J Strizzy

Call It A Spree

I am a lucky girl.

Family members who know me well gave me these two books for Chanukah. 

Super Natural Every Day is by Heidi Swanson of the 101 Cookbooks blog, and if you're not familiar with Heidi's cooking, you should check out her blog - she has not only wonderful recipes but also mouthwatering photography. 

I've been looking through both of these books while working on a new project:

It's A Grey Loop, and coincidentally mine is grey too, thanks to my stash - Classic Elite Wool Bam Boo.  I feel fairly confident in predicting that this will be my first finished project of 2012, since I'm well over half done already, in just two days.  The endless rounds and smooth soft yarn and nearly mindless stitch pattern are totally mesmerizing and make it hard to put down.

Finished And Almost Finished

I finished some sweaters!  Little ones:

Some button detail (a lousy picture but you get the idea):

The Boy has thus far refused to try his on (not surprising), but The Girl has refused to take hers off since she received it last night.  Good thing that yarn is superwash.

I also finished my final pair of year-of-socks socks (that gets its own post, soon), and there's one more thing I want to finish up before the end of the year. 

Last fall, I didn't quite finish a black cotton sleeveless shell in time for the appropriate season, so I put it away until spring.  And then in the spring, I somehow managed to make great progress but still not quite finish it in time to wear.  I think all I have left to do now is weave in a few of the many ends, sew on buttons, and block it.  So, as ridiculous as it may be to rush to finish up a garment I won't be able to wear for another eight months, I'm going to try to do it in the next three days anyway.  After all, it's no more ridiculous than taking over a year to finish what little was left.

Oops

Thank you to Jen for letting me know one of my links was wrong.  Here's the right link for the salted caramel butter bars.  The mint meringues ended up a success too; for two egg whites, I used 1/4 tsp. of peppermint extract and 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract, and although the unbaked meringue seemed overpoweringly minty, the finished product is just right.

 

Busy Busy

So the Bottled Rainbows project I mentioned I was planning for 2012?  This happened last weekend:

I sorted my scraps by color, and found that I'm more than well stocked with greens and yellows, and kind of light on the purples.  I also made piles for colors I still need to buy solids for, and multicolored fabrics that I'll be able to fussy cut to get the right colors out of.  It looks like I'll need to cut into some yardage for some of the colors though.  Or buy some more fabric (the horror).

Unless anyone wants to send me some scraps (especially purple ones)!  Or trade scraps with me so you can make a Bottled Rainbows quilt too?

In other news, I'm almost done with The Girl's sweater - just a bottom band and sleeve bands to go, then blocking.  Choosing seamless patterns for both of these sweaters was definitely the way to go here, given the deadline.  Sewing up is always one of the things that I put off - I don't know why, because I actually kind of like it, but somehow it just takes me a while to get around to it.

And in between knitting and quilt prep (and spinning - I spent the duration of Black Swan spinning the other day), I've been baking every night this week: Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shortbread on Sunday, two batches of Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites Monday and yesterday, Salted Caramel Butter Bars Tuesday, and Mint Chocolate Chip Meringues (no particular recipe, I'm just going to make standard meringue cookies and add some peppermint extract and mini chips) tonight. The Salted Caramel bars won me third place in the office bake-off yesterday! We'll see whether the others will be as popular at the cookie exchange I'm going to tomorrow...

Gifties

I'm making good progress on my Chanukah knitting.  Ten days until the beginning of Chanukah, and I've got one sweater done and the second well over halfway.  This is the cardigan I'm knitting for The Girl:

It's the Silver Cardigan, knit in Shelridge Farm Soft Touch DK (yes, that's the same yarn as the baby blanket I started while I was pregnant and didn't finish until my kids were a year and a half old).

These sweaters are both size 2, so it's not like if I were knitting an adult size and still had almost half a sweater to go - I can probably finish this up in another few evenings.  If I didn't think it would be seriously messing with the karma of gift knitting to say it, I'd tell you I feel comfortable that this will be finished in time for Chanukah with time to spare.

And I even have buttons already, so I can avoid my usual weeks-long delay between finishing knitting a sweater and actually completing it:

I bought these at Rhinebeck, after it occurred to me to ask the vendor whether they're machine washable instead of just assuming they weren't (they recommended wrapping the buttons in foil before putting them in the wash). 

This afternoon the twins were playing while I was knitting nearby, and they asked me to knit sweaters for them.  I will enjoy it while it lasts!

