More baking than knitting

There was likely more baking than knitting this last weekend, although some of the latter did happen.

A bit of a celebration of sorts forced me in to the kitchen.  While I try really hard not to bake sweet stuff because I eat too much of it, I really had no choice.

Found a recipe from my favorite baking book for whole wheat cinnamon rolls.  Who knew, before Judith Fertig taught me, that yeast dough would rise in the fridge??  What about all that " put in a warm place to let the dough rise" business??

Anyway, while the recipe says to grind one's own flour from wheatberries, I didn't, but I swear I'll do that once I retire.  I swear.  Rather,   I used King Arthur white wheat, which is my go to...  I didn't forget to use Grandma Helen's ancient rolling pin, which adds a dash of those  je ne sai quoi old wood fragments, the matrilineal rolling pin version of sour dough??  (Its handle fell off about 5 years ago, still works great...).

There's a reason that I knit rather than, say, sculpt;  it's that I don't create matching 3 dimensional free form shapes well  (I'm very bad with  the Lucia bun S shape...)

However, the result looks pretty fine, on a tea saucer also inherited from Grandma Helen. It also tasted pretty good, the cream cheese drizzle on top used a WHOLE BOX of confectioner's sugar, which sort of mitigated the taste of the tannins in the whole wheat.  A particular teenager wasn't unhappy with the lack of white flour

And then...at yes, I confess, Walmart, I found the cutest little mold for gingerbread men cookies, which was convenient as I had some frozen gingerbread dough left over from Christmas (these pictured are unbaked).

Really cute although really the wrong time of year...

On the knitting front, I have had some gauge-related frustration with a pair of socks that I've been working on and put aside last month, waiting for patience to return. I  got back to them this week, figured out which needles I needed, and steamed ahead

They are for that nice man, done in Poems sock yarn.  Do love the slow color gradation.  I'm on a size zero.  Just heard on a podcast today that the smaller the gauge, the better they wear.  That's good news, I'm at about 9 stitches per inch here...

Handwash? Must she?

Someone I know is having a  baby.  I am a firm advocate of machine washable yarns for baby, but I would like to use some stash stuff, and there isn't much machine-washable-suitable-for-baby in there. (I  tend to buy baby yarn for individual projects with someone in mind, rather than stash it).  This time, I would also like to use something more natural.  To that end, I dug out some Cotton Comfort from Green Mountain Spinnery for an experiment.

Pattern-wise, while EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket is always fun, I've done many and I really like a yoke down pattern.  I have  also done Carole Bareny's Seamless Yoked Baby Sweater many times, it's been on the internet for years and I really like it. Here's one  I did some years ago for a coworker's baby, ironically also in Cotton Comfort.

Carole now has a website with cute free  baby patterns and while perusing there I discovered another sweater similar in construction called the Eyelet Yoke Cardigan.  That is my choice.

I am happy to report that my Cotton Comfort sample made it thru the washer and dryer unchanged in size!  (This yarn is an 20-80 cotton and wool blend). I consider this to be a bit of a coup. It also softened up very nicely during this process. I don't know of any other natural minimally treated yarns that will tolerate washer and dryer.  Perhaps 100% cotton? 

Knitting time has  been precious little this week.  I'm working to optimize it this weekend!

7 year old project finished!

I finished my kilim shawl.  I wrote a little about it here.

The fun part was that it knit up in a cone, getting larger and larger.  It involves a steak and confidence with involves trusting a sewing machine.  I thought the fringe was gonna take a long time, but it didn't!

DONE!

It's a big afghan of a shawl

OK, there is Spanish moss where I live.  So, check this out (sorry about the commercial).

I'm not so ambitious. A little research revealed that Native American of the South and Gulf coast made good use of our local epiphyte.  And ehow has directions on how to rett or process it for spinning and weaving.

Might be a good summer project for me...wonder if I need a dedicated spinning wheel just for moss?  Looks messy...let me know if you'd like me to send you some!!!

Rogue Adventure

About 7 years ago, I found Rogue. 

 I learned about it reading Helene's blog.  (Helene writes excellent blog but my Norwegian isn't that great, so her photos and my guess work must suffice).

I had sworn about 15 years before never to knit a cable sweater again.  One should never say never.  I love this pattern, thank you, Jenna. I went to an upscale unnamed yarn store in an unnamed city and bought some yarn for it.  They did not have enough, and promised to send the rest, stating that "dye lots didn't matter for this yarn."  Like heck...don't ever believe that.

Finished Rogue in light green, with big streaks on the sleeves where the dyelots met.  It fit poorly.  The yarn met gauge but wasn't somehow chunky enough.  I think I actually put it in the trash!!  Maybe I gave it to my local charity place...

