Ramblings

knitters are everywhere

2009-11-25T17:02:49Z

When I traveled to DC at the beginning of this month I had my knitting carry on pulled aside for further screening (gasp!) When the security guard informed me she needed to open my bag I spurted "I have an awful lot of knitting supplies in there!" Turns out I didn't need to worry - the TSA employee knew how to knit herself. She had never seen a magnetic chart keeper in person, although she'd heard of them (turns out that's what set off the detector. Oddly I've taken that set of steel plates and magnets on planes several times and this is the first time it was a problem) She was careful not to drop any stitches or bump my charts around while she did the routine wipe down and check for explosives. I still wasn't allowed to touch anything in the bag until she was done though...

Yesterday I had to have a tooth filling replaced. The dental hygenist who came into the waiting room to find me recognized my half knit sock as a sock from across the room! She talked knitting with me the whole time she was setting the room up. After the dentist had gotten the numbing process started instead of offering me a magazine she handed me my knitting bag. Then she hung out and we talked knitting while I waited for my mouth to numb up. She told me about sweaters and hats she's knit and I explained how a sock heel works. I love running into other knitters in the most random places!

Tonight I head for my family's thanksgiving. Our traditional 3 day affair is shaping up to be pretty big this year! Several relatives from further away are coming. In my family a big year is over 50 people and "from further away" means wisconsin (the people from Pennsylvania come every year) There will be LOTS of good food, and of course I'll have my knitting! If the weather isn't too bad there might be a hike on Friday. Neil has to work a 12 hour security shift on Black Friday though, so we're going to skip the annual Mt. Washington hike on Saturday. I'll be incommunicado until Sunday. I hope everyone enjoys their thanksgiving!

And I'll round out this post with a finished object:

This is the hat I made for my sister to wear after her surgery. I knew exactly what I wanted in a pattern: a slouchy beret that would hide the hairline in the front and drape nicely in back. I wanted a sock yarn pattern with lace so it could be worn inside. One of my absolutely favorite parts of ravelry is the great pattern search feature. In the advanced search you can filter by a huge number of things including pattern type (hat, sweater, scarf, etc) yarn type (weight, yardage, fiber, etc) and also by things you've favorited in the past, specific designers, on and on. And then after applying the filters you can search the results by key words. I honestly don't know how I looked for specific patterns pre-ravelry. Doing a search for fingering weight hat patterns tagged with the words slouch and beret gives 13 options:

Some free, some for sale, and all pretty much exactly what I was looking for! So easy, so wonderful. Even if you don't need Ravelry for the forums (which I could totally understand) or for the ability to track everything you've knit, your stash, and your list of things to knit next (and I don't understand why you don't want that, unless your stash fits in a shoebox and your queue is 2 items long) I think every knitter (and even just people who happen to knit) should use this pattern search feature.

December holds some more knitting surprises, I can't wait to show you.

don't eat the crayons

2009-11-23T17:26:46Z

I did a lot of sewing this weekend:

Now that the curtains are up (and the stool covers, don't miss those!) I think this kitchen is just about as good as it can get. The one other easy change is that we want to paint the white walls - we'll keep them light colored, but white walls are for people who don't plan on sticking around. Then there are always the expensive remodeling ideas, like new counter tops, but those have to wait until some theoretical future when we have money to spend on counter tops when the ones we have right now work just fine.

I think I've taken my kitchen theme as far as I can without going over the edge to crazy-land (I'm not there yet, right?) I do love the sunflower-y-ness of it! But if anyone ever hears me talking about sunflower print counter tops PLEASE stop me before I go through with it. I'm thinking some nice, sunny yellow counter tops should be fine...

The other sewing project was to re-make a dress I picked up in a clothing swap last weekend:

I love love love cranberry red, and this corduroy dress was in beautiful shape - probably because it has as much shaping as a brown paper sack. I changed the outline of the dress by adding four darts to provide princess shaping. First I had to take the pockets off the front. Then, since corduroy sheds like crazy on any raw edges, I figured french seams were necessary. French seams are when you sew the seams twice, first with right sides facing out, then trim the extra to less then a 1/4 inch, fold so right sides are together, and sew again. This encases the raw edge of the fabric so it's not visible (or shedding anywhere) from either side. So I put the dress on, pinched where I wanted the darts and pinned. This also meant I could make sure it would come off over my head with the new shaping. I measured after pinning to be certain the shaping was even on all sides before sewing. After adding the darts I reattached the pockets lower on the skirt (not that these pockets are functional, but they are decorative) I also raised the hemline by 6 inches. The result:

I feel this is much cuter! Neil still thinks it's a great dress for a kindergarten teacher (he was much impressed by the added fit though) I'll admit a corduroy jumper might be a touch childish, but it's a great dress for wearing to the office in the winter, it goes really well with the charcoal gray shirt I'm wearing today.

