Around October I started thinking that I should frog or finish my WIPs by the end of the year. This week, it got obvious that I wasn’t going to finish everything, so I buckled down and made decisions (and live-tweeted it with the hashtag #frogorfinish).
It quickly became obvious that I like making hats, but I don’t like weaving in ends.
I remembered the dishcloth kick I got onto last year.
I even had a few projects that had been finished and just needed a wash! A few more hats were finished and washed, then dried in the oven (with a timer so I wouldn’t forget – 170F, checked every 10 minutes). I bagged up several finished hats and mailed them off to a dear friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest, to be used/shared/gifted as she chooses.
Now I have two big bags of WIPs that can be finished quickly; my plan is to keep one next to the couch so I can grab projects to work on during my commute or while relaxing at home. I grabbed two dishcloths on my way to the post office yesterday; they just needed the edgings finished and ends woven in. Done!
Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep, so I finished a set of crochet potholders and coordinating dishcloth. Done!
I’ve also gotten started on destashing. More on that later.
Last year I blogged a lot less and started tweeting on Twitter (mk_carroll) and tumblring on Tumblr (mkcarroll). This month, I’ve also been pinning on Pinterest (mk_carroll). I’m still active on Ravelry (mkcarroll), although I have scaled back on the amount of forum posting I do and I’ve disabled Ravelry messaging.
Twitter: mostly little glimpses into my day, including, yes, what I have for breakfast sometimes. Tumblr: still working this out. When I have more to say than the 140 character limit on Twitter, or want to share a photo. Had been using it to bookmark pages and sites as well, but I haven’t done that since I got started on Pinterest. Pinterest: 13 boards, currently, including But What Do You Knit or Crochet in Hawai’i (short answer: whatever you want to), Handmade Accessories, Vintage Costume Jewelry, andBooks I’ve Been Reading. Ravelry: knit/crochet projects, mostly.
It started out as me thinking about how to do a King Charles Brocade style knit/purl pattern in the round, and then became scribbling out ideas about different ways to transition into that (for shaping purposes; I’m thinking about how to incorporate it into a hat). I let myself just wander over the paper with the pencil, gridding out blocks and making eye-pleasing patterns.
From a technical aspect, I had been thinking about working out the math, and charting out the shaping and working out smaller patterns that would fit into the shaping. That’s the kind of thinking that gives me a headache – the good kind, I think, the kind that has me pushing at the boundaries of what is easy for me. That’s often a good starting point for me to go into a wandering creative direction, in which the seeds of the technical issue 1) start to annoy me, which often inspires me to find Something Else To Do, and 2) looking at patterns of lines and shapes light up other thoughts about how to express textures, and perhaps colorwork, and wouldn’t it be interesting to incorporate colorwork into the texture pattern, and oh, what if it was done in fingering-weight in strong colors, or in worsted Peace Fleece (have you seen the new colors for 2010 by the way? Baba’s Sienna looks like it would be gorgeous colorworked in a pattern with Volgassippi Blue, Soyuz-Apollo Teal, Baikal-Superior Green, Glasnost Gold, Chickie Masla, and a little hit of Violet Vyehcheyeerom), or in all soft colors (again with the Peace Fleece – Anna’s Grasshopper, Georgia Rose, Lena’s Meadow, Chickie Masla, Latvian Lavender...). This is, unsurprisingly, happening after I’ve done a massive de-stashing and gave my set of colored pencils to a child who has a great enthusiasm for colored pencils (how could I resist? His mother was telling me he calls out to her when she’s leaving the house to “bring back more colorrrrrrs!”). I’m going to make sure I have a pad of graph paper and a few colored pencils packed in my carry-on luggage. Although I can work out these sorts of patterns on my computer much faster than by hand, I find a lot of personal value in working out some ideas with pencil and paper. It’s really soothing and forces my thinking to slow down in some areas, which can lead to a blossoming of more ideas in the long term. It’s also a more peaceful way for me to work out how the patterns are structured, and how different geometric patterns can relate to each other. I can see that there are rules and formulas I could use, and it would probably be faster if I just went with that, but that does involve a certain amount of fighting with my inclinations (which is good for me in some ways, but sometimes I don’t want to be grouchy and breaking pencil tips over a possible border for a winter hat).
I don’t know if I’ll wind up using any of the ideas I have been sketching out, but I am really itching to get my hands on a skein of solid-colored sock yarn and start something smallish, like a baby hat, to start toying with knit/purl texture patterns.
I've been baking cupcakes at least once per week for the past several weeks, ever since I picked up the recipe book. The recipes I've tried so far I've briefly reviewed here previously and they've been so good that I've been making them over and over again (Green Tea, Banana (from the Banana Split recipe), and Gingerbread). Since I'd found Frontier Peppermint Extract at a big-chain grocery store recently, I figured it was time to try the Chocolate Mint cupcake recipe. These are gooood. The mint icing is a light accent that contrasts nicely with the dark chocolate ganache, although I made half the recipe amount of the mint icing and I could have used half the recipe amount of the chocolate ganache. I am not a huge fan of heaps of icing, and the recipes in the book tend to lean towards big fluffy mounds of it. I also opted to dunk the tops of the iced cupcakes into the ganache rather than try to drizzle the ganache on, and I think it worked out well. The ganache did not solidify as much as the recipe seems to suggest, but I don't care, it's delicious! Next time I think I will make the mint icing a pale pink, just because.
#1 best reason for me (an omnivore) to keep baking vegan cupcakes: no fears about eating the raw batter! I think I liked this raw batter more than the gingerbread batter.
Frontier Natural Products Co-op carries a wide range of organic and fair-trade herbs, spices, and baking flavorings and extracts, including great Fair Trade certified loose-leaf teas , an alcohol-free Fair Trade certified vanilla flavoring (glycerin base) and vanilla flavoring powder (but only in a 1/2 lb. package). If you are in Honolulu, Kokua Market Natural Foods Co-op (open to the public!) carries Frontier herbs, spices, and a couple of the flavorings (almond and vanilla), and you can special order any Frontier item they don't have in stock. In case you are wondering why no-alcohol and powdered vanilla is desirable, if you are using vanilla in something that isn't going to be cooked (like, say, a mango smoothie), the flavor is, in my opinion, far superior. Quite frankly for baked goods I think even fake vanilla extract does fine, but for frosting/icing, smoothies, drinks, fruit salads, and so on, using for-real vanilla without alcohol can make a big difference. Some of the other flavorings and extracts (including peppermint and lemon) are also no-alcohol.
A few days ago, I put my hand down the side of my seat in the car and then yanked my hand back and hissed. Kidlet asked me if I’d scratched myself on the broken plastic guide thingy for the seatbelt, but I hadn’t – what I’d done was turn the plastic knob to adjust the seat back, and just as my wrist hit a certain position, my entire right hand felt like it was stuck in an electrical socket. That was the biggest of the red flags I’ve been getting over the past couple of months. There’s a tightness and mild loss of sensation running down my right forearm from the elbow to the wrist, tingling in both of my hands, and tightness in my shoulders. More than once in the past few weeks, I’ve dropped something because my right hand has suddenly lost sensation. I know all the signs. Irony? Part of the reason I’m experiencing these symptoms is because I work on people who have these same problems.
I’m doing the best I know how to – stretching, icing, and resting my hands and arms. I haven’t knit or crocheted much in the past several weeks, and when I do, I try to stop every 15 minutes. My workload has eased – the primary at work was out sick for a while, but is back now – so if I keep stretching and icing and resting I should be back to normal in a few weeks. It does foul up my plans to get a bunch of knit/crochet design stuff done in time for the autumn rush, like doing symbol charts and schematics with VectorDesigner, as working on the computer is another activity I have to restrict. I have taken up paddleboarding, but I’ve been careful with that too and it’s good for my shoulders and my balance, so I think I’m okay with doing it once per week (and probably skipping it this week as there’s a shark warning today). If I take care of myself now, I’ll mend faster. I really hope so – because just about everything I do for fun involves the use of my hands. I’ve been reading more, so I have that, at least.
If I seem fairly calm about the situation, it may be because I just paid for kidlet’s airplane tickets home for Christmas. OUCH. Now, that really stung. Next year, I’ll buy them by June 1 at the latest. I also bought my return ticket home – I’ll be going to her college campus with her and I’d booked those tickets over a month ago, but because I’ll be heading to Portland afterwards and flying home from there, I thought I’d wait until I was sure I could take the time to spend a weekend in PDX. If you know of anything going on in PDX this September that you think I’d be interested in, please let me know!
* “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings” as my grandmother used to say
So Sister Super Princess is heading off to Toronto tomorrow and I repurposed one of the Anne Crochet Scarf Kits so I could do a quick, chunky, waffle-knit hat for her.
Cascade 109, waffle knit (aka broken rib) on US 10.5 needles
At the most recent Aloha Knitters meeting, I started thinking it might be too big, and kept on knitting anyway. I got home, got out a measuring tape, and knew that it was too big, so I ripped back. One of the nice things about a top-down hat – I didn’t have to rip the whole thing, just back to the crown and into the increases until it was the right size around.
Cascade 109, waffle knit – reverse side
On my way to and from work today, I kept knitting and stopping to measure the length. While sitting in a parking lot waiting for my Dad, I noted with a bit of annoyance that one skein wasn’t going to be enough, and that I would need to use just a little more yarn to do two more rounds and the bind-off. I bound off on the way home.
Once home, I tried it on. It’s too long. By about two rounds.
I’m going to rip back the bind-off and three rounds (it will ease up a bit when blocked), then wash this and pop it in the oven (yes, it’s another one of those days). Afterwards I might make cornbread.
update: after washing the hat, I ripped out about 8 more rounds. The cornbread is delicious.
Skillet Cornbread
8” cast iron skillet (all iron – will go into oven) an uncooked strip of bacon, chopped 1 c stoneground cornmeal (1/3 cup in mixing bowl, remaining 2/3 cup in small bowl) 1/2 c boiling water 1/2 c plain yogurt and 1/2 c water blended together with 1 tsp salt
1 lg egg 2 Tbs sugar or 1 Tbs honey 1 c whole wheat flour 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda
Heat oven to 450 F with skillet (containing bacon) on middle rack.
Blend the 1/3 cup cornmeal and boiling water with a whisk to make a mush. Slowly add yogurt, beat in egg and honey (if using honey). Blend remaining ingredients in a separate bowl. When skillet is very hot, blend dry ingredients into wet just long enough to combine. Pour bacon bits and fat into batter and stir in quickly. Scrape batter into pan and return to oven for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown. Turn out onto cooling rack immediately and let cool at least 5 minutes before serving.
One of these days I’m going to arrange to be at home alone when making this cornbread so I can peel the crusty bottom off and eat it first, while still hot.
You’ve seen Beatrice before on this blog, modeling scarves patiently while I fiddle with angles, light, tripod, and a digital camera that needs a good spanking every once in a while, but I haven’t gotten around to formally introducing her to you until now. It has come to my attention that Beatrice ought to have some shirts of her own* – she’s smaller than I am, having belonged originally to my petite grandmother. My grandmother was a professional seamstress, and Mom thinks that Beatrice is the dressmakers form she used for her own personal sewing. If so, Beatrice spent many years as the fit model for tasteful shells, blouses, and jackets made with high-quality fabrics and clean, simple lines. Grandmother was a woman of dignified and elegant taste. Money was tight for a long time, but she could do things like cut and stitch a custom-fit and classically styled top that would last her for years out of a piece of velvet rescued from a remnant bin somewhere in LA’s Fashion District.
I don’t think my grandmother ever expected that one of her grandchildren would grow up to dye her hair loud colors and make clothi…er, things to wear…out of torn-up thrift shop finds. She loved it! Always encouraged my creativity, and declared my dark purple hair dye to be her favorite because it reminded her of irises (her favorite flower).
Am also fairly certain that my grandmother never envisioned her dressmakers form sporting such a…well, a…isn’t that a lovely shade of green? That shirt, incidentally, was a gift to me from my sisters. I have worn it, in public even, but it’s just not Beatrice’s style.
p.s. thanks for the encouraging comments and emails - I think my grandmother would have agreed with you.
*"Oh, for &%$# sake. Get her something that fits, sweetie. You haven’t been to Stylus in ages; now you have a reason other than finding something for yourself to replace those dishrags you insist on calling garments." (note from Viv)
Size H crochet hook oddball of ribbon yarn, no band
I went through my crochet stitch dictionaries and vintage crochet pamphlets and came up with nothing. Thinking back, I figured that if I couldn’t find it in my current collection, the motif probably came from a hippie-era book or Maggie Righetti’s Crocheting in Plain English. One thing about the way I move (I sell or give away most of my belongings, books included) is that my home library is not stable. I’ll check the next time I’m at the public library.
I’m going to get some prep work for tomorrow’s lunch done, and then I’m going to sit down with a skein of Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton. This time around, I’m going to make sure I have the pattern written down and scanned into my laptop and saved to a flash drive along with photos of the finished items.
. One thing about the way I move (I sell or give away most of my belongings, books included) is that my home library is not stable. I’ll check the next time I’m at the public library.