Category Archives: knitting

birthday weekend.

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I have a whole slew of unrelated (or maybe loosely connected) photos: knits in action, kitchen adventures, knitting mistakes… Hmmm. I promise NOT to name this post something about the letter K.

Friday:

bolero-in-action1

Bolero Jacket in action. I feel like I read a lot from folks about how sometimes knitting is not super wearable, and my blog gets lots of visitors who are looking for advice on wearing things like legwarmers, so I’ve been a bit more mindful of snapping photos when I am actually wearing things I’ve made (not that I consider myself remotely fashionable). This sweater gets a lot of wear around the house, and steps into real life when the weather is variable enough to warrant a heavy sweater but not a winter coat — this works best for me with a big puffy vest. I wear this when I need to bring a bit of comfort with me — in this case, the discussion of a tough book.

fork-for-scale

Friday night, we made pizza and lemon tart (from deb at smitten kitchen, of course). No pictures of the pizza. Note the fork for scale in this picture. I also discovered some serious errors with my increasing on the BSJ I’ve been working on — I literally had 6 ridges left to knit when I realized that my increases (for the fronts of the sweater) were uneven. I don’t even have the heart to photograph the problem, nor could I stomach ripping back. I just put it aside, dug through the stash, and cast on for a baby version of the bolero jacket.

Saturday:

biscuits1

moroccan-stew

Moroccan Stew (from deb) and biscuits (a la Mark Bittman). Also, a new spindle arrived:

newspindle

I LOVE this spindle. I spun the sample fiber it came with immediately, and may need to dig through my fiber stash to start something new so that I can put it to work. The spindle is from Spinsanity, and it spins wonderfully. Hooray for birthday presents to myself.

Sunday (actually anniversary of my birth):

birthday-cake

Homemade birthday cake, not baked by me. Honey-Rosemary Cake with Lemon Frosting, from Apples for Jam. This is incredibly delicious, the kind of cake you can eat several pieces of during the day and not feel like you’re overdosing on sugar. I intend to have some for breakfast after I post this.

replacement-sweater

And since this purports to be a knitting blog, here’s the progress I’ve made on my replacement baby sweater. Just about halfway done already — what a difference worsted weight yarn makes. I’ve had enough distance from my BSJ to take a look, and I imagine I’ll rip back and keep going — it may go to this baby, or to the next. Lots of folks in my life are adding to their families this year!

Hope you all had lovely weekends. Sadly, you don’t get to stop reading when it is your birthday, but I did slow down a bit. Time to have some of that cake and prep for class!

pooch for scale.

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pooch-for-scale

pooch-for-scale-2

Ta-da! My first plied yarn. By my calculations (which are often up for debate), this skein contains about 180 yards of squishy mostly worsted weight yarn, with some light worsted and light bulky here and there. I’m thinking that I *need* a new cowl, and once I finish this BSJ for the now overdue baby, maybe I will allow myself to cast on.

bsj-almost

I’m making progress, to be sure — cast off the 5 st on each side for the neckline yesterday, but there is much to do, leaving me with a dilemma: do I read for my independent study with my advisor tomorrow, or knit for him? I’ll likely do some of each, but what I cannot do — I repeat, CANNOT DO — is work on this:

fruitloops1

How did this happen? Spinning is a slippery slope, my friends. I got a new Butterfly Girl Designs spindle in the mail this month, but did not allow myself to test it out until AFTER I had finished spinning the Finn. So, while my plied skein was drying, I figured I had earned just a few minutes with this spindle and some more AVFKW fiber from the club. It seemed slightly unbalanced — likely due to how soft the gold hook is/perhaps some jostling during the shipping process, so I tried bending it slightly this way and that to make it just right — and suddenly, I had spun almost an ounce of this beautiful shetland in the Fruit Loops colorway. This is wayyy too much fun.

Alright — must stop blogging and get reading! or knitting!

quiet weekend.

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applesauce-bowl

more-giant-muffins

more-sushi

helping

Good and good-for-us food was enjoyed, some reading was accomplished, and a cozy clapotis got some serious wear:

knit-in-action

Back to it. What if Boh actually helped with the reading, instead of just lounging NEAR my books?

Hoping to get some in some knitting on that BSJ later on this afternoon. (No SuperBowl watching occurring here…) Happy Sunday, all.

purple potatoes, pickled onions and progress.

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Apologies for my kindergarten-esque approach to blogging this week. I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that my brain is tired — first “real” meeting with my committee this morning. It will be fine, but the meeting does have the word “exam” in the title, and I’m still a tad nervous.

