Mmm... Yarn

I went to Stitches West last weekend after all. For a few weeks I wasn’t sure whether I would actually go. This was my first big non-family social event since Mr. MmmYarn died and I was oddly nervous, so nervous that I had lots of trouble sleeping for nearly 3 weeks and sometimes even had panic attacks at the thought of going. I did, however, pre-pay for my Friday class and saved up the cash to go and filled out a pink form for using a vacation day, all well in advance, providing great incentive. So I packed up my suitcase Thursday night and told myself no backing out.

For as much shopping time as I had, I didn’t get much loot. Friday I was in class all day except for the lunch break, during which I dropped off my donation for Afghans for Afghans and met up with a few friends in the Market and ate lunch with another friend. There wasn’t time for buying yarn.

Class was good. I took Lapland Hand Garments with Susanna Hansson. Here is a preview of what I made in class, one worsted-weight practice wristlet in the traditional colors for Rovaniemi mittens that I will probably use as a tea glass cozy and the actual wristlet on size US 00 needles, still in progress:

Friday evening after the Market closed I headed to my friend’s house in San Jose. Other friends of ours came up from San Luis Obispo and we all went out to dinner, then had an evening of knitting before hitting the hay.

Saturday we spent all day in the Market. And I was so very good with all that temptation. I go with the cash-in-an-envelope method, to avoid the late March shock of a big Visa bill. Saturday night was wild and crazy: giant salad for dinner plus red wine and chocolate, followed by knitting. Sunday I went for the 1pm drawing (didn’t win) and bought a little more yarn.

So this is it, the 2010 pile of loot:

Click for big.

You’ll notice the complete absence of spinning fiber. While I saw lots that was simply gorgeous, I don’t spin much right now. Instead, I went at little nuts at the Creatively Dyed Yarns booth and bought 6 skeins (pictured top center and bottom right) with the intent of making 2 baby blankets. The first is underway, pictured here on top of a washer at the Laundromat Monday night:

And I also got some great shawl pins that I want to use after I make White Lies Designs’ Colette Cardigan with the green Brooks Farm yarn pictured in the upper left corner.

All in all, a good time.

Today I went to the California Academy of Sciences to admire the butterflies, fish, various sea creatures, albino alligator (who yawned — what a big mouth he has!), and penguins. Then I went out to lunch alone for the first time. I brought a book and went to Jannah, a Middle Eastern restaurant. It’s very good — if you live here, I recommend it highly. I had dolmas and a pizza with little hunks of sausage on it. My one quibble is the music. I suppose if you’re dining with at least one other person and therefore conversing you don’t notice it’s the same song played on a 45-second loop. Dining alone, it’s annoying. And I’m not kidding about the loop: I timed it.

Last week, before I went to Stitches West (more on that in a later post), I sent a small cardboard box off to our 3-year-old niece. I initially was going to send only the sweater but decided to put Gwendolyn in there as well. Remember Gwendolyn?

Here she is, waving good-bye:

She apparently transformed during her travels and is now Mr. Hippopotamus Guy. I heard from our niece’s mother Tuesday who said our niece loved the hippo but did immediately take off the tutu and say it’s a boy. Darn, and I thought I had that one right. How embarrassing, both for me and for the now male hippo. The sofa is lonely without its purple adornment (s/he has been watching TV with me for months).

Same niece also finally got her sweater. This should have been her birthday sweater, and I was right on track with getting it done by the end of October… or maybe a week later. Then I watched as I came close to running out of yarn. True to form, I slowed down; my brain always thinks knitting more slowly will make the problem not happen. What happens is it’s a problem less quickly. How that’s supposed to be better, I don’t know. There really is nothing like delaying the inevitable, right? In December, I admitted defeat. Here’s what I had right before frogging:

So I went yarn shopping: found lots of not-quite-right colors and one fantastic Baby Ull match that was about half the thickness I needed. I left the sleeves as they were, unraveled the body back down to the hem, changed my body pattern to plain stockinette, and knitted 4 rounds with the Tess’ yarn and 1 round with the Baby Ull held doubled for the body and the yoke. It blended well.

