Scrapdash

You say you want a resolution?

2012-01-08T21:39:00.000-06:00

Well, you know, we all want cheesecake in the world.

At least I do. And I like this one, Apple Crisp Cheesecake, I found on Inside BruCrew Life.

It has apples, people. And dairy. The graham crackers alone sing the wholesomeness of childhood. Unless the crackers in the upper crust get burnt by the broiler.

True disaster was averted, though, because the crust is thick. By chipping away the uppermost layer, I found all the crumbs underneath gorgeous as gold. A bonus: fewer calories are now present to pester your food journal.

There's so much goodness in this cake it spilleth over.

Now, partake in moderation. You're welcome!

"Destined to become a Christmas Classic"

2011-12-14T23:34:00.001-06:00

This was my husband's claim when he handed me the notebook in which he'd written his version of an old Christmas carol. We'd heard the good and proper version during a concert the night before, an evening attended by an occasionally cranky baby a few seats over and other fidgety children throughout the concert hall. Many said children were swinging glow-in-the-dark stars meant to be worn as necklaces.

Obviously, someone with budget money to spare thought these do-hickeys were a great idea to bestow upon the good folk of my community. And the sight was kinda charming as we looked down on the blue lights from the nosebleed section. However, when a couple of manic stars are two rows directly in front of you...Well, remember how Fireball looked after his buddy Rudolph's fake nose fell off?

Right, so, punchy with vertigo, THOMY leaned over and sang the first two lines to me. I, in a similar state of mind, got a case of the giggles. It's not really that funny, I know, but I want to share his lyrics with you anyway. If you stay to the end, you'll get a treat.

To the tune "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"

Have yourself another piece of fruitcake;

Let your pants be tight.

From now on the calories will be out of sight.

And have yourself another bowl of Chex Mix;

It'll be OK.

New Year's resolutions are still days away.

Here we are with elastic waists

Filling up our plates once more,

Punch with gin to bring cheer to us.

Don't be querulous--just pour.

Put your prudence off until tomorrow;

Be indulgent now.

I just might have eaten an entire cow.

So have yourself another piece of fruitcake now.

Or, as promised, cheesecake.

Coming up, the overview of its creation and its recipe source.

Headband Hullabaloo

2011-11-21T00:57:00.001-06:00

So, as of this past weekend, the Scrapdash blog is five years old. No gifts, please. No streamers or cake are necessary, either. Well, okay, when is cake really ever necessary?

Fudgy Brownie Cake with a peanut butter pudding frosting. Mmmm. I should make this again.

Anyway, to extend this celebratory theme ad nauseum, I have supplied the party hats. For me, that is. And, they're not really hats since I'm not a fan of hat hair. They're headbands.

Nice, wide ones, of which there are three.

One: Santa Fe Headband

I used up the rest of the yarn I bought in Santa Fe three years ago and with which I first made a Kinetic Cowl.

Only, I didn't have enough of the yarn left! Tragedy upon tragedy, I know. Luckily I was in a yarn shop when I discovered this and grabbed a ball of black yarn in the same weight. I started over, beginning and ending the cowl with the black.

Ravelry Link for more on this headband.

Two: Quant

On Knitty.com, this headband begins and ends with i-cord ties. I learned from my experience grafting the Santa Fe Headband and I cast on provisionally for Quant, knitting a six-stitch band for three inches before I began increasing for the entrelac pattern. Near the end, I decreased back to six stitches and knit the band for the rest of the length I needed to fit my head. I grafted the two ends together.

Ravelry Link for my Quant project.

Three: You Did What?!? Headband

Under the category You Knit A Perfectly Good Project Just to Cut It and Knit It Back Together Again?, I file this headband:

…which began life from the cowl pattern Gyre used by my local yarn shop in a class called Steeking with Supervision. Steeking is often used to create a cardigan sweater out of a pullover by cutting (!?!) stitches right up the front. A cowl is a much smaller commitment. A headband is less painful yet. So, as a student in the steeking class, I knit the colorwork pattern in the round, secured the stitches to be cut, and took the plunge.

As you can see at the bottom of the blocking picture, I had already turned under the cut ends and picked up stitches to graft the sides back together. I did this just for the experience, really. No bungee cord involved. No rider on the life insurance needed. But I did down a Pimm's and Lemonade right after the slaughter.

Ravelry info for this insanity.

And now I won't lose quite as much heat out of the top of my head this winter. Hats would be better, I know, but PBTPBTPBT. (A mere five-year-old blog can publish a stuck-out tongue with impunity.)