Bottled Rainbows

I've decided on a project for 2012: Bottled Rainbows, a color-sorted ticker tape quilt.

These are fat quarters of most of the solids I need for it, so now I want to start sorting my scraps by color so they'll be all ready to go in January.  And so I can be on the lookout for scraps in colors I'm short on.

There are sixteen blocks, and only twelve months in the year, so depending on how the project goes for me, I'll either just stop at twelve (which is, coincidentally, how many colors are in the picture above), or try to do the other four blocks spread out over the year when I have time.

In mostly unrelated news, while I was writing this post, I fell down a rabbit hole of gorgeous Bottled Rainbows photos on flickr, and I forgot that I'd left a cup of tea steeping.  For twenty minutes.  Holy wow, this stuff is STRONG. 

Taking On 2012

I have abandoned New Year's resolutions.  I always used to resolve to do the same things (eat more vegetables, exercise more, keep in touch with distant friends, etc.) and neither actually fulfilling them (for a few months anyway) nor ultimately and inevitably failing in them makes me happy.  So last year I decided instead to take on a big project for the year; something that I enjoy and don't make enough time for otherwise, not things I feel like I should do.

Last year it was socks.  I wanted to use some of my sock yarn instead of just buying and storing it, so I matched up patterns and yarn and set myself the goal of knitting a pair of socks every two months.  By having the patterns and yarns all ready to go in envelopes, I could start each pair without dithering over which one to do next or which yarn to use with which pattern, and without being delayed by having to remember to print out the patterns or wind the yarn into balls.  And it worked!  Though I did run into one pattern I didn't like very much, I will still end up with five and a half pairs of socks at the end of the year, plus sizeable dents in both my sock yarn stash and my "to make" list.  And throughout the year, I almost always had a project on the go, something small that I could start and stop at a moment's notice, something I could stick in my purse for whatever spare moments I wanted. 

So now I'm starting to think about what I will take on for 2012.  While I still have sock yarn left, and sock patterns I want to knit, I'm a little tired of always knitting socks.  And I'm not wed to making it a knitting goal - though I do have a significant stash of lace yarn and patterns, and I haven't knit much lace in a while so I miss it.  But I have a feeling I'd get sick of lace by next December too.  I would like to think of some sewing goals that might work; not just a list of sewing projects but some bigger long-term theme or goal.  Spinning?  I enjoyed the focus on spinning I had during the Tour de Fleece - but that wouldn't be sustainable for me over the course of a year.  I want to give some thought to ways I could apply that kind of thing to a whole year.

I'm not set on making it something crafty.  Lately I've been finding it surprisingly satisfying to organize our house and get rid of things we don't need or use (on Thanksgiving I realized we have at least two baking sheets that don't fit in our oven!).  I found this 2011 de-clutter calendar that appeals to me, and it wouldn't be hard to turn it into a 2012 calendar.  And I have been bookmarking lots of interesting ideas for kids online - a long-term plan for doing things with my kids would also be nice; i.e., other than just "do cool things with the kids".  Photography has largely fallen by the wayside the last few years too, and I'd love to take on a year-long photography project of some kind.  The hardest part of this for me is settling on something that's interesting and challenging enough to keep my interest all year, something big enough that it feels like more than just what I'd be doing here and there anyway, but also something realistic enough for me to actually complete.

Any ideas?  What do you want to do in 2012?

And A Knitting Query Too

Spotted this scarf online today.  This is just stockinette with short rows along one side, right?  Or maybe another set of short rows somewhere in the middle of each row?  I feel like I shouldn't need to go searching for a pattern for something like this, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something, and I can only zoom in so far on that picture.

Four Eyes

I want to buy new glasses - my prescription hasn't changed in several years and I almost always wear contacts, but recently I had to wear my glasses for a few days and realized that I bought my current pair when I was living in California. Which means they're at least six years old, and probably more like eight years because I think I remember picking them out in a store in Berkeley.  Glasses styles have changed since then, people - I need to keep up.

I know I've seen several recommendations for buying them online, but I can't remember where.  I know someone who was really happy with glasses from Warby Parker, and I like that WP lets you pick out a bunch of pairs to try on at home before deciding, but their selection is pretty limited and there are some types I'd like to try that they don't have.

So if you've bought glasses online recently and would recommend the site you bought them from, please tell me where!  Especially if it's a site that lets you try on at home first.  Thanks!

 

Not Sure Where November Went

I finished the first Leyburn Sock last week, and started in on the second right away.  I really like these - they're obnoxiously bright, but they're really really soft and cozy, and I have a feeling I will be wearing them to bed a lot.  I'm knitting them at kind of a tight gauge, and that's how I like my socks best, nice and dense.  But not so dense that they're stiff, just enough that they're a little cushy.

I also finished the sweater I was knitting for my little dude.  Although I don't normally go in for holiday knitting, I was knitting this anyway, with plans to knit the little girl a sweater next, and since both should be done by Chanukah (or at least by the end of Chanukah - an eight-day holiday provides some leeway) and the kiddos are still little enough to not feel shortchanged if they don't get toys, holiday knitting it is.  I had plenty of yarn to knit long sleeves on the dude's sweater, and it looks adorable.  I haven't tried it on him yet but it does match the dimensions of some shirts that fit him well so it's promising. 

Today I'm eating Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch.  But not like you think!  My sister made this thing with farro and caramelized onions and roasted butternut squash and spinach and a sweet vinaigrette dressing, and it's the kind of thing that's just as delicious five days later and microwaved as it was when she first served it.  I asked her for the recipe - I have some possible variations in mind that I can't wait to try out.  Namely, the produce delivery box we're getting this week is going to have kale in it, which I think might actually be better than the spinach because it will retain a little more bite. 

Starting The Ending

Last night I went down to the basement where I keep my stash, and grabbed the envelope containing this skein of Woolarina sock yarn (it's really more of a fuchsia than the red it looks like here), and the pattern for Leyburn Socks - the last project of my self-imposed 2011 sock club.

I got on the subway and went to start my usual short-row toe with a crochet provisional cast-on, only to find that the only scrap yarn in my little bag of knitting tools was some wool/silk laceweight - hardly ideal, right?  But I persevered, since the only alternative was waiting until I got home tonight to cast on, forgoing an entire day of commute knitting time.  It worked, but I will definitely make sure I have some nice smooth worsted weight cotton with me when I'm ready to start the second sock!

Insert Clever Title Tying Together Socks And A Sweater With A Pun

My self-imposed sock club keeps on chugging.  I finished the September-October socks last weekend:

(as always click to see it bigger - I usually embed the photos from Flickr, and they don't offer a size that fits my blog format nicely)

The pattern is Sunday Swing by Kristel Nyberg, from Knitty Summer 2009 (though I knit them toe-up with a short-row heel, instead of cuff-down with a heel flap as written), and the yarn is Steinbach Wolle Activ.  They're perfectly serviceable in every way - the pattern was clearly written and charted, the yarn is nice enough, and they fit right - but nothing that (you'll have to excuse this) knocked my socks off. 

Which is fine.  Not every pair of socks has to be spectacular.  And in fact my sock wardrobe, if you can call it that, was in need of a serviceable pair of plainish dark socks, so I suppose I'm very glad to have these.

But I'm also glad to be finished and ready to move on.  I haven't yet picked out my last pair of socks for the year, but during the week in between I started a sweater for my little guy:

This is the Playground Shirt by Elena Nodel, knit in Filatura di Crosa Zara. This is what I've been able to knit in a week - I always forget how quickly baby and toddler knits can go.  It's a pretty standard top-down raglan with a collar, but I'm modifying it a little bit; the pattern calls for YOs for the raglan increases, which I thought looked a little feminine so I'm doing kfb, and instead of the pattern's short sleeves I'm going to knit these long so we won't need to deal with layers.  It's hard enough to get the boy to stand still to put on one shirt, much less two!

Visual Rhinebeck

My Rhinebeck photos are here.  The set includes a few shots from my side trip to Walkway Over the Hudson too, even though the conditions were less than ideal for taking pictures. 

Rhinebeck 2011

First, let me confess I did not get a photo of myself wearing the new sweater.  I'll try to take one soon.  I did wear it all day Sunday, though, and I love it. 

Next, the things that confound and confuse me about Rhinebeck:

1. People who waited in this line to buy Sanguine Gryphon yarn.  People near the front of the line told me they'd been waiting almost two hours (this was Saturday late morning, I think).  Crazy.  Sanguine Gryphon is lovely yarn, but I don't think there's any yarn in the world special enough that I would wait two hours in line to buy it.  Especially when it's also sold online.  I can understand wanting to see the colors and feel the yarn in person, sure, but why wouldn't you take a look-see in the booth, make a note of what you liked, then skip the line and order it later at home?

