Just made it to 2009

Those 10 days leading up to Christmas were my busiest of the whole year but I made it. The presents were bought and wrapped. The house was minimally decorated. The cookies were baked, packed, wrapped and distributed. Food was bought, cooked and served many times over. And the dishwasher was run two or three times a day! The time spent with Family and Friends was my favorite part of all. It's taken me a couple days with my feet up and knitting in hand to recover but I'm ready to face the New Year. I hope all you were better prepared and enjoyed your Holidays.

I did very little gift knitting this year, I don't know why. Maybe I didn't see any patterns that seemed perfect for anyone on my list or maybe I just wasn't very imaginative this year. I did knit a hat for Laura. It was Black Forest Hat made from Noro Silk Garden edits/leftovers. (I've admitted before to editing skeins of Noro when there's a color in a skein that I don't care for in a project.)


This was fun knitting; both the pattern and trying to select yarn bits that looked like they could be from a regular skein of Silk Garden. The scalloped edge is what initially caught my eye and I like it as much in my finished hat as I did when I first saw it on Ravelry. (The pattern is only available through a free Ravelry download.)

While I was stalling finishing my green sweater I pulled out and finished a sock UFO. These are a 2/2 rib pattern in Cherry Tree Hill, sorry I don't have the band so I can't tell you the color name.


Ty, kept bothering me while I was wrapping gifts. He kept trying to sit on the paper, to give myself a few minutes break from his attention I gave him his own piece of tissue. Little did I know that was all he wanted. He's been on that corner of the sofa sleeping on his paper for over a week now. I have to give him a new piece every other day as he shreds it kneading on it.


I think we all deserve a NEW Year, 2008 is broken and can't be fixed!
Happy New Year 2009 to all

Welsh Traveling Socks plus Toes

Here are the finished Welsh Traveling Socks

and a close up of the pattern (click on the picture and you can see a close-up on Flickr)


So what do you think of the color of the yarn I used for the toes? I'm still not sure about it but no matter what anyone says I won't be pulling it out. The pattern calls for yarn with 450 yards I used a yarn with 350 yards; I never noticed until the tail end of the yarn hit my hand. Surprised doesn't cover it! This was my blind faith I had enough yarn - No, I didn't compare my yardage to the pattern requirements. For some reason I was confidant that this yarn would work for this sock. I think I was led down the rosey path of dilusion because this yarn was so similar to the look of the yarn pictured in the book. I feel so dumb!

Anyway, the yarn was wonderful to work with, the yardage problem was all me. I bought it from emilyparson.etsy.com more than a year ago. It's called Starry Night in Sophie's Toes Sock Yarn.

I finished and blocked my Noro Striped Scarf and still had half a ball of both colors of Silk Garden (270 & 264) and decided I should make matching fingerless mitts.


I pulled out my favorite pattern for fingerless mitts, Maine Morning Mitts played around with the stitch count to get it to work with a 1x1 rib and I was off knitting in circles. (I added one stitch to get an even number next time I'd subtract a stitch or three. The gloves are a bit large because the 1x1 rib doesn't pull in as much as the original pattern's 3x1 rib.)


Tuesday I spent a foggy morning with my garden club taking a ranger guided tour of Presido Park, the site of the very first California Mission. 1769 Father Sierra claimed the land for the Church and Spain making San Diego one of the older European settled Cities in North America.

This cross was made of brick salvaged from the ruins of Fort Presidio, what was left on the site when the priests moved the Mission 6 miles east to get away from the soliders.

Edit: I was ask where to buy the Grayce's Scarf pattern by someone that didn't leave me a return email address. The pattern only has an email address: pearlyqueentx@prodigy.net There is no other names or address on the pattern. I bought this pattern at the Taos Wool Festival.

Miscellany

I'm always amazed at how something you thought was all your own turns out to be happening in other places simultaneously. Seems I started a Noro Striped Scarf at the same time as another Famous Blogger and I'm sure there are at least several other knitters that cast-on with us. Wonder what was in the Knitting Stratosphere to inspire this unplanned group knit-along? Can't be weather because it's still summer temperatures here in Southern Cal.

Is anyone else having trouble with their Bloglines updates? Some days there are duplicate updates and then other feeds have no updates for days. When I go to check on bloggers that usually have daily entries I find Bloglines has missed three or four daily entries. What's the deal? Am I really going to have to transfer all my feeds over to Google Reader? What do you use to keep you updated on all the Blogs you like to read?

Wednesday, at the Yarn Shop where I work, several of us that teach or have taught knitting were having a discussion on teaching Provisional Cast-on (click link for a YouTube video by Lucy Neatby) in a class setting. What method is the best for what purpose and which is the easiest to teach in a limited amount of time? We all agreed that the Crochet Cast-on was the quickest and easiest for us to teach. Of course, having many cast-on options at your command would be ideal but in a class with several students time constraints limit the time you can spend on any one topic. The Shop has tried a class on Cast-on and Cast-off methods which is always poorly attended; our customers seem to be project oriented. I'd like to hear your opinion on teaching a Provisional Cast-on.

