What a mess!!!

I dumped my knitting bags out for a little look. It had been a while since I straightened things up, untangled my projects, took stock. Yikes. I think I need to buy a box of ziplocks! Rest assured, when I put it all back, things were in better order than they started out. In the full size version of this photo (which you don't get to see), one can pick out several dormant projects, which will be back on active status, once the priorities are dealt with.


Here are some current sock projects. The green Wildfoote ones are for me. Nearly done, but on hold while other projects take priority. Then there is one grey sock from the Regia Silk. Have I mentioned how much I love this yarn? These socks will be for my dad's birthday later this month. Next, a little teeny bit of a sock from some KnitPicks cotton sock yarn that Terby destashed on me a couple months ago. She said she just wasn't happy with it, no matter what she tried. Maybe I'll have better luck?


This is a sample of the Mystery Project for release around April 1. Tune in for more details later.

What do I have to show for myself?

What have I been doing with my time lately?

Knitting socks for Dad's birthday later this month. Knitting a surprise for a free pattern, a designer trio from Wendy, Wendy, and me. And sketching and planning. Precious little blog-worthy knitting. If only I could knit in my sleep: think of the progress I would make. I could do all the long, repetetive boring parts in my sleep, freeing up my waking hours for the exciting stuff.

Today, I registered The Little Emperor for kindergarten! Wow. This was fairly painless for me, in terms of time and form-filling, because he was already in the school system computers. He was in a speech therapy preschool classroom last year and at the beginning of this year, so I had already done all the stuff with verifying birthdate, social security number, immunization records, etc. All I really needed to do was tell the school secretary his name and sign up for two appointments. Piece of cake. I'm very excited about fall. The last time I finally had a kid starting kindergarten, I went and got pregnant right away. Believe me, that's not happening this time.

Gifted!

My very kind friend Wendy B and I were chatting the other night and I mentioned that I want to make my Dad some socks for his birthday, which is in late March. He's had some hard stuff happening in the last week, and he's not a very emotionally open kind of person. Wendy said she had the perfect yarn and put it in a box to send for me to use. She packed a few other goodies in there, too. A handy little case for small items and some lollipops for the kids.


This yarn will be perfect for my Dad's socks. I'm so touched that she did that! Thanks Wendy.

Now, hum along:
Here's the mail, it never fails,
it makes me want to wag my tail....
When it comes I want to wail
Maiil!

For those of you who want to know more about Steve and his life since Blues Clues, see Steve's Web Site. Listen to his music. Watch the video. It's actually interesting stuff.

Olympics afterthought

I did not participate in the Knitting Olympics. I guess I'm not a joiner. But my maternal grandfather was an Olympic athlete in his youth. And he had a Michelle Kwan moment about 82 years ago. Read all about it here

Weekend Update

Minor change in the template: I made a little sidebar group of Madison knitters' blogs. I hope to add to list as I stumble onto them. Sometimes when I'm following one of the webrings I realize I've found another Madison knitter. Next time that happens, I'll add the link to the sidebar right away. I hope. I think. I'll try.

Not much in the knitting news right now. I have a few stealth projects in the works. Some dormant UFOs. Nothing worth taking a picture of today.

My big accomplishment today was washing my kitchen floor. And back hall and half-bath. It's all one stretch of flooring. It was really disgusting. I can't remember the last time I washed it all. Isn't that awful? What's worse, I think that when I was a college student, living in the Party Apartment with my degenerate guy housemates, we washed the floor more often than mine gets washed these days. Ick. It was very rewarding, especially the really awful zone around the downstairs toilet. A house with three males… need I say more? I've learned in life that I can face almost anything if I can wear rubber gloves. I could have made a Spic'nSpan commercial with the before and after, except that my floor is not all that attractive when it is at its best. The vinyl was already old when we bought the house in '97 and the years of neglect haven't helped. I haven't bothered replacing it because in a few more years, come hell or high water, I plan to gut our kitchen and the back hall area and do a massive remodel, involving removing a pointless chimney, and when that happens, I'm going to get a very nice ceramic tile floor. So we live with the dinged and stained vinyl for now. But at least it's clean today!

E is for echinacea

This is the dried seed cone from the coneflowers the swallowtails were working in my B is for Butterfly post. What a difference a few months makes...

I bet you all thought I'd do E is for Elizabeth. And I almost thought I would have to do that, but out in the yard with the camera, I had an AHA moment.

My second attempt at the Alishar hat is back to yarn status. It was coming out way too big. Not sure why, but my gauge was very different from the first effort that ended up too small. Scott suggested that I felt it, and I almost went with that idea. In fact, from the moment of suspecting trouble, I continued knitting for another couple inches. And I almost thought, well, a bag could be any size... but frogged anyway.

The Garter Belt Newsletter now up!

Thanks all, for nice comments on the hat.

Sign up here for The Garter Belt newsletters. Download February newsletter here. Keep up with the latest and read Wendy B's tips on Knitting For Kids.

