lost the thread

Winter In Maine

2012-01-23T08:15:00.001-08:00

I spent most of the time I was in Maine at various hospitals and nursing homes, but I did manage to take a couple of pictures on the last day. Mist rises up from the river in Hartland and then freezes on the trees, turning even weeds into gorgeous sparkling creations.

And with all that time on my hands (pardon the pun), I made myself a pair of wool gloves out of self-striping sock yarn. And I weighed the gloves and the remaining yarn and I have enough for another pair. (But no need for another pair.) The yarn is Berocco Sox, and it is not one of the softer sock yarns I have worked with, but I love the colors. Gloves feel like a major accomplishment to me. I'm looking forward to wearing them in Chicago in February!

Eat. Knit. Christmas.

2012-01-01T20:56:00.000-08:00

A lovely breakfast with home fries and smoky links...

Later, roast beef, peas, sweet potatoes, biscuits, mashed potatoes, and more!

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without presents.

A baby hat designed by me, and knit by Kristen for a co-worker.

And new year, new knit...I have started a vest in a lovely yarn called Fez that is 15% camel, 85% merino wool.

Christmas is A'Comin

2011-12-22T17:13:00.001-08:00

and the goose is getting fat...

Well, I am tired of looking at that chicken meal! So before Christmas, here are a few things I have knit lately.

I posted a pattern on Ravelry today for these Autumn Leaves Coasters.

I knit like 14 of 'em, for Deborah, for my office mate, for myself. I can't stop. They are addictive!

I also finished a lovely shawl:

Live Oak Shawlette.

I wore it when I met up with Katie in Palm Springs.

And I have embarked upon an apparently endless afghan.

Knit. Cook. Eat.

2011-10-10T18:20:00.001-07:00

For supper tonight, I adapted a recipe for a chicken bacon appetizer, to make it a main course.

My Version:

4 chicken skinless, boneless chicken breast filets
4 strips of bacon
1 container cream cheese with chives and onion
1 jalapeno pepper

Pound the chicken breasts to flatten them. Put cream cheese on top of each piece, along with a small strip of jalapeno. Roll up and hold with a toothpick. Then wrap bacon around, and use the toothpick to hold the whole thing together. Place in rack in pan and bake at 375 till bacon is crispy.

I also bought a stalk of brussel sprouts the other day, just because it looked awesome. Turns out you just pop the brussel sprouts off the stalk and cook them like any other brussel sprouts. It's a trick to get white people to do farm work. I fell for it.

So, brussel sprouts, off the stalk, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with a lot of salt. Put in the same oven with the chicken.

The rice is a package mix of Spanish rice. It's a trick to get white people to eat rice...no, I kid.

Anyhow, it all came together into a nice simple meal.

And then, there was some knitting that got its picture taken over the weekend.
The scarf is knit in laceweight cashmere, in a pattern called Barbara, for my Mom, who is also named Barbara.

The sweater is further pictures of Peasy, to show how cool it came out.

Isn't it cool? Some day I will get a photo of it on me. If I can find someone who knows how to do this. My poor husband holds the digital camera up to his eye, no matter how many times I tell him not to. Just not worth it.

Vogue Knitting

2011-09-25T09:47:00.001-07:00

I have been busily at work on my Peasy cardigan, in the hopes of having it ready in time to wear to Vogue Knitting Live, and I actually made it. This is the first time I ever managed to finish a sweater at the appropriate season--just in time for what passes for fall and winter here in Southern California.

I made a few modifications--I added shaping over the hips, I did the bottom in 1 x 1 rib, and I tapered the sleeves and added lace at the cuffs. I also added buttons all the way down the front. I am quite pleased with the process and the end result.

I especially enjoyed wearing it on Saturday morning in Franklin Habit's class, since the classroom was quite chilly. Franklin is an amazing knitter and a great teacher, and a very funny guy. And he was wearing a Utilikilt. What's not to like?

I also took a class with Meg Swansen and Amy D. Meg is the daughter and heir of the most illustrious person in 20th century American knitting, Elizabeth Zimmermann. She showed us sweaters knit 30, 40, maybe 50 years ago that are still gorgeous.

My other classes, with Clara Parkes and Barry Klein were also very informative and worthwhile.

I also bought some fancy-dancy yarn that includes qiviut.

What I knit in Maine

2011-08-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Gloves for Kristen, made with yarn I bought in Maine in October. Alpaca and silk. My first gloves.

A sock, just because socks are so suited for travel knitting.

The beginning of a lace scarf, in cashmere.

Mom's Shrug

2011-08-10T09:07:00.001-07:00

The Pittsfield, Maine Egg Festival

2011-07-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

No eggs were seen at the Egg festival, because Pittsfield is no longer a major (or even minor) egg producing town. But any excuse for a festival during Maine's short but glorious summer, and so the name endures.

Karen and James, who live in Pittsfield

and mom and Dad.

Mom woke up this morning, after being in the hospital for a week and the house for the following week, and declared, "I am not an invalid!" So we drove over to Pittsfield.

In the morning there was a parade:

Antique fire engines are a big part of the parade.
As are antique cars
and tractors

And after the parade, this year the festival featured lobster dinners for $11. We carried them home and ate them in Karen's back yard.

My father demonstrates the technique for breaking down a lobster.
It was delicious!

One thing ends, another begins

2011-06-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

I have lots of free time to knit these days, so I finished the shrug for Mummy quite quickly, and immediately got to work on a shawl I've been anticipating for a while.

The shrug seems like a pretty good success. I haven't blocked it at all yet, because I think it will grow when it hits the water, and I don't want it to be too big for my Mom.

The shawl is called Hilton Head, and it is quite simple. There lace edging is garter based, and then there's a growing section of stockinette, and the whole thing is knit as one piece.

I weighed out the yarn to find the center of the skein, and when I get to the center (or if it seems long enough before that) I will begin decreases.

And a few odds and ends

2011-05-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

It turns out that given a three-day weekend by myself to do whatever I want, what I mostly want to do is dorky stuff. Go to Casa Arigato for breakfast. Go to Borders. Knit. Dye yarn. The most exotic thing I did was get a facial. At the cosmetology department at El Camino College. Whee!

Anyhow, here's what's done:

And here's what's newly started:

This is an anonymous pattern from Let's Knit for a clever little shrug that is knit as a rectangle, which is then folded and stitched to make sleeves and a back, and then has stitches picked up around the edge to make a ruffle that becomes the collar and bottom edge. Hard to visualize, but I tried on their sample, and I see that it works.

This will probably be a gift for my Mom, to wear as a sort of bed jacket while she recuperates from her hip surgery in July. And if that doesn't work out (Mom is opinionated, let's just say...) I will keep it for myself. Or something. Anyhow, it's a totally easy and relaxing knit, done in Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool, which is nice to knit with.

Le Livre, El Libro, the book!

2011-05-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

We went out to Havana Mania to celebrate the publication of our textbook. We were not nearly as impaired as these pictures would seem to indicate!

(Also see shawl, from previous post, in actual use.)

Socks and a Shawl

2011-05-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

So I'd better post pictures of the pink/grey socks before they disappear again and I have no evidence of their existence! I actually almost doubted that the socks did exist, since I couldn't find them for months, and I had no photos of them. My only thread of hope was that I had a little baggie with the left-over yarn. I am not even entirely sure when I knitted them. I know they were in existence during the time Kristen was home for Christmas.

This is Patons Kroy yarn, on size 1.5 needles, but I cast on 68 stitches, and they seem a little looser then I'd ideally like. I thought 64 on 1.5 was too tight, but maybe it is better. Or maybe I should decrease to 64 immediately after the ribbing. In any case, these are comfortable and entirely wearable. (or could these have been done on 2's? Since I don't remember knitting them, how do I know what size needle I used?)

I finished the Faroese Shawl that I was working on, in Elizabeth Lavold Silky Wool, and it's s great pattern. Through clever and rather inscrutable increases along the shoulders, it comes out in a nearly circular shape, perfectly fitted to the neck and shoulders. I didn't want mine to be too long, as I thought that would make it less wearable (since I'm not actually a peasant woman living on the windswept Faroe Islands). This is plenty voluminous, reaches almost to my waist in the back, and the fronts can be thrown back stylishly ( I like to think) over my shoulders.

Silky Wool is a great yarn. It's not silky, and it's not wooly. It is firm, a bit rustic, and a nice weight for lace that is not really lacy. I have a plan to knit a shrug-type thing out of it, if Mrs. Oyama can come up with the pattern she used. Some sort of rectangle thing that is seamed to make arms and then has stitches picked up around the edges to make a collar and ruffle.

Now I'm working on little odds and ends--a Greenleaf Baby hat for my pregnant Egyptian student, in dk weight (done) and a pair of booties to go with it, with little leaf-ended ties, if I can pull that off with the skein of yarn I have. I hairband for Nitza (also finished, but needing finishing), and I don't know--maybe some sideways garter gloves?

A Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T13:01:00.001-07:00

Last night Sam took me out for Thai food at Bangkok Sapphires, and I ate myself into a coma. Had to take a nap on the couch, and could barely stand to watch cooking shows for several hours after!

And today, these lovely flowers were awaiting me on the dining room table.

Also, big news on the Saint Anthony front--my lost hand-knit wool socks have been found. It was a case of bad housekeeping. They were wedged at the foot of the bed, which means that I hadn't actually re-made the bed since January. Not the bed I sleep in, I hasten to add, but still. I did look there too, but apparently not hard enough.

I am well on my way with a shawl in the Faroese style called Alberta, designed by Myrna Stahman. The Silky-Wool yarn in a peacock color is quite pleasing to work with, and I have high hopes for this shawl.

Oh, and for once, I found yarn at the Goodwill. There were a dozen or so skeins of various sorts, and I chose 4 skeins of this sportweight 100% wool from Holland.

Finished Objects!

2011-04-16T09:14:00.001-07:00

So first of all, I started and finished a small scarf made from the novelty yarn I bought in New Orleans. I used literally every inch of the yarn, including the leftover bits to make a couple of bits of fringe.

And then I finished up the socks that I began during my trip to Chicago just before school started in February. Another pair of plain vanilla socks in Patons Kroy FX yarn. Too bad I misplaced the pink-grey ones, but these, called camo color, are also nice, and not at all army-looking, imo!

And finally, and most impressive, I finished the sweater I started in January. This is made in Cascade 220 yarn, using a pattern called Chic Cabled Sweater from Red Heart. However, I made it a bit longer in the body, knit the sleeves in the round from the top down, and most importantly, removed the cables from the top of the sleeves and used them to make the cuffs, which I think was a good move. The sweater fits me to a T, though I don't have the photos to prove it yet!

And I've started on a Faroese shawl. Pictures much later!

New Orleans!

2011-03-24T06:52:00.001-07:00

I started a new blog!

2011-03-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

I decided to create a separate blog to write about what I have learned about Copyright as it applies to knitting. I will be adding to it over the next few days. It's called CopyKnit.

My Mink!

2011-02-28T06:08:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I'll never wear a mink coat, but why not mink mittens? This yarn is spun from 70% sheared mink, without harming the mink and 30% cashmere (without harming the goats!). The weight is dk, and it looked a little thin when it arrived, but after I washed the skein, it fluffed up a bit. The colors are dyed in the wool (well, mink), so they are very saturated. In fact, with this color, almost too saturated. In bright sunlight, the color is quite pretty, but under artificial light (ie when knitting with it) it seems to swallow up all the light and give nothing back.

The pattern was also a bit of a pain, with all the knit stitches knit through the back loop and a constantly shifting of the pattern from row to row.

But I am very pleased with the end result. The single skein of yarn had more than enough yarn for this pair of mittens, and I wish I had made the cuff a half inch longer (I made the hand shorter than recommended. They are extremely lightweight, the yarn fluffed up nicely as I knit, and I think they will be warm for their weight.

The yarn comes from Great Northern Yarns and the pattern is also theirs. Their customer service is exceptional. I ordered the yarn without the pattern and later saw the "kit" offer and I emailed them to ask if I could get the pattern. They sent it out immediately by US mail and I had it in 2 days.

Amethyst Lady

2011-02-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

I am so amazed at how quickly I knit this sweater. I started on January 3, frogged it and started over on 12, and finished it on January 30. This is an all-time record for me.

Also, I like the way it fits and the way it looks. made a lot of modifications to the pattern.

So I decided to try my luck on a second sweater, this one with cables instead of lace. I am modifying the pattern from flat to knit in the round, and hoping for the best.

Back, better than before!

2011-01-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

The February Fitted Pullover is back on track, further along than when I frogged it. I finished the first skein of yarn today and finished the waist decreases. And I took it off the needles and tried it on, so I am confident that it fits. So, full steam ahead!

1/19/11 ETA: In the one week since I frogged this and started over, I have 8" done, in the round. That seems like a pretty fast pace.

That sweater in the post below?

2011-01-13T08:22:00.001-08:00

Gone.

I showed the 5 inches or so I had done to folks at the Woolgatherers lunch yesterday and mentioned my concern that 2.5 inches of horizontal-looking garter stitch around my butt might not be the most flattering. Everyone agreed. Christine noted that the lace is very vertical and that a more vertical edging would flow better. So true.

So I let 'er rip. And I cast back on immediately. It helped to do the ripping and re-starting in public, so that I was somewhat distracted from it all. I am doing 1 x 1 rib, which I hope won't grab as much as 2 x 2 rib would.

I think I will be much happier with the revised sweater.

And so another year of knitting begins

2011-01-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

One of my goals for my spare time on sabbatical was to change my Greenleaf Baby Hat from free to paid and to improve upon the pattern a bit. When Cathy of Twist: Yarn of Intrigue came up with a charity knitting project that involves baby hats, I knew it was time!

So I knit 2 new Greenleaf Hats, in finer yarn on smaller needles, and used 2 x 2 ribbing on one. Then I revised the pattern to include these options, made it into a pdf, and re-listed the pattern on Ravelry. Already several people have bought it at $1 a pop. If I had gotten $1 each for the 600+ people who have already knit it, I would be rich! Of course, they might not all have knit it if it hadn't been free, but still.

Also on my list of things to do is to start a new sweater for myself. Sweaters are so much more challenging and intimidating than other knits, because they not only have to end up a specific size, they have to look good on a body that offers some challenges. Mittens are never going to make my butt look big! But a sweater? It's months of work, and in the end it might look horrible, ya know?

So I've started one, in Cascade 220 heather yarn in a purple sort of color, but I still have some severe mental reservations. The designer claimed it would be flattering to all sorts of figures, but I am still wondering whether a band of garter stitch 2" wide, with its horizontal look, will look like a flashing red light around my tummy and butt. I tried it on and it seems to fit ok, but will I regret this? I think the vertical look of 2 x 2 rib would have been better. I am dabating whether to press on or start over. Sigh. What to do, what to do?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to have all my knitting projects finished and off the needles, giving me a blank slate as I start the new year.

This is the second one of these that I completed in December. Cashmere and silk dyed by Red Fish Dye Works, in the pattern Feather Duster, but I am calling them Gold Dust. (the stitch pattern is based on Ostrich Plumes.) One for me, one for Kristen.

And this small lace scarf has been on the needles since September, for no good reason, since it's quite a simple stitch pattern and not even lace weight yarn but dk alpaca-silk. But it was closer to black before I soaked it, and it was hard to knit after dark. The pattern is called Road Not Taken, and I knit it (and in a road-like color) for that very reason.

So what's next? I swatched for a sweater today, but it's such a commitment to start a sweater and I'm stalling.

Images of Christmas

2010-12-26T07:43:00.001-08:00

A very happy day for one and all. There was also good food, but we were too exhausted from cooking to take any pictures!

Seafood Chowder for Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

When I was in Maine in October, I had delicious Seafood Stew at the Red Barn in Augusta , and I've been thinking about it ever since. Would it be possible to re-create something like it at home? Then I saw a tv show about the custom of the Feast of Seven Fishes in Italy as Christmas Eve food, and I decided to give it a try.

I found a frozen cooked lobster at Marukai Pacific, and the game was on! I added a package of sea scallops and some Pacific Red Snapper fish.

I adapted a recipe I found online for Lobster Stew, and the results were wonderful! Papa loved it, and we all enjoyed it with some Spoon House French bread and more butter!

The Recipe

1 cooked lobster

6 large sea scallops

1/2 lb. white fish

4 Tbsp. butter

3 cups whole milk

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 Tbsp. white wine

white pepper

salt

Hungarian paprika

Melt butter gently in pan. Slowly cook scallops and fish, add cooked lobster. Slowly add milk and cream. Season to taste with wine, salt, pepper and paprika. (I also simmered the lobster shell in the stew for a while to impart more lobster flavor, then removed it before eating of course! The lobster had roe in it, so that added a nice touch to the stew.) Serve with good bread and butter. Yum!

Feeling Festive

2010-12-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I came across a blog called GingerCake, and this pattern, and right away, I got to work. I used 2 felted sweaters and an old skirt for their bodies. Instead of muslin and interfacing, I used a piece of felt for the faces. When I made the first one (the hot pink) I completed and stuffed the doll first and then stitched on the face and buttons, but for the other two, I embroidered the face and sewed on the buttons before stitching them together.

What charmed and amazed me most about these dolls is that the body consists of three identical pieces, shaped like the front of the doll. I imagine that you could also make something like the old topsy-turvy dolls, with a different face on each side. I think they look a lot like Japanese kokeshi dolls and Russian matryoshka dolls. It would be cute to make a series of smaller and smaller ones, and to embroider fancy designs on each.

Thanks to Virginia Lindsay of Gingercake for this great free pattern!

I am also working on my Gold Dust shawl. The pattern is actually called Feather Duster, since it uses the Ostrich Feather stitch pattern.

It's a very simple lace pattern, with not only purl resting rows but also alternate rows on the front side are all stockinette as well. The yarn is gorgeous cashmere and silk that I bought at the Weaving and Fiber Festival in Torrance in November. It is produced by Red Fish Dye Works, and it is a total pleasure to work with.

Today, I mail out my Christmas cards and put up the Christmas tree. After that, Christmas can come!

Something Old, Something New

2010-11-26T07:14:00.000-08:00

I had a case of camnesia yesterday and forgot to take any pictures of any of us and our food. But I want to make a record of a couple of new dishes we tried that were a big success.

For several years I have been cooking my turkeys breast-side-down, on the theory that it makes the juices run into the breast meat and keeps it more moist. But it's kind of ugly that way, and I read this year that it doesn't really matter, so I returned to the more traditional method. But I continued my family method of wrapping the turkey with bacon, and that does work to create a lovely moist turkey, and a delicious appetizer of bacon for the cooks!

What we did that was new was to make home-made cranberry sauce of the first time. It is so simple and it came out delicious, and it looks really beautiful too. 1 pound of cranberries, a cup of sugar and a cup of water. Cook the water and sugar, then add the cranberries and stir and cook till they are soft.

We also tried a new recipe for green beans which was simple and delicious. Pre-cook a pound of green beans in boiling salted water till crisp tender. Drain and set aside at room temperature. When ready to eat, heat a frying pan and add a handful of walnuts to the dry pan and stir to toast. When the walnuts begin to brown, add a Tbsp. or so of butter and the green beans and stir to re-heat the beans and coat everything with butter. This tasted really good and the walnuts also went nicely with the wild rice we were eating. Wild rice is a family favorite for Thanksgiving. If I have extra left over, I will make wild rice cream soup later on.

We also had baked sweet potatoes, which were delicious. They taste especially good right next to the cranberry sauce. I only got 2, since Sam doesn't like them, and we had a lot of other food. I choose smallish sweet potatoes, the kind with reddish skin and bright orange interiors. Wrap each sweet potato firmly in foil. Place them on the oven rack for about an hour as the turkey roasts. When they are completely soft, they are done. They give off juice which will burn and make a mess in the oven, so it's important to have them well-wrapped in foil. To serve, remove the foil, cut in half, lightly mash the flesh with a fork, add a pat of butter and a grind of salt. Mmm, delicious.

With the green beans, the cranberries and the sweet potato, the plate was colorful; in the past, I have noticed that a Thanksgiving plate tends to be all shades of brown and beige!

All in all, a totally successful meal and a wonderful day. It was such a help top have Kristen in the kitchen. She carved the entire turkey while I made the gravy and the mashed potatoes. My gravy, in which I take great pride, was once again really delicious. It didn't seem to want to absorb as much stock as I had prepared, but we saved some of the fat, so I can make another batch tomorrow, if we still have turkey left and no more gravy.

Today, we are going to make cold turkey sandwiches on white bread with butter and take them with us when we go out. Kristen was noshing on bits of turkey last night and commented, "Why do people say Quit cold turkey, like cold turkey was a bad thing?" I like the way she thinks! :-)

Pre-Thanks

2010-11-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

I am pre-thankful that Kristen is coming home tomorrow.

And I am pre-thankful that the shawl/blanket I have been working on for 3 weeks is off the needles and blocking. I enjoyed every stitch of this blanket, and then at the end, I had a near disaster. I discovered that I was short of yarn, which i totally didn't expect, since I had 1000 yards, so I ended off the pattern and started the bind-off after 18 rounds rather than 25, and after binding off over 400 stitches, I had 30-something stitches left and not another inch of yarn!

Rather than botch the whole thing by undoing hundreds of stitches of bind-off, I decided that only God is perfect and that I could live with a little imperfection. I happened to have a near-match of gray alpaca, so i tied that on and finished the bind off.

Pattern: Brooklyn Tweed's Tweed Baby Blanket.

Yarn: Natural Baby Alpaca bought at the Torrance fiber festival in early November.

Is this a baby blanket? Not necessarily. I don't have a baby anywhere on the horizon. Folded in half, it is a shawl. Opened out, it is a lap blanket.

I can't wait for it to dry so I can try it. Mismatched bind-off be damned!

Swatch This

2010-10-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

Since I made these 5 squares, I might as well save my notes here in case I decide to knit any of these stitch patterns in the future.

Th first one below is called Double Broken Rib. It is different on front and back and has a deep waffled texture. It is on page 12 of Barbara Walker's first Treasury. 4-row repeat. Would work for a scarf or wash cloth.

The second one is Raised Moss Stitch Rib. It is very similar to the Farrow Rib pattern used in the Allegan Cardigan from The Book of Wool, but the knits and purls vary slightly. It doesn't curl but it does pull in. I got this from Simply Knitting, I put the pattern in the Book of Wool.

The next one is also from Simply Knitting. It is 4 over 4 cables, with stitches on the RS worked through the back loop. I had to add croceht to the sides because it pulled in a great deal. I also tried to steam-kill it because it wasn't lying flat enough. The effect is pretty, but a bit troublesome to work with.

The one below is a classic Basketweave, found on page 16-17 of the first Treasury. Very satisfying appearance, easy to work but needs more attention that you would think.
The last one is perhaps my favorite. It is a single Diamond Brocade, from page 30 of the first Treasury. It lies perfectly flat and smooth and seemed to grow in width (though perhaps not. I cast on 33 stitches, more than the others.) I had to frog several times before I got all the lines lining up correctly, but the end result is very pleasing.

All of these were done with size 7 needle and Bernat Berella 4 "afghan yarn" (worsted weight), which I found surprisingly unpleasant to work with. I might go up a needle size, since my gauge is pretty firm. I had less than a yard of yarn left at the end. Th se can all be stretched to 7" x 7", and all had between 30-33 stitches cast on, but the finished dimensions vary much more than you might expect.

Picture Dump

2010-10-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

I have a lot more pictures of the beauty of Maine in the fall, which I might as well upload here. These were all taken in Hartland.

A stranger's clothes on the line. I liked the colors.

"He is all pine and I am apple orchard."

Grandma's window box.
A grape vine twined itself into this maple tree in the back yard, and not until the tree turned red could you really see what was vine and what was tree.

Family and Food

2010-10-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'm home now, but last Sunday, the Elwells and the Allens gathered at Grandma and Grandpa's to tell funny stories and eat. Above, Joanne and Emily.

Caleb, Hannah and Abby.

Yes, Lydia is taller than Grandma. Everyone is taller than Grandma.

Molly's new beau Nathan had to be warned repeatedly about low-hanging appliances.

Yes, he's taller than Molly....

but in this picture, taken with both parties standing their full height on level ground, you can see his height advantage over Grandma!

Caleb, Lydia and Abby.

Ben, Caleb and Lydia.

Grandma.

The Elwell name depends on these two fine young men plus Zach and Keith. (not present)

Grandpa was only drinking ginger ale.

Joanne and Grandma chatting through the window.

Sorry, Hannah, you closed your eyes!

Emily's eyes were not actually glowing red.

Bailey's eyes may have glowed red, however.

And did I mention that food was involved?

Karen was also there, as was I, but no photographic proof exists. A good time was had by all! Thanks for gathering, everyone!

Good picture of Grandpa!

Yesterday in Skowhegan

2010-10-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

We took a drive over to Skowhegan yesterday. Our first stop was at the New Balance store--did you know that New Balance makes many of their shoes here in New England? I didn't know! Their factory outlet is a classic old school building, and they have several factories in the center of Skowhegan (also in Lawrence, MA and a few other US locations. One more reason to continue to buy their shoes!)

For lunch we were told that Kel-Mat Cafe was a good place to eat, but from the outside, and the name, it didn't seem too promising. However...

the inside of the building was gorgeous, an old Victorian house, beautifully refurbished.

Karen contemplates the menu--what to have for lunch?
We settled on Buffalo Chicken panini and Tomato Bisque. An excellent choice.

We need to walk that lunch off! A stroll along the banks of the mighty Kennebec River is just the thing.

The spirit of the tree? This face in the tree was totally a natural artifact.

And a stop at Lake George Park.

I could just go on and on with pictures of foliage and lovely old houses, but my camera batteries claimed to be "exhausted." A likely story.

What we do in Maine

2010-10-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

We enjoy the beauty of the fall foliage:

And we eat quite well:

Karen's Chicken Pot Pie

1 rotisserie chicken

1 cup broth

8 oz. frozen mixed vegetables, slightly cooked in microwave

1 ¾ cup half and half

1/3 cup flour

1 pie crust

Heat broth, stir in flour and ¾ cup of cream, stir and thicken. Then add one more cup of cream, vegetables , and torn up chicken. Pour into 9” pie plate, place pie crust on. Cook at 350” for 40 minutes, till golden brown.

And we captured a skunk! And there's more where that came from. The other night when Karen and I came home from seeing Dinner for Schmucks, a skunk showed us his impressive tail right in the headlights in her drive way. A neighbor has a skunk trap and experience in the skunk-catching business, so he set the trap next to Karen's barn, and this morning, there was a skunk! But James saw another skunk wandering around, after this one was in the trap. So there's more skunk-trapping to be done.

What does one do with a captured skunk, you ask? Apparently once in the cage, they cannot lift their tail and hence cannot spray. So this skunk will be driven to Burnham and released. Lucky Burnham!

Columbus Day in Maine

2010-10-11T12:12:00.001-07:00

Walking the dog in Manson Park.

Aunt Bobbi, me, Grandpa, Uncle Richie, Grandma.

Aunt Bobbi, Aunt Karen, Grandpa, Uncle Richie, Grandma.

We took a drive over to Aunt Bobbi's house, and then stopped for dinner at The Red Barn, where I had a wicked good bowl of Seafood Stew.

Foliage is at near peak conditions, the sky was sparkling blue, and the weather was brisk but pleasant. What could be better?

A New Pattern Published

2010-09-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have worked hard for the past couple of weeks to design 4 small lace bookmarks and a garter and lace scarf, along with a detailed tutorial to teach newbies how to read lace charts. I am really excited that I was able to upload it to Ravelry today, and that I have had multiple sales already!

The Climate Changer

2010-09-12T14:56:00.001-07:00

This little bit of low-tech technology will enable you to save on heating costs in the winter and cooling costs in the summer. It will increase your comfort level whenever you are sitting around at home, for almost no cost. You will cut down significantly on your carbon footprint because you will run your heat and your air conditioning much less. You will sleep better winter and summer. And the cost to make one is about $5 and 1 hour of your time. Interested? Read on!

Step 1: Purchase supplies. For each Climate Changer, you need a quarter-yard of cotton fabric. Most fabric stores sell what they call "Fat Quarters," which are perfect for this. The fabric should be quilting cotton or calico, in whatever print you like--make a different color for each member of your family. If you cannot buy "Fat Quarters, get a half yard, which you can then cut in half across the width to make your own "fat quarter" (otherwise, you will have a piece of fabric that is too long and skinny.) I found Fat Quarters on sale at Jo-Ann's for $1.00 each, rather than the usual $1.99. (Don't buy fabric that has any metallic elements in the design.) (I tried wool felt and it didn't work well--damp and smelly. Get cotton cloth.)

The only other supply you need (other than thread and a working sewing machine) is flax seeds. If possible, buy these in bulk. I got mine at Sprouts, which sells ordinary whole brown flax seeds for $1.19 a pound. For each Climate Changer, you need 3-1/2 pounds of flax seeds. Do not buy ground flax seeds. Many people will tell you that they use rice or cherry stones or field corn. Whatever. For best results, get flax seeds. That's what the professionally made ones use, and that's what I use. The exact amount is important. Get 3-1/2 pounds. It seems like too much, but trust me. I'm an expert.
If you make smaller ones, or ones with fancy channels or shapes, they don't hold the heat effectively. I made a special shoulder one once and it only stayed warm for 5 or 10 minutes. The density of this size and shape works just right.

So: 1/4 yard of fabric at $1.00 = $1.00
3 1/2 pounds of flax seeds at $1.19 a lb = $4.16

Okay, it more than $5. I spent $5.16. You might spend as much $10. Money well spent.

The exact size and weight matters. Yes, size matters! I have made smaller ones and larger ones and the size I am explaining now is perfect. Seriously.

