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!

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!


Poll #1478020 sock poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Which socks should I knit at the conference?

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!

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!

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...

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)

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.

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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........

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.

Yesterday I wasn't feeling very well so I took a sick day.  It was pretty productive as sick days go, though.  I sat on the couch with my book (Omnivore's Dilemma - highly recommended)  and my knitting.


Chapeau Marnier from Knitty.  I knit it out of the handspun I was spinning during the Tour de Fleece.  It's perfect for handspun, it's pretty, but not too complicated.  I have 30 or 40 yards left too, enough for either a very small project like wrist warmers, or maybe a few squares in the never-ending sock yarn blanket.  The yarn is an alpaca/bamboo blend, so it's drape-y more then stretchy, but for a fitted hat this doesn't matter too much - and it means that this hat has exactly zero itch!


I really love how the ribbon finishes the project so nicely.  I kinda wanted a chocolate brown ribbon, but the burgundy one was already in my ribbon stash and it matches the yarn so well!

In the afternoon I was feeling a little better.  Also I had just finished reading about an experiment done on two blackberry patches grown in the same soil and sunlight one with conventional growing practices and one with organic growing practices.  Turns out the organic blackberries had more micronutrients (flavonoids etc...) then the conventional ones.  The people who did the study were still looking into exactly why.

Anyway, all this reminded me that I had a quart of wild blackberries that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge a week and a half ago.  (bad sign, right?  blackberries really don't last that long) but when I pulled the container out I discovered only a handful of moldy berries.  Some more were soft, but for pie, who cares?  So I made pie.


I even baked the crust first, because the berries were very juicy.


And I made a lattice work pie.  Usually I just cheat and mix the dough right in the pie dish, and squish it down into the dish rather then rolling it out.  But this time I decided to roll out the crust, and since I was doing that anyway, why not really do it up fancy?  This pie has a touch of ginger in it.  Cinnamon is common for fruit pies but I find ginger once in awhile keeps things interesting.


And I had extra crust, so I made some raisin custardy tartlets.  I had a recipe in mind, but pretty much just made these up.  A handful of raisins in each, then I mixed an egg, a handful of sugar, a dollop of molasses, a squirt of lemon juice, and pinch of cinnamon.  They worked out perfectly, I ate two as soon as they cooled and only barely held off on eating the third so Neil could try it.

Oh, and our best mama blackbeard has been rescued from the woods (rescued is my term, she was quite cranky to be removed from her carefully secluded nest)  This time she hatched ELEVEN (that's 11) baby chickens.  I tried to take pictures with the good camera, but somehow the files went corrupt.  No kidding.  The pictures I took before (pie pictures) worked out and the pictures I took after (hat pictures) all worked.  But the chicken pictures didn't just come out blurry, but the computer couldn't read the files.  And then I put the chip in the camera, and it can't read them either.  And then I tried to take a picture with my camera phone this morning, and that died while I was trying.  So now i'm formulating a claim about mama blackbeard being impossible to photo like some kind of mythical chicken-beast.  It's the only logical explanation, right?

And I am feeling better today, so that's nice.  Hopefully Neil and I can find a nice place to camp this weekend.

Over the weekend it got chilly, and it was 41 when I woke up this morning!  The weather people promise it will warm up again, but I don't really mind the crispness in the air - I like autumn.  Last night I made bread again:

I love when it comes out this perfectly (hint: it doesn't always - last time was tasty but it was also only half this size and a bit dense)  I used the aramanth again - the flavor is wonderful.

I also made a delicious dish that I'm calling (from now on) VT harvest curry.  The original recipe is called Country Captain in the newer Joy of Cooking model, and while I'm sure that version is quite tasty I've never made it.  The recipe calls for a lot of different ingredients and spices (raisins, onion, garlic, tomatoes, nutmeg, cloves, brown sugar, etc...)  Which all get simmered together.  Reading through the list I realized that everything except the tomatoes was already in a jar of my chutney.  So rather then all that crazy chopping, simmering, and stirring my version goes something along the lines of "Brown chicken, dump in jar of chutney and chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned) simmer just until soft"  It's so quick and so delicious.  The original recipe also doesn't have apples in it, which is a huge oversight in my opinion, because my way is great!  We ate it too quickly for me to take a picture.

