4.6 Magazines

Ok - the assignment today is magazines. Do I have 10? Not sure... but I guess we'll see.

1. Spin-Off. I subscribe to this one.

2. Interweave Knits. And this.

3. Popular Science. J subscribes to this one, but I read it.

4. Scientific American. And this.

5. Consumer Reports. I particularly like the last page with the idiotic advertisements outed.

6. Reader's Digest. My MIL subscribes, and I always read them when we visit. Or at the Dr's.

7. For Women Only. An occasional pick up at the grocery store, I never can get over how they manage to juxtapose "Diet this way now" with "A Great Recipe for Chocolate Cake" on the cover. K and I snicker over it and talk about the hidden expectations. They do have occasional interesting recipes.

8. And... and... I'm drawing a blank here. I'm not really a magazine reader. Sorry, just 7 on Tuesday.

4.3 Crocuses

This is the crocuses at their best - sadly yesterday's 85F caused many of them to wilt, poor things.

4.2 A (Sun)Room of Her Own

3.24 Overdyeing results

'Member when I was fussing about the lightest one of these?

I dragged out the dye pot for a shawl I wasn't happy with the color of (more about that later), and while I was at it, I threw the pinky skein in. It's still in the same relative position, next to the medium colored red.

I don't think it's too pink any more.

3.23 10 signs of spring

1. Obligatory crocus pictures from those of us in the northeast.

2. Robins have been spied flitting about and listening for worms.
3. Our precipitation has changed from snow to rain.
4. The incredible 7 foot snow mountain in the front yard has dwindled...

5. ...and the grass is starting to green-up.

6. Indoor track practice has given way to outdoor track practice.
7. Being much more opportunistic, the weeds have started sprouting, although it is still too cold to spend a lot of time eradicating them.
8. Seed and flower catalogs are arriving weekly.
9. Planning for summer activities is starting to kick into high gear.

10. I'm waiting somewhat impatiently for the notice that a particular fleece is available for purchase, although I have no need whatsoever for a new fleece and am not at all sure I'm going to buy it.

(all right, who was that in the back going 'liar, liar, pants on fire'?)

3.17 Add another way...

I've been getting bored with cooking and tired of the complaints that I fix the same old stuff - both of them probably stemming from the fact that I have been in a cooking rut. So, I've been looking for new things to fix. This one was labeled "Bangers and Mash Slimmed Down" but the text of the article says it is similar to "colcannon". Ok - we'll call it bangers and mash since I'm not acquainted with colcannon.

Chicken sausages, split and browned, with a light onion/chicken gravy, served with red potatoes mashed together with kale.

A big hit with everyone, and much to be preferred to corned beef and cabbage, which seems to be the local push for St. Patrick's Day.

3.15 10 Ways...

to celebrate St. Patrick's day. Hmmm....

I've never been one to celebrate St. Paddy's day, as it wasn't particularly a big deal when I was growing up. However:

1. Wear green. This was important, particularly when I was in elementary school, as those who didn't wear green on that day were fair game to be pinched. I wound up with bruises one year...

2. Wish my friend Happy Birthday as her birthday is the day before and I will probably have forgotten until the next day.

3. Listen to one or more of my cds of Irish folk songs, or

4. Put one or more Irish folk song seeds in Pandora and let it roll.

5. Drag out one or more of the Riverdance DVDs.

6. Avoid the St. Patrick's Day parade (although this mostly happens on the Saturday, rather than on the day).

7. Laugh at the guys who bring the green food dye into the German pub to make sure their beer is green on St. Paddy's; laugh at them again when the dye makes the beer go flat; and laugh at them a third time as they try to explain to the English speaking restaurant owner what they are doing so that he can explain to the thoroughly confused waitress. (A five minute explanation on the Americans' part boiled down to a one sentence explanation in German to the waitress: It's just one of those weird things that Americans do sometimes.) (I only did this one year, but it was memorable.).

8. Knit one or more of the green items I should be working on.

9. Dye some more yarn and/or fiber green.

10. Find green clothes for my offspring to wear (see point 1 above).

3.12 Oh, my

After seeing references to it sporadically over the years, I finally requested "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome from the library. Oh, my. If you need a good belly laugh, I strongly recommend this one. Three men (and a dog) going off on a boating holiday on the Thames. I'm only a little bit into it and I keep having to put it down because my sides hurt so much.

3.11 Spring fever

After all that snow we had just a bit ago, the temperatures this week have been in the 40s and 50s.

I have a serious case of Spring Fever.

That is all.

