Wordless Saturday

Where are the brakes?

I had good intentions of posting on a weekly basis.

Then life happened.

Life has included planned doctor appointments, chauffeuring a Boy Scout selling popcorn around (Thanks, dh! You grabbed the chauffeur cap tonight), school, and general household stuff.

Household stuff is usually knitting around here, but this year it happens to have PUMPKINS in it as well. And not just any pumpkins, but rouge Rouge Vif d'Etampes. Rogue pumpkins, because they are the Wrong Color. They're supposed to be a brilliant red, but they are instead a rather wimpy salmon color - greatly improved to orange by digital photography. This 22-lb pumpkin has been reduced to 12 pints of pumpkin puree, and the seeds from it are drying over the stove, perhaps to be roasted tomorrow.

Today's mail was delightful. Three letters came from our insurance company, telling us coverage was extended for another 6 months (whee), something had been denied due to bad paperwork (bad, bad, paperwork), and that they had paid for a few medical services. Nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing that needed my attention.

But then ... there was a BOX and a padded ENVELOPE! The box contained goodies from Elann for me and dd. I can now get my not-Niebling blocked! (Yup, I finished it. One month. And it's going to be purty.) The boxy you see is a very odd size, but it had to be in order to contain the blocking wires. And 21 skeins of yarn (for dd. She has big eyes when it comes to projects, and this one is going to be delicious when it's finished. But it's for her.) The envelope contained my new eyeglasses, which are very long overdue. For the past 2-3 years, my left lens has been clouded. Now I have a pair with unclouded lenses! I can hardly wait to sit and knit with clear vision.

Finished Object: Morning Glory Mittens (twined), by Beth Brown-Reinsel. A delightful knit, marred only by the knitter's failure to put the thumb for the medium mitten in the proper spot for the medium thumb. The failure was discovered while knitting the second mitten, and was rectified by practically knitting a 3rd mitten (since the mitten needed to be frogged to 2 rows past the cuff).

Current WIP: Delfts Blauw (in Cincinnati Bengals colors, which do happen to be rather popular this time of year, despite the team's abject performance on the football field which has led to a complete lack of any discussion of the team's post season prospects, and even their current prospects) by Nancy Marchant.

Bandit

I'm not talking about a stash bandit here. This is one of the things that happened to us over the summer. Meet Bandit, a 'small dog', who entered our family in June. Our resident dog (Terry) was not pleased to be sharing his house with another dog, and for a few days I wasn't sure the first week would end with two live dogs and one sane me. Forty-eight hours of total and utter pandemonium, lunging, and non-stop barking (on the part of the resident dog) ended with a truce, and I'm thinking before we get too far into winter that Bandit is going to be the next best thing to an electric blanket, so far as Terry is concerned.

Another thing that happened to us this summer was a grandmother giving four cans of paint to her granddaughter as a birthday present. And when life gives you paint cans (in your choice of color!), you have your mom paint. And so I painted. And painted. And painted. The other two walls are solid - teal and tangerine. No one has called the room 'boring and dull' lately. It's even clean, thanks to a week of post-painting destashing.

And a Sad Event

I learned that my Niebling isn't a Niebling. It's a Duchrow. That means that after I finish it, I should probably go knit a real Niebling.

The Niebling, it groweth

I am having way too much fun knitting my Niebling. It doesn't have a fancy name, like Lyra, or Federdolde. No, its name is Page 19. Someone ran out of inspiration, I guess. Or he was too busy designing to think of cute names.

Someone has alerted me that Franklin posted about the Five Stages of Niebling. Now, when I read about it, I thought - Ben Franklin commented on Niebling? I thought Niebling was more contemporary than that. Hmm.

Oh, THAT Franklin. And those five stages have nothing to do with me. True to form, I don't follow the form. My five stages read something more like Dreaming (about making one), Drooling (over my choices, when I get into the serious planning stage), Delight (in casting on, and once I get past the second row), Tedium (somewhere around 50 hours into the project), and then it's back to Delight (when I get close to finishing, finishing, and smiling upon it when it's blocked)

I'm still waiting for my FleegleNeedles. Rumor has it that our heavy rains (thanks, Earl) disrupted mail traffic a bit. So far, I'm doing fine with 360 stitches on dpns. Small yarn, six needles to work with, light needles, and tight tension have conspired together to produce no dropped stitches. But boy, will it be nice to have a circular!

A KnitPicks order went in today. I got only one skein of yarn (pats self on back), but two books. Filia will find one of them helpful for her knitting class next year. Yup, that's it. (That wasn't the whole order - Filia got yarn for an argyle sock, non-argyle mitten, and her swatches. And a friend got some goodies as well.)

If I'm going to be knitting with my new skein this year, I need to get back to Page 19.

Carowho?

It's been a while, one might say, since I wrote a blog entry. What happened?

• I joined SparkPeople, and blogged there a bit more regularly than I did here.
• I had the Hectic Summer to end all Hectic Summers, and didn't find myself sitting at the computer wondering what I could do, ever.
• There wasn't that much knitting one going on.
• There wasn't much schooling two going on either.

But now, my activity on SparkPeople has shifted into maintenance mode, my hectic summer has ended (hear that, summer? You are NOT allowed to be hectic any more. No carryover into fall, either. Period.), I am knitting, and I am schooling.

Life is pleasant. It's staying pleasant by regular and repeated pronouncement of the word 'no.' This is necessary because

• The schooled two have activities on Monday night, in towns 10 miles apart. This requires two parents (since the towns are 12 and 20 miles from home, respectively)
• I'm in a book discussion group on Tuesday night.
• The schooled two and dh have activities on Wednesday night.
• Thursday is knit night.
• Our next free Saturday is the 23rd of October.

It's also pleasant because I have begun to knit a Niebling. There aren't any photos of it on the internet that I can find, but if you're on Ravelry you can look at my projects and see the one item someone else has made and photographed. I'm using size 30 crochet cotton (don't panic - it's on 2.25 mm needles) and estimate it will be just a yard in diameter, as opposed to the 5 ft suggested by the model which used size 10 crochet cotton (and 3.0 mm needles)

In order to knit this Niebling, I needed (yes, really and truly needed) a circular needle, and one with an excellent join. So I have ordered myself some FleegleNeedles - and decided I may as well get a short one and a long one. (22" and 32") If I love them as much as I think I will, it's highly likely that size 1 will become my size of choice for lacework.

Lunch break over ... back to school! Reading for the afternoon includes Book I of The Histories by Herodotus, 5 pages of Johnson's History of the American People, and 2 pages of Every Thought Captive. Plus Job 31-42.

Little Scraps of Paper

It's the end of April, which means it's time to check in and see what I've been up to this month as evidenced by ball bands.

I cheated a little bit. I'm including some ball bands which were laying on the floor in the craft room (hmm, when did THIS get used?) and also some partial balls that still need their bands. But I'm excluding quite a few bands that are perched on partial skeins of KP MerinoStyle, so it all works out.

Discovery of the month: Louet Gems Merino bands are HUGE!

It's lovely to knit with, too. No split stitches, except for when I goof and need to tink down 10 rows or so to rearrange a zig zag. And that only happens when I go to knit night. I've thought about avoiding knit night until the gansey is done, but since I found my first error - 10 rows back - only 5 minutes after sitting down to knit, I don't know if that would help.

I'm practically finished with the front, and am well into the back. Well, sort of. It's knit in the round up to the armholes, and then the parts split. Since I've just 4" or so to go on the back, let's just say I'm almost done with the body and leave it at that.

And here are the contents of my yarn stand. Needles, quilt (in the process of having the binding blind-stitched on), handspun scarf (waiting for the gansey to be done), and extra gansey yarn.