Onward to the letter “P”.

purple-potatoes

Purple Potatoes. These are, in fact, from my friend P.’s farm! Aren’t they beautiful?

egg-and-pickled-red-onions

Pickled Onions — from  (where else) Smitten Kitchen — Deb made a pickled red onion and escarole salad last week that sounded incredible, so I made the onions, put them on a bed of spinach and fried an egg to make it dinner.

bsj-progress

Progress. This baby is going to arrive any moment now, and I really would love to be able to give this to my committee chair next week. I have a knitting date right after the meeting with my committee. Knitting friends + garter stitch = therapy.

Happy weekend.

more letter b’s.

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ginger-cookies

giant-muffins

Baking… (triple ginger cookies from 101 cookbooks, and some giant muffins from one of many Moosewood cookbooks in my collection)

bsj-aaron

Baby Surprise Jacket… (the chair of my committee is expecting a baby boy to arrive next week)

green-sheets

and Brightness, in the form of new green sheets and a comforter. I’m still looking for a pale quilt or blanket to fold on the end of the bed for Boh to lounge on. This makes a huge difference in the overall cheeriness of my room!

Must get back to reading — hoping to settle into a routine/rhythm for this semester by the end of the week.

Happy Monday!

the calzone report.

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calzone-making

calzone-detail

Despite my success with pizza dough earlier this week, it seems that I still have a thing or two to learn about calzones, and in particular, the behavior of white-whole wheat flour. I made exactly the same dough recipe, but with white-whole wheat, and it just did not rise this time, which yielded a rather dense calzone dough. These were good, but an airier, dare I say, doughier crust would have made them fantastic. Well, that and not eating an entire loaf of farmers’ market bread BEFORE putting the calzones in the oven.

sheepy-slouch-fo

slouch-side-view

I’m pretty sure I’m ready to jump back into the land of productivity, and my new sheepy slouch will certainly make it a slightly warmer leap!

Details: Le Slouch, by Wendy Bernard.US 7 needles, sheepy Romney/Corriedale blend worsted from the Merck Forest and Farmland Center. CO 74 st, knit 6.25 in before decreasing. I’m not letting Boh get this one.

sheepy slouch.

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sheepy-slouch

The spring semester starts Monday, and there are certainly productive things I could be doing (like brushing up on my skills in a certain language so that I can pass a translation test whenever my department decides they’ve found someone to administer it), but instead, I’m knitting a hat. Boh ate my favorite squishy malabrigo cabley slouchy hat (see previous post), but instead of replacing it with a malabrigo look-alike, I’m craving something a bit sheepier, if you will. Enter my second le slouch. This one will be slouchier than the first, and a bit tweedy in appearance. I’m knitting it out of a Romney-Corriedale blend purchased as part of last winter’s snowshoe adventure at a farmland trust in Southern Vermont. I modified the cast on # slightly in order to accomodate my desire to knit the hat on 7s — in part because my 8s are in use, and in part because I want a denser fabric. Hoping to have this warming my ears soon!

dishcloths-fo

I finished these thank you-dishcloths yesterday, which means I’ll have no excuse if they aren’t in Tuesday’s mail. You heard it here first! Also, we were invited for dinner at a friend’s house a few nights ago, and bread was requested, but it was too late in the day to start my go-to no-knead bread. I opened Mark Bittman’s big yellow book, and found a recipe for a lighter whole wheat bread using baking soda, yogurt and honey, and ta-da:

quick-wheat-bread

A hearty, wheaty quick bread that has been great with morning omelettes. I’ll be making this again.

Rather than take advantage of the free time to get ahead on reading, thinking, language study, etc. this weekend, I’m planning to knit and spindle away the afternoon before a planned evening of hunkering. There will be calzone-making, movie-watching and wine-drinking here at Chez Rooster — the dough is steadily rising!

the perils of pooches (and some oh-nine goals).

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dsc05552

One minute, the hat was where it always is when it is not on my head: in the basket by the door. The next, Boh is galloping gleefully through the apartment, a destroyed star-crossed slouchy beret in his mouth. At least he looks sad, right?

A few other things I’ve been working on:

blurry-pizza

Reacquainting myself with my kitchen (yay!) through pizza-making. (If you haven’t checked out Smitten Kitchen, do so now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, etc. I love Everything I Make from Deb’s blog, and you should see the pile of printed out recipes in the kitchen queue.)

