-effing-mo-lee! Donny Darko in fun fur!

Other notable crafts included felting, like this hat,

and various preserved foods. Look at these dried tomatoes, like yummy chips!

(The judges agree.)

Bonus points to anyone who can guess what this green stuff is!

After last year's heartbreaking visit to the children's animal barn, we didn't look at any animals this time. We did peek in at the fine art, where this super-cool "fiber" sculpture made out of pine needles was on display.

Nothing I saw at this fair was remotely as funny as this blue-ribbon-winning booth on signs of a doe in heat (scroll down a bit) from the fair that Erika (Redshirt Knitting) attended (and won ribbons!) Maybe next year I should check out some of the 4H booths?

WIPs, wearable and edible

2010-08-07T14:16:00.001-05:00

It's an impossibly perfect day, good for a trip to the farmer's market. Finally, plums! Hooray!

It's become a weekly Saturday ritual to get a bundle of cherry tomatoes and leave them in the orange colander seemingly made expressly for this purpose.

By the end of the day they are always all gone.

It'd be a great day to work in the garden, and harvest some of my own tomatoes. Sadly, despite a dozen tomato plants growing taller than me (you can see the top of the fence in the picture), not a single one has borne fruit, even a little pea-sized baby one! Does anyone have any suggestions? Some are growing in the ground and some are in containers (which get moved around to get sun), and they are all similarly tall and barren. At least they are green and alive, so for now we'll still consider them edible works in progress.

As for wearable WIPs, this is Emily, by Ysolda Teague. It's a little capelet knit side-to-side in garter stitch with short rows, with a cable/lace/picot combo at the edge. I'm loving knitting with this yarn (Indigo Dragonfly), which is super squishy and sproingy! The colorway is great, isn't pooling much, and the cables are turning out very pretty in it. It's definitely one of those "sock" yarns that are too pretty for socks; thank goodness for capelets that need just one skein of yarn.

It's still a small enough project that I can knit it outside and not get it all sweaty. I'll take advantage of the weather and sit outside with it and some iced tea. I picked up this glass pitcher at the thrift shop today. Things used to be made with so much care and artistry--the lip curves perfectly to catch ice, and the handle is stable even while the top end of it doesn't connect to the body of the pitcher.

Organic chamomile lavender, from Traveling Tea, yum.

Cammy is enjoying the gorgeous weather too. Now her favorite spot under the patio table is shaded by the bike/bike cover. It's a tough life!