Queen Susan (and other knitting)

Queen Susan Swatches

Queen Susan Wednesday #2

Start time: 1:25

End time: 2:00

Bread Bowls, Soot, and Obligatory Knitting Content

For Christmas, I received a Bread Bowl.

To season it, I followed the directions which came with it. Coat thickly with olive oil or other food grade oil, let stand 3-4 hours, wash, dry, and enjoy your seasoned bowl. (That's a loose paraphrase, by the way.) Except the next day, the wood looked a bit dry. So I coated it again, and again, and again ... and two cups of olive oil later, it still looks a bit dry to me.

Then I had to figure out how to use it. I looked online, and saw that at least one person made her bread in it from start to almost-finish. She mixes up the dough for 3 loaves in there, kneads it, lets it rise ... and bakes it elsewhere. I gave it a shot, mixing up one loaf's worth of dough and making a mess all over the counter. The bowl isn't that deep. And kneading in it was tough - I banged my wrists on the narrow sides and got bruises on my legs from the bowl spinning on the table when I tried to rotate the dough. Hmmm. I must be missing something. It's a gorgeous bowl and I want to use it ... any ideas how one can safely use it? I've got the bit about putting the dough in, letting it rise, and then shaping it and doing a final rise elsewhere. I can't do a final rise in the bowl since the dough sticks (despite generous flouring of the bowl, or additional oiling of the bowl).

On another topic ... here are my gorgeous pink gloves AFTER being scrubbed with soap and water. Soot is a pernicious, dirty thing. My fingers are still soot-streaked, a day after cleaning our stove WITH the gloves on. This does not bode well for Queen Susan. I'll have to schedule my cleaning for days that I don't have much knitting time. (I did discover that a baking soda scrub, followed by dish soap, can work wonders for getting soot out/off of things. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else I've tried)


Speaking of knitting time, I've been hard-pressed to come up with 'traveling knitting' projects to work on lately. I fell back on hats. Two watch caps, Jali, and now a Fish Hat, to be precise.


Today's a home day. I need to brave the elements and walk over to the post office to mail some packages, but apart from that - hot soup, a cuppa tea, and some sewing are on the agenda before I sit back to knit.

Queen Susan Wednesdays

I love Fridays!

Fridays this semester will be FUN!

Yesterday I finished my shawl (for the second time - the first time was in 2010).

I knit a swatch with the double-knitting technique to test a pattern.

And I got a good start on lengthening Filius's Christmas gansey.

All in ONE sitting. With no snacking. Or distractions. Or anything else of that ilk -- although the head of campus security did stop by to see if there were any spots on campus that Filia could think of which could be tweaked for better accessibility. (They're working on next year's plans, and he wanted her input. The college gets top marks for wanting to be accessible! There was one minor question we had, about getting in a locked-but-oh-so-convenient external door - and within 10 minutes, she had the right hardware to open it.)

Yes, Fridays are the day that I drive Filia to college and then wait until her classes are done to drive her home. I can do shopping in town then, but a minor surgery done just before class made me want to stick around 'just in case' since the last minor surgery of that sort had a wee complication before the day was over. No complications this time, which meant more knitting.

I'm also listening to Little Dorrit on my Kindle, and some Psalms on my iPod - but not at the same time. I just LOVE blank space in my day that cannot be gobbled up by stray dust bunnies, search engines, or random weeds.

How about you? If you had to sit somewhere comfortable for 5 hours or so once a week, what would you do? Go beserk? Bring jogging gear and shun the chair? Nap?

Odds and Ends

Today is the last day of vacation. Filia starts an 11-credit load at Bethany Lutheran University on Monday, and Filius and I will dive back into his books. That makes today a perfect day to continue tidying, straightening, decluttering, and preparing for a new year.
One thing that needed doing was the Emptying of The Yarn Labels Bag. Over the course of 2011, I tried to keep all the yarn labels from my various projects. The final count is 77 labels. They will now go live in the recycling bin until Thursday, at which point they will join the ranks of post-consumer content. Maybe in some yarn?


One of my lesser-favorite things to do around the house is to clean the corn stove. I should probably call it a pellet stove, since we're burning wood pellets this year instead of corn ... but old names die hard. Wood generates a lot more soot than corn. Corn generates more ash than wood, at least on the (in)sides of the stove. Corn produces a 'clinker' - a nice solid chunk of spent fuel that can be pryed out of the firebox and popped into an ash can. Wood produces a bunch of ash which has to be scooped out. Both make my hands very dirty during the weekly deep cleaning. And since I have some heirloom-quality LIGHT colored knitting to do this year, I splurged and got myself a pair of gloves. Here, they are pictured in their original, clean state. They will never look like this again.

Any of my stove-owning friends know how to get soot off of hands and cloth? How about glass? (Ammonia, water, sudsy ammonia, elbow grease, magic eraser aren't working around the edges.) And is there any good way to clean the inside of a stove without producing airborne particles that make me think about wearing a face mask while cleaning?

2012 Knitting Goals ... but not really

2012 will not be the year of the sock. It will not be the year of 12 shawls, or 12 sweaters, or even 12 pairs of mittens. (Those of you who know me a bit will not be surprised if I knit that many pairs of mittens without aiming to, however. And I did misplace my favorite pair of mittens in mid-December, so I probably should knit myself another nice toasty pair. Despite our current lack of real wintry weather.)

I thought about making it be the year of the Baby Items. Or another stash-busting year. But I’ll work from my stash anyways – yarn acquisition is not something I have a problem with. The only influxes come via either destashing friends or my own leftovers. So why make a goal of it? And Baby Items are generally too tiny to really make a nice goal. Now, 52 baby items might be a nice target … but I don’t know 52 babies, and have other things to knit, so that’s not going to make it on my list. I reserve the right to add it should a grandchild visit my future.

Which leaves me with no glorious knitting goals.

However, at the end of 2012, I hope to have a completed Queen Susan Shawl. Out of Phoenix yarn, in silver. Unless someone talks me into Pixie Dust – a gorgeous color, but not quite the thing I envision for my bespectacled self.

I think a Queen Susan in one year is a respectable goal. Not glorious – one shawl in a year? Good grief – but respectable.

Miscellany:

I have some 120/2 silk which I’d love to use in a project, but nothing has called my name quite yet. I don’t have a shawl’s worth of any one color, and there’s nothing worse than knitting up 1200 yards of thread and finding out you don’t have enough.

I could make the completion of Molly’s Fault a goal, but it’s gotten used to it’s perpetual position on the back burner. I did get another 15-21 squares done over Christmas (the period, not the day), so it is growing.

I didn’t get any spinning done in 2011.

If I finish the Queen Susan by late July, which shawl do I enter in the state fair? It, or Unst? Unst needs to be under a Christmas tree come December. Could be a tough call. Do you think I could get away with calling 20/2 merino wool ‘medium-weight’? That would put it in another category …

Twenty Twelve

Wait a second ... weren't we just talking about whether it was "Two thousand and one" or "two thousand one"? Where did the past decade and a bit go?

But that's beside the point. More to the point, this is my blog and I've not been here all that much. Why? Oodles of good reasons.

1. I'm trying to scale back the time I sit in front of a computer screen.
2. My right hands gets ice cold when I type or use the mouse more than a few minutes.
3. Blathering on about items of next-to-no value is a thing to avoid.
4. I'm trying to spend more time knitting doing things of lasting value.
   
5. Two mornings a week I've been sitting in a college library rather than at my computer.
6. I haven't been up to anything bloggable?

Fact is, I'm also not schooling two all that much lately. My eldest, a high school junior, began taking classes at Bethany Lutheran College this fall and did a wonderful job with a 4-credit load (plus Math, Chemistry, Fine Arts, and English at home). This semester she's taking 11 credits, and I think that's enough to call a full load. If one semester of a college class equals one year of a high school class, then taking 6 college classes in one year should equal a full year of high school, no? Especially if we tuck in a second year of Fine Arts (finishing Master Hand Knitting Level 2), a year of Chemistry, and a summer spent brushing up on math skills. Plus a semester of English!

Point six above isn't exactly true. I have been up to all sorts of things, but nothing has demanded it be made into a blog post. I DO like to have things all nice and tidy, though. Since I didn't make my end-of-the-year wrap-up post, it's time for a post-mortem of 2011 here.

Let's look at the goals from my side bar. Test Knit - I did that four months of the year, taking most of the opportunities that came my way. I may be looking for more test knitting this year, but maybe not. There is The Queen Susan calling my name! Knit One Stash Project Per Month - yup, did that. A bit skimpy in some months, a bit overkill in others. Knit In Cycles - sorta. Nothing particularly called my name. I still like the idea.

Ravlery tells me I started and finished 58 projects in 2011. Perhaps even 60, since sometimes I don't start a new project if I'm making multiples of the same things. And right now, I'm finishing a project I started in 2010 -- the hap shawl I was never quite 'hap'py with. I frogged the entire edging and border and am working them over with a LOT more stitches.

My desk is tidy. There's fresh bread in the kitchen. I'm staying healthy (my joints aren't always happy with me, but all my knitting joints work so I'm okay with that.)

And there's a puzzle on the kitchen table that I really should put a few pieces into before I sit down and knit some more. Maybe I'll even finish Hannah Coulter!

Next up - plotting and planning for 2012!

How did your 2011 go? And what direction will you be going (or at least planning to go) in 2012?

Set, anyone?

This deal happened at the beginning of the game, from a shuffled deck. The cards got rearranged -- the original deal wasn't QUITE this tidy, but still ...

International I Love Yarn Day

Today happens to be I Love Yarn Day. Why anyone needed to pick a particular day in which to love yarn is beyond me. I manage to find time on most (but not all) days to play with yarn.

But in honor of this particular day, and the new Fiber Artist Spotlight at my local yarn store (for which I am the second person so featured), here are some photos of my knitting currently at my LYS. (I love my new camera!)

Unst Be Blocking

Unst in Progress

Once upon a time, there was some yarn. Specifically a fine 2-ply merino yarn from Colourmart, spun and wound off at the lovely size of 2300 yds/150g cone. (Cone on the left is new, the one on the right may or may not last the shawl.)
The knitter swatched, just like Goldilocks, to find Just the Right Size Needle. (MamaBear had the right size)
The the knitter knit, and knit, and knit, and knit, and knit ...
And someone asked for pictures. So she stopped knitting and found a decrepit camera, and a couch, and some pins.
And, although the knitter didn't measure how wide the shawl pinned out in her Very Impromptu Pinning Session, she can report that each red stripe and each navy stripe on the couch blanket is 4" wide. Finished size is supposed to be 24" wide. Hmm. Overachieve!

Blank Space

This morning, my students are studying quietly. The bread is rising, the washer and dryer are both running, supper is in the crockpot, and the mail is sorted on the kitchen desk. There's nothing on my to-do list that needs attention at the moment. (I just double-checked to make sure.) It's been much too long since I've carved out space to write on my blog, so here I am.

The past almost-three months have not gone by quietly and uneventfully. There's been Scout Camp, a TKGA conference, the State Fair, Joni and Friends Family Camp, and the start of the school year - both the homeschool one and the filia-taking-classes-at-a-local-college one. Knitting submissions have come, and knitting submissions have gone. Knitting projects have popped onto the needles, and they've popped off the needles. I've read the entire Barchester Chronicles and Palliser Chronicles by Trollope. (I'm a bit lost as to what to read next. I think 13 books by Trollope in a row is probably sufficient and I'd like something a bit more meaty to chew on auditorily.)

We're now into fall. The weather is rather warm for fall, which means it's not corn stove weather yet. This heating season isn't going to see us burning corn, since corn prices have more than doubled since last year. I will have to get used to saying (wood) 'pellet stove', I suppose. It's lovely weather for walking around town. This weekend, my husband and I took the road less traveled and walked away from town, then detoured on path through the fields rather than walk through the dust from a combine in a bean field. It was lovely to walk and see nothing but corn, beans, and the top of a farmhouse and some trees in the distance.

The project on the needles is Sharon Miller's Unst Lace Stole. I love shawls - knitting them, even more than wearing them. I expect to finish it in the next week or two. After tomorrow, there will be one long side left to edge, and then the magic of blocking will turn the gray lump into gorgeous lace. I'm pleased that it won't be too small. A too-small stole can be difficult to wear well. It will rest in my craft room until the fair next year, and then be on its way elsewhere. Sort of like the table centerpiece I knit last year in October, except I haven't sent that one on its way yet.

Facebook is being annoying. I miss being able to see only status updates. I really don't want to have to sort through all the things that people 'share' to find out who is up to what. I'm dipping my toes into the water of Google+, and have deleted Facebook from my browser bookmarks. Poof - several dozens of minutes of each day have been recovered! Just think how much more time there would be in a day if we didn't have bookmarks!

And now ... to get OFF the computer and into my knitting chair.

A Hodgepodge

Summer has been, well, summery. We've been on one (of 3) trips away from home, have wrapped up the bulk of the school year (one child still has work to finish in one subject), and I'm happily plugging away at my summer goals.

One of those goals is to READ! What with working at the computer and knitting, reading hasn't been really happening. But then, I got a Kindle for Easter. (As well as the Chocolate Easter Bunny that I didn't eat between Easter 2010 and 2011. If my kids don't say something, I'll pass it back to mom for my 2012 Easter Basket. Shhhhh.) With my Kindle, I can listen to books AND knit. And read the books when I don't want to knit. It does happen. Especially when the book is interesting and it's taking too long for the computerized voice to get to the really, really interesting part.

So this summer (since Easter, actually), I've read - and remembered to write down -

• Heir of Redclyffe (Thanks, Willa!)
• Rilla of Ingleside
• Common Sense
• The Praying Life
• The Next Story
  
• Tortall Stories
• The Man who Knew Too Much
• Bloodhound
• The Hero and the Crown
• The Blue Sword
• Walden
• Bleak House
• Ralph the Heir

I'm working on The Art of the Commonplace (Readaloud with the kids) and The Warden (by Anthony Trollope). Defintely too much fun. I've got Children of Hurin on the shelf too, and hope to read it before it has to go back to the library ... and then there will be The Wandering Arm, one of Abigail's college books. Reading is fun. But it can take away from knitting time.

As to knitting, I'm plugging away on the mittens. The picture from my last post is pretty representative of how things look, so no new photo. I am 6 diamonds into the mitten now, and start the top decreases at 8 diamonds. The end is in sight! I suppose the question is ... will I finish the mitten beFORE I finish listening to The Warden, or will I abandon the mitten briefly to read the book, or is the book shorter than the mitten?

One of my 'to-do' things this summer was to weed out unloved foods from the pantry and either use them or find a new home for them. One of the unloved things was Real Non-Instant Tapioca. I now have Tapioca Pudding in the frirdge. Mmmm. But why don't any of the recipes or instructions for folding in egg whites say to let the pudding cool first? The recipe on the bag even says "Beat Egg Whites until stiff. Fold into hot tapioca mixture." Snippets from Google Books suggest folding the hot tapioca mixture into the egg whites. Other advice is to let the pudding cool, then fold in the egg whites. Any opinions?

And one of my favorite recipes this summer so far (apart from homemade barbecue sauce and homemade baked beans with aforementioned barbecue sauce) is homemade pita bread. My last batch had perfect pockets on 6 of 8 pitas, and partial pockets on the rest. With baked beans and lettuce inside, a half pita makes a perfect lunch. Mmmm.

Not really planned or on my schedule, but happening anyways, is sitting in the passenger seat while my daughter practices driving. Not entirely in the passenger seat. I'm her brake pedal. Seems like most parents, when they drive with their children, have the liberty of letting their right foot weigh heavily upon an invisible brake. Not me! Due to Minnesota's shut-down, Filia's evaluation for hand controls is on hold, so we don't know what sort will work best for her. She's not about to trust her feet (which don't reach the pedals to begin with) to finding the right pedal and being able to exert the right amount of pressure ... so I get the job. And get to practice controlling that AAAAAAAH slam-on-the-brake instinct. Our van idles at a nice steady 5 mph -- perfect for cruising around a little-frequented cemetery and practicing turns. The ground isn't perfectly level, and thus a bit of brake pedal is needed from time to time.

And that is a hodgepodge of what's been going on around here!

One-word Wednesday

Oops.

Mitten Progress

A baby robin at breakfast

Microgauge Mittens

It's all Beth Brown-Reinsel's fault. Or maybe it's Arenda Holladay's. Or perhaps Birgitta Dandanell's.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not normally a sane person. I have flashes of normalcy, perhaps - but I've never quite walked the beaten path. Years ago, when I read Twined Knitting, I marvelled at the gloves that were knit out of cotton at 22 stitches per inch, and thought "would that I could do that someday! But not gloves. Gloves aren't nice." And then Arenda designed a lovely sweater using fine yarn, and I thought again - ahhh, finer gauges. How lovely. I should make one. But I'd have to revise the pattern so I could steek it. And then Beth posted her lovely photo of a hat/mitten set made at 13 stitches per inch in the same yarn Arenda used ... and then Beth posted, a few months later, a picture of a Latvian mitten at 19 stitches per inch.

THAT was the straw that broke the camel's back. I can do mittens. I can do Latvian. And I can do skinny yarn. So I decided to knit a Latvian mitten using fingering-weight yarn and a pattern with lots of stitches on small needles (that would be a US size 1, for those of you who allergic to relative terms) and ended up with Cindy's Mittens. Mmmmm, pretty, aren't they?

But there was a problem. Those were only 54 stitches per 4", and they knit up awfully fast. So I decided I must need skinnier yarn, and thus the Great Yarn Hunt began. It ended up at (don't click on the link if you don't need more yarn) RedFish Dyeworks, with some 20/2 pure silk. I really wanted to use 30/2, but the knitting community rallied in defense of my sanity and I decided to play along - for this pair of mittens.

See? Pretty yarn. I must be in a red white and blue phase, since my vacation project is also red white and blue. And no, I am NOT so insane as to think of working on these while sitting in a car going down a road full of potholes. They do require some concentration.

After the yarn arrived, I had a crisis of intent. I knew what pattern I wanted for the top of the mitten -- it came from a stocking photo at Flickr. (If you don't want design inspiration and are avoiding stranded knitting at the moment, don't click on that link either.) But I also knew I didn't want to have ribbing at the cuff, or any of the other traditional Norwegian cuffs. So what should I do??? I thought, and thought, and whimpered quietly to my knitting friends online, knit up a sample in fingering weight, threw that idea totally out the window, and cast on 150 stitches, and started knitting while perusing Latvian Mittens. (Sorry, I'm linked out.)

And, after a while, this is what I had ...

Mmmm. I like it. A sweater at this gauge would be nice, too.

But I wouldn't.

Would I?

May Jottings

April has disappeared, and May has arrived - cool at first, and rather toasty in the sunshine today. I am glad it will cool off again tomorrow, and stay cooler for a while (cool now is 70 degrees, give or take 10. Obviously I'm in summer mode - an easy place to be when the window thermometer says 106 degrees.)

My fun project right now is dreaming of the mittens I will make at a Very Tiny Gauge. Here are two swatches ... More yarn for swatching is on the way. In the meantime, I've pulled Molly's Fault out of hibernation and am making decent progress on it. The plan is to make it into a scarf first, then a wrap, and then a bona fide blanket.
We have all sorts of plans around here. Filia was planning out her History Day presentation board, when Canis Magnus decided he would help.
And a week or so earlier, in that very spot, Canis Minimus decided he would help Filius with some science questions. Canis Minimus is very picky about where he reposes, and because of his arthritis and prior-to-us life, often responds to annoyances in his repose with snarls and a tooth. Filius doesn't like being a place of repose.
Short, sweet, and plenty of photos. Now it's back to organizing my desk!

Knitting in March ... and reading?

March has been a busy month. It really started in February, when I took on a test knit .. and then had a small problem with the test knit that involved reknitting a large chunk of it, and life just sort of rolled on from there.

While waiting for more yarn for the test knit, I whipped out some stash projects. (Stash courtesy of Molly). We have the Yummy Mittens, by Beth Brown-Reinsel.

Then we had the annual meeting of the county historical society, which begged for some easy knitting. And behold, a stash hat jumped onto the needles. I did good. The tassel contains ALL the CC that was left over. Then my son announced he needed some socks. In fingering weight yarn, please, so he could wear them with shoes. And I ended up making herringbone socks. I don't like herringbone. It's pesky. And the pattern had an error in one of the two pattern rows. And the pattern was for SEAMED socks. I fixed the error and ignored the seam.
Then the yarn for the test knit arrived, and I knit that up and finished it. And I cast on for a pair of mittens. Using fine yarn (of course) and my new set of Blackthorn dpns. Regrettably, the gauge I got was a shade too plump for the number of stitches I was dealing with, so I only knit the cuff with those needles - the switched to a US 1 for the stranded portion.
Isn't it pretty? The chart is #37 in Latvian Mittens - and, near as I can tell, there aren't any photos of it in the book. I'm working it up at around 12.5 sts/", and it fit my hand (m) nicely. Much better than any of the other mittens with a peasant thumbs that I've tried, actually. Mitten #1 is done, and I'm on row 1 of colorwork of #2. And there's a nice quiet weekend ahead. Unless one gets wrapped up in basketball.

Reading. It really cuts into knitting time. (So does blogging.) I couldn't find the rest of the Giants in the Earth trilogy, so I have ILL'd them. I discovered Kindle for PC, and was amazed to find that BOTH books recommended in the day's US History lecture from the Teaching Company (which I will get used to calling The Great Courses sometime in the next decade or two, perhaps) were available as free downloads. Then Filius decided he needed to check it out, and the next thing I knew, all sorts of Jules Verne books were dropping into my Kindle. And the entire works of Edgar Allen Poe. If you've got boys who liked Stowaway or Shackleton's Stowaway (two different books), consider hunting up Jules Verne's An Antarctic Adventure. I became acquainted with it through Librivox, and it's also a free download at Kindle.

And if you like Jane Austen, and are in the mood for a short story (a wee bit over an hour) do give Love and Friendship a try. It borders on slapstick comedy, and the reader does a lovely job.

Current Reading: The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, and Caesar's Column, by someone whose name I forget. That's a problem with the Kindle for PC. You don't see the author's name lurking on the book spine to help fix it in your memory.

Happy Spring, all! Our garden is just a foot under the snow now, and I can see the tops of my oregano plant!

Finishing Things

After finishing the mini-sweater in my last post, I decided to tackle a pair of Bavarian Knee Stockings. Ahhhhh - they were fun. And they took a while. The pattern was a bit vague - no gauge or schematic, just 'fine wool, size 0 needles, to fit size 40 shoe (German)'. I dove in with my trusty 2.75mm, Spud&Chloe Sock, and decided to see what happened. The first thing I discovered is that for the ribbing, one is supposed to work stockinette. Ooops! I persevered, and with some help from a friend, had enough yarn to finish off two stockings that fit nicely (thanks to decreasing an extra pattern at the ankle)
Sometime this year, I knit up a sample mitten for a forthcoming project, but I wasn't happy with the gauge. Dale Heilo seems thinner than it used to be - but the stats don't support my fingers' report. They're a nice easy knit.
But I wanted to get a denser mitten, so I pulled some KnitPicks Telemark out of the stash and worked these guys up on Sunday. 70 minutes per mitten, not counting weaving in tails.
After the tails were woven in, there was still more time left in the day. I pulled out The Complete Photo Book of Knitting (nifty book, but pleasepleasePLEASE do not use it as a reference for picking up stitches from bound off or cast on edges, or mattress stitch.) and worked up a twined mitten. Found two errata! My day is made when I can fix a little bit of errata in this big wide world of ours.

Yesterday I made the mate, and then cast around for something to do. It needed to be small, since a large project is lurking in the wings and I don't like having too many projects on the needles. I settled upon the Wooly Bear Mittens from the latest issue of Knitting Traditions, and got started on those with some Bartlettyarns Sport - until I discovered that yarn and gauge did not go together. My new project ended up being a pair of socks for Filius.

For a few months, I've been listening to audiobooks while knitting. I didn't have anything on my iPod I hadn't listened to, though, and was in the middle of Giants in the Earth - so I got that out and read. It's a nice change to have a knitting project I can read during! Those Bavarian stockings are NOT something you can knit and read through.

Giants in the Earth is, so far, an enjoyable book. It's like Little House on the Prairie for adults. I think I may have to hunt up other books by the author.