Tangled Up in Yarn

Just a teaser pic - we've just come back from a trip

Here is a photo from the recent trip the family and I took camping... more to follow

I am so peeved

I've noticed over the last couple of days at work that I've had trouble seeing photos on some blogs and all of Ravelry when surfing at lunchtime. It was a big mystery but one that I assumed would probably resolve itself with time. I finally figured it out the problem today - my work has blocked Flikr! ^$#^%*&^ !!!!  So now any site that sources it's photos from flikr I won't be able to see (the photos only not the site itself). This isn't that frustrating with the blogs since there are so many of them out there and only a fraction uses flikr only for it's photos but it completely takes Ravelry out of the picture for looking at patterns, etc. Of course I can do it from home but I eat lunch at my desk everyday and love that hour of surfing. I'm just ticked.

Sweaters, Hats, Seeds and Birth

 

Well the sweater is done and blocked and has already been worn several times. My verdict... this may be the best sweater I’ve ever knit. I love it and my husband assures me it is flattering as well. It’s not perfect and were I to knit it again I would make a few changes. It is a little bit too long – not so much that it looks strange when worn but enough that I wish I had altered the instructions just a bit from the Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. I am fairly short waisted and the dimensions from the pattern called for me to knit the body for sixteen inches before hitting the underarms. I think that was a bit much for me. I did have enough forethought to change the sleeve instructions since I was directed to knit the sleeves for twenty inches before joining to the body. I measured my arms to the shoulder and didn’t even come up with twenty inches so I knit about fifteen to sixteen inches increasing at a slightly faster rate until I had the right sticth count and called it a sleeve. Now that the sweater has been put together and finished sixteen inches turned out to be just the right length for my short armed self. I love the KHBofSP but when you knit something as individual as a sweater you really need to view the patterns in light of your own measurements. If you do this the book is really invaluable for its handy dandy generic patterns. You’ve already have someone who has done the stinky math for you and you can just get on with the knitting.

 

Since completing the sweater I’ve been knitting on pretty small projects. You’ll remember there are several new babies around in my life right now and I’ve been fiddling around with several baby patterns. This week I’ve been on the baby bonnet pattern from Hello Yarns – I really like this pattern and am currently on my second hat. The first was done in white acrylic to match a sweater I’d already knit for a baby shower coming this weekend. The second is in a pretty blue handspun for my new nephew in north carolina. I’ve knit him one sweater already and am planning another with this little hat to match. It is my mission in life to cover this baby in handknits. Besides baby things are so much fun to knit and they go so quickly the gratification is almost instant. My only beef with these little hats is that I need to get some lighter dpns. The ones I had in the needed size are metal and their weight is problematic with these light little hats. I have some circs in the right size but they don’t work until about the last inch so they aren’t that helpful. I think some wooden dpns would do the trick but right now they are a bit fiddly since I’m trying not to let things get stretched out as I work each round.

 

I received my seed order in the mail day before yesterday and have plans to start seedlings this weekend. I also want to work out an organized plan for the garden plot this year instead of planting things a little bit haphazardly like we did last year. Mom – pipe up with the varieties you are interested in and I’ll make up a packet for you. I’m assuming you don’t want a little of everything – sounds like you might not have enough room for corn and winter squash!

 

Last night we did something really fun – we drove down to  Oxford to see a screening of The Business of Being Born  . I had heard about the movie on some of the mothering message boards I frequent and after checking out the website I knew I wanted to see it. It is a documentary that focuses on the sad way childbirth is treated in the united states and how home birth or at least midwife attended birth is a saner and many times safer way to go for many low risk women. Now with me they were totally preaching to the choir as I had both of my children at home attended by midwives and would never do it any other way unless it was absolutely medically necessary. Luckily both of my pregnancies were low risk and my labors beautiful and strong. This may be tmi but I delivered both vaginally with no tearing and no drugs or other interventions and they were each at least eight pounds. I have always been a crusader for home birth and midwives and if anyone out there has any desire to know more the Business of Being Born is a great introduction to the subject. The dvd will be out on February 26^th (on netflix although amazon has May 6th) and there are still many screenings taking place all over the country in the next several weeks. You can check out the website for dates and other details. Please see this movie – especially if you are a woman who is pregnant or thinking about having children . The way we come into this world is actually important. I’ll get off my soapbox now as I leave you with a quote I love - We have a secret in our culture...and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong. - Laura Stavoe Harm