Step 2: Wash, dry, and iron the fabric before you start.

Step 3: Fold the fabric in half with right sides together and cut a rectangle as follows:

Measuring from the fold, cut a piece 8" wide (unfolded size would be 16") and 15" long.

Step 4: Pin around the cut edges and sew using a 1/2" seam, leaving one short end open.
Sew again close to the first line of stitching, in the seam allowance.

Clip the corners to make a smoother corner when you're done, and turn the bag right-side out.

Step 5: Iron it flat, folding the seam allowance in at the opening and ironing it neatly.

Step 6: Stand the bag up in a box or other container and using a cup measure, pour 3-1/2 pounds of flax seeds into it. Pin the top shut.

Notice the neatly ironed seam allowance above.

Yup, 3-1/2 pounds, and there should be room to spare at the top. This is important because otherwise, you will have a hard time sewing it shut, and it won't work as well either.

Step 7: Back to the sewing machine, you want to top-stitch across the entire top, 1/8" from the edge. Add a second line of stitching to be double-sure that no seeds will escape. Trim loose threads and you're done.

Now, how to use this thing of wonder? Well, if you want to warm up, heat it in the microwave for 3-1/2 minutes. It will hold its heat for about 2 hours. If you re-warm it, adjust the time. If you are nervous about over-heating it, start with 2 minutes and add more time as you get the feel for it.

I know, people are going to tell you that it will catch on fire, that the seeds will pop, that it's dangerous and so on. My family and I have been using these for many years, with no ill effects and no fires. Don't get it wet, and don't put it into a damp microwave. Don't use it on little babies or people who are too old to be able to protect themselves. Wrap it in a towel if it makes you feel better. (I don't.) After maybe a year of daily use, you might find that you have burned a hole in it. That means its time to throw it away and start over. If you over-heat it, yes, it's possible that it will burn. Same as anything else you put in the microwave. Use a bit of common sense and this is perfectly safe.

During the day, rest your feet on the warm Climate Changer. When your feet are warm, your whole body feels better. Rest it on your lap under an afghan while you watch tv. It will hold heat longer if it's kept under covers.

On cold nights, warm up your Climate Changer a little before bedtime. Stick it in your bed under the covers while you wash your face and brush your teeth. Crawl into bed. Ahhh, doesn't that feel nice? Now curl up with it, or put it at your feet and enjoy blissful warmth while your ambient temperature is kept at a money-saving level.

But wait, there's more!

During the summer, you can keep cool without even spending the few cents that running the microwave costs. Store your Climate Changer in the freezer during the day. In the evening, pull it out and again, stick it in your bed just before you turn in. The coolness will be enough to let you get to sleep on even the steamiest of nights. Rest your head on it, drape it over the back of your neck, or lay it on your stomach.

By warming or cooling yourself rather than the entire room, you can save money and the planet. Now don't you feel clever?

They like me, they really like me!

2010-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

Over the Labor Day weekend, I designed and knit up a little leaf-shaped bookmark that I thought was rather pleasing, and I decided to try offering it for $1.00 on Ravelry. It is by way of an experiment to see if other designs that I might like to sell would actually be worth the trouble.

I am delighted that 5, (no make that 6, as I am writing this post!) people have actually parted with $1 to purchase my design. And 79 people have faved it and 21 have put it in their queue!

Clearly this is not a road to riches, but I am very please with this small sign of success, and quite encouraged to go ahead with a couple of other design projects. And who knows, I may accumulate enough money in my Paypal account to allow me to buy some luxurious yarn from Etsy! :-)

Suzy Homemaker

2010-08-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, maybe I don't want to look at squid eyes every time I open my blog. Ok, so here's the chicken I roasted tonight.

When we were in Chicago in June, Kristen took us to a wonderful authentic-ish Italian restaurant called Quartino's, and really, you'd think I'd never been out of the back hills or something, because everything made such an impression on me. So I've been trying to duplicate some of these wonders. I made mushroom risotto a while ago, and fonduta, and pesto gnocchi, and today I decided to try my hand at calamari.

I am comfortable with cleaning squid from Japanese cooking. So that was fine. I got the instructions from Marcella Hazan's cookbook, and she warned that a spatter shield would come in handy, but I don't have a spatter shield, so I used the lid of the wok as a shield. (Spatter shields cost $20! Fuggedaboutit!

And it turned out great! Papa was very pleased.

So for my next trick, I decided to work up a few patterns for lace knitted bookmarks. Quick and easy, but when I undid the blocking I realized that I screwed up the pattern on the next to last repeat. Oops, back to the drawing board.

And at long last I finished the socks that I cast on for my trip to Chicago in June. The ones on the right are the new pair. Their siblings are on the left, made during jury duty on spring break. I love this yarn! Patons Kroy FX. I have enough for one more pair, in a pink/gray mix that I will cast on for my next travel knitting.

And here's my Very Little Shells. It was actually called Little Shells, but the pattern called for dk weight yarn and I used laceweight, due to a brain misfire, so it turned out Very Little. But I like it. Disregard the scowl--the sun was very bright and right in my eyes!

I'm actually very happy with this, really!

Life Goes On

2010-08-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

All right, I think everybody who might want to see Kristen's graduation has seen it by now, so I can move along here. Life has not actually come to a stand still since June. I taught my summer class and am now on sabbatical. So that means I am working on my book (to be called Pronunciation Party, or maybe Pronunciation Celebration). I am surprised and delighted with how engrossing it is to actually write each chapter of this book. I start in at 9 or 10 am and I don't even want to break for lunch. Unlike grading papers, say, when I am stopping every 30 minutes to check my mail or something.

But I am also hoping that this sabbatical gives me plenty of time for knitting. Here's what I've gotten done since last June:

Counting Crows Shawlette:

Close up of the stitch pattern. This is a small but very wearable little triangle made of quite fine alpaca that I bought at Liscat in Long Beach. The actual pattern name is Crow Prints.

Then I used some Cashsoft to design a small pillow using a stitch pattern called Big Bamboo from Vogue Stitch-a-Day calendar. This went to Kristen as a sort of house-warming gift.

And I made another small shawl that feels like wearing kittens around your neck. Actually it is angora, which I purchased from the lady who raises the rabbits. It is handspun and was not only fine but fuzzy and irregular. Yes, this was a challenge. But I love it!

before blocking

blocking

after blocking

And let's see, what else? Well I did finish the Lilac Leaves shawl, which also went to Kristen. A person in Chicago needs a cashmere neckwarmer more than a person in Los Angeles!

Currently on the needles is an interminable pair of socks that I cast on for the trip to Chicago in June. I only work on them when I can't concentrate on lacier stuff, and I guess I've been concentrating pretty well, because they are progressing awfully slowly. But I'm halfway down the foot of the second sock, so they should be over soon. Paton Kroy FX, which is lovely inexpensive stuff to knit with. But size 1.5 US needles is slow going!

And I am also working on another small shawl, maybe really small, since I'm using laceweight on size 4 or 5 needles and the pattern called for DK weight on size 8. Somehow I missed the Dk part, in my excitement to cast on. I did start with size 8 needles with the Alpaca Silk laceweight but that just looked like a bunch of holes. I'm hoping for the magic of blocking to make this wearable. It's called Little Shells.

Ah, there was one other thing also, which never got its picture taken. A longer version of this in a lovely coppery green, also for Kristen:

Blue Sky alpaca and silk, lovely stuff. Adapted from a pattern called Grandma Twombly's Back of the Neck Scarf. A pleasure to knit. Nice intro to easy lace.

I'm enjoying reading a classic Italian cookbook by Marcella Hazan. So hopefully this will be a late summer-early fall of Eat, Knit, Write, Love.

Graduation Day

2010-06-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Graduation Day for the Class of 2010 at the University of Chicago was on Saturday June 12th.

Instead of the usual pomp and circumstance, UChicago has swarms of bagpipers, adding a festive air.

We sat where we could watch the individual students receive their diplomas on one of the screens set up on the Quad. Yup, that's Kristen, shaking hands with President Zimmer.

The proud graduate, with her hard-earned diploma.

Proud father

And mother.

A very happy day! Congratulations, Kristen!

Mother's Day 2010

2010-05-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

So as you can see, I was given a beautiful bouquet of flowers in honor of Mother's Day

and I have finished my Jury Duty socks

and progress continues to be made on what I am calling my Lilac Leaf shawlette.

Its actual name is Heart-to Heart Beaded Scarf, but it has no beads, and with the green yarn, it says lilacs to me more than it says hearts.

I talked to Kristen today, as well as my Mom, all 3 of my brothers, and momentarily to my sister as well. All is well in my world.

Socks and Dress and Shoes

2010-05-01T13:39:00.001-07:00

I have finished one of the jury duty socks, and am past the gusset in the second one, so this should be a pair of socks very soon.

I am very taken with this yarn and colorway. Patons Kroy FX.

And I went shopping on a whim and came away with a new dress, or maybe I should just say a dress, because I actually only have one dress in my closet, and it is many years old. A woman should have a dress, don't you think? This one is a little, as Sam says, "Hade," meaning bright, showy in Japanese. Yeah, it is that. But I like it.

Actually what inspired the dress purchase was that I bought these sandals yesterday, quite pricey, but an amazing amalgam of sexy strappiness and actual walkable comfort. And I said to myself, gee, those are so cute and feminine, they'd look good with a dress. So I bought a dress!

Let's do a little price averaging here. The dress and the shoes, $170. Feeling summery and attractive--priceless!

Jury Duty for Spring Break

2010-04-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

I spent 4 days last week serving on a jury in a domestic violence case. I of course did not knit in the coutrroom, but jury duty involves quite a bit of downtime, waiting out in hallways or in the deliberation room. And since we were not supposed to talk about anything related to the case, people kept to themselves, and I did so by knitting.

I cast on the first sock and got the cuff styarted before I went to the courthouse, and I held up my little baggie and asked if it was all right to bring it in. They waved me in, and over the ocurse of three days, I got close to the heel flap, which requires a bit of attention. So I slipped that sock onto a spare needle and started the second sock, so that I would still have mindless knitting to work on. So now I guess I will have to finish sock #2 before I pick sock #1 back up.