It's all in the smartitude

2011-10-09T23:52:00.007-05:00

Almost three weeks ago, my Smart Car wouldn't start while sitting in the grocery store parking lot. Packed with groceries. At night.

After a cab ride home for me--groceries in the trunk--and a tow home for the car, we discovered an unheavenly truth. The local Mercedes dealership doesn't work on Smarts. (Mercedes makes Smart Cars.) Never mind that someone at that dealership told me otherwise when we were thinking about buying the car (from an unrelated car lot, so the misinformation is totally not their fault) way back in January.

I'm telling you, there was much sighing and rolling of eyes around here. And phone calls.

Two days later, Triple-A towed the car 200 miles from home to an official Smart Center repair shop. Thank God for them and for our inherent nervousness which had prompted us to buy the extended warranty for the car. Both resources paid the majority of the bills.

The repair itself took less than a day, but we had to wait another week and a half before we could fetch the car. By that time, I was in the mood for an old fashioned road trip. I was determined to redeem all our frustration into something fun.

So, on our way home from the repair shop, we visited the Louisburg Cider Mill during their Ciderfest.

I didn't take lots of pictures, but here is how the cider apples are given a bath...

before they take a little ride up a conveyer…

into the cider press house.

As you can see, quite a crowd attended the Ciderfest. Here in Kansas, we had a long, miserable, record-breaking summer, so folks are ready for fall.

On the other side of a long walk across a field of parked cars, however, the pumpkin patch lay wide open.

Off in the distance the maples are turning red…finally!

We passed up several handsome pumpkins…

To adopt this pretty boy.

He's sporting a new shawl I whipped up for my local yarn shop. I love the shawl's name: Arachnophilia. It's a name apropos for the first cooler-weather holiday, no?

The shawl, a pattern by Jennifer Dassau, is based on the same stitch I used for edging my Occasus square shawl. Details about my version of Arachnophilia are on its Ravelry project page, but the short of it is it's an easy, fun shawl.

Finally, the best treat we ate at the Ciderfest was a batch of little cider donuts. The mill's donuts are fried, but I baked a batch of my own using a mini donut tray and this recipe. They turned out well, I think, though they don't melt in one's mouth like a fried donut.

If I wanted to add calories, I'd soak them in melted butter and sprinkle sugar over them. I'm naughty for eating donuts, but I'm not that naughty. So instead, I soak them in milk. For the discovery of cider donuts, I'm not so cranky anymore about my car wigging out three weeks ago. I forgive it.

Weekly Menu Board and Grocery Shopping

2011-08-14T16:31:00.001-05:00

I discovered Pinterest awhile back, when it wasn't so cool yet. As a virtual corkboard for all the ideas you can find online and want to remember later, the site is getting cooler all the time. One of the great ideas I pinned there came from the Little Birdie Secrets blog by way of makeandtake.com.

A dry erase menu board.

Little Birdie Secrets' tutorial is for a 12" x 12" board and uses a vinyl cutting machine to make the letters for the days of the week. The letters are adhered to the glass, and the paper behind the glass can be changed as desired.

Alas, while I'm hip and up-to-date for having joined Pinterest, I haven't taken the waters from the vinyl cutting machine project flood. I don't have a vinyl cutter.

I do, however, have a printer. And I found document frames (frames made especially for an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper) for half off at my local Michael's store. I also had a couple sheets of scrapbooking paper that I cut to fit into my printer. After a bit of desktop publishing magic in a word processing program (like Word or OpenOffice), I had my own wipe off menu board.

I also threw together a board for things we need to add to the weekly shopping list.

By the way, the font I used for the boards is Hill House. I like its Arts & Crafts/Mission vibe. We hung both boards on the side of our upper cabinets.

Thanks for the idea, Little Birdie!

I've linked this post up to The DIY Showoff blog.

Too bad I'm not superstitious

2011-08-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

I just finished knitting a steering wheel cover for my Smart Car. Yes, I wrote knit.

And here's what I wrote on the steering wheel cover's project page in Ravelry:

After 30+ days of 100+ degree heat, I got sick of burning my hands on the steering wheel after work. I know, I’m a leetle slow sometimes. I couldn’t find a steering wheel cover for my tiny Smart Car, so I decided I’d make one. This one.