2.  People who buy bags of "novalties" yarn at a sheep and wool festival like Rhinebeck.  I mean, I don't get the notion of buying a full bag of brightly-colored eyelash yarn to begin with, but I certainly don't see why you'd come to a festival that celebrates wool and other animal fibers and the animals they come from, only to buy the polar opposite of everything the festival is about.  That you can also readily buy at lots of other places.  I don't know, maybe $15 a bag is such an amazing deal for this kind of thing that people can't resist?  (I really don't know - I don't buy this kind of yarn so I have no sense of the pricing for it)

And finally (for now), the haul:

Clockwise from bottom center, my Day 1 purchases (click for bigger): some ceramic buttons, an assortment of fudge (partially eaten by the time of this picture), 4 oz. of merino/silk top from Fiber Optic Yarn in a brown-red-orange-gold "layered gradient" colorway, 2 oz. of merino/tencel top from Bitsy Knits, one skein of Moose Manor Lamb's Ear Fingering yarn (alpaca, silk, and cashmere), and a pair of earrings made from old knitting needles.

On Day 2, I only bought one thing, 4 oz. of alpaca/silk top from Gale's Art:

I did take a lot more pictures, of animals and yarn and foliage and a gorgeous walk across the Hudson River, but those are on my other camera and I haven't had a chance to upload them yet - soon!

It's Called Peasy For A Reason

Peasy is done.  Blocked.  Sewn up, ends woven.  Buttons on.

 

And just in time to wear at Rhinebeck, although I hadn't planned it as a "Rhinebeck sweater".  But the timing is right, and the weather promises to be right too.  I'm hoping some fellow festival-goer might be willing to take a photo of me wearing it (unlikely, I know) - then you'll be able to see that it fits just perfectly.

This sweater represented a few firsts:

- I lengthened it a few inches compared to the pattern instructions; I'm short enough that I don't think I've ever made a sweater *longer* than called for.  But I'm glad I tried this on before binding off (it's knit top-down), because otherwise I would have blindly followed the instruction to work the bottom trim at 30 cm from the armpit, whereas I ended up making mine 34 cm. 

- I believe this is the first time I've ever knit a sweater in the actual yarn specified by the pattern.  And I love it and want to knit lots more things with Rowan Felted Tweed.

- It's also the first time I've used a tweed yarn.  Why, I couldn't possibly tell you, because I love it.  I'm not planning to buy much yarn at Rhinebeck, but I do want to look for some more tweed.

- I think this is also the first time I bought buttons before finishing a sweater.  I thought I was being smart, planning ahead and getting buttons early in case I ended up finishing the sweater when I wouldn't have a chance to go button shopping for a while (I don't advise shopping for buttons, or really anything in a fabric store, with toddlers).  The pattern said 1/2" or 5/8" buttons, so that's what I bought.  But when I got to the buttonhole part of the pattern, I discovered it called for eyelet buttonholes -- in DK yarn.  No way 1/2" buttons would fit through an eyelet.  So I did a double YO - the resulting eyelets are still a bit snug for the buttons, but they work. 

So: Rhinebeck.  I'm driving up there tonight, by myself, the downside of which is that I won't be able to knit on the road.  But the upside is that I get to stop at whatever horrible fast-food place I want for dinner, and I can listen to whatever I want in the car.  Simple pleasures. 

The Elephant In The Room

A friend had a baby, so I made a little elephant for him.

I'd never made a knitted stuffed animal before, and now that I've finished it, I'm not sure I would make one again.  It wasn't hard, it was just fiddly.  All those separate pieces, and sewing them together, and figuring out just the right spot to attach each one.  Though I didn't have to worry about blocking or weaving in ends, my two least favorite parts of finishing, and I made him entirely out of bits from my stash, so I suppose those are points in his favor.

And he is pretty cute.

Mistakes and Design Features

Lots of knitting lately, but also lots of mistakes.  Last night I discovered this dropped stitch:

Luckily Rowan Felted Tweed is nice and grabby so the stitch wasn't going anywhere.  It was easy to pick back up and ladder it up to the needle with a crochet hook.  Such a non-event I wouldn't even have bothered blogging about it if that was all that had happened.

But then I looked at the socks I'm working on and noticed something weird.  Here's one side:

And here's the other:

Notice anything?  Yeah, I wasn't paying attention and I worked the stitch pattern on both sides.  I didn't realize it until I was almost ready to turn the heel.  I decided not to rip it out and start over - it's a pretty subtle stitch pattern and shouldn't be uncomfortable on the bottoms of my feet, and although it has a few YOs it's not lacy enough for me to worry about how the socks will hold up.

