Fire Ox Vs Metal Dragon

Here we are at mid-June

2011-06-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

Not much knitting (or crocheting) progress to report here. I've been getting out & taking more photos of late.
This is one from last weekend that I like quite a lot. It's from the IBM Glen, a scenic spot behind the old IBM country club. The Waterman Center owns it. There are some inviting signs when you leave the parking lot, warning one to watch out for the poison ivy (appreciated) and to call 911 if you see vandalism going on (how often does vandalism happen to prompt a sign like that?). I'd been there once before and was a bit put off by most of the trails being old asphalt roadways. The asphalt's mossy, some of the old roadways are steep, and I was picturing the potential for falling.
Mossy old asphalt, bordered by one to two feet of low-lying poison ivy.
But this last weekend, I finally got down into the glen itself and was very pleased with the experience. This place is only about a ten minute drive from home, yet feels more remote. The creek with all its falls, small and large, is lovely, and the topography & water block out the valley's traffic noises. A very relaxing place.
Until I realized how much poison ivy there is.
But still, relaxing.

Goodbye great yarn store in Oneonta! Hello Babette Blanket!

2011-05-28T05:18:00.001-07:00

I've started the Babette Blanket, due to a windfall purchase of yarn in Oneonta.
27 skeins (2 skeins each of 13 colors, and 1 skein of a 14th - not sure if there was only 1 skein, or if I dropped one in all the excitement/waiting in line with my arms full of yarn until some kind person brought me a basket) of Ella Rae Silkience at 75% off. The yarn is 41% cotton, 39% modal, 12% silk, and 8% rayon. I loved the range of colors and the sheen that the fiber has. On further reflection, I'm not sure what kind of useful blanket cotton/modal/silk/rayon will make, but it will be pretty. I've so far made 10 of the 50 little two-round squares for the pattern. Many more squares to be made. Like quilting, it will be fun to combine the colors in different ways.
At this 75% off sale, I also purchased 9 skeins of Elsabeth Lavold Silky Wool in a charcoal gray,
And 8 skeins in 4 different colors of Ella Rae Kasbah. Those I don't have a real plan for (and if I'd bought more yarn that I just liked with no plan for it, I could have cleaned out half the store, and my checking account). A woman in line behind me suggested throw pillow covers, which was an excellent suggestion. I could make use of approx 520 yards of 4 different colors, and have something to adorn the living room.

Springtime

2011-05-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

[Wow - coming by to check on the blog & there's a comment! Hi Marcia!]
It's been a lovely springtime. The grand family trip out to the Midwest went pretty well, lots & lots of driving, but the little guy did quite well.
On the crafting front, I finished off the trucks sweater, it fits & has been worn!

It might need to be a little longer if it's going to fit next year. If so, I have an ambitious plan: unravel one row above the ribbing, knit another couple of inches, then graft the new knitting onto the body of the sweater.

A last-minute project for the big Midwestern driving trip was the Bile bag (or for my Ravelry purposes the Put a Bird on It Bag). This involved learning double knitting, which is somewhat interesting. And somewhat tedious. The result is quite pleasing, but the process... I'm about half done, and should be able to stick it out.

Because starting things is the way to go, I also have started two more scarves, one involving learning another technique - brioche knitting. I had bought a book on brioche, and have had some lovely skeins of alpaca as a gift from my sister-in-law, in two colors. Two-color brioche makes a lovely corrugated effect, and seems like it will be an extremely soft & lofty scarf.

And, tonight I cast on for yet another project. Seems like a bit too many, but I found out today that one of my son's daycare teachers is leaving for a new job. Mindy's been really great, so a small scarf - a Drop Stitch Scarf in KnitPicks Imagination sock yarn (Mermaid Lagoon - blue & purple with a little green). Greatly helpful to have one project with a deadline - Mindy's last day is in a week and a half.

Car trip!

2011-03-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

Car trip tomorrow, so I had to come up with some knitting. Thinking more about gifts, I decided I haven't been making enough. At some point, if there aren't enough people I know to make gifts for, I'm really going to have to get into charity knitting. Just need a good idea for a specific one there...
But for now, there's a new baby in the great pool of co-workers, and I'm going to make her a Milo. Also, I may start a Strangling Vine scarf. Because it's good to have a backup project. The Owls sweater for N & the neck-down cardigan for me are still out there, but figuring out shaping is not a task for the car, so those can wait just a little longer. (At this point, I better figure out if the Owls sweater needs to go up a size for next year.)
And, I just heard earlier that tomorrow there will be a "Supermoon!"

Bit of Ugh

2011-03-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

[Well, interesting how it's been nearly 2 years since I posted on here.]
Knitting satisfaction seems to have ground to a halt, and I thought it might help to write a bit about it. It could be winter doldrums, except that this has been a lovely winter, and winter is generally good knitting weather. No complaints with having a lap full of knitted fabric in the winter. It's more likely a part of a more generalized doldrums - with what I do for work, with my lack of getting outside as much, and with the physical effects these are having on me.
But I still like to make things, I'm just not happy with how these things are turning out.
Such as:
Not one, but two hats I knit in 2010 was very happy with, and which then grew - and now are unwearable.
First, there was my version of Soulemama's "My Hat of Choice," in a dark purple Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed. I really loved this hat. Hat was great, then hat fell off my head onto the floor beside the garbage at daycare, so I washed it gently in Eucalan. And it grew. Now it just kind of sags off my head, down into my eyes. Well at least I can unknit the yarn and reuse it.
Unlike the next one, my version of the Bryony Cap in some purple Manos del Uruguay. I've had the yarn for at least a couple years, had tried it on a couple of different projects, and not been happy with it. The Bryony actually calls for Manos, so it should be a perfect fit. And it was. It was beautiful. For about four months. And then it grew. On its own this time, not with any washing. So, I tried to wash it in warm water to make it shrink a bit. Instead, it seemed to grow even bigger (not to mention losing a lot of color). So, in some bizarre fit of making sure this yarn would be done forever, I tossed it in the dryer, on a delicate setting. And so it felted. Not in a way that turns it back into a wearable hat. The best suggestion from friends at work was that I felt it more, and it could be a decent bowl.
More unsatisfying knitting? Sure.
There was the owl sweater for my little guy. I had been given some nice durable acrylic/wool blue Patons Decor from a friend at work that fit the gauge. I followed the directions in the pattern (from 1983 or so, but really - have children's bodies changed since the early '80s? Apparently). And came out with sleeves that were too long and too narrow. They're set-in sleeves, too, so the whole torso plan called for them being narrow at the armpit. I unknit sleeves, and body back to a reasonable armpit level, reknit body back up to the neck again, and haven't managed to reconfigure the sleeves to actually fit.
Then, there was the trucks sweater, again for the little boy. First off, I made the wrong size. He was currently wearing 2T, and the pattern jumped from 2T to 4T, so I made 2T. That makes sense, right? No, not really. It came out too small. So I unknit, and reknit in size 4T. This one seems to be successful, except that little boy will not try it on. Possibly remembering the 2T version, he insists, "That's too small."
Also in the fall, there was the ultimate disaster of knitting-for-little-boy, the batwing poncho in Morehouse Farm's 2-ply merino. This project was an utter slog, and just did not feel right - taking this nice soft merino & knitting scads of boring, boring garter stitch with it. And, little boy absolutely hated it. My husband & I managed to wrestle it onto the 2-year-old, and he had it back off in probably 10 seconds. So, not even a photo of that one. I frogged the yarn for happier uses.
And so, it's been the winter of scarves.
One dragon skin scarf made with the batwing merino. It's coming along. I've knit up 3 of the 4 skeins, and it seems like it should be a little longer. Not 4 skeins long, but a little more than 3.

One one-row lace scarf made with some purple yarn I purchased years & years ago at the old Cornucopia on Washington Avenue in Endicott. Sometime after I wound the skein into a ball, the label went missing. I do have about a yard left so I could do some burn tests to at least figure out what fiber(s) are in the yarn. This scarf is pretty, but so far too light-weight for the weather so far.

And, one feather & fan scarf made with some luscious-looking Universal Yarn Classic Shades from the current Cornucopia in Endwell. The color and texture are yummy, but over time, working with the yarn, I was feeling the 70% acrylic more & more. Now I'm not sure if it's too long, too skinny, or just too acrylic. Something doesn't feel quite right. My husband's niece liked it back in January, so maybe it will end up a gift this weekend..

Filling out the winter's knitwork, is the in progress cardigan in gifted Reynolds Chesapeake. Should be a nice, basic sweater, but I think I'm just afraid that there's no sweater that will fit this ungainly shape I'm in now. In hopes of making this work out better, I've just downloaded the Fit to Flatter collection from Stash, Knit Repeat. Let's see if Amy H's plans will help me ensure that this will work out.
OK, so a lot of frustration, but one piece worked out beautifully for a Christmas gift - a Hemlock Ring Blanket made with Cascade Yarns Ecological Wool for my sister-in-law. I loved working with this yarn, and loved the end result. Maybe more gifts are in order?
Seems like it's generally time for more thinking & more planning...

Red Food

2009-03-13T16:44:00.001-07:00

Beet Risotto

Tasty, and oh so visually appealing.

A Boy and His Quilts

2009-02-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well, Nikolas has obviously grown quite a bit in the last three months. And, he has already amassed a fine collection of three quilts.
First one started, I believe, was this colorful one which I planned out.
I had made a very similar one about 2(?) years ago for friend DVP 's son DAP. I used a number of curated prints from baby quilts made as gifts for others - a fish print from a quilt for C&D's baby, alligator prints from quilts for R&M's boys, dragon prints from E&A's baby's quilt, etc. By Nov 13, when I entered the hospital for what turned out to be a week's bed rest, the quilt was not done. Some work happened while little N was in the NICU for the remainder of November & December, but it was not a terribly creative time. Finally, the day N came home from the hospital, my mom took it back to PA to do the quilting & binding, so it has much more masterful quilting than if I had done it myself.
Next, 2nd started, but 1st finished: the quilt my mom planned and made for little N.
I love how the blocks come together and form larger patterns. Also, the quilting is fantastic - my mom machine-quilted motifs from the main patterned fabric - images like a cat, a dog, a trumpet, etc - into the main blocks.
And finally, a quilted play mat that I thought I might make from remnants of K's work jeans. Then I remembered how little spare time I've had lately, and how unlikely it is I would make such a thing, so I suggested it to my mom.
And she made it so much better than what I had imagined. It's made from pieces of my jeans from high school in the 1980s, so there are fancy embroidered back pockets, as well as my own additions - bleaching & doodling. It has plaid flannel sashing between the blocks & the jeans pockets can hold little toys.
The greatest success on the knitting front has been the burp cloths from Mason-Dixon Knitting & the this-could-be-the-last feather & fan blanket.
The little guy certainly does seem to love his blankie (equating "sleeping soundly while wrapped in" with "love").

Nikolas

2008-12-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Our little boy had to get out into the world ahead of schedule.

Nikolas's due date was January 9, 2009.

He was born November 20, 2008.

He's in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), but doing well.

October summary

2008-10-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

As DC has pointed out, October is almost to an end. Looking back, it was a lovely and productive October.

My parents came up to visit the weekend that friends from work threw a baby shower for me & LS. The shower was fun, and thanks again to anyone involved who might conceivably read this.My mom & I had lunch in Skaneateles,

and the next day the three of us went for a walk in Binghamton Univ's Nature Preserve, with lots of gorgeous fall colors.

The next weekend, I drove down to New Jersey to visit a friend from college and his wife & son. 5-year-old son loves drawing, and is very fond of Disney princesses. Yea for subverting gender stereotypes, but does it have to be Disney?

This would be the Delaware Water Gap, with a very low water level in the Delaware River.

A number of crafty projects have progressed close to finishing, which is good as pregnancy is taking away the use of my hands. The top for the baby quilt is all pieced together and I have backing fabric, so I'll get those combined at some point. Still have the Lizard Ridge blanket to seam up, and a couple of baby clothes to finish up.

Such as this baby surprise jacket, which has mysteriously uploaded sideways.

I bought a pack & play with bassinet top, so our son will have a place to sleep in our room until we're ready to move him to his own room (or until his own room is ready, which it is definitely not yet).

Last night we had snow and it looked fantastic with many of the fall leaves still on the trees.

Quick & colorful

2008-10-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend, my parents were up visiting, so Sunday my mom & I cut out 108 3" squares from my pile of colorful fabric. On Saturday we had visited Patchwork Plus, outside of Skaneateles, NY, where I bought the border fabric for this quilt.

Yesterday, when I came home from work I had 108 little squares and 6 colors of border fabric.

By a little after 11pm, I had 12 blocks. Next step is to sew these blocks together & use the remaining 60 or so 3" squares to make a border.

The pattern is from Quick Colorful Quilts. Quick? yes. Colorful? Certainly!

Fall Projects

2008-08-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

I started organizing my quilting fabric, and this is a starting palette for a new baby quilt. Many of these fabrics are left over from other baby quilts I've made, and I saved the pieces b/c I like them a lot. Especially four across the top - the dragons on dark purple, weird mer-folk on blue, striped and spotted cats and dogs on yellow, and madly grinning black cat on red.
I'm thinking to make these into something like one I made for a friend last year, with smallish squares of the colorful fabrics and sashing strips of one or more nearly solid fabric in primary or secondary color(s).
Now, the next photo is not my own project. It's a quilt my mom made for a charity auction. The centers of all those stars are made in a kaleidoscope fashion using 6 pieces of the exact same pattern section of a print. So, I believe that all the star centers are made using the fabric in the outer border. There was a request to show some of my mom's quilts b/c she is a grand master quilter and wins prizes for her quilts. This is the first picture I came up with of one of hers. I'll post more if I come up with some more photos, and so long as she doesn't mind.
It's going to be a busy fall. Last Friday was week 20 of the pregnancy, so half-way through & so far all's well. And since it would be best to get the dissertation done before the baby comes, it will be a busy fall.

Dress-Up Day

2008-08-19T18:31:00.001-07:00

Last weekend was the end of the season for the Sterling Renaissance Faire, and with about 10 hours notice, I bought a ticket to head up with DC & BB.

We all ended up buying some new duds. We all loved our lace-edged linen shirts or chemise, as the case may be. Look how nice the ladies on the right and left look. However, this dress makes me (in the middle) look more pregnant than anything so far has. Is that a good thing? Hmm...

Knitting Update

2008-07-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

I've been lax on posting about it, but some knitting has been done this summer.
As usual, gifts actually get finished. The first one was a Pinwheel Blanket with a lace edging (Plymouth Dreambaby dk) for a friend's new daughter, born in July. It's a varigated pink-blue-yellow, with a cream edging. Fun to knit, though the couple dozen rows seemed endless. If I make it again, I might do worsted wt instead of dk.
The 2nd FO just shipped out yesterday - a cotton hat for my cousin's new daughter, born in March. Friends are so much more immediate than cousins. I have 16 cousins on my mom's side, and while I like them, I don't see them very often. This cousin and his family live in the San Francisco area, so I spent some time trying to come up with something to make that was smaller than a blanket, and appropriate for the climate. The pattern is quite descriptively titled "Children's Cotton Hats" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, made in Plymouth Fantasy Naturale (fancy name for a cotton yarn). The bear didn't cooperate so well as a model, but I was in a hurry to send it off, before the child's head got any bigger than it already must be.
The Lizard Ridge blanket has been languishing in the heat. The blocks are done, three of the columns are sewn together, and then it just got too hot to sit around sewing a wool blanket together.
That leaves the two current projects, the Lady Eleanor (from Scarf Style) in Silk Garden,
And yet another baby blanket in Cascade Kaleidoscope dk. I found this nice denim colored yarn last winter while working out of town & staying in Oneonta. They have a nice yarn store there (Knitting it All Together, 175 Main St). They are friendly, have a nice selection of yarn, and share their space with a natural food store.
Perhaps more later, about hilarious letters from health insurance companies...

Rats

2008-07-11T05:33:00.001-07:00

I went for a walk in the university's nature preserve last night, since it was the first day of nice weather we've had for quite a while, and I'm not feeling as tired as I have been for a couple of months.

It was a successful evening in wildlife sighting - a doe and fawn, a blue heron, a couple of large turtles (anonymous to me since they stayed 90% underwater), a snake, several frogs.

And a rat.

More specifically, a muskrat. The least camera-shy creature in the nature preserve, apparently. According to Wikipedia, approximately 4x the size of a normal rat, they often live in the same habitat with beavers (this is the case for the nature preserve), have duels to the death in the springtime, and in the Archdiocese of Detroit, can be considered fish and eaten on Ash Wednesday and Lenten Fridays.

Catch & Release

2008-07-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

On the way home from Wegman's this afternoon, I spied a little turtle attempting to cross a busy road. Naturally enough, when I came back to get him, he (or she - I wouldn't begin to know how to check on a turtle) responded by running away from me, further into the road. Fortunately, no cars came along, and I am faster than a tiny turtle.
Snapping turtle, as it turns out.
So I took him home, put him in a bucket, and K & I walked him down about 4 blocks to the Susquehanna River. We could hear 4 wheelers in the woods, so we took the turtle right down to the river. When we got close, he started trying to climb up the bucket walls. And when we put him on the ground, he booked right off...
...straight for the river.
Once in the river, he took a deep breath (snout sticking out of the water, with body to the right),
and then settled right in - can't really see him in the last photo, but he's right in the middle, half buried in the river mud.
Finally, he moved on to a denser tangle of underwater branches - just what this website said a snapping turtle would like to do.

Squares are stacking up

2008-04-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

The Lizard Ridge blanket is moving right along. I now have 20 completed squares, which leaves 4 more for the size in the pattern. I'll compare it to a good sized flannel quilt that we currently use on the couch. If it's about that size, then 24 squares will be good. If it's drastically smaller, I will consider more squares.

I've also finished the Candle Flame Shawl in 3 skeins of Southwest Trading Co's Bamboo. It came out to a good size, and the Bamboo yarn has a lovely feel to it.

Parting shot of Bean (one of the household's metal dragons):

Logical, indecisive mechanic?

2008-03-27T04:12:00.001-07:00

You Are An ISTP

The Mechanic

You are calm and collected, even in the most difficult of situations.
A person of action and self-direction, you love being independent.
To outsiders you seem impulsive, surprising, and unpredictable.
You are good at understanding how all things work, except for people.

In love, you tend to be very easy going and flexible.
The only thing you can't stand for is someone trying to change you or your life.

At work, you can stay completely calm under pressure. You handle stress well.
You would make an excellent pilot, forensic pathologist, or athlete.

How you see yourself: Logical, flexible, and unconventional

When other people don't get you, they see you as: Indecisive, flippant, and disrespctful

What's" Your Personality Type?

If I were an Austen heroine...

2008-03-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

Take the Quiz here!

It's been a while since I've read Sense & Sensibility, so I'll have to wait until next week's PBS Jane Austen to see what I think of this. I think Elinor Dashwood was a good heroine. At least I didn't come out as Fanny Price or Emma Woodhouse!

Kingfisher of Thankfulness

2008-03-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

(Lesser known compatriot of the bluebird of happiness)

So, LC went to Boston, and brought me back this awesome yarn - thanks! It's Colinette Cadenza, in colorway Kingfisher. I could make a kingfisher stuatue cozy with it. But probably won't.

Free the Owls!!

2008-03-09T05:12:00.000-07:00

Owls behind bars - what kind of people are we? Well, this is a little screech owl who apparently flew into an ugly glass building on campus. He was sitting at the base of the building Friday morning, being as hunched up and inconspicuous as possible, but still tending to draw a crowd since he was on the sidewalk just off a major walking route from parking lot to the center of campus. A professor from biology brought the cage up, and we called a wildlife rehab person, who came later in the day to pick him up. The juice botle in the background was a warm water bottle for the owl in case his/her temp was low (good thing to remember for stunned birds - they might need to warm up).
On knitting fronts, the candle flame shawl is coming along, though I'm wondering what size I'll get out of these 3 skeins. Some calculations yesterday on excel gave me a height of 24" from the point of the triangle to the long side that goes across the shoulders. Doesn't quite seem like a full shawl. Does that size make for a hippie head wrap? Or a pleasant dash of color scarf kind of thing?

On a fence

2008-03-02T05:29:00.000-08:00

So, I'm wondering... Lizards or miters? (Dearest Cupcake, you're not going to like this, but then again, you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so what are you going to do about it?)

I've been working along on this mitered square blanket (ala Mason Dixon Knitting) that I had started with my 12-skein stash of Noro Kureyon colorway #128, thinking that 12 skeins might make a whole blanket. It doesn't, not to my concept of something to cuddle up with on the couch. So, I bought 4 more skeins of Kureyon in 2 different colors, which gets me up to a bit more of a blanket.

So, this morning, I took a dive into the yarn stash, Noro section, and found these 3 squares I started at some point for the Lizard Ridge blanket.

So, is there any chance that I'm nuts enough (and spendthrift enough) to make 2 Noro blankets? The simpler option is obviously to frog these 3 LR squares, knit up 8 more M squares and be done with the mitered square blanket. But, of course, I went and browsed through some of the 559 LR projects on ravelry... And, well, the LR seems a lot more interesting to have on hand.

I am not 100% indecision, though. I've been working on the Candle Flame shawl in Southwest Trading Company's bamboo. It's lovely. The yarn's rather slippery, so that I actually have to twine it around my fingers to keep the tension proper, as I hear people generally do with knitting. The stitch definition is fantastic, very nice for this lace pattern.

And, I've even finished things.

Earlier this year, I made the Koolhaus hat in Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed (though there is a problem here, it's too small, and keeps popping off my head, making me into a conehead - I'll probably redo it b/c the pattern and the yarn are both quite nice).

No problems with the Trellis Scarf in Rowan Silk Haze. The pattern was fun to do, the yarn is gorgeous, and I worked out how to make both ends of the scarf have matching points.

And, I made a Be My Dischcloth for my mom. Since Valentine's Day is my birthday, my parents used to give me some present each year with hearts on it. So, when I saw the dishcloth, I thought I might as well reciprocate. And, washing dishes or wiping up spills seems like a great use for something with hearts on it. And it was a bit of a lesson in reading the pattern. I cast on the 47 sts, did the seed stitch border, and started following the chart. K & I were watching a movie & I wondered now & then why the dishcloth was coming out so rectangular, but kept soldiering on. When I got all the way through, it looked like the picture, but kind of squashed. Which would be because the chart is for every other row - the alternate rows are just plain st st. So, reknit, followed directions, soaked, blocked & popped in mail in time for Feb. 14.