I predicted that upon finishing the cover, the Dome of Heat over the Midwest would lift, thereby rendering my efforts useless. I was wrong. The day I bought the yarn, a sudden storm whooshed through town, blowing trees, trash, and temperatures down. I delayed beginning the project, and temperatures popped back up for a few more days.

This morning, while I whip stitched the cover onto the car, we had steady rain for hours. It’s still thundering outside. I am afraid of my own powers.

Or, I just ran out of patience about the same time the heat wave did. But the Jen Almighty take is better.

Sherbet Floats

2011-08-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

A couple months ago I had a brief respite in the hospital. Nothing to worry about, just some planned surgery. As a gesture of kindness, a knitting friend brought over two tubs of sherbet and a bottle of ginger ale for post-op sherbet floats.

I already had the appropriate soda fountain glassware. I'm a strong believer in consuming comfort food in the appropriate vessel.

As it happened, one of my pre-op orders had me drink something nasty, flavored lemon-lime in a futile attempt to mask its gag factor. The flavoring made it worse, in my opinion. And, so, I couldn't stomach the lime sherbet afterwards. Even now my face crinkles at the idea of Sprite or 7-Up or the like. It would have been a real sad state of affairs during my recovery if my friend hadn't also brought the raspberry sherbet. I hoarded that tub and Would Not Share. Thankfully, THOMY understood.

Watermelon gazpacho and a staggering harvest

2011-07-31T23:09:00.002-05:00

The prospect of eating watermelon was enough to make me squeal when I was a wee young thing. I chewed my way through slices like a silk worm with mulberry leaves. At some point, though, and I don't remember when, I grew out of eating the sticky, awkward fruit. I guess my vanity has taken a few weird turns into my adulthood: I don't like to show my neck; I won't wear hats; and I don't eat watermelon.

Until now.

That is, the watermelon part. I still don't do the other two.

I've tried a few cold soups lately. Strawberry: a yummy, sweet soup. Peach: more sweetness. Yesterday I tasted a zucchini lemon blend which was not sweet though quite buttery. Hands down, however, this Watermelon Gazpacho is the best savory cold soup evah.

Our version is based on the recipe out of Taste of Home's Simple & Delicious magazine, the July/August 2009 issue. We omitted the jalapeno pepper; the ginger adds enough heat for me. Also, we substituted parsley for the cilantro because I'm not on Team Cilantro.

Watermelon Gazpacho

4 cups cubed watermelon, seeded, divided
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon grated lime peel
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
1 teaspoon salt
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 small cucumber, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 green onion, chopped

Puree 3 cups watermelon in a blender or food processor. Cut remaining watermelon in 1/2-inch pieces; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the watermelon puree, lime juice, lime peel, ginger and salt. Stir in the tomato, cucumber, green pepper, parsley, onions, and cubed watermelon. Chill until serving. Yield: 4 servings

And now to reveal our staggering tomato harvest so far this season.

Yep. And here is what it looks like to the right of a supermarket tomato.

Thank you, month of 100+ - degree days of drought. The home-grown tomato, a Silvery Fir Tree heirloom variety, really is supposed to be that small. Just not so...singular. We can count on two hands how many cherry-sized Golden Nugget tomatoes we're waiting to ripen.

And waiting. And waiting. Like the world is doing for me to pull my hair into a ponytail.

Salad Day no. 3

2011-06-05T22:33:00.001-05:00

The final recipe of this week's salad trifecta comes courtesy of one of my uncles. He didn't give me the recipe; he provided the main ingredient. He is this household's primary source of fish, and by jove, do we have loads of catfish in the freezer.

The original recipe can be found at UScatfish.com. We sandwiched the salad between kaiser rolls. It also makes a mild dip for artisan breads or crackers.

Catfish Salad

3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 cups chopped cooked catfish (about ½ pound)
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
2 tablespoons finely shredded carrot
2 tablespoons ranch salad dressing
Salt and pepper, to taste

For sandwiches:
6 hamburger buns
6 tomato slices
6 lettuce leaves
Dijon mustard
sharp cheddar cheese, shredded or sliced

Place ricotta cheese and lemon juice in a blender or food processor. Cover and blend for about 30 seconds or until smooth. Mix cheese mixture, fish, celery, dressing, salt, and pepper. Place ½ cup fish mixture on each bun bottom, and add tomato, lettuce, and other condiments. Top with bun top. Serves 6.

Salad Day no. 2

2011-06-02T23:59:00.000-05:00

I first feasted on this tortellini pasta salad at a friend's house, insisted she email me the recipe, couldn't wait for that and looked it up online for myself when I got home. It's that good: tangy, savory mouthfuls of joy . The dressing alone is worth drizzling on other veggie concoctions.