Alishar Hat on the way

Just a little teaser of the next upcoming pattern. This first sample came out way too small, but I've started another. I'll be keeping the effect on top, though, because I think it's pretty cool.

Not a lot of other news to report. It's cold cold cold here. I awoke to a pleasant surprise: temperature at +10 F at 7 a.m. That's about 28 degrees warmer than it was two days ago at the same time of day.

We all seem to be recovering from our tummy bugs. Thank goodness!

Not much else to report right now. Some boring socks are almost done. They're so routine, they don't even count. Time to bring some projects out of hibernation.

Later
Just found this little bit of fun:Make your own tartan
This is my first effort. Give it a whirl!

Happy Valentines Day

And Happy Birthday to Owen, my funny Valentine, now 11 years old. The picture at the right was taken last summer on Madeline Island. Owen is at his happiest digging in sand near water.

I don't know what I've been doing the last several days, but it sure isn't knitting. Owen was in the city spelling bee on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I ended up sleeping as much as I felt I could get away with. And still slept well Saturday night. I've been fighting a cold and over the weekend I felt like I easily could have spent an extra eight hours in bed if only mommies were allowed that privilege. We had Owen's birthday party on Sunday, so I had to muster the energy to clear the dining room table. This is a job I dare not delegate! The trouble with our table is that everything ends up there: junk mail, important mail, checks we got for our birthdays in November, any paper that comes home from school with either child, bills (new and old). You get the idea. Also, many forms of arts and crafts and the necessary supplies. Nope, no knitting stuff in the dining room, but everything else: kid art, kid crafts, beads big and small, paint (kid friendly and not), many kinds of glue (kid friendly and not), model boat parts, model train parts, little snips of paper, and more pens and pencils than we will use in the next decade. Toss in a few old newspapers and you have the idea. The cleaner must be careful to actually sort the detritus, stash the bills, file the financial statements, pocket the checks and spare change, put every art and craft in its proper place, purge the junk mail, and stay attentive to detail through the whole job. I was able to tackle the table through my head-cold and anti-histamine fog and get mostly down to bare wood. The children were reasonably well-mannered. Dr. Science took them all to see Wallace and Gromit at the cheap seats. No sooner did they return from the movie and the parents began to arrrive to pick them up.

Last night I was to bake a cheesecake for Birthday Boy to bring to school, but I did manage to delegate that. I had Owen find a recipe online and I bought the supplies. The rest was up to Owen and Scott. They did a good job of it, too. I was supposed to bake the cake for the family party tonight. Also buy lobster for the birthday dinner. If you look in the sidebar, you'll notice that my place of residence is Wisconsin. This is a long way from where lobsters live. Still, I obliged. It was not cheap. I didn't make the family cake: bought a little frozen Pepperidge Farm cake. We had homemade ice cream, so that kind of makes up for it. Through all this, I'm still slogging along with the head cold. I'm down to wanting an extra 2 hours of sleep, not 4 or 5, so that's better.

Besides all this, I was up late finishing a book I'm reading. I'm not sure yet what I think of it. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. It's a dystopian future kind of book, with global warming, economic collapse and environmental devastation, and all the attendant anarchy. For this kind of fiction, I think Margaret Atwood sets the standard with The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. Still, this wasn't a bad read, and was hard to put down after the half-way point. And it does seem to cry out for a sequel or two: it reads like Part 1 of a trilogy.

So, not much knitting from me these days. I did make an Alishar Hat. I need to darn in ends and block before I show the world. And make a bigger one. I got the skeleton of the pattern written. Need to make some charts and explain the tricky stuff a little better.

The big news in my little knitting orbit is that Wendy Bernard of Knit and Tonic has joined The Garter Belt! She'll be a wonderful asset to our little store and we're happy to have her on board.

This is a picture of the face a mother in her forties makes when a child is approaching with something in his extended hand, heading right for the sweet spot, about 4 inches out from said mother's nose. Yeah, my husband really knows how to capture his wife at her best.

D is for Dandelion

I took this photo last summer when I was playing with the macro feature on my camera. I call it Georgia O'Keefe Moment.

In other news, I'm most of the way through a hat to go with the Alishar sweater. I think it's coming out really well. I've got a cold and I'm feeling kind of low. I actually spent a large part of the afternoon dozing in bed, waking a bit here and there to feel guilty, but going back to sleep anyway. I'm happy I've been able to get a little knitting in this evening: I was feeling like such a cotton-head all day I didn't know if I would. I'll have to find a model with a normal size head when it's done. When I make hats in my size, they are huge for everyone else. Kind of affects my baseline perception of normal.

Owen's City Spelling Bee was today. He did make it through one round before getting knocked out. There were kids up through middle school (8th grade) age, so it was some tough competition. Nearly all the kids looked terribly nervous. I noticed that as the girls got into the teens, they seemed more insecure, whereas the boys got more indifferent. Owen's mood has been all over the map today: he woke up at 5 something, too worked up to go back to sleep. When I got up, he was watching Star Wars. After the spelling bee, he was grumpy, touchy, tired, and demanding. So, it was a bad day for mom to be having a sick day. Tomorrow is his birthday party, so we have more anxiety and anticipation about that. Yikes. Then the actual birthday on Tuesday.

