Category Archives: Knitting

Happy Twenty-Thirteen!

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Ah, the new year.

Typically, this is when we begin to swear off junk food, promise to eat thirty servings of vegetables every day, commit ourselves to nine days of exercise each week, and promptly forget that we have all-consuming jobs and responsibilities that make slicing out a part of our day and reserving it for resolutions feel impossible by the second week in January.  And while I, too, will be making good-health commitments to my body along with most of the rest of the world, my resolutions have a lot more to do with making the most of those tiny slices of time.

See, I started a new job in November that’s tacked on an extra two hours-ish of commute time to each of my days, and pairing that with taking one class a month to finish my bachelor’s degree has made the initial transition trying.  I decided to take a month off of school for December, considering the new-job-exhaustion I was feeling and the likelihood of transforming into a full-fledged Scrooge over not being able to bake as many Christmas treats as I wanted or to make sure each and every gift was as perfect as possible.  And, while that time off did help, I now know that in order to experience a holiday season as magical as I expect for myself and my loved ones, I’m going to have to prepare sooner.  A lot sooner.

That said, I am resolving to begin now.  I know plenty of crafty people who create the entire year and stash their future presents for gift-giving situations and it’s time for me to become one of them.

The second important note is: to create with variety.  Here I am speaking only about knitting, but that could translate into any of the other homemade things in which I dabble.  Christmas rewarded me with four volumes of knitting stitches that will help me — finally! — create my very own knitting pattern.  More than homemade, I love the possibility of being original, so I expect to get a lot of use from those books.  (Thanks, Mom!)

And the third, and final, craft-related resolution is to use that spinning wheel!  I’ve been so intimidated since my first attempts of making a giant mess of my roving, but over the last year I’ve seen such an improvement in my knitting, I expect that, too, just needs time and practice.  I can hear my friend Kathy right now: “Just fifteen minutes a day, Katie.”  It’s enough to practice but not enough to get angry about the errors.  I think that I should be able to spare that much!

Hopefully you’ve all recovered from any party-induced weariness by now and have written your own (small!) list of resolutions.  By announcing them to the world, I give my friends and family free license to nag me, all year, on the status of my resolutions.  I suggest you do the same!

Good-bye, 2012.  We learned a lot this year, whether it be about life and love or cumin and cables.  Looking forward to all the new information 2013 will bring!

Saturday Night Hooking: It’s Levi-oh-sa, not Levio-sah!

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Let’s be clear about one thing this morning: I love Harry Potter.

The world, yes.  The movies, yes.  The story with all its foreshadowing and multi-level themes, yesyesyes.  But even more than that?  I love what Harry Potter did to the world.  Every photograph and news story about children and parents lining up at midnight for book releases, parties to celebrate the newest novel, Halloween costumes composed of round-framed glasses and hand-drawn forehead scars: magic.  Not the same wizard magic found in J.K. Rowling’s pages, but the kind that makes children (and adults!) fall so deeply in love with characters that they remain lifelong invisible friends.

Every time I hear of someone thanking Rowling for their childhood, I tear up just a bit.

The skein pictured with the beginnings of a scarf that it just wasn't destined to become.

The skein pictured with the beginnings of a scarf that it just wasn’t destined to become.  Like Harry, this yarn had a very specific fate.

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Happy Birthday, Monique!

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Today is my co-blogger, co-worker and friend of over four years (!), Monique’s, birthday!

From what I understand, her husband (who, while very sweet and kind, tends to stick to things like surfing and let’s Monique do the ‘kitchen thing’) woke up and made her a birthday breakfast of waffles with fresh fruit.  Lucky girl!

On Friday, the girls at work and I celebrated Monique’s birthday the only way we know how: with food and yarn.  The night before I made her a cake.  This particular cake took about four hours due to a few mishaps along the way and had me crawling into bed at 11 o’clock PM, mumbling to my husband about how it was the “Worst Ugliest Cake Ever.”  He was fast asleep, so I’m still trying not to begrudge him his answer of:  “Oh honey, that’s too ba– SNORE.”

I didn’t bother taking any pictures of it before I left for work.  Saving that cake at a stoplight cost me my coffee and resulted in sticky peppermint syrup all over the center console.  So, by the time I arrived I was pretty peeved that the Worst Ugliest Cake Ever ruined my caffeine fix, would potentially harm my coworkers’ digestion and would definitely, definitely offend their eyes if they happened to look at it.  At least two of our coworkers went in on a Nothing Bundt Cake’s cake that morning, just in case we had to fling this monstrosity in the direction of the nearest waste bin.

We delivered gifts to her desk and I threw in a few disclaimers regarding the cake, assuring her and everyone in earshot if they hated it I wouldn’t be offended, and then left it at that.

About half an hour later, Monique rushed into my department with the cake on a plate and spare forks in her hand.  It was good!  She promised!

What a relief.  There are few things worse in Baking Land than spending hours on one item as a gift and then finding it tastes almost as bad as it looks.

I named him Frankencake. Don't mind the Project Management folders in the background. I didn't expect to ever want to see this cake again, so there wasn't any effort put into staging a photograph.

Now, I’m going to point you in the direction of Dessert For Breakfast for the recipe for this Raspberry Lemon Lime Layer cake.  The cake itself I found to be absolutely amazing.  The right consistency, just the right amount of sweet and sour — divine.  The lemon curd was amazing as well (and it was my first time making lemon curd — woefully not vegan, though I’ve seen that those recipes exist!).  But it was the raspberry buttercream that didn’t thrill me.  I’m sure I must have done something wrong, but it was just.. too thick for my liking.  For such a dense cake with so many complex flavors, I would prefer something lighter.  So!  This has become a personal project — to perfect a cake to my tastes.  I know it may sound absurd to all the foodies out there, but I’ve never done that.  I’ve never taken pieces of several recipes and twisted them until they became my own.  But I’m about to!

(Also, please notice that her cake is gorgeous and doesn’t look anything like Frankencake.)

You may notice a few bites taken off the side of the cake I was bringing home to my family after work. I must have mice. In my car. Or something.

I mentioned yarn, right?  Well, it was my first time giving a gift that was still on the needles, but apparently the ride back and forth from Las Vegas last week wasn’t enough time for me to finish her scarf.  I know what you’re thinking: Gifting a scarf in May?  It’s practically summer in California!  Yes, well, it’s winter temperatures in our office all year ’round, so she can just drape it over the back of her chair and use it to combat her boss’ air conditioning needs.

The yarn is Lorna’s Laces (of course it is!) in Honor.  The colorway is “Cookie’s Vintage Office.”  The pattern is “Seafoam” and is very easy to memorize!  Once it’s finished and blocked, I’ll show off the pattern a little more.

When I went outside to photograph this, the boys that were playing in the street got quiet. I didn't look up to see what they were up to, but I'm pretty sure they're starting to wonder why the crazy lady across the street takes her food and other objects outside, photographs them, and then disappears again. Or, they might wonder why she's still in her pajamas at noon. Valid questions.

Happiest of Birthdays to you, Monique!

Saturday Night Hooking: Trading Needles For Spades

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I’m ashamed to say that there haven’t been a thousand projects flying off my knitting needles since I last posted.  In fact, I don’t even have a real project in the works!  At least, not one I have the yarn for.  I need to get organized and stop buying yarn with no project in mind or choosing projects for which I have no yarn.  Something just isn’t meshing here.

(That said, I totally bought Hunger Games yarn today!  I still have “The Boy Who Lived” waiting in the wings with no project chosen, but never you mind!)

But thanks to an enthusiastic friend who had a birthday in March (but we didn’t celebrate until late April), I got to knit up a second iPad monster!  I let her choose the colors from Jimmy Beans Wool, making sure to point out that I was a particular fan of Lorna’s Laces.  She chose Peppermint Mocha, in the worsted variety (they didn’t have that colorway in ‘Honor’ anymore) and I discovered that, while it’s still my current favorite brand of yarn, it’s ‘Honor’ that I’m wild about.  Something about baby alpaca mixed with silk feels amazing against my fingers as I knitknitknit.

There he is! Goofy teeth and all!

I told myself I was going to write down my steps this time, so I’d have an actual pattern… but here’s what happened.  Worsted yarn and Honor (whatever weight Lorna’s Laces considers that — a little finer than worsted,  but not as fine as sock) do not knit up the same way, so this fella (Darryl, we named him) has considerably more stretch than my iPad monster.  These are things that I tend not to discover until after he’s half-way finished and then I do the traditional hand wave and the, “Oh, it’ll be fine.”  Well, yes, it will be fine.. but it won’t be perfect enough to count for a pattern.  I’d like to knit a third one and take notes this time, but I’m rather worn out on the iPad monster front.  Another project, please!

Another project, you say? What's that in the background?

Do you know how I know Spring is officially here?

I’m covered in dirt.  All the time. 

Sometime around February I think, “This is the year where I might just skip planting.  It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just not really feeling it this year..”  And then March ends and I start to twitch.  Maybe it’s the gardening flyers that start circling, or the fact that I know how delicious food is coming from a backyard harvest.  Or perhaps it’s the sheer terror at the thought of grocery store, pesticide-flavored vegetables.

Either way, we took our annual trip to the nursery to pick up Heritage seed packets and organic starter plants for the new garden.  At our old home, we had half our yard fenced and devoted to gardening, but now that we’re living with my parents it gets a little trickier.   They have a well established front and back yard, with beautiful grass and trees.. and well, I can’t just go around yanking things out as I wish.  So, it comes down to finding pieces of land that haven’t been planted (or where the plants aren’t doing well and I could argue that they didn’t have long for this world — yank!).

And honestly?  Planting in tiny planters or pots is a lot more manageable than handling all that land I had set aside for my previous garden.  Weeding is so much easier because I’m not going to be weeding paths between vegetable beds — those are poured concrete!  It also keeps me growing on a smaller scale.  I mean, did we really need the thirty-something cucumbers we grew that year?  I don’t even like cucumbers!

The only tree I missed when we moved was my pomegranate tree. The first year we go three tiny pomegranates. The next? Nine. And the last year I believe we were in the range of thirty-five. Good thing we moved-- I think they were taking over.

One side of the house. I used cinder blocks I found around the backyard to act as strawberry planters, that way the fruit won't lay in the dirt. The back will be a tiny raised bed, as well. I think I'll plant the other leafy greens there, so they'll get lots of shade. Also making a star appearance is our brand new pomegranate shrub. I planted it Wednesday!

The hay bales mark our potato/onion/artichoke planter.  Potatoes have a tendency to run off underground and I was just broken up over the thought of raking at the end of season and finding old potatoes we may have missed.  So, we decided to make a deep planter that way the potatoes and all the other root vegetables can, hopefully, move around in the soil and not go deeper than the hay bales.  That way I can just stick my arms in to the elbows and root around for those tasty fingerlings when it’s time!

Berry blocks. These are June strawberries. We only got a few just to see how it would go, being late season and all. I always have dreams of how the next year will go and they usually involve my own version of Strawberry Fields Forever.

This is the front planter. I freed it from it's geranium grasp in favor of making a salad planter. You may notice strawberries in their container there, but those are the ones that were planted above. Lettuce, spinach and kale are in the front, along with a raspberry bush.

This is the front planter. I freed it from it's geranium grasp in favor of making a salad planter. You may notice strawberries in their container there, but those are the ones that were planted above. Lettuce, spinach and kale are in the front, along with a raspberry bush.

Speaking of established backyard trees, my mother has figs and plums that are already on their way. This fig has your name on it, Monique.

Not pictured are the empty beds with sewn seeds (spaghetti squash, acorn squash, carnival carrots, purple beans, shelling peas, and zucchini).  Pictures of dirt aren’t very exciting, but tiny shoots are!  So, as soon as we start seeing some of those, I’ll be documenting those like a baby’s first steps.  For sure.

Lovely!

Saturday Night Hooking: Anti-theft Knitting

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I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it’s been spring here for about two weeks, even though it’s not supposed to officially turn over until the 20th.  The sun is shining, the wind is whipping through the wind chimes outside, and no one, including pets, wants to stay indoors.  With all the new plant growth and baby squirrels and rabbits popping up all over the place, it’s no wonder spring is recognized as a time of renewal.  Rebirth.  Re.. blogging?

Monique and I took a three month unscheduled vacation from this blog.  You’ll notice she’s come back with two posts earlier this week, but I had yet to show my face.  Getting hacked twice was no fun at all and after all the work it took to get the blog back on it’s feet the first time, the second time I just folded it up neatly and put it away so I could look at it later.  Christmas and New Year’s came, then Valentine’s Day, and now that winter’s chill has pretty much faded (and so harsh here in Southern California), it’s time to start again.  I’d like to say that in my absence I dreamed up a thousand new projects and finished almost half as many, but alas, my time off was devoured by television, like The Walking Dead.

Today I finally took my camera off it’s shelf, dusted it off, and wandered into the backyard to take some pictures of our incoming spring.

First buds on my mother's plum tree.

If you focus here, you can see very tiny buds on this branch--wait a minute!

Well, that certainly isn't a baby squirrel!

Okay, so maybe we’ll put our joy of sunshine and seasons changing on the back-burner today and instead talk about this insistent little guy!  I’ve been knitting him, on and off, since the end of October.  While my husband and I were on our road trip to British Columbia, we stopped in Reno and popped into a place called Jimmy Beans Wool.  I hadn’t heard of it at all before we Googled “yarn store Reno” as we left our hotel that morning, but what a pleasant surprise!  It’s woman owned and she’s received all sorts of recognition for being a very fast growing company.  The store is clean, well organized and every skein of yarn is presented in such a way that it feels a little like walking into a pet shop.  Yes, please, I’ll adopt all of them!

Luckily for my bank account, I only left with one skein.  It was my first experience with Lorna’s Laces.  I purchased it based on how soft it was first, then color.. but what really sealed the deal?  This specific yarn coloring is called “Zombie BBQ.”  Oh my gosh.  As I write this, they only have four skeins available on their website.  I don’t know if that means once they’re gone, they’re gone, or if that’s just current availability, but it really was a joy to knit!  I’ll admit, I’ve popped “The Boy Who Lived” into my shopping cart half a dozen times lately, but haven’t been ready to commit!

With any of my electronic devices, I’m really anti-scratching.  I know that sounds silly to say, because no one wants their iPad or Kindle scratched, but I’ll plop the things that will fit into single socks and use dish towels to wrap larger objects just so nothing in my purse scratches them!  I was gifted an iPad not too long ago and am often envious when I see people using them at cafes because I wouldn’t dare bring mine out without any protective covering.  I know, I know.. you can buy covering, but making your own is so much more fun!  So, with this gorgeous skein of yard in hand, I decided I’d knit a case.  This is my first time freehanding any knitting, though my coworker assures me it’s as simple as can be.  I did consult a pattern or two to see how many stitches should be used for the width of the device, but after that it was all knits and purls.  Now that I’ve made one, I think I’d modify that first step anyway, just to go with my own gauge and to take into account the stretch that comes with these stitches and this fantastic yarn!

I'm hanging him here so you can see all of him at once. Don't worry, he's empty at the moment. Nothing expensive came crashing down.

(Also, it’s not important, in the slightest, to note that his name is “Jake.”  Or “Jack.”  I can’t really remember.  The knitters at work have started naming their projects because it’s much easier to complain about something with a name than to whine about a scarf or a sock.  Most lunches we hear at least once or twice how tired one of the girls is of “Janet.”  Poor Janet.  It’s not her fault!)

The underneath is never the pretty part, but I wanted to show the reinforcing of the button holes. Had I not messed up on not one, but both holes, no reinforcement would be necessary. Instead I like to pretend that this way my monster always has red eyes, whether he's buttoned or not. And red eyes, as you know, are an excellent theft deterrent. Put your tablet in one of these babies and no one would dare get close!

Why, yes, that is a LinnPuzzle drawing of Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens playing chess as the background. How funny you noticed! (Side Note: Linn, if you ever come back to the internet and to art, know that you've been missed dearly! I've been in love with this particular piece for, oh, a million years?)

I’m rather fond of his zombie-stitched heart.  It’s a working pocket, though I’m not sure what I’d ever put in there.  Ear buds, I suppose.  Or maybe some money, though it doesn’t clasp.  But now that I think about it, I might make that modification in the next one.

Squeal!

For my knitting buddies at Christmas time, I picked up a few of these personalized tags from Mountain Street Arts on Etsy.  She has many sample images but is able to take requests.  I was so impressed with the speed in which they came and the packaging, but the nicest part was how she offered to make an entirely new set if I didn’t like the custom one I requested!  (Unnecessary.  It was perfect!)

So, what did I learn from this project?

1.  Free-style knitting isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  Apparently one does not need a pattern for everything.

2.  It’s more fun to theme a knitting project: knitting with Zombie BBQ while watching The Walking Dead or my husband play Dead Island.

3.  Next time I free-style something, I really should write it down so I could share a pattern with those who do enjoy them (and I still do!).

And as far as my next project, well.  I have too many ideas at the moment.  I’ve been paralyzed by choice for days.  Hopefully by next Saturday there will be a steady project on my needles we can talk about because I don’t want to disappear for another three months!   Just like diet and exercise blogs keep those folks accountable, I think this really keeps me on task.

So, thanks to all of you!