Scarves & BSJ's

Squeee! It's a BSJ!
Photo by spinnity

Hi Knitters,

Hey, is August over already? It's getting sort of chilly around the house and I'm starting to change into yoga pants instead of shorts when I get home from work. (Yes, like Mr. Rogers, I have indoor and outdoor clothing.)

The end of August was my deadline for a pair of Baby Surprise Jacekts I am knitting. What was it Douglas Adams said? "I love deadlines, I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

So it's true - and predictably the deadline whooshed by last week and my two sweaters are not totally done. Boy BSJ is nearly there - as the photo demonstrates. There's just a bit of cuffery, I-cord and buttons left. Girl BSJ is only a little bit behind, with about 2/3 of the I-cord bind off and the shoulder seams left plus the same cuffery and buttons.

Both are knit in Socks That Rock Mediumweight - Star Sapphire for the Boy and Quilla for the Girl. The I-cord edging on both is Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeach and the buttons are as yet fictional.

The twins they are supposed to clothe are now scheduled to arrive next Monday - about 2 weeks earlier than I planned for them to arrive. Guess what I'm knitting the rest of this week??

[missing a photo of the Girl BSJ - watch this space]

I'm thinking of nominating the the BSJ as The Perfect Knitting Project for an All-Day Meeting, as soon as someone invents an award for that. I think it will win because it's all garter stitch with like 4 rows where you have to pay attention to anything other than the two marked increase / decrease spots. You can drink in a lot of projected Power Point slides while knitting these puppies.

Herringbone lace scarf
Photo by Bill Walker

Truly, I got started on these two little sweaters because of the all-day meetings. I decided that knitting at work could be excused if I was knitting *for* work, so I latched onto knitting twin baby gifts in solidarity with two newer knitters in the office who are knitting up Big Bad Baby Blankets for our collegue's impending twins. I think the ruse / tie-in worked perfectly, since several people asked how the knitting was going in follow up phone calls after our meet-a-thon.

And helping the newer knitters is turning out to be a big boost to my "non-work" knitting progress as well. Last night, one of the two blanket knitters came over to learn about retrieving dropped stitches, weaving in ends, and "blocking" your knitting. So mysterious, that blocking.

Nothing like an audience to help get things done, I always say. Showing my work buddy how to block knits got me to wash up the Texture Argyle Vest in progress to check the fit, the "bag" part of the Buddy Bag, my Chai Herringbone Rib scarf, and a lace alpaca scarf in progress. The scarves are both lacy and served to demonstrate pinning out lace to open the pattern. The other two items just got patted into shape & left to dry. A good lesson, no?

Alpaca lace scarf with owls
Photo by Bill Walker

Bill took photos of the two scarves this morning - the finished one clocking in at 74" long and the work-in-progress a puny 8". I'm thrilled with the results of the blocking - both scarves look fabulous. But a run rate of 8" of scarf produced from 8 grams of alpaca predicts a very short scarf.

This one isn't "due" until Christmas, I ordered a second skein of Golden Crown Suri Alpaca from Windy Valley Musk Ox this evening. I sure hope the new skein will match - I have pretty good hope that it will & if it doesn't, at least the colors will be in two balanced halves.

Veggie box tonight: Skillet beans & orange salad

Hello knitters,

Not much to report on the knitting front lately - I've been working on a new pair of midnight blue Reversai socks with just the second toe left to complete the pair. They are a thank you to our friends who put us up in June when we were out of our house for a week due to "work being done."

In honor of the Tour de Fleece, I've been trying to spin on days other than our montly Spin-In. I'm working on a 210 g bump of moorit Shetland with just 25 left to spin. I'm hoping to finish my Tour de Fleece with plying on Sunday.

Ok, that's it for fiber.. and now it's time to celebrate veggies.

I love my weekly veggie box from Two Small Farms. And I'm so very proud that we are winning the Veggie Box Game this week, for a change.