At least one, or what I've been doing at work...

2008-02-24T04:54:00.001-08:00

Here's some real archaeological excitement - lay out all the pieces of broken dishes, plates, bottles, etc, from an archaeological site, and try to figure out what the minimum number of vessels are. My first guess is there's at least one here. Maybe 5.

There is the occasional small charming scene on transfer-printed ceramics. And this one's an identifiable pattern, too, with dates of manufacture! (We like dates.)
And I had a birthday the week before last. This cake was a shared cake between me (Valentine's Day) & the co-worker born on Feb 15, Susan B. Anthony's birthday.

There's knitting going on too. I'll have to post about that next. If the tiny, tiny pieces of ceramics don't drive me crazy first.

And now this

2008-02-18T04:44:00.000-08:00

All our beautiful snow, gone overnight.

This is the backyard, with puddles of water on the frozen ground. Bleh.
On a brighter note, I found this great quilt pattern in the April 2008 McCall's Quilting.

Alternate color schemes could be

greenish blues? (probably not just these, now that I see them in the photo, there's so little variation in this bunch)or autumnal reds, browns, yellows & greens

Maybe a trip to the Candor quilt store sometime?

I love winter!

2008-02-17T04:42:00.000-08:00

Not That Potter, The Other One

2008-01-27T03:34:00.000-08:00

Well, after much-needed help from my mom with the triangle piecing, LC & I had a quilting day yesterday on the Beatrix Potter quilt.

So the quilt for Benjamin (born June 2007) is significantly closer to completion - the entire top is pieced together and the backing, binding and top are pinned together. Now there's just quilting, adding on binding, and the unpleasant tacking down the back of the binding to the backing. Somehow the quilt came out huge (that somehow would probably be b/c we designed the quilt from the center out, and wanted a good-sized piece of the center design, and then the addition of 4 borders would kind of make it get a lot bigger). Not such a bad thing that it's huge, since Benjamin is a growing boy. We had just enough backing fabric to cover it all. The only problem is that we came up short on the binding fabric, due to my losing the original outer border strips (blue) that we cut last...May? June? So, the binding reserve went to making new border strips.

Since this is my first post of the new year - Happy New Year!

Christmas in Clarion

2007-12-31T07:50:00.000-08:00

Sunrises,

sunsets,

& a visit to Oil Creek State Park - near Titusville, where oil was first drilled in North America.

See the old barrel - I assume it's there, in a state park, because it's historical? This came as a surprise to me, but people are drilling for oil again in northwestern PA. I thought they got it all in the 19th century, but apparently with the high prices now, it's worth going back for whatever's left here.
We also had a great dinner at the Black Forest Restaurant und Bier Haus, in Parker, PA. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Parker (why, I don't know), I highly recommend the sauerbraten & K recommends the wurst.
And on the knitting front... I gave up on the feathery lace stole for being just way too boring for the lovely deep purple Kidsilk Haze, so I frogged that and started the Trellis Scarf from Spring '06 Interweave Knits. I'm very happy with the TS, and just got to the half-way point with it last night.
Also started another feather & fan baby blanket. I have been working on wraps, then realizing that I don't wear wraps. They kind of bug me - drape this end over the shoulder & it looks all right, until I move & it falls off. So, apparently, I like having a large knitting project to work on. I found this great yarn (Cascade Kaleidoscope dk) at Knitting It All Together, the lovely yarn shop in Oneonta, NY. Also, since people do keep having babies, it will come in handy sooner or later.

Korknisse!

2007-12-20T20:02:00.000-08:00

After receiving a handsome & tall korknisse (pegnisse?) from DC, I finished my own slew...

Hooray for hoarding little balls of yarn - it really can come in handy!

Off to Georgia!

2007-12-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

Elephant and Penguin get ready to set off for Georgia with a bag of espresso bark, while red dragon bids them adieu.

Good-bye!

Elephant!

2007-12-09T16:48:00.000-08:00

Elephant for a friend's little girl - This was a fun project to make from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

While I was working the body up from the legs, someone asked me "Are you knitting a pair of small gray pants?"

Seven Things

2007-11-20T17:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been memed by Basenji Boy, so... Let's see, seven random things about me?
1. I screech when I see snakes (snakes in the wild, not in a zoo or pet store - not that pathetic). I'm not scared of them anymore, but I still screech when I see them. In a related vein, last week I was screening dirt for artifacts (archaeology), and a hibernating frog showed up in the dirt - I screeched! (The frog was moving sluggishly, we tried to make him comfortable in another spot.)
2. Book series I loved as a child: C.S. Lewis' Narnia books; L. Frank Baum's Oz books; L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books; and Madeline L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time" trilogy.
3. I'm really, really annoyed with apostrophes stuck in plurals, as in the 11/20 Cooperstown Crier's headline "Veteran's Honored on Their Day." Aside from oddities like children & moose, plurals are not that tough! (also, misuse of "your" and "you're" - last weekend there was a handlettered sign in front of Home Depot using "you'r" in place of "your" - first time I've seen that one.)
4. I have specialized equipment for making lefse, thin Norwegian potato pancakes.
5. I'm a fiber snob, a pie crust elitist, but have nothing against cake from a mix. I've tried making cake from scratch; it didn't seem worth the bother.
6. In the last year or so, I've developed a crush on the semi-colon and have probably been overusing it.
7. My parents named me "Claire" while they were living in the town of Clarion, in Clarion County, near the Clarion River, where I would attend Clarion Area Elementary School and Clarion Area High School, and where they worked at Clarion University. Why? They said they didn't expect to end up staying there. The only time I recall a really likely chance of moving, though, it was going to be to Eau Claire, WI!
I'm not going to forward this meme for two reasons: 1) seems too much like a chain letter, and I hate chain letters with a passion; and 2) BB's already sent it to everyone I know.

Peppermint petals

2007-11-10T12:22:00.001-08:00

Since I seem to have hit the wall for now on baby blankets, I decided to make a couple of the petal bibs from One Skein for the most recent friend's baby. AC Moore had a bunch of new colors of Sugar & Cream, including a bunch that are striped with each strand in a different color. Though I generally oppose pink, I really like this one - you can't see it in the photo, but the yarn is made up of separate strands of white, dark pink, and pale pink. It just looks like a tasty mint to me - am I thinking of Canada Mints? This pattern is quick & fun, the construction is ingenious. The only downside will be the 12 ends to weave in for one little bib. But then, I can start the green one. (See my hand on the cat? He was in a really "you're looking here, so I will put myself here" mood, so I had to hold him down to take the photo. Silly people think cats are aloof.)

And, here, to remind myself that I need to be working on dissertation writing (!!!), is a photo of some old timey knitting from Colorado Fuel & Iron's "Camp & Plant," the company magazine in the early 20th century.

Interesting Quiz Results

2007-11-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big follower of the Harry Potter universe, so I'm not sure if this is a good thing...
Quizilla has decided that Slytherin would be my house. And they gave me a song, too:
Do these two go together somehow?

And what is my dear K?

So, apparently I'm conniving and he's honorable?

What was in the Bag?

2007-11-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

Why, thank you for asking, Ms. Bestitched...
DC has shown off (most of) her loot, and MOD made off with quite a haul from the Sheep & Wool Festival, including a few skeins of beaded 100% bunny yarn.
Here's what filled up my tote bag:
Some bluey-purple mohair that has (as of last night) turned into a scarf. I thought there would be enough for the Feathery Lace Stole from Exquisite Little Knits, but I was (way) off in yardage estimation and yarn weight. This is quite a bit thicker than the Rowan Silkhaze that the pattern calls for. So, I ended up having enough to make one feather & fan patterned scarf. The colors are lovely - darker than it looks in the photo.
Three skeins of this lovely, lovely Mountain Colors Barefoot - noticing a color trend here? Maybe MCB would make a good Feathery Lace Stole? We'll see what this turns into.
Two huge skeins of something not bluey-purple, this Peruvian Tweed alpaca yarn. It's so soft, mmmm (makes you hum like an alpaca). I was thinking of some kind of wrap with this b/c it would be luscious to wrap up in. I've been experimenting with one lace pattern, but the soft, soft alapaca seems to make the lace pattern kind of - mushy? Maybe Clapotis? (And here's some of the great handiness of ravelry - I found someone else who had made Clapotis in this yarn. She's very happy with it, and recommended a size 7 needle rather than the size 8 the pattern calls for.)
And I bought one very handsome ceramic button from the Briar Rose Fibers booth.

Oh so knitterly

2007-10-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well, first off, there was the Sheep & Wool Festival.
DC, M'OD & I travelled down to Rhinebeck for the day on Saturday. There were indeed sheep and wool, and also alpacas, llamas, bunnies & border collies.

Then, today, an invitation to ravelry - just in time for figuring out what to do with the new Sheep & Wool Festival yarn!

Autumn in the Adirondacks

2007-10-06T19:03:00.001-07:00

Oh yes, so beautiful!

Honeymoon

2007-09-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

Full moon over Rockport, MA

A look back & current projects

2007-09-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

I came upon this Polaroid in my parents' photo album & borrowed it to scan - me (on the left) knitting, 1983. Obviously creating thrills a-plenty for the person on the right.

Argosy scarf is blocking on the ironing board. The shade of purple doesn't come through so well in this photo. I made it wider than the original, since I'm not a real skinny-scarf kind of person. It still seems kind of skinny to me, but it was also curling like crazy before blocking.

And Argosy baby blanket underway. I'm making Kay Gardiner's (of Mason Dixon Knitting fame) square-ish version of Vyvyan Neel's design (would Vyvyan Neel appreciate knowing I once had a cat named Vyvyan (named after Vyvyan on "The Young Ones.")?). (Excessive use of parentheses in one sentence??)So, the blanket started with one little square, and keeps expanding to the left & right until I'm half way through the yarn, then I'll start descreasing squares to get back to one little square at the other end. I found the other day that I have an odd number of skeins, so I've been pondering whether to just see when it feels like about halfway through skein #9, or whether to actually separate this skein into 2 parts & weigh to get the exact halfway point. I'm using Jaeger Baby Merino, 100% Merino wool, machine-washable. Not quite sure who it's for yet, but there are 3 more babies coming up, between work & cousins, so no lack of potential recipients.

And, yes, getting married in 2 days. Just a few little things to do between today & tomorrow. K's driving up to Syracuse to pick up the best man, who just had to move down to SC about a month ago. My mom & I will look for a bouquet. And I'm just having a little quiet time with the computer early in the morning.

Latest feather & fan

2007-09-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

Here's the most recent feather & fan baby blanket (in the spare room which is filling up with wedding gear). I was very happy to get it all done & ready to ship off on Saturday. The recepient will be at our wedding, but it seems a little awkward to be giving people gifts at your own wedding. My favorite image of the wrongness is the family waking out to their car with a wrapped-up gife & someone asking "Changed your mind?"

This one is in Plymouth Yarn's Dreambaby DK, 50% acrylic microfiber, 50% nylon, in white with little dabs of blue & purple. I'm pretty happy with how the color spots worked out with the pattern. I still haven't found a suitable replacement for Sirdar Snuggly Baby Care DK, for knitting these blankets, but maybe something will pop up eventually. I may give KnitPicks Swish DK a shot.

