weighty snow

snowed 4-6 inches last night/this morning - heavy, slushy snow!

a view to our backyard


hello tree

so much for spring buds

what stole my time this fall and winter

rewind to last summer, when i thought to myself "hey, wouldn't it be really neat to knit something sorta fashionable for my glamorous cousin in paris for her birthday?" i bought the perfect yarn - a dreamy fingering weight bamboo/wool blend that i found in seattle, handdyed in the san juan islands in the most glorious purple-blue combination. perfect, i thought, to represent her pacific northwest roots and her exotic life now.

i began with such optimism ... and got seriously sidetracked. it was a test of endurance - though as i write that i laugh. i'm so happy that such things are the nature of my endurance tests at the moment.

part of the problem was that i never really mastered the pattern. i put a ton of stitch markers in - one to mark the beginning and end of the center section, and in between to mark each repeat of the center section. but the way the pattern is written makes you have to move the stitch markers with every other row by about 1 stitch. i must have frogged it 5-6x before i figured out that was just the way the pattern was written.

did only 3 pattern repeats across because i wanted more of a stole/scarf than a shawl. i tried size 8 needles in the hopes that a bigger needle would speed things along. somewhere along the line i had to steal those size 8 needles temporarily for another project, and when i picked it up again i forgot what size i used and used the wrong one for a few inches. but it blocked out, i think.

well, her birthday was in july, and that came and went. then it approached the time when she was going to move to montreal, and i thought, well, i don't want to burden her with anything extra for the big move. so i slowed down.

then christmas knitting interfered.

i took it up after christmas and oh it took so long! i eventually got into a sort of a rhythm so that one pattern repeat would take one hour. i was constantly looking at the chart, though, which is part of why it would take so long.

it has spent time in chicago, seattle, virginia, and texas. more of a movie knit, not a conversational knit. did 42 repeats because i seriously underestimated how much this would stretch when blocked. i was planning on stretching it a lot out widthwise, so i thought that would eat into the length. nope.

at the end of 42 repeats it was just a couple of inches past my fingertips, when draped around my neck. then after blocking, it was down to my ankles!

it ended up being about 20” wide by 100” long - just a smidge too long for my blocking foam squares.

speaking of blocking - this was the first time i used the blocking wires that i just got. it took FOREVER to thread on the wires, but once i did, it was cinch to block. i also took franklin's advice (see below) and threaded the ends in when it was on the blocking wires, which was nice.

i still have a lot of the skein left - about 660 yards (meaning it took a paltry 460 yards).

coincidentally, franklin habit was working on the same stole at the same time. almost the same, at any rate - a different border, but the interior was the same. we talked about it briefly when he came up to my LYS for a book signing. allow me to quote from his blog: "It has been cooed over and it has been sworn at. (Mostly sworn at.)"

so, it ends up being a birthday / christmas / welcome back to the continent / happy spring / housewarming / happy engagement gift. happy all of these, cousin!

pattern: sea and shells stole by val campion

yarn: peekaboo fly by fly designs, 65% superwash wool, 35% bamboo.

sari silk table runner

also recently finished a table runner as a wedding present for my houston friend that recently got married (yes, i know it was a couple of months ago ... i figured that if the couple gets a year to send out thank you cards, don't i have a year to send the gift? :) christmas knitting interfered with the proper timing. plus, i figured it was such a large wedding that she would better appreciate this when not arriving with hundreds of other gifts.)

initially i had in mind a pattern made with an aran or dk weight yarn, a solid color with some funky pattern knitted into it. but then i saw the beautiful vibrant playful colors of the sari silk yarn and thought it was a better representatation of my friend's personality. plus, it's spun out of recycled / repurposed sari silk, which embodies an ecological spirit that i thought she would love.

the pattern took 2 skeins. from my last endeavor with sari silk yarn, i knew that no two skeins would be the same dye lot, or even the same gauge. so i alternated skeins with each triangle, which was a perfect way to blend them.

pattern: multidirectional scarf
fringe: based on the picture of this table runner
size 13 square rosewood needles

easterish knits

just finished a little hat for a baby that was born last week. so refreshing to knit in girly colors! i'm not even normally a fan of pink, but i've had so little pink in my life it really was quite welcome here.

the bunny hat pattern is from "itty bitty hats" by susan anderson. love this book - i give it to any new knitter that i teach that has an interest in babies. she explains the basics fairly well, and it has a lot of cute variations on a simple hat that are not too crazy. like these ears, for example.

the hat was knit out of simply soft acrylic, which is about the only pure acrylic i like to work with. i crocheted on a border and ties to match the blanket, which was made out of plymouth "heaven" yarn that i snagged when the lake forest knitting store closed a couple of years ago. it may be heaven to touch, but it is hell to knit with. mostly because it is so inelastic and slippery. it would slip right off all the needles that i tried. finally i tried some square rosewood needles out. yes, the needles are square instead of round. it actually makes picking up the stitches a lot easier, and so i find it works well with inelastic yarns - like recycled sari silk or this one.

the blanket pattern was free and quite easy, knit on the diagonal with yarn-over holes along the edges.

here's the card that i made to go with it. a simple affair, thanks to some thick scrapbooking paper pads that i picked up on sale at joanns.

the grill is out

yes, it was 6 degrees with wind chill today. but there was a breath of warmth earlier this week, and DH dared to break out the grill and try a new technique. best recipes recommended slicing the beef into 1.5 inch cubes and butterflying them, to maximize marination surface area yet enable even cooking when squeezed back into the cubes. good in theory, but my execution of equally sized cubes was poor. still, a lovely presentation and great veggies.

i love staycations. especially when it means i get meals cooked for me :)

leggo my legos

the first community college course that DH takes: "Intro to Lego Engineering." You sign up for it, they send you an awesome "mindstorm" lego kit with 1000+ pieces, and you login to a website to find your projects. It begins with a 90 page PDF file full of scientific theory to please the engineering-minded adult - starting from the Pythagorean Theorem and figuring out the smallest size cube you can make with legos, to the physics of building gear boxes, functioning steering wheels and engines.

the first project, since E was intrigued and interfering with actual progress otherwise, was a tractor trailer that DH invented.

the first course project was a chainsaw. turn the crank and the gears all move!

one of the next projects was a guy who pedals a bike across a "high wire" (i'll have you know that "high wire" is made from a scrap of the finest alpaca you've ever seen)

other projects included a gun turret, a "moth man," and a cool trike bike. E is intrigued - i'm not sure we're going to be able to return to duplos.