See, every week when the box arrives on Wednesday, I make an inventory of the existing veggies and then check in the new arrivals. The list goes on the front of the fridge for awareness. This week: 26 "veggie units". Units are things like 2 pints of strawberries. 3 torpedo onions. A 2 lb bag of red potatoes. Two small heads of cauliflower. In other words: a lot of veggies for two people to eat up!

The goal of the Veggie Box Game is to have fewer veggies after the next checkin than you have today. When life intervenes (theater tickets, weekend wedding in LA, band rehearsal night), we get bad marks.

To increase the success rate, I've hatched a new plan, tentatively called the Veggie Box Dinner Cooperative. We met for the second time Wednesday. The Cooperative will alternate dinners at the Fiber Fiend's house and mine, with Ms. Seltsame graciously joining us increase our odds in the Game. The hosting household does a main dish, the other participants brings a salad or side.

Last week at their house: Cauliflower & tomato sauce for pasta, greek salad & an amazing plum crisp made with plums from the yard. (Home: 3 veggie units, visitors 1)

This week at our house: Zucchini Ankara, sauted spinach, and a beet / walnut / egg / romaine salad. (Home: 5, visitors: 2)

Well if we can cook for 5 or 6 adults (and mind you, Randall definitely counts for two adults at dinner time) on a weeknight, whipping up dinner for two on Friday shouldn't be any trouble right?

Tonight: Cajun Skillet Beans from the Moosewood Cooks at Home and a fabulous red leaf lettuce and orange salad. Rack up 4 veggie units consumed & nibbles into the onions & celery. And it was one of the best meals I've eaten in months. So fresh, so delicious!

For those of you scoring along at home: 26 - 5 - 4 = just 17 veg units left to go for the week. Let's see... strawberries & waffles on Saturday, repeat tonight's salad for Sunday lunch... and then my secret victory plan... invite out of town colleagues for dinner Monday night!

I'm queuing up tandoori chicken (with red onions & cilantro), a salad of romaine / peaches & basil, rosemary potatoes and grilled baby bok choi. Plus a melon for dessert. That's SEVEN at one blow! In your *face*, delicious, healthy vegetables!

What I did on my vacation + Rosemary shortbread

Hi Knitters!

I've been "away" lately. Managing my contractor work life @ Symantec has been a big learning curve for me since October and I don't expect that to change much now that they've hired me as a regular employee, starting May 18th. Church choir meeting on Wednesday nights this year means I'm missing all the Santa Clara Knitting Meetup nights and I even missed a knitting guild last week. Booo!

So what *have* I been doing? Well, May 9 thru May 17 spouse-man and I were on walkabout with our very good friends from Milkwaukee. We drove north to the far northeastern corner of California (no, there there really isn't anything there - it was great). From there, we headed into Oregon for a visit to the High Desert Museum and a weekend in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Phew! Our friends sent me a thank-you note that I am blatantly stealing from their note to tell you what we did:

... This was our longest vacation to date - it had everything, too: mountains, waterfalls, theater (second row!) duck (live and on plate), more theater, falafel, prairie falcons, jalapeno cheese curls, Sid's Water Hole's fried chicken and JoJo's, early morning birding, veggie box greens, moving furniture, high end shopping, business socks, modern architecture, badger petting, red naped sapsuckers, lava beds, petroglyphs, jazz piano + bass, Vietnamese food, lots of life birds, way too much cheese, late night discussions, Star Trek, wine flight, rainbows, microbreweries, sock knitting, Shakespeare, mosquitoes, kitties, Dr. Horrible, Ave Maria, fava bean puree, vast changes in climactic zones, post-theater discussion and, well, being with y'all!

Oh yes, S&R, it was a fabulous week. Thank you so much for coming to California to make it all possible!

Honestly, it was a startlingly successful vacation for the amount of planning that went into it, AND we got to spend 10 days on the road with our friends, meeting up with AWiz & the Wiz knitter in Ashland to top it all off.

Meanwhile, the thing that finally drove me to post on the blog today was the crazy search I go through every time I want to make rosemary pine nut shortbread. Well, this time, I'm getting SMART. If I post the recipe here, then I won't be able to lose it anymore. Hah! I'll fix your wagon, Internet! Just try messing with me again! Hmm.. maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Anyway, here's the rosemary pine nut bars, a recipe we found in our Two Small Farms CSA newsletter in June 2008. Quick & easy - try it!

Tuscan Rosemary and Pine Nut Bars,
here is that old recipe from the L.A. Times Food Section 8/11/99—Julia
¼ cup pine nuts, roasted
½ Cup butter, cut in 10 pieces
½ cup powdered sugar
1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup flour
Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, rosemaryand pine nuts. Stir in flour to make dough; it will be stiff. Pat dough evenly into ungreased 8-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until golden and firm at edges, about 20
minutes. Cool pan on rack about 2 minutes, then use sharp knife to cut bars into 16 squares. Let cool in pan at least 10 minutes before removing with small spatula

ONE Tropical Mer-tini...

ONE Tropical Mer-tini
Originally uploaded by spinnity

... is not a pair. Round 1 of the Sock Madness closed yesterday, and I've been so busy with work that I didn't even manage to knit the assigned pair of socks in two full weeks of life. I finished both up to the heels within the contest period, but work interfered with finishing the heels by 3 pm Thursday. Sad, sad, sad.

But they are still nice socks, so I am marching on to finish them. I wanted to share this photo of the first sock all finished, so I could show you the unusual heel flap.

In this sock, you knit the entire tube of the sock, close up the toe, and then come back to fill in the great big empty triangle where the heel goes. The last move is to take live stitches from the sole and live stitches from the heel and graft them together!

The pattern was fun to knit and creatively designed. It definitely fit the bill for sock madness, by making us excecute several unusual maneuvers (German twisted cast-on, the large chart, a modified toe, and the dreaded afterthought heel flap heel).

I think it could be refined by graphing the quilt pattern on knitter's graph pape to make the Drunkard's Path quilt blocks come out square instead of rectangular. I bet that would also soften the tendency of the purl sections to pooch out around the ankle a bit.

Anyway, that's it, I'm booted out of the Sock Madness and I'm liberated to go knit other things. Bill has an owl kit next on his knitting docket and I'm responsible for the wing parts. And I think I could maybe get my Early Spring socks finished to wear to Easter services. Green, the color of hope, right?

March 14 - 20: the week in photos

First veggie box of the year!
By spinnity

It's really feeling like spring around here. And it's not just the weather -- so much is going on, it's like everyone's energy has woken up after the long winter sleep. These photos give you a flavor of the week.

First up: The veggie box is back! The Two Small Farms CSA made it's first delivery this week: flowers, fennel, kale, carrots, napa cabbage, parsnips, beets, spring mix, parsley and green garlic. The flowers were the most beautiful bouquet we've ever seen from the CSA and the fennel, orange and arugula salad was a fabulous first receipe on Wednesday night. On Friday, we munched up half a head of napa cabbage in Sesame Noodles with Napa Cabbage. Mmmm, peanutty.

And of course, as I mentioned last week, Spring means Madness: March Madness & Sock Madness.

Abandoned Mer-tini
By spinnity

The first Sock Madness pattern, called Tropical Mer-tini, came out very early Thursday morning.

The design is inspired by the Drunkard's Path quilt block and comes with a photo of a nice blue martini-style drink. I wanted to stick with the blue theme and I had some great yarn in stash to work with. Socks That Rock mediumweight, in a great color called Star Sapphire


I knit 4 inches of cuff using my first choice of yarn, and decided it was just not going to work. Too big, too floppy. Curses! And to rub salt in my wounds, Illinois lost their first round game to Western Kentucky. Grrrr!

Sock Madness 3, Round 1
By spinnity

Friday, a full 36 hours after the pattern came out, I cast on again - this time with a thinner yarn and size 0 needles in another lovely blue - "Pacific" Artisan Sock yarn from Hazel Knits. I knit through the evening basketball games - two squeakers featuring Big Ten teams (Go Wisconsin!) and I've caught up to my first sock. Sigh.

I'm way behind the fastest knitters in my division at this point. But this is the weight of yarn and the size 0's are the right choice and the new yarn is beautiful. You can look to see whether I make it into the top 40 knitters in my division here on the Division 2 - Great Knitspectations - scoreboard.

Rock Star gets a new keyboard
By spinnity

The last update on the week - the Roger Steen Band, featuring our very own Janice and my multi-talented spouse-man, Bill Walker are playing TONIGHT at the Quarter Note bar in Santa Clara, just off Lawrence Expressway near Central, at 9 pm. To get ready for tonight's show, Bill sorta casually "picked up" a brand new Nord Stage EX to extend the range of available keyboard sounds.


[EDITED TO ADD... ]Whoops - I nearly forgot spin-in last Saturday! We had 4 wheel spinners, 2 spindle spinners, 2 knitters, and 2 onlookers at the spin-in, which was a great turnout on what had looked like a slow day. I had met a needleloca from Sunnyvale at Stitches & invited her to join us - and she brought delicious artichoke fritata to keep us energized all afternoon, mmmm! Around 5:30, we had a real treat when Seltsame & her fiance M. stopped by. M. tried a little bit of spinning - with terrible fiber I offered him.

Emy plies!
By spinnity

And just *look* at Emy's plied yarn, in perfect Emy purple! Spindle spun, spindle plied and look how happy it makes her. Way to go, Emy.

There you have it. A busy week of veggies, knitting, basketball, music and spinning. Oh, and work. And not enough sleep!

Jeni was here!

Can you spot the crazy one?
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Here are a few photos from the March 5th Bobaknit - The Return of Jeni. Anyone who has knit much with Noro will recognize the crazy gleam in her eye caused by the kinks building up in the yarn while making a 450 st crochet chain. Talk about fun!



It sure was nice to see Jeni and the Bobas, who I don't get out to see often enough. And I wasn't the only long-lost boba to show up:

Time for the Madness

Oh March, how I love you.

In one week, on March 19, both the NCAA mens's college basketball tournament and the annual Sock Madness competition will begin. And there I'll be: watching basketball, knitting, possibly even drinking a beer.

Not familiar? Let me explain.

NCAA tournament: college basketball teams, including my beloved Illinois, travel to distant venues to compete in a field of 65 teams to become national champions. The tournament takes three weekend to go from the first game to the championship. On the first two days, 64 teams play 32 single elimination games, then over the weekend, they play 16 more games. Dudes, that's a lot of basketball on TV. A.k.a., knitting time!

Sock Madness: A friendly competition in a field of 200 knitters to see who can knit their socks the fastest. Signups closed a week ago and the divisions were posted yesterday. I'm in Division 2. Last year, I made 3 great pairs of socks during Sock Madness, but I was out in Round 3 and sat on the sidelines while the remaining knitters battled it out. In May, MKSmiles eventually won the contest in Round 7. The patterns were really fun last year -- I'd still like to go back & knit some of those socks from last year's contest.

But now it's 2009 and time for Sock Madness 3 and a whole new set of patterns. My plan is that the combination of basketball on TV and the goad of the competition will result in 3 new pairs of socks this spring. Because in spring, a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of socks. Wish me luck!

Check it.

Stitches 2009 : The Thursday night haul
by spinnity

Look! A lot of unplanned purchases obtained Thursday night at Stitches West. Best items: Felted owl kit selected by Bill for us to knit together and Malabrigo sock yarn in multiple colors -- for testing knitting a Janice design.

Here's a closer photo of the garter ribbed mitts I'm working on -- bought the yarn at 7:30 and by 8;30 I was knitting away at dinner with my knitting pals, Jo, her mom Joyce, she-who-is-not-named, Ms Mel, and Bill the knitting spouse.

Village Spinners & Weavers - quick mitts>

Getting up early tomorrow for Cotton Spinning

Honk if you love Stitches!

(Emy -- that's your shirt under the haul. Call me! Or tell me where to find you Friday.)