I've also finished knitting the Argosy scarf in Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool, a lovely yarn to work with. Right now it still has ends sticking out, and is curling like a mf, so no photos as yet. And I've started the Argosy baby blanket, with Jaeger Baby Merino. So far, it's very satisfying, making a squishy soft fabric.

Trippy Needles!

2007-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Wow - look at those! I've been thinking about getting a set of KnitPicks Options interchangeable circs, & now they've come out with them in trippy colored wood! Whee! Right when I'm getting married & have no $$ - what were they thinking?? And I just bought some plain wood size 0 dpns for sock knitting! Mere plain, un-colored wood!

Arizona

2007-09-03T19:08:00.001-07:00

The baby blanket in Knit Picks Shine Sport headed off to my cousin in Arizona this weekend. It turned out rather nice, though I found a spot right near the beginning where I had apparently dropped a stitch, then picked it up, but missed one row. That's the best I can figure out. I didn't go so far as to take a picture of the flaw, though.

The Shine Sport was a pain to knit, but feels quite nice. I'm thinking it would make a really nice lacy summer cardigan. Like maybe the Chic Knits CeCe (only not so cropped, so must remember to factor in more yarn).

When I downloaded photos from the camera today, I found this tasty, colorful salsa. This was loosely following a recipe for blueberry salsa, but very loosely, so I'll just list the ingredients: tomatoes, vidalia onions, jalepeno pepper, blueberries & mango pieces. It was really, really good.

And this weekend I was treated to a lovely bridal shower, organized by LC and hosted by MO'D. My mom came up from PA, K's mom & sis came down from Albany & I got to open a package containing lubricant & naughty dice in front of them. That's kind of required for a bridal shower, isn't it? Thanks everyone & especially thanks LC!!!!!

80% & 55%?

2007-08-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

Well, just a little update, without any big excitement. I finally received the two more skeins from KnitPicks for the baby blanket & have just started on skein #9 - so just one more after this, and then 22 ends to knit in (10 skeins, plus one break in a skein). The blanket still looks about the same as it did in the last post, though. The 2nd sock hasn't gotten far, since while I was waiting for the yarn from KP, I started in on another baby blanket for a recently arrived person. These people are having babies faster than I can knit!
And there has been so much going on other than knitting. Next Wednesday is K's dissertation denfense!!!! Yea! Needless to say, the tension levels around the house are a bit higher than usual. And, of course, his defense is making me realize what I haven't gotten done on my diss over the summer. Thursday marked 1 month until the wedding. We picked up the license this week & I had to make the decision about whether I'm changing or keeping my last name (keeping).

60% & 50%

2007-08-10T17:40:00.001-07:00

Two new projects, both at least half done. The yellow item is a feather & fan baby blanket for my cousin's new baby. They live in Arizona, so I thought cotton would be a good idea. The yarn is KnitPick's Shine Sport, cotton 60% Pima cotton, 40% Modal, in Apricot. Usually, this blanket takes 8 skeins of yarn, but those tend to be skeins of 145 or so yards. But Shine Sport skeins are only 110 yards, and like an idiot, I didn't take that into account. So, I ordered 8 skeins, got started & had to order 2 more. Now I've knit up 6 skeins, with 4 more to go. Somehow, though it will end up being the same size as the others I've made, knowing there are 4 more skeins just makes it seem like it's more than usual. Also, the yarn is slippery and harder to knit with.
But, then, earlier this week, I had the blanket draped across my arm and thought, wow - that's a really nice feel - this would make a lovely wrap or light summer cardigan. Hmmm... Lots of nice colors in Shine Sport...
So the blanket is at 60%, and with one sock finished, that makes 50% of a pair of socks. This is also a Knit Picks yarn - Felici, 75% Superwash Merino wool, 25% nylon, in Hummingbird. Even though it has a bit of pink in it, I really like the colorway. This is my second pair of socks. The first pair was basic top-down. They didn't turn out well. While those two facts are not necessarily related, I wanted to try a different method this time, so I'm using Ann Budd's "On-Your-Toes Socks" in the Summer 2007 "Interweave Knits." So far, it's working out great. I was able to try the sock on throughout the process. It definitely fits this time.
And this will probably be the next pair of socks - it's self-striping sock yarn by Kaffe Fassett! In several really awesome colorways. Hard to pick just one.
And, today's arrival - a not-so-awesome colorway... This is my favorite yarn for making baby blankets - Sirdar Snuggly Baby Care DK, 60% acrylic, 40% cotton. And apparently it's not being made anymore. I can't find it anywhere. Except for this package of 10 skeins in lime green from an ebay seller. I don't think it really shows up in the photo, quite how lime this green is. It is quite vibrant. Who will want this near their child? So sad. I've been trying out some replacement baby blanket yarns, but nothing so far has been as satisfying.
And this is a new, unwelcome, visitor to our yard this week. I bought this shepherd's crook last weekend to set up a birdfeeder in front of one of the windows the cats can easily sit in. The feeder's beside a couple of bushes, so it's working out great for the birds. But now THIS! A groundhog! Where did it come from? Where does it live? This will not be good for the garden.

How does the garden grow?

2007-08-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

(I ask myself rhetorically...) Pretty well. This is one of my favorite things about having a house - having the garden space to play around with.

Here, in the back, is one of the house's original garden beds. Last year, my mom & I weeded it out & found a lot of something in it, which turned out to be gladiolas. Since then, I've been adding many other perennials to it, though I seem to trend heavily towards shades of purple. These are two of last year's additions that I'm particularly pleased with this year - a Rose of Sharon (one of my favorite garden plants) and anise - both happily flowering. The anise has been flowering for maybe a month now, and garnering lots of attention from the bees.

Not far away, I started a raised bed garden in the spring, largely due to K's desire to try growing red onions. The first photo is back in May.

And here it is this past weekend. The onions did not do well at all. The green tops died off, we dug them up & found they were about the size they started. However, the radishes & spinach did well, and the tomatoes and herbs are doing great. In this picture the tomatoes have gotten so tall that they fell over the tops of their cages (just 2 large tomato plants here - one cherry tomato & one Brandywine). Later on, I stuck in stakes & tied them up.

The garden's not getting nearly as much sun as I expected this spot would, and the reason seems to be that the walnut tree is bearing nuts this year. So many nuts, that it's weighing down the tree branches. Occassionally, they fall, but our neighbor says when they really start to fall things will get interesting. Some of those branches are at least 50 feet up in the air, which will give falling walnuts quite a punch.

The main challenge the walnut tree has presented is that there is a toxin, called juglone, in its leaves, bark & roots (I wrote about this last fall as well). While being vaguely aware of this, I nonetheless went ahead & put walnut tree leaves into my first batch of compost, then wondered whether that was a good idea. This weekend, I read a suggestion that after the compost is ready, to try it out in a pot with a tomato plant, because tomatoes are particularly susceptible to juglone. And, because the compost I bought from Agway for the raised bed garden apparently had some tomato seeds in it, I happened to have a volunteer. So, compost experiment is underway!

Last on this garden tour, is the front garden. Last year, I divided some varigated hostas that were in one huge clump at the side of the house, between the driveway & the house foundation. This year, they really took off & made an impenetrable barrier of hostas. There were things planted behind them, you just couldn't see them without standing on the stoop by the front door & looking straight down. So (with a bit of advice from the contractor who is going to put a new layer of roof on next weekend), I rearranged things up front & farmed out some of the hostas. I took 3 hosta clumps away entirely - one to the other side of the front steps, and 2 to the back yard. 3 others moved to the back of the garden, the big ferns to the middle of the garden & the little ferns that I had forgotten were even there, to the front. And I brought a few small, newer perennials in from other areas of the yard to fill out the front.

There's still this rosebush, which is a real pain - absolutely covered in small & large thorns, and very attractive to aphids & japanese beetles. The simplest way to deal with the japanese beetles is to take them off the plant & kill them, but with the thorns, that can get a little painful (leads to me in the front yard grumbling, "Damn it, I'm trying to help you!") One friend at work insists I can't get rid of an old rose. What's keeping me more from yanking it out is the fact that it's so well-entrenched. It was taller than me when we moved in (last fall I cut it down drastically). It does not move when pushed. I've stuck a shovel in & met with some pretty solid tangle of roots - roots which no doubt extend under the driveway & sidewalk to the east and north.

Knitting-wise, I started a new baby blanket for my cousin Kristin's new son, Trent, and a new sock (toe up sock - the picture is from mid-week, since then I've turned the heel & am headed up, going 'til the yarn runs out).

Miscalculation

2007-08-04T05:44:00.001-07:00

Here's a little problem child:
LC & I are making this baby quilt for some friends (who, coincidently enough, have a new baby). I figured out how big the inner pieces would need to be in order to use this triangular pieced border. It's kind of noticeable in this shot, but the fabrics are from a line of Beatrix Potter fabric - with large scenes from her books in the center. The blue has faint white-lined images of her characters. The backing we have is like the center panel, but in a toile format.
Only thing is, I apparently figured wrong. See that gap between the completed section & the right-hand border? Hard to miss.
What we need to work out now, is whether it's fixable - like are the seams a little too narrow on the triangle pieces? Do we make a new, slightly wider border (the cream with little specks which are actually radishes)? Or do we trash the triangle border entirely & just finish it off without it?

Baby Surprise Jacket

2007-08-01T12:56:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a busy summer so far, and it's flying by. I haven't gotten a lot of knitting accomplished (but I have interacted with a prison guard - now that's fun). Last Saturday I finished this item for a friend's baby shower - sewing in the frog buttons on in LC's car on the way up there & popping it into a gift bag with these great books just before we got to the house. The construction of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket was truly a surprise. With Cupcake looking on, I matched up the points as they were marked on the diagram, and - wow - it actually makes a little jacket.
So, here is the cast-off, no seams sewn version (with a messy thread left right smack in the middle - how did I not notice that?). Quite impressive how it turns into a little garment.

Cloisters and Cat Beds

2007-07-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

Just going through some old images, and wanted to mention - I love the Cloisters! That is, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's separate branch for the art & architecture of medieval Europe.

I've happily made the transition from "downstate" to "upstate" (not a native of either), but I still do miss the Cloisters.

While they have a great collection of medieval art inside, it's really the outside spaces that I love - the gardens, colonades, and the views of the NJ Palisades ("New Jersey - Best from a Distance" sorry Dan!). Maybe a road trip this fall?

And now, a short review of knitted cat beds...
This one is from Stitch & Bitch, and is the clear favorite. It has these nice padded sides. I used scraps of batting left over from quilting; after the first trip through the wash, I needed to add more scraps, but there's no shortage of batting scraps here. It's made in a soft acrylic, I think it's called something like Angel Soft, or something that sounds like toilet paper and comes from A.C. Moore. Anyway, the cats love this yarn. I had some of two colors here, and decided to make some random stripes.
The second cat bed is from A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting. It's felted, and I don't really see myself making a felted cat bed again - that's a lot of wool for something that gets matted with fur, if they use it. If they don't use it, then it's a rather odd throw rug. Cat Bordhi recommends drying it with an inflated inner tube, to keep the shape. Not having any inner tubes around, I wasn't able to do that, which may explain the near total failure of the sides to stand up. If the cat will get in it, I can pull up the sides and make it be a proper cat bed. And, of course, they don't generally like things they're lying on being tugged at. So, not such a resounding success. But Zeno here is a good sport about it.

Color Quiz

2007-06-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

After LC's interesting results, I decided to take it as well...