This is Patons Kroy FX in Cascade colorway, and I find it very pretty. It was only $10 for a pair's worth and I got 2 colorways, at Joann's. I am enjoying knitting with it quite a lot. Very well-suited to tv knitting as well.

When I have a bit more attention available, I ama lso working on a lace scarf called Heart to Heart Beaded Scarf, but my version is not beaded and to me in this color, it looks like the leaves of lilac trees, of which I have fond childhood memories. So I am calling it Lilac Leaf. The yarn is cashmere in the colorway Basil from Sarah's yarns in Brooklyn (well the yarn is from Mongolia.) This is pleasant knitting too, but does require decent light and more than half a mind.

Spring Knitting

2010-04-08T20:28:00.001-07:00

I saw a pattern in Piecework that was done over 100 years ago in my neck of the woods, and an updated version, using sock yarn. I thought it might be fun to do fewer repeats and a somewhat heavier yarn, but I only had one skein of alpaca and silk from Blue Sky Alpaca....well, let's give it a try...

I knit it up in a couple of days, and still thought it might not be long enough

but with some severe blocking

it works!

And then I had nothing on the needles again, so I took out the Basil-colored cashmere laceweight I bought from Sarah's Yarns a couple of months ago

downloaded Sivia Harding's pattern called Heart to heart beaded Scarf, and cast on. No beads, but this is a fascinating pattern and I think I will love doing it.

Easter Eating

2010-04-08T20:25:00.001-07:00

Honey Baked Ham and asparagus looked so fresh and spring-like

And tasted delicious!

A Sweater!

2010-03-14T16:20:00.001-07:00

I cast on for this sweater way back in November, but lots of things came along in the meantime that kept pushing it to the back burner. At times, I was ready to give up on the whole thing. I made many mistakes, the ribbing was hard to maintain, and I wasn't sure that it would fit since it looked so small.
But I kept going, reasoning that even a bad sweater is of more use than a pile of crumpled yarn. And today....it is a sweater! And not that bad after all.

Because the rib design is remarkably stretchy and adjustable, it fits snugly and quite well.

It hasn't been blocked, and I might decide that this is actually too snug.
And it is remarkably warm. It matches a mock turtleneck that I have perfectly, so I can wear it without wondering what to put under it. But unfortunately, I managed to finish it just in time for the cool weather here to come to an end for the next 6 months. I might wear it a few times and then give it a soak and a blocking before I put it away for the summer.

But all in all, I am very happy to have persevered, and I am proud to have a wearable sweater that I made with my own two hands.

The pattern is from Clara Parkes The Knitter's Book of Wool and this sweater was designed by Sandi Rosner. I knit it in Patons Classic Wool in the colorway Plum Heather (which I love!). It's 100% wool and cost less than $25 for the yarn (plus $7.50 for the buttons!)

Folk Festival Footwear Finally Finished

2010-03-07T16:04:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I'm a slow knitter. But I keep on knitting! And if you keep on knitting, eventually you finish! I cast on the first sock and got the cuff done before I even went to Chicago.

I knit from LA to Chicago, and during substantial parts of the 4 days I spent in Chicago. I finished the first sock during the plane ride home and immediately cast on the second sock, to avoid a life time of one orphan sock.

And then I knit and knit but it never seemed to get done. Until suddenly it did! Kitchenered it off on Saturday morning. And immediately went out and bought more sock yarn, in case of a sock knitting emergency.

So now I have to apply this same logic (if you keep knitting, you will eventually finish) to the sweater. I am kind of bummed about the number of screw-ups in this sweater, and yet I can't even bear the thought of frogging back, so onward I go. If I keep knitting, it will be a sweater. Some day. Just in time for spring! Yeah, not much motivation there.

Friday night and Saturday afternoon

2010-02-13T13:42:00.001-08:00

Friday night's concert at Mandel Hall was nearly full. The hall is quite beautiful, with a balcony and Victorian architecture. And because I had connections, I had seats in the second row, so close I could see the rosin flying off the fiddle bow!

The concert starts with a bagpiper to call everyone to attention. I didn't take any pictures of the other performers because flash is not allowed during sets.

Kristen and Ezra announce the raffle ticket sales.

Kristen announces one of the acts.

On Saturday morning, I enjoyed Scandinavian dance music at Ida Noyes, especially this unique instrument which I had never heard of--called something like nickelharpen. Played with a bow like a fiddle, but keyed like an autoharp.

Upstairs in Ida Noyes, a workshop on styles of fiddle music was well-attended.

Later, a workshop on Irish social dance.

Downstairs, the food sales.

And the vendors area.

On the landings, impromptu jam sessions go on all day long.
Resting up now for tonight's concert!

At the Chicago Folk Festival

2010-02-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 2010 University of Chicago Folk Festival. Kristen hand-made this awesome banner, which is prominently displayed in the foyer of the Reynolds Club.

Down the hallway is Mandel Hall. Kristen chats with the ticket sellers.

A man buys tickets to tonight's show, while Kristen does some problem-solving.

Lots of phone calls to answer and arrangements to make.

A person could get hungry! A ham sandwich at the Medici Bakery is just the thing.

The view of the Midway from my room in I-House.

And socks again!

2010-02-08T07:45:00.000-08:00

Since I will be traveling this week, and perhaps hanging around some as well, I decided to cast on another pair of socks. (Also, I am having a hard time powering through the final third or so of the Allegan sweater. Sweaters are so much responsibility! Socks always work.)

I had this yarn tucked away since last April, and it is knitting up even nicer than expected. And so wonderfully mindless, to just knit and knit.

Socks at Last!

2010-01-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

I started these socks well before Christmas, put them aside for some Christmas knitting, took them to Maine with me and finished the first sock there, and finally just finished the second sock yesterday. The yarn is on the heavy side for sock yarn, and the needles on the small side (US 1.5) so these are remarkably dense and chunky.

The pattern is by Anne Hanson, called Holidazed, and the yarn is Socks That Rock Mediumweight in the colorway Jasper. I saw a pair that the Yarn Harlot knit in a blue colorway and was smitten, and I ordered the pattern and yarn within moments, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I cast on 56 stitches instead of my usual 64, but I ended up having to make the leg section shorter than I normally would because the cuff was turning out a little too tight to go all the way up my calfs. And I decided to decrease only down to 64 on the foot section, for fear that would also be too tight. So if I were to make these again, I would cast on 64 stitches. But these fit nice and snug and are uber-cozy.

The rain it raineth every day

2010-01-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

From the time I landed in Philadelphia on Sunday till today, it has basically been raining steadily. Yesterday we had huge torrents of rain and wind. Today it is less intense, but the rain continues.

What is a little hard for people from the rest of the country to imagine is that winter, the rainy season, is when California is at its greenest. My weed patch:

temperatures

2010-01-15T06:27:00.000-08:00

It's quite moderate here today. But yesterday morning, this is what I was greeted with.

Dinner at The Angler's Restaurant in Newport

2010-01-14T11:59:00.001-08:00

A Day in Hartland

2010-01-13T10:59:00.000-08:00

Grandpa plans his summer garden, making out his order from the seed catalog.

Grandma cooks dinner.
Chicken Pot Pie!

Bailey the dog wishes he could take a walk.

The sock continues slowly.

Dinner is homemade chicken pot pie, salad, potato puffs, and peach melba for dessert.

Grandma's Potato Puffs

1 cup leftover mashed potatoes
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1.5 tsp. baking powder
1.5 tsp salt
(maybe add some grated onion?)

Mix all ingredients together. heat oil in frying pan. Drop large spoonfuls into hot oil. Brown on both sides.

Peach Melba

10 oz. frozen raspberries (or fresh)
2/3 cup sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
plain yogurt (Greek yogurt would be excellent)
peach halves in heavy syrup

Thaw raspberries if frozen. Cook with sugar, stirring constantly, till raspberries break down and thicken. Place a peach half on each plate. Fill with a scoop of yogurt. Pour sauce over peach and yogurt. Or serve in parfait glass.

After dinner, a walk to the library, over the river, but not through the woods!

25 degrees, not much wind, wearing Grandpa's hood over my hat, I am as toasty as can be.

2010

2010-01-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

A new year, a new decade, must be time for a new post. Kristen is going back to Chicago today, leaving temps in the 50s to 70s for temps in the single digits. Not easy. But she is looking forward to her new classes and quite satisfied with the ones just past, so I'm sure she will be fine. I am going there to visit for Folk Festival, which is over Valentine's Day weekend, just before my classes start. In the meantime, I'm going to Maine on Friday night, arriving Saturday morning, just for 8 days. I have to get some school work squared away before I leave, so the next week should be a busy one for me.

Current knitting is the Allegan sweater, which is at a kind of slow and boring stage. Last night Kristen went out to a post-New-Year's New Year's swing dance party, and I set up my laptop with a Julia Child dvd called The Way to Cook and added a couple of rows to the sweater. I get motivated to knit more when I can feel the end in sight--but how will I ever get to that point unless I press on a bit more? Hmmmm.

I also have a pair of socks on the needles, but I'm kind of saving them for travel knitting. I also stocked up my ipod with 2 Cast-on podcasts to entertain me on my long trip from Los Angeles to Bangor.

This trip consists of 4 sectors, all of which may be rather trying. First, I get to the airport at something like 8:30 pm and wait for my 10:20 pm flight. Then I fly across the country in about 5 hours--not really a night's sleep, even supposing I could remain unconscious for the entire time, which I can't. Then there's a 3 hour wait in Philadelphia, followed by a 90 minute flight to Bangor in a smallish plane. Total travel time is listed as 9 hours and 35 minutes, but that doesn't include the waiting time at LAX, which is mandatory. So really more like 11 hours, which seems like 14 hours with the time change factored in. If I could get on a plane here and get off in Bangor 10 hours later, it wouldn't be so bad. But what are you going to do? The only way to avoid the night flight is to arrive in Bangor in the middle of the night, which is also problematic. Especially if there happen to be any delays. Which there could well be.