And to show how crazy the weather is... I have an epiphelium in bloom. These plants normally bloom in this area in May. The big Epiphelium flower show in Balboa Park is always on Mother's Day. How crazy is that!!!

There are no pictures of the Epi; it's hanging in direct sunlight this morning which is beyond my abilities to get a decent photo. Maybe this afternoon.

Repurposing Kureyon

I mentioned I bought 8 skeins of Noro Kureyon 213 to make the Sandy Cardigan, well...
There's this pattern that's been calling to me for awhile now, the Side-to-Side Vest from Creative Knitting, Nov 2007.

The amount of Kureyon I'd bought for the Cardigan is exactly the right amount for this Vest. And in a moment of weakness I grabbed the bag of Kureyon from the Stash and cast-on and haven't looked back.

The colors look very washed out in this picture. Below is a badly framed shot that has truer colors.

The only difficult part is trying to make the colors go in the opposite direction from the center back. Noro doesn't wind their yarn the same direction skein to skein even with them all from the same dye lot. I'd like the fronts to at least suggest they match but I think that's going to be harder than I originally thought.

I finished the Midwest Moonlight Scarf from Scarf Style.

This was an enjoyable project; the stitch pattern was easy to memorize and from then on it was mindless knitting. This is for a Christmas Gift - that's one done.
Ravelry listing here. Used 5 skeins of Noro Silk Garden 284 with all the orange removed for 27 pattern repeats; probably could have squeeked by with 4 skeins.

Here's a look at my own pattern for a cabled sock. I've pulled it out twice so far. Cherry Tree Hill, no idea what the name of the color is - I've had it several years.


This weekend I finished spinning the Roving from Creatively Dyed

I tried to split the roving lengthwise into four equal pieces. Funny how one skein is so much bluer than the other. Here's what the original fiber looked like.

This is 8 ounces of 70% superwash Merino 30% Seacell fiber.

On several foodie blogs there has been talk about Mark Bittman's Tomato Jam recipe. I had everything in the house

so I made a batch yesterday.

The whole house smelled like an Indian Restaurant while it was cooking. After all the chopping, measuring and stirring I barely had 2 cups but it was worth it. This stuff is fabulous. We were eating it warm on crackers with goat cheese. I'll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with so I'll be making more. I wonder what it would be like made from yellow tomatoes?

More Noro and Giant Flowers

Yes, yet another new thing. Above is a close up of the Midwest Moonlight Scarf from Scarf Style. I'm making it with Noro Silk Garden, color 284. Funny thing about this colorway, I knit through two skeins and it wasn't until I pulled out the third that I found orange in it. Doubled checked that it was the correct color and dyelot - it was. So now what? I removed the orange from the remaining three skeins.

This was very hard for me to decide to do - it felt like cheating. Like there are Noro Police that are watching for tampering. Isn't that silly; it's my project I can do what I want and I didn't want orange in there with all the cool blues and purples.

When I'm working at the Yarn Shop, which is air-conditioned, I work on my Curlicue Afghan. We have another two months of summer weather locally before I can look forward to cool enough evenings to comfortably sit and work on this project in my lap.


I've completed the first four sections and you can see that it's laying pretty flat so far. Keep your fingers crossed that it will continue to lay flat! I'm only using colorways of Noro Silk Garden that don't have reds, yellows or oranges. I haven't done skein surgery so far, just knitting as it comes. I am enjoying knitting this, seeing how the color sequence will play out in each section.


This past Sunday was my Birthday and I received a couple of nice presents. A very nice and roomy Striped Green Tote (from Target) that I've moved my Curlicue project into.


And a very odd vine that I first saw at the San Diego County Fair this year. It was so different from anything I've ever seen before I was intrigued. Daughter #2 set out to ID the plant and then located one for sale. Both daughters gave it to me.

Aristolochia Gigantea; Giant Dutchman's Pipe
The flowers are easily 12" across. Supposedly one of the largest flowers.

This is one of those plants that's pollinated by flies rather than bees. Suppose to smell like rotting meat but so far I haven't smelled anything bad or good.

Else where in the garden I'm vying with a squirrel for tomatoes. He'll eat them greener than I will so he gets two for every one I claim.

(sorry for the blurry picture, it was in the shade and inside the tomato cage)
It could be worse; somehow most of my tomatoes are a yellow variety. Striking looks but little to no taste. I think the six-pack's labels were tampered with, the Red Beefsteak tomatoes came out yellow the same as the six-pack that was suppose to be yellow. I do have some Red Roma tomatoes that are Red and are Roma shaped. Picked my first one today.

The Roma tomatoes are in a different area that the squirrel hasn't found yet. Maybe I'll give the yellow tomatoes to Mr. Squirrel in hopes he leaves my Roma's alone. Think that'll work?