Claire took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test!

"Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in ..."

Click here to read the rest of the results.

Inspirations

2007-06-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here, enjoying being home all week for the first time in 6 weeks!!!! My cuddly friend Zeno is sitting, washing his face beside me & I'm leisurely checking out the summer & spring issues of Knitty. Arietta was one of the spring surprises that I hadn't gotten around to checking back for. It seems to be a very fine example of mosaic knitting, with the multi-colored effect of fair isle without all that picky yarn-carrying. And, with a handy little banner from Knit Picks at the top that says I can knit this sweater for just $37.35. How handy.
Wisp is a lovely mohair scarf. After I made a scarf this winter with mohair/silk for a family friend, it's been in my mind that maybe I need one myself. After working with the mohair/silk, I feel strongly that the economy version - mohair/poly - is not the way to go. That silk just gives such a...well, silkiness to the mohair. It's yummy. And the idea of knitting with mohair right now is just so appealing. The past few weeks of work have just about crippled my right hand past the point of getting much knitting done on the rather thick 90% silk Ella Rae Shibu sweater.

3 Months 'til Wedding Day

2007-06-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Well, today's it's exactly 3 months until K & I get married.

As a happy coincidence, today I stopped at a local store with my Dad & found a wedding dress. I had looked at it a couple of weekends ago, but the store sells prom dresses, has only one dressing room, and it was prom season.

I wasn't looking for a white dress, but this is the first dress I've liked, so it's all set. It's a long sheath, but with 3 separate layers, so it doesn't cling all too much.

And the style makes the most of my nice tanned arms, without showing off the pasty legs. Just need to find some shoes now.

I've been pretty lacking in any crafty content, so here's a shot of green sweater in progress - with the handsome Mr. Z.

One FO

2007-06-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

Just a note that the big grey huck lace shawl has been done for a couple of weeks now. Something has made it a little bit difficult to get aroudn to photos...oh yes, it's the 4 weeks of being away during the week running a site exam in Seneca Falls, NY (home of the 1848 women's rights convention and now the Women's Rights National Historical Park), and then catching up on dissertation writing and everything else on the weekends. Maybe with Cupcake on the project this week, a Seneca Falls photo shoot will be in order.

Preserve us from the Demon of Weak Nerves!

2007-05-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

This is an early 20th century advertisement for Wolcott's Instant Pain Annihilator - just the greatest patent medicine ad I've seen so far in my diss. research.

See the little demons, pounding and drilling into poor beardy's head? They're numbered and identified as: 1) Demon of Catarrh; 2) Demon of Neuralgia; 3) Demon of Headache; 4) Demon of Weak Nerves; and 5) Demons (yes, plural) of Toothache. With the grim reaper standing in the background. Since I have way more background info than I need for the diss data, this will probably keep the title of Greatest Patent Medicine Advertisement.

"Cleveland Eliminates New Jersey"

2007-05-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

Don't take this to mean I'm any kind of sports fan, I don't even know what sport this has to do with, but when I heard this phrase on the radio this morning, "Last night, Cleveland eliminated New Jersey," I just thought - Whoo-hoo Cleveland! Good move! And all in one night, too! That's one powerful city, to take out an entire state. If the city of Cleveland needs any help recouperating from this epic battle, I say we should all pitch in out of gratitude. The only question is, was it just the state that was eliminated, or will the inhabitants (and especially the drivers) be migrating into neighboring states?
With apologies to the good people of Joisey.

All's well in the land of grey

2007-05-12T05:18:00.000-07:00

I'm back to work on both the green Shibu top-down cardigan, and the grey shawl. I sent a sample of the grey lace yarn to Morehouse, and since it is one of their natural shades, Jill says it will be easy to make a match. They're sending one more skein, and I frogged back just 4 rows to eliminate one repeat from the mainly st st center portion to make sure one skein will do it.

And now back to the BIG slog, dissertation analysis. Damn all inconsistent record keeping and artifact cataloging!

And another big yay!

2007-05-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

I find myself made quite happy by finding out that next week will be the last ever episode of "Gilmore Girls." This show's been like a train wreck for me over the years. I've never consistently watched it, but keep coming back again to watch for a month or so until finally reaching the same conclusion, "This woman is psycho!" It must be the infamous GG banter. Now it's ending, Lorelei's done with the oh-so-annoying Christopher (daren't call him "Chris"), and to make it all the sweeter, Rory did not accept the manipulative marry-me-or-we're-done proposal from her pretty boy, Logan.
How long will these names remain in my head? I have more important things to remember!

A FO and more problems with math

2007-05-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

Yay! I finished the 2nd placket neck sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts! (Well, third, actually, if I count the now-frogged soy silk placket neck.)
I got off track with figuring out problems with other projects, and it ended up being a week late for AG's birthday. However, I'm hoping 2-year-olds don't notice late presents that much. Now it's just a random new garment.
He did seem to like the fish buttons. I made it with Tahki-Stacy Charles' Tweedy Cotton (mercerised). It was a little slippery to work with, and I think my tension suffered a bit. The yarn itself is quite nice, with 2 strands each of 3 different colors. The recipient child's mom is allergic to wool (I've seen her break out in hives), so wool was out. Best not to make mom allergic to her son, and the allergy could be inherited.
Since sometime last year I've been knitting away on the Huck Lace Shawl from Morehouse Farm Merino Knits. It's been moving along as a backup project. Whenever I'm stuck on something else, or have finished a project, I've just picked it up, figured out where I left off with my notes on a post-it & worked on it some more. Now it's getting pretty long.
The shawl is roughly divided into thirds - two thirds at each end with the main pattern, with mainly st st in the middle. I'm going along, almost through with the middle section, when I realize I really have only 1 more skein left. Huh. It appears that my gauge is off and I'm basically making this shawl denser than it's intended. I am happy with the feel of the fabric, so I sent off a couple of yards of yarn to Morehouse to see if they can match me up with a couple more skeins.
And, just for fun (a strange concept to 2 grad students), K & I went up to a state park near Ithaca for a short hike on Saturday.

This is near the start of the upper gorge trail at Robert H. Treman State Park, and just a minute or two's walk from where K & I will be getting married in September. The upper gorge looks like the road to where the elves live.

I used to be good at math

2007-04-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been working & working along on the top-down Summer Cardigan from Knitting Pure & Simple. I'm using the lovely green Ella Rae Shibu that I found on sale a couple of weeks ago. My gauge with this yarn is 1 st more over 4 in than the pattern's gauge, so after a mathmatical consultation with Cupcake, I went for the XL size, which would otherwise be a bit too big (this XL, anyway, most often I am wearing XL). (Note small fierce calico outside, guarding the house.) Yesterday at our Sunday knitting at La Tazza, I came near finishing the 5th ball of yarn, and had knitted a little over 12" of top-down sweater. I was noticing that the armholes seemed huge. In fact, I could easily fit my head through one of the armholes. Very easily. So I strung the live stitches onto waste yarn and was able to confirm that this sweater is way, way too big. So, more math computations later. In the meantime, I'm back to the backup project, the grey wrap.
And here is a more floral representation of spring at our house. The big forsythia in the far background is in a neighbor's yard. The little one in the foreground is one my mom brought from PA for our yard. There's a little, skinny stick of a lilac behind it, which is just starting to put out leaves, which mom also brought up last year. Most of what's in our garden is still a bit more like this:
This is one of the perennials I put in last year. It seems like all but one survived the winter. Day lillies are coming up, and some mystery items. I think a couple might be some bulbs I rescued from an archaeological site last fall. They had already lost their flowers at the time, so they'll be a surprise. Even the oregano has come up again. It's spring in upstate NY, and it's coming along nicely.
ps - the small fierce calico is one of our two metal dragons, here's a shot of the two metal dragons taking time out from their hard, hard lives. The fire ox is elsewhere.

Spring!

2007-04-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

Spring?

2007-04-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm a fan of winter, but several inches of snow the week after Easter? The daffodils are up! Time for spring already.

I'm doing my bit by starting this springy green short-sleeved cardigan from Knitting Pure & Simple. On a side trip to last weekend's baby shower, LC & I stopped by Patchwork Plus Quilt Shop in Marcellus, NY. In addition to a great selection of quilt fabrics, they have quite a nice selection of yarn. Ella Rae Shibu was on sale, so I picked up enough for this sweater. It's 90% silk, 10% viscose and just lovely to work with.

Three sweaters done, Two done well

2007-04-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

So I finished a near slew of small sweaters this week. First, the heartbreakingly cute baby kimono from Mason Dixon Knitting. It's in Rowan Handknit Cotton, which feels just lovely and is machine-washable. For buying this at the local vacuum/yarn store, though, I got the comment "That's a lot of money for blue string." Yeah, thanks.

The buttons were washed out in every flash photo I took, and I probably won't get a chance to try natural light before heading to the shower tomorrow, so take my word for it that they're cute bunnies. After checking out the button selection at Joann's Fabric, I went with ribbon tie for the inside flap and (securely sewn on) bunny buttons for the outside.

I also finished the toddler-sized placket neck pullover from Last Minute Knits. This is last-minute in kind of a "this kid's birthday is in less than a month" fashion, not quite so precisely "last minute." I had some little square pearlized synthetic buttons, but then I came across the yellow striped glass beads. One interesting thing with this pattern is that there are no buttonholes, you're just supposed to push the buttons and/or beads through the seed stitch placket. It seems to work out all right. This one's in Plymouth Encore DK, which is a nice compromise for being wooly, machine-washable and coming in a bunch of colors. I was very happy with how this yarn knit up.

And then there's the sad little 6-12 mo size placket neck pullover, which was intended to go along with the baby kimono as a shower present. I finished it up, the Pure Soysilk feels lovely. Then I gave it a light rinse and blocked it.

Where stitches had been a little uneven, they became more so, as well as rather sad and sloppy. I picked up a couple of receiving blankets from the couple's registry to go with the baby kimono. Not sure what I'm going to do with this.

And, we're set on the pavilion at upper Robert H Treman for the wedding, just not sure which day now. Our first choice turned out to be Yom Kippur, which means no dear DF from college, which is not ideal.

Wedding Pavilion?

2007-04-10T04:45:00.000-07:00

Well, we did make it out on Sunday to check out parks for wedding sites. We liked this pavilion at Robert H Treman State Park, south of Ithaca.

It has an indoors, a covered outdoors, and a good number of picnic tables. It's on a piece of land where two streams come together, so there's a pleasant sound of water all around (and bathrooms not too far away). There are bridges across the streams. Across one stream, there's a trail that leads down the gorge to the east end of the park. Across the other, there's a big field with more picnic tables. The park's also handy to Wegman's, so it should be fairly easy to bring food over. The pavilion's available in September, now we just have to get ahold of the park office sometime. They're closed for the season until 4/27, though someone did return my phone message yesterday.

Love is a Battlefield?

2007-04-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

In the mornings, the plan is that I work on my dissertation. I started out well this morning, and then went to trawling for wedding spots on the internet. Today's supposed to be our day for scoping out a couple of state park possibilities, up near Ithaca (their public lands are much more scenic than ours down here), but there's snow on the ground and K's not out of bed yet.
So, I just found that people get married at the Newtown Battlefield State Park, out towards Elmira. The location would be handy, and they have a quite nice-looking rustic lodge constructed by the CCC in the 1930s where people hold receptions. Only thing is, the park is there to commemorate the Battle of Newtown, part of the Clinton-Sullivan campaign which aimed to (and largely suceeded) "remove" (i.e., kill, burn down the crops & villages) the Iroquois and open up their lands to colonization. We're both archaeologists, working in New York State, occassionally working with the modern Iroquois. So, not checking that wedding site out.

Two new projects

2007-04-06T04:53:00.000-07:00

New projects? What am I, nuts?

Well, there's a baby shower coming up on April 14, and I decided that instead of the feather & fan baby blanket I've been making for friends & relatives since I was 18, I would make 2 little garments. The first one is the child's placket-neck pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm making it in the 6-12 mo size, from Pure Soysilk purchased last weekend in Providence. Last night, I got to the point of setting the body aside & starting the sleeves, and found out I don't have size 5 dpns! That will soon be corrected.

Fortunately, I did not need to get twitchy for lack of knitting (aside from all the WIPs around the house), since I had purchased 3 skeins of Rowan handknit cotton earlier in the day for the Mason Dixon heartbreakingly cute baby kimono. I'm passingly familiar with newborns, but haven't had one of my own, and I keep thinking, "This is just so small!" The gauge is correct, though, so hopefully they're just that small.

Interesting how both these colors coordinate with my office wallhanging.

Good to get out of town

2007-04-01T18:36:00.000-07:00

We got out of town for the weekend! With all the driving, to Providence, Newport, Boston, and back, I finished my first pair of socks (except for some ends that need to be sewn in). They're some kind of mainly blue wool. Can't say more, since I lost the ballband back on the first sock. (4/7 - I think it was Trekking.)

After finishing the socks, I picked up the Reid lacy kid's sweater in this peach-colored Patons cotton yarn. It's a 16-row repeat pattern, and a bit of a pain. Also picked up some gold Soysilk Pure from A Stitch Above, in Providence, on the store's last day. Three skeins will make a baby sweater for another one of this year's babies.

In Providence, we stopped by H.P. Lovecraft's grave, in Swan Point Cemetery, a lovely place.

This large marker is the monument for H.P.L. and his parents. Fans put in a smaller stone just for H.P., but the light was against me in getting a good shot of that one.

Another Swan Point monument.

And the ocean! So good to just sit with the sight, sound & smell of it.

Up, down & out of town

2007-03-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a little bit of knitting. It's Stacy Charles Tweedy Cotton Classic, knitted up to be a sweater for a small child. Why no needles? It's knit in one piece, bottom up, and I realized when I got to the armholes that I had 20 too few sts. 20? How could I be off by that many? Because it's one of those patterns with 6 or more sizes, and apparently I have some touch of dyslexia, because I misread 113 for 133. So now the question is, undo it, or just finish it off, for some other, smaller child?

Today, two co-workers and I spent a bit of time in a dank pit under a parking lot. As archaeologists, we do things like that. Though things are usually a bit more open-air. A couple of days ago, at a local food/beer/music spot, the Cyber Cafe, they were doing some work on the parking lot, specifically on a slumping concrete pad. The pad was smashed, and there was a hidden room, with old wooden kegs, a trap door, a pulley system. The building above (no longer standing) was built soon after 1918. So it seems like a little bootleggers den. We mapped in what's there for posterity, before the property owner has to seal it securely to keep out idiots.

And tomorrow, we're heading out of town, to Providence & Boston. Just for fun.

One WIP

2007-03-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

So, Cupcake in essence said "Less bitching about the computer, show some progress shots." As I said in the last post, one is a present, so it's not going up, but the other project that's been going on for a bit now is my grey lace-weight merino shawl.

This is the Huck Lace Shawl from Morehouse Merino, and right now it's just over 1/2 done. I took it out to the lovely warm & sunny, but March-barren, backyard and did get a bit of an odd look from a backyard neighbor over taking pictures of a piece of grey cloth slung over a tree branch.

And, for anyone who can't get enough of Progressive Era proscriptive literature, here's a gem of knowledge from the 1911 "Guide to the United States for the Immigrant Italian," published by the Connecticut DAR: "Never give wine or beer to children. When children take these drinks they do not eat enough, and sometimes faint in school. Alcoholic drinks are too stimulating for them and prevent the natural development of their little bodies."

We hates Vista, it burns us

2007-03-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Well, one comment on the last posting, so I'll go again...

Sadly, no new photos of any FO's. For one, nothing's finished. I'm working on a large grey shawl from Morehouse Merino's book (the huck lace shawl), but it just goes on & on. I'm working on a secret present item, so obviously there will be no photos as yet.

2) Through a complicated series of maneuvers, I have a new computer, specifically K's newish computer. He got an Acer laptop in December and was very happy with it. I've been having problems with my old Compaq, but needed to wait for the big-ish tax refund check to get a new one. In the meanwhile they put out Vista. Vista didn't work with our wireless, and I don't feel like being new operating system guinea pig, so we returned it. K got a mac and I got his Acer. And I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to get pictures from the camera to the new laptop. Luckily the printer & laptop worked it out between the two of them.

3) Little time for figuring out camera-laptop relations and less time for knitting, as I've been reading & writing like mad (for me at least), trying to get a draft of my dissertation in to my advisor before he goes away on a year's sabbatical. A year plus, actually, as I understand it, he's leaving town after this semester's over, and will only very occassionally be back between then & September 2008! 2008! There's some fun stuff, but the writing kinda drags at times. Fun stuff like 1915 Department of Labor literature on having children. Expectant moms in 1915 were recommended to "Exercise in the open air" but no violent exercise, no stair climbing and no using the sewing machine in the later months.

Oh, and K & I have decided we're engaged. We're hoping to get married in late September.

Cold & snow outside, Warm cats & flowers inside

2007-03-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

My handsome Bean.
Since last I blogged, I finished the blotchy blue alpaca as Cozy-inspired scarf. It's actually been done for a couple of weeks, I think, but blogger & my laptop have some issues. This time, I'm at least saving a draft before the stupid thing crashes. The 4th ball of alpaca was noticeably darker when knit in pattern, so I fooled around a bit at the ends, with this garter stitch & other thing I've got going on here. The pattern is just lovely, and now that it's done, I'm wishing I had enough of this blotchy alpaca to do it up properly as the Cozy wrap. But I don't and an alpaca scarf is still quite nice. I've also finished this feather & fan scarf in an incredibly light & airy mohair/silk blend (Madil Kid Seta, 70% super kid mohair, 30%silk). I've been wondering whether to block it, and looking at this photo, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. It's a present for a very wonderful lady who took care of me during the days from when I was 6 weeks old til I started 1st grade. There's some confusion over whether it was Betty or my mom who taught me how to knit, but somewhere between the two of them, I learned so long ago that I don't even remember it. I think this will make a good present.

Snow, snow, snow!!

2007-02-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

Yay! It's like winter! And I got a snow day for my birthday yesterday. Working half time on winter hours does make it easy to reschedule. Mainly just hung around the house. Yes, our poor, dingy house. We thought we'd get around to painting it the first summer, but then so many other things came up. I'm in favor of yellow. Today I got my laptop back. They said the problem was dust inside the vents, clogging it up and making the laptop overheat & crash. Now the dust has been cleaned out, and it still freezes. But at least I can show off thif this fairly decent photo of the dragon scarf.

And, the Cozy scarf, unblocked at this point.

Hats & scarves

2007-02-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

On the trip to Williamsburg, I made this hat, from the current issue of Knitty. It's made with one skein of Noro's Cash Laine (wool & silk, if I remember correctly) that I have had around for a while, and 1+ skein of Peru Chunky Luxury (alpaca & silk) that went on clearance at A.C. Moore. Both are double-stranded to get gauge, and boy is this hat warm. Perfect timing, since it turned bitter, bitter cold (as will happen in January & February in these parts) a couple of weeks after finishing the hat. It's getting good use. (And, in the background, is the elusive fire ox, Zeno, himself. He's so shy, a couple of friends have still never seen him, and do not believe he exists. Focus on the hat and the cat, not my puffy tired face.)

Now I'm working on Cozy, from the Fall 2004 issue of Knitty. I've narrowed it down from a wrap to a scarf, mainly because I didn't have that much yarn, but also because I do wear scarves but haven't found a lot of times to wear wraps. I'm making it with some variagated blue alpaca yarn I bought last year and have tried out on a number of projects. I tried it with Argosy, but because the yarn blotches rather than stripes, the effect was uninspiring. I did like the Argosy pattern, though, and may come back to that one. Initially I tried pairing the alpaca with a light blue angora-something blend (I've had that one for a long time, I can't even remember if I bought it or swiped it from my mom somehow). I showed a sample of that in November. But now all the possibles have been frogged and the splotchy blue alpaca will be Cozy. It's reached an acceptable minimum length now (once around my neck with a reasonable length to hang), and I still have just under a skein, so I'll just keep going a bit longer and see how it goes. Maybe some kind of neat edgings for the ends from one of Nicky Epstein's books?

Another scarf I'd like to try out: My So-Called Scarf. I have one skein of some wool produced in NY bought at North Wind Yarns in Oswego (nice shop, helpful store owners, and great dinner options nearby - the thai restaurant & the pub on the river in the town's oldest building). It's a mix of purple & teal (I also showed it in the November blog on UFOs, right now it's knit up as a possible hat). It's about the weight and yardage of Manos, so I could hop over to the A-to-Z Vacuum store and match it up with a skein of Manos. Then it's more or less knitting from stash.

Also, I finished the dragon scarf. He's orange, with red & grey snort tassles (which I hope look more like fire & smoke and less like a nosebleed), and golden yellow eyes with black pupils. DC donated the red for the tassles from her gorgeous alpaca sweater in progress & LC donated the gold from her beautiful feather & fan scarf for the undeserving.

So, on top of Cozy, Dragon & all the other scarves I already have, I need one more [My So-Called] scarf?

And thanks to everyone for showing up last night for my early birthday dinner!

Finished quilts

2007-02-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

These are not recently completed, but I hadn't posted photos of them yet. Both were presents for friends who had babies in the past few years. The first one was one I adapted from a pattern in a quilting magazine. Theirs was a wall hanging with darker, countryside fabrics, and some kind of message in the large spaces around the central block. In this photo, it seems that the seams showed through too much on the yellow fabrics, though I don't remember that being a problem in person.
The second revolved around a farm theme, with one print of cows in a cornfield (not what what I think you'd want for your cornfield), a chicken print and the yellow print which had little specks that were to stand for grain. The back & binding were nice, soft flannel.
(Note the highly polished quilt display system - "Please stand over there & hold this quilt up.")
Since my last post, I finished the dragon scarf 8 days ago. Now he's just waiting on getting some eyes. This past weekend, I had to take my laptop in for service b/c it kept freezing up. A bit distracting when trying to work on the dissertation, or when doing much of anything for that matter. Hopefully, it will be fixable & fairly inexpensively so. Until then, photos will be hard to come by.

New Knits and Old Books

2007-01-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

This week the yarn arrived from Morehouse Farm for the dragon scarf. I started it off on Wednesday and have been going like mad on it since. I knitted the dragon scarf at the podiatrists - it helped that a 2:30 appointment kept me there until 4:15 - a lot of waiting between actual interactions with medical personnel. I knitted the dragon scarf at K's sword-fighting class - if you can't knit a dragon scarf in the bleachers at the sword-fighting class, where can you knit it?

As for the books, a friend at work brought in this treasure trove, the 1976 "Woman's Day Book of Knitted Sweaters."

Tube tops for the ladies,

Double-breasted knits for the gentlemen, And a sweater reading "MOMMY" across the front, with "MOM" and "DAD" stockings for the child you wish to have beaten up every day at school.

Also, this smaller book of patterns with no date, but I would guess from the mid-60s?

Thanks Daniel!

Here there be Pancakes! And Waffles!

2007-01-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

This weekend, K & I travelled down to Williamsburg, VA for archaeology meetings. Mapquest estimated 7.5 hours drive time, but Mapquest lives in a happy, happy world without DC/Alexandria traffic snarls. Ah, idealism.
In honor of my dear friend Stephen, Mama Steve's House of Pancakes. We've seen at least 6 Pancake and/or Waffle places in the Williamsburg vicinity. Most hawk both pancakes and waffles, but some only one. Are these holdouts to the days before pancake/waffle alliance?
And now, belated thank you's for Christmas presents.
DVP kindly sent me this lovely skein of yarn from her lys (which we visited last Feb). It has a funny little frizzy spot after I left it on the couch overnight. I think one of the cats took it as her (or his, but probably her, the girl cat has a thing for natural fibers, esp. alpaca) new best friend.
K's sis gave me 4 skeins of alpaca yarn (2 skeins in each of these 2 colors), so now I'm thinking about what to make with it (the above try did not work out). An alpaca hat sounds lovely, but 4 skeins will make more than one hat. Hat & gloves? Still thinking.
One hat pattern I've been looking at is Elinor's awesome Winter Sunrise . In addition to loving her choice of colors, I also really like with the way she worked the decreases out with the pattern to make that great X at the top. Another great 2-color hat pattern is Hello Yarn's "We Call Them Pirates" hat. But I think I can see myself wearing winter sunrise more.
Also found this week: Morehouse Farm's Dragon Scarf. They could use some more color choices for the kit, not that we're limited to the kits.

Knitting? Oh right - that!

2007-01-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! K & I, along with LC, ICP, & VLo, went to beautiful downtown Binghamton last night for First Night. Thrilling? Not quite. There were fireworks at the end, though. Yay fireworks!
So, what have I been up to?
There were Koigu scarves for K's mom & sis, which turned out quite well. But did I remember to take a photo of them? No, I did not. DC made a beautiful scarf in the same pattern that she did record.

There were felted bowls. I made the first one (darker blue on right) for a present, then decided I liked it & would rather keep it. It's the key-holder by the door now. Then, I wanted to make a couple more, so I did pink & light blue for K's neices, to wrap up with the small jewelry presents I already had for them. So gratifying to impress the 11& 13 yo's - "You made this?! Wow!" I'm happier with the shapes of the two blues; I think I cast on too loosely on the pink one. Following splindarella's suggestions from November 2006 One Skein Knit-Along, I used Paton's SWS (soy & wool) doubled, and did 3 ridges of garter at the beginning to keep the top from rolling. The SWS has a nice sheen to it.

Harking back to pre-Christmas days, a thanks to AZK for the knitted purse book! The examples in the book make a bit more use of eyelash yarn than seems healthful, but of course the eyelash is not obligatory.

My lovely orchid is blooming & making the whole living room smell kind of like a spicy, flowery vanilla. A payoff for my practice of buying orchids at Lowe's after they've lost their flowers & been marked down to $1.

Next post: Williamsburg in January?

Tree Tour

2006-12-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Following in the footsteps of both DC & LC, I am happy to display my (fake) tree with (real?) ornaments:

The pinecone bird
The elf/sprites
The camel

The dragon (no stealing these last 2 when you feed the cats, IP & LC)
The gnomes
Yay tree!

Finished objects!

2006-12-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Yea! I finished the Christmas stocking for little RZK! I'm happy with it, and R's mom is too, so it's successful (so long as it doesn't fall apart, which I don't think it will). I bought quite a lot of little decorative notions, and then used relatively just a few of them. The bird (top branch, right side) is my favorite.
And, I made three felted bowls, from the "One Skein" book. Following a comment from splindarella on the One Skein Knit-Along, I used Patons SWS (soy/wool blend) doubled and added 3 ridges of garter at the top to keep them from rolling. The SWS has a nice silky feel to it. I'm least happy with the pink bowl, I think I cast on too loosely on that one, thus the flared lip. The dark blue is for me to keep, the pink & light blue are for KS's nieces.

As of yesterday, Dec 23, the house is now fairly well Christmassed up. I gave in & bought a small fake tree. It's really an ornament display device, because I couldn't think of where to fit a tree in our small living room, but was really missing having the ornaments out.

The quilted wallhanging tree, while nice, did not quite do it. Though the presents on the chair below the wallhanging blended in nicely. (Note example on this wallhanging of why we shouldn't blindly follow directions. The base of the red bow on the "package" in the lower right-hand corner doesn't match up with the red ribbon underneath. It's even more noticable in person. Ideally, I suppose this quilt would be hung up at least 20 ft away, so that I wouldn't notice the flaw so much).

Post script to Friday

2006-12-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

So... Our knit group stands at: one pure evil, one twisted, and two angelic.

Long suspected...

2006-12-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Despite the knitting, despite liking fuzzy bunnies...

Thanks to Enchanting Juno, I came across this handy little quiz & found what I've suspected. Only question is - I came out Pure Evil, Enchanting Juno came out Evil - does anyone come out anything other than Evil?

Post Script to Western PA, Part II

2006-12-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

One more item of interest on the Austin disaster:
While the town was downstream of the dam, in the valley, the brothel was uphill, within site of the dam. The madam was one of the first to realize that the dam was breaking & she became a local hero for getting the word out that the dam was breaking & saving some lives at least.
And another bit on industrial disasters:
I'm currently reading Devra Davis' "When Smoke Ran Like Water." Davis' interest in environmental pollution started when she found out that her childhood home, Donora, PA, had been the site of a severely underreported environmental disaster in 1948. The town had a steelworks & zinc smelting facility, both of which let off a lot of smoke. In the fall of 1948, an air inversion trapped fog and the smoke in the valley for several days, killing about 20 people immediately, and causing health damage to countless others over the following years. Similar incidents happened mid-20th-century in Belgium & England. Apparently, the same conditions are occurring now in China (NPR, Morning Edition).
And, back on the crafty track, I'm just about 1/2 done with the leafy scarf - yea! Right wrist is crampy & somewhat painful - ouch!

Western PA, Part II

2006-12-11T17:58:00.000-08:00

More views of our trip to PA, including this KS-approved photo along the Alleghany River. This man of mystery, by the way, has requested a sweater. He found a photo of a Norwegian black metal band with a guy in a sweater. It's gray, has a wide neck & ribbing at the bottom edges, and is purl-side out. We picked out some yarn at Ithaca's Homespun Boutique (great yarn store, with fabric too, but apparently no website). But it will have to wait until after Christmas to start it. This was the rail trail along the Alleghany River. At the parking area, there was a sign warning "Hunters wear orange. So should you." There were other people on the trail without orange on, so we set off & walked south a mile or so. Until we heard the first few gunshots. Then we headed back to the parking lot.

On the way back to Binghamton, we stopped by Austin, PA, site of the Austin Dam. This dam was built by a lumber company. The company hired an engineer to design the dam, but his design was going to cost too much, so they didn't make the dam quite so thick, or seat it quite so deeply. In 1911, it broke. The town was downstream of the dam, with huge piles of logs for the lumber company in between. The lumber company had argued that at least if the dam broke, the piles of logs would slow down the water. Instead, the town got a rush of logs & water. The disaster was a major impetus for Pennsylvania to pass legal requirements on dam engineering. What I really like about the Austin dam is how it's still standing right there, apparently just how it was at the end of the day on September 30, 1911, an unplanned monument.

Now, must get back to working on the "backyard leaves" scarf from "Scarf Style."

A Trip to Western PA

2006-12-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

Western PA, a land of bright greens (at least in the summer) and the occassional orange creek.
KS & I went out to Clarion for Thanksgiving, and took a day trip into lands to the east, including Oil City. Oil City is not far from Titusville, where oil was first drilled in North America (was oil drilled earlier on another continent? I don't really know). This photo is from one of the bridges in Oil City. The main downtown area seemed to be over there, at the base of the hill. It's on a point where Oil Creek joins the great Alleghany River - wonder if there've been any archaeological investigations there?I know nothing of Oil City, though it's my official birthplace. My family never lived there, it was just where the hospital was. We passed by this interesting kind of grotto. From the small bit of time I spent in the Southwest, I feel this structure is lacking a lot of saint statues.
After the grotto, we stopped at Mystic Pig Cycles (disappointingly, no website) in Reno, PA. This stop was to continue KS's investigations of motorcycles. But Mystic Pig specializes in Harley's, which are quite pricey.
Finally, we ended up on a rail-trail along the Alleghany River. Unlike our local rail-trail, this one apparently extends for miles, connects towns, and runs along a beautiful river rather than running in back of stores and a parkway.

Finished quilt duo

2006-12-02T16:46:00.000-08:00

Ah, the comforts of home... It is the Fire Ox, in his natural habitat. While he's afraid of sinks and wouldn't be caught dead in one, he loves to lounge, tree-sloth-like, on the chair arm.
And, now the finished baby quilts that seemed never-ending back in November. But the cats protected them from harm.
This one was commissioned, with a green & yellow color scheme to work around. I liked it better with the orange & purple in as well. The center squares of each block are not pieced, but are from a cute kiddie fabric that actually matched the shade of green required. The squares have giraffes, hippos, lions, tigers & a creature I kept thinking of as a donkey until EG suggested, "Maybe it's a zebra?" And indeed, it has stripes.
The second one is more the color scheme I tend towards on my own (which would, evidently, be as many colors as possible). This one is for DVP's 2nd child, a boy born last summer.

It has a great number of small squares of fabrics with creatures. Many were left over from earlier kids' quilts. I'm very happy with this one.

Hats & warshrags

2006-11-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

OK, so I do actually finish some things. Like this hat made with Lopi, the sturdy Icelandic wool.

It is not a masterpiece of technique (perhaps DC will post her latest hat, which is a masterpiece), but it was my 2nd hat and I'm very happy with it.

Since this hat, I've gone on & made 2 hats for children. The first one was a sort-of gnome hat for AZK's lovely little girl. There's a pattern in Morehouse Farm Merino Knits for a pointy hat with a knot on top. To make it more of a gnome hat for baby RZK, I did the first one without the knot on top.

It looks better on kids than on the cat, but I have better access to Bean (metal dragon in a calm moment here). The skein left enough for another hat, so I made the 2nd one with the knot on top for EG's little boy who is also blonde & blue eyed like RZK.

And, I've made some warshrags from Mason Dixon: I bought a ton of Sugar & Cream (wish we had that Peaches & Cream around here, they seem to have better colors). The first batch was colorful, though not so much in this photo as they'd been used by this point. I like how the color comes back again when they get wet, like rocks. The 2nd batch is more sedate, and may end up being a Christmas or Thanksgiving gift.

This week I finished 2 baby quilts, one for my friend & one that she asked me to make for her sister. I tacked down the back of the binding last week, made some labels, had to remake a label due to a spelling correction, examined them for stray threads & mailed them off to GA yesterday! Photos to come in a future posting.

W.I.L.s

2006-11-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

Not Works in Progress, but Works in Limbo, a Hall of Shame.