Oh, and I'll show some pictures of the princess birthday party as soon as they're sent to me! It was a fabulous 3 year old birthday party!
ETA: Here's a princess photo, one of the prime duties of a princess at a princess themed birthday party is reading princess themed stories:

princess

2009-11-20T17:10:48Z

And now for something completely different:
This weekend I'm dressing up as a princess! Why yes, I am serious. I've been asked to dress in one of my princess costumes and make an appearance as a "real princess" for the birthday party of a 3 year old girl. I'm going to go for the classic princess look with sequins, tulle, and pastel colors. My tasks include posing for pictures with 3 year olds dressed as princesses, reading a princess story, and discussing princess life (you know, castles are fancy, how to courtesy, visiting with other royalty, the mom suggested also mentioning that princesses must have good manners and speak softly indoors - the usual) I'm planning on subverting the genre a bit, I'll be reading The Paperbag Princess. But I'm also going to take along my copy of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, because who can resist that art??

But all the usual things will be happening too. I have more craft projects lined up then I could hope to complete (curtains for 3 rooms, a dress I want to modify, and a major knitting project) and the usual weekend house cleaning. I hate cleaning, it really cuts into my knitting time.

Cambridge Cables

2009-11-18T17:59:52Z

Designs come to me in a lot of different ways. Sometimes there is a fair amount of work: plotting, swatching, testing, and fiddling to get a design to look the way I want it to. Other designs appear in my head pretty much in their final form. This sweater was one of the latter. I know exactly what inspired the design too, it was this shirt:

I was getting dressed one morning and I realized the reason I like this shirt so much is the combination of the empire waist with the A line body. So many empire waist shirts make everyone who wears them look pregnant but the A line increases seem to help with that. The next thing I thought was - I bet I could make something like this.

The cable was the immediate answer to the question, “How do I work the waistband?” I’d used the cable cast off in a previous design so I knew it could work well here. I also knew right away that I needed to change the neckline – it may look nice but it’s my least favorite part of the shirt. I decided to pair the waistband cable with a similar cable forming a V shaped neckline which is one of my favorites. I wanted to be certain the empire waist would fall below the bust line for ladies of all sizes so I went with top down raglan shaping. I was able to write the directions for the bust short rows independent of the chosen garment size so everyone can customize the garment to their own shape. Hemming the tunic body and the cuffs with cables and putting cables on the raglan increases carried the cable theme throughout the garment without cables becoming the main point of the sweater.

The idea came easily to me, but then there’s the matter of getting it across to others. I admit to not being the best at sketching garments:

I mostly just hope to get the general shape and theme down on paper. Then I like to highlight the details in my swatch. I showed the collar design, raglan increasing, and cable bind off all in one 4x4 inch square (well, trapezoid-ish, actually).

Once my design was accepted I let the folks at Twist Collective pick the yarn. I had some suggestions on fiber content and weight to give it the right drape, but I felt the sweater would work in just about any color. I was thrilled to get a chance to work with Tosh Merino it’s a lovely yarn, possibly one of the softest I’ve ever worked with. Once it arrived I had a bit of a mad dash to get the sweater knit up on time. Luckily I could knit during the conference I had at work that week! With 8 hours of knitting time every day the sweater worked up quickly, and I even took a moment to take a quick photo before blocking it and sending it on its way:

The sweater has about 1 inch of negative ease when I wear it, compared with 1 inch of positive ease on the model.

see lots more photos and buy the pattern here.

I like knit tops with a little negative ease so I’m struck by how much nicer it looks with positive ease. The fit of the collar and the drape of the body and sleeves really need that extra ease.

I think this sweater could easily be changed in a few ways to fit the needs or mood of the knitter. I’d be really interested to see it knit up with the stretches of plain stockinette knit in a more variegated or handpainted yarn and the cables worked in a coordinating solid color. The V neck could be extended, as long as the knitter is willing to pay attention to the sleeve and bust shaping while working the cables at the same time. And for people who want a more fitted body working some extra decrease rows in the bust before the empire waistline would be a breeze.

Coming to you from a remote location

2009-11-15T13:22:44Z

I'll post more later - but I couldn't wait another second to let out an internet wide

SQUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mystery project from this summer has gone live. Check out (I hinted at it before) Twist Collective's new issue.

My sweater, Cambridge Cables, is there, AND It made the FRONT PAGE. I'm a little excited (just a little)

knitting weekend(s)

2009-11-13T17:13:40Z

It's fall and I have fiber on the brain - well, even more on the brain then usual. Last weekend I visited a friend and along with snacks, lovely dogs and good conversation there was a DRUM CARDER. The drum carder is to the hand carder what a dish washer is to washing your dishes in the stream and scrubbing with a little sand.

See, I bought 3 pounds of raw jacob fleece years ago, thinking that cleaning and carding it myself would be great fun and so much cheaper then buying prepared fiber ready for spinning. Clearly I didn't think this through, since I had no idea how to clean three pounds of fleece and I didn't own any carders at all. Well I washed a full pound of fleece in my bath tub (it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't the most thorough cleaning job either) and then I still didn't have any carders.

And so the fleece has sat in its bags, through 2 or 3 moves, in various closets ever since (2 pounds of it still un-washed, Neil is so tolerant of me hauling around pounds of sheepy smelling fleece...) Until last weekend. I brought half a pound with me, completely uncertain of how long it would take to process. Twenty or thirty minutes later I had 6 batts of lovely, fluffy soft wool ready to spin. Seriously, the drum carder is like magic. The fiber is still a bit lanolin-y which is fine because the jacob fiber is pretty rustic and I think it'll make a great outer layer something - something where the lanolin will provide a touch of waterproof and windproof-ness. I started spinning the fiber immediately when I got home, and I have it all spun up into singles. I'm hoping to ply it tonight - I'm aiming for a worsted or aran weight three ply. We'll see, and we'll see what the yardage is too. Very exciting.