Also, dishcloth knitting — some thank yous for hosting us on our north country adventure:

dishcloths

Apologies for my link-laziness: it is unlikely that I will actually connect these patterns to their internet homes. Quick rav searches should do the trick…

So! I’ve been making lots of lists, clearing space on my bookshelves for a new semester’s pile o’ reading, and thinking big thoughts about what I’d like to accomplish this spring, and this year. I won’t bore you with the Grand Academic Plans And Worries just yet, but I do have lots of exciting knitting ideas. I recognize that purely by virtue of writing all of this down, I will not accomplish all of it, but at least I’ll be able to come back to this post for inspiration, should I need it throughout the year.

First up: sweater knitting, or rather, sweater completion!

Right now I have Brompton and 28thirty on the needles. I’m happy with how they are coming along, and I just need to find some slightly longer chunks of knitting time to feel like these are worth pulling out — a row here and there simply doesn’t work when you are trying to keep track of increases or knitting huge rows. I desperately want to wear these, though, and I really think I can get Brompton finished in time to turn it into the cozy grad school cardigan I have been envisioning forever!

Other sweaters on the list:

Valia (Santa brought me a bag of gorgeous Malabrigo and the pattern, and I’d love to have this ready for next fall’s holiday trips home, if not sooner.)

Drops Jacket (I’ve had yarn for this forever, love all the FOs I’ve seen, and my apartment gets cold in the afternoons. This is obvious, right?!)

Cobblestone (for me), Tangled Yoke, Salina, Francis…I have yarn that would work for all of these, and they all have long stretches of stockinette: exactly what the frazzled grad school mind requires.

Next up: Socks! I’ve been a member of the Yarn Pirate Sock Yarn Club this year, and I have a gorgeous stash of Georgia’s yarns, but I’ve been slow to turn them into socks. I’ve unsubscribed after this 3-month round as a way to motivate myself to knit with what I have. I think socks have finally clicked for me as great mindless knitting — I can now turn a heel on a basic sock without having to dig for the instructions, and socks really are perfect take-to-school for extra free moments waiting to meet with professors or for class to start.  No specific pattern goals here, except to master the art of both toe up socks (I’m working on my first pair now) and the short row heel (mine are always hol-ey. I think Cat Bordhi will rescue me on this one, as a knitting friend pointed out last year).

I’m also working on learning to cable without a cable needle, so this year, I’d like to develop confidence/comfort with this technique.

Spinning goals: I think I’m finally getting the hang of (and the addiction to) spindle-spinning, and to this end, I want to make time each month to work on my spinning and learn how to ply. By the end of 2009. I’d love to spin up a 3-ply sock yarn to knit (toe up?) socks with.

All that should keep me busy, don’t you think?

turn a spindle, turn a square

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vinn-pink

And here’s what I was working on while skein number 1 was hanging to dry. This is the first half of 4 oz of Finn in colorway Equilibrium, the November installment of the AVFKW Woolly Wonders Fiber Club. Here’s the beginning of the second half:

brown-vinn

This is more of a complex chestnut brown than it looks. Silly me for photographing it on a brown chair. I clearly took this picture before my morning coffee. I’m planning to attempt plying on my spindle when I finish spinning this up. I think these colors look lovely together, and “Equilibrium” suits them perfectly.

I’ve also been working on turning another square:

square-in-progress

blurry-square

I had to have one for myself — I’m hoping that the decrease seams will become more slouchy with a good blocking. (Apologies for the blurriness on this shot — all I can say is that my arm is a bit tired from all of the spindling!) Details: Grey Cascade 220 and Araucania Nature Wool Chunky leftovers, size 6 and 7 needles, as directed. Also, even though I’m using the notes to get the stripes to line up, it doesn’t look quite right. I ran the tails of both colors up the seam to fill in a few gaps that formed during color switches. Maybe I need to pull the yarn tighter as I’m carrying the strands along inside.

Totally unrelated, but I found myself wearing my malabrigo cowl on my head. And I like it.

cowl-on-head

Still thinking about my knitting plans for 2009…

FO: leftover socks

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blurry-leftovers

blurry-close-up

Apologies for the blurriness, folks. We all know how hard it is to take pictures of one’s own feet. Details on these socks: Cascade 220 superwash, maybe 3/4 of a ball? I bought 2 balls to make a pair of men’s size 10.5 socks, and started a new ball for each sock. I made these with the leftovers. Same basic Ann Budd pattern, size 5 needles. My toes are nice and warm!

Also, this guy wants you to know that even though he is on vacation, he is getting a lot of work done on his green toy:

pooch1

pooch2

Boh is currently snoring loudly on the couch. He worked very hard today.