Again, we've altered the original recipe just a tad. We're not fond of olives, so those are out. Also, we drain the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes and keep it in reserve for the dressing, then add enough olive oil to make up the difference for the total amount called for.

Tortellini Pasta Salad

Salad Ingredients:
24 ounces cheese tortellini
2 cups celery, chopped
14 ounces artichoke hearts
3/4 cup green onion
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and oil reserved
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Dressing Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
Oil from tomatoes + olive oil to make 1/2 cup
1/4 cup red wine vinegar or champagne vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon oregano, ground
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1/4 teaspoon dried basil or 1 teaspoon minced fresh basil
1 clove garlic, minced or finely chopped

Cook and drain tortellini according to package instructions. Allow it to cool. If desired, slice or chop sun-dried tomatoes. Combine tortellini, celery, artichoke hearts, onion, sun-dried tomatoes, and cheese in a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Serve immediately or cover and chill for 3 hours. Best if chilled overnight.

Salad Day no. 1

2011-05-31T21:23:00.003-05:00

We find ourselves mired in the first genuinely hot week of the year. Summer, my friends, is my least favorite season but at least eating salads makes it endurable. Our menu for the week is a string of salads. And here is the first one, originally from Taste of Home magazine. We have altered it very little, cutting down on the onion because breathing fire is not a desirable side effect of dinner for us. Also, because cherry tomatoes are beyond our budget and our own plants aren't bearing fruit yet, we chopped larger tomatoes into comparable chunks.

Asparagus Mozzarella Salad

Salad Ingredients:
2 pounds fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 pound fresh mozzarella cheese, cubed
2 cups chopped tomatoes (or grape or cherry tomatoes)
1 small shallot, halved and sliced
1/4 cup minced fresh basil

Dressing Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice

In a large saucepan, bring 1/2 in. of water to a boil. Add asparagus; cover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain and immediately place asparagus in ice water. Drain and pat dry. Transfer to a large bowl. Add the cheese, tomatoes, onion and basil.
In a small bowl, whisk the oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, mustard and pepper. Pour over salad; toss to coat. Drizzle with lemon juice. Chill until serving. Yield: 15 servings (2/3 cup each).

A quick before and after

2011-05-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

Please excuse the bad photography. The lighting in our house is a joke, especially in the kitchen. While that remedy is on my To Do list, I'd like to show what we most recently accomplished in our food prep room.

The curtains gracing the kitchen windows came with the house when we bought it…fifteen years ago. They were obviously custom made, a nice linen, and Dry Clean Only.

But, um, we're not a Dry Clean Only kind of people around here.

Over the years, then, the curtains got dirty dirty dirty dirty.

To replace the curtains, we opted for bamboo Roman shades. Since the multitude of kitchen cabinets are a pickled YELLOW and the new flooring waiting to be installed is a dark wood color, the bamboo shades are a deep brown as well. (Remember, the lighting in this kitchen will not always be so insipid.)

We found these blinds at Overstock.com at a most excellent price. They were way too long, but the tutorial on Landsdowne Life helped us fix that in a hurry. Now they are a perfect fit.

As for the old curtains, I saved the fabric and donated the drapery hardware to Goodwill. We'll see what use I can find for the linen...

Side Fringe Scarf and Tutorial

2011-04-17T13:13:00.005-05:00

This week I finished a scarf I probably wouldn't have made except I'd been asked to. It's pink, it's for summer, and it has fringe--none of my favorite things. By the time I finished it, though, it had charmed me.

The scarf is based on the La Boheme pattern in A Year of Scarves, a book by Knit One, Crochet Too. As a summer scarf, it didn't need to be as wide as the one in the book, so I decided the main body of the scarf would be 18 stitches and the fringe would be created from 10 dropped stitches. (Yes, dropped. ON PURPOSE.) According to my higher level math skilz, that adds up to 28 stitches for the cast on.

Now, when I tried to explain the side-fringe method to a few curious bystanders while I was still knitting the scarf, I got even curiouser looks. (Insert wry comment here about my higher level explaining skilz.) Now that I'm done, I can show the steps in pictures.

First, I bound off 18 stitches. Actually, I bound off 17 stitches and had a solitary stitch remaining on the right needle.

This stitch needs to be knotted, so I drew the yarn up to make a larger loop.