In other news, spring continues to be beautiful, and all sorts of things are growing in the yard. The car isn't fixed yet, but after waiting two weeks for the parts to arrive, we called and found that they'd been in for a while but someone forgot to call us. Hmmm. And there are just three weeks left in our school year.

Of Tea and Jenga

When children are small, often they find the packaging of a toy more appealing than the toy itself.

I thought those days were far behind me. (No, not ME finding the packaging more fun. My children.) Today's tea order's arrival shows that I have been operating under a severe delusion.

Consider: The Box

Consider: The Contents

Consider: The Result

Jenga, anyone?

Gratuitous Yarn Photo

And an update on my oven. Not only is 500 degrees on the dial equal to 420 degrees after 40 minutes, 350 is equal to 350 after one hour. And 450 is sometimes equal to 450, and other times it's equal to 375. Rather than get another stove for a wee bit more than it would take to make Lady Eleanor in the yarn used by the designer, I have reset my cooking mentality back to the days of the Wood Stove, and check the temperature every 5-10 minutes and adjust accordingly.

Happy Spring, everyone!

Big joys and small annoyances

The annoyances are easier to catalog.

1. One of the major reasons why it takes forever for roast vegetables to roast is that my oven temperature, according to at least one oven thermometer, is often 80 degrees lower than the temperature setting. Can I blame all the cooking failures of the past 15 years on this? Maybe my no-burn granola will burn now.
2. The oven isn't ALWAYS 80 degrees off. Sometimes it's pretty close. So I have to check every 5 minutes or so to be safe. There's no rhyme or reason. 425 = 500, 350 = 450, and yesterday for a while, 450 = 450.
3. Updating our brand new GPS (aka speedometer) to the latest map has caused the GPS to become non-functional. Did I really want to spend 12 hours watching the computer download and install updates in order to find out that the installation would crash after 2+ hours, twice? No.
4. My shawl isn't as long as I want it to be. And I have a finite amount of yarn. But, if there are 150 grams of yarn in a 71 st wide shawl, 78 grams of yarn should be enough to do a narrow VanDyke edging, no? Better be.

And now, for the Big Joys

1. (Insert Happy Dance) I get to knit a gansey!
2. (Insert Smile of Delight) It's by one of my favoritest designers! You know, the kind of designer whose patterns you'd knit up without even checking to see if you liked them because that would be redundant? Yes, that one.
3. (Gleeful Grin) The yarn is en route. Louet Gems Merino Sport, which I've seen in Level II argyle socks, but have never worked with myself.
4. (Sticking nose comically in air) No one else can knit it. The pattern is not publically available. That must mean I'm special. (cough, choke, return nose to normal position)
5. I've spun up all the yarn from Shepherd's Harvest 2009 and am 37 repeats into 48+ repeats of the shawl I'm making with it.
6. I had fresh asparagus from my garden yesterday.
7. My swiss chard and parsely didn't get hit by the same hail that stopped us in our tracks while driving just 5 miles north of here. Nassssty hail. But the car is okay, and we were inside the car.
8. My husband is so good at helping car dealerships realize they shouldn't charge us for fixing something that broke on the car while they were fixing something else.
9. There are daffodils outside my window.
10. There's fresh granola in the oven. Better go eat it!

Monthly Ball Band Tally

March was a much better month for having ball bands.

The month's knitting tally includes a pair of socks, a finished baby cardigan, two pair of Compass mittens, and felted slippers. Some spinning also happened - and in fact, I'm planning on my next serious knitting project being a shawl to use the yarn. Serious knitting projects, because one simply cannot go days without knitting while waiting for yarn to be spun (although, since I'm the spinner, the yarn gets spun faster if I'm not knitting) and dried. And my spinning wheel doesn't fit into the front seat of the car (no, I do *not* need a traveling spindle.) So I need a traveling, non-serious, knitting project.