I finally blocked the Storm Cloud Shawlette and it turned out okay. Not as drapey as the sample at Twist, but that's because hers was knit in a yarn that included silk, which I didn't really think about carefully enough at the time. Also, the color which seemed moody and mysterious at the time seems a bit gloomy now. But it was simple and not a failure.

Which is pretty much how I roll. Simple, but not a failure.

December

2009-12-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

I can't stand to look at the picture of the turkey anymore, every time I open up this page to connect to my favorite links. So I am posting this here just as a placeholder. I will take some pictures soon to fill in some space. Kristen is home and that is very nice. I still have school for another week, though I am now mentally on vacation already, so that's a little awkward. We still haven't put up our tree or done any Christmas stuff yet though.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

Ok, Martha Stewart will not be calling on me to do her food styling next year. I roast my turkey upside down with bacon on it, so it doesn't look like the Norman Rockwell images. But trust me, it tastes great!

hahaha, no there were NOT chopsticks sticking out of the turkey. Don't you hate the way photography flattens things out and makes you look like you have a lampshade on your head?

Stuffin muffins. Don't tell me about your oysters and chestnuts and laa-di-da stuffin. I like stuffin muffins!

And gravy. Lots of gravy. World-class gravy. mmm gravy.

Some knitting

2009-11-26T20:13:00.001-08:00

Finished the little angora scarf in feather and fan. 2" of yarn left!

Started a cardigan sweater. I'm having difficulty incorporating the increases into the rib pattern, but I'm up to one elbow by now.

An assortment of lace sampler bookmarks, which I shared with my California bookie friends.

From the Torrance Craft Faire

2009-11-14T18:18:00.001-08:00

No, I don't know why they add an extra e at the end, but they do.

I think I should collect sheep in various forms. I have a couple of postcards and two sheep pillows. And now I have a needle-felted sheep:

Ingenue Finished

2009-11-08T14:41:00.000-08:00

Papa approves :-)

Magic Loop Improved aka Travelling Loop

2009-11-08T07:08:00.000-08:00

I was knitting Ingenue, a top down sweater in the round, using, as advised, 24” needles which made it easy to knit the traditional in-the-round method. (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ingenue)

One of the selling points of knitting top down in the round is that you can try the sweater on as you go. Except that in order to do that, you have to slip all the stitches onto waste yarn, try it on, and then slip all the stitches back onto the needle again, (because the needle is always going to be smaller than the actual dimensions of the item being knit.) So that’s do-able, but a waste of good knitting time.

When I got near the bottom edge of the sweater, I decided to put the whole thing on a spare Knitpicks cord and knit the sleeves first before deciding on the exact length of the body. I used a 60” cord, for a 40” sweater. And as I knit the sleeves, I was able to try it on without fiddling around with putting the stitches onto waste yarn, since the cord was plenty long.

So it came time to re-attach the needles to the cord on the body, and I figured, ok, I’ll just keep this 60” cord in here and do the seed stitch border at the bottom by magic loop. That way, I could try it on without moving stitches. And that was good.

But at some point, instead of having the cord arranged Mickey Mouse style, with half the stitches in the front and half in the back and a loop coming out on the left and another length of cord on the right to knit with–I pulled all the cord to the right side in back. So now I had all the stitches in one circle, and a lot of excess cord on the right-hand side, and I was able to knit the entire round without turning and re-arranging stitches at all. Just knit from beginning of round to end of round in one smooth motion. And then pull the cord all the way to the right again, positioned the stitches near the tip of the left-hand needle, and off I went.

So I began puzzling about this! I had seen tutorials about how to finish up a hat without resorting to dpns, by using a single loop variant of magic loop. Is this the same thing as that? And most importantly, will this method work on socks and sleeves and hats and entire sweaters? And would it work using the same length needle that most of us have been using for magic loop all along? Is this an improvement to magic loop, or does it have some other drawbacks that I’m not seeing?

I posted these questions on Ravelry, and it was confirmed that this is a known and valid way of doing Magic Loop, by none other than TECHknitter, as well as a couple of other experienced knitters.

I saw a tutorial that explains this method, but somehow I didn’t see the beauty of it until I accidently unvented it again myself!

I have not been able to find a video tutorial, and unfortunately, I do not have the technological skill to create one. So here’s a verbal description. So let’s imagine that you have a sweater on a typical ML set-up, and you’re at the end of one section. Hold the knitting as you usually would to begin the next side, with two needles hanging out on the right side and a loop sticking out on the left, yarn coming from the back needle. Now pull on that back needle, pull so that the loop is eliminated and you have a long cord and needle coming out from the back. Slide the stitches into knitting position on the front needle.

Now look: you have stitches ready to knit, you have a needle available to knit onto, and you have enough cord to move easily…and you have all the stitches in one neat circle.

So start knitting, and keep knitting until all the stitches have been knit! Then repeat the instructions above again. The picture tutorial for Traveling Loop mentioned above says that the loop moves and that it knows where to go. But actually, you are just knitting all the way around, and the loop isn’t really “moving.”

I haven’t tried casting on and doing this from the start, but it seems that it would work. But you could start as you are used to and then after a few rounds are done, pull and eliminate the left hand loop and keep right on going.

Not only is it a Pretty Thing....

2009-10-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

it also feels heavenly, being made of (inexpensive!) cashmere. I can even feel virtuous, since it was recycled.

Pretty Things

2009-10-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Yarn Harlot put out a pattern for a lace neckwarmer named Pretty Thing that attracted a lot of attention when she first knit it, and I jumped on the bandwagon. I happened to have also recently purchased a single skein of recycled cashmere yarn in a lovely rapsberry color from www.Pepperberryknits.com, and all I needed were 16" size 4 needles. I am so in love with Knitpicks Harmony needles, so I ordered a pair, and when all the pieces were in place, I couldn't resist casting on. This pattern requires a fair amount of attention to the chart, so it's good for when I have good light and few distractions.

I'm up to row 12 out of 60 rows, so cruising right along, and so far, (bless me knitting goddess!), no mistakes. I'm not using a lifeline because frogging on a circular needle is just too much trouble.

The sweater continues apace. I know this is about as interesting as watching paint dry--it's only marginally more interesting to knit than that as well--but there is the excitement of wondering whether the whole thing will be a failure, so there's that. I tried it on and it is rather fitted, in a good way, I hope. It will grow a bit in the blocking.

This yarn seems quite soft to the touch, but up against bare tummy, it prickles a bit, so I will have to wear at least a camisole under it, and maybe a turtleneck. I tried on my old turtlenecks, and decided that they are ridiculously loose and baggy. So I placed an order today for 4 mock-turtlenecks from Lands'End in size small. I know, I'm not really a size small! But to wear under other things, I thought that might be better. If not, they will go back to Sears. Free shipping, so not much to lose.

The sweater is perfect to knit while watching 2 hours of Ugly Betty! Let's hope the Ugly doesn't rub off on the sweater. I have to say that I'm glad poor Betty is finally improving her appearance.

As I Lay Dyeing

2009-10-04T12:21:00.001-07:00

First the old news: I have been working on the top of this top-down sweater (Ingenue, which I ain't!) since August, but I wasn't sure it was working out. I cut the yarn and blocked what I have so far, and at this point it is looking a bit more hopeful. As I was warned, Patons Classic Wool has a tendency to grow quite a bit when it hits water. I did soak and block my swatch, so perhaps I am on the right track after all. Worth pressing on, once the shoulder section dries.

So to amuse myself this morning, I decided I needed to do some Kool-aid dyeing. I had purchased 2 50-gram skeins of 75% wool sock yarn at Let's Knit a week or two ago, marked down to $3 a skein because the skeins were kind of messed up.

So I wound it into a skein, using one strand from each ball so that whatever pattern I ended up with would be the same in both socks.

Then as my exercise for the day, I walked over to Ralphs and bought 4 colors (um, flavors) of Kool-aid:

I dissolved the Kool-aid into 3 jars (I used the Grape to top off the jars and kind of deepen the brightness of the Black Cherry, Berry Blue and Strawberry) and put the whole set up in the microwave and nuked it a couple of times.

The colors seem to be fairly promising:

So my yarn is drying on the patio, and I will rewind it into 2 separate but pretty much matching balls, ready to start a pair of socks one of these days. I want to weigh the yarn at the PO to make sure I got the full 100 grams I am supposed to have. (One skein had far less than the other, for some reason, so I evened them out, but yardage may be missing. Hey, it was $6 total.) So I may try the toe-up method, in case the yardage is a little low. Socks that don't come up very high on the ankles are more useful than socks that don't quite reach the toes....

So while my sweater dries and my yarn dries, I still need something to knit!

Luckily, I have some monster knitting to work on. A couple of weeks ago (July?? August??) Beach Knitting had a big sale, all sale yarns $2 a skein. There were 3 skeins of Rowan's Big Wool in a most unappetizing beige color. But hey, it listed at $16 a skein, and I could buy it for $2 a skein, each 100 grams of super chunky a 100% pure wool. Color is no obstacle!So I also bought a jar of Wilton's Food Dye Gel in Leaf Green and back in September, I wound and spit-spliced all three skeins into one continuous skein and dyed it Leaf Green. The beige was no more!

And this yarn was exactly the yarn called for in a pattern that I had been thinking of for quite a while--an oversized Basketweave pattern to use as a cushion cover (from Knitting For Good.) I even had 3 over-sized buttons in my button stash, just right for the look.

Knitting with size 17 needles is not really as much faster as you might expect, because all the movements are larger and less efficient. The cover is maybe 2/3rds knit. I picked up a 16"pillow form at Joann's yesterday so that I could make sure of the size as I finish it up. Not sure who the lucky recipient of this pillow will be, but it has been a lot of fun to work on.

