I’ve got a pretty full week coming up here, so there won’t be a post on Wednesday.  However, Chatters is scheduled as always, same time - same place!

First off, a couple of scarves.

I’m finally doing the One Row Handspun Scarf in the harvested, dyed, chunky weight yarn.  It’s going to be nice and long, nice and soft and certainly bright enough to see in the dark :)

And, here’s another take…

...same stitch pattern, but worked lengthwise over 204 stitches rather than widthwise over 20.  Because this stitch is a modified rib, the lengthwise scarf has an unexpected springiness to it that’s very appealing.





And, while the rows are very long indeed, there will only be 24 of them plus the cast on and bind off rows.  It’s fairly fast and it’s also a nice way to do long stripes on a scarf without having to resort to (shudder) intarsia :)

I went out this weekend and found some 7” US size 5 (3.75 mm) bamboo double pointed needles.  Also some point protectors.  I use these to create very short straight needles to work panels and scarves on.  This time, the target was the lace scarf.  I had started it on 12” Crystal Palace bamboos because they were the only things I had in the right needle size that weren’t metal.  I felt metal needles would be entirely too risky for a novice lace-knitter on her first project!  I then knitted the work onto the new needles and proceeded to finish one pattern repeat and start another.  The shorter needles also helped me a bit with speed just because they’re easier for me to handle though I will probably never be a speed demon with the lace work.

I’m cautiously thrilled at how things are coming out so far :) I don’t have quite the length of yarn the pattern recommends, nor am I using the recommended needle size so my scarf isn’t going to have quite the suggested scarf measurements.  I don’t see this as an issue as even if my version is 10” shorter than theirs, it will still be a lovely accessory and that’s all I want from it.  Well - that and the practice!

I have also lucked into another sweater to disassemble for a good quantity of nice, chunky, wool/angora yarn.  The label in this one is Eddie Bauer but I’d bet the wool came from the same source as the last sweater as it’s exactly the same weight and is composed of the same materials in exactly the same proportions.

It’s a red and cream marl type yarn and I’m not really thinking I’ll over dye this.  However, if I get either really bored or really ambitious someday, I might see if I can separate the red from the cream - just to see if it can be done and if it’s practical to do so.  I’ll probably go to work on this later this week.

I’ve got my first Dulaan box ready to go and am more than halfway to my personal goal of at least 52 items this year.

I hadn’t realized there were so many hats, compared to other things.  Maybe I’ll try and shift my focus a little for the second half of the year.  Then again maybe not :) The two scarves mentioned at the beginning of this post will also go with this lot.

One last thing…

Of late, I have seen - what is to me - a mildly frightening tendency amongst knit-bloggers to distinguish themselves from non-knitters by the use of pejorative terms.  The particular words don’t matter because any term can be derisive depending on how it’s used.  There are two things about this that trouble me.

1.  The law of averages (as well as human nature itself!) precludes any possibility that all knitters are saintly, selfless, angelic people.  Certainly some knitters are.  Some aren’t.  The converse is also true.  Non-knitters are not automatically evil morons.  Those firefighters that rushed into the twin towers on 9/11 - the ones who could have stayed outside and remained safe - think many of them knitted?

2.  There is enough divisiveness in our lives already.  We were once convinced that a person’s skin color, religious background, sexual orientation or condition of financial solvency defined something essential about their characters.  We know better now and are learning that these lines do not define what is worthy and what is not.  The very last thing we need is to create another arbitrary and meaningless division, however limited.

See you at Chatters on Thursday night, and back here at the blog on Friday!

We’ll start with the provisional failure and you probably already know what’s coming.  I spent most of yesterday working on the Autumn Seeds sweater.  My thought process had been that if I put the time in, I could conceivably have the beast done by today so that I could proudly show off my very first knitted sweater.

Ummm...no.

The sleeve is about an inch and a half from where I want it on my wrist with about 20 stitches still left to decrease.  Never going to happen.  After wrestling with it for quite a while, I finally decided that this needs a time out - a long one.  What I am going to do with this (and I cannot stress this enough) eventually, is made long, wide sleeves and use this as an outer wear garment.  I believe I have enough yarn to make mitts (or mittens), scarf and hat to go with it and it will be just fine for a casual look.  It will never be what I envisioned because I kept looking at what I wanted it to be and not seeing what it really was.