Quick Offer

I managed to end up with two copies of Interweave's Winter issue. Would anyone like a free copy? Leave a comment - whoever comments first gets it!

Is it Spring yet?

It may be cold here  but I have visions of spring dancing through my brain! I just placed my main seed order for this year’s garden this morning. Here is a list of what we are planning to grow. I placed the order with High Mowing Organic Seeds.

 

Provider Bush Snap Beans

De Cicco Broccoli

Red Express Cabbage

Luscious Bicolor Sweet Corn

Green Finger Cucumbers

Salad Bowl Lettuce

Moon and Stars Watermelon

Delicious Melon (cantaloupe)

Sugar Daddy Snap Peas

King of the North Peppers

New England

Pie Pumpkins

Partenon Summer Squash (zucchini)

Success Straight neck Squash

Amish Paste Tomatoes

Roma Paste Tomatoes

Waltham

Butternut Squash

 

I also ordered some inoculants for the peas and beans. I’ve never tried using this before but I read that it can bring good results so I decided to give it a try. Last years garden was a complete experiment for us. I have a fair bit of book knowledge about gardening but have never had the opportunity to try my hand at the real thing. I have to say our garden last year was not the prettiest thing – in fact it was one of the ugliest and weediest around. But what we grew did pretty well and the things that didn’t do well we were able to see why and learn from our mistakes. We have high hopes for this year’s garden as you can see from the expanded seed list. Last year all we grew was tomatoes, peppers, beans, zucchini, summer squash, watermelons and pumpkins. I say that’s all we grew but looking at the list typed out it seems like much more than it did at the time. We had so much unused ground last year that just grew weeds and this year I want to fill up our whole plot. Our last frost date around here falls around the end of the first week in April so I am planning to get seedlings started in the bedroom here in the next couple of weeks hence the seed order. I still need a few more things – I only ordered paste tomato seeds from High Mowing because they didn’t really have a slicer variety that interested me. The Romas and the Amish paste did really well for us last year but the slicers we chose didn’t do well at all. If anyone has a favorite drop me a line and let me know – we live in Zone 7 right on the border between a and b.

 

Not a whole lot else has been going on with us – Christmas came and went with very little fanfare especially as I managed to get very sick on Christmas Eve and so I hardly remember Christmas day at all. I think it was okay. I managed to take two weeks off from work by hoarding vacation days throughout the year – really it was only seven vacation days counting the days everyone was off for Christmas and New Years but it sure felt nice. After getting over being sick and going to various houses for the holiday I pretty much stayed at home and vegged out. Sat on the couch and knit. I did some cooking and baking and hubby and I went to see an extravagant number of movies. It was heaven. I wish I could do it again.

 

One of the things I knit on over the holidays was a reknit. I knit klaralund from some silk garden noro ages ago but never wore the sweater more than a couple of times. I hated it because I loved the yarn and couldn’t stand to just let the finished sweater languish unworn. So after the first I spent nearly a whole day unraveling the sweater and winding the yarn into balls. I cursed my careful sewing up as it was so hard to find the ends to unweave. I know I should have probably washed the yarn afterwards but I really didn’t feel like it. I planned a seamless yoke sweater from the Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns with the odd purl row thrown into the yoke for a little textural interest. This sweater is flying. Maybe it’s because I really want to wear this yarn or because it is a heavier weight yarn than I normally knit but I am through the second set of decreases on the yoke so I only have about five or six inches of knitting left to do then button bands and collar and lastly the weaving in of ends and blocking. I haven’t even taken a picture of it yet and it’s almost done! It may still be a little optimistic but I might actually finish it up this weekend. We shall see.

 

 

Soup Season

Soup Season is finally here in our neck of the woods. In the warm weather it’s all I can do to get anyone in my house to eat soup even though it is just about my favorite kind of meal. Now that the weather has finally turned cooler soup season has arrived. We’ve managed to have some form of soup or stew almost every single evening for the last week and a half or so. We’ve done plain beans, recycled bean soups, vegetarian chili, potato soup and my new favorite – Chickpea Noodle Soup. This is from the much awaited new vegan cookbook Veganomicon that’s been making the rounds on many a food blog lately. We ordered our copy a couple of weeks back and although I haven’t cooked that much from it yet I can tell that Chickpea Noodle will quickly become a staple in our house this winter. Luckily the recipe is actually available on the web – it was one of several “preview” recipes that were posted on the Post Punk Kitchen before the cookbook was actually released. We’ve made this one twice so far and the whole family likes it – although the kids say it would be better without the mushrooms. I think the mushrooms totally make the recipe so don’t take their word on it. The thing I think is so nice about this one is that it is so open to variations. I believe this will be one of those soups you never make the same way twice and it will always be good. The first time I added chopped up bits of the leftover soy and seitan roast from thanksgiving – this was excellent. It made it almost seem like chicken noodle from the texture of the leftover roast. The second time I added some cubed tofu instead. Also very good but I preferred the roast. The recipe mentions that greens would also make a great addition – I haven’t tried this variation yet but it also sounds very good.

Just a little something extra here – homemade eggrolls. Hubby and I love eggrolls so I created these. They are a conglomeration of several different recipes. Primarily sautéed cabbage, grated carrots and crumbled tofu. I added some soy sauce and ginger along with some sesame oil. I wrapped them and then sprayed them with a little canola and baked them at 350 for 20 minutes flipping them after 10. Absolutely wonderful. I baked about half and froze the rest.

Back in the Saddle

The knitting bug has definitely gotten me again. Maybe it’s hanging out so much on Ravelry lately but my need to knit has come back strong. I’ve cast on for a couple of new projects but mainly I’ve been pulling things out of hibernation to get back to. One of the new projects I’ve started lately has been the Kiri Shawl. This will be the second time around with this pattern since I knit another one a couple of years back out of the recommended Kid Silk Haze that I loved but gave away long before the weather was cool enough to justify shawl wearing. I enjoyed the pattern enough that I wanted to knit it again – this time in black lace weight Misti alpaca. I’ve been meaning to knit a black shawl ever since I started playing around with lace. I have a store bought black pashmina type shawl that goes with me just about everywhere I go but I’d love to have one that I made myself. This picture was taken just after I completed the initial set up chart. I’ve done another repeat and a half of the main chart since then. I haven’t had too much time to devote to it since I really only knit on it in the mornings before work when it’s quiet and there aren’t too many distractions. That really only gives me time enough for a few rows – not even a full repeat. I’m not quite sure how I feel about the yarn. I bought it about six or seven months ago at my local shop and started the Wing o’ the Moth pattern with it immediately but set it down because I didn’t like the way it was handling. I’ve since gone down a couple of needle sizes for this shawl and am okay with it but I like my lace yarns with just a little more heft to them. I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those knitters that really like knitting with very very fine yarns. I’ve heard a lot of people compare this yarn to Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud but I really like that yarn – it has just that little tiny bit more substance that I’m looking for. Not a huge difference but just enough so that I feel better with it.