Owen would like me to post a link to his first Flash movie. He's really determined to learn all he can about computer generated animation. It's one of the few things he persues for hours on end and sticks with in spite of frustrations and set backs. Most things at school are easy for him, so he hasn't had to learn how to work through frustration with that. I'm glad there's one area of his life where he goes for the challenge.

A Sunny Day in February

I've been writing the Hyde Park Pullover pattern for the last several days, getting scant knitting time in. The job is nearly done: I need to do another proofread and make a few corrections that I already know about and then, get decent photos. The sun is finally shining in Wisconsin today, but, wouldn't you know, now it's too bright. The pictures we took in the yard today resulted in a nice exposure on the sweater, but a blinding glare from my hands and face. I need a nice dark hat with a wide brim to cast a shadow on my face and maybe that will work!

I've sized the pattern in 7 sizes from XS to 3XL. It gave me the incentive to create an Excel template to spit out some rough numbers for every size. Using the Craft Yarn Councils Standards, and extrapolating with some help from the tables in the back of Maggie Righetti's Sweater Design in Plain English, I created a template that can take any gauge and spit out stitch and row counts for 9 sizes at most crucial fitting points. As it turns out, I didn't use the two largest sizes for this pattern, but if any 4XL or 5XL women out there want it in that size, I'll do it. Just let me know.

Later the same day
I think I may have inadvertently set my camera to overexpose everything when I was trying to do self-portraits last week. I've been having exposure frustrations since then, and had the idea at the time that I'd done something wrong. The trouble is, the full owner's manual came as a 289 page pdf. How stupid! How often do you have your computer with you when you need to look up something? I've tried sitting at the computer with the camera reading, but then I'm out somewhere and can't quite remember what I read. There are some adjustments I make often enough to have learned, but others just don't come up too often. I've begun printing out the relevant pages as I need them and assembling them in a binder so that I can have the manual with me when and where I need it. Meanwhile, I figured out how to reset all factory settings, did that, and hope I've cured the problem!

Another internet quiz...

The Librarian You scored 71 erudition!

Congratulations! You're well above average when it comes to your knowledge of English grammar, history, and literature. You may have missed a few questions, but if you keep your studies up and stay away from genre fiction, we'll have you ready for Stanford in no time! Who knows, we just might be reading your columns in Talk of the Town a few years from now.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 30% on erudition

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test written by okellelala on Ok Cupid,

No photos, just text. OK, one photo.

I decided after two picture posts in a row, I'd better actually say something.

Knitting updates
On Saturday at knitting group I got most of the way down the foot of the current sock. It's from Brown Sheep Wilde Foot in a very pretty green. I think I'm nearly ready to start toe shaping, but need to double check on my foot.

I've been working on the hot pink cardigan (Plum Shrug revised) the last couple of nights. I had some interesting glitches in some of the early on rows (don't ask me how), but decided to soldier on with errors I probably should have gone back to fix. My excuses are that my grandmother, the intended recipient, is extremely visually impaired and might die before I finish the project. So, if I'm going to give it to her, I can't really dawdle. Right now, I'm taking a break because I noticed my left hand starting to rebel on the purl rows. I took my ibuprofen and I'm waiting for it to kick in.

Scott's tweedy sweater is completely parked in neutral. Until my hand gets happier with long stretches of purling on little needles, that might have to stay dormant for a while.

Last year my friend Jim asked me to make him a sweater with natural lanolin. I started one in Bartlettyarns' Sport weight with a Shaker Rib, on my double bed knitting machine. I was able to crank out a back and front in relatively short order and then started experiencing frustrations with the sleeves. So the whole project got back-burnered for many months. A couple weekends ago Scott took the boys up north for an overnight and I made a sleeve while they were gone. It was a charmed piece of knitting. Determined to clear this project from my pipeline, I started the last sleeve with great optimism. But the males were back in the house and it was doomed. I thought it was going well and I was about two-thirds of the way through the raglan decreases when the yarn broke mid-row and the work dropped to the floor. And then I realized that there was a screwed up section about four inches down from the last successful row, which would have ruined the effort anyhow. I think I need to send the guys away overnight again. Jim says as long as the sweater is done before May, when he and his girlfriend are going to Alaska for three weeks, it's fine. So, between now and March, I would like to create one more successful sleeve and then put that sucker together. Hell, if I have to do the neckband ribbing by hand, so be it.

Other News
It has been abyssmally grey and dark and dreary here. I tried to get some photos of the Hyde Park Pullover, but even in mid-day there was not enough natural light. It's a hard combination of things to control. Getting a flattering angle of me and having the stitch pattern on the sweater show up and not catch me in the middle of pulling a goofy face. Also, I need a photographer who notices things like how the garment is hanging and adjusts as necessary. Scott is very well-intentioned and tries, but he has never taken good photos of me. He takes amazing pictures of bugs, butterflies, and inanimate objects. He just can't seem to do the same for me. I'll try again on a clearer day: can't sell a pattern without good pictures.

