Month: November 2012

Words get the best of me

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Not spoken or written words – the game, Words with friends. As I write this, I have 6 games in progress. Several just get a word a day.

It’s sort of like Scrabble but its not. Nonsense words are accepted. There’s no opportunity to challenge an opponent’s move; if the computer doesn’t like it, they can’t play it. And the computer likes crazy words – luv, bens, jape, om, bo. These are desperate times. Z and Q words remain limited.

I’m sure this game leads to corporate waste because I see a few moves made during working hours. It’s a nice way to stay connected but I don’t want it to interfere with baking

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bread making

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cooking

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The first photo is the most amazing nutmeg and black pepper popovers from Bon Appetit magazine.
They went perfectly with short ribs cooked in the crockpot and kale and leeks. Hoo boy that was good!

Ship on a bottle

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We finally wrapped up the boat last week. Well, Tim did while I walked around muttering to myself and him. It was a fairly frustrating day but the boat didn’t mind. Tim rescued our olive oil from the galley.

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I thought one of the benefits of a monounsaturated oil was it remained liquid. Not so at below freezing temperatures, apparently.

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends and all that train travel came in handy. Actually I spent more time than usual repairing errors while I knit on the train but it kept me occupied.

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Yesterday I began the task of working off the turkey and fixings by taking a walk and working on the wood pile. Nice to be home.

Bonus Fall Day

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The weather was perfect yesterday and since I didn’t have to cook, we went for a walk in the woods.

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Icicles hung from the shady side of rocks but we hiked without jackets.

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It was a short walk. We probably spent as much time at the summit as it took us to get there. I have a new panorama app, 360, and played around with it. Here’s a conventional pic,

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And a self portrait

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Here’s the link to my panoramic view

For an interior shot, here’s my house
Now I’m off to knit!

Sympathy Labor

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I am lucky to be heading out for Thanksgiving. As much as I love having the holiday at home, I live too far away for most of my family to travel here. So I will spend most of Thursday, Friday and Saturday knitting while I ride the trains for at least five hours every day. May as well look at the bright side; there could be delays, which would allow me even more knitting time. Plus there will be family and food at the end of those tunnels.

Here’s what I will be working on.

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I am modifying Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid. It may be sacreligous but it was too big and boxy as written. I’m using Cascade Heather on 5’s, eliminated the first chart and using a set in saddle shoulder. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m cooking in sympathy with all Thanksgiving hosts. I’m putting up more farm goodies. I have brussel sprouts to feed an army until the cows come home. And the brussel sprouts are making more brussel sprouts right before my eyes!

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Next I’m blanching three types of winter squash – acorn, delicato and butternut. The delicato is amazingly sweet. So sweet I put them in my pancakes. (Don’t tell Tim)!

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The finished product.

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Strings and strings

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I worked on an overshot pattern I had on my floor loom for as long as I could tolerate it and then decided it was time for something else. Since I still had a lot of yarn warped, I decided to rethread it. It went easily but I made a bunch of mistakes in an 8″ warp!

Two threads were in the wrong heddles and I couldn’t just slide the right ones over because the area was closed in by threads. I needed to insert a new heddle and I remembered reading about string heddles. So I improvised and made a couple and saved the day – or at least the hour.

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They work quite well and now I’m off weaving some huck lace from Judith Davison’s book of patterns.

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There’s still a mistake, which is way more obvious in the photo than in real life but I couldn’t figure out, so it remains and becomes a design element.

My Ashford reed holder, double weave wall hanging is progressing slowly but nicely. It’s probably a good thing the lower layer will be against the wall.

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I got a chance to use my yarn swift and nostespinne and wound a few balls of cascade 220 to begin Alice Starmore’s St. Brigid. I went down a needle size and eliminated the first chart to make a more fitted sweater.

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At this point, I’m very proud of the ball of yarn. I’m not sure if the sweater will be done by Christmas but certainly by winter’s end.

Who turned off the color?

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There was a definite chill in the air this morning with ice on the windows. Although it was clear, it was as if someone had sucked all the color out of the landscape and replaced it with grey scale.

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I put my snow tires on just in time. I guess we won’t see any more Monarch butterflies on the milkweed.

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Hopefully the cluster flies will go to sleep for the season-or better yet migrate south where it is always warm. Cluster flies are new to me since I moved north. I should have been wary when the person who built and sold us our house had a handout. The good news is they don’t spread disease. The bad news is they swarm inside the house on sunny, cool days. They play dead, or are just sleeping, when you scoop them into a dustpan and then miraculously reawaken and fly away just when you thought you had them. Now I only use a DustBuster and put a sock in it.

I’m on the Knitpicks podcast!

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One of the first podcasts I listened to was Kelley Petkun from Knitpicks describing what knitting she would do on a deserted island. I still have that podcast on my iPod. She introduced me to the idea of a Pi shawl as great island knitting and I cast my first one during a hiking trip in the Grand Canyon when I couldn’t possibly take another step. . Since then, I’ve listened to episodes about the creative process, knitting, designers, yarn lines, football, spinning and life in general and I am hooked. I began listening during my hour long commute into Manhattan to work.

I remember trying to describe why I listened to knitting podcasts to my stepson. He couldn’t imagine what would possibly capture my (or his) attention for 30 minutes. But it’s so much more than knitting. And now it brings me back to the Knitpicks podcast because on their 200th celebratory episode, Kelley revisits deserted island knitting and refers to MY BLOG as an example. Because I knit on deserted islands! And love it. And hope to continue doing it because, after the first time, it keeps getting better and easier. Food planning and packing gets simplified.

Some of my best projects were envisioned and completed in remote settings. Like Tim’s Christmas penguin! knit while on Deal Island Tasmania with some beautiful organic merino roving gifted to me by a new friend in Tasmania, which I spun and knit during my three months there. Or the four pairs of socks I have knit for myself on Seguin Island. Or the warm vest I modified and knit on Deal Island. This podcast makes me appreciate and remember what a wonderful life I live.

Today, in the mountains, I worked on three projects: a pair of socks for my daughter’s friend

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A double weave wall hanging with pockets to hold at least some of my weaving tools

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And I continue to work on the overshot sampler

To think, I was working and commuting when I began listening and now I have given most of it up am living the life I never dreamed of!

Warped mind

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I learn backwards. Sdrawkcab! I progress from hard to easy. I did it with spinning; I used a wheel first then downsized to a spindle and now I am doing it with weaving.

I wanted to try overshot, which is a simple but complex form of weaving. I have a book called “Learn to Weave” and it is covered in Chapter 15 (out of 16 chapters).

I have a wonderful book of patterns published in the 1940’s. As an aside, I learned from it why I love linen so much. The author states you can tell linen from cotton because linen gives up stains easily with mild soap and sun, cotton doesn’t and holds the stains. Something to do with the nature of the fiber. And here I thought I was a phenomenal laundress! At least it justifies my linen addiction.

Back to weaving. Instead of using a tried and true draft (pattern) I found one I liked on the Internet and imported it into my iPhone weaving app: iWeaveit.

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Looked good, so off to the loom I went.

I warped the loom and eagerly began weaving and it looked terrible. I went back to the book and learned the pattern didn’t obey a rule of overshot and the software didn’t know any better. Whoever uploaded the pattern probably created it in theory without trying it out.

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But through this fiasco, I learned big lessons and now understand overshot weaving more than if everything went by the “book”.

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