I finished up socks Tuesday morning and haven't cast on for something yet. I think it's a record.

Molly's Fault doesn't count as a project. It's a lifestyle.

March Musings

Every so often, I remember that projects with garter stitch seem to take longer than they should. So it has been with Minni. She's done now - or as done as she can get with the yarn I have on hand. Praise God for Ravelry Stashes! I've found someone with a skein of the color I'm out of (almost out - and 2 yards will not make a sleeve) and we're working out the details of a swap that will not only let me finish Minni, but also clear out one of my yarn boxes! How efficient can one get?

The socks are done, too. I'm positive my camera ate some pictures of them, but here's what one of them looks like. They're warm, and toasty, and TALL! Now I need something old-fashioned to hold them up better. But for sitting and knitting? They can't be beat.

Of course, now that the socks are done, the weather warms up. We lost almost 2' of snow in our front yard in just over a week. The flowers are up, the sidewalks are visible under all the snow that the plows pushed into the yard, and the yard needs a good vacuuming. Inspired by the warmth, I started some Swiss Chard, peppers, and parsley. The first is up, the latter sprouted in a paper towel and has been gently transferred into pots, and the middle isn't saying anything about its activities.

The massive time-gobbler of genealogy has been kept under strict control. But - because it's always fun to find new relatives - I'll still pass along a bit of family history here and there. Back a ways up my husband's tree, he has a Very Jewish Relative. (Just like I have Very Polish and Czech Relatives ... can't get more Polish than Tekla Gaciarzianka, can you?) Dan's Jewish Relative is named .... Judah Levi. You can't get much more ethnically distinctive than that. Judah came from ... England. And because he seems to have been escaping an unpleasant situation in the old country, the line dead ends there.

The shawl hasn't been frogged yet. It's nice to pop on in the evening when my shoulders get cold.

And a question: Why do all the pictures of roast veggies show them with nice dark marks from roasting, but mine - despite cooking them for twice the suggested time - don't? Yesterday's new recipe called for roasting potatoes until golden brown - 20-25 minutes. I upped the temperature 50 degrees and cooked them for closer to an hour, and they were still pasty white. It's a small annoyance in life, but if anyone has a solution, let me know!

Big Projects

So much for the year of the Ball Band.

This month I finished the twined hat - no ball bands to show you.

I'm working on, and hope to finish tomorrow, a hap shawl - no ball bands to show you. The yarn doesn't have ball bands, being coned and partial cones.

The second skein of sock yarn I began this month didn't come with a ball band. But I did start it!

Insert picture of nothing < >.

Yup, that's my February knitting.

I'd have done more (and still had nothing to show for it) if I hadn't been sucked into genealogy research. The initial burst of activity is gone, thankfully, but there are so many fascinating little ends to hunt down, and a Certain Friend (who doesn't read this blog) keeps feeding me wonderful genealogy sites. Thanks, Patti. Just when I exhaust what I think I can find, you point me somewhere else.

Which is why I now know that Rebecca Wood Butts Bigelow's (b. 1824, NY) granddaughter Lillian Eagles Lee (b. 1876, MO) moved to Texas in 1920. You'd think with names like Leroy, Robert, Eunice, and Velva (in descending birth order), I'd be able to find them. But no ... do you know how many people there are named Robert Lee in Texas? We think they moved back to Kansas, anyways.

And there's your Carolyn's Bunnytrail Genealogy snippet for the day. If you're related, let me know! I like knitting things together, and that applies to BIG family trees as well as yarn.

2010 - The Year of the Ball Band

Last week, I decided to make this The Year of the Ball Band. I will save (note - not I *have* saved, but I *will* save) the ball bands or tags from each skein of yarn I use. At the end of each month, I can take a picture of the month's contribution and tot up how many yards have passed through my fingers.

Unfortunately, my big project uses coned yarn. So the totting up of yardage will be an estimate.

