Tag Archives: boh

bracken: blocking/before buttons.

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bracken blocking

I gave bracken a nice soak and then tried to get a bit more length out of it as it lay drying on these awesome blocking squares. (These are from Knitpicks, and seriously, they cut drying time in half.)

bracken almost1

bracken almost 2

bracken almost 3

Blocking = magic. Everything relaxed and totally evened out, and I think the length is absolutely perfect. I think Boh agreed, because he kept trying to get in the picture.

boh with bracken

Now I just need to sew on the buttons! (Well, first I need to find some appropriate thread.)

bracken grey buttons

I was looking through my button jars for a set of dark brown buttons, but the ones I have are a bit shiny, so I think I’m going to go with the grey matte buttons on the left.

If only I could make such satisfying progress on my writing projects…

vest-ness.

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bracken try on2

bracken try on1

Apologies for the terrible photos — I realized this morning that I could really use an extra arm to help hold up the vest AND take pictures. (Cleaning the mirror wouldn’t be a bad idea either.) In these pictures, the vest looks super short, but that’s because I happen to be wearing a long shirt with pockets today. In real life, this seems to hit at the top of my hips, right around the waistband of my jeans, and I think that’s what I want.

Unrelated but adorable:

boh paws book

If you’re not going to read that, paws off.

boh forlorn

If anyone wants pouting lessons, I’m sure this guy has all the proper certifications necessary to teach beginner and advanced classes.

so good.

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so good1

so good 2

This is what happens whenever I (a) put on socks or shoes or (b) put on another layer. It gets pretty cold in my apartment in the middle of the day, which means that I’m often adding layers without planning to go outside. Boh has developed a two-pronged strategy: (a) sit directly in front of the door and (b) sit up very tall, almost as if to say “See? I’m being SO good.”

brack inc

I managed another inch or so on my bracken vest this morning, and I’m optimistic about my productivity for the day: laundry is in the dryer, granola is in the oven, and it is time to dig into the work pile. Happy Monday!

silence.

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“The creosote and tar smell of the railroad tracks woke him from the dreaming. The cinders made hollow crunching noises under his boots. He had come a long way with them; but it was his own two feet that got him there.” — Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1976) (My version is Penguin, 2006, p. 236.)

prewittrr

Do you ever read something that just takes everything out of you? I didn’t intend to just stop posting, but I read Ceremony this week and it stirred up a lot of things that I’ve been processing. Powerful books can be almost incapacitating. (This is good. Also, hard.)

boh knit corner

Boh started to worry about the knitting pile. He told me so.

bracken prog inc

As you can see, I’m making progress on Bracken. (You can also see that this Jo Sharp Classic DK wool seems to attract Boh hair.)

messy dumplings

I made myself a plate of very messy dumplings last night — the only wrappers I could find this week were enormous! I overfilled a few, and they ruptured in the cooking process…but they were still incredibly delicious.

cloud complex

(A few pictures from 2007 seemed appropriate, given Ceremony‘s mostly southwestern setting.)

pie for breakfast/vestvember.

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9

pear pie 1

I wake up when the light starts poking through my windows, so this whole daylight savings thing really works to my advantage. Don’t get me wrong, I hate that it is dark before I leave campus in the afternoons, but in terms of rooster productivity levels, 6:30 am as the new 7:30 am makes it seem like I have lots of time to get things done. So yesterday I baked myself a pie for breakfast — pear pie, to be precise.

pear pie 2 boh

Boh is guarding the kitchen. Or waiting for pie.

pear pie 3

I may have also eaten pie for lunch.

sillydog1

sillydog2

Never a dull moment with this dog around.

bracken1

Ummm, have you guys heard about Vestvember? Yep, that’s right: VESTvember. Well, I’ve had the yarn and pattern for a vest sitting here for months, so I decided that since I’m a joiner (which is not necessarily the same as being a finisher…) I would at least cast on my vest project this month and enjoy all of the vesty inspiration occurring over on ravelry. This is Bracken, a button-up vest that I’ve been admiring for quite awhile now. I’m knitting it out of some Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool in a deep brownish purple. I got st gauge on size 6s, but my row gauge is a little bit off. It looks like the pattern includes lengths (inches/cm) in most places instead of number of rows to knit, though, so I should be okay.

bracken2

You should totally cast on for a vest this month. (Everybody’s doing it.)

I tucked the remaining pie into the oven to warm when I poured my coffee, and delicious pear-y aromas are wafting towards the computer…time for breakfast!

yellow.

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It was a quiet Friday, spent trying to catch up with the week: lots of list-making and stock-taking, but also a longer walk to the reservoir with Boh to clear my head and stretch his (okay, our) legs.

yellow1 six mile creek

yellow2 six mile creek

It was a proper eve of Halloween — the sky was grey, the wind, howling, and the familiar scent of leaves settling and decomposing whirled about us. The seasons are starting to turn again, but there are some leaves, branches, whole trees, even, that seem to resist. These solitary bursts of yellow made me smile, and I found myself looking for pockets of color in the muted beauty of these woods.

leaves six mile creek

leaves2 six mile creek

wind in weeds six mile creek

late fall six mile creek

Everything always seems more manageable after a walk along this path.

ming muffins1

ming muffins 2

The oven helps, too. A friend of mine from college has this gorgeous cupcake website that you should all check out, and yesterday she posted a recipe for savory cheddar and scallion cupcakes. Moments after reading this, I was in the kitchen melting butter and measuring out flour. Yum.

winter storage first bobbin

I also finished the first bobbin of Winter Storage, and I’m hoping to start the next one this afternoon — but only if I can get some writing done today.

boh admiring himself

I’ll leave you with a bit of Boh humor. I caught Boh admiring himself in the mirror yesterday. He was so engrossed in his own reflection that I was able to snap a few pictures before he starting looking at me in the mirror. Silly, silly dog.

kind of a big deal.

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Nope, no pigtails yet. And nope, I didn’t finish my plain and simple pullover, though I do have progress to share.

Yesterday was kind of a big deal for me because I gave my first-ever lecture. I’ve done a fair amount of talking in front of people before, and I generally don’t mind it once I get going, but there was something different about this, in terms of the significance of the opportunity: this was a chance to do the thing I want to do, a chance to practice a big part of the career I’m working towards, and I was really nervous. I worried about all the usual things: that I’d talk too fast, that it wouldn’t go well, or worse — that I wouldn’t like it.

I still have a lot to think about in terms of planning and pacing a lecture, and quite a bit to learn, but I did enjoy myself yesterday, and the students even laughed at my jokes. And there won’t ever be a “first” lecture again — just a “next” one.

Onward to my pullover progress:

plain and simple front st1

plain and simple front st close up

Under Boh’s watchful eye, I finished the body, and moved on to the next step in the pattern, which involves working the front stitches back and forth. I panicked, thinking that there was no way I had a set of size 2 straight needles, but some digging through my vintage lot of aluminum needles (an ebay acquisition born of my new-knitter excitement a few years ago) yielded a mismatched pair.

plain and simple boh supervise1

plain and simple boh supervise2

As you all noted, Boh takes his job very, very seriously. I wish he’d step up and supervise the huge pile of grading I have to get through today…

fifteen.

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plain and simple 15in

Inches, that is. (Actually, more like a smidge under fifteen when laid perfectly flat, but hey, I’ll take it.) The pattern says to knit 16.5 inches for my size, but as I am a little anxious about running out of yarn (and short-waisted, and generally seem to knit my sweaters a tad too long), I’m going to knit to 15.5, the length for the smallest size, and call it good.

Last night, friends hosted a Radio Party potluck, which meant we all brought food, drank wine, and listened to This American Life at the appropriate time. I got in about an hour and a half of solid knitting on my plain and simple pullover, and I’m going to try to finish the body before getting back to my pile of grading this morning.

plain and simple 15 boh

Also, for documentation purposes, I snapped a picture of my hair last night.

long hair.

I’m aiming for low, braided pigtails. Not quite long enough yet, but getting there…

rustling.

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(Not cattle. More like leaves, branches, half-thoughts, glimpses of moments past.)

sundaywalk1

sundaywalk2

This is one of my favorite paths to wander along, as those of you who’ve been reading for the summer, even the last year, are well aware.

sundaywalk3

The wind in the beech trees, the water pouring over the spillway, even the distinctive vibration from the trucks on the state road I walk to get here; these sounds stir me. I see and hear echoes of words I have felt, said, thought. My memory surprises me. These walks are harder on some days than others, but always strangely restorative.

sundaywalk4

Yesterday’s walk (and the walk I took last week, with our houseguest) was different. After an incredibly delicious mushroom-leek quiche (everyone should find friends who will bring breakfast to your house) that I wish I had photographed to share here, we bundled up and headed out the door with Boh and Coltrane. I guess I write all of this to say that it seems important to experience solitary places with other people. It’s not that the reservoir was transformed by the company; more that I noticed new things around me, and at the same time, rustled up a little less. It is nice to turn my regular route into a space filled with chatter, storytelling, community.

sundaywalkamyandtalia

sundaywalk5

sundaywalk7

One of the great things about friends who are also early-risers is that you can enjoy an indulgent brunch and take a relaxing walk AND have plenty of time left over for productivity, of both the academic and fiber-y variety.

polwarth bw

In between bouts of reading and writing, I sat down at my wheel and spun up two bobbins of luxurious polwarth from Southern Cross Fibres in the Boogie Wonderland colorway. This was incredible stuff to spin, and the depth of these greys and greens is stunning.  We’ll see if I can get through today’s pile fast enough to start plying this today.

FO: a second seaman.

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6

seaman's cap 2 fo2

seaman's cap 2 fo

This hat just flew off the needles, and I love it. These big hats intended for boys also seem to work with my incredibly big hair, which means I may need to cast on for another. This grey/green version out of AVFKW falklands in The Silent Undergrowth colorway has more drape — again, maybe because it is a 2-ply, but also because the yarn seemed a bit thinner as I was working with it. (I used the same needles: US 6 for the ribbing, 7 for the st portion and decreases. WPI tool, are you hiding under piles of fiber?) Also, for those counting ounces, I started with 3 oz. of fiber, and I have .45 oz. of yarn remaining.

seaman's cap 2 unfolded

Here it is, with the brim unfolded. Perfect for big hair, no? (The colors are too wonderfully gift-able for me to keep this, particular when compared to the bright. cheery pile of handspun taking up space on the bookshelf. I can still try it on a bunch before the holidays, right?)

Alright. Onward to a few photos of the fun parts of Saturday:

bohbeingsilly

cocoa nyer

Snoring dog, hot cocoa made with milk on the stove, the New Yorker…

snail, cowl mitts

Snail hat, handspun cowl, thanksgiving day mitts: necessary for a nice walk along the reservoir.

bohsillycouch2

Boh continues to stretch and snore. I imagine he’ll be doing lots more of this later today, as his greyhound friend (and his people) will be here (with breakfast!) in about twenty minutes. Boh has no idea.