purlsandmurmers

Sweet

November is date season, a heady indulgence which appeals to my sweet tooth. Dates, after all are like candy masquerading as fruit.  No other treat is really necessary.

Of course, then Thanksgiving rolls around, and Texas girl that I still am, I cannot imagine making a Thanksgiving dinner without pecan pie, even though I no longer have those hard shell native Texas pecans.

No traditional pecan pie maker I.  The pecan topping was always my favorite part, so years ago I started making this all-pecan version.  The pecans are wrapped in a rich sweet caramel.  Candy masquerading as Pie.

Which to choose?

Pretty Pink and Sparkly

A little simple knitting for the general Thanksgiving Festivities:

Another scarf for the donation box. 
Seed stitch, 6 inches by 46 inches
Tahki Cotton Classic in bright pink held together with Trendsetter Dune

Thanksgiving was wonderful.  The company was really great and the food was excellent as well.  I also made the best cranberry sauce ever; well, it was really more of a cranberry compote this year.

It is really a combination of fresh cranberries, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, golden raisins and bosc pears cooked in tangerine juice with a dash of sugar with a generous glug of sherry added at the end.  It was one of those things I kind of made up as I went along, but it turned out really well.  Luckily I wrote it down after everyone left so I can recreate it next year.

The End of the Affair

Tesla waiting to be made whole:

It was not always an easy path, the second sleeve had its adventures and misadventures, see the weekend entry at Sew Distracted (how weird to be blogging myself).

But she waits.

My resolve to remain a one-project woman has failed.  I strayed, tempted by the siren call of another yarn previously sitting quietly by the sidelines, tempted by the lure of practicing a new technique, lured by the call of cool weather and the onset of winter.

The affair was brief:

Short row scarf.
Yarn: Noro Kureyon, slightly less than 1 skein, leftover from a previous project
Finished length: 34"

First project of this season for my “Morse Box”. (actually there are a few projects already there, left over from last spring waiting for the return of winter)  Each year I try to knit scarves, hats, mittens and gloves for the children at one of Poughkeepsie’s elementary schools.  They go to a school downtown with a large population of poorer children.  The nurse keeps a box in her office with scarves, hats, and mittens for children who have none. We all know kids can’t keep these things through the season.  Many of these children never get a second pair, if they had any to begin with.  When I worked downtown it always broke my heart to see the little ones without gloves, h*** little ones without coats or warm clothes on bitterly cold winter days.   I never manage to knit enough.  I suppose I am too selfish.  I always end up supplementing the hand knits with a few purchased goods just to help ease my conscience.

I think the original pattern was in Knitter’s but so many have been made over the years I have forgotten.  The original was shaped more like a wide V with a curve meant to hug the base of the neck, but I did not have enough yarn.  Besides I think this will be long enough for a 4-7 year old, at least I hope so.

And what new technique was used?  Not short rows.  I knit this Continental, carrying the yarn in my left hand.  I decided to give Tesla a break from from the constant back and forth.  It worked well.  At first it bothered me to carry in the left and pick while knitting Western, through the front loop, but I eventually got the hang of it.  Wool was much more forgiving.  Garter stitch helped, no purls, and the wrap and turn portion of the short rows actually was easier and made more sense with the Continental orientation. I don't think I will ever master purling with the yarn in my left hand, except using Combination knitting, where it seems perfectly logical. 

I don't think I will ever be a one knitting-style woman again.

Little Bits of This and That

The second sleeve on Tesla is almost finished.  I have about 9 inches knit, 2 more to go, then I will be able to join all the pieces and knit the top portion in the round.  THIS is I am looking forward to with its decreases and shaping. Although truth be told I am enjoying knitting the sleeves even though they are plain garter.  I still have to determine if my  sleeves are going to be radically different due to my different yarn carry techniques, but I don't think so:  they are the same size at the same points in the knitting and they are using up the same amount of yarn -- all good signs.

I started reading Annie Modesitt's Confessions of a Knitting Heretic  and am enjoying it very much.  The writing is entertaining and the instructions are for the most part clever and intelligent and treat knitters like they are people who can look at what they are doing and think clearly.  Am I biased because she is a combination knitter and talks about its benefits? Probably.  I think I had read at least one section before, as an essay in a magazine perhaps?  It is no matter, always a pleasure to read again. I am not far, only up to cables.  I cable well but I am interested to see what she says.  I have not yet cabled without a cable needle, I am rather fond of my cable needles, but I am willing to give it a try.  I worry about needle-less cabling in the car -- what if we hit a bump or a curve and I loose those stitches?

Now is it coincidence that I decided to try left-handed carrying while reading Annie Modesitt?  I am not sure.  She doesn't particularly write about this and this book did not provide the impetus for this experiment.  Am I feeling a little smug that it has worked so well?  Yes.  This is probably a bad sign. 

PICTURES! PICTURES!
The sock yarn finally arrived.  Well, most of it anyway.  I have some solid colored wool on the way as well.

I scored some SocksThatRock.  Since I have come late to socks, I reached The Fold only recently.  The SocksThatRock yarn is in very short supply right now, but I couldn't wait.  After a very patient and helpful phone conversation I got enough for two pairs.  The top yarn is Rose Quartz and it comes in 225 yard skeins;  I think these will make a pretty pair textured socks, not sure what yet, but the ideas are rolling.  The bottom is Cobalt Bloom and it actually looks a little more vibrant than the photo.

The top yarn is Anne by Schaefer Yarns.  The skein is large, about 560 yards.  I could probably do a shawl with it instead.   And in the lower portion of the photo?  More Lorna's Laces! I love my first Lorna's Laces socks so I "needed" more.  The color is called Newtown and it just makes me smile.

Knitting Saves the Day (with a little help from a glass of wine)

Yesterday was one of those frustrating days where everything seems to take much longer than it should.  Gym.  Several errands.  Hours on the road and in just a couple of stores, stupidity, incompetence, lack of sales help on the floor, all of these things did nothing to improve my mood.  And it’s not even Christmas season yet...thank goodness I had Tesla with me so I could knit even a little bit while I stood in line, far better than rolling my eyes, looking at the ceiling and starting to rearrange the displays next to the registers.

It’s not that I am impatient; well that is patently not true.  I can be patient, but I have to feel like I am in control.  This is not necessarily possible in the world of retail.

When I got home, far later than I had planned, I just had time to wolf down some yogurt and start preparing dinner before going off to knitting group.  I anticipated that George would be home late, after 10, so I contemplated putting off starting the dinner until I returned, but knew that if I did so he would have an inexplicably light day and be waiting for me when I arrived. 

Even this, cooking a simple beloved dish, was a lesson in frustration.Still more delays occurred.  I was planning to cook Squid in Red Wine which requires about an hour of simmering.  I quickly minced a nice Spanish onion and several garlic cloves and got the onion started in the olive oil.  Then I opened the wine.  I had planned on using a nice Alion Ribera del Duero, 1995.   We had been working our way through this wine of late and it has been quite lovely.  I had one bottle up in the house.  I opened it, took a sip, and spat it into the sink.  This was followed by extremely foul language.  The wine had corked. As there was no other red wine upstairs in the house this meant I had to go down to the crawl space that we call basement and wine cellar and crawl around the cases of wine trying to find something appropriate.   Yet again, I found myself cursing myself for not building those wine storage shelves down there, knowing full well that the reason I keep putting it off is that I had crawling around and the thought of sitting on the bare rock ledge building shelves in a place I can't even stand up is also fully unappealing. 

I found a Domaine Tempier Bandol 2000, pretty quickly in fact, and rather than look further, I quickly retreated to the kitchen.  I had a slightly larger package of squid than I had used in the past so it took most of the bottle.  This was a treat as it meant that I could relax with a half-glass of wine before Alexine picked me up for knitting.

We opened the second bottle with dinner.

Time spent at knitting group proved productive for Tesla and she is progressing nicely.  I continue to switch back and forth between left-handed and right-handed carrying, fully aware that this may not be wise, but I still can’t discern any difference in my gauge.  In the stores it depended on my mood.  Initially at group I knit with the yarn in the right as I found the combination of conversation and left-handed carrying too confusing.  Eventually, as I sat around looking at how everyone knit, I noticed that Leslie carries her yarn in the left and holds it in a way that I had not considered.  After a little finagling with the yarn I eventually found a nice tension and was able to finally eliminate my penchant for laddering at the joins between the double points when using the left-handed carry.  I have been knitting with the yarn in the left ever since.  Ahh, peace at last.

I don't know that I will always knit this way on all projects.  It may depend on the other techniques being used.  For example I really want to knit Rogue but as it is knit at least partly in the round, I will have to use Western Knitting.  I don't like knitting through the front loop and carrying the yarn in the left, so I will probably work right handed for that.

I am also getting bored with having only one project.  I have tried to be faithful, but it is proving difficult.  Simultaneous projects will be starting soon, including socks, if the sock yarn ever arrives.

Left, Right, Left??

After casting on for Tesla’s second sleeve and knitting the ribbing, I got a crazy idea which has proved quite entertaining but slow for knitting.

Can you tell the difference??

They were not knit the same way.

I have always knit carrying the yarn in my right hand – English style.  I did learn to carry in both for FairIsle knitting and it is a useful technique but I had always considered myself too strongly right-hand dominant to learn to carry with the left regularly.    A post from Jessica the other day got me started questioning these assumptions and was overwhelmed with the urge to try carrying with the left. 

Some background. 

I am basically a self taught knitter.  I remember my grandmother and mother knitting and they may have tried to teach me, but it never took.  In my early 30s I picked up Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting without Tears, bought some yarn, and started.  Initially I knit in the method I now know to be the combination method, knitting through the back loop, wrapping the yarn counter-clockwise, and purling through the front loop, wrapping the yarn clockwise.  This seemed like a logical way to knit and the stitches looked normal to me.  I realize that this is not how E. Zimmerman illustrated knitting.  I think my grandmother may have knitted this way, but I do not remember. 

Later, when I attended a knitting seminar I was told that I was knitting incorrectly, and being naive and new to knitting, I believed the instructor and learned to knit in the Western fashion, which I continued for almost 10  years.  This did not seem as natural to me but it worked and I was a fairly slow but prolific knitter anyway.  When I learned to do 2 handed 2 color knitting I was knitting Western and although I could use the technique it never felt all that natural.  I had to re-learn it each time I started a new project.  I then learned to carry two colors in the same hand which worked a little better.

About 5 years ago, in the summer of 2000, there was an article in Interweave Knits which described my natural method of knitting as Combination Knitting.  I felt validated, but did not immediately switch back.  That winter was the first winter that the arthritis in my hand started acting up and one day, quite unintentionally actually, I picked up my knitting in started working in the combination method.  My intention to do this had probably been lurking in my subconscious and only my stiff joints coaxed it out into daylight.  I was immediately hooked.  For me, this was faster, very relaxing on the hands, and even made my arthritic fingers feel better and move more easily. 

But I still carried my yarn in the right hand, the left serving only to hold the needle.  When Jessica wrote about how dominantly right-handed she was and how useless was her left, she reminded me of myself.  But she continued to say she knit continental and the yarn was carried in the left, which only held the yarn.    Hmmm... I always thought knitting continental was harder on the left hand because I couldn’t figure out how to hold the yarn and the needle and move the stitches forward without creating a tangle of dropped stitches.

Time to rethink my knitting...

Actually this has worked very well even if slowly.  The way I knit lends itself very easily to carrying the yarn in the left and picking up the stitch with the right needle.  It may be faster once I master the technique.  It took me a little bit to maintain tension, and I still have a little trouble holding yarn and needle occasionally, but that could be partly the thick and thin nature of Tesla and the fact that I am working on double pointed needles at the moment.  This probably was not the easiest project on which to change my knitting style.  But then I have never been one to necessarily take the easy road.  My first knitting project was, after all a mohair sweater.

Although I am still slower using this method rather than my old one, although only marginally at this point, I think I like it better.  It seems more logical and natural when actually knitting.  My left hand is still a little clumsy.  At this point I can’t imagine being able to do this in the dark without looking, but I felt the same way about knitting in general when I started.  I suspect that as I grow more accustomed to the technique I will be able to do it by feel very well, perhaps even better than before. 

So far my gauge does not seem to be significantly different, but I only have about 3 “ of the second sleeve completed so it is still hard to tell.  Something may end up being re-knit.  In the meantime however, I am having lots of fun.

But not smart enough to stay out of trouble

Superhuman brain power, huh.  Well it's not superhuman enough to keep that old boredom problem from surfacing and letting my dig myself into bigger and bigger holes. 

I've just started the second sleeve of Tesla and the old bored brain is already thinking about at least 4 other projects, and that is only knitting projects.

Your Birthdate: July 5

You have many talents, and you are great at sharing those talents with others. Most people would be jealous of your clever intellect, but you're just too likeable to elicit jealousy. Progressive and original, you're usually thinking up cutting edge ideas. Quick witted and fast thinking, you have difficulty finding new challenges. Your strength: Your superhuman brainpower Your weakness: Your susceptibility to boredom Your power color: Tangerine Your power symbol: Ace Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Hi Ho! Hey Hey!
I'm off to the CIA
I'll eat cookies, cakes, and pastries
All Day!

Baking class at the CIA today.

I wound some Manos  and some lovely gray Tahki Donegal Tweed up into balls yesterday so I can start swatching for the next projects. 

Tabasco helped:

Oh, watch that flash, woman!

Passing the Buck

Anna was a disaster.  I have no idea what I was thinking when I started her (4 years ago?).  I see why she was banished to the back of the closet, she should have been sent to a place much further away. 

I know she did not look that bad on the blocking board but when I picked her up and basted her together, (what are you crazy, did you think I would spend hours fretting over the best way to seam her without first checking to see if she was worth the effort?) she was big and blowzy and all over the place.  Those puffy places with thick yarn really puffed out.  Nothng stayed in place it just kind of rolled over itself.  Do you remember that movie, The Blob , well, that's kind of what the sweater looked like. I felt like a polar bear, or a fox with its winter coat on, and if you've ever seen a fox without its coat you would know exactly what I mean. 

The only good thing about Anna was that she was so bulky she made my somewhat hefty arms look waif-like.

So I threw her in the washer with HOT water.  Twice.  I let her dry flat, I didn't further the felting process by using the dryer.  The result still looks like knitting, but it is flatter and I am really happy with the results:

The felting made the bobbled portions of the yarn lay flat and drew them in to show off the lacy portions created by the thinner strands of binding yarn. 

Now this Anna is too small for me to ever dream of wearing.  The first Anna was too big, she grew substantially in the wash and I could not push all those fluffy areas flat and small again.  I am not sure how that happened as I knitted the small and used significantly LESS yarn than the pattern called for.   The new Anna is about 30 inches and has no give whatsoever.

Still, I love the fabric I created and envision her being used in a jacket or something.  I have passed her on to the sewing pile where she will eventually be transformed.

Must Knit Socks

Me socks keep sliding down to me toes.  Must knit more socks.

Who would have thought that I would ever say such a thing?  When I started having sock-knitting urges I could not understand why.  I never objected to the principle of knitting socks, my objection was purely practical:  I don’t, or didn’t at least, wear socks except to the gym or in the garden; that was before I had hand-knitted socks.  The socks I made don’t slide down my foot into my toes.  Even with the extra fullness between the heel and arch, they fit better than any I have had before.  I want to wear them every day.  Must knit more socks.

I admit I never objected to pantyhose.  For a long time I had corporate and office type jobs where a suit or business clothes were de rigueur.  Knee-highs always also slipped down to my toes, decidedly not professional looking, pantyhose, being firmly attached at the waist, do not, so I always wore pantyhose with either skirts or slacks and have continued the habit.  But my life is much more casual now. I am home much more.  I have arthritis in my metatarsal joints and some days socks and loafers or sneaks are perfect.  But socks always slide down to my toes.  Most annoying.  Except the new hand-made socks. I want to wear them every day.  Must knit more socks.

I even wore socks to NYC on Friday, unusual for me.  But I didn't wear MY socks; big mistake.  They kept slipping down my feet (I wore the hand-knit socks the day before and they weren’t dry yet when I had to leave to catch the train).   Walk a block, stop, pull up socks, walk another block, repeat until end.  Must knit more socks.

Of course, once again being sock-brained, I started looking around at sock books.  Yesterday, my order from Amazon arrived:

A bit of an excess I know as I have only knit one pair of socks Lucy Neatby’s book could keep me happily knitting for a long while yet.  Although I do want to knit all the socks in that book and try all the techniques, I am a fickle knitter.  I might not want to knit those socks at any given time.  Hence more books.. Don’t anticipate that I will work through them in any orderly fashion.  The Anna Zilboorg books is mostly inspirational.  I had seen it before and been totally smitten with the colors and patterns but talked myself out of it because it was a sock book.  It does not seem to be so much of a practical book, as the others are.  I know I will enjoy them all.   I have been thrilled with poring through the books last night and occasionally today and am really looking forward to starting some more socks, although I am not yet ready to have multiple projects on the needle again, like a recovering alcoholic I still feel the need for restraint.  However since socks are so portable you know they will get started eventually.

Of course, in order to knit socks I need to purchase sock yarn as the sock-weight-yarn cupboard is bare.  Well, two skeins of Trekking XXL don’t count as a full cupboard do they?  I didn’t think so.  This leads to more opportunities for stash enhancement. More shopping to come.  I’ll keep you informed.