I’m still making progress on my On Your Toes knee socks although I am pretty certain now that two balls of yarn are just not quite going to make these the knee socks I envisioned. I’ll have to break down and order another ball of Nature Spun Sport. This is not an expensive yarn by any means but I hate to order just one ball. If I’m going to pay for shipping I’d like to make the order count. I’d love to find a place that would let me order one ball of that, two or three more balls of Galway Chunky and some Knit Picks Essential. I know that won’t work because of the knit picks but I may have to wait until after Christmas to order since things are a bit tight.

I also pulled out the Flyingdale’s Cardigan I started right after last Christmas but also put away due to lack of yarn. I had bought four or five skeins at my local shop as that was all they had and put the rest on special order but gave up after months went by and the order never came in. The other day I happened to be in there and came across three more skeins so I snapped them up and will see how far these will take me before I run out again. I like this pattern a lot and can see this will probably be a sweater that will get lots of wear if only I can manage to finish it!

I also have plans to pull out another very old sweater from the depths of the knitting chest. I was poking around in there the other day and pulled out  Stornoway from Fisherman’s Knits that I actually started in February of 2004. I’m toying with giving myself a little challenge – try to finish this sweater before the FOURTH anniversary of casting on. Do you think it’s possible? I have actually more knit than the picture shows but I’m at work so I pulled a picture from my very first or second post to insert here. I pull this sweater out every once in a while and knit a few rounds and then forget about it.

I’ve also pulled out the wheel again – that is another fiber area that I’ve been seriously neglecting. I’ve not spun for months. Months! I pulled the wheel out last night and started to ply up the singles that were taking up all my bobbins to try to clear the decks a bit. I plan to comb up and spin some wool hubby bought me last Christmas and make a plain jane sweater from it from the Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. I’m going to try to finish up the plying tonight and maybe have a picture of a finished skein in the next couple of days. We will see!

Maybe it’s the weather cooling off or maybe it’s Ravelry – I don’t know but I’m glad to back to my knitting.

The Ravelry Bandwagon

Well I’ve gone and done it – I’ve joined Ravelry. I was seeing references to this new site for knitters all over the place over the last few months and decided to check it out. I had signed up for an invitation to the site about a month or so ago and got my invite shortly after that. Once actually signed up I forgot about it for a little while but over the last several days I’ve really been checking it out. People – this site is seriously cool. It has features I never even dreamed of that I’ve been running across and I’m only beginning to figure out the basics of how the whole thing works. I started “my notebook” this morning and put in the details for my on your toes socks and put a few other projects I have been planning in my “queue” for later knitting. At first I thought the site was a replacement for knitting blogs and that idea totally turned me off. I love knitting blogs and most certainly have no intention of giving up either blogging or reading other knitting blogs. I finally figured out that it works with blogs to make things even better and I’m also discovering tons of new blogs I had not run across yet in my web surfing.

But enough talking about it – if there’s any way you haven’t heard about Ravelry yet you should just go check it out. By the way my screen name there is Tangledyarnjess - doesn't flow too well but it was all I could come up with at the time.

An actual knitting update!

Slowly but surely I am making progress on the On your toes knee socks I mentioned in my last post. I am finding as I go along that I really like these socks. They are knitting up very soft and squishy and I anticipate that they will feel great on the feet. I finished the short row heel this morning before work and got a round or two past that. I have a few more rows until I start ribbing my way up the leg. Unfortunately I don’t think I am going to have enough yarn though to make it to the knee the way I want. I originally bought this yarn along with two balls of the same in black to make a pair of mittens. The mittens never got made and while I’m fine with that I think I may have to go on line and see if I can get some more of this grey because I really want these to be the knee socks I envisioned and not crew socks. I’ve looked around a bit and I don’t think it should be too hard to find – I need the ball band which is sitting at home to be sure of the color name though – I can’t remember it for the life of me. I may get a couple more balls of the black yarn too and go for a second pair of knee socks while I’m at it.

As an extra here is a photo of the last of a pair of purple socks I finished up recently. I started them sometime early on in the year and put them away when the weather got warm. I pulled them out of the knitting chest last week and was amazed because I only had the toe decreases left to do to give me a finished pair. I can’t believe I tucked them away that close to the finish line. Maybe I was just really sick of them – I don’t remember.