On the sports front, a lightbulb went off in my head this morning that should have gone off years ago. Sam remains a Chicago sports fan, but he can't get the games live on tv. He was planning to follow along on today's Chicago Bears game by watching the online scoring, and he said, yeah, it's almost like listening to the game on the radio. Wait a minute, what did you say? Radio? Maybe you could **listen** to Chicago radio online! And guess what? Sure you can! Live streaming of the local Chicago stations! That means that Cubs games can also be followed on the radio, play by play! How did I never think of this before?? I have known since 2006 that I could listen to WFMT on the computer! I just never put 2 and 2 together (and in my defense, neither did Sam or Kristen.) Anyhow, Sam is now listening to the Bears live on the radio online.

This is a good time to be alive and I don't want to hear from anyone who thinks the internet is making us stupid/isolated/whatever. It's the best thing since movable type!

A few more pictures of Kristen and the Ishbel shawl

2009-08-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

Endings and New Beginnings

2009-08-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

It seems appropriate as my summer vacation comes to an end today and Flex day looms up tomorrow, to tie up some loose threads, so to speak, and bring a couple of projects to an end, before starting fresh on a new challenge.

So I finished up a little necklace of leaves and called that done. I had originally intended to pick up stitches all around it and use it as the base for a smoke ring, but I think I am finished with it and it will be more wearable as a necklace. Knit in Mini Mochi, which looks beautiful but behaves badly while knitting it.

Then I decided that the mermaid scarf in Malabrigo laceweight was no longer giving me any pleasure at all, so I bound that off as well. What is it? It is nothing. Just an 8" square of soft lace.

But my binding off and ending up was not all of the abortive attempt sort. I completed a second Ishbel shawlette, this one for Kristen. She loves the blueberry color and the cashmere softness, and I am quite pleased with how fast and easy this one went--less than 3 weeks start to finish.

And for new beginnings? I swatched Patons Classic Wool in the colorway Moss Heather to get started on a top-down raglan sweater from Custom Knits called Ingenue. Details to follow! This one will probably be for me, unless it turns out that I am not an ingenue, actually, and it knits up too small, as can happen to the best of us, in which case, well ther eis an actual ingenue in the house! :-)

Sukiyaki

2009-08-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

We recently discovered the joys of Wagyu beef, and decided to try it in sukiyaki. Usually we only make sukiyaki in the winter, but it's been a cool summer and besides, we discovered the joys of wagyu beef!

What is wagyu? The word means simply Japanese beef, and it's actually a breed of cattle indigenous to Japan. The Japanese, although they didn't begin eating beef till the mid 19th century, have raised it to a fine art. But the most surprising thing about wagyu is that it is naturally low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat. Usually monounsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature, while saturated fats, like butter and lard, are hard or at least solid at room temperature. Well wagyu beef, if you leave it at room temperature for a short time, almost begins to melt.

And in your mouth? It does melt.

The vegetables are also yummy: enoki mushrooms, shirataki (sort of noodles), nappa, green onions, tofu, bamboo shoots.

Unfortunately, I was too busy cooking and eating to take any pictures of the finished sukiyaki. But trust me, it was good.

Read much?

2009-08-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

I am marking as read any book that I finished, regardless of whether I now remember one thing about it (oh the joys of old age!) Y= yes, I read that. P= parts, one of the series N= nope. NHOI= Never heard of it.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -Y
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -N
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -Y
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - P
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -Y
6 The Bible -Y (all of it!)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -Y
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -Y
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -P
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -Y
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -Y
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -Y
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -Y
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare- (all of them?, uh no. but a dozen or so, probably)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -Oh my yes!
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -Y
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -NHOI
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -Y
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger- N
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -(I'm not sure. Maybe. I read several of hers. Maybe this one?)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -Y
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -Y
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -N
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -N
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -N
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -N
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -Y
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll-N
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame-P
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -N
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -Y
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -Yes, repeatedly
34 Emma-Jane Austen - Y
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -Maybe
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -(wait, this is part of the Chronicles of Narnia!)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -N
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -NHOI
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -N
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -Y
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -Y
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -Y
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -N
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving-N
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -N
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -Y
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -Maybe
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -Y
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Y
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -N
51 Life of Pi - Yann Marte l-Y
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -N
53 Cold Comfort Farm -N
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-Y
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -NHOI
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -NHOI
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -P
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Y
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - Y
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -N
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - Y
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-N
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -Oh yeah. Fantastic, unforgettable.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -Y
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -N
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -Y
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -I think so (graduate school is kind of a blur. I took a course in Victorian fiction, and speed-read a bunch of the, seems like this was one of them)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -hell no.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -N
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -P
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -Y
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -N
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -Y
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -Y
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - N
76 The Inferno – Dante -N
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -N
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -N
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-N
80 Possession - AS Byatt –NHOI
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -Y
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -NHOI
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -N
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -N
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert-N
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -NHOI
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -Y
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -what the hell is this doing on this list?
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -P
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -NHOI
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -Y
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -N (I Know, I'm ashamed of this no.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -NHOI
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -P
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -N
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -N
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -N
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -(see again, this is part of the Complete works, no? I did read Hamlet.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - N
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -N

So now I have to find out where this odd list came from. And if they're going to retroactively revoke my status as an English major....(I have read about 40 from the list.)

And, btw, the BBC part is apparently an urban legend. This is not the BBC list, nor did they say that most people only read 6 of them. I guess the BBC proofreads their lists....

Let me add a couple of suggestions to this list:

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Victorian Shoulderette

2009-08-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

So this has been keeping me happy for a couple of weeks. I bought the yarn last April when I was in Chicago--it's natural alpaca, meaning the color of the yarn is the actual color it was on the alpaca. I like this shape and I enjoyed knitting the knitted on border.

30 years and counting....

2009-08-06T10:53:00.001-07:00

A couple of pictures from our quiet anniversary dinner. Kristen had a coupon to an Indian restaurant in Torrance, so we went out for a lovely dinner, just the 3 of us.

Lace

2009-07-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

It is official: I totally love knitting lace.

This is my latest little project, which took only 2 weeks to knit, called Ishbel. I bought the yarn on July 3rd and spent a day fiddling with the pattern, and then it was just full-speed ahead.

The yarn is 100% cashmere, for which I paid $40 at Wildfibers in Santa Monica. I love the color, and of course it feels marvelous. $40 seems like a lot to pay for a skein of yarn. But it doesn't seem like too much to pay for something this pretty when I'm done! (I also have quite a bit left. I will stop by the post office and weigh the finished shawl and the remaining skein and see how they compare and figure out something else to knit from it as well.

I like that this design is small and wider than it is long (that's what made the pattern tricky at first--you have to do yarn-overs on both sides, between purl and knit stitches, which doesn't seem hard, but takes a little figuring.)

Summer knitting

2009-07-06T09:39:00.001-07:00

To keep my hands occupied, I made two washcloths, which I really like. Sure, washcloths are silly. But they're soft and lovely to use, and fun to knit. And you can finish them in a day or two.

Kristen got some Cascade 220 on our fieldtrip to Wildfiber in Santa Monica, and is at work on a rippled cable scarf that I am in love with.

And I got some cashmere laceweight in a color known as Plum Rose (which already makes me love it) and am off and running on the shawl pattern Ishbel. It took em two days to figure out a method of increasing that I was satisfied with, but now I am very happy with how this is coming along. we'll see how the lace portion goes!

The Elwells in Torrance!

2009-06-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

Kristen and Hannah

and Molly

and Lydia

and Emily

Hannah again

Abby

Caleb
Joanne

Caleb, Joanne, and Kristen

Finally finished the April in Chicago socks...

2009-06-12T08:41:00.001-07:00

Which perhaps should now be called California June Gloom socks?

I have no idea why it took me 3 weeks to knit the first sock of this pair. the second sock went very fast, and I finished it in a week.

the shawl!

2009-06-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

I am so happy with the results of my first lace-weight triangular neck-down shawl. The pattern is from Evelyn Clark's Knitting Lace Triangles, and although some points seemed mysterious to me as I read through it, once I started, each step was clear as I came to it.

I knit the entire thing is less than a month, even with stopping for a couple of days to make another small item. I expected lace to take a long time, but actually this was rather speedy. After blocking it and ironing it a bit, it is a very good size--about 22" from neck to point down the back, and 58" "wingspan." I used one whole skein of Sarah's Yarns mongolian cashmere, plus a small amount of a second skein.

The softness, the drape, the warmth are spectacular, if I may say so myself. And I have enough of the yarn left to make another scarf or small shawl. (I guess the yarn was $29 a skein, though it seems like I may have paid less than that. In any case, it was money well spent!)

Warehouse Sale

2009-05-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, I am becoming one of those people! A local yarn store announces a 50% off sale at their warehouse, and I show up at 9 am on Sunday, and spend $78 on high-priced yarn! I bought 4 small balls of cashmere, 3 in maize and one in forest green, originally $26.50 each, now only $13.25! And what am I going to do with 4 small (mismatched) balls of cashmere?

Well, to ease my conscience, I decided that I could turn each one into a small Christmas gift, a sweet little neck-warmer. I liked this pattern better after I heard it referred to as a lotus-leaf design. In any case, it turns out that one 25 gram (80 yard) ball of cashmere is just enough to knit this, luckily. And it only takes a couple of days of pleasant and easy knitting. So I feel a little better about my extravagance.

I also bought 4 balls of Cashsoft, one of which is exactly the same dye lot and everything as the one I used for the baby hat I designed (Greenleaf). I now have 4 miscellaneous colors of this as well. More baby hats? I don't know.

A few more pictures of the lace

2009-05-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

This is the actual way the lace will end up, while the previous pictures were actually upside down. There are now six leaves across in each section. This is about 18" across the neck and 10" top to point. I might be a little obsessed....

Leaves of Lace

2009-05-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely Mother's Day--received a very sweet card from Kristen, and Sam took me out for dinner and also washed the dishes on Sunday! I talked to my mother and my sister, as well as my daughter, so all family ties are firmly in place.

So on Saturday afternoon, I cast on for the realest of real lace: cashmere laceweight yarn from Sarah's Yarns, and Evelyn Clark's pattern for a triangular lace shawl knit from the neck down. All was going well, and by noon on Sunday, I had 3 repeats done and was feeling quite confident....until I took a close look.