Too damned big :)

The body width I could live with if it hadn’t meant that the armscyes went halfway down to my waist (or where my waist would be if I had one) making necessary the decrease of umpty-zillion stitches before getting to the wrist and having only about eight inches to do it in.  Sigh… However, I will take this lesson with me as I move forward.  I am not thwarted nor cowed - well, not much anyways :) Overall this has been a positive experience and well worth doing.  It’s just that right now, I’m tired of wracking my brain over this thing and need to put it out of sight for a bit.  I haven’t given up on it - only on what I thought it was going to be and I need a little time to adjust to what it actually is.  Then I will finish the sleeves and make the accessories.

The draw is another hat :) This one is probably 6 months to 1 year size and is being modeled on a fat ball of chunky yarn because I lack a real baby :)

It’s made with worsted weight yarn (Scheepjeswol washable - nice feel but fairly splitty) and size 7 US (4.5 mm) needles.  The body is knit over 19 stitches, 5 stitch garter borders with a middle panel of stockinette and bobbles.  Because of the smaller scale involved here, I wound up picking up 64 stitches to do the crown and you can see the little point that resulted in the increased number of rounds worked to accommodate the decreases.  On a baby hat, that’s probably not a big deal.  Things to remember - sideways garter stitch makes excellent pseudo-ribbing!

The success - first let me apologize to last night’s Chatters group as I whined incessantly about being afraid to work with lace weight yarn.  Now let me thank last night’s Chatters group for offering their support and suggestions.  After I shut down the chat room last night, I did this:

...which is the beginning of Crystal Palace’s Madeira Lace Scarf, a pattern I’ve been drooling over for a very long time.  It’s not much, just the first 6 rows - but it’s further than I’ve ever gotten before and I’m already wondering why I was so afraid to try it!  Of course I am working very carefully and counting obsessively :) But the pattern isn’t difficult and I imagine by the time I’ve been through a couple of pattern repeats, I’ll be able to relax a little. 





The yarn is Merino Lace from Heirloom Knitting in the UK.  I’m liking it so far - it’s not hard to handle, doesn’t seem to tangle on itself when I’m not looking at it and is strong enough to withstand some of my clumsier moments.  That had been my biggest fear with lace weight - that I would be constantly breaking it.  That doesn’t seem to be an issue and I’m very, very relieved!

Have a great weekend all :)

The Knitting of Socks

The knitting of socks is a wonderful thing.
It makes for fleet fingers; it makes the heart sing!
The point at which color and craftsmanship meet,
The knitting of socks makes for warm, comfy feet.

The turning of heels is both joy and delight -
A neat little miracle, there in plain sight.
A tube with an angle and - what do you know?
The turning of heels makes you feel like a pro!

The shaping of toes is a practice profound -
The Dutch toe, the wedge toe, the star or the round.
With plenty of wiggle room, finished off neat,
The shaping of toes is a serious treat.

Fingering, worsted, sport weight or DK,
All sizes and types (at the end of the day),
A practical pleasure that honestly rocks -
There’s nothing quite like it - the knitting of socks!

Jumping on the bandwagon for what would otherwise be a rather lean post, I give you:

Six Weird Things

1. I can’t abide bell peppers.  I like lots and lots of all kinds of food, from venison tenderloin to lemongrass/chili soup and all the calamari, brussels sprouts and rhubarb in between.  There’s something about the bell pepper’s ability (regardless of color) to annoy the daylights out of my taste buds.  Any dish of which it’s a part will taste to me solely and only of bell pepper.  Bleah....

2. I cannot stand to have the toothpaste tube squeezed in the middle.  I am a bottom-up squeezer of toothpaste tubes and believe that any other right-thinking person should be the same :) If the tube does get squeezed in the middle, I will carefully squeeze the stuff up from the bottom.  Oh and the toothpaste itself has to be peppermint; spearmint makes me gag.

3. I am addicted to raspberry turnovers.  Not the thing in general, but the specific turnover that is turned out by the bakery in one of our local supermarket chains.  It’s a half-moon shape of thick pie-type crust filled with a fairly lavish amount of raspberry puree.  There is nothing even remotely delicate or gourmet about this thing, no puff pastry, no lady-like dusting with powdered sugar.  This is a crude confection that combines just the right amount of sweetness (filling) with the right amount of butteriness (crust) to suit whatever passes for my palate.  For a number of reasons, I do not generally indulge in these things but last week they were one of the featured items in the market’s weekly sale.  Ahhhhhhh…

4. I have lots of white cotton socks - to wear under white cotton (presumably) sneakers.  Over the years, I have amassed quite a collection and they get tossed into a communal white sock drawer, unballed and unsorted - the grey-toed ones mixed in with the grey-soled ones lying cheek by jowl with the wide-ribbed ones.  When I grab a pair, they have to match.  They are all white socks.  They will go in my sneakers and under my jeans and any part of them that shows to the casual observer isn’t going to give away anything at all.  Doesn’t matter - I seem to be totally incapable of leaving the house wearing one grey-soled white sock and one wide-ribbed white sock.

5. Though you would probably never guess it, I can be painfully, almost clinically shy.  If you and I meet, I can and will be cordial and pleasant but until we are past the “nodding acquaintance” stage, I probably won’t approach you to chat or have lunch and would find the prospect of doing so almost terrifying.  Many years ago, my mother asked me to deliver a bunch of Christmas cards and small gifts to the place where she used to work.  I took them and drove by that place a dozen, agonizing times over the next few days, trying to make myself go in and deliver them - but I just couldn’t do it.  I didn’t know any of these people and I couldn’t just walk in and announce myself.  I finally had to bring them back to her and she had my father drop them off instead.

6. I am paranoid about inflicting my music on other people.  It’s not that my musical tastes are that weird - classical mostly with some folk, rock and country thrown in to leaven things.  It’s because I find having to listen to other people’s music distasteful in the extreme.  Although sometimes it’s amusing :) Someone comes to pick up an individual in the building next door periodically.  I don’t know anything about the people involved - not even the genders - but the person doing the picking up always parks such that whatever is playing on their car stereo is focused by the alleyway between the two buildings and clearly audible to us.  Generally, they’re playing late 70s/early 80s rock.  Last Saturday morning, we were treated to a mini concert, the contents of which were apparently based on the presence of a color in the song title.  It started with “Blue Bayou”, moved on to “Raspberry Beret” and segued from there into “The Green Berets”.  We were speculating on what would come next - Myria thought “Yellow Submarine”; my bet was on “Red Sails in the Sunset” - when the vehicle finally departed.

Chatters is on for tomorrow night - drop by if you have a few minutes!

1. I learned that the second hat is as much fun as the first :) This was done with chunky yarn on size 10 (6 mm) needles.  I cast on 20 stitches, as before, and worked borders of seed stitch with a stockinette swath down the middle.  Also, as before, I worked to a 20” length and then did a couple more rows.  Of course I completely forgot about doing a provisional cast-on so I wound up picking up the cast on stitches and then binding them off with the working stitches.  Again :)

This time I picked up 48 stitches around the crown, knit one round and then started decreasing towards the center.  When I was down to 4 stitches, I cut the yarn (leaving a tail long enough to stitch with), threaded a tapestry needle and pulled the yarn through, tightening so as to close the crown.  Then I added a braid and tassel - just for the hell of it :)

I need to work out how to do this for smaller sizes - babies and children.  When I have the sizing worked out, I’ll post a pattern.  It really is ridiculous, the amount of fun you can have doing this!

2. I learned that 7 ounces of yarn is really too much for a 5 quart crock pot to handle gracefully.

That this came out as well as it did is no credit to me.  The crock pot was so stuffed, there wasn’t even stirring room!  I’ll remember that in the future.  The particulars for this yarn, Flamingo, are over at The Dye Pot.  The first link will take you to the specific post and the second to the home page.

3. I learned that a 72º F day isn’t when you want a big sweater lying on your lap while trying to work on a sleeve.  Even if it is January!

4. I learned that, yes Virginia, there really is such a thing as a beautiful heel!

This is the yarn that dear Nat over at Knitting Natty sent me for Christmas and the pattern, as I mentioned before, is the Lacy Mock Cable Socks that Rob clued me in to.  I had been watching enviously as she seemingly effortlessly turned out a gorgeous pair in Megaboots Sock Yarn and knew I have to have a pair of my own.

You probably know I generally do socks on a larger scale than usual using sport to worsted weight yarn and anything from a size 3 (3.25 mm) to a size 5 (3.75 mm) needle.  These are worked, as per the pattern’s recommendation, on size 2 (2.75mm) needles.  Let me tell you, picking up the gusset stitches required considerably more focus than I am used to!  Also, the heel flap is done in a method I hadn’t tried or even read about before.  Over an even number of stitches, the right side rows are *Sl1, K1*; repeat to the end.  The wrong side rows are *Sl1, P1*; repeat to the end.  I was uncertain about this slipping on both sides of the fabric, but I certainly can’t argue with the results.  This produces a firm but surprisingly cushy fabric and works so well with the color repeats of this yarn that it took me twice as long to do the flap as it normally would because I kept stopping to admire the gorgeous effect :)

5. I also learned, for what it’s worth, that when Myria makes one of her justifiably famous and outstanding pancakes (see German/Yorkshire Pancake/Pudding and fries up a few breakfast sausage to go with, a little fresh, chopped apple makes an exceedingly bright a pleasant note to the overall flavor of things!

Hope your Monday is yummy :)

I finished a somewhat differently styled hat a couple of nights ago.  It didn’t originally start out to be a hat - it started out to be a scarf.  However, when it was about 15” long, it was clear there wasn’t going to be enough yarn to make a scarf long enough for anyone but Barbie!  So I modified my thinking and this is what happened…

It is based on the Harlot’s One Row Handspun Scarf with which I seem to be obsessed this winter.  I knit the pattern over 20 stitches for about 20” and then added a couple more rows (chunky yarn and size 10 US (6 mm) needles).  The ends were folded together and I picked up a cast on stitch and knit it together with the corresponding stitch on the needle and proceeded as with an ordinary bind-off.  Then, without cutting the yarn, I picked up stitches all around the edge and began decreasing them (8 per round, alternating with a plain knit round) eventually ending in about 4” of I-cord for a top knot.  Were I to do this again, I would use a provisional cast-on and do goofy grafting or a three needle bind-off.  Of course, regular kitchener stitch will work too for those of you who’s fingers aren’t all thumbs, like mine :)





On Christmas Eve, dad and I went over to my aunt’s house (his younger sister) for dinner.  It was really nice to see her again as I hadn’t for several years, and to make the acquaintance of my now adult cousin whom I remember being born when I was about 10 years old!

Aunt Ev served a chicken salad for dinner made like a traditional Waldorf Salad, but with chicken added.  She kept it simple, but it was absolutely delicious and, of course, I wanted to try it myself :)

And, of course, I changed things somewhat in so doing.

The standard recipe for a Waldorf Salad contains celery and (at least in the preponderance of the recipes I checked) red, seedless grapes.  I don’t care for raw celery, so I left that out.  I hadn’t known about the grapes or I might have included them as I do love red grapes :) Ultimately, this is what I came up with:

Open Faced Tuna Waldorf Salad Sandwiches
Serves 2

2 bulkie rolls (croissants, bagels - whatever you prefer)
1 can (6 oz) solid white albacore tuna, drained and flaked (or an equivalent amount of cooked, chopped chicken breast)
1/2 an apple (I used a Braeburn - exquisite!) - peeled or not as you choose
1/2 c walnut meats, roughly chopped
4 slices of your preferred cheese
Mayonnaise to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

Start by making your salad.  Flake your tuna into a bowl.

Chop your apple and walnuts and added them to the tuna.





Add whatever quantity of mayonnaise you need to achieve the consistency you like.

Slice your rolls open and toast gently.  Butter the cut surface very lightly and top with a piece of cheese.  Place all four be-cheesed (is that a word?) roll halves on a microwave-safe plate and stick in the nuker for about 40 seconds - just long enough to melt the cheese.

Top each with one fourth of your salad and generously grind on the pepper.





Serve with a green salad or a cup of soup.  Honestly folks, this seriously rocks!

Have a great weekend :)

It’s Chatters tonight, it’s Chatters tonight,
And nothing much else really matters tonight!
So bring yarn and needles and all your good cheer,
And join us to knit in a crafty new year!