I had a hard time knitting over the summer. I think it’s been about six months since I’ve really been knitting regularly. I chalk it up to the warm weather, being seriously busy at home over the summer and maybe just boredom. I don’t know what’s gotten into me recently because my desire to knit (and spin) has woken up with a vengeance. Over the last few days I have been all over the knitting blogs catching up on those I’ve ignored and planning projects in my head for the winter. I’ve also been eyeing my wheel at home longingly – I’ve got a good bit of beautiful wool my husband gave me for Christmas last year that I’d love to spin up for a sweater I have in mind.

*** don’t think I gave up knitting completely – I don’t think that will ever happen. I just seriously slowed down and my projects got smaller. I have been baby knitting some though – there are two new babies in the family and one coming for a friend at work so I’ve been knitting some of the EZ baby sweaters. I haven’t taken many pictures but I have a few I’ll have to dig up.

Thanksgiving Recap

All in all I’d say we had a pretty nice holiday – we spent most of the official day itself out at our various families’ homes not overeating since there wasn’t that much for us to really eat. I did have a little too much wine at my family’s house but other than that not much damage done. As I mentioned in my last post we had our own thanksgiving this weekend at home and I really had a nice time. I spent most of the day in the kitchen cooking but it was mostly fun cooking – no real rush (except for hungry people) – relaxing and nice. The movie afterward was good as well and every bit as sweet and moving as I remembered – I definitely recommend it. The food all turned out well except for the pumpkin pie – I didn’t puree it in the food processor like the recipe said and it was a bit stringy. The soy and seitan “turkey” was a big hit with everyone – even the kids seemed to really like it with one of them even going back for seconds. I thought the stuffing was the best – I had added some soy sausage to the onion and celery mixture and used a combination of homemade corn bread and whole wheat bread that I thought was wonderful. I probably liked the stuffing the best because it was what I was missing the most at the various houses we went to – even the stuffing with no chunks of meat in it was made with chicken broth so I was completely out of luck. Hubby and I decided that this is something we’d like to do every year – have a day just for our little family where we can establish a few of our own traditions – the good food is just a perk! I do think that next year my cooking needs to be a little more organized – several things should be made ahead like the soy and seitan turkey – it took forever! I think if I planned better and made that and the pie the night before would cut the cooking time on the day itself down considerably. I spent about four hours this weekend all told on the day itself – I’d like to cut it down to about two if I could and spend more time with the family.

  In other news I picked up a new knitting project this morning. I have been looking at Ann Budd’s “On Your Toes” toe up socks using the Eastern cast on method because I have a yen for some comfy knee socks. Now that the weather has gotten chilly I have pulled out all the hand knit socks I have but I noticed that knee socks are something I’ve never bothered to knit. Not because I don’t think I’d have the patience but because I never really run across knee sock patterns when I’m looking for new socks to knit. Since I wear skirts most of the year the shorter socks are just not cutting it when the wind blows around my ankles. I’ve had some brown sheep sport weight yarn in a lovely grey languishing in my knitting chest for a couple of years now and I thought this pattern would really fit the bill. I actually checked my gauge over the weekend to find how I liked it knit up – this is something I never do for socks – I don’t really know why since I religiously check gauge on most everything else but I usually don’t bother on socks. This morning after figuring out my gauge and foot measurements I cast on for the first sock. I am not really sure how I feel about the new (to me) cast on method. I thought it was a bit fiddly but very clever. I flubbed it a couple of time but managed to get it accomplished eventually. After working several of the initial increases to form the toe I can tell the original cast on stitches seem a little loose. I’ve tried to tighten them up a bit using the tail but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. It’s not very noticeable but is something I’m going to try to improve. I made it through most of the toe increases and should start the main portion of the foot this evening. Will post photos of that later.