This weekend I'm going down to visit Fat Toad Farm. We'll knit, sit around the wood stove, eat delicious food and play with goats. There will be caramel, I'm planning on bringing some of it home with me. It's gonna be awesome.

Oh, and you might want to check out Twist Collective this weekend, I hear their new, winter issue is coming out...

Applesauce

2009-11-12T18:19:24Z

I made and canned applesauce for the first time last weekend. I don't know why I've waited so long to do this! Applesauce has to be one of the easiest things I've ever canned. Apples are acidic enough that this process is really easy:
1) make applesauce
2) put in jars with 1/2 inch of air at top
3) put sealable lids on jars
4) put jars in any pot where you can cover them with 1 inch of water
5) boil for 20 minutes

The reason this is so easy is mostly step 1. It doesn't matter how you make the sauce, peels on or off, puree or mash, sweetened so it's like pie filling or completely unsweetened, whatever spices you like. You really can't screw this up as long as you're using apples (and not peaches or something)

But making sauce was even easier then it might have been. Because now I have this:

It's a squeezo strainer! My mom passed it along to me since she's not using it anymore. (side note? I'm more then a little shocked at the sticker price. But seeing as how mom used it for years and it's still in perfect shape, it's probably worth it... And it really is all metal, not a plastic piece in the whole thing except three rubber rings, which don't even need replacing)

So first I steamed the apples, I just cut them in half and put them in a pot with a bit of water at the bottom, and simmered for 5 minutes tops. Then, into the squeezo!

See?? See??? The lovely sauce all goes into one bowl and the skins, stems, seeds, and hard little core-y bits go the other way. BRILLIANT! I can't wait to make pasta sauce again next year...

I may have gotten a little carried away with the squeezo though.

I made almost a gallon of sauce. The squeezo does such a good job of separating the good bits and the icky bits that I got a gallon of sauce and 2-3 cups of waste. Only losers in this picture are the chickens (who get fewer scraps)

More socks!

2009-11-11T17:34:31Z

Finally! Some good photos of the socks I knit while I was in DC:

This is, of course, Leyburn. I loved this pattern and this yarn. But I feel a bit betrayed that they ganged up on me when I wasn't paying attention and decided to become socks for Neil instead of socks for me. But maybe it's just as well. This is a toe-up pattern using a pretty standard short row toe and heel. They're fun to work, but for my foot I don't think anything will ever beat the perfect fit of a flap and gusset sock. Neil (OTOH) has narrow heels and high insteps - and I've fooled around a few times with changing the flap and gusset to make socks fit him better. A standard heel flap uses half the sts in the sock, the best fit I've gotten for him so far used a few less then half the sts for the flap, but it still wasn't perfect. This short row heel seems to make a much smaller heel cup leaving a lot more sts for the instep. The fit on my foot is kinda wonky (partly the heel and partly that it's just all around too big for me) but I suspect this will fit Neil much better then a flap and gusset sock. So it was a learning experience, I can handle that. But, because this sock is so much bigger then I expected, I spent TWO days knitting it (well, and the toe for the next one) so at the end of the second day I stuffed the first and the toe for the second into my bag and moved on to something else.

Kai-Mei. I love this pattern, I'm less sure about the yarn. It was a gift, but I know I picked the colors out myself because it was from a wishlist I put together. Maybe I can blame it on a monitor where the color settings were a bit screwy? I'm going to over-dye it with onion peels once the socks are finished. The yellowy-brown of the dye the peels create should tone down everything. Hopefully the pink will become a browny-orange and the purple will become an olivey-green and that should all blend well with the yellowy-brown that will cover the white. "Hopefully" is the key word here, but since the yarn is machine washable wool it's unlikely I'll destroy the socks, and no matter what color they turn this first one fits like a dream. It was 3/4 done at the end of the third day, and the second one is already half way through the heel flap.

In other exciting news, I'm starting to advertise some of my things on Ravelry. Everything I've read from other designers says that Ravelry adds are really useful and really easy. The self service system is easy and flexible, and the bill comes at the end of the month after you've (hopefully) sold some patterns. And of course the target audience is self selecting - 500,000 people all interested in yarn, knitting, and crochet. It'll be an interesting experiment at the very least, and hopefully a really great tool. The hardest part was definitely doing the ad layout. These are the two banners I finally created:

Um, I don't know why LJ insists on making them slightly fuzzy. You should be able to click through to see their full size without that blur...

tying up loose ends

2009-11-10T18:31:12Z

After I got back from my conference I finished up a few projects:

Clapotis. It came out wonderfully! After binding off it was about 3 and a half feet long and I was worried.

But it blocked out to over 4 feet! Still short for a scarf but totally long enough to tie loosely in front and look pretty. I love the way the silk yarn makes such a crip yet drape-y fabric.

And Boyden Valley (Ice wine) mittens:

I was thinking these might go in the gift drawer, but I screwed up the second thumb. I forgot to work the opening stitches on a scrap yarn, so I resorted to going back and snipping the sts where the thumb should go - picking up the unraveled live stitches and knitting the thumb from there.

The problem? I put the thumb about half an inch higher then on the first mitten. They're still wearable but I wouldn't give these away (it's a touch uncomfortable) so I guess they're mine! They're still awfully pretty.

I have a few projects in progress I'll talk about later. For now they're all on hold while I knit an awesome slouchy lace beret.

Never say never

2009-11-09T16:16:07Z

One of the potential issues with having long hair (although not one I've dealt with much) is the possibility of people confronting you to donate your hair.

The NY Times did a pretty good article on hair donation awhile back.

Like I mentioned, donation isn't an issue I've dealt with much, but I've been prepared with a polite (no thank you) reply for years - just in case.

But today (right now actually) my sister is in surgery. Turns out her body has too much cerebral spinal fluid. This results in pressure on the brain - a bad thing. Less invasive methods haven't controlled the problem, so she has to have surgery, basically they'll install a drain to help control the fluid pressure. All this means she had to shave her head. She decided to donate her hair ahead of time, and she's asked us if we'd join for moral support. So my mom, my dad, and I are all donating hair in support for Kathy. I'm sending some of my hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths.

Neil gets extra bonus points from me because he's shaved his head in support.

bad cell phone photos

2009-11-04T01:24:28Z

my new phone takes much worse photos then my old phone did - which makes me even more glad to have a decent digital camera. But for now, this is what I've got:

My setup when flying (I even avoided spilling the tomato juice on the white lace). Not pictured is the cell phone masquerading as MP3 player with knitting podcast.

Half a sock. These were supposed to be for me, but this was the first time I measured it, and it's much too big. Oddly it's just the right size for Neil, lucky guy. This sock is now finished, but I'm thinking I may knit something else before I start the second, just for variety.

The conference it half finished, and I clearly won't be finishing extra socks. But again, that one pictured is bigger then I was expecting, which means it takes longer to knit. Also, see me surfing the web and posting instead of knitting in the evenings. wheee!

Sweet sweet internet

2009-11-03T01:47:36Z

So it turns out that rather then being internet-less on this trip I have a cute little net-book type thingy on loan (thanks mom!) I was going to give you some bad cell phone photos, but I can't seem to navigate to them for uploading, so you've been spared.

Traveling

2009-10-29T16:29:50Z

I hate traveling, and the stress of it is starting to get to me. But soon it will be over! In the mean time, some pluses:
1) I finished clapotis, but it's officially poor lighting season, and even with a decent camera I'm having a really hard time catching the jewel tones
2) I did get a decent picture of my cashmere cowl that goes with my mitts:

3) I now have three sets of matching knitwear. The cashmere mitts and cowl, the blue and white hat and scarf combo, and the orangey/pink hat and scarf pair. I love matching sets of knitwear, what do you think?

4) I have a bag of pink M&Ms here at my desk
5) My new (free) cellphone came from Verizon in time for me to take it on my trip.

Finally, I really do need help with my sock pattern choices, and no one is giving me any opinions! I don't even care if you knit or even look at the links. Vote early, vote often!

View Poll: sock poll

Working from stash

2009-10-27T16:33:39Z

I've been working from stash a lot recently. It's fulfilling to create something awesome without having to buy any ingredients (and better for those of us buying fire wood and oil for the winter and paying property taxes anyway) The bronte's mitts (and matching cowl, I haven't gotten a good picture of that one yet) were spun and knit from cashmere I stashed last spring. The socks I knit next week have the potential to put an actual dent in my sock yarn stash. Over the weekend I needed something simple to knit at a knitting get together, so I started this:

Clapotis. I'm only five years late to the party. (my cell phone washed those colors out, they're much brighter in person) Mine is a small scarf-sized one. I'm using 150 yards of handspun silk - the silk top entered my stash in 2007 (? I think so anyway) and I had it spun and plyed by spring 2008. This was the silk that I first learned to navajo ply for. That was Lara's suggestion, and it was she who planted the idea that the yarn would be good for a clapotis as well. When I recently dug the yarn out of my handspun stash I realized that my idea of plying (at the time) didn't involve adding any twists to the plies, but rather just aligning them next to each other and hoping they made friends. So I started this project by running the whole skein through my spindle again adding more twist to the plies and re-setting the twist. It made the thick-and-thin nature of the yarn much more consistent and made the pure silk much shinier and less fuzzy - so that's a win for me! And this pattern really is well written and a joy to knit. It's been bus knitting the last few days in spite of how simple it is (as I said to another friend 13059 ravelers can't all be wrong)

Last night I did a little cooking from the stash too. Not from the yarn stash though. I decided I needed to cook something new, and I wanted to use a few of the 40lbs of delicata that I'd pulled from the box because they had breaks in the skin. So I invented something new (is that even possible in cooking?) Here's the recipe for "squashed rice"

2 small/medium delicata
2 cups uncooked rice
4 cups water
1/4 tsp each of curry, ginger, sage
6-8 shakes of worcestershire sauce
salt and white pepper to taste

Cut the delicata in half, scoop out the seeds and chop into bite-sized-ish pieces. I leave the skins on my delicata, they're tasty.
Put the delicata, spices, worcestershire sauce, and water into a pan and bring to a boil. Allow to boil ~~while you finish emptying the dish washer~~ for about 5 minutes. Turn down to a simmer and add the rice. Cook until all the water is absorbed. Add salt and pepper to taste.

That's it! I'm sure black pepper would work just as well, but I was making a point of shaking things up and using the spices that had migrated to the back of our cabinet. I'm eating some just with butter right now for lunch and it's tasty, but it could also be served as a side dish with any number of lovely fall meals.

We served this under apple cheddar bratwursts. I just browned a red onion and several brats, then added some chopped apples and apple cider, simmered until everything was cooked and squished the apples a bit with a fork. (side note, these apples are crisp and sweet and just a bit tart and hold up really well to cooking and the flesh isn't all mealy raw - and I've been collecting them out of the ditch on the side of the road ever since the wind blew them all out of the tree last weekend. The un-tended, un-pruned, un-sprayed ancient tree on the side of the road with not another apple tree within 200 feet.) I put this mess on top of the rice and grated cheddar cheese over the whole thing. I worried for a moment that I shouldn't add the cheese because there might already be too much going on, but I was wrong. As we know, everything is better with cheddar cheese on it!

Unreasonable expectations

2009-10-26T22:06:54Z

I have a work conference coming up next week. The educational opportunity is good, I really don't look forward to eating restaurant food for a week, and overall I'll admit I prefer staying home to business travel. On the other hand, I reeeaaaalllly look forward to the available knitting time. As this is a national conference I prefer small projects I can hold in my lap, put down easily for note taking, and that don't require much attention. In other words, I knit a lot of socks. In fact, last year I finished a second sock, knit an entire pair, and started a forth sock all during one conference. This year I intend to knit a certain lace shawl during the flights there and back, so I really just need sock projects for the conference itself. Given that I knit 4 socks last year, and it's not unreasonable to think I might knit faster now then I did then, I think bringing 3 projects is totally reasonable. And of course I'd hate to be stranded in an airport without knitting, so I'll bring 4 projects, just in case.

All that being said, I have narrowed down my project choices to ELEVEN and I can't seem to choose just 4. So I'm leaving it up to you! My criteria are that the sock project be simple enough that I don't have to look at it or the pattern much, but I dislike plain stockinette socks. Patterns with 1-4 round repeats are great (and stockinette rounds don't count) and lace and cables are ok in small doses, but not all over.

I'm quite certain I'll be knitting some Leyburns. I've had the yarn chosen since I bought it at VT sheep and wool this fall. Here are the candidates for the other three slots: Pembrokshire Pathways, Hermione's Everyday Socks, Outside In, Froot Loop, Blackrose, and (because I just got the book last month) Glynis, Kai-Mei, Lindsay, Sam, and Sunshine from Sock Innovation.

So! Vote for your favorite pattern(s) choose up to 3, and I'll accept write-ins if they fit my conference knitting criteria! I'll chose yarn for the top three winners and knit as many of them as I can :-D

Also, if anyone is going to be in the Washington DC area next week and wants to meet up in the evening, I'd love to have an excuse to explore!

all about ME!

2009-10-23T17:00:33Z

1) I think I'm developing a reaction to something in some types of lip balm, but I'm still working on what. This summer some of them started making my lips feel more sore, almost blistery, and a bit rough (the opposite of what lip balm is supposed to do) At first I thought I'd gotten a sunburn on just my lips. It's taken a while of testing just one at a time but I've figured out I'm getting the reaction from burt's bees honey but not burt's bees mint flavored. The honey lip balm from the people selling honey at the farmer's market is bad too. But so is Badger ginger and lemon is out, so I don't think it's the honey ingredient (also, I can smear honey on my lips without trouble, ask me how I know) The only two that seem ok so far are the burt's bees mint and the burt's bees with a little color tint. Oh, and nutrogena lip gloss with moisturizer.
I could just stick to the one I know, but I like variety, so I'm trying others. I just got something from eos - I've never heard of them but they had a raspberry pomegranate flavor (I'm such a girl) I'll know in a few hours whether this is a problem one too.
1a) anyone want several (slightly used) honey lip balms?
1b) brownie points to anyone who can detect a trend

2) I'm considering cutting my hair - but not in a way anyone would notice. Right now I'm just approaching classic length aka the very bottom of my butt/top of my thighs. The original plan was to see how long it would grow. But I'm starting to get tired of sitting on it all the time. If I cut it I'd only take 4 or 5 inches off. It's still be long enough to accidentally tuck into the waistband of my underwear by accident.

3) It's supposed to rain a LOT this weekend, and I'm supposed to be taking some knitting photos. We'll see how that goes. Maybe it'll be a good chance to clean house, my house could really use it.

Design in progress

2009-10-21T16:13:21Z

At least one person has expressed interest, and since it amuses me too, I'm going to start posting about a design in progress. For those of you who aren't even going to read the rest of this, have a cute animal picture:

I think Jake and Moxie are secretly friends, I catch them like this a lot...

Ok? Onward!

The original idea for this design came ages ago. Neil was complaining about how even with a hat his ears were constantly cold. As a knitter I took that as a challenge, and whipped up a double knit hat in bulky wool:

Double knitting is a technique for creating a piece of knitted fabric that is two layers thick. Both the inner layer and outer layer are knit at the same time on a single set of needles. There are a few patterns out there for double knitting projects, but not many. So I decided to publish this pattern, I've even already listed it as a pattern on ravelry (which is part of why I've decided to talk about it so freely, the cat's already out of the bag)

The problem with the original hat was that it was TOO WARM even for Montgomery VT winters. Since warmth was the goal, it wasn't a huge problem, but it meant that maybe it wouldn't be a hat most people wanted to wear. Also in a bulky yarn the hat was about 26" around which made it way to big and with the colorwork pattern it was hard to size down. The original hat actually got given to a friend with a very large head (he was complaining to Neil about hats from stores being too small, it was a perfect match)

So keeping all that in mind I switched to a worsted weight yarn. But this brought out a new problem, the colors I had on hand didn't contrast enough for the pattern to show (plum and charcoal, very pretty, just not a good combination.) This is when the project went to the back of the line. Not just the back of my closet, being at the back of the line means I mostly forgot about it and even used the yarn for other things.

Then I got a wonderful offer of yarn support from knitpicks. Since the original hat was knit in their bulky wool of the andes yarn I thought their worsted weight yarn would be a good choice to give the hat a second try. Once I had the yarn I re-worked the chart for what I expected my new gauge to be (notice, I didn't try a gauge swatch, my folly, but then it's my design) I graphed out the chart in 3 sizes and cast on.

Unfortunately I didn't take into account that I have to fit ribbing evenly around the brim of the hat as well as fitting the chart evenly. So it came off the needles again almost instantly:

But with a little tweaking of ribbing size (I really wanted K4, P4 for a big squishy rib, but getting replicates of 8 to fit around the circumference of the hat in 3 sizes and with 3 different color charts was Not Going To Work - to translate: Designing involves Math) I got something that would work. I cast on a second time, and after knitting two inches in double knit ribbing I realized that my gauge wasn't even close to what I was expecting and this was becoming a double-knit lampshade, not a hat. So I ripped out again. Keep in mind that since this is a double layered fabric each cast on was between 160 and 180 sts - just for a hat... I did some more math (just consider that second try a really big gauge swatch, it's all good) and I think this third start is really going to work, at least until I get to the chart...

no impact week

2009-10-19T17:00:24Z

I found out about this from my mom - the Huffington Post is having a No Impact Week in conjunction with the climate meetings in Copenhagen. I haven't read all about it so I don't have all the details, but reading through their good ideas pdf got me pretty excited. Seriously, when was the last time you heard anyone besides me talking about divacups, and cutting up t-shirts and using the rags instead of paper towels and tissues? I agree with Bill McKibben (I'll totally admit I read his post because I recognized his name from VPR) that this wouldn't have been possible a few years ago, I hope that having such ideas in a more mainstream forum really will mean progress.

Luscious

2009-10-18T16:56:35Z

I'm really into the quick knits these days! This weekend I finished (and started) my bronte mitts:

They're knit out of my handspun, fingering weight cashmere. I followed the pattern almost exactly as written. I did go down a needle size to US 3's since I wasn't holding the yarn double. And I only picked up 15 sts for the thumbs so I could continue the garter stitch lines up the thumb in the same pattern as the hands.

The best part of this project?

Leftover Cashmere.

The skein that measured 69 yards gave me 1 whole mitt and 1/3 of the second. It's possible going down the needle size made the gloves shorter then designed... Anyway I think I used about 105 yards total for this pair which means I should have 71 yards left. I'm thinking of making a short cowl in the same lace pattern. It would probably only be 4ish inches long, but I think it'd be a cute way to use up the rest of the cashmere (and I want to wear it around my neck, it's SO SOFT)

How to make a tomato skin itself

2009-10-16T16:26:18Z

I've talked before about my canning escapades. This year's pasta sauce was especially exciting! How could pasta sauce be exciting? Well many farms across vermont lost their tomato crops. Between the horrible rain and the late blight my own tomatoes all shriveled and died even my CSA didn't have extra tomatoes to sell. But finally I found a farm selling tomatoes, and I managed to get 30 pounds of organic tomatoes for $35. Some of them were considered seconds:

But they look fine to me!

I don't have one of those fancy food mills that grinds and separates out the seeds and skin all at once. Every year around this time I swear I'm going to get one... This year I finally perfected the dipping in hot water technique.

See? The tomato is practically jumping out of its skin!

You have to have the water at a rolling boil FIRST. Then you drop the tomatoes in just until the skins split. I've started pricking them before putting them in because once in awhile the skins just don't split and the tomato gets soft. Really, you only want to leave them in the water for about 30 seconds - not even long enough for it to get back up to a boil.

And, the center is still cool, which is nice for me since the next step is to cut it in half and scoop out the seeds, much easier to do when I'm not burning my fingers at the same time. I found treating the tomato a bit like a grapefruit worked best for getting all the seeds out of each wedge shaped hollow while preserving as much flesh and juice as possible.

I threw them all into Neil's brew kettle and smashed at them a bit with the potato smasher. Then the simmering began. I simmered all of the tomatoes and flesh, along with a bottle of wine.

The fresh herbs, onion, and garlic got chopped very fine and sauteed lightly before going into the pot.

And I ground the dried herbs up and added them:

The final result? 17 pints of pasta sauce put up in my cabinet! That'll last us awhile, although certainly not all winter.

Where'd the time go?

2009-10-14T16:48:43Z

I had a long weekend and it seems to have eaten up more then it's fair share of time. So let's review what I got done!

I'm just about done with gardening for the winter:

But that's not my harvest. Nope, someday I hope to get a haul like that from the garden, but this is a photo of the storage crops my local farm stand was selling. I think Foote Brook Farm actually the closest farm to us. They're all organic, and it turns out they sell winter storage crops in bulk. I love it. There's no good scale in this photo unless you know how big my kitchen island is. This is 50lbs of potatoes, 40lb pumpkins, 40lbs delecatas, 25lbs carrots, and 40lbs tomatos. The tomatoes were a real score because most farms in the area barely have enough for themselves due to blight. I'd pretty much given up making pasta sauce this year, until I found these! More on the pasta sauce later. I will highly recommend Seeds of Change for (among other things) they're great hints on long term storage of your autumn harvest. Or at least I think I recommend them. I'll let you know how things work out. After all, picking up 50lbs of organic potatos for $38 is a steal of a deal, but only if they last long enough for us to eat them all...

I also harvested the last of my beans, they're still not dry enough for shelling, so I have cookie sheets of beans all over my living room for the next week... I split my alpine strawberry plants up and spread them out. The domestic crowns I planted last spring look pretty good too. It's going to be a massive strawberry bed someday, but hopefully by next year it'll be big enough for more then just grazing on handfuls of strawberries (not that there's anything wrong with that either!)

While I was out in the garden I had to run in and grab my camera. The setting sun was shining in under the clouds and painting the already orange hillside a glowing shade of gold:

Which the camera barely catches. Oh well. It totally botched the shot of the snow squall on the same hillside about 10 minutes later, so I'll spare you that photo. This was also the weekend I stood around being the cheerleader for Neil while he puts in the storm windows. I'm sure I could do it if I had to, but he's much better at getting them in without pinching his fingers or dropping them - and with giant sheets of glass dropping them is really frowned on...

Knitting, lots of knitting. In fact knitting took up most of my time this weekend, and I'm ok with that. I took a break from the cabled hat that was causing me so much grief, and knit a mitten:

It's an icewine mitten, in sport weight yarn (coopworth, from the sheep and wool festival) I changed the cuff from ribbing to braids and snowflakes, and did the cuff on size 1 needles. Then I moved up to size 2 for the hand. It was a bit tight, so I blocked it before starting the second, and that make it just perfect! I blocked it over a tall skinny honey jar that's just over 8" around. This stretched the floats out and evened the stitches so perfectly. Someday I'll knit the mate.

I finally knit Verity:

To go with the Just enough ruffles scarf I made last spring:

It's warm and squooshy, the handspun white has a lovely texture. I also managed to save almost, but not quite, blue yarn for the hatband. It's knit back and forth binding off the hat sts at the end. And I ran out with this many sts left:

Of course this is some blue I kool-aid dyed and spun as a batch months ago. There's no chance of having any more that matches. Luckly there's a tab that overlaps so I just finished up with white yarn and the tab was just long enough to hide the little white square.

So yeah, knitting took up a lot of my weekend. Knitting and also writing up knitting patterns and taking knitting pattern photos, and some knitting pattern charts. All that I and still need to do some seious knitting pattern layout. But soon, there will be more knitting patterns, so that's good.

foiled again (and again)

2009-10-08T15:35:02Z

So that hat, it's still not working, but I have another idea that I really think will work this time. I just need to re-work the lower portions of the chart. I should note that I'm not re-knitting an entire hat here, but I've just been re-knitting the decrease portion. Furthermore I've been just re-knitting the top 5-10 rows of the decrease portion for the last five or six tries. But for my next attempt I need to re-knit the whole crown (still not the whole hat) so I'm putting the project in the time-out closet until this weekend when I can sit down and focus on try 13.

After fussing with the hat last night I was so fed up I spun instead of knitting:

This white will (hopefully) combine with some blue I dyed from the same fiber, and make Ysolda's Verity hat. There's a really solid chance this hat will be my quick knitting fix as soon as the yarn is dry, because even my attempts at getting a quick knitting fix are being foiled right now, allow me to demonstrate:

The sleeves for the sweater I'm knitting need two needles, size 7dpns for the cuff (I don't own any, they were "borrowed" by a "friend" who I haven't spoken to in months now) and size 8dpns (which are in the closet with the hat I'm not speaking to)

But it's ok, because I have cashmere. Which will become bronte's mitts(on ravelry):

The good news is the pattern calls for over 300 yards because it's written holding a sock yarn and a fuzzy yarn double. So I can totally knit these to full length with just my cashmere. The bad news is I want smaller needles then the pattern calls for because I'm not holding any yarn double. And my size 3dpns? They're in a sock project right now.

The sock project in question could be a quick fix, after all the second sock just needed a gusset and toe. So after being foiled by Bronte's mitts this morning i snipped the contrasting heel yarn and picked up some gusset stitches. When I knit down to the bottom of the heel I discovered a slight problem. I've knit the flap, but I haven't turned the heel yet. So now I'm going to have to re-join the yarn, turn the heel, and pick those stitches up again.

It's ok, maybe I'll try these icewine mittens, which I got yarn for at the sheep and wool festival. But the pattern calls for worsted weight yarn on size 2 needles (those are some DENSE mittens) And the yarn I got is sport weight yarn, so I need to re-work the chart to add a touch of width. It's no longer a quick fix when you need to re-work an entire mitten chart.

I know all knitters go through this once in awhile, this thing where nothing works out the way you expect. I guess I should just be glad that (most) of my problems are showing up at the beginning of a project and not at the very end after I've put in lots of hard work, right?

frustrating

2009-10-07T20:22:43Z

I'm beginning to get frustrated with a cabled hat I'm designing (hopefully to self-publish!) I've now knit the cable 11 times. I really think I've learned something these last 2 times though, and hopefully 12th time's the charm (I said that about 3rd, 5th, and 9th times though...)

I kinda wish I'd taken pictures of each try, since each one has been a little different, it would have made an interesting sequence (hint, each one has not been better then the last, although the two most recent have been the best so far) It helped a lot after the 8th try when I realized I had a whole extra cable cross in every repeat...

Urgh, wish me luck! The finished project looks so good in my head, now it's a matter of getting it there in real life.

VT S&W Festival

2009-10-05T16:23:43Z

I had a great day at the VT sheep and wool festival on Saturday. It was a rainy day with a lot of drizzle and more then a little all out rain but my friend and I had pretty good timing and managed to be in buildings already any time we heard the rain begin.

The festival was at the tunbridge fairgrounds this year, which were beautiful (in a misty, and muddy, sort of way)

The vendors were almost all indoors (I felt really sorry for the few who had only their pop-up tents to keep them dry) And the animals were all in nice dry barns. I had a giant maple creemee in spite of the cold (they were only serving one sized creemee, huge) And I pet a cashmere goat! (and picked up the farmer's card, in case someday I want a cashmere goat of my own) It was wet, so I didn't take many pictures, but I did get my camera out for the Ravelry meetup in the evening:

We got a picture of everyone wearing handmade garments:

and of everyone's hand-knit socks:

Overall it was a wonderful day in spite of the rain. And it encouraged me to finally finish spinning the cashmere I picked up at the NH sheep and wool festival this spring:

Here it's hanging to dry after I set the twist. Cashmere can bloom a lot during the setting of the twist, which also causes the yarn strand to be shorter. I measured the length of the skeins after setting the twist to make sure I knew my yardage, and a good thing too! my niddy-noddy is 72" around, but these skeins post-twist-setting were only 62" around! So I have just 176 yards of fingering weight cashmere. I'm going to find a lovely, lacy pattern for fingerless gloves for this (I think)

And from the festival I picked up 3 skeins of sock yarn (I'm thinking colorwork with the blue and green ones) plus two skeins of sport weight coopworth (also thinking colorwork, apparently I want to start some colorwork projects) plus some pretty mill ends mystery fiber (it's really soft and nicely springy)

After spinning I made tries number 7 and 8 on a cabled hat pattern I'm trying to design. The pattern is so clear in my head, but getting the cables to do what I want is becoming frustrating...

Sunday was actually a nice day (what is that burning ball of brightness in the sky called? sun?) So I went out into my garden to do some cleanup. I've pulled all the dead plants (and weeds) from the squash, broccoli, lettuce and tomato beds, and I pulled 2 rows of corn stalks (some of which I bunched up for decoration around the outside of my home) Bonuses of the winter cleanup were finding a domesticated strawberry plant in the squash bed, along with bajillions of little tiny garlic bulbs. I think this is a nice side effect of dumping the kitchen compost right into the garden!

Preparing

2009-10-02T16:21:57Z

Last evening I started to put the garden to bed. I picked my squashes - which made me feel like less of a failed gardener!

Although the butternuts and pumpkins are teeny. I think that's due to the lousy growing season. The sweet dumplings I grew from saved seed appear to be true to form (the white ones) so yay! And the vigorous volunteer appears to have been a hybrid, they're the green ones speckled with thin yellow lines (and orange bottoms) I'll be interested to see how they taste. I also re-found a volunteer bean plant that I thought the squashes had shaded to death (not dead!) I suspect it grew from one of the many wrinkly beans I didn't cook for dinner some night last winter. I'm contemplating harvesting the seeds to grow next year instead of to eat, since it seems to be such a hardy little bean variety.

Along with pulling the squash vines I pulled the lettuce bed and started in on the corn. If it's not actively raining when I get home tonight I'll work in the garden some more. I need to pick up some garlic soon to seed in for next year. I also plugged in the chicken coop timer. We've been getting 2 or 3 eggs a day for awhile and the hens are (some more clearly then others) molting. I hope that with the added light they'll get back to laying sooner then they did last year. (really I should remember to plug the light in at the beginning of september)

This weekend I'm going down the the VT sheep and wool festival. Saturday looks like it'll be cloudy and rainy, but as the friend I'm driving down with said "the weather won't matter, we'll be high on wool fumes!" Neil's working that evening, so I have to be home in time for the animals' dinners.

And now, I'm going to sit in the sunshine before the clouds roll in!