Also, I just decided to do this last week. Therefore, I am missing evidence of a decent amount of yarn usage - the green from the medieval mittens, anything from the Compass mittens or Brewster Stockings, and the Offering Mitts. (I cheated slightly by using the Merino Style label from the Shades hat (December) to stand in for the green, or the red or purple Merino Style that were wound into a plied ball several months ago, but which I am now using for a class hat. Any way you look at it, I'm 2 labels of MerinoStyle short.)

That should cover all my caveats. Am I missing any?

Ah, yes. The fact that I have a ball band pictured does not mean there are no leftovers. It just means the leftovers are with other yarn of the same ilk, where one ball band will do for all.

This month's total ball band yardage? 1,452 yards. Not counting the cone of 2300 yards of cashmere, which has so far become a 4x4 ft square.

For those of you following our corn stove odyssey, here is what you do NOT want to see inside the stove when you come downstairs at 5 AM and 52 degrees. We're not sure why it does this, sometimes, at the higher heat settings. It could be a warped firebox (and we confess to aiding in the warpage since the critter would NOT come out for cleaning), but that doesn't explain why it works most of the time. Its favorite time to not work is around 2 AM, but it will do it while being watched. All day yesterday? Fine and dandy. This morning? PLUG!

Ah well. It's warm out - 5 degrees with no wind - so I turned it into a stove-cleaning opportunity.

It's a Bonnie Winter

Some winters go by with no sign of hoarfrost. This winter has seen an abundance of it, and I'd like to think it's welcoming our pastor's wife, Bonnie, to Minnesota. Late last fall we saw a lovely picture entitled "Hoarfrosted Berries" and she commented that she hadn't heard of that variety of berry. I explained to her about hoarfrost so she wouldn't go looking for a hoarfrost plant in the catalogs, and hoped we would get some hoarfrost this year.

Hoarfrost has been abundant! And not only abundant, but the winds have been very light, allowing the trees and bushes (and anything else outside) to retain the extra beauty for several hours. A good wind will wipe hoarfrost right off the landscape in 5 minutes or so.

And my latest knitting toy has arrived. Vir thinks it adds a touch of class to our living room. I love how it lets the yarn fumes grace the room with inspiration.

No more knitting toys for a while. I've got a lot of 2/28NM yarn to work up into a shawl (basket 2), plus some Compass Mittens and toasty warm Brewster Stockings to do. Plus there's the Araucania Ranco in basket 1 to find a project for. Lilleput and Stole? Socks? Time will tell.

Piecework Project #3

And, while two of the remaining projects in Piecework are lovely, I have no need for either of them at the moment - unlike the three pairs of Compass Mittens for which I ordered the yarn today. The remaining project from Piecework will have to wait until the yarn arrives as well. So - onwards I go to the Hap Shawl which has been calling my name for a few months!

It will not be featured as a finished project tomorrow. Guaranteed.

Piecework Project #2

Three more pair of Compass Mittens have been requested, and there are three more projects in Piecework calling my name, one of them Very Loudly. Plus one more that I am ordering yarn for tomorrow.

Six project from one magazine? Is that possible?

Piecework Project #1

The latest edition of Piecework should have been illegal.

Here I am, all set to plan on knitting everything from Folk Knitting in Estonia, when into my mailbox drops Piecework.

It's the knitting issue, which is a major reason why I subscribe to Piecework. The Rovaniemi Mitts came out two years ago in the knitting issue, and I scrambled to get a copy.

This issue is drool-worthy. I've got the Compass Mittens on the needles already, and have popped the Offering Mittens and The Brewster Stocking in to my queue to work on next. I'm torn about whether to knit the stocking using the pattern given in the magazine, or get the reproduction pattern from the author, or recreate the sock at the original gauge from the information in the magazine. There are two or three other things in the magazine I'd like to knit, too. Sigh.

Traveling Sock #1

Rita's Socks from Folk Knitting in Estonia - finished yesterday!

Happy Knitting!

It was either the 5th or 6th day of Christmas, depending

You'd think that roughly 2000 years after Christmas, and many centuries into the tradition, there would be a consensus on when the 12th day of Christmas is. But no, there is not. Some consider the 12th day to be January 5th, and some consider the 12th day to be January 6th. Complicating matters is the fact that Twelfth Night is after sundown on January 5th (for everyone that celebrates it, as far as I know), but in the Hebrew tradition the post-sundown period goes with the daylight time of the following day. ("There was evening and there was morning, the first day." -- that comes from a pretty good authority!) So I'm celebrating the 5th day of Christmas today, and watching several of my Facebook friends celebrate the 6th day of Christmas.

Calendars are sneaky critters, and good for deceiving one's self about the weather. Consider: "It's fall, and we're having a blizzard. Oh well, snow from fall blizzards never lasts long." One month later, with the snow depth still over 6": "It's winter, and we're having a blizzard. But usually in January there's a thaw." (I'm not holding my breath. 2010 is certainly not starting off with a thaw, at a projected -12 and 5F.) Several months later: "It's spring, and we're having a blizzard. Spring blizzards can dump a lot of snow, but it doesn't last long." The only season I have NOT seen a blizzard in is summer. But next year, I wouldn't be surprised at all if one happened. I'm not talking Antartica in a northern hemisphere summer, either. I'm talking about a I-90-closing-blizzard in one of the months which are known in some locales for their hot weather.

I just hope we have enough of a summer that the farmers can plant, God can water and give growth, and then the farmers harvest the corn for our beloved corn stove.

But back to my normal subject: knitting. In a continuation of HatWeek, here's the next hat to jump off my needles. Will's Hat, modeled by Not Will. Twined,with black sportweight(cough) Telemark and blue worsted Wool of the Andes. I used my standard top-down pattern, but shifted the last row of triangles just because.

Today's burst of organization is directed to closets. Clothes closets. My husband's half of the clothes closet. It looks so purty now! I hope to keep it away after today's laundry gets finished, too.

And today's knitting? Nothing on the needles except a traveling sock. If some yarn doesn't arrive in the mail, I'll have to knit another hat. Or see how much of a disaster knitting new soles for felted slippers is. Will felting them without the rest of the slipper attached, then sewing them on, work? Or not?

2009 Knit From Your Shelf ... How did it go?

I realize the updates on our informal group have been few and far between ... but the year is running out, and so is the time for updates.

I accomplished what I set out to do. The six delicious knitting books I received in December are not knit from (or at least 5 of them aren't), but they don't count. Nor does Haapsalu Sall, or the Dale of Norway Commemorative Collection 8501. All the other books on my shelf are now USED!

2010 is close upon us, but no theme for it has jumped out at me. There are just so many lovely things to make! I hope to knit the Queen Susan Shawl, but a whole year of one shawl doesn't sound right. I'm not sure if I will muster up the proper insanity to tackle it either. There's still the Unst Lace Stole, or even Miss Hamilton's Gift that could be done also. Or an Estonian Lace Shawl. Or several of them. So much to knit, so little time.

The week between Christmas and New Year's is definitely The Week of Hats, though. One watch cap, two twined caps, and two unnamed Fair Isle hats. (Any suggestions for names? The pattern is destined for release as a freebie at Ravelry, and it's a stash-shrinker). I think 2010 would be a good Year of the Hat, too. Has someone already started a group for that at Ravelry?

I love the week after Christmas. Not because of all the chocolate within arm's reach, nor because of the silence that reigns while new gifts are being constructed, devoured, or rearranged. It's a time to wrap up one year, and prepare to enter a new one. A new calendar page, new check book register, new all sorts of things! There'll probably be a new knitting project too.

Best wishes to all of you for a happy New Year!

Mute Monday