After row 7, I had the number of stitches I was supposed to have after row 9. Which means that I had somehow added 4 excess stitches. Much hemming and hawing and counting and re-counting of sticthes ensued, culminating in ripping out 2 whole repeats.

So now I am filling the lace with lifelines and stitch markers every 10 stitches, which makes it less attractive to look at and slower to work on...but not as slow as actual ripping out of stitches!

This will keep me busy for quite a while, methinks!

Shawl Done

2009-05-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, the puns are getting worse! But the shawls are getting better!

This is my third go-round with this pattern, and I really like doing it. You can feel the progress, and it took me one week each time to finish a warm and cozy shawl.

I often sit by this window in the evening, and the breeze, while delightful, can be a little too much on the back of my shoulders. Now I will have a lovely little shalw to toss on and avoid a stiff neck.

Koi Noburi

2009-05-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

May 5th is not only Cinco de Mayo, it is also, coincidently Children's Day (Kodomo no Hi) in Japan. Quite a few of our neighbors put out the fish banners that celebrate this day, called Koi Noburi, which means Swimming Carp. They represent the wish that children (boys, actually) will be as strong and determined as carp which swim upstream. They look so festive, blowing in the wind!

So I completed a second Simple Yet Effective Shawl in Lion Brand Romance mohair yarn, this one for my Mom for Mother's Day. And again I made the whole thing in just a week's time, which is like a world record for me!

I've had such a good time with these that I immediately cast on for one more, this one for myself. We'll see if my luck holds!

Saturday fun

2009-04-25T16:12:00.001-07:00

This morning I decided to do a few things I don't usually do, so I went over to the beach and took an hour walk, ending at Casa Arigato, where I ordered a cappuccino...and it was so lovely, as well as delicious. I must do this again!

And I took a few pictures around town. A nice day.

Home Alone

2009-04-24T07:39:00.001-07:00

So what's a girl to do when she has the house to herself? Well, keep on knitting, for sure. I started this sock before I left for Chicago, sure that I would have enough knitting time on planes and while waiting for Kristen in various places, and I did do some knitting in those circumstances. But somehow I seem to be as slow as molasses on this thing. I am not quite up to the toe decreases on sock #1. But it is a handsome sock, is it not? Patons Kroy stripes in the colorway Burnished Sierra Stripes. I may cast on something else before I do the second sock, however. Maybe more Romance mohair? I am surprised at how much I enjoyed knitting with that. Might be the difference between size 2 needles and size 10.5 or 11.

And of course the other thing to do while home alone is to cook and eat whatever I want! Which in this case was a bottle of Thai yellow curry sauce from Trader Joe's. I cooked several potatoes, poured the sauce over the finished potatoes, added some fresh chicken tenders and some frozen peas and carrots, and had it along side basmati rice. Last night and the night before. Not bad. I also have a bottle of Thai red curry sauce and I am thinking about the fresh skinless duck breasts that they sell at Nijiya....no, not this week. Maybe after Kristen gets home? We shall see.

Busy Day

2009-04-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

I attended two of Kristen's classes today, and then went and did a few other things while she went to Italian lector and writing class and then had her phone interview. While she was working, I took a few pictures around town:

I found the Treasure island grocery store, which is quite fancy and has everything you could want, though a bit pricey.

The Museum of Science and Industry as seen from the corner of Kristen's street.

Kristen's front door

and her 8th floor apartment from the outside.

We met up at The Snail Thai restaurant, and it happened to be Thai New Years. We got fired rice and red curry, both of which were delicious. And in honor of New Years, they gave us a free little dessert of mango and sweet rice.

Rainy Days and Mondays

2009-04-13T18:00:00.001-07:00

To start a rainy Monday off on the right foot, we stopped at Istria bakery under the Metra tracks on 57th street for a cappuccino. They serve it with little disks of chocolate, which made a cheery face melting into the foam.

Then I accompanied Kristen to her Italian class in Cobb hall. Her professor, Rafaelo, is great--I was able to get the gist of the grammar points that he was making, and the time went by fast.
Then Kristen went to Green Hall to work in the psych lab, while I relaxed in the Reynolds club, reading and knitting. At 3:30 we made a dash over to the Ray School where kristen's tutee was waiting. Mirai is so cute, and after Kristen helped her do all her homework, they had a little time to play paperdolls!

We came home for a short time and then walked to Giordano's pizza, which is on Blackstone near 53rd Street, and met up with Ezra, because I wanted to take him out to dinner.
Ezra kept us entertained with stories of his blog and his political adventures while we waited 40 minutes for them to cook deep dish Chicago pizza. It was worth the wait!

The pizza was delicious. But even though 2 people were sharing a 10" pizza, we had to take half of it home with us.

Sunday at UChicago

2009-04-12T21:42:00.001-07:00

After a few false starts, we went to the infamous C-Shop so that Kristen could work on her writing class.

This is what the C-Shop looks like inside.

And this is what Kristen looked like for 6 solid hours, as she tried to find a suitable article for her report. I read a book on language and mind, took a brief nap, made a couple of phone calls, and offered what moral support I could. Luckily, she finally found something she could use by 4:45, and then we met up with her friend Susan and went up to the north side for sushi.

Here's a link to their menu and location: House of Sushi and Noodles.

As you can see, Kristen and Susan both enjoyed it! As did I.

Saturday in Chicago

2009-04-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

We got up early in the morning and looked out the window from Kristen's apartment...yup, looks like a good day to go have some fun.

We took 2 buses and ended up by the Water Tower, where we spent a little time in Borders.

Then we walked towards the Chicago River, which is this green all the time, not just on Saint Patrick's Day!

There are sculptures and art works all around the city, including this enormous sculpture of American Gothic.

Kristen bought new sunglasses and was looking awfully cool!

For dinner we went to the Parthenon Restaurant, where the meal begins with flaming Greek cheese to the cries of Oopa!

The main course was a plate that included braised lamb, roasted chicken, spinach pie, and eggplant moussaka. We had leftovers!

Then we went back to Uchicago, to attend the Contra Dance. The musicians were playing...

and about 100 people were dancing.

including Kristen...and mama a few times, though it's much harder work than you would think. But a whole lot of fun!

And finally, we fell into bed! Kristen's pedometer registered 18,000 steps, and that doesn't count the dancing. Our feet are sore, but we had a great time.

Shawl again

2009-04-08T18:25:00.001-07:00

This was my first try at a neck-down triangular shawl, and I really enjoyed it. You start with 5 stitches, and then make a yo on each end one stitch in, and on each side of the center stitch. It seems confusing, but the part closest to you in the picture above is the neck edge and the part where the needles are will be the two bottom edges.

I had some difficulty with the stitch marker indicating the middle stitch slipping underneath the yo and misleading me about where the middle was, but once I figured out what was going wrong, I looked carefully at the center stitch , and it worked out fine.

Here is the pattern.

I liked this so well, I might make myself one as well. I ended up doing 82 rows, and the finished size was 50" wingspan, 22" deep (neck to point) and 30" along each side. So it's relatively small, a shoulder warmer, but big enough to tie in front.

I went over to Christine's house this afternoon to give it to her, and learned that unfortunately, she has a second surgery scheduled tomorrow. So it was perfect timing to give it to her.

That's Shawl She Wrote

2009-04-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

All right, bad pun for a header. But nice shawl! This is Feather and fan done with fluffy Romance yarn on size 11 needles. The yarn seemed like cotton candy and I was afraid it was going to be hard to knit with, but it wasn't bad at all. It was tricky to undo, in the event of mistakes (who, me?) but for straightforward knitting, it was pretty easy.
This reminds me a lot of the very first thing I ever knit--a scarf for my baby sister when I was a teenager. It took me like 2 years and I finally just bound off because I couldn't stand any more garter stitch. But I recall it being some sort of blue acrylic/mohair.
I will send this to Aunt Bobbie, who gave me the yarn.

I liked it so well I decided to try the pink skein, and have a go at knitting a triangular shawl from the neck down. It seems that a triangle would have to have hundreds of stitches cast on for the top edge, but not so. This starts with just 5 stitches, and you increase two stitches in the center and a stitch on each edge on every right side row, and it makes a triangle which is a triangle no matter how much you have done. This is for Christine, who unfortunately was diagnosed with breast cancer recently. In keeping with the pink ribbon theme.

And after that, I think I want a feather and fan shrug of some sort for myself. If the shawl above were made a little wider, the edges could be stitched together to create a simple shrug. This yarn is very warm and cozy, so that would be nice.

Socks

2009-03-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

Just visual evidence of an actual pair of socks.

No Lions Here

2009-03-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

March is supposed to come in like a lion, but of course Southern California does not include lion-ish weather in its bag of tricks. We get odd touches of spring that really don't make much of an impression, against the backdrop of general mildness. One odd touch is these flowers that bloom outside Kristen's bedroom window out of what is not simply a dormant tree but one that is actually dead. Or nearly so. But one bit of life must remain.

So I've been using the various Omaha Steak items that Mum and Dad sent, and last night I wanted to use up some asparagus, and decided to cook the last 2 chicken breasts to go with it. I boiled the asparagus and made a sauce out of mayonnaise and a splash of usukuchi soy sauce blended together. Then I dredged the chicken breasts in a bit of flour and sauteed them in olive oil. When they were nearly done, I added a substantial bit of minced garlic. I added about 3/4 cup of chicken broth and some capers I happened to have in the fridge. Covered that and let it steam a bit, then I squirted in some lemon juice and tossed in some green onions, and let the liquid reduce.Add some yellow rice and the asparagus, and it made quite a nice meal!

On the knitting front, I am on the foot section of my second sock in the Burnished Berries colorway. But I was feeling impatient to try out the Lion Brand Romance that Aunt Bobbie sent, so I cast on 40 stitches in Feather and Fan to see how it works up. It's easier to knit with than it appears. The fuzziness is kept in check by the fact that there is some nylon thread spun into the yarn. Feather and Fan is just my kind of stitch pattern: the end results look far more complicated than the actual pattern. You knit a row, purl a row, do one row of yos and k2togs, and knit another row. How hard is that? And you get this for your trouble: