that other stuff.

sillydog

Lots o’ pictures today — I have a (digitized) pile of shots (like this one) to share! Yesterday, the wheel won out, and rightly so. I may have spent another hour and a half spinning last night. I’m still breaking the yarn every so often because I haven’t quite balanced the pull of my bobbin with the speed of my treadling, so I was getting underspun yarn that wasn’t quite strong enough to be pulled onto the bobbin. (Does that make sense?) I am already way better at starting and stopping the wheel, and at sliding the guide around to get a more evenly filling bobbin. Though the specific mechanics are the same, drafting with your hands in your lap is different from spindle spinning, but I like it. (I like them both.) More writing today, but I will be rewarding myself with time at the wheel — that luscious undyed oatmeal BFL is going to be all spun up by the end of today.

First up: Food. Here’s a picture of the last piece of quiche. I forgot to take a “before” shot. We were too busy eating.

last piece quiche

A strawberry cake I baked last night, totally impulsively. Deb at smitten kitchen posted this around dinner time, and I could not resist.

strawberrycake

Pile o’ cookbooks — they looked pretty to me when I was in the kitchen snapping food pictures.

pileocookbooks

Those pears need to become pie, stat. We’ll see how far I get with the paper today. This next one does not fit into a category, but it was chilly early in the week, and I was wearing my 28thirty for added warmth. (I’m one of those people who would rather throw open the windows and put on a sweater than keep them shut and not need layers.)

28thirty in action

I love it. I may have made the upper sleeves a tad tight — in response to how loose the shoulders seemed — but I think with a little more wear, these will stretch just enough.

Next: Work photos.

workspace2

This enormous primary source was way too big to rest on the desk next to my computer, so we had to curl up on the couch. Boh was not pleased that the book took his spot. There’s my whisper, about an inch into the ribbing, for “thinking” while working.

yarnwinding

Yarn-winding is work, right? Here’s my technique. I’ve got about an inch and a half of the whisper ribbing, and I’m ready to start the second ball. I’m glad it is already wound!

spinning corner

Okay, one more wheel pic. This is my spinning “work” space, at the moment. Bright yellow bowl for fiber, sturdy chair to sit in, rug for wheel to stand on…Have I mentioned yet that I love my new wheel?

Blogging helps me to get words in my fingers — time to pour the coffee and switch over to academic writing. Have a great day!

stress knitting.

I finished my Sunday Market Shawl tonight. It is way past my bedtime, but it was such a slow, unproductive day of writing that I just needed to make progress on something, you know? Ends aren’t woven in, and it could use a good blocking, but here it is.

sms-done

sms-done2

I love how vibrant this is! Originally, I thought I’d make this huge, with 2 skeins of Fleece Artist Somoko (or a yarn named something close to that) in the Masala colorway, but this is exactly one skein, and it is plenty large!

Also, here are a few more silly pictures of Boh. He just has to be on the couch with the boy. He makes room for himself:

bohcouch1

bohcouch21

Also, I have been seriously internet-stalking spinning wheels. I imagine I’ll take the plunge this summer. It is now wayyyy past my bedtime, and tomorrow I am planning a VERY productive writing day. Good night!

plying, frying…

gradingwithboh1

Apologies for the post slowdown over here. This is pretty much what’s been happening at casa del barefootrooster: work. (Or napping, if you’re Boh.)

I did manage to start plying my Spunky organic merino in Twilight, in between paragraphs (may is the month of paper writing) or particularly bad/cheesy sentences.

twilight-plying

I also have some rather exciting food to share. We had dinner with friends last week — they brought the burrito fixings, and we made the tortillas and some modified (flour) tortilla chips. I was so excited to finally make something from The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, by the legendary Diana Kennedy. Flip through one of her cookbooks the next time you’re in a bookstore and you’ll know what I mean. Kennedy is a fantastic storyteller, and you really get a sense for what it meant to build a life in Mexico. (For more, check out The Splendid Table episode where they go to Mexico to hang out with Diana. I want to be her.)

tortilla1

Tortilla dough, with tortilla chips (made by frying freshly made tortillas) in the background.

tortilla2

Homemade chips! While these were frying in the pan, we were trying to figure out why they weren’t like normal tortilla chips. After several minutes of puzzling, the boy and I exclaimed, “Corn!” at exactly the same time. These were more like pita chips, I’d say, but still delicious.

tortilla3

Flour tortillas. These were incredible, and oh-so-simple. They even retained their flexible-ness long enough to be turned into next-day breakfast burritos! I’ll be making these again. Soon.

Since it seems we have a theme, here’s one more bit of frying from this week’s kitchen adventures:

stirfry

Tofu, kale, carrots, onions, ginger, garlic, brown rice. I’m planning to eat the rest for lunch.

One last bit of super fun news — I won some gorgeous AVFKW silk over at sockpr0n. Thanks, Aija! I can’t wait to play with it!

pie and daffodils.

delicious

daffodils-whisper

An oatmeal pecan pie and a fresh bunch of daffodils (with my whisper cardigan hiding in the background). The sun is shining brightly (and ever so warmly) on us today, and I am thankful for the coolness (literally) of my basement/first floor hybrid apartment. (The house is on a hill, so even though my apartment has full windows on 3 sides, it is technically the basement.)

Also, this guy wants you to know that he is on full alert:

guard-dog

And he has good reason to assume the guard dog position! Today I got off the wait list and into the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, which means that the already-full blue bucket of fiber behind Boh will soon be overflowing…

Enjoy the sunshine! I’m off to class.

whispering.

Excuse the rooster-still-in-her-pjs-photographing-herself-in-a-dirty-mirror nature of these pictures. (Yup, still abusing the hyphen.)

whisperside

whisperfront

I know these pictures leave something to be desired, as they don’t really give you a good sense of the actual knitting, but I love this sweater. For laceweight yarn, it is moving quite quickly. I’m past the lovely center back gather and plan to log a few more inches at a lecture this afternoon. Hooray!

In less happy news, this guy has not been feeling so hot the last few days. Here’s what he looked like on Wednesday: swollen eye, puffy ears. Boo.

sickboh

After talking with the vet, it seems like he was having some kind of reaction. The swelling has gone down, and with the help of some antihistamines, he is almost back to his sweet silly self. Here he is, napping in the morning sun:

sleepingboh

I’m hoping he’ll be up for a frolic of some sort this weekend, as the forecast is for sunshine and relative warmth!

before blocking and buttons.

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!

friday.

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.

monday.

After a weekend of warmer weather, today’s forecast is for snow, rain and cold. That, combined with the ever-growing pile o’ library books taking over my apartment, makes me less than enthusiastic about the coming week.

I snapped a few pictures of Boh yesterday that convey this general emotion:

boh1

boh2

More knitting progress soon. I may attempt to coax myself out of my bleary-eyed state with a few rows of Ishbel. I am less than 10 rows from the lace section.

I hope your Monday brings you sunshine! It looks like Boh and I will have to wait until tomorrow.

longer…

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.

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…