FO: Roo

Here, finally, is the Spanish Inquisition's new purple sweater-coat:

The penguin buttons/bribe totally worked; she loves them, and they don't disrupt the pattern too much (and the button band makes the jacket close fully, which is good).  I originally envisioned it as an early fall jacket, but it's too cold for that now, so she gets to wear it as a cardigan. Which is fine. She's worn it a couple of times since Thanksgiving, and it fits perfectly — which makes me feel a bit better for insisting on re-knitting it in the 24" size, as this means that the original (22") really was far too small. I would have preferred a longer length, but it's hard to adjust on the fly.

This coat has a garter border at the bottom of the coat and somehow, I managed to knit a different number of rows for the back and the two fronts — and not notice until seaming. This means that I even blocked it without noticing the discrepancy. Luckily the fabric is very dark (this photograph was taken in nearly-full sun), and the Spanish Inquisition moves around a lot, so I don't think anyone will notice. But I'm a little appalled that I managed to do that. It's not like the pattern doesn't give me the exact number of rows I should be aiming for.

The only other problem was that the penguin buttons are very, very skinny, so they kept slipping out of the buttonholes as knit. (I used a simple double yarnover-k2tog). I sewed the holes tighter when we got home after Thanksgiving, and now they're fine.

The yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca, which is 50% wool and 50% alpaca, in the imaginatively named "Deep Purple," between 2.5 and 3 skeins. 4.5mm needles. The pattern is Roo from Twist Collective, by Kate Gilbert.

fly-by update

What a week. Work has been busy, not least because I've had to take some time off because home has been busy — various members of the family (including me) had various appointments that couldn't be shifted, and so we've started earlier, stayed up later, and paradoxically worked less, time-wise, than usual this week. I wrote a very simple, fairly irrelevant post earlier this week; Blogger ate it, and I've had neither the time nor the inclination to write it again. (It really was negligible. It was about the Spanish Inquisition's hats.)

We took the Spanish Inquisition to the new aquarium last Saturday! And the picture above is the only photograph I'm ready to show you. I know: there are sharks in there, and sawfish, and giant Pacific kelp, and I'm showing you ... jellyfish? But they were beautiful. And they photograph well; always a plus.

Meanwhile, this is what I have been doing this week:

This is roughly how much of a fingerless mitten one can get through when forced to sit still (more or less) for three hours or so at the doctor's office. The pattern is Sherbet Lemon by Ysolda, and the yarn is Alisha Goes Around, Richness of Martens in the "Genevieve" colourway. 2.75mm needles. It was a sock club yarn that I've been saving for something special; I love the colour but I thought that it would be wasted on socks. These are much more fun.

I aded an extra half-repeat so that it goes (roughly) up to my elbows; that's why the beginning of the cable looks slightly different from the original pattern. If I had to do it again I would sit down and plan the tessellations a little bit better, but this isn't bad, and I was anxious to get started. I actually finished them today; in fact I'm wearing them now. And oh, they are so lovely; there's 15% cashmere and 10% silk in the yarn. It's been getting down to the low single digits here in the mornings, and so these will be perfect.

I have also the never-ending sweater (doesn't it seem like I have one of those every fall?) and the Spanish Inquisition's Olivia Petit, which is almost done. I really only have about an inch and then the sleeves to go, but sleeves are never terribly fun, so I'm finding it a bit of a slog. (Also: the alpaca, while lovely, sheds as I knit it, and I am big enough now that my knitting is generally resting on my bump ... which means that, every time I knit it, it looks like I went and rubbed up against some particularly-hyperallegenic cat. So I have decided that they are not really good as subway- or work-knitting.)

And then there is also this (although technically this is cheating; I did these last week):


Yup. (Canadian) Thanksgiving is over, which means it's time. This year I am attempting to be rational about it all and to do a little bit frequently, instead of trying to create 60 cards in the span of a week. So far I am only averaging perhaps a few cards every two weeks, but even then, that puts me ahead of where I usually am. These are being left for now; I've got my eye on a stamp I want to emboss on the top, but I have to wait until the One of a Kind Show in late November to actually get it. Perhaps this year will be the year I actually learn to use the embossing gun effectively.

thankful

I know that I am a little late posting this. I needed to wait for Pd to stop hogging the computer* so I could offload (and then upload) some photographs** so that this isn't completely boring, and it took a little while.

* By "hogging," please read "using the computer for his kick-ass programming skillz that actually helps pay the bills around here." My first-generation Air (which is what I am using right now) is no longer capable of supporting my photo -taking and -editing habit, so we got a shared desktop a few months ago. We have an agreement, actually, that I can use the desktop pretty much whenever I like, but it's a lot easier for him (and better for his back) to program with the big screen and proper chair ... and I feel kind of bad kicking him off to support my emphatically nonprofitable blog, while he works to keep me in knitting and crafting supplies (not to mention food). So I am happy to wait.

** Yes, this means that I actually used the proper camera this weekend! The iPad is convenient but the lens is rather soft, have you noticed? Of course, what happened then was that the Spanish Inquisition stuck her fingers on the camera lens while I was packing, and I forgot to wipe it clean, so for the first hour or so I was completely flummoxed as to why I couldn't focus properly, even on manual. Soft focus or toddler smear? — ultimately, it's all the same, really.

Anyway, it was Thanksgiving, and I am most thankful for my favourite two people in the world:


Sometimes we are sleep-deprived, and sometimes we are cranky, but for the most part we are all happy and silly and content, and when one of these people grins a silly grin at me, my heart explodes with joy.


(And yes, that is the purple sweater, take 2. The penguin buttons/bribery totally worked. Details later.)

cold hands call for desperate measures

I am usually a very ... obsessive kind of person. (A small strain of OCD runs through my family. It was such a relief when I heard that.) I am the kind of person who can have the same thing for lunch every week. I change up my clothes, sure, but practically everything in my closet is either black, grey, a shade of white, or a shade of blue. I have very recently begun branching out into — wait for it — purple. (By "branching out" understand that I mean I have one cardigan, one shirt and one dress.) I listen to the same album on my iPod over and over until I am finally sick of it. That usually takes a few weeks.

The only exceptions are books and knitting. I am usually reading two books at a time. I don't know why; maybe it's a remnant from grad school. And I usually have a bunch of knitting projects on the go. I have two blankets — a Moderne Log Cabin, and a mitered square (made out of remnant sock yarn) — I've been working on both for three or five years, respectively, and they're too big to be portable anywhere, so they stay at home and get worked on during long winter evenings.

Actually, I thought the sock blanket would be done by now. I'd say I'm about a third of the way through. Part of the slowdown was that I'd stopped knitting socks for a while, so I didn't have any new yarn to add, and I have a thing where the same yarn can't be too close to each other (OCD, remember?) and the problem-solving was driving be mad. I am really hoping that it's not going to take another 10 years to finish.

I don't really count those as "projects." They're just ongoing things in the back of my mind. Actual projects right now are my Fino sweater, which is coming along (but also not, because it's a full-size adult tunic in fingering yarn; I'm small but not that small) and another sweater for the Spanish Inquisition.

I may have panicked a little when the cold weather came. She had a big growth spurt in July, and I think she's having another one now, the upshot of which is that none of her old, pre-summer clothes fit. Which is fine, but I wanted to make sure she had sweaters. This is Olivia Petit, by Connie Chang Chinchio; she got one last year, too.

(Her father destroyed that one in the wash. Fun fact: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend felts like a dream. The thing went from fitting a one-year-old to practically doll-size. The buttonholes were so small that there was no physical way the buttons could get through. Pd felt bad about it, but it really was awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. And anyway, she'd practically grown out of it by then. But she'd loved it, and it was well used; that's why she's getting another.)

This one is Cascade Eco Duo, an undyed 70-30 merino-alpaca blend that's also not machine washable, but Pd says that he's learned his lesson now. I discovered it last winter and it's become one of my go-to yarns for toddlers — super soft and warm.

All this is to say that I'm not big on knitting monogamy, although right now even I am having a little trouble juggling all of my projects. I keep my number of projects in check by keying it to the number of available stitch counters. This is feasible because I very rarely buy knitting notions; I tend to feel guilty about the amount I'm spending on yarn, and the easiest way to lower my total at the cash is to drop the knitting notions.  Right now, I have three. Two are being used in the projects above, and the third is with a shawl project that's been ... "resting." (It begins with an 8-stitch lace border that's repeated 70-odd times. I crapped out around repeat number 40.) I can't remove that marker because there really is no way to recover if I lose the number of repeats I'm on.

So I shouldn't start anything, is what I'm saying. No stitch markers, no new projects. I only have two hands, Christmas is coming; I want these sweaters done before the snow hits. How much knitting time do I even think I have?

But it's starting to get cold now, especially in the mornings, and I have this beautiful skein of Alisha Goes Around Richness of Martens that I've been saving up, and I finally found the perfect fingerless mitten pattern for it, and ...



Oh, screw it.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone!

naptime is for cooking

(nb — I started this post two days ago. That's kind of what my life has been like recently.)


In honour of Marcella Hazan — although, truth be told, I have no idea which book or class this comes from. This is her bolognese sauce, more or less (perhaps even her "famous" one, according to the New York Times obituary), though I doubt she would acknowledge it as such. My knife skills, patience and available time being what they are, I utterly fail at making a proper soffritto — and anyway, I rather like the rustic look that identifiable chunks of carrot and celery give. So: diced onions, yes, as small as I can stand to make them, and fine for the home, but it would probably make a true gastronome weep.

Anyway, this has by our go-to bolognese sauce for years, since my brother-in-law made it for us many winters ago and I cribbed the recipe from him. (I have no idea what the state of his soffritto is — although, knowing him, it is probably meticulous and excellent.) We make it all the time, almost always only in winter, and the first one of the season always feels like the start of something — an acknowledgement of the incoming cold season, maybe. Just the smell of it makes me think of snows outside, the smell of frost, the comfort of the warmth indoors and the quality of winter light.

It's the sort of food that is deeply, almost sacrilegiously out of place in the warm months, and its reappearance made me happy — even though it also meant, inevitably, the reappearance of woollies and cold and being able to see my breath in the morning.

(Pd says that we've been having a mild fall. I say we haven't been experiencing the same season at all.)


I've finally finished version 2 of the Spanish Inquisition's Roo coat. (The above picture was taken yesterday, when I was about 20 rows from the end of the second sleeve.) It's going into a Eucalan bath and getting a wet block tonight. Then I'll knit a button band and put those penguin buttons on it. The toggle closures were actually one of my favourite parts of this coat, but ... I've knit this coat twice now and I want her to wear it. I am not above petty bribery, and the kid loves her penguins.

things undone

Last week was a bit of a doozy. It started out fair, if tiring — why I no longer remember — and ended with a small medical emergency in my family and a lot of dashing back and forth. Rest assured, everything (and everyone) is reasonably fine — but it didn't leave a lot of time for getting on with things. In fact, everything that could be dropped, was (and so were some things that probably shouldn't have been, probably).

For instance, I have not really knit. I have my traditional fall sweater:

I'm a few inches farther along now; I've divided the sleeves from the body (it's a raglan), but fundamentally it looks about the same. I am loving the yarn, though: Manos del Uruguay Fino, 70% merino and 30% silk, in "Silhouette." It looks like a lovely green darkening to turquoise in artificial light, and exactly the colour of wellworn denim in the sun.

It is also an adult sweater-tunic knit in light fingering with 3mm needles, though, so I wouldn't expect this to be finished any time soon.


Another example of things undone: garlic. I'd meant to plant garlic this year. I didn't get around to it last year; the year before I had merely plugged some conventional garlic into the ground (it may have been locally grown, but I honestly don't remember), but this year I was Going To Do It. Growing garlic is ridiculously easy: you plug the cloves into a plot of ground in the fall, then summer comes and you harvest. The demands on the soil are light; there aren't really any required amendments, no trimming or deadheading. And the more harvests you make, the better garlic you get.

The devil, of course, is in the details. I'd meant to buy order proper garlic online (likely 'Music,' which seems to grow well in Ontario), but the growers didn't take orders until late summer. Ah, but I was sick throughout August. I checked last week and they had stopped taking orders for 2013.

Okay, I thought. I can probably get some at the Garlic Festival. Which is a great idea and would absolutely have worked if only the Garlic Festival hadn't happened two Sundays ago.

I want to plant tulips this year (that got missed last year, too), but we were too busy this weekend to buy the bulbs, so we'll see. I do remember one year that I actually put them in the ground on my Remembrance Day holiday, so there's time. But there's also the distinct possibility that the universe is trying to tell me that salvaging the fall is pointless; I might as well skip directly to winter — for these came in the mail last week:



... which is a little discombobulating, even for me. (And I am sharing it with you so that you may be as freaked out as I.) I read them, of course — I always do — but it still feels a bit wrong. Like starting to cram for finals in February.