Category Archives: knitting

scones and sweaters.

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Self-explanatory, no?

scones

Heidi’s maple syrup scone recipe was super easy, and incredibly delicious. I even called my mom to tell her about it. Maple syrup is a big thing around here, so I can get jars full of different grades of local syrup at the co-op. This recipe perfectly highlighted that hard-to-describe but oh-so-good maple syrup sweetness. And it is quick enough to make impulsively. And then ruin your dinner by eating one (or two) moments after the scones come out of the oven. You’ve been warned.

Next up: 28thirty is blocked! And dry! No buttons yet, but I have some options, and am waiting for some of last week’s ebay purchases to arrive so that I can play around with size/color. Here are some rooster-in-the-mirror-wearing-the-sweater-even-though-the-sleeves-are-still-damp weekend pictures. (Apologies for my hyphen abuse today.)

28thirtyblocked-blurry

28thirtyblocked-closeup

28thirtysideblocked

28thirtyblocked

Also, I really love this picture:

amytiltedpic

Trying to take pictures of yourself using the hold-your-arm-out-at-a-ridiculous-angle approach occasionally yields unexpectedly delightful results.

I’ve also made some significant progress on Whisper:

whisper-sleeve1

boh-whisper-sleeve

Boh thought about knitting a few rows this morning, but ultimately decided that he’d rather take a nap.

I lengthened the sleeve to about 9.5 inches so that it falls just past my elbow, thinking that when I block this, I’ll get a bit more length. I’m into a big stretch of stockinette, which makes this project perfect for some of the lectures on my list this week.

I woke up with the sun today, well before my alarm. It has been awhile since I’ve done that, as the winter sun rarely appears before the appointed wake-up time. The days are lengthening now, and I like it.

pssst.

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whisper-first-sleeve

And so it begins. Yesterday, in between chunks of reading and note-taking, I wound up a skein of Knitpicks Shadow in Redwood Forest with an intention to swatch. After struggling with attempting to cast on/join laceweight yarn on circular 6s (which I was going to try first after reading some rav comments), I gave up on the magic looping because I was too lazy to dig up a book to refresh my memory on the start-up part of it and went looking for dpns.

Take 2: Bamboo dpns, size 6. AKA the dullest dpns in my collection. I cast on 76 st and knit a few rows of k1p1 ribbing (a popular rav mod to prevent rolling), cursing all the while. Then I remembered these needles, given to me by someone quite dear. Maybe there were sixes in this set?

Nope. But there were dpns in size 7s (which the pattern uses), and they were pointy. The needles determined my plan of attack: with only one set of viable needles for starting the project without wanting to poke myself in the eye repeatedly, I dove in, SANS swatch. I mean, if the results of the swatch do not matter because there is only one set of needles in the house that will be enjoyable to knit this yarn with, what could a swatch really DO for me?

Famous last words, I know, but if the knitting isn’t enjoyable, why do it?

Here’s how it is working out so far. On this sleeve, I’m getting 7 st/inch and 8 rows/inch on 7s. The pattern gauge is 6st/inch and 8 rows/inch. I’ve read that some folks have found that Shadow will grow, and the sleeves are pretty big on a lot of people. With this pattern’s particular construction, my st gauge is not as important for overall size (notwithstanding the arms, but I am happy with them being a little smaller), because the pattern moves from sleeve to sleeve across the back, rather than down, and my row gauge is on, and then the back gets picked up and worked down. Does that make sense? I think so…

Also, I am aware that I need to keep an eye on all of this, and laceweight yarn on bigger needles seems particularly responsive in the land of blocking. Yay!

I’m glad my needle dilemma reminded me of these needles. It feels good to be using them.

Back to the books…

rains/pours.

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Lots of knitting and posting this week, folks! (Me? Hiding? Procrastinating? Never.) First up, 28thirty, gloriously blocking on the kitchen table:

28thirty-blocking

I won three or four lots of buttons yesterday on ebay, and I can’t wait to play around with color combinations. Right now, I’m thinking big red buttons, but we’ll see…

For some reason, the catharsis of casting off just makes me want to knit more! I dug into the bag that goes everywhere with me for my toe up socks, and realized that I only had a few more inches to go on sock #2. A few hours of decompressing from a very productive Monday-Tuesday and voila! Socks!

socks-fo-chair

Although these socks are not perfect, I am thrilled with them, and I may be a toe-up sock convert! This is my first toe-up pair, and believe-you-me I did some serious wrangling with the cast-on, heel instructions, etc. before discovering knitting by bicycle’s tutorial and experiencing an a-ha moment. The heels do not match, and I can’t quite figure out why. Neither looks wrong, exactly, but they are not the same. Also, my loose bind off is not loose enough. Something to work on.

socks-fo-3

socks-kitchen

Maybe I’ll do a wrap up post on these sometime in the future, but for now, these puppies are on my feet! Notes on my stitch count, etc. can be found on the project’s Rav page or in an earlier blog post. (Confession time: I haven’t even gotten around to weaving in the ends and tidying up those little holes that show up sometimes when you turn the heel…)

before blocking and buttons.

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complete-on-bed

blurry28thirty

full-length-awk1

Hooray! I’m going to dunk it in a warm bath with some wool wash and lay it out to block and dry, but had to take some celebratory pictures first. I also managed to place a few bids on vintage button lots on ebay before heading to class — they may take a few days to get here, but this way I’ll have oodles of mismatched buttons to play with in the future!

storm

It is snowing right now, though none of it has accumulated yet. Apparently that may occur overnight. Here’s a shot of the first rain-into-snow storm cloud approaching on Monday. I know it isn’t quite as dramatic as the out-my-front-door pictures I used to take in the desert, but it felt good to dash back inside for the camera last night. I haven’t done that in awhile!

I’ll conclude with pure cuteness:

cuteness

Awww. I’ll do a wrap up post with specs/mods once I get 28thirty blocked and buttoned. I’m so excited!

28thirty weather.

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I had forgotten what a tease spring can be in certain parts of the country. Clearly I need to just enjoy sunshine and flip-flop weather when it comes, and stop expecting that it will stick around. The only positive thing I can see in today’s rainy yuckiness (and the week’s similarly cold and rainy forecast) is that I may actually finish my 28thirty in time to have a weather-appropriate day to wear it out of the house. I’m past the left elbow now, and steadily approaching the wrist!

leftsleeveclose

leftsleevealmost

Soon. Very soon. I still haven’t found my reading mojo, and I wonder if this sweater is holding it hostage. I mean, I’m getting my regular reading done for class, but it is time to tackle my writing projects for the semester, and while I’ve acquired quite the pile of library books, I seem to find other things to do (like scrubbing the top of the stove) when I should be systematically note-taking in order to get a handle on my papers.  Sigh.

As part of yesterday’s “cleaning trumps reading” mentality, I washed a bunch of handknits, and thought you might like to see them drying all over my apartment — above dog level, of course.

washing-handknits

washing-handknits21

Also, while making a quick, mission-driven stop at my LYS to pick up a specific yarn for a future project, I impulsively snatched up a copy of the Spring IK, as the Whisper Cardigan has been calling my name on Ravelry. I dug through my stash, and discovered some gorgeous Knitpicks Shadow in Redwood Forest that I bought on sale last year sometime.

whisper-excitement

This will be perfect for spring! I’m not quite ready to cast on yet, but when I do, I think I’ll be using some of the more popular mods — ribbing the sleeve cuffs and keeping an eye on sleeve and body length, and ribbing the lower edge of the body to limit the rolling. I have a few other projects to focus on before I start this, but I am excited about this sweater!

Time to devote my attention to (a) my mug of coffee and (b) preparing for my first class. Hope your week is off to a good start!

friday.

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bohbone1

bohbone2

Just in case it was unclear, that is Boh’s bone. Let’s move on to my sweater:

sleeve2-28thirty

I can already tell that this sleeve is going to move much faster. With the right sleeve, I was trying it on after every couple decrease rows (see my modifications in an earlier post) in order to find a sleeve circumference that worked for me. With the left sleeve, I know to work down to 44 st and then work even until the wrist, where I did a few more decrease rows and then the basketweave cuff. I’m not the only one around here who is excited about 28thirty!

bohinvestigates-28thirty

Remember my Sunday Market Shawl? I dug it out this week because I had a few lectures to attend, and I am almost through the first ball of yarn.

sms3

I’ve been rather appalled at the disrespect for the person at the front of the room at the larger events and talks I’ve attended this year, and I certainly don’t want to be lumped into the category of undergrads who stay only long enough to write a response, or who text and facebook/watch movies through most of a talk, only to make lots of noise while leaving during the already harder-to-hear Q&A. I understand that sometimes people need to leave early, and if you’re thoughtful about it, there’s absolutely no problem. It is this consumption mentality, the idea that these opportunities are bought and sold and thus devoid of the need for basic courtesies, that has been driving me nuts lately.

ETA: There are lots of thoughtful, engaged, respectful undergrads here, and I do not mean to suggest that the behavior I’m responding to is universal. I’m ranting about the handful who seem to think that basic courtesies do not apply in university lecture halls. (Hey, you! You’re making your friends look bad!)

I write all this to say that I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to knit at a lecture, and I’ve settled on sitting further back in the room, bringing only mindless knitting, and making an effort to connect to the speaker through eye contact, to make it clear to him/her that my hands are not distracting me from the content. So far, this feels like a reasonable approach.

One last photo:

bohgreenfleece

This guy is paying attention!

Hope you have a great weekend, and that spring weather makes an appearance wherever you are.

resistance = futile.