3.7 More spinning

And, some of you may remember this...

a different dyeing experiment. I like this one a bit better, as there's more variation in the color. After flailing a bit, trying to decide how I like it spun best, I settled on this:

this is a two ply from the lightest end of the fiber. I'm working on the middle section now,with the darkest end yet to come. I'm thinking of something like Girasole, but am still pondering the question of whether it should be center light, edge dark, or center dark, edge light. Opinions?

Thanks all of you for your congratulations on our anniversary. We had a nice dinner out last night (through circumstance, we wound up at our favorite local Chinese restaurant, which seemed fitting as the first time we met, we ate lunch at a restaurant in Chinatown, SF.)

3.6 Bright spun

Remember this?

It's turned into this:

The change in shade is not an artifact of the light - it really does change in shade from dark red to peach. The red will be good for Red Scarf Project, but I think the peach end will be too pink-y. I'm really not sure what I'll do with the pink end, but I suppose something will come to me.

3.4 Happy anniversary to us...

21 years ago, J and I were married. It's been a good ride.

3.3 And last but not least

of the wips I finished off during the Olympics:

One Artisan's Vest from the Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book. I really like the color, I liked knitting it, I wanted a vest to keep my shoulders cold (we had just moved to NY from Oregon - in January). I got it all finished, just needed to tuck in the ends, and realized that the mohair content in the Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride is too much for me. The ends go straight through whatever I put under it and give me a prickly rash. That completely dampened my interest in finishing it off and there it sat.

It's been an ongoing source of irritation for me, sitting there in the drawer and being useless (because unfinished), when there must be people who could and would wear it just fine. Now I can send it on its way, somewhere, anywhere, and let someone else enjoy it and be warm.

3.2 Wips smackdown the fourth

One baby surprise jacket (complete with cat head, because she just can't leave it alone). This was knit from some DHF that I dyed in the bump and then spun about worsted weight in a chain ply. I have finally crocheted the edging, tucked in the ends and washed it. Pre-finishing it looked like this:

and you can see how much it grew with a dunk in the water. The picture post washing is still wet and the colors are much more true in the second picture. Since I have no immediate need for baby clothing in my own family (thank goodness) or in my extended acquaintance (how did that happen?) this one will probably be turned over to Warm Extremities. I knit it to figure out how it was done and I cannot imagine how someone could come up with this. I have a decent two-D visualization, but I just don't do the three-D stuff.

3.1 Wips smackdown #3

I got to the end of the wool peddler's shawl and had a bunch of yarn left over (not surprising since I had started with a little over a pound of finished yarn). So, I knit a scarf. This was the second time I knit Sylvia's cabled rib scarf and I still like it. The cables don't show as well in the variegated yarn (surprise surprise!) but it makes a soft cushy squishy scarf anyway. And then, still having more yarn left over, I knit a hat to go with it. (Why do I never notice things like photographing the hat with the seam side up, which wouldn't be all that bad since my seaming has gotten a lot better, but it is noticeable that the stripes stop and start at one place. This is the back of my head when I wear the hat and I don't care about it then, but it looks funny in a picture. However I am lazy and if I wait until I get another picture, you won't ever get to see it.)

The hat is my standard mindless knitting hat. I cast on a random even number of stitches (wrap the yarn around my head, then triple that length. Cast on an even number of stitches using long-tail cast on until I have about 4 inches of tail left.) Knit in K2P2 rib until the knitting is as long as my middle finger. Put a purl welt on the right side of the turn up. Continue in K2P2 rib until the part above the welt is the length of my hand. Start decreasing (1st decrease row: K2P2tog across. Knit in pattern for 3 rows. 2nd decrease row: K2togP1 across. Knit in pattern for 3 rows. 3rd decrease row: K2tog across. Knit in pattern for 1 row. Repeat 3rd decrease row and return as needed until somewhere between 10 and 15 stitches are left.) Sew through remaining stitches to pull into a circle, sew up side, remembering that the right side will change at the welt for the turn up (something I don't always remember to do).

This leaves one with a seam, but on the other hand, since all the measurements are off my own body, all I need is a ball of yarn and a circular needle, with no switching to DPNs necessary at the decrease.

Since I knit the scarf and then the hat immediately after the shawl, they've all three been sitting 'round waiting for ends to be tucked in. Consider it done.

Well, we wound up with a total of about 19 inches of snow out of the storm. The bird bath was nearly swamped and there were no birds in sight for about 24 hours.

The pear tree is hidden by the mounds of snow on that side of the driveway.



Fortunately, the sun has come out today and things are a little brighter.

2.26 Weather reports

Shall we review the bidding for those playing along at home?

1. NWS yesterday claimed an inch for yesterday, 8-12 inches last night, an inch or two today.

2. The radio this morning stated we'd had 8-12 inches, depending on where you were and an inch or so more today, tapering off mid-morning.

3. The paper this morning stated we'd probably get about 15 inches out of this storm.

4. NWS this morning said another inch or two today, tapering off mid morning.

And, our final results a-a-a-re!

I scraped 2 inches off the drive yesterday evening.

There were 8 inches on the drive this morning. J&I shoveled half of it; K&S&I shoveled the other half of it.

I shoveled another inch late morning.

K shoveled another inch early afternoon.

K&S shoveled another 2 inches mid afternoon.

K&S&I shoveled another inch late afternoon.

It's still snowing.

That's 15 inches and counting...

2.18 Second up on the wips smackdown

The next item on the WIPs list is a cat favorite*. They've loved it since it first came in the house as a part of a fleece:

A Corriedale fleece split between three of us, purchased from Whitefish Bay Farm, I wound up with about 2.5 pounds. It was one of the fleeces that shaded from white through grey to a very dark grey. Using the dog comb shown above, I opened the tips of the locks before washing. It made a nice spring project, sitting out on the deck in the back of our rental house in between trips looking for a permanent one when we moved to Rochester in 2004.

Once flicked, I washed it.

After combing the locks again with the dog comb, I spun from the opened up lock, grabbing locks at random to get a nice mix of color:

Once it was all spun up, the spinning project was over, and there the skeins sat. I was in th middle of knitting other things and not ready for a new knitting project. It marinated for quite a while and I couldn't decide what I wanted to knit in a variegated grey. In May of 2006, I gave up on grey and decided maybe a trip into the dyepot would be useful:

It is at this point that one can see the deep interest the cats have taken in the project - skeins covered in cat hair.

Having dyed the skeins, it didn't take too long to decide on a project (only until February, eight months later, ): Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls. I've never cared for the flat red the project is shown in, but a variegated red seemed to me to be a possibility. I knit it up and once again it sat. And sat. I was not in the mood for the zillion ends that the small chain plied skeins left me.

When I started looking for WIPs needing finishing, this one leapt to hand. I took it out of the drawer and set it on the counter, where the cats immediately discovered it:

I persevered (this time) and we finally have a completely finished object:

*Actually, it was Bitsy and Snowball, rather than Snowball and Tiger, since this fleece is older than our junior cat, but he moved right into loving this project too. They climb up on it, immediately get that giddy look and start in with the purring and kneading before they fall over and snooze for a while.

2.17 Working on wips

I may have mentioned that I don't ordinarily do -alongs or -swaps. I hate dropping what I'm in the middle of in order to do something to someone else's schedule. Exceptions do occasionally get made, particularly when it's something I was going to do anyway. Ravelympics came along and I thought about how and whether I wanted to do that.

The category for WIPs seems tailormade for where I am right now. I may have also mentioned before that I hate finishing with a passion. Once in a while, I make myself finish things immediately, but often, they get tucked in a drawer to wait until I feel like it.

I haven't felt like it for quite a while.

The stack has been reaching critical nagging mass.

My personal goal for Ravelympics is to reduce the mass, if not to zero, at least to the point where they don't nag me any more (which will be pretty darn close to zero).

And in that spirit, I offer up the first of the items on the finishing line:

One Triangle Scarf.

This is a pattern that I came up with from a description of the technique a few years ago. There was somewhat of a hoohah online about this as I recall, as Person A published a pattern for it, and then got upset when Person B gave a two sentence description of the technique. Person A claimed that Person B had violated copyright (with all of the attendant copyright nonsense that followed). I would probably have ignored the whole thing because I dislike the yarn the scarf was intended for except that the nonsense made me decide to figure out if I could come up with the scarf from the two sentence description.

Obviously, I did come up with a scarf. I've never looked to see if what I did matched the original pattern, because I didn't care whether I did or not. I now have a mindless knitting scarf pattern that I've repeated several times; it's a good pattern for long repeats of color.

This scarf, now finished and blocked, is headed out for my nephew. It should be just the perfect size for an eight year old.

2.16 finally...

I don't know what it is about this shawl. I have taken more awful pictures of this than any other shawl in the history of blogging. This one is about as good as it gets.

It is a comfortable shawl to wear and the pattern was well done. Leaf Lace Shawl by Evelyn Clark, knit as written for smallest size in Jaggerspun Zephyr.