I snipped the yarn from the ball, leaving about ten inches for a tail, and inserted the yarn end through the loop. (The tail doesn't need to be woven in since it can blend with the fringe.)

I tightened the knot…

And all I had to deal with were the ten stitches on the left needle.

So I ZIPPED the needle out of the them!

Which meant I could beginning unraveling the stitches.

Unbeknownst to me, ten stitches unraveled from garter stitching makes for a lot of fringe. A lot. Like, 10.5 inches. Look at the miles of fringe on the scarf.

To tame the fringe, I harkened back to a project I have "favorited" on Ravelry but will never realistically begin: the Lady Eleanor Entrelac Wrap from Scarf Style. Sorry, no photo for the wrap, but it's knotwork fringe is beautiful and worked well for my dilemma.

And that's how I made pink fringed lemonade out of a pink fringed summer scarf. To peruse more details of the scarf, please skip on over to its Ravelry project page.

Linked to:

The DIY Show Off

Under the Table and Dreaming's Sunday Showcase

Just Something I Whipped Up

An hour in early spring

2011-04-03T12:02:00.002-05:00

A little over a week ago, THOMY and I took lunch al fresco and wandered a bit through the city garden. It was our anniversary.

I had to use the telephoto lens to snap this shot. The buds are huge, but I couldn't find the plaque under the tree to discover their proper name. Anyone have a guess?

They're growing feathers next to the peony bushes now, I gather. Who knew they were a companion crop?

And, close up…

The brook was an inviting feature that day. Proof:

And now we're just waiting for the roses to wake up.

And I'm not a garagiste

2011-02-20T09:31:00.003-06:00

"Garage wine," from the Bordeaux region in France, is a kind of down and dirty, lickety-split red wine compared to its more properly aged grandfather of the area. Someone who makes this wine is called a garagiste, and not always kindly.

I know. I learned that this morning, too.

I found a recipe for a sweet, fruity faux wine, just add the decanter. It looks like a rosé, no?

Equal parts white grape juice and ginger ale to a half part cranberry juice.

Ginger ale, you say? Why, that's--

Stop calling it punch. Around here, it deserves stemware. It's a dessert wine. I didn't even need a garage.

Linked to:

The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Crazy Domestic
All Thingz Related's Anything Related

Snow Day Knitting

2011-02-08T14:09:00.001-06:00

For the second Tuesday in a row, I'm on a Snow Day. Last week, the umpteen-state Snowpocalypse of 2011 gave me two days at home because I was, by no means, taking out my wee Smart Car to get shucked around like a pinball on the snowy streets. During my stint at home, I read NuttyIrishman Knits's blog post about her Swallowtail Shawl. She used a bulky yarn (Cascade's Eco Wool) for a shawl pattern that calls for lace weight.

That inspired me to use up my Eco yarn with which I made a blanket last year. Since I had a little over 200 yards left, I chose the shawlette pattern 198 Yds. of Heaven.

It was so quick! It's meant to use up yarn too luxurious (read: to expensive) to have acquired more than one skein. Eco isn't luxury yarn, but the wool comes in fantastic, heathered colors. Like Rainier Heather.

As it turns out, the pattern used up only 115 yards of my yarn, so I could have kept going to make a larger shawl. I wish I had since my shawlette is barely large enough to be a kerchief. Still, it's a warm kerchief. And pretty.

And it's earned approval from the other girl in the house.

Smart

2011-01-30T16:06:00.000-06:00

This is the form my middle age crisis has taken. It's literally not much to look at and completely adorable. The cutest thing about it is its gas mileage. It's supposed to average around 40 mpg, which is about twice as much as my pickup was getting.

We bought the car Friday after finally deciding that we'd had the pickup long enough. (The starter in my pickup died on my birthday earlier last week.) So we traded in the truck (a two-seater with an open trunk I wasn't really using anymore) for a more up-to-date two-seater with an enclosed storage compartment I don't mind stowing stuff in. The thing is, my dad found the pickup for us over ten years ago, so letting it go generated some emotion and a few tears on my part.

Still, I think my dad would have approved of our choice. It's going to be a great little errand vehicle. I call it my shopping cart.

Or, I could do tricks in it.

Jay Leno's review of the Smart Car:

Milestone Illuminated

2011-01-22T18:27:00.000-06:00

Very soon, my eyes will have been in use for four decades. When I was seven, my sight swirled down the pipes in a hurry, and I was fitted with bifocals which I wore until junior high. Then I got "regular" glasses.