Off to finish the sock: I think the wrist is happier now. Let's hope for photos of works in progress soon. If the sun ever shines in Madison again.

Since I skipped "A" I'll catch up now...

A is for Avocado

I promise to do the others at the right time and in the right order, to the best of my ability. Amen.

C is for...

Cherry Tree Hill

This satisfies Wendy's longing for yarrn pron and gives me a luscious C word, all at once! And I'm only a little early out of the gate.

Quick photo post

Here's a self-portrait of the me in the latest sweater: The Hyde Park Pullover. You know, it's really hard to take a good self-portrait with the auto-timer. Finally, I just gave up and figured that I'll have Scott take some better pictures on the weekend.

This pullover was made from Valley Yarns (aka WEBS) Donegal Lambswool, which I bought from a local yarn store. It came on a kilo-size cone, and I have a lot left. I wouldn't give a strong recommendation for this yarn for knitting. When I first swatched it, the stocking stitch sample biased very strongly and quickly. It has a lot of twist and curls up on itself a lot. The oil that coned yarns are treated with (to work better in knitting machines) made it take a little extra effort to form each stitch. I used the Broken Rib stitch in part because the combination of knitting and purling on the right side of the fabric helped counteract the tendency to bias. This yarn, bought on a cone, is very inexpensive. Mine worked out to about $16 a pound, which is a bargain for a sweater's worth of yarn. The final product blooms a lot after washing out the greasy treatment. The yarn was much fluffier and softer after washing. If price is a strong consideration for you when choosing yarn, this would be a good one to try. But it wasn't real pleasant to work with.

In Other News
My older son, Owen, won his school spelling bee this morning. On February 11 he will compete in the city-wide spelling bee. Even when he's nervous, he stands right up there and speaks loudly and clearly. His final word was "chrome." I found this appropriate because one of my favorite lines in Sponge Bob is "Everything's chrome in the future."

Good Stuff on The Garter Belt

Wendy has updated The Garter Belt with two new patterns: her totally hypnotizing new bag Roxy and my pullover Alishar.

I'm eager to make a Roxy for myself. I have a lot of miscellaneous balls of cotton that have been crying out for a project forever! Wendy lined her cotton Roxy with some wild striped fabric. It seems sure to bring on summer weather.

In Other News...
I'm making another version of The Plum Shrug. This one is at a slightly larger gauge and will have 3/4 length sleeves and be longer in the body: more a cardigan than bolero. I'm using some HOT pink yarn I got from a frogged thrift shop sweater. It's a blend of nylon, rayon, cotton, wool, angora, and 3% cashmere. One wonders why they bothered with the 3% cashmere, but, hey, beggars can't be choosers. I'm planning to give it to my 96 year old grandmother who loves hot pink and tangerine orange. She wore a hot pink angora sweater to my grandfather's funeral: not exactly looking like a grieving widow after 65 years of marriage, but totally in keeping with her personality. I did find a couple wee little typos in the Plum Shrug pattern, so I'll be posting a corrected version soon. If any of you have had problems you couldn't sort out, please let me know! I'm happy to answer any and all questions.

I'm coming down to the home stretch on the Hyde Park Pullover. At least on the knitting part. The pattern is probably still a couple of weeks out, as I need to do a lot of fiddling with the numbers and such to calibrate sizes.

Madison Knittyboard Meetup

A little photo collage of some slightly blurry pictures. Word to the wise, if you share a camera with your significant other, check the settings before you take pictures. I tend to assume that everything will be in the automatic mode and forget that he likes to turn off the flash and such.

Top row: Bina; Bina, JennyZ, and Yarnit; Dancing Gardener and Kathrows
Bottom row: JennyZ and Yarnit; Dancing Gardener and Kathrows

I was bummed that I had to leave early. My husband had an all-day meeting of his train module hobby group (don't ask) and I asked him to give me a couple of hours mid-afternoon to see everyone. I hope we can all do it again soon. Dancing Gardener and Kathrows each had to drive a piece to make it. Not to mention, Bina coming around Lake Michigan.

Funny moment: while Bina was discussing her medical care and options, which gets into Female Troubles, I noticed Jenny and Yarnit having a strange side conversation and looking embarrassed. I finally asked them if they felt the conversation was too personal for a crowded coffee shop. No, it wasn't that. They suggested that I look behind me and there was a couple engaged in a long, passionate kiss, standing up, right there in a packed coffee and yarn shop. It went on and on and on and on. Now, that's something you don't see every day!

Terby had to miss the meet-up, due to illness. Next time!

At one point, a woman walked up and asked if we were the Knittyboard meetup. "Yes!" we answered. "Oh," she said, "I'm a lurker." And then she walked away. A lurker on the board and in real life. Too funny.