Perfect Timing

I'm humming along on Peasy.  It's going really fast - or at least it feels like it is.  I haven't knit an actual adult-size sweater in two and a half years, so I'm not sure anymore. 

In two weeks, between my subway commute, a couple of knit nights, and a hurricane, I've knit the yoke and both sleeves.  And just as it's really getting too big to shove in my purse for the commute... hey, what do you know, it's September!  Time for the next pair of socks.

It's just a swatch so far, but it's going to turn into Sunday Swing Socks.  In a couple of hours I'm off for a family vacation that starts and ends with a nice long drive, and has lots of lounging time in the middle, so both projects are coming with me!

Next!

I'm getting all productive up in here. 

I finished the Concentric Socks:

They're ok.  The pattern is certainly not your usual plain sock, and I admire the fact that someone thought of this, but it doesn't fit very well.  It's looser than my usual sock gauge; I didn't do what I usually do in this kind of situation, and change the pattern to use the gauge I liked, because at the outset I didn't yet understand the construction well enough to know how that would play out.  But I now realize that I totally could have done that, and I probably would have liked the result better. 

Although they would still have that rippling along the sides, which is the main thing I'm not crazy about.  Bottom line: impressively creative pattern, less-than-impressive result.  This ersatz sock club thing was mostly supposed to be about process though, not product, and I consider these a success in that department.

Moving on!

This

is the very beginning of Peasy.  I started it last night because (a) I have the very yarn specified in the pattern (Rowan Felted Tweed), in the proper amount for the pattern; (b) I have a hankering to knit myself a sweater and I don't have any other sweater quantities of yarn on hand; and (c) I'm going to a knitting thing at a yarn store tonight and it would be silly to go to a knitting thing without any knitting.  And (d) it's still August, which means it's not time to start the next pair of socks yet.

I did a new thing with my swatch for this sweater.  I always swatch, at least if I'm making a garment and not a blanket or a bag or a shawl (I've had enough fit problems in the past), but I don't usually bother blocking my swatch.  I know - what's the point of swatching if you're not going to treat the swatch the same way you intend to treat the finished sweater.  And yet I don't, because I'm usually too impatient to wait for a swatch to dry before I can cast on.

But this time I did block my swatch.  The first swatch I did, on size 6 needles, seemed to have a tighter gauge than the pattern, while the second one, on size 8s, was closer but slightly on the loose side.  So I washed them and laid them out to dry, gently stretching them into shape (no pins), and waited.*  And the size 6 swatch was bang on! 

It feels weird to be knitting a wooly tweedy sweater when it's still so hot out, but it's starting to get cool enough in the very early morning that it's not totally inconceivable that I might wear wool again one day...

 

*Not very long, because they were just little squares and I didn't need them to be totally dry to measure anyway - I don't know why I've thought all these years that waiting for a swatch to dry would postpone the cast-on that much.  Consider my swatching habits henceforth reformed.

Oh Hi There

Lack of blogging is usually either because there's too much going on or too little.  This time it's been too much.

Remember the Tour de Fleece?  I ended up with these three finished skeins (L to R: 2-ply merino/silk, probably sport weight-ish; 2-ply Falklands wool, weight too uneven to measure; and chain-plied Falklands, probably Aran weight or so),

 

this angora/merino/silk single (I'm waiting to decide on how to ply it until I spin the other four fibers in the sampler it is part of),

and the start of this merino.  I didn't spin every day of the Tour, but I did put in at least a few minutes most of the days, and it definitely improved my skills.  Compare this pic to the wildly uneven first skein I spun on the wheel (middle one in the top pic) for evidence.

And then these are my July-August socks:

The pattern is Concentric, by Carissa Browning, and the yarn is Knitting By Zen in the Rosewood colorway.  I'm zooming through them (I started on July 1, and I'm almost done with the second one already) even though I don't love either the yarn or the pattern all that much.  The pattern is actually very clever and also very clearly written, I just don't like how the socks fit my feet.  The shaping results in some unfortunate rippling along the sides, and the toe just doesn't feel right.  But I'm hoping some good blocking might help - I don't normally bother blocking my socks, but I think these could use it.

Not to mention all the time and creative energy used up in planning and executing a 2nd birthday party.  Yeah, I know - how can they be two already?  And starting preschool in a few weeks.  Craziness, I tell you.