Anyway, I always vowed that I'd do another...after researching for a long time what yarn to use, I settled on Jamieson's Heather Aran from here.  This time in a natural cream.  I'm steaming along and loving how Jenna fit the shaping in to the cables.  Brilliant!  Ironically, when I did Rogue the first time, Jenna suggested using this yarn, which obviously as recounted above, I didn't.  But it's a pleasure to knit this sweater again.

 In my travels on the internet this week

Granted sells fabulous  chunky handknits.  Their prices might actually be fair for the handknitters. (People ask me a lot "how much to knit me a sweater?"  I dunno, 1K sounds about right...given how precious my time is and how many hours it would take...). While the label "Cowichan" cannot be used, there is certainly a strong resemblance.  My favorites at Granted are the wave and the mermaid. 

The Red Cross sponsored the Production Corps during the First and Second World Wars, and copies of official knitting patterns from WWII are available here.

I love Librivox, which involves the opportunity to listen to spoken versions of books in the public domain.  I just finished Jane Eyre and am now on to Moby-Dick.

Lace design...goes on and on and on OR why I love a graph

I have been busy this week.  A while back, I conceived of a shawl.  This was after my trip to Scotland and I was enchanted.  I wanted to design a shawl that was like some of those I saw on my trip.  Most traditional shawls in Scotland are square in shape, and are either 1) functional working women's shawls or 2) fancy lace shawls originally knitted for sale to wealthy women.  I wanted to design one that incorporated the earthy-crunchy feel of the working croft woman's shawl, but with some added lace patterns.  I also wanted it in a nontraditional triangle shape.

I knew in my head exactly what I wanted to do...it is designed in my head.

For the first attempt, I wrote down the directions as I knit. There are many opportunities for mistakes over the course of 300+ loooooong  rows.

For the second attempt, I started a graph. I wrote about it here. The second shawl is cute (and alpaca!) and seen here.  But my graphing skills and perhaps my problem solving skills failed in the border.  I screwed up the border and must go back and redo it...later.

This month, I returned to the graph and the shawl.  So, I being my own test knitter.  Again.

I should add that I am using excel for this graphing task.  There are some internet resources to help me, discussed here.  And, it helps to have a teenaged son at home for some basics on how to move a graph chunk from excel to a word document (use paste preview).  Working on the graph is much more fun;  this will be a graph only pattern.

I am having more success this time.  Here we are so far.  But...I'm not sure after all these hours of work that it will be free...the yarn is from Harrisville Designs New England Shetland and is lovely to work with.

Vibration Knitting

So, a long time ago I bought yarn from Mostly Merino at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Fest.   It's a heavy worsted, about 4 stitches to the inch and I also purchased a sweater pattern for it.  Didn't start it.  As we know, merinos have a history in Vermont.  And interestingly, I had traveled to this farm a long time ago as a day trip during a workshop at Green Mountain Spinnery. 

In 2006, after moving to South Carolina, I found a cool triangular shawl pattern with intriguing shaping, done in a cone, actually, neatly avoiding...you guessed it....purling in stranded colorwork!!  It came from Sheep to Shawl by Patricia Kim for Philosopher's Wool.  Construction involved starting on 4 needles then moving to a circ, with 2 increases per row at the edges.   Once done, there is a steek to stitch up and cut, to open up the triangle. I decided to repurpose the lovely merino and wool blend for this heavy shawl.  It's the kilim shawl, here's the pattern

I decided this year to try to finish some old FO's, of which this is one.  It actually was almost done; there are 5 different colors.  As there were different amounts of each color, there has been some spontaneous "vibration" use of the colors...as in I used what seemed to work at the moment...

I am having fun doing an icord at the top

 It will be a big blanket of a shawl...after it's steek is steeked and the fringe applied

And in other news, here's a new offering at youtube

why is it that this IMMEDIATELY reminded me of the killer rabbit in Monty Python and The Holy Grail...?

Does she look like me?

I gave Theodora-Lucia long hair because I don't have it...she and her klukka (Icelandic for "slip" or underdress) are done. She's finally smiling because she has hair, eyes, a smile, and a klukka...

More wardrobe to follow...

I finished a hat for R

No, R isn't pictured here, it's B...in the Utopia hat, done in Cascade 220 washable wool.

And in other news, it's warm here on the first of February in SC...

rosemary is starting to bloom

"native" SC gladioli are sprouting...actually, they are not native, they were brought to America some 300 years ago...called "african parrot"

 

cats want out to eat some grass

and the garden produces lettuce and broccoli