Mmm... Yarn

In my cleanup this summer I ran across 3 dishcloths that a knitter friend had made me, that I remember I tucked away because they were “too nice to use.” How silly. I expect that people use my knitted gifts, so why wouldn’t I use hers? Those dishcloths are seeing heavy action now and I realized since I like to switch them out every few days I don’t have enough to make it to laundry day. So I made two more:

Pattern: own (garter stitch and yarn overs)
Yarn: 2 skeins Crystal Palace Yarns Monterey, 100% mercerized cotton, color 188
Needles: size 5
Size: perfect
Started 1/5 and finished 1/12/2010

Really, it doesn’t get easier than this. I unraveled each ball and marked the halfway point with a knot, then started knitting. Once I reached the knot I started the decreases. I have approximately 6 inches of yarn tails after weaving. How very economical.

Speaking of Monterey (you did notice the yarn is called Monterey, right?), I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with a friend last Saturday. I still haven’t learned to use the SLR camera so I brought along the little point-and-shoot. Big mistake. Since you can’t use a flash and the animals are moving, most of my water-animal photos look like this:

(I believe there are 4 leafy sea dragons in that photo). Or like these seahorses:

A couple of leafy sea dragons held mostly still long enough for this (thanks, guys!):

– As with all my photos, click to see them embiggened* –

The jellyfish photos make you question whether your eyes are working, hence unpublishable. The birds were better lit and held still once they settled on a position but kept changing position with no warning. They’d be looking at me while I positioned the camera and adjusted the zoom, then turn their heads, apparently camera shy, once I snapped the photo:

Sigh. Wildlife photography is clearly not in my immediate future. So much for a career change.

The secret fuchsia little pullover I’ve flashed here a few times is nearing completion. It’s only 3 months late. Let’s hope the recipient hasn’t experienced a growth spurt.

* As spoken by Jedediah Springfield. It’s the most cromulent word I know.

And this is all I have to show for it:

I do like how it looks!

Size 1 needles + double knitting + following a chart + adult size hat + moving bus = slow going.

I like the brown and blue.

One of the ladies in my knitting group held a bonus session at her house today. She is the same person I am giving the hats to and said patients have commented the Chinchilla hats work great as sleeping hats, so I’m glad I made them.

The get-together was the post-Christmas cookie party, held with the intention of guests consuming many of the host’s remaining holiday cookies. What a great idea! I spent my time there eating my share of the cookies and casting on for the Bird on a Wire hat [Ravelry link]. The beginning is slow going so there’s not much to see yet:

Behind the hat is one of the two bobbin lace doilies I bought in Belgium when we were on our honeymoon. I put them both under the glass surface of my desk so I can have a nice reward whenever I clear off my desk. It’s an infrequent reward. 

I found the big camera’s battery yesterday afternoon. Now to learn to use it properly.

Heeeere’s 2010. Last night I knitted, drank my kir royale, and watched some movies. One was “Blades of Glory,” the goofy ice-skating film. I noticed something I haven’t seen before: the censors are permitting a raised middle finger to be included on TV. What this says about the evolution of our society’s standards I don’t know. I found it odd.

Last night’s knitting was re-visiting an old WIP. I’ll give you the same old photo since the new knitting looks pretty much the same. Slightly narrower now, but still black seed stitch:

Today I caught up with reading my feeds in Bloglines and saw lots of folks are writing year-end or decade-end retrospectives. Instead of looking back, I give you my new year which starts out with a new-to-me bread recipe:

This is a cheddar-beer loaf as presented by Alton Brown on the “Fermentation Nation” episode of “Good Eats.” And it is very good eats, indeed:

I added the sunflower seeds because I had them, not because I was, as Alton put it, “feeling especially hippie.” Although “hippy” might be a more apt term: between the cheese, the beer, and then the sunflower seeds, this is probably not the best bread for anyone with weight loss as a personal goal.

Apologies for the over-flashed bread photos. One of my goals for my nearly 2 weeks off was to learn to use Mr. MmmYarn’s SLR camera because it can be adjusted for light settings and you get far better low-light photos with it than with the little point and shoot. I got it out, found its manual, did some learning. Then I went to take test shots and found it is without its battery. I also can’t find the charger which means the two of them are hiding somewhere together in here. Considering Mr. MmmYarn was always more neat than I am, this surprises me. Yet, here we are.

So… I am completely stuck on that project until I find all the needed hardware. This meant more knitting time. In my last post I promised you hats, and boy, can I deliver. For this we need to go back to 2009 for a while.

This first one is made with leftovers from a pair of socks I made for my mom:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Austermann Step, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color 01; held together with Wolle Rödel Baby-Merino, 100% superwash wool, color 13065 (yellow)
Needles: US size 4
Size: adult
Started 12/15 and finished 12/20/2009

This next one made me hungry for chocolate and marshmallows the whole time I was making it, so I have named it the S’Mores Hat. I held a strand of JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool in brown and white throughout and used the brown and white yarns for the stripes.

Pattern: own (3×3 spiral rib)
Main Yarn: JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool 3/10, 55% cotton, 45% wool, color Brindle
Stripes Yarns: Madil Loden, 50% wool, 25% alpaca, 25% viscose, color 589 (darker brown) and color 588 (lighter brown); Brown Sheep Nature Spun, 100% wool, color 740S (Snow)
Needles: US size 4
Size: adult
Started 12/20 and finished 12/23/2009

One of the ladies in my knitting group volunteers at a local hospital, running a knitting circle there for… uh, complete brain failure here… I think for patients and staff although it might be only for patients. Anyway, that hospital accepts donations of hats for chemo patients. Since family members are not clamoring for gift hats, and I can only sell hats I make from my own patterns, and there are tons of really cool published patterns out there that I want to try, I plan to make some hats for donation this year. I am still knitting from my stash so the first 3 are what I pulled from the stash this past week.

First up, a lovely slouchy beret, modeled by a dinner plate. I felt a little silly carrying a dinner plate down the block to the cafe with the metal tables:

Pattern: Ishbel Beret by Ysolda Teague, as published in Whimsical Little Knits
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, 50% merino wool, 50% Tussah silk, color: Peacock, held doubled
Needles: US size 2 and 4
Size: adult
Started 12/28 and finished 12/29/2009

Back in 2007 I made two soft, green chemo caps for a relative of Mr. MmmYarn’s who needed them. I had yarn left over so I made two more, pretty much identical twins to the first two:

Pattern: Knit Chemo Cap by Berroco Design Team
Yarn: Berroco Chinchilla, 100% rayon, color 5567 (olive green) and color 5571 (light sage green)
Needles: US size 9
Size: adult
Modifications: Used a k2p2 rib instead of k1p1 as the pattern indicated because I like the look of my k2p2 better than the usually sloppy look of my k1p1. Not that you could really tell with this yarn.

Chinchilla is not for the faint of heart: you lose one stitch and it’s really really lost. Not to mention the difficulty in keeping track of where the decreases are, although the yarn’s fuzziness certainly hides any fudging there. I hear these hats are big hit with chemo patients for indoor wear. The rayon doesn’t block the wind at all so they’re not too suitable for keeping warm outdoors.

I make most hats bottom up because my bind off usually leaves a lot to be desired: messy-looking and too tight. Since any attempts at neatness are obscured in these hats, I was able to use a sewn bind off that I find works great with Chinchilla.

And just because hats weren’t enough to keep me busy, I turned out two more pairs of potholders:

Pattern: own
Stitch Pattern: single crochet
Yarn: mystery yarn, assumed 100% acrylic. Definitely bulky.
Hook: size I
Started 12/25 and finished 12/27/2009

Today begins a new year. I made bread, cleaned the apartment, and went for a medium-length but brisk walk before the rain started up. I read half a book, watched cartoons made before I was born (Looney Tunes and The Pink Panther) while knitting, printed out my 2010 Hooters calendar (what? what were you expecting? — really, it’s OK to click that link) and looked out the window at the gentle rainfall. It’s a good start.

2009 is sure wrapping up quickly. I don’t really want to greet 2010 without Mr. MmmYarn but the cosmos don’t exactly give a person a choice in these matters, so I put the champagne in to chill and bought a bottle of crème de cassis so I can make kir royale, my New Year’s Eve drink of choice. And the eve after and at least one more after, if not two, because there’s only so much booze I can drink in a sitting whether I’m trying to keep track of a pattern or not.

Now, Stollen, on the other hand, is something I can eat a lot of in one sitting. I did make my Stollen the other day and it turned out well. Here is half of it:

The key to its great flavor is to soak the raisins in rum for a week before baking your Stollen. My raisins soaked for a month so they were super-tasty. This year I added a bit of orange zest left over from the San Diego Sunshine bread and it added a subtle new flavor that went wonderfully with the rumminess:

Lest you think this has become an alcohol-fueled blog (sheesh, I had Glühwein in my last post, now champagne and rum in this one), I have to tell you I did get my exercise and vitamins yesterday. I trekked to two different drug stores, searching for contact lens solution to use up the last of my FSA dollars for 2009. The second (and final) one I went to was on Clement Street. The ethnic markets there always yield some interesting items. The market I went to had dragon fruit again so I picked one up as a treat:

So very tasty for my well-deserved snack after walking at least 6 miles, nearly half of it with a full backpack. And beautiful, too; the interior contrasts nicely with the exterior:

I don’t know how the Vietnamese (my fruit came from Vietnam, its little label said) eat their dragon fruits, but I use a spoon to eat the white parts out of the peel.

Today I’ve been cleaning up my filing cabinet. Did a lot of paper shredding. I also scrubbed my bathtub yet again, something I’ve been doing probably twice a week out of pure enjoyment since I made my own scrubby stuff. Last month I checked out “The Urban Homestead” from the library and while many of the suggestions I can’t implement where I live (no garden or chickens for me), I can use the natural cleansers. I followed the instructions and mixed baking soda and liquid castile soap into a paste, then added about half a teaspoon of peppermint extract from the baking shelf. My tub is minty fresh and sparkling clean when I’m done. My hands are minty and don’t have that horrible dry feel I get after using commercial cleansers. Plus the scrubbing part is far easier, requiring much less labor than I needed when using my usual generic Ajax/Comet-like stuff. I’m sold! Yes, the rest of the place is in the same mess it’s always in. I guess if I were to have a visitor I’d have to show the bathtub last or else it will show up everything else.

Anyway, you didn’t come here for culinary exotica or cleaning tips. This blog is about yarn and I have been knitting.

First up, a hat for a good friend who’s going through a rough time. She made herself one of these hats, then remarked to me in November that she had bought some black yarn to make a second one but wasn’t looking forward to slogging through 40″ of ribbing. I volunteered to be the slogger and she gave me the yarn.

I guess I don’t need to buy a hat form if the 8-pound exercise ball doesn’t mind being a model.

Pattern: Esprit Chemo Turban by Ann Cannon-Brown
Yarn: 2.33 skeins Cascade Fixation, 98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic, color 8990
Needles: size 7
Size: adult
Started 11/17 and finished 12/6/2009

It was an interesting knit because I rarely use an elasticized yarn. I started with size 9 needles and my gauge was far too small. I also didn’t like the feel of the yarn on needles that size. With too small gauge you usually go up in needle size to correct the problem. However, I know my knitting style so I went down to size 7 and found that got me bigger gauge and was more comfortable because I was no longer fighting with the yarn. Go figure. She says the hat fits her perfectly and I delivered it right in time for her to wear it to a holiday party.

Next up, the latest brown socks for my mom (must get better photo in daylight when I next visit):

Pattern: Sam by Cookie A., as published in Sock Innovation
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage Hand-Painted Sock Yarn, 75% merino superwash, 25% nylon, color 9931
Needles: size 1 (ugh)
Started 10/28 and finished 12/12/2009

I picked this pattern because my mom wears short shoe-like hiking boots and therefore can wear socks with a heavily-textured pattern on the cuff. Any stitch pattern up the ankle would probably be uncomfortable on someone with tall hiking boots. I hear she is the envy of her hiking friends, having seamless and custom-made socks.

Pattern modifications… maybe. I don’t really know. I worked the cuff pattern as written, then stopped reading the pattern and did my usual heel and foot.

The last item for today is the Noro scarf I had on the needles for ages, modeled by Sancho Panza:

Pattern: garter stitch with a yarn over row every 5th row
Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, 70% wool, 30% nylon, color S102
Needles: size 3
Finished size: 7″ x 68″
Started 11/9 and finished 12/18/2009

Absolutely love the highlighter pink and yellow in this scarf. I am tempted to keep it; for now, it will go in the sale box and we’ll see if I fish it out of there.

Up tomorrow: hats!

Yeah, I know, it has been a while since I wrote here. The holidays are making it harder for me to focus than I thought they would. And it’s not because of holiday-related activity. I am eschewing all decorating and card-writing, etc., and even all baking although I still might make my Stollen. I did do some visiting over Thanksgiving, saw Mr. MmmYarn’s mom and stepdad and then my mom and stepdad. Decided to stay home for Christmas. I spent Christmas Eve watching a Star Wars movie and sipping Glühwein. Christmas Day I took advantage of the uncharacteristically warm and sunny weather and took a long walk in the park before going home and concocting a butternut squash soup with chestnuts and orange juice (so very good!) and marmitako, a Basque tuna dish. Then I watched the latest Harry Potter movie and had more Glühwein (sensing a theme here?).

It’s cold and rainy again today and I’ve been holed up since running morning errands, getting some stuff in order around here. So today I’m catching up. And the first thing to catch you up on is some weaving. I finally finished the scarf Mr. MmmYarn helped me warp on back in May:

Pattern: plain weave
Warp: stripes of Cascade 220, 100% wool, .85 skein in color 4010 (mustard yellow) and .75 skein color 9463 (orange)
Weft: 1 2/3 skeins Artful Yarns Portrait, 70% mohair, 25% viscose, 5% polyester, color 104
Loom: Schacht Flip rigid heddle
Sett: 10 dent reed
Finished size: 8.5″ wide x 68″ long without fringe or 78″ with fringe
Started 5/16 and finished 11/7/2009 — and sold it 11/20!

It’s so big it obliterates a dinosaur footprint:

And I like how it looks almost plaid but it isn’t:

Work was busy here and there. We did some software upgrades and had one colossal hardware failure. We also decorated my boss’ office the last week of November because he went away on vacation for 10 days. He came back from vacation to find a sign on his door:

And when he opened it, found his office gift-wrapped:

Click a photo to go to my Flickr photostream to see more photos

Hahaha! He appreciated how much we like him. :)  We in my department were briefly famous at work and even on Twitter, once my work’s blog writers got the photos up there. I usually don’t participate in the pranks; this time I can proudly say not only did I participate, I was the mastermind. Well, I guess the writers of “The Office” were the masterminds because I saw this recently (Jim’s prank on Dwight) but I suggested it and the others went with it. I also donated 6 rolls of Christmas paper that I moved to S.F. 7 years ago and never used: it’s sun-faded and so cheap that crease lines rub ink on your hands and it’s hard to cut in straight lines. I thought this was a great use for it. It certainly wasn’t fit for wrapping gifts. It’s amazing how quickly this kind of project goes when four sets of hands are involved. We could have been more thorough: we should have done the ceiling and/or floor, too.

Knitting update to follow in the next few days, I hope. I have next week off work so I had better find some time to blog in my busy schedule. Bread machine just beeped that it’s done (San Diego Sunshine bread today, a whole-wheat loaf with bits of orange zest in it) so that’s it for this post.

Noro yarn gets me every time.

I sit at home surrounded by a sea of WIPs and all I can work on is what is supposed to be my bus knitting, what is supposed to be reserved for the commute when I have to keep my elbows tucked in and my project small and easy.

With Noro, it’s not just the color changes that suck me in, but the fact that the colors aren’t solid. There are flecks and streaks of mint green and hot pink in the blue, of orange and blue in the salmon, of yellow and orange in the transition from blue to pink again.

There’s also the anticipation of not knowing which color you’ll get next. That electric yellow, for example, that I can see on the outside of the skein and know is in there somewhere, hasn’t made it into a stripe yet.

Part of the reason for abandoning that large pile of WIPs is that my brain is so unfocused. I thought it would be better now than it was a few months ago but it isn’t. It’s just as bad and on some days even worse. I focus at work, because I have to, then when I get home I do the basic tasks: opening the mail, thinking about what to cook for dinner (or not), paying bills. Then I watch TV and knit, taking frequent breaks to obsessively check my email and Bloglines. He isn’t going to email and he isn’t going to post to his blog and he isn’t going to walk in the door even though all his stuff is here, and I really need my brain to grasp that fact and let me get on with normal.

So I knit on something simple, something my brain can handle.

Just garter stitch with a row of dropped yarn overs thrown in for kicks. Simple and mesmerizing.

This is NOT my stash, just the contents of the scraps bin I mentioned a few weeks ago all laid out on the floor and arranged in little piles by color:

The Yarn Harlot did write that we knitters keep the baggie company in business.

No pile contains enough to make a scarf based on one hue so I’m thinking a rainbow. Since I have so much more of the cooler colors of the rainbow than the warmer ones I am picturing a progression that starts with purple and goes in to red and back out again. Where, though, would pink go in that scheme? Between red and orange? Leave it off altogether? I’ll leave the black, white, and brown piles out of this project.

I also have a pile of scraps that defy being categorized into one color group. I may use the teleidoscope to figure out where those would go in this plan.

Sunday warmed up a lot after I posted the blocking photos and the shawl dried very quickly so I took it for a walk in the park in the afternoon. The weather obliged by being almost perfectly still most of the time and the clocks hadn’t changed yet, making for some great light.

We took a short walk around the area in front of the Academy of Sciences:

And continued on the walkway around the Music Concourse:

And stopped at a park bench on the way home so you could get another good look at the crocheted bind-off edging:

Pattern: Peacock Feathers Shawl by Dorothy Siemens, available from Fiddlesticks Knitting
Yarn: 2/3 skein JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18 lace weight (2/3 of 150g ball, 1665 yards), 50% merino wool, 50% tussah silk, color: Peacock (what else?)
Needles: size 4 Addi Turbo lace needles and size E crochet hook for border
Finished size: 78″ across top, 41″ straight up the middle, 56″ each side
Started 10/2 and finished 10/25/2009

For the sake of accuracy here, I looked up the Cervantes statue that’s in Golden Gate Park, the one I use for hat photos sometimes. I always call it the Cervantes statue even though I know only the disembodied head at the top of the sculpture is the man himself. I wanted to know who it was kneeling at his feet. I give you Don Quixote with his buddy Sancho Panza. Don is the one cross-dressed for a night out:

I got some amused looks from passersby when they saw me staging that one. The wind had picked up and I took about 45 shots trying to get one that didn’t have the shawl flapping in the breeze so I was there a while.

The pink blob grows, slowly, slowly, on the bus. I had to wad it up to make it an unrecognizable blob for its photo shoot (recipient views my Flickr feed):

I don’t know if I have enough yarn to finish this. Pout. Which means I’m working on it more slowly, as though I don’t want to find out for sure that I don’t have enough yarn. I frequently find myself doing this when it looks like I’m fighting a losing knitting battle. I know working more slowly makes the yarn last longer, calendar-wise, but doesn’t make it go any further in a project. It’s my irrational knitting thing and the reason there are 5 sweaters in progress for me in the apartment on which I have not made any progress in months or even years.

Yardage surety is a great thing: the last (or perhaps I should say latest, in case she decides she wants more) of a series of hiking socks for my mom is also underway: