As of yesterday, I have been writing The Yarnpath for two years.  No one is more surprised than I am that I’ve actually been able to keep it up for that long :) Having the attention span of a gnat, I never thought this would be more than a pleasant diversion that might go on for...weeks?  But here we all are, two years later and I have only one thing to say - Thank you, all you wonderful readers and commenters, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You have commented and corresponded and what started as a mere fling has become something considerably more dearly held, more passionate.

I was a little concerned about how the Opal would pattern on the bitty socks because it’s not really designed for something with that small a circumference.  However, while what resulted was definitely more in the nature of an assortment than a set, I don’t find it unpleasant to the eye and think it has kind of a quirky charm :) I’m very happy with how the marriage between the Opal and the Fisherman’s wool came out for the hat.  It was worked on size 8 (US) needles for the sake of making it dense and warm.  I’m pleased to say that the hat is quite dense, though not the least bit stiff and should keep a little noggin warm as toast.

Next up:

I decided on the Lana Grossa Meileinweit for the other set and started the hat this morning:





I think this is also going to be an auspicious combination and am curious to see how the socks will turn out.  With this yarn, though, I should be careful about starting each one at the same point in the yarn pattern.  This is a much more regular repeat than the Opal was and, if I’m careful, should yield a pair of identical socks :)





I had to move Jade this morning so I could take advantage of the sunshine to take my pictures.  She was most displeased with this and a small battle of wills ensued.  By dint of sheer size (and the inestimable advantage of opposable thumbs) I did prevail in the end.  But she won’t be forgiving me any time soon :)

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday morning I had to make a trip to the market.  While I was waiting at the deli case for my roast beef, I noticed a beautiful knitted bonnet on a little girl in the charge of an elderly woman (her grandmother, I imagine though I don’t know for sure).  The yarn was a variegated brown/gold/pumpkin and looked quite nice on the little girl who had brown hair and blue-grey eyes.  I asked the woman if she had knit the bonnet.

“Yes,” she said as we started to move away from the counter,” She comes to me every morning bare headed.  I had to have something to put on her.” She seemed more than willing to talk about the hat, but never once did her eyes do anything but focus straight in front of her.  I explained that I thought it was very attractive, nicely made and that it looked good on the little girl.  “Well, it was yarn I had around.  I couldn’t afford to go and get something else.  But I had to have something to put on her when we went out.”

The little girl was smiling shyly up at me now, but I had the feeling I was making her grandmother (?) uncomfortable so I went on my way.  It really was a lovely bonnet though…

We have moved the gerbils into their new, glass mansion.  It’s quite a bit larger than the acrylic tank, the glass is way clearer than the acrylic was and the air circulation is much better.  The little guys were busy all night exploring, moving things around, digging and, in general, making the space theirs.

When we open the top to feed them, they all come out and sit up on their hind legs and watch.  If you put your hand down flat on the bottom of the tank, they’ll run over and walk all over your hand.

And they’ve grown so fast!  They’re nearly adult size now but when we brought them home three weeks ago they were still pretty tiny.  Crackle and Pop (the two taupe babies) have dark masks, ears and tails - much darker than the rest of their coats.  I’ve been thinking of them as Siamese gerbils :) Snap is silver, and while her coat, overall, is a bit darker than it was, she doesn’t have the “points” that her sisters do.

Oh yeah…

...I finished this last night.  I worked the body (past the ribbing which is about 4") about an inch longer than usual and decreased faster so as to get a less pointy, more rounded top.  When I was down to 6 stitches, I put three of them on a holder and made I-cord with the other three - about 4”.  Then I retrieved the remaining three stitches and repeated the I-cord.  After all the ends were woven in, I tied the I cord in a double knot.  I like it :)

Hope your weekends are peaceful, productive and happy!

Ahhh - the sun is trying to come out and it has actually stopped raining.  How long this fortuitous circumstance will last is anybody’s guess but I’m going to go out and enjoy it before too much longer!

Jade is sitting in front of the gerbil tank.  The little buggers are being most impolite and unfair to her this morning.  They are playing and tussling around, flinging their stiff, little tails in Jade’s direction but no matter how fast she moves, she can’t seem to catch one.  She was actually snapping at the side of the tank and then looking around at me, all puzzled.  Oh Lordy, animals are surely worth their weight in laughs :)

Onwards…

I got the second sock started and done up to turning the heel and then I decided I wanted to do a hat.  What I really wanted was to see how the sock yarn would blend with the cream colored wool and what the effect would be like.

I think this looks pretty nifty.  It’s not as aggressive as a marled yarn because the Opal also has cream bits that blend with the cream wool.  It’s by no means subtle, but it doesn’t pop one in the eye either :)

And there was a bit of a surprise.  Working with the sock yarn alone..

...you don’t really notice anything but the red and the cream.  But combining it with the cream wool reveals other shades that ordinarily get washed out.





I was surprised when I started noticing it, but there are actually shades of pink in the sock yarn.  This is very cool - hidden color!  Color that you can’t see (or don’t notice) until you put it next to something else or combine it with something!  I’m seriously wondering about all the variegated yarns I have and what I might be able to see if I combine them with the right shade.

This would be a great exercise the next time I decided to organize the stash.  Of course it could extend the actual “organization” a few days....heheh…

Okay - here’s the first sock, completed about an hour ago:

I used this Basic Baby Sock pattern with a couple of changes.  The pattern asks for a plain, stockinette heel and I decided to use the heel stitch because I think it looks better.  I also decreased from the heel gussets in the standard way rather than the way written in the pattern which didn’t make much sense to me.  I kept the spiral toe decreases because they’re rather cute :) Now to cast on for the next one!

I’ve been thinking about hats - and thank you all for your comments, suggestions and pointers; they’ve been a great help!  I have a few ideas to go on with and one of the things I’m considering is combining yarns.

A strand of worsted and a strand of sock yarn would come close to bulky weight, I think.  While this isn’t really what I wanted, I think these two would combine well and look nice.  An added benefit is that it would take me less than a year to make the hat :) But I’m not completely decided just yet.

The gerbils are growing at a rapid rate (as most babies do) so we are off north today to get them a larger tank.  This will be their permanent home.  Unfortunately, since it will be glass, I won’t be able to get the kind of pictures of them I’ve been getting with the smaller tank which is acrylic.  Acrylic seems to swallow up the glare of the flash.  Glass will just reflect it.  But there will be more pictures, one way or another.

We’ve also been playing Guild Wars.

To my surprise, this is great fun (my usual, pedestrian preference being something much less involved - like Pokemon Puzzle League) and we are having a grand time exploring, fighting battles, doing missions and just gawping at the scenery.  This is a beautiful game, gorgeous graphics, lovely music, and the story is very complicated and involved.  At the rate we’re going (couple of hours a day) we’ll probably finish it in about three years :)

My doctor and his wife have just had twins - a boy and a girl; They were born Monday night.  The funny thing is that their eldest child will celebrate her 2nd birthday today.  They’re going to have all their children’s birthdays in the same week.  Won’t that be fun?  Unfortunately I didn’t even know they were expecting again and so have nothing ready to contribute :(

I’d like to knit some baby hats and socks (and maybe thumbless mitts too?) and I’m thinking that sock yarn would be perfect for this because it’s mostly wool (so it will be warm) but can still be tossed in the washing machine.  Does this sound like a decent plan?  Is sock wool soft enough for baby skin?

So I spent most of last night chasing down baby stuff only to find that a great deal of it is now being made in DK to worsted weight yarn.  Foo… I had figured baby things would be made from baby or fingering yarn for which, I think, I could substitute sock yarn without too much trouble.





I did, eventually find a few things like this wonderful Baby Cardigan Set from Opal.  I shall probably avoid the cardigan, but the hat and socks are too cute for words :) /I also thought these Basic Baby Socks would do the trick.  Hats were a little more difficult as very nearly all of them are made in DK or worsted weight yarn.





The Beatrix Hat is a serious possibility.  I like the shape of this one :) I wouldn’t be doing it in stranded knitting though - just using the patterned sock yarn and letting it do its own thing.  This Opal Baby Cap might work too though there may be a size issue; I’ll get to that in a minute.  And there is this classic Harlequin Cap though I would probably not make it double.





As you can see, my sock yarn colors aren’t exactly baby-colors.  I like pastels, myelf, but I’m uncertain they should be inflicted on babies just because they aren’t big enough to protest :) I guess this will wind up being rather a unisex assortment and maybe that will be useful with boy-and-girl twins,

I’m a bit nervous about the sizing of things.  Because these guys are twins, I kind of wonder if they’re a bit smaller than the average newborn.  And would things geared even for newborn sizing be a bit big for them?  Would I be better off using a large preemie size pattern than standard newborn size?  I want them to have these things for this upcoming winter and, of course, I don’t want the assorted clothes to be too small to last through the cold weather, or too big to be useful.  I’ll take my best shot but if anyone out there knows how big around a newborn’s head usually is, I’d be grateful for the information :)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

It finally got here - I was beginning to wonder!

And here’s the pattern.  I’m October 5th :)





I’ve heard grumblings about this calendar but I don’t think it’s bad at all.  Certainly it does have a few patterns for things I’m not likely to make - but isn’t any collection of patterns like that?  And, in addition to the scrunchies and the various paper-product covers, the calendar also has some beautiful afghan squares, mittens, gloves, shawls, ponchos and socks.  Not bad at all :)

And, of course, it’s got me all hot to crochet something - just to get a hook in my hand again for something besides picking up a dropped stitch!  I need to dig out the Kimono jacket and get that finished.  I’ve only got the sleeves and trim to do.

But I want another project too and maybe crochet is the ticket.  I love knitting, don’t get me wrong, but crochet was the first thing I tried to do with my hands that didn’t make me feel completely inept and clumsy.  And you always go back to your first love :)

This morning, for the first time, I caught both dark gerbils out together.

Pop is the darker one :)

Yesterday, finally after what surely did seem like forty days and forty nights, we finally had some sunshine.  It was actually clear and bright in the morning, though it clouded in and was overcast later in the day.  An interesting thing happened though, as the sun began to set in the afternoon:

As the sun sank below the cloud cover the light caught in the trees across the way.  The colors of the brilliant, turning leaves against the sullen blue-grey of the sky was an extraordinary contrast and something I wanted to capture.  My apologies for the fuzzy image.  It was taken hastily through the living room window before the light could change.  But it was the colors I was interested in and wanted to share.

Cheryl over at Tell Me a Yarn went apple picking with her family and found herself wanting a fast simple recipe to help use the fruit.  That got me thinking about something my mother used to make called “Knobby Apple Cake” It’s a nice simple recipe for a nice fall dessert.

Knobby Apple Cake

1 c sugar
2 tbl soft butter
1 egg, beaten
3 c diced apples (you don’t have to peel them, but I prefer to)
1/4 c chopped nuts (optional)
1 tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Grease an 8” x 8” baking pan and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

1.  Cream butter and sugar together.

2.  Add beaten egg and mix well.

3.  Add apples, nuts and vanilla.

4.  Sift flour, soda, salt and spices together.  Add to the batter and mix well.

5.  Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.

Note 1: This isn’t going to look much like batter before you put it in the oven.  It’s going to look as though you dropped a bunch of apples into something thick and sticky.  Don’t give it a thought - it all sorts itself out while it’s baking.

Note 2: This is traditionally served with whipped cream or ice cream though it’s really good just naked too.

Note 3: I made this yesterday with pears (as I had a few that were going south), substituting a teaspoon of ginger for the cinnamon and nutmeg.  It’s awesome :) And it’s even better cold than it was hot!

Happy Monday :)