throw down your heart.

Posted on February 15, 2010 by barefootrooster

Or in this case, finish peeling the beet and add it to the pot. It does look like a heart though, right? This post shares its title is with a Bela Fleck album (vol. 3) I received in the mail along with a beautiful hand-stamped valentine that is already on the fridge. This music, a combination of Bela Fleck’s banjo and the voices/instruments he encountered as he traveled through several African countries, makes me smile. And I need that today.

To continue with the music references, I give you my garter yoke cardigan, revisited. (Yes, I’m a nerd.)

(That is a cardboard box behind my arm — the cardigan hangs straight down.)

I attempted to block it longer and narrower in both the sleeves and the body, and I think I managed to turn this into a leaner, slouchier cardigan.

Boh seems to agree. I’m going to wear this out of the house this week!

boh reads, while i knit and eat cake.

Posted on February 14, 2010 by barefootrooster

I took a break from my work on Friday night to make another cup of tea, and I returned to find that Boh had decided to sit, and then lay, with my book. If only he could help with the reading. I alternated reading chapters with knitting increase rows on my snowbird cardigan, and now I’m working on the first sleeve.

This is the first pattern I’ve knit that calls for knitting the sleeves before the body, and I think I like this approach: after knitting the longest rows — the raglan increases — I get to knit the shortest rows!

Also, the birthday celebration continued on Saturday. Boh’s favorite people and his best dog friend Coltrane came over with a full-on triple-decker coconut cake! (Which, by the way, is every bit as delicious as it looks. I might eat part of this piece for breakfast.) We ate cake, and then took a nice wintry walk. Boh snored, with his head on my lap, for the rest of the afternoon.

The combination of the cold weather and my need to feel extra cozy means I’ve been wearing a lot of handknits lately. I snapped this picture yesterday morning before heading out to a nearby coffee shop to get some reading done. (With some books, I just need a bit more din to stay focused.)

Yesterday I was looking for an extra layer, and dug out my sassymetrical, which provided just the right amount of warmth under my slouchy navy (store-bought) wear-all-the-time cardigan. And that’s today’s handknit-in-action.

(I feel sort of weird taking pictures of my outfits in the mirror, but these are the photos that I really like to see on other people’s blogs and on ravelry — how they actually wear the stuff they make. Sometimes seeing a handknit incorporated into someone else’s wardrobe convinces me that I could/would wear said handknit.)

Alright, enough of that. Happy weekend, folks. I’m off to curl up with my (canine) valentine to knit a bit/read a lot.

knits/no knitting.

Posted on February 11, 2010 by barefootrooster

I haven’t picked up my needles this week, which makes me sad. I’ve been wanting to blog, but I couldn’t come up with anything to show you!

So yesterday I decided that even if I didn’t have any knitting, I could at least post a few pictures of knits, to continue with my occasional posts that feature knits-in-action.

Mara-in-action. Whenever I wear this, I am happy. The cheeriness of the pink, the squish of the beaverslide — this shawl generates happiness.

And now, a confession. I haven’t yet worn my garter yoke cardigan out of the house. I’ve worn it several times, but only when I am home. I love the squish, I’m thrilled with the handspun yoke, but the fit just isn’t quite right on me. Something about it being too big to be a fitted cardigan, and too small to be a slouchy cardigan. See?

I haven’t blocked this yet, in part because I can’t decide how to make it fit better. I’m thinking about aggressively blocking it to make it longer and narrower — sleeves too. What do you think? (I took this picture half an hour ago, but I am already wearing a different cardigan. Boo.)

Now, insert an appropriate transition here, because I don’t have one.

For my birthday, my friend K. baked me the most delicious cinnamon raisin swirl bread ever. I have been eating it for breakfast, snack, and dessert. (Well, and I might have eaten some of it as part of a breakfast-like dinner on Tuesday. But don’t tell anyone.) In fact, I intend to eat the last two slices for breakfast in a moment.

More knitting soon, I hope.

golden.

Posted on February 8, 2010 by barefootrooster

Today is my golden birthday. No, I’m not turning fifty. (Yet.) I am, however, 28 on 2-8, which is apparently what makes today golden.

Mondays are super busy for me this semester, so in terms of celebrating with friends, I’m pretending that my birthday isn’t until later in the week.

I do think that birthdays require deliciousness, though, so last night I baked myself a cake — one that I can justify eating for breakfast.

This is the walnut jam cake that Deb posted earlier this week. I topped it with my homemade strawberry balsamic jam, and as soon as I finish this blog post, I’m cutting myself a hearty slice. (I may have eaten a small piece last night after this photo was taken…)

Other things worthy of celebration?

I finished the double garter stitch waistband of my Kerrera. Despite the frustration of my false start, this went a lot faster the second time through.

Boh understands…something about Kerrera, and I’m happy that he’s keeping an eye on it. He was clearly less worried about it yesterday, don’t you think?

Also, on Friday night I cut off my hair. I can’t exactly articulate why it became so important for me to rid myself of most of its length — something about my hair being sort of inconsistent with the person I am and would like to be. And more specifically, it was getting way too long to spontaneously eat soup. And it required detangling.

So I got out of bed on Friday night and chopped it off. In handfuls. I tried to take a few pictures over the weekend, and here are two of my favorites — more for the way they demonstrate my complete incompetence when it comes to photographing myself than for how they highlight my haircut.

(This is me attempting to capture how long/short it is on the side. But it just ended up looking silly.)

And this one…well, you get the idea.

Time for cake!

false start.

Posted on February 5, 2010 by barefootrooster

I know the Superbowl isn’t until Sunday — and let’s face it, I will be at yoga Sunday afternoon instead of anywhere near a television — but I couldn’t resist the penalty reference.