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This applies both to massaman curry and the WEBS anniversary sale. First, the curry:

curry

curry2

curry3

The boy has been raving about this particular massaman curry paste from one of the Asian grocery shops near his house. Last week he brought me my own container. Yum. I made a regular four-serving batch, as directed by the instructions on the curry paste, complete with tofu, potatoes and onions, and these are my leftovers! I have been eating this all week, and it is delicious.

Today marks the start of April, but it also (and more importantly?) is the first day of the WEBS anniversary sale. As this blog post’s title implies, I’ve already clicked the “complete purchase” button, and a healthy dose of eco-wool (for a hemlock ring blanket, an owls sweater, and maybe linden or shalom), as well as some classic elite silky alpaca lace (ishbel is building my lace confidence) and some jo sharp dk wool (for bracken) should be en route to my doorstep soon.

Speaking of ishbel, my version has graduated to “blob” status. It is too big to stretch out all pretty on its circular needle, so here it is in a big heap.

ishbelblob

I’ve finished the stockinette portion for the large size, which means it is time for lace. Wish me luck!

ishbel.

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ishbelprog

ishbel-prog-2

The stockinette portion of Ishbel is absolutely flying! Talk about a satisfying knit. No visible progress to report on my 28thirty sleeves, but I am dutifully working on it at home.  It has taken me twice as long to upload photos for this post because I’ve been simultaneously eating half of one of these espresso banana nut muffins:

muffins

Soon I’m going to heat up some cheesy Sweet Potato Spoon Bread leftovers for lunch:

sweetpotato-spoon-bread

Both of these recipes are from Supernatural Cooking, the most recent cookbook from Heidi over at 101cookbooks. My kitchen binder of internet recipes has a healthy selection from her blog, and this cookbook does not disappoint — I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve made from it, and the book itself is gorgeous. Also, one more plug for those muffins — they use white-whole wheat flour, natural cane sugar, less butter than you’d expect, and yogurt. I was expecting the white-whole wheat flour to yield a pretty dense, dry muffin, and I was happily surprised with the result. These are light and moist, and I will certainly be making them again!

Boh is pouting because he can’t have either of these treats. I promise I’ll take him on a longer W-A-L-K today to make up for it.

Have a great weekend!

longer…

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sleeve-is-longer

This sleeve is slowly lengthening. Why is it that the closer I get to completing this sweater, the slower my progress looks to me? This project is no longer appropriate for bringing anywhere except a designated knitterly gathering, both because of its size and because of the way I feel like my arms flail about as I tug on cables and untwist the sleeve along my way towards magic looping to the wrist. Whining aside, I love this and cannot wait to prance about in it. (Yes, I said prance.)

Because I have a serious problem with project monogamy, and because I had a lecture to attend yesterday, I cast on something new.

ishbel

It is true; I’ve caught the Ishbel bug. I’ve been resisting the urge to knit this for some time now: Lace is hard! Another fingering weight project when I still have socks on the needles? And then, after viewing many a lovely Ishbel, I saw this one over at brokeknits. I bought the pattern immediately.

I’m using some gorgeous slightly variegated deep purple Yarn Pirate fingering weight, and I’m hoping to successfully combine the small and large sizes — large st portion, small lace version, to use all the yarn. We’ll see how that goes!

A few more Boh pics that are too sweet and silly not to share:

boh-under-blankets

We may have fallen asleep here together on Monday night…

boheyesclosed

Someone is very pleased with his cookie. Time for me to get back to work!

becoming an armadillo.

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mirror-close-up

dirty-mirror

sleeveinprogress

upclosesleeve

I am loving this sweater. Have I said that yet? LOVING. Now that I’m making progress on the right sleeve, I’m seeing the armadillo comparisons I’ve read mention of on Ravelry and the broader interwebs, but I think this is a good thing. I’m contemplating working the ridges as directed until mid forearm, and then going for straight stockinette until the cuff, but we’ll see how I feel when I get there.

Notes/sleeve mods:

As others have experienced, the sleeves for the non XS and S sizes do seem overly large. I’m knitting size M, and the 59 st sleeves were very blousy on me. I picked up 3 st to close the gap, and then knit as directed to the next purl ridge. I then skipped ahead to the decreases, and worked them every other row (including the purl ridges) until I got down to 44 st (close to the st count for an XS sleeve), which seemed snug over a button-down shirt-sleeve. I’m working the sleeve straight until my repeated trying on/admiring myself in the sweater seems to suggest that I need another decrease row.

I realize you may tire of pictures of this guy (or that it may appear as though I take the same photos of him each day), but I never do. Check out the posing I witnessed this morning:

posingdog

posingdog2

Sigh. I must admit, I did more knitting than reading today, and I really should try to get in another chapter before bed. I’m hoping for more signs of spring this week…