Pattern: own
Yarn: Tess’ Designer Yarns Superwash Merino, 100% superwash wool; Dale of Norway Baby Ull, 100% superwash wool, color 4536 (fuchsia), held doubled
Needles: US size 3 and 4
Size: made for a 4-year-old; currently fits a 3-year-old
Started 10/12/2009 and finished 2/20/2010

Her mom posted modeled photos to Flickr on Thursday and I’m so happy to say the sweater fits her. In my opinion, the neckline is a little too high in the photos so next time I’ll make it lower. No need to give a kid what’s practically a stand-up Victorian collar. However, she looks good in it with the placket buttons opened.

merely overwhelmed my resolve. You’re probably thinking I’m talking about three yarn-y goodies. No, not today. It’s cold and raining and running the oven is the best way to keep warm. Therefore, yesterday’s dough became today’s big pile o’ cookies:

I have sampled each kind and they are great. The lighter ones are Rum Spice cookies and the darker ones are non-sandwiched Chocolate-Pistachio Sandwich cookies. The chocolate ones are indeed wonderful by themselves so I am not making the frosting to make them sandwich cookies. Note to self: need to crush the pistachios a lot smaller next time. I used a rolling pin to crush them and some bits were still large. The bigger hunks simply fell off the dough and skittered about the kitchen when I sliced off cookies.

Of course, chasing those rogue pistachios gave me an opportunity to practice my sweeping. Does this count as today’s exercise? Probably not. Although when Homer and Marge were Olympic curlers last week this was how Marge warmed up.

Back on track, I did say triumvirate, didn’t I, so here’s the third thing for today. This is a recipe called Milk Chocolate Crunchies that I got from my American grandmother. She and I hoover up a batch of these every time I visit her. Mostly while playing dice and card games.

These go quickly, under half an hour from start to finish, excluding cooling time.

Step 1: Put 2 cups (12 ounces) of chocolate chips and half a cup of peanut butter into a double boiler:

Her recipe calls for milk chocolate chips but I like my chocolate darker (”come to the dark side… we have cookies”) so I went with semi-sweet chips. The peanut butter can be creamy or chunky. I used creamy, half regular peanut butter and half honey peanut butter.

Step 2: Heat until melted:

Step 3: Add 2 cups of quick oats and 1/4 to 1/3 cup slivered almonds. I used toasted slivered almonds. If you keep your oats or almonds in the refrigerator or freezer, you need to let them come to room temperature before tossing them in the chocolate.

Step 4: Stir until well-coated. Turn off the heat on your double-boiler.

Step 5: Drop by tablespoons on wax paper or a cookie sheet. I use cookie sheets. The chocolate is too hot to handle with bare hands so I use a 2-spoon method to scoop and shape the crunchies before dropping them on the sheet. Resist the urge to taste the very hot melted crunchie base. Athk me how I learned thith.

Here are half my crunchies, hot off the spoon. I have no idea why I spaced them. They don’t expand:

Step 6: Put your cookie sheets in a cool location (in my house, that’s anywhere but the top of the oven) so your crunchies can harden. While waiting for that, use the non-sharp utensil of your choice to scrape the remaining few cooled chocolate bits out of your double boiler. Lick the utensil. Yum. Note: this also reduces clean-up.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Then do a few extra minutes of step aerobics.

Today was all about errands and dough. Besides the usual weekend errands I ran an extra one to pick up buttons for the fuchsia sweater that I finally, finally did the finishing work on this morning and heel reinforcement thread for my socks in progress. Here’s the sweater, unblocked, with buttons not yet sewn on:

The pink and purple buttons ImagiKnit had didn’t quite work so I went with yellow ones that pop nicely. And even though Stitches West is next week and I’m saving my money for that, I ended up not leaving the shop without a bit of yarn. It went with me to the bank and the library, then posed for this photo:

That’s Malabrigo Lace for those of you who were wondering.

I realize you’ve been seeing a lot of green, blue, and brown projects here lately. I didn’t even notice I was doing this until I saw all my projects lined up in Ravelry. So for a change of color, I’ll show you the little socks that also got done this week:

Pattern: own (I cast on 28 for the smaller sock and 36 for the larger one, then made a sock)
Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL Sport, 75% wool, 25% nylon, color 1454
Needles: US size 1
Size: infant and bigger infant
Started 1/29 and finished 2/11/2010

There rest of today was devoted to dough. I turned out a loaf of shredded wheat whole wheat bread and made dough logs for chocolate cookies rolled in pistachios and rum spice cookies:

I plan to bake them tomorrow. I have no idea what possessed me to make so many cookies this weekend but they freeze and keep well so it’s not a problem. The chocolate ones are supposed to be sandwich cookies with a chocolate frosting between them but for the sake of my girlish figure I think I’ll stick with plain cookies. Plus I’ll have twice as many that way.

Tonight I have to work on my Stitches West homework. It won’t take very long.

The Jolly Green Giant will not get his socks because I have unraveled and started again, this time using a modified version of Little Arrowhead Lace, a pattern that I have also seen called Gull Wings. The sock and I went to the park today and looked at the garden of absent dahlias:

It was warm today, I’d say close to 70 even though the forecast was for 62. And there I was inappropriately warmly dressed because it was still only 61 indoors so I assumed it was colder outside and I couldn’t take off my sweater because what I was wearing under my shirt didn’t work. Sloppy dressing, even on the weekend, isn’t a good idea. So I took my 1.5-hour walk and took a shady break a couple of times to admire all the turtles out in every body of water. I only saw one turtle swimming; the rest were all sunning themselves on rocks and logs. They are probably just as happy as I am for a break in the rain. There was a huge crowd buying tickets outside the Academy of Sciences today so I didn’t go in. I was really looking forward to sitting and knitting in front of the coral reef tank but I don’t like to go when it’s super-crowded. Ah, well. Next time.

The sock and I walked over to see the poppies more closely instead:

Then we went home and relaxed with a beer and watched the biathlon and luge events on TV.

It’s been a while. And the reason for that is that here at MmmYarn I have had a whole bunch of knitting failure. Go figure. All these years of experience and this is where I am, at total knitting system collapse. It’s discouraging.

All right, before I get into all that, I guess I did do one thing right in the past month. I finally brought myself to finish the little hat that Mr. MmmYarn started last May, when he asked me to teach him to knit when he was practically crawling up the walls with boredom being cooped up all the time. I had him make a garter stitch band and then work in the round up the body. Last week I finished the last 7 rounds of the body and the crown and sewed that little seam at the band.

Pattern: Mr. MmmYarn’s own
Yarn: Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters, color: Huckleberry (how very Nelson Munz)
Needles: size 6
Size: infant
Started 5/5/2009 and finished 2/2/2010

Matt always did have great taste in yarn and colors and his stitches are wonderfully even. He wanted to donate this to the hospital as a chemo cap but they won’t take this where I inquired so I am going to add it to the Afghans for Afghans pile. He would be OK with that.

How bad can the rest of it be, you ask? Here is the list.

The secret fuchsia pullover project is still in progress. Yes, still. I can’t believe it, either. I wove in all sleeve and body ends and made a neckline with facing. 4 times! The first time I had the decreases and increases reversed, increasing where I should have decreased and vice versa. So rip rip rip it went and I started again. And made the same mistake a second time. Gah! So out it went and this time I got the shaping right. Only now I had too many stitches on the neck and not enough on the body and everything was weirdly askew before I even noticed the problem. Out one more time. Do you want to see what I ended up with? It looks pretty good with its solid fuchsia lining:

So I guess not a total failure, but definitely a time-suck. Now it’s in the procrastination pile because I dislike putting buttonhole stitch around buttonholes. I am hopeless. That kid is getting bigger by the minute.

The little brown and blue double knitted hat that was coming along so slowly suddenly got faster when I got out of the double knitting part. The problem is my gauge toward the end of the pattern chart, where only a couple of stitches were in the pattern and the rest were all one solid color or another, is completely off the rest of the hat. It looks ridiculous and is sitting in the pile of things that need to be ripped and re-worked. I am only going to rip it to the point of major gauge change. The rest will come out in blocking.

Next up is sock failure. The first Froot Loop sock looks pretty good here, right?

Well, way way way too small for my foot. I worked about 6 inches of cuff before a try-on and that cuff will not go up over my heel. Or really anywhere near my heel. So I’ve cast on again with more stitches so I can put a separate purl stitch between each motif but the half inch I have done looks so big that I believe it might clothe the Jolly Green Giant. While he will look smashing in robin’s egg blue socks, I do want these to be my socks. I’m going to slog along for another couple of inches and if it’s still huge, I’ll redesign it to have a purl panel on the back of the leg. Or I’ll say the heck with it and make another sock with the gull wings pattern I’ve used before. We’ll see.

Bag failure is up next. The black Origami Bag is defying all attempts at being sewn together properly. It needs two little 5″ straight seams and my seams are crookeder than the squirrelly part of Lombard Street. Perhaps I’ll try drawing lines with a ruler and tailor’s chalk and see if I can manage to follow them. Or perhaps I will throw the darn thing in the garbage chute.

Non-knitting has been busy, too. The other things that kept me from writing here are more bank stuff (closing accounts for someone who is deceased is a long-term project) and I became an iPerson. I switched over to using our Mac computer because my little Windows computer is having several aggravating-but-not-fatal hardware problems that are more pricey to fix than the computer is worth. I do have Windows XP as a VMWare instance so I can keep Sweater Wizard and some of my card games and continue to play online Scrabble with my mom. There is a learning curve with the Mac: I keep using the wrong keyboard shortcuts and doing things I don’t mean to do. I will figure it out.

Oh, one more small thing is done. I managed a tiny sock. Yep, just one. It needs a mate. Sigh.

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.