Today, my slow and steady progress on Kerrera came to a screeching halt. Somehow, I managed to drop some loops or otherwise majorly $%&* up the double garter stitch in such a way that I could not repair it. In fact, my attempts at fixing just made it worse.

I think that qualifies as a false start, no?

An hour ago, I was exasperated, so I took a few deep breaths, made a cup of strong cocoa, and decided to attempt productivity at something in the work pile.

After dinner, though, I’m casting on again.

boh gets a visitor.

Posted on February 4, 2010 by barefootrooster

This is the kind of week we had. Me: scrambling to stay on top of things. Boh: patiently waiting for attention.

See?

And for once, all that sitting waiting wishing paid off. Our dear friend P. (you may remember her from her former north country farm fame) arrived last night for a quick visit.

Somebody was VERY happy to have her around.

Boh and P. went for a walk while I went to class. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

And when she left this afternoon to continue driving south and west, Boh assumed a contented position on the couch. (And so did I. So good to see dear friends. The north and east will miss you this spring, P.)

KAL cast on.

Posted on February 1, 2010 by barefootrooster

Mick, Laura, and I had so much fun KALing with our garter yoke cardigans that we decided to do it again. We agreed on a start date of February 1, and I’m not gonna lie: the knowledge that at some point tonight I’d get to sit down with my needles and some luxurious Berroco Ultra Alpaca to cast on for Kerrera helped get me through a very long Monday.

After looking at other projects on ravelry and reviewing the pattern, I decided to cast on for the smallest size. I have a rather boyish shape — no hips, no waist — and the pattern seems to be written for women far curvier than this rooster. My plan is to work the hips for the smallest size, and then only decrease down to the body/bust stitch count for the 36.5″ size so that I’ll get a cardigan that skims my shape, rather than someone else’s. Good plan? Boh doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion on the matter at this point.

Something else that helped with a long Monday? This recipe for cheesy pasta. Simple, delicious, and sometimes exactly what I need.

I’m exhausted from a super busy day, but I think I’m going to make one last cup of tea and knit a few more rows before heading to bed.

Happy February, folks.

spinning/silliness/sunday.

Posted on January 31, 2010 by barefootrooster

The sun came out yesterday while I was spinning the first bobbin of my first (of two!) bump of Hello Yarn shetland in Sour Fig, from the Fiber Club. I had to stop and take a picture. Twenty minutes later, my bobbin looked completely different:

I’m super excited to see how this ends up. I’m aiming for a 2-ply dk weight, but this stuff wants to be spun fine, so we’ll see what happens.

And now, the silliness:

I am a lucky girl.

Yep, another picture of this sweater. The fit is a bit awkward, the armholes are huge, the seams are wonky, even the ends are poorly woven in. I love the big ribbed collar, but I think the reason I wear this sweater more than any of the others I’ve made is that it was my first, finished in February 2008.

I wear it to late night reading groups, to dinner at friends’ homes. I pull it on to take Boh outside in the morning, I curl up in it on the couch. I buy groceries and write papers in it. It fits over many layers, even other sweaters, which is often how I wear it. It warms me, in more than the obvious way. I’ve been reading/discussing Rushdie this week, and these rather silly ruminations on my green sweater make me think of something his narrator says in Midnight’s Children. “Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real” (230, in my 1991 Penguin edition, though this was first published in 1980).

Time to slip my arms into the green sweater and get back to work.

objectivity and bias.

Posted on January 30, 2010 by barefootrooster

As an aspiring historian, I am certainly sensitive to questions of objectivity and bias. (In the realm of full disclosure, I don’t think history is about the pursuit of truth so much as the exploration of an expansive/infinite number of alternate tellings, re-tellings, and interpretations of the past, necessarily colored by the historian’s “present,” whenever/whatever that may be. I don’t think objectivity should be the goal. I’d rather we focused on interrogating our own perspectives biases interests contexts as part of wrestling with what how why we are arguing whatever we’re arguing.)

Anyway, Boh must have read your comments, because he called me on this. He wondered (to no one in particular, though I was the only one here) why certain people (ahem) think very carefully about how to accurately represent their sources in some contexts, but are perfectly happy to misrepresent, oh, I don’t know, a certain four-legged and important member of this household.

Boh wants you to know that he does not sleep all day. He does very important things.

You never take pictures of me doing other things. That’s why they think that. Show them that I can catch my ball! That I can jump high into the air! That I bark at potential intruders and guard our home! The problem, dear reader, is that my skills do not lie in the realm of photography, so I mostly have a blurry mess to share. Boh is right, though. He does appear very energetic in these photos.

I took about 43 other photos, all of them blurry.

I’m sorry, Boh, for not thinking about how I have been representing you. (I listened to the RadioLab “Animal Minds” episode last night while working on my snowbird, and I am certainly aware of my own anthropomorphizing here…)

Also, lest you think I only knit, and do not work, here’s what Boh and I have been up to this morning:

Yep, the semester has begun. Sigh.

bird/dog.

Posted on January 28, 2010 by barefootrooster

First of all, thank you for sending sweet thoughts of health my way. I am finally feeling like myself again. (For awhile there, I had no interest in sarcasm, which is when I knew I needed to get back into bed.)

Last night I allowed myself to break from my pile o’ reading to knit on snowbird and watch the SOTU. It is actually starting to look like the top of a cardigan, and the construction is super cool, so I snapped some pictures. Soon, I’m going to kitchener those panels of stockinette together and sew them to the body of the sweater — they form the start of this cardigan’s awesome collar.