Ramblings

bad cell phone photos

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:24:28 GMT

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

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:47:36 GMT

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

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:29:50 GMT

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

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:33:39 GMT

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

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:06:54 GMT

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!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:33 GMT

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

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:13:21 GMT

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

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:00:24 GMT

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

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:56:35 GMT

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

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:26:18 GMT

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?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:48:43 GMT

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)

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:35:02 GMT

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

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:22:43 GMT

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

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:23:43 GMT

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

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:21:57 GMT

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!

tactical error

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:20:34 GMT

I finished up to the armscye shaping of the body of the 2nd rogue sweater I'm knitting this morning on the bus. Now I need to knit 2 sleeves, I'm going to do this in the round instead of flat and then join them and work all the sleeve cap and shoulder shaping at once.

Unfortunately for my ride home, I don't have my DPNs so I can't start the sleeves. And because the sweater is in its own, big, knitting bag I don't even have a backup knitting project (I always carry a backup, for reasons just such as this!) With no DPNs and no backup project I have Nothing. To. Knit. on the bus ride home.

I know, I'm scared too.

Waiting

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:31:01 GMT

I go through spells where I don't feel like I'm a "real" designer. Mostly this happens when I'm not actively communicating with anyone about anything upcoming. It's bad enough when that's because I'm just not working on anything of my own (which is fine sometimes) but it gets much worse when I'm working on several things, but it's all just me, and nothing's been submitted yet, and I'm working in a vacuum, and what if it all gets rejected because everyone thinks I'm a hack? I wonder if this feeling will go away when I have more then 1 knitty pattern and 5 self-designed patterns, but I suspect it won't.

Waiting is another whole kind of hard. Right now I'm waiting to hear back on 4 different designs submitted to 4 different places (these are the worst). I'm waiting on a 5th project where I've done everything I can and it's out of my hands now. I'm waiting on some yarn that needs to arrive for a 6th different project. And I suppose I could say I'm waiting for myself to finish knitting a 7th (and 8th that hasn't been started yet) projects so that I can get them moved on to the next steps.

Waiting, ick.

Doing nothing isn't my strong suit

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:54:44 GMT

I had a great weekend. Saturday was a perfectly beautiful fall day, the kind of day that gets me raving like a lunatic about that peticular shade of blue sky that I swear only happens on fall days when the trees are red and there are no clouds. We spent the morning running errands around town, including introducing ourselves at a new dairy farm - this one sells milk year round (the milk from our neighbors is wonderful, but his two milkers dry up soon, and we don't want to go back to store bought milk) Neil impressed me by cleaning the chimney himself (we may have the easiest-to-clean chimney ever) Then I joined Neil on a trip into the big city where we walked up and down church street and I was shocked by the number of "new" stores on that street. I guess I really haven't been into Burlington in quite a while.

Sunday was the complete opposite, rainy, dreary, chilly. That morning I declared that I would do nothing but sit on the couch and knit. And yet, by the end of the day I'd also baked cookies, frozen corn, and made and frozen pesto. I would sit for awhile, but then I'd get antsy and need to DO SOMETHING. Then I'd try to sit again, but the laziness kept wearing off. I did get quite a bit of knitting done.

The shawl for my mom is moving along. It looks like a white lumpy mass (all lace is lumpy and shapeless, no real surprise) I'm already into the edging chart, but since the "edging" takes up 45-65% of the yarn I suspect I'm only about halfway done. About 10 rows back I counted and had 345 stitches in a row - and each one is a little longer then the one before it...

The closeup is the best shot, trust me. Also, look at the cute little nupps! (those are the rounded clumps of stitches, they're so fun to work)

I also worked on the endless blanket, I've finished the 7th row! This means I'm now 11.2% done (I was about 10% done at the end of the 6th row...)

See how it stretches on forever? That's exactly how it feels when I'm knitting on it, in a good way of course...

fighting back

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:15:09 GMT

Monday night I started to feel that icky scratchiness at the back of my throat that indicated to me a cold of some kind was incoming. I'm having a pretty busy week so when Neil recommended Zicam (he swears by the stuff) I figured it was worth a try. I'm combining it with echinacea in the evenings, airborne once in awhile, and lots of tea with raw honey in it.

I can't say whether it's due to any of this, my immune system, or the cold not being a bad as it felt (and it felt like it was gonna be bad that first night) but I seem to be holding it at bay! The soreness in my throat is still there, but it hasn't gotten worse, and I'm sneezing rarely.

Most of the stuff I'm taking tastes nasty, but I have a huge fondness for Stash blueberry tea with honey in it. It's like drinking blueberries smothered in honey - and not fake blueberry flavoring either. It's pretty good tea alone or with a touch of sugar, but the honey really brings it to life!

long term knitting

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:12 GMT

We've been having some of the warmest sunniest weather (that's only a little bit of an exaggeration) since May this week - which is odd since it's the first day of autumn. Maybe the fact that it was 60 overnight (craziness) is why I've been feeling rather un-inspired to work on any projects in the evening. Not that I'm uninspired overall, I feel a bit like I have designs falling out of my ears the last few weeks, it's actually getting the knitting done that keeps holding me up.

Of course what that means is I'm making regular progress on the easier things. The square sock blanket has become my evening knitting of choice for the last week. And at about 3.5 squares a night I estimate it'll only be another 416 nights before I finish it (not including knitting on the edging) So, given my habit of stuffing a project to the back of the closet for months at a time I predict this blanket will be done in (if I'm lucky) 3 years. Wheee........

done and not done

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:11:51 GMT

My MIL didn't come up for a visit this weekend, so I ended up with a surprise! free weekend to do stuff. And yet I don't feel like I got nearly as much done as I wanted too...

I picked my dry beans and soybeans and the last harvest of green beans from the garden. And I got all those processed, either shelled and on the dehydrator, or blanched and in the freezer. But I didn't get the corn or the beets from our CSA put up (blanched and frozen is the goal for the corn while beets involve getting the pressure canner up and running)

I did get a fair amount of knitting time, but, oops, I ended up working on a brand new project. It's a new design, and it needs some tweaking, but I'm hoping to self publish it once it's done.

Oh and sewing! My local quilting store is going out of business (which makes me sad) but I picked up some nice fabrics which I'm hoping to turn into some fairly color-neutral tops to wear under my colorful handknit sweaters. But then I ended up sewing a shirt from a different piece of fabric I already had. And I didn't get the apron I said I'd make for a friend sewn either.

This shirt started the weekend as a size 4 (seriously, I think the waistband was about 20 inches around) calf length skirt. The fabric came from a friend's fabric stash (that's be the friend I'm making an apron for, in exchange for this fabric and a few other pieces) It's rayon, and the pieces were all cut on the bias which gives them quite a bit more drape then woven fabric otherwise has, and makes it just a touch stretchier. For the shape of the pieces I started with the mock ups I made of a princess seamed blouse I'd taken apart to duplicate more then 2 years ago. But this top has no darts, different lengths, widths, sleeves, and a different neckline. So pretty much all I duplicated was the armscye shaping...

With the bias stretch I could make the top fairly fitted without needing any buttons or zippers. The waist is exactly my bust measurement, but it doesn't feel tight at all when putting it on.

I wanted a button closure on the back in case the neckline was too narrow, I needn't have worried, it fits over my head even with the button done. The whole thing was done in an afternoon. It's just 4 pieces (front, back, and two sleeves) sewn together with no fancy bits. The hardest part was putting the facing on the neckline, and trying to find ribbon for a button loop that matched the fabric. Surprisingly I had a perfect, olive colored button so that part was easy.

While I had a great weekend I'm left feeling like I have so much to do. My list for this evening includes blanching because the corn really can't sit any longer. I'm trying to convince myself to put canning off to next weekend. The beets will be fine. I'd like to make some bread, if I get home in time to start it before the dogs' walk. And I need to do laundry, the underwear situation is getting desperate.

ideas

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:02:56 GMT

Twice today I've had an Idea (with a capital I) and I can't explain why they're coming to me today, hopefully(?) it's not some kind of a sign. These are Ideas of other ways to pay the mortgage. I've always said when I grow up I want to be a goat farmer* and I've always figured that along with making cheese and selling fiber I could do other things, design knitted stuff, run a doggy daycare (I suspect there's seriously good money in this, assuming you have regular customers, good insurance, and don't actually need to leave the property anyway)

Ok yes, these ideas are clearly all pipe dreams right now, and they'd take a lot of work, and maybe some extra hours in the day, and probably a professional accountant to figure out the taxes on the different fronts every april, and YES I know how much work being self employed is and how little money it actually brings in sometimes, seriously, that's why I work for the state right now anyway. Ok, now that I've gotten that mini-rant out of my system...

This morning on the bus I thought to myself "why doesn't anyone do value added CSAs? I mean, there are lots of veggie CSAs and frequently you get cheese, or a jar of jam in the spring, or a little something extra along with. But what about a weekly share that consisted of a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a jar of preserves (it'd rotate, jam, pickles, chutneys, etc..) a homemade dessert (brownies one week, pie the next, etc) and maybe a savory jar too (a jar of salad dressing, BBQ sauce, flavored vinegars) Wouldn't that be awesome? And while my veggie growing skills aren't on par with real farmers (see the sad state of my garden this year, thank God for the CSA veggies overflowing from my fridge) my kitchen skills are pretty good. I make awesome breads - sandwich and artisnal, and I haven't had one completely fail on me in a year (watch, the next one will) We've given up buying salad dressing because my vinegarettes and Neil's creamy dressings are WAY better. Oh, and Neil makes ridiculously good mother sauce for BBQ as well. Sure not all our ingredients are locally sourced, but I bet with a bit of networking most of them could be...

The second idea was completely un-related, and not really a new idea of my own. But I was reading Kristina's blog and she linked to a clothing designer on etsy. And it struck me - hey! I could do that! I've had a handful of people admire the things I've sewn in the past (and one suggest outright that's she'd buy my stuff) But clothing design is complicated. Do you sew a handful of outfits and try to sell them at an indie store? How do you handle the different sizes that people come in, and the overhead, and the possibility that you put all that time and effort in and either no one loves it, or it's the wrong size for the person who does love it? Right, etsy! Make just one garment in your model size, and sew things AFTER they're ordered. Brilliant.

So, add those things to the list of stuff I can do when I grow up.

ETA: also, you can put "spelling" on the list of things I'll never be able to do no matter how much I grow up. I just fixed 3 mistakes, but I can't guarantee they're all gone.

*I have this crazy idea in my head that at my 10 year high school reunion I can say "Why yes, I'm a forensic chemist and a (backup) CODIS Admin for an entire state, how's your life going?" and then at the 20 year reunion I can say "why yes, I'm a goat farmer, how's your life going?" with equal amounts of pride. In my dream this causes people's heads to spin and wonder exactly what happened to me anyway. Someone pointed out once that this requires people remember what I was doing 10 years before without meeting up with me anywhere in the middle. Details, details...

Busy

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:40:35 GMT

It's tricky when you're busy, and don't have internet at home, to keep up to date on everything. So here's a rapid-fire summary:

On the farm:
The tomatoes all died of blight. They went from healthy to dead over the course of a week. The first 4 days just the bottom leaves were brown, then in 2 days the entire plants died. It was sad to watch and I'm feeling very defeated in the garden. Luckily it's just the dried beans, cabbage and winter squash waiting left, so they can handle my moping and ignoring them for awhile.

Mama blackbeard still has all 11 babies. I haven't got a clue how she keeps track of them all. We have a wanderlust chicken, I'm pretty sure she's not nesting, but she's also not coming in to sleep at night. I don't know if she survived the weekend or not.

Weekend:
We went to NH to visit my family. Good times and good cake were had by all (my birthday and my future brother in law's birthday were both last week)

We went on several very nice hikes, and Neil seems to have managed to wash himself carefully enough after a walk through a patch of poison ivy that so far he doesn't have a rash.

Knitting:
Beginning of last week I finally finished Neil's sweater, this one was almost a year in the making (with lots of closet time)

I re-knit the yoke 3 times and it's still not perfect, but it's pretty good and Neil really likes it and I really like that he wears it so much.

End of last week I finished some crazy cabled blue socks

The Ornette pattern from Cookie A. Brilliant.

And I cast on for a lace shawl

It's getting bigger quickly. This one is for mom!

And I'm working on a sweater

It'll be the second rogue I've knit, and I almost never knit the same pattern twice. But I've learned so much about knitting since my first rogue. This one is for a friend who provided the yarn as well as a lot of comfort and understanding to me late last fall.

And I have this strange urge to cast on about 3 different sock patterns. This always happens when one sock pattern gets finished. Socks want to breed like rabbits, but my hands only knit so fast.

I also have 3 other sweaters I want to knit, and yarn for 2 of them in my stash. The next two will probably be Ruby Red and Wisteria which are ready to go as soon as I figure out how to extend the day (currently I'm trying the "sleeping less" approach)

I also have the yarn for OWLS...

I really want to knit Luminen, but I need to find the yarn first, and with property taxes due next month there really isn't any yarn money in the budget. Clearly this is why I have a stash. Of course my stash could keep me knitting for over a year, but I haven't got enough of any one color for Luminen.

And in the stash world - I did get yarn money for my birthday! And I got more sock yarn. Don't ask about the Luminen yarn I just mentioned wanting. It'll just have to wait. Clearly I have enough other projects to keep me going for awhile anyway.

So in summary, the summer gardening push is winding down which is good because I have a serious case of startitis going on. And it's monday. At least that means lots of bus knitting time ahead.

Camping story

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:25:17 GMT

Somewhere around the middle of last week Neil and I decided we wanted to go camping over the long weekend. Unfortunately hundreds of other people clearly had the same idea. We quickly scaled back from the idea of camping in the Adirondacks to just hoping to find an available camp site here in VT.

Thursday VT State Parks on facebook (why yes, I follow the state parks on facebook) posted a link showing only a handful of campgrounds had any available sites at all. Friday Neil was going to Marshfield anyway so he went over to the New Discovery campsite and booked us the second to last available site! As he was walking away he heard someone reserve the last one over the phone...

Then he went home and started packing, I got home after work, collected some clothes and some knitting and we headed out. We got to the campsite after dark, but since Neil had already setup the tent it was no big deal. We got our campfire going, made dinner, and settled in for the evening. Well, we humans settled in, the dogs were on unfamiliar territory in the dark and understandably paced most of the evening. At bedtime they refused to settle down in the tent, so they slept in the giant, portable dog crate that is the subaru. (you may laugh, but these boys LOVE their subaru, sometimes at home we just leave the doors open so they can crawl in and take naps)

We had a great weekend. Saturday and Sunday both started out with after-breakfast hikes. Then after lunch both days we went canoeing. The Groton state forest is so full of lakes and trails that we didn't repeat anything all weekend. In the evenings we were all exhausted (dogs and humans) and after some campfire, dinner, and s'mores time we turned in early. After a bit of exploring and seeing their weekend home the boys were much happier in the dark, and even curled up to sleep with us in the tent! Jake slept on our feet (keeping our toes warm) while Reggie slept in the rain-flap awning (keeping guard) Where they slept in the tent really says everything about their two personalities. I'm excited because their willingness to sleep in the tent means we could, theoretically, take them on backpacking trips which would be their favorite kind of vacation ever as far as I can tell (they love hiking and really aren't fans of the canoe)

Monday we had another morning hike before packing up the campsite and heading home. It was a great weekend, the weather was gorgeous, and we even managed to forget very little. The mess kit (but we had a cast iron pan and the coffee maker) and the camera. Oops!

Creemee

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:27:53 GMT

I'm releasing another free pattern, meet Creemee:

A one-row, reversible, garter rib scarf with blocks of color perfect for showing off special hand spun fibers. The blocks of color allow you to use as much or as little handspun as they want. Commercial yarns can be chosen for the other blocks. The scarf pattern itself is quite simple however I've included several tips for minimizing leftover singles during spinning and for minimizing leftover scraps of yarn while knitting are included.

The PDF for this pattern is available for download now. Once again this is made possible by the wonderful folks over at Ravelry, but you don't have to be a member to download!

I got some soft, naturally chocolate colored merino at a farmers’ market last summer. It was so luscious I bought it all on the spot without thinking. When I got it home I realized that “all” was a little less then 3 ounces. Not wanting to spin up another single skein that would not be enough for a knitting project I decided I needed to find a way to stretch the fiber further.
Enter the white merino I always have on hand for dying projects. The two undyed fibers complimented each other so nicely I decided to try combining them. As I was plying my first two singles together – one white and one brown – it reminded me of a creemee slowly twisting out of the machine. Once I had all my yarn plyed I designed a simple, cozy scarf to show off the texture and variations of the three handspun yarns – chocolate, vanilla, and twist.
Another great benefit of this scarf is that if you only have a little handspun, and you don’t want to spin up yards and yards of plain white, you can buy commercial solid and marled yarns to complement without worrying too much about matching anything exactly.

And remember, just because it's called Creemee this scarf is not food.