The Rejected Sweater...

Today I got the letter from Interweave that my submission was rejected. I've decided that I don't have the energy to shop it to other magazines right now, so here it is. I'll be preparing the pattern for The Garter Belt over the next several days. While it's a little disappointing to get rejected, I still think it's a good design and I'm proud of it. And it's a bit of a relief not to have to drop everything and make a sample in the yarn and size needed on three weeks notice. So, back to Plan A, which is to continue self-publishing on my own schedule for now and work more seriously on print submissions in the fall, when The Little Emperor goes to kindergarten.

The Alishar pattern is available for immediate pdf download.
$5 US.

It must be time to post again

I finally got the Swirl Hat pattern written up and sent to Wendy to put up at TGB. It should be up by this evening. I wasn't entirely happy with my photos, but just want to move it along. Maybe I'll redo pics some other day.

I've been moving along on the textured pullover from Valley Yarns (aka WEBS) Donegal. Remember, the dainty-size cone? Last night I came up with a name. I was sitting there knitting my sleeve and mulling it over. A name for a piece of knitting has to do a lot. It's really a marketing tool. It has to suit the style of the garment and suggest a lifestyle or attitude. Successful marketing has to make buyers think that they will attain that ideal if they, too, wear that garment. I'm not a natural born promoter, but I'm trying to think that way. So, this particular sweater seems kind of outdoorsy to me. I looked for names of places in northern Wisconsin, but most of them just wouldn't work. I'd feel funny appropriating a Native American place name, and many of the places up there have names based on Native American words. A lot of the good east coast outdoorsy words have been used by places like LL Bean: big companies with big lawyers. I sat there knitting and thinking, saying in my head, Campfire Pullover. Sounds like Campfire Girls. Are they still around? Door County Pullover? Too touristy. Copper Harbor? Madeline Island? Then I started thinking about my student days in Chicago. Aha. Hyde Park Pullover. Forget the outdoorsy thing. When I was a student without a car in the Windy City, I used to have some funny ways of staying warm. I had many sweaters and some thrift-shop wool overcoats. I would layer all the sweaters (usually three at a time over a shirt), put on the overcoat, and then wrap a couple of scarves around my head, babushka-style. When I got indoors, I had to do an elaborate strip-tease which my friends found amusing. I emerged from this wooly cocoon half the size I had appeared before. Still, there were times when that Chicago wind could cut through all those layers. One of the sweaters was a plain olive drab turtleneck that my maternal grandmother had made for my brother in his early teens. It fit him for about 2 months. I loved that sweater and wore it with some purple pants I bought in Rome and some big funky beads. It vanished before I moved on from Hyde Park, and I never could figure out exactly when or where. You know how some garments just do that? Some clothes, you know when you gave it away. Or when it turned to rags. But some just kind of vanish. This new sweater will fill a similar niche in my life. Not too baggy, not too tight. Comfy for every day. Never really "In" and never really "Out". And it's nearly done. I've bumped it up to Priority status in the queue, so it should be done soon. If it seems like it's been a slow knit, it's only because I haven't given it the focused attention I should have. In the months since I started it I've made several hats, several mittens, a scarf, a Gioia, progress on a long-term sweater, and a whole lot of dinners. Also, survived Christmas vacation with too much time with my darling husband and kids, washed about 84 loads of laundry, and went to the supermarket about 30 times. So, the Hyde Park Pullover will be along soon. If you live in the Windy City, or anyplace with winter, it might be just what your wardrobe needs.

B is for Butterfly

I don't think I can do the whole alphabet with the rest of the ABC alongs, but I did find these nice pictures of a swallowtail on a purple coneflower that Scott took last summer.

Gioia!

Here is my version of Wendy Wonnacott's Gioia. I used a bulky single-ply mystery yarn, in natural black, which my brother in law and his wife sent me from Switzerland about 12 years ago. I suspect that this scarf should be made from something slightly thinner. I used size 11 needles, which would probably be only a wee bit too big for this yarn in stocking st. I can't tell you the yardage, but I had two (presumably) 100 gram skeins and used about one and a half of them.

This photo suffers from poor exposure, but I was under pressure because a. it's a self-portrait, b. my husband has misplaced a crucial component of the tripod, which would allow the camera to actually attach to it, and c. the four-year old was extremely demanding of mommy attention, and I couldn't placate him long enough for one more retake. So, I cranked the brightness and contrast in Photoshop so you can actually see something, and I'll try again. Next time, I'll check to make sure the flash is turned on.

Later the same day
Another attempt at self-portraiture; this time, with the camera on the tripod and the child at preschool. It's a little better, as far as photos go. But not great. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of knitting in a dark yarn: it's a challenge to show off in photos.

Swirl Hat

Here's the coordinating hat to match the Swirl Scarf. The pattern should be ready in a couple more days. It's a little small for my oversized head, which means it should fit everyone else pretty well.

I've also been working on test knitting Wendy's Gioia Scarf. This has been a fun, quick little knit. Wendy had some requests for expanded line-by-line directions, so she asked me to be one of the testers to make sure it all works. It's a great project for showcasing a small amount of special yarn. I'll post of picture of my Gioia as soon as it's done. I suggested that Wendy upgrade the rating from Easy. Don't be too intimidated by that. The pattern stitch is quick to memorize, but it's a bit beyond the basic. If you know how to knit and to purl and can pay attention to a few details, you can make Gioia.

Rites of Passage

Last night we went out to eat at Culver's, a fast food chain. I left the receipt at the table with my husband while I went to fill the water cups. When I returned, he told me that the young man at the counter had given me the Senior Citizen discount! That was a first. I guess to a high school student, everyone over 40 looks ancient!

Then I had to take Owen out for emergency shoe shopping. His sneakers had self-destructed during the day at school. We had to buy men's size 11!!! And he's not even 11 years old yet! He's going to have massive feet by the time he finishes growing!

Point of clarification on a previous post. I don't find it funny/strange that my sister sent me thrift shop yarn for Christmas. I think that's perfect. The part I find funny is the Sears logo on yarn. It somehow seems like a funny juxtaposition. My strange brain at work.

The Swirl Scarf

I needed a little pick-me up to get through the drab days we've been having. It's a great project for using up odds and ends. If I make a bunch more, I could drape the whole yard and have a Christo party. Pattern here.

Do You Find This Funny?

My sister sent me a box of this Sears Mohair as a Christmas present. It's a nice olive drab color. There are about 20 balls. Why do I find it funny? Well, somehow the early '60s Sears logo on yarn just strikes me as incongruous. Also, I'm immediately reminded of that Frank Zappa song from sometime around 1977 in which he asks the ever-important question, "Is that a Sears Poncho or a Real Poncho?"

So, if I make a poncho (I won't, I promise!) out of Sears yarn, is it automatically a Sears Poncho? Although I doubt there is such a thing as a good poncho, a 1970's Sears Ponch is definitely the worst of all. Well, the modern-day equivalant, a Wal Mart poncho, would probably be worse.

I'm sure I'll find a perfect use for this wonderful old mohair.

I pick up a lot of old yarn at thrift shops and I have (as you may know) a generously sized stash. Sometimes I stop to reflect that the animal whose fleece I'm knitting probably died more than 25 years ago! One of the amusing things I discovered while poking around in my blog stats is that someone once accessed my blog from the search words "Life expectancy sheep." So, I went to some of the other sites that search turned up and found that sheep live about 11-15 years. Which means that when I knit with yarn from 1960, the animal that gave it has been gone 30 years or more.

Updates

Last Saturday Knitting
As it turns out, I was not alone at Last Saturday Knitting. I wasn't even the first to arrive. I strolled in at about 7 minutes after 10 and Terri and Linda were already there, at the big square table by the fire place. Before I was properly settled in Jenny arrived, too. It was a nice time and good conversation. Linda was working on a Log Cabin square, and then a scarf. Jenny made an entire baby hat while we were chatting. Terri was working on her Cutaway Cardigan. And me? I was working on the sleeve to the as-yet-unnamed purple pullover. Unfortunately, the sleeve ended up too narrow and I later had to rip it out and restart, in closer consultation with my swatch. I think it will be much more successful this time around. After I got anxious about the sleeve, I switched to my basic green sock.

Yes, the same old boring sock again. I really tried this time. I thought about doing a simple lacy pattern. I started one and really didn't think the little holes were going to work with the Wild Foote. I thought about toe up, because then I could make the most of each skein: no piddling little leftovers when the toe is closed. After three false starts on that, I just decided to do what I know I like. It just seems a lot less fiddly to me to make decreases for the toes and then graft, than to do the figure 8 cast on and make increases. (OK, so my mittens were made that way. It doesn't seem to bother me in thicker yarn.)

Preview of coming attraction
On the right is a little preview pic of the quick mosaic scarf coming up soon on The Garter Belt. I have to take a few more good pictures tomorrow and then Wendy will do her magic.

In the past 10 minutes I have had to pause writing 10 times for debate and discussion with the 10 year old about the meaning of Bedtime. And now I have lost my whole train of thought. Children seem to think their parents aren't too bright. Little do they know that they made us that way. I guess that means it's time for me to stop writing and go do a little more knitting.

Thanks to those who volunteered to help me with naming sweaters and such. I just might take you up on that.

It's been a long school vacation already and we still have to get through several more days.

I've been working on a quick new scarf pattern and the purple pullover pattern (still have some more knitting to do), which I'd like to release for The Garter Belt newsletter in late January. People really seem to like quick projects. I must try to make more of them. I had hoped to spend some uninterrupted time on the double bed machine, finishing up a long-dormant project. Maybe I can still get to it over the weekend. If anyone who reads this has a particular talent for naming knitting patterns, please let me know. My mind just doesn't work that way. My ideas for names tend to be quite literal and descriptive, like Raglan Pullover. When I try to get more creative, the results always sound a little dippy and contrived. It's hard to imagine that I spent so many hours of my adolescence writing poetry, yet cannot find an apt word or phrase to name a simple sweater.

Yesterday we had to buy a new furnace. This wasn't too much of a surprise, since we had been told a couple years ago that we were on borrowed time. I'm glad that it was a relatively mild day: high approaching 40 degrees F. And I'm glad that I had just gotten a largish end of year check from my grandmother. So, while it isn't pleasant to suddenly one day have to fork over $2900 just to stay warm, it could have been worse. And the company that did it was able to get a crew in that day. It's nice to know that our house shouldn't blow up from a gas leak and to feel assured that the CO monitors won't be shrieking at us at 2:00 a.m. on a 10 below 0 night.

Counting down til the end of 2005. Tomorrow morning I have Last Saturday Knitting. I wonder if I'll be all alone this month? That's ok if I am. Okay to have company, too. We have no plans for tomorrow night. My ideal New Year's Eve involves hanging around doing nothing special and going to bed about 11. Mr. SABLE and I agree on this. Unfortunately, the older child has gotten the idea that something FUN and MAGICAL happens at midnight and he wants to stay up to experience it. I tell him, "Fine, we're going to bed. Have fun," but this isn't what he wants. He wants us all awake and experiencing the thrill of the New Year sweeping in. Some of my best New Year's Eves have been when we celebrated with other boring people like ourselves. In '99-2000, we went to a party and did Greenwich Mean Time New Years. The hosts live on Greenwich Drive, so it's quite appropriate. Another time, friends with young kids were visiting us and we had New Year's in Reykjavik, which wasn't strictly accurate, but based on the fact that we wanted to have New Year's at about 8 pm.

So, have a safe and happy New Year's Eve everyone. See you all in 2006.
And remember, friends don't let friends knit fug!

Maternal bragging ahead.

My ten year old son, Owen, drew this picture earlier today. Click to make it bigger. He has always had an artistic bent, but lately the quality of his sketches has made a big leap forward. He's leaving the "kid art" and behind and really starting to make art. I'm very proud of him.

End of the year activities

Two views of the same thing
Here we are in our matching Diamond Hats. He should have mentioned that my brim was folded up in back. I wasn't sufficiently motivated to retake the pictures.




Knitting with Fathom and her mom
We managed to get together yesterday afternoon at Lakeside Fibers for a little knitting and yarn browsing. I always get a kick out of meeting other people's parents. The unexpected ways that family resemblances come through are always interesting. Yes, a certain aspect of the face but more, the gestures and expressions. I hope we can all knit again next time Emily's in town.

Not much else to show the world today.

Updates and a recipe

I finished the second Diamond Hat. It's drying now. This one is from charcoal grey Plymouth Galway and some Pengouin yarn in white. I used #5 needles, which made a good fit for Scott's head. Pictures tomorrow.

I finished reading Bel Canto. I'm a little ambivalent. Yes, it's a good read, but I don't think it's great literature. I felt a little shortchanged at the end, as if the writer took a short cut from the story that had engrossed us for 300 pages to the epilogue and no reader could figure out how she got there.

Today I made a particularly successful batch of soup. Thought I'd share the recipe. I made it up as I went along, so posting helps me in case I want to make it again in the future.

Elizabeth's Chicken Barley Rice Soup

Day 1
Roast a whole chicken. Make gravy with the pan drippings. Serve with potatoes and green beans. Save all the leftovers.

Day 2
Early in the day, pick all the meat off the chicken carcass and put it back in the fridge until later.
Put the bones and skin in an eight quart pan. Cover with about 4 inches of water. Bring to a simmer. Cover. Simmer gently for a couple hours, stirring occasionally.

When you wander through the kitchen, turn off the stove and let it cool for a while.

Strain everything out of the broth. Toss out all this stuff: any remaining meat will be too boiled to taste good.

Add to the broth (in the 8 quart pan): 1/2 cup of pearl barley, 1 medium sized diced onion, several medium sized diced carrots, several celery stalks, diced, 1 tablespoon of salt, some poultry seasoning, black pepper, 1 large or 2 small bayleaves. Simmer, covered, for an hour or more. Stir occasionally.

Add one 24 oz can of canned tomatoes and a few finely diced slices of Canadian Bacon (optional for those who don't want pork). Simmer gently, stirring occasionally and while stirring, mash the tomato chunks up.

About one hour before serving time, add 1/2 cup of rice. Stir while simmering to keep rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Stir in any leftover gravy from previous night's dinner.

Adjust salt and other spices as needed at this time.

Dice up chicken meat and any leftover potatos and green beans. Stir in about 10 minutes prior to serving.

Would be good with crusty french bread and butter.

Diamond Hat ready now, too!

Mine is a little big, but you can make it smaller by using smaller needles and a tighter gauge. The pattern will be available at The Garter Belt as soon as Wendy performs her magic. The good news is that I was able to make the mitten and hat set from the 100 gram ball of blue and 4 oz skein of white. The blue was the worrisome one.