As of last year, I'm back in the bifocals…sans the classic, annoying lines bisecting my world, thankyouverymuch. My vision had gotten to the point where I couldn't look from far to near--to read, type, sew, knit, etc.--without feeling like my eyes were trying to adjust by screwing themselves deeper into my head.

Now, have I ever mentioned here how dark my house can be? I'm sure I have. It's a pet peeve of mine and I'm not likely to keep a peeve hidden under a bushel. No.

And surprisingly enough, bifocals don't increase light, no sir, no how. They just make the shadows sharper. My middle-aged eyes were griping at me to speak some light into the darkness, or else. So like a good, modern consumer, I bought a lamp.

The neck of the lamp has a pretty medallion to make aging appear graceful…

And it slides up and down for height adjustment…

…The mirror in the hall caught me taking pics of the lamp. And here's the whole shebang.

I've installed an incandescent bulb in the lamp for now because I like the warm light. One day, when I'm yet another year or two older and incandescents have gone the way of rotary phones, I'll probably cave into societal realities by buying a CFL bulb. CFLs emit an ugly light, though, and I don't like them. Really, I'd like to, but I don't. Maybe I can save up for an LED bulb instead. According to what I've heard about those, one bulb may last me a couple decades. By then, I'll probably be thinking more about replacements for knees than light bulbs.

In the meantime, I can knit, quilt, and read without a headache stalking me. Happy birthday to me.

First Week's Favorite Photo

2011-01-11T23:04:00.003-06:00

I can't promise (read: resolve) to show a favorite photo every week during 2011, but at least I've got the first one picked out.

I finished a sweater already this year! It's a replacement for the very first sweater I finished almost four years ago when I began to knit with needles. The pattern is the Kimono Jacket from the book First Knits. Here's a less twee shot of the new sweater:

And the one to be replaced, before it became a huge fuzz ball:

I'm hoping the second sweater won't pill horribly. It's knit with Cascade Eco Wool, and the first sweater is in something of lesser quality, so perhaps the maturing yarn snob in me has chosen something better this time around.

Our Christmas Stockings

2010-12-14T23:22:00.000-06:00

Have you ever desecrated a perfectly good cabled sweater? I have.

Twice.

That one was from Ireland. Yup. An Irish cabled sweater. And I felted it and its cousin from England, cutting off their sleeves afterwards.

But why?? Dear holy Patrick, saint of wet and windy weather…Why???

THOMY and I are starting a tradition this year. We are filling stockings for each other with all manner of goodies and trinkets. The snag in our plan was that we didn't have any stockings. Sooo, I found a lovely little pattern on Martha Stewart's website. Literally, it's little. I enlarged it…

Then I enlarged it again manually, taping the pieces to some cereal box cardboard I have handy. And I photocopied that mock up.

I had to sketch a few lines to reconnect the pieces, but I made sure the pattern fit the smaller set of sleeves.

Both stockings cut out and pinned together:

Both stockings done!

I know. Our stockings have cankles. But all stockings have cankles. So there. What is awesome is I was able to use the sleeve cuffs as the stocking cuffs, too. I'm also jazzed that I was able to use two scrap cable lengths as the hanging loops. I just zig-zagged the edges and sewed the loops on by hand. (Because, you know, it's a virtue to salvage every last bit from a perfectly good sweater one has just cut into.)

I didn't line the stockings, and I probably won't unless the aforementioned trinkets poke through, such as a diamond stick pin. They could do that.

Lastfruits 2010

2010-11-14T21:08:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, just a few days before the temperatures fell to freezing overnight, we cleaned out our garden. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, we planted our tomatoes late this year. Coupled with the scorching heat that roared from April to September, our late vines didn't produce much until after August. That meant I gathered a LOT of green tomatoes before we tore out the plants.

I set the tomatoes in brown paper bags and included a small bunch of green bananas. All of the large tomatoes are now ripe as well as several of the small ones. The photo above is a sampling of them.

The dark red ones with green tops are Black Seaman Tomatoes, a Russian heirloom variety. They grow well in containers but the vines do need some taming so they don't sprawl all over the ground.

The green tops never turn red but they're quite edible. They're yummy! Buy some seed. Plant them. They're dark and look almost rotten on the inside, but oh, no. Delicious.

Walters' Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-30T01:17:00.002-05:00

We did our part for agritourism this fall. Instead of going on a vacation this year, THOMY and I threw ourselves into the mercy of a corn maze and wandered among the exotic varieties of pumpkins just north of El Dorado, KS.

Yeah, that's right, El Dorado. City of Gold. Black gold, in this case, and Friday we could smell the black gold from the refinery all during the drive through town. But I digress. Here are a few of the best photos from our foray.

Hopped Up

2010-10-24T16:21:00.003-05:00

This weekend, I toured the Central Kansas Yarn Shop Hop: Nine yarn shops from Abilene to Winfield in three days...three hundred fifty-five miles, seven hours and three minutes of just drive time, according to Google Maps.

Of course, I had to take time to browse, shop, and eat. I brought my camera with me but never dragged it out of the bag, I was so gung-ho about my roap trip. So I've missed showing you all the ironwork for sale at an antique store, the decadent slice of chocolate mousse cake at Abilene's Kirby House (the wedge could've propped open a door), and the weird little scooter/pedal bike I saw weaving through traffic in Hutchinson.

The post is not without pictures, however. At each shop, a container of mini yarn balls--40 yards per ball--awaited shop hoppers. We were allowed to choose one at each shop, thus collecting enough to knit a Scrappy Lengthwise Scarf. In the last year or so, cowls have taken the place of scarves in my winter closet. So, with my yarn, I'll make a cowl in the scarf pattern's linen stitch. That's the plan, anyway, whenever I get around to it.

But now, a pretty little still life.

And another of my larger yarn haul.

Most of the shops also gave goody bags with truly goody stuff in them.

The purple box contains smaller compartments with lids to hold stitchmarkers, wee tiny scissors, used gum...etc.

At the shop in Winfield, I snagged a small, felted coin purse on sale and a test bottle of starch-substitute pressing aid.

And that was my weekend! I really wanted to find a video of someone riding one of those electric bike scooters as they were pedalling it, but all I could find was one like this. Yeah, it's a commercial, but see the pedals? How cool is that.

Spice it up

2010-09-19T12:40:00.000-05:00

Or down….because we downsized our spice jars this month.

You see, way back in the way back, our 1940s kitchen was fully furnished with a breakfast nook and shallow shelves built in above each bench seat. (I'm assuming the breakfast nook had bench seating because, really, nothing else would fit and because I've seen 1940s breakfast nooks intact.)

Our nook, alas, was emptied of table and seating sometime prior to our home ownership and was refitted with cabinetry. It's a wiser use of the space, I think, especially since the house already has a dining room right off the kitchen.

Anyway, the shelves on the facing walls remained untouched, and they are a perfect place for storing spices. Except, they are out in the open, and THOMY and I were kinda fed up with cramming spice jars of various sizes and makers on each shelf. We started buying spices we already had because we couldn't find them on the shelf. And then it just looked cluttered.

I know. It's a rough life. And I don't have photographic proof of how bad it was, so you'll just have to take my word that it sucked to be us when it came to spices.

But now it doesn't.

We bought the acrylic, bale jars at Target. Unfortunately, Target's website doesn't have these jars listed. In the store, they come in packs of three and are located in the same aisle as larger canister sets. When we found them, the canisters were half price; normally, they're $5 a set.

Instead of labeling each jar with a pretty font, like I'd wanted originally, I dug out our P-touch labelmaker for efficiency's sake. On most of the jars, I printed the spice name in the smallest typeface to make the label tape stretch. But a few large letters snuck out when I wasn't paying attention. I used them anyway.

Oh, and what are we doing with the excess spices that don't all fit into these tiny jars? We're storing them in the cabinet above the fridge, practicing a kind of salt shaker principle. Not all the salt in the canister goes into the salt shaker from the get-go.

It was a big deal

2010-08-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

We got our tomato plants in the ground late this year. So while the blossoms have been plentiful, the weather got too hot for them to fruit out, for the most part. Our cream sausage tomato plant has produced one (1) tomato…

…with blossom end rot. (sigh)

I salvaged most of the good stuff. With a circumference no bigger than a quarter and length not beyond my stubby index finger, that tomato yielded tiny slices. But they were a big deal. And sooo good.

When I have too much table cloth

2010-08-04T22:35:00.004-05:00

and not enough table…

(one end of table)

(the other end)

I get tied in knots.

Not bad for the $3 wad of linen jacquard my friend threw in when I bought so many hankies off her. I snapped it up without scrutiny. I'm so trusting.

Notice I didn't do a whole lot of tablescaping. (Yeah. None.) Around here, the beauty of this table is its barrenness. It is clean. No clutter. I even swept under the table.

So, anyway, I tied the excess fabric of one end around itself, then did the same on the other end. I tugged and fussed with each knot to make it into a round knob. Now the table top is a blank canvas. If it wasn't in the same house as our pair of curious and meddlesome cats, I could tuck flowers in the knots and go crazy with the china and glassware.

As it is, this simple white plane is as extravagant as a golf course in Tokyo. We could actually eat at the table now, if we wanted to.

The lacework's detail:

Linked to:

Debbiedoo's B & A Party
Make it Yours at My Backyard Eden
Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest

Another reason to love yarn

2010-07-31T23:22:00.001-05:00

I'm learning how to crochet. As in, learning the stitches by heart rather than being led step-by-step like I was with the Bucket Bag last summer.*

A week ago, I made this washrag of beauty.

It had all the basic stitches I needed to commit to memory: how to chain, single and double crochet, and slip stitch. There was even a little half-double crochet thrown in for a bit of whiplash. The pattern is called My Fave Dishcloth by Kathy North.

All that basic crochet swordplay was needed as a prerequisite for a second-level crochet class I signed up for at my local yarn shop. I took the class. I learned not only how to crochet in the round…

A coaster!

…but the pièce de résistance was a beloved Granny Square.

On just a mechanical level, I see how these things could be addicting. Granny squares are super easy and fast. However, I'm a child of the '70s, and my recollection of granny square blankets is ablaze with harvest gold and avocado green acrylic yarns. And a kind of whimpering orange. The colors make me itch, to say nothing of the petrochemical fiber itself. So, I have this mental block when it comes to a full-on addiction to granny squares. Maybe if I used something like Noro Kureyon or the Lion Brand look-alike, Amazing, then I could crochet piles of squares.

In the meantime, I began a crocheted shawl. Elise Shawl, by Evan Plevinski. I'm using a bamboo yarn called Happy, and that's how it makes me feel because it's lusciously soft.

Oh, yeah. And it's pink. Normally, not so much my color, but this skein seems to have more power than prissiness in it, so I've made an exception.

I'll post updates to the shawl's progress.

* The crocheted bucket bag from last year. The pattern is in a booklet entitled Enviro-Totes
by Leisure Arts.

I was pressing board challenged

2010-07-22T22:48:00.007-05:00

…because I don't have room for one in my sewing grotto. I used to have an ironing board, the scissor-legged kind, but I gave it up for more storage room. You see, I'm ill. I have towered stashes of fabric, yarn, and beads. Then I acquired a treadmill that needed a niche, so into a corner it went. This space greed is probably a sickness from which I'll never recover, though I might have a sporting chance if I had a pressing surface on which to flatten the aforementioned fabric and sew it into fabulous creations.

Last year, I rearranged my sewing area and planned to use my UFO cart as the base for a new pressing surface.

(My stepfather-in-law made this for us when we lived in our first house. The kitchen had next to no counter space, and this cabinet was oft dusted with flour or mashed potato flakes.)

I wanted an ironing board that could be removed and that came up to the proper height for me according to the ergonomic guru my quilt guild hosted. I needed about three inches more in elevation.

So, I measured the top of the cabinet and gathered my supplies.

3/4-inch plywood cut to size by the saw master at the big box store.
Scrap batting, enough to cover the board's surface in a double thickness. (I used a wool batting because it's what I had. If I'd had big enough pieces in cotton batting, I would have preferred that. Polyester would melt, of course, and that's a big no-no.)
Teflon fabric, enough to fold to the underside of the board on all sides.
At least four, small bun feet meant to be screwed in.*
At least four straight mounting plate kits.*
Staple gun with 1/4-inch staples
Electric drill with proper sized drill bit and Philips driver bit, or a really strong hand to work in the screws manually.

*I bought five because I thought I'd need more support in the middle of the board, but the 3/4" plywood is sturdy enough…as long as I don't set my entire fabric stash on top of it.

In keeping with all the tutorials I've read about upholstering a flat surface, I layered the teflon fabric (face down), the two thicknesses of wool batting, and the board on top. I wrapped the teflon fabric around the edges, working one edge and then it's opposite to stretch the fabric tight, and I stapled as I went.

Here's how I folded one corner.

Doesn't that look tidy? The board fits snug inside the lip around the cabinet. I could've stopped there, but it still needed more height. So on with the mounting plates and bun feet.

Voila!

I think one thing I'll add is some