I "finished" Neil's sweater a second time.  And for a second time I got to the end and realized I'd screwed up the neck shaping.  Last time I didn't decrease enough, this time I decreased too much, too quickly.  I'm going to have to rip it out again.  I'm trying to resist the urge to stuff it back into the closet.  I know Neil really wants to actually wear it this season...

I am on a finishing roll! It helps that I'm focusing on projects that I started early last spring and then stuffed in my closet for various reasons. Finishing a project goes much faster when it's already 85% done...



This one is Eleonora from Knitting Nonstop. The yarn is Jewel sock yarn from Mocha's Fiber Designs. I got it at NH Sheep and Wool this spring and haven't stopped talking about it since. It was THE YARN that I was looking for. It met every requirement I wanted, and I snapped it up so fast I amazed even myself.

As usual I changed a few things. I knit the cuffs single stranded on size 3 needles instead of holding the yarn double and using size 4's. I really wanted the lace to be light and airy and not too heavy for the light weight fabric. Because of these changes I followed the size small cuff directions, then changed down to the XS for the sleeves. That's because this is technically a shrug - which means it's just a set of sleeves and the back of a sweater. Since there's no front I didn't have to make any accommodations for my bust.



I'm not normally a shrug person. You might have noticed - I tend to make my tops hip length. I don't like to tuck things in and I don't like to have my midriff show. But this one called to me as soon as I saw it. That's not unusual, but when I see a pattern, like it, and find myself thinking about it still days later I know I need to go buy the pattern. So I did. I feel only a little odd wearing it, so hopefully I'll adjust as I wear it more.



Right, modifications: After the sleeve was done I changed the back a bit. I increased an inch along the bottom edge to make it a touch longer (and slightly less shrug-like) After finishing the second sleeve the lace around the body is knit on. I added 4 sets of short rows along the lower edge (two from armpit to armpit, and another two along just the lowest center quarter) So the lace is a little more then an inch longer at the bottom then at the top - again this is to make it slightly less shrug-like. The best part was, when I finished with the knitting I only had 4 ends to weave in! Just 4 ends and no seaming at all. Fabulous!



I really like the little points on the sleeves, although that is only due to the way I blocked the lace out and has nothing to do with the pattern...

Also, look! See my calla lily?? I'm so proud, I grew it myself. It's in a clay pot sunk into the garden, and the real challenge comes this winter when I have to move it inside and nurse it though the winter until it can go out again. And it's not like a dahlia or gladiolus that come inside dormant, I have to keep it alive...

Next up is the sweater for Neil that I "finished" last spring only to discover I'd completely screwed up the yoke shaping. COMPLETELY. I didn't decrease fast enough and I didn't decrease enough. It fit him fine to just above the armpits, then it got all baggy and wrinkly and the collar was twice as big as needed. Last night I ripped out 20% of the sweater and I've started re-knitting it. Ripping that much sweater (especially man-size 46" chest sweater [Neil likes his sweaters to be big]) hurts, but it's worse having it stare at me, completed but unwearable, every time I looked in my closet.

Just busy!

Last weekend (I keep doing this, it's friday again already?!)  One of my good friends came up for a visit.  It was lots of fun, we had knitting time (one of my favorite kinds of time) and boating time, and swimming time, and pretty much had a very relaxing weekend.  She took lots of pretty pictures of vermont (another thing I love to do!)  Although some of my favorite photos were of the immature loon and its parent:



Although the photo of the mama hen who somehow managed to get her baby up on the pearch are pretty fabulous too:



That pearch is over 4ft off the ground, there are some in between things for jumping on, but I had no idea a baby chicken could jump 2 or more feet at a time and land on a perch!

This weekend there's a sterling college reunion (which I'm really looking forward too!)  and a LOT of veggies to put up.  I picked 16 ears of corn from my garden yesterday (some are a bit small, but with the beginning of the growing season the way it was the plants are small too) and we've got 2 or 3 quarts of beens to freeze between the purple beans in my garden and the green and yellow ones from the CSA.  We got a lot of brocolli this week too which I might freeze, my fridge barely shuts properly right now there's so many veggies stuffed in it - and the corn and big summer squashes are living on the counter!

Oh and yarn:

I have more!  This lovely batch is from Knitpicks (the green in front is gloss sock, the mossy green/dark brown in back are classic wool of the andes worsted, and the tan/chocolate brown on the side are stroll sport) and they're all destined for new designs!  I'm quite excited!  I love knitpicks - their yarns are very nice and very reasonably priced.  The Gloss has lovely sheen and is very smooth - wonderful to knit with!  I'm also really excited about their stroll (used to be essential) coming in other sizes then just plain sock yarn - the socks I've made with it in the past have held up really well to wear and tear - which is really important in a sock!

I also made bread Wednesday evening.  It was the one evening of the week when it cooled off below 60 - I'm glad I grabbed the chance to bake while I had it!  Anyway, I added some aramanth flour to the dough and it was delicious!  I picked it up because I wanted to try something new and the bag said it added a nice malty flavor to bread - and I like malty flavors!
I've slowly grown to baking bread by feel.  I used to follow the recipe exactly, then I started changing or substituting 1 or 2 things, now I don't even bother pulling out the recipe book.  Making bread goes something like this:
Mix some yeast in warm water with a touch of sugar in my bread bowl.  Is it foaming? check.
Ingredient checklist (in my head) fat? flour? liquid? salt?  Mix it together and start kneeding until it feels right.
For a single sandwich sized loaf I generally start with 2ish tsp yeast in 1/4c of water.  Generally I want at least 1 but not more then 5 Tbsp oil (yes, it is that flexible, depending on how rustic/soft you want your bread)  Then I add the flour - 2 heaping handfuls of flour and 1 of something else.  Each handful being somwhere between 1/2 and 1C flour and something else can be almost anything - rolled oats, oat flour, rice flour, cornmeal, sunflower/flax/sesame seeds, strange grains flour, etc...  And the bulk of the bread needs to be between 2/3 and 3/4 real flour when I'm all done (for the gluten!)
Once the fat and flour are in (sometimes I add an egg with the fat, if i feel like it) I'll sprinkle in some salt (I really can't say how much, and under-salting things is one error I still make regularly)  The poor yeast cells should always be buffered from the salt addition by flour/oil/egg/something.
Then I add some more liquid - milk, whey if I've made cheese recently, beer, water if I have nothing else.  Then I just keep adding flour until it's bread-like.  I suspect I end up with somewhere between 4-5 cups of flour and enough liquid for it to stick together the way bread dough should.  It takes a bit to get it right, but I really enjoy just throwing together some bread based on my whims!

Oh, and now that I finally have pictures up feel free to go back and see a photo of me trying to eat a smore half the size of my head - it's pretty funny...

Not last weekend but the one before (boy this post is late)  I went to the first annual VT knit and fiber camp!  Putting the event together started through a ravelry group, but our fearless organizer posted fliers around the state as well.  The idea behind it was that while there are lots of great knitting events, retreats, classes, conventions out there they all cost money - more money then some of us can really justify (it would seriously cut into my yarn budget) 



VT knit and fiber camp was a simple get together of like minded knitters at Kettle Pond right here in VT.  We had a pot luck the first evening, and otherwise everyone brought their own food, camping gear, etc although there was still plenty of sharing going on the rest of the weekend!  The $12.50 fee covered two nights in some really nice lean-tos and s'mores the second evening.  I tried a variation on the classic s'more - this one uses cookies instead of graham crackers, reeses peanut butter cups instead of plain chocolate, and a GIANT marshmellow.  It was delicious, but horribly sticky... 



We had a yarn swap table for people who brought yarn they were willing to trade, and one person brought the leftover stock from a relative's out of business yarn store - so we had a huge table of 40% off yarn and needles as well!



There weren't a lot of plans for the weekend.  We had cabling and spinning demos - but mostly we had an entire weekend of sitting around the campfire with our knitting and spinning where we talked about yarn, fiber, gauge, works in progress, each other's socks (sock summit came up) and no one felt bad for not doing chores, and no one rolled their eyes at us about our stashes, and no one's face glazed over when someone started discussing the merits of certain kinds of knitting needles over other kinds (I passed around my signature knitting needles - everyone loved them and totally understood how awesome they were)  Good times all weekend.  I can't wait for next year!