Next up in this series: cuff-to-tip mittens with a side gusset for the thumb.

Also, it's this time of year:


I made Owen's stocking in Dec. 1995 and Colin's in December of 2002. (Yes, he spent his first Christmas without a personalized stocking. What are you going to do? Report me to Martha Stewart?) The really big problem with these stockings is that Colin's is noticably larger than Owen's. Try explaining to a kid why it doesn't really matter. It's not like Santa keeps on shoving loot in there until it's full. Owen's stocking was adapted from a magazine pattern. I think it was a 1970s Family Circle Christmas Crap, er I mean, Craft issue. Colin's was a little more free-form. With a little tweaking, I think Colin's could be a nice pattern. But in a kid's view, it's perfect because it is REALLY BIG!

Mitten pattern count down...

I did get the mitten pattern finished this evening. I sent the pdf and some photos off to Wendy in Italy. I'm not sure what her schedule is like this weekend, but I know she'll get it up and available as soon as she can.

I worked out a graph for the matching hat last night. Started knitting tonight. I put one slightly tricky element right at the beginning: a Baltic Braid. You can see an example on this page of the Peace Fleece site. Scroll down to the hat with Baltic Braid trim.

I hope to make the hat out of the remaining yarn from the mittens. I started those with a 4 oz skein of Germantown (the white) and a 100 gm skein of Peer Gynt (called Sport Weight, but works well as Light Worsted). Ideally, a person could make the set from 100 grams each of two colors. If the hat starts to run short on the blue, I have a Plan B, but I'm not as happy with it as I am with Plan A. If I do run out of the blue, I'll have to start again, because this was one of my Goodwill odd skeins and I doubt I could match the color on a 25 year old skein of yarn from Norway.

Look for hat progress pics in the next day or two.

The other big project around here was cleaning the living room enough to get a tree. I hauled out a bunch of boxes of miscellaneous toys to sort in the playroom. Put a bunch of stuff in recycling or trash. Boxed some items to take to storage on their way to the Goodwill (the two-step schlep: it helps with plausible denial when things get remembered after they go missing). I actually got all the way to the fireplace and we had a firelog hanging around from last year. So, we had a nice heartwarming moment with all of us eating popcorn in front of a cheery fire, with brotherly love and harmony in the air. It lasted about 10 minutes. Would have made a good Christmas card if I'd had the camera handy.

Heat Wave?

This morning's temperature here in balmy Wisconsin. This is a big improvement over the last week or more when we haven't broken 15 degrees F for daytime highs!

Here is my nearly done Branching Out. I say nearly done because you will notice I have not yet darned in the ends.


It blocked out quite long. I'm pleased about that, because I think such a skinny lightweight version should have some extra length to compensate. I used a little over half of a 2 oz, 350 yard skein. Pretty economical. More for fashion than for warmth, but that's okay.

Finished Branching Out

I finally finished my Branching Out today. I used Blackberry Ridge wool and silk laceweight yarn and size 5 needles, so it took a little longer than most of them. I made it about 53 inches long before blocking. Not sure the length will change much with the blocking: more like the width.

I was in a quandary about blocking. I even went so far at to look at the welding rods when I was at Farm and Fleet a while back. For those of you who haven't read this tip, the rumor is that steel welding rods can be had at a fraction of the cost of blocking wires available from knitting supply sources. The welding rods I saw did not look suitable. They were too heavy to pass through the stitches easily, some were copper coated (green oxide on the knitting!), some were not coated (steel rusts!), some had some coating to aid the welding process (can't remember what it was called, but sounded like it shouldn't go on my knitting!) and they were all so oily and dirty looking, I just didn't want to pursue that option.

So, I got out a spool of heavy duty nylon thread left over from an upholstery project. Took two strands of that and using a fine darning needle, ran it down the length of the scarf on either edge.

Then I had to give more thought to where to pin that thing. I wanted to pin it damp. I put a towel on the ironing board and pinned out as much as would fit. There's about 10 inches dangling off the end. Tomorrow when I release the dried and blocked section, I'll block the remaining bit with mist.

Over the weekend I should be able to get pics of the finished project in bright natural daylight, when our temperature will climb above 20 for the first time in a lot of days. A veritable heat wave!

Yes, I've been working on the mitten pattern. Should be ready by the weekend, unless I add the matching hat to the deal. Of course, I could always add the hat later...

Good grief: look at the time. I better go to sleep soon, because I've got first morning duty tomorrow.

Diamond Mittens

Newly completed: The Diamond Mittens in worsted weight yarn for adult-sized hands. These would fit either a medium to large size woman's hand, or a small to medium man's hand. For child sized mittens, make the same pattern in sport weight on smaller needles.

Pattern to come to The Garter Belt soon! I have it about two-thirds written. Should be available by the weekend!

UPDATE: Diamond Mitten Pattern Here!. If you want the hat, too, you should wait a few more days, because there will be a special price on the pair of patterns.