This is partly inspired by a Binghamton visit from DL (of Bestitched fame). DL is a woman who gets things done (just look at her finished projects sidebar). I, however, am a person who gets a good idea, plays around with it for a bit, and then either can't figure out what to do with the supposedly good idea, or just gets bored with it. So I did a little photo shoot today to bring these unfortunates out into the open again.
First off, the back of an Elsebeth Lavold Viking knits sweater, in a red Sisik that doesn't show up well in photos. I had a close-up to show the cables, but the level of detail was no better than in this photo, so just take my word for it that there are intricate cables. I also have the front done up to the armholes. At that point, the shaping was coming in, which made it require a bit more thought, so I set it aside for a bit. Which was after setting aside for a bit after finishing the back.

Here's No. 2: the orange blob on the handsome quilt (made by my mom, as it A. is actually finished, and B. has countless non-90-degree angle corners, calling for greater proficiency in sewing than I possess) is the back, left front, left right and one half-done sleve of a cardigan. I like the orange, and was making great progess on it, but then I was overwhelmed with the boredom of it all. What will I have upon completion? A very orange sweater. I've since had some thoughts about adding interesting edging, which could save the project.

Now here are some mitered square blocks in Noro Kureyon (and my toes...which brings up a digression. It's November in New York State, and yesterday it was warm enough that I was wearing these flipflops outside - outside! But not today). A few years ago, I purchased a couple of skeins of this black/green/orange/purple, thinking I would us some of it, with a solid, to make a sweater in some fashion. Then, I bought a couple more skeins. Then, last year, I decided to just make a whole sweater out of it and found 10 skeins of the same color combo for a bit of a bargain on eBay. But, it turns out that knit on sweater size, the color changes (of course) get all long & skinny. And I wasn't very fond of that. So, along came "Mason Dixon Knitting" with the mitered squares, and Dearest Cupcake started making the striped cotton mitered squares, and I realized those squares would be somewhat simplified by using the striping Noro. Then, the Noro could become a throw for my living room rather than sitting in a bin, victim to my indecisiveness. So, there was decisiveness - the Noro would be knit into mitered squares. If I ran out, I could supplement with some new Noro which would mesh well. So what happened? Dearest Cupcake became Evil Cupcake, and for some reason told me about a pattern in a new Noro mag where you knit a sweater in vertical blocks of color (using 4 different skeins as you knit), which would do away with the whole long, skinny stripes problem. And I thought, well, maybe I do want it to be a sweater after all... (postscript: check out what inventive MLE has done with Noro in blanket form)
And here, my progress to date on a first pair of socks. The pattern called for size 2 needles, but from my gauge swatch, those seemed to be too big, so I went down to 1. After getting this far, it became apparent that 1 was too small, I should have gone with 2. So I set them aside, and now have misplaced the pattern. (Yes, there's a need for greater organization here.)

And finally, these last two fall under the heading of: I like this slip stitch, but don't know what to do with it. The first is a slip stich worked in some lovely NYS wool from a shop in Oswego - the slip stitch makes the colors intermingle instead of forming into stripes. So I fashioned a hat, but it is a little too short, and quite inelastic.
The next one is something I've been playing around with for a year or so. There's a multishade alpaca yarn, and an old stash angora (I think) blend. They seem to go well together, but to make what? A scarf would seem an obvious solution, but I've done 2 in this stitch, one for me, and one for the bf:
They both turned out great. Mine is the one on the left, with a black yarn paired with a multicolored, and his is on the right, with just red & black (K's two favorite colors). I really like the different effect produced by the same pattern in these. But another scarf in the same pattern seems like overkill.

And that's it (probably, there might be another one, if I really dig down in the boxes).

The baby quilt winter

2006-11-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

Another exciting trip into days of yore (well, just Jan-Feb of 2005), when we found ourselves with 3 friends at work having babies due within about a month of each other. So LC, VL & I decided that it would be feasible for us to make 3 baby blankets, with different fabrics but the same pattern, all at once. Fortunately, it was winter, and for archaeologists in the northeast, winter is a fairly slow season (no digging in the frozen ground, usually).
The first one was hard for me, as it went against all of my color instincts. LC came through with picking out these pastel-like shades of 1930s repro fabrics (we also had help from the kind ladies at the former great Endwell quilt store, no longer here, alas). This one was for S&VC, who were having a girl, and have no qualms about pink.

This next one suited my color tastes quite a bit more. It was for CK&AZK, who ended up having a girl as well, our little gnome baby, RZK (if you know the gnome book, she looks like the little gnomes in the book, with blonde hair, blue eyes & chubby pink cheeks).

And then there was our January surprise, when we found out that E&AG were also expecting a baby & decided there was no question of making time for the 3rd baby quilt. E&A are two people you know will not see any problem with dragons on the baby quilt & I was happy to put dragons in (that's what the dark purple fabric with colorful things on it is).
The pattern, by the way, is Yellow Brick Road from Atkinson Designs, a very versatile and relatively easy pattern. There's also been more recent knitting, I need to unite the camera & laptop. Just imagine that it's all been fantastic.

One down project down...

2006-10-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

So I actually finished something last week. Some old friends in IL have had their 2nd child - congratulations to C&D. I wanted to send a present right off, but with a lot of people having babies, this was the 5th baby blanket this year, and unfortunately it just dragged on. I like making these in Sirdar Snuggly Baby Care, which no one sells around Binghamton. It's 60% acrylic, so good for popping in the washer & dryer, and 40% cotton, which gives it a more genuine softness (unlike the fake and often transitory softness of purely acrylic yarn - yes, I'm a fiber snob). I've been getting it from a lovely store in Harrisburg, PA (http://www.knittersdream.com/Yarn.html ). Now that it's almost November, I think it's nearly impossible that anyone I know (well enough to give presents to anyway) could fit in another baby this year. And, as of Saturday, the blanket was nicely packaged up and sent off to Chicago - yeah!

And this is my beautiful wallhanging from Kaffe Fasset's "Glorious Patchwork." It was years in the making, and I finally finished around my birthday last Feb. I learned hand quilting on this, and added beads in with the handquilting. For this quilt, I could look for interesting pieces of fabric, and then just use a little bit of them. It was made with paper piecing, so the squares & corners are all more precise than I could make them on my own.

A sad day, a senseless loss

2006-10-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Our friend, BW, did not make it through his illness. He passed away yesterday evening. Today's been a hard day for everyone who knew him. It's hard to imagine now what life will be like without him.

More on the tree of selective death

2006-10-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

So, my poor laptop is really not doing well. The narcolepsy was the fault of the power cord; I switched to another power cord & that problem is fixed. But I tried to upload some photos last night and it slowly froze, in stages. First stage was that nothing seemed to be happening with the upload, but as we're still working with (free) dialup at home, that wasn't too unusual. But then absolutely nothing was happening. Next step: the laptop stops recognizing the keyboard properly. It will recognize some keys, but only as if they were . I hit "f" & it brings up the command, "find". Then, a few minutes later, the whole thing is frozen up. Bleh.

So here's one crafty image, from the net:

This is my result for the quiz, "What kind of knitting needles are you?" (http://www.quizilla.com/users/larissmix/quizzes/What%20kind%20of%20knitting%20needles%20are%20you%3F). Apparently, I am pink aluminum. I do have several of these, probably either swiped them from my mom, or bought them at Woolworths.

And now, back to the tree of death. The toxin released by the walnut tree is called juglone. This is a diagram of where the juglone is released.

Apparently, from most parts of the tree (the roots, the leaves and the inner bark, mainly). This looks a little daunting at first. And I briefly considered whether the big, beautiful tree in our backyard should be done away with. But it turns out that the toxin is not toxic to everything. It's particularly toxic to members of the nightshade family (tomatoes, potatoes, and presumably, though no one mentioned this, deadly nightshade), but not toxic to many lovely plants, such as forsythia, crocus & hostas. So I'll use the walnut compost, in the vicinity of the walnut tree, and put some of these unaffected plants back there. This is the kind of happy info we can get from our university cooperative extension websites (like Cornell (http://www.cce.cornell.edu/), Virginia (http://www.ext.vt.edu/), Minnesota (http://www.extension.umn.edu/), etc) - good folks!

More Quilts of Yore

2006-10-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

My laptop has developed narcolepsy, which has made it difficult to get to any recent photos. So the parade of oldies will continue, with a mini quilt made for VL in an art exchange last year:

This one was a wedding present for DVP & DP:

And this is one I actually made for myself and finished. I made it with old flannel shirts from the thrift store. It is oh-so-cozy.

I can't think of much else to write. I visited a friend with lymphoma in the hospital this morning. I guess if someone's in the hospital, there's a good chance they'd rather have a visit than just watch tv all day long. We are all hoping BW will get better soon!

A Chicken and Quilts from Last Year

2006-10-17T05:25:00.000-07:00

Here is one of D&LS's chickens. D&L are wonderful & helpful people. For example, L answered a composting question for me this weekend about whether walnut leaves would be harmful in my compost. K & I have a lovely walnut tree in the backyard of the house we bought this past spring. After buying the house, we found out that the downside to a walnut tree is that it is a Tree of Death - it releases a toxin that kills most other plants (not grass though) within the radius of its roots & branches. L, a plant biologist, warned against putting the leaves into compost, as the toxin may well be in the leaves, and then I would be creating Compost of Death (or at least Compost of Ill-Health) - not your general aim when composting.

Unfortunately, I had already added the leaves. And mixed them in. Thoroughly.

LC has requested that I show off the quilts we made last year for flood relief. The first two were crib- or lap-sized:

The next two were something like twin or full bed size:

This last one earned a nickname, but now that I come to think of describing it, I realize it was completely backwards, and made no sense. We were doing a marathon amount of quilting at the time and were probably sleep-deprived.

A few UFOs

2006-10-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

So, let's see about adding some images...
This is the great UFO #1. I started this queen-sized quilt many years ago. It was from a book of "Weekend Quilt Projects." Ha! For a few years it was all pieced together, but without backing or batting. Then (I think around Thanksgiving 2003) my mom & her quilting group helped me stretch it all out on big church-basement tables, sandwich the backing, batting & top, and pinned it all together. Thereupon followed a start at machine quilting a queen-sized quilt on a regular sewing machine. The weight of the quilt pulls the fabric down, which led several times to the needle coming down on the sewing foot & snapping in half. Now I have a bigger work surface and should really get back to this project.

After a few others, anyway. Here's a sad little color scheme:

This is my 2nd commissioned piece, a baby quilt for DVP's sister. The lovely DVP sent a couple of color samples, incliduing a green most like the right-hand green of the two above. This green was very hard to match to any cute kid prints. And since taking this photo, the whole scheme has changed completely with only a few of the above colors staying in it.

And here's my first log cabin quilt. At the time of this photo, the blocks were not pieced together, though now they are (I'll have to work on this more, with more recent photos). It's sized to cover up a storage space in my office, and the orangey-yellows go with my office color scheme.

On a non-textile note, I made the maple-cayenne popcorn from DC's blog last night and we will attest that it is indeed a new form of crack.

2006-10-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

Third attempt at starting a blog (maybe there are other things to work on today?). I'm inspired to start a blog by looking at what DC (http://dearestcupcake.blogspot.com/) and DL (http://bestitched.typepad.com/bestitched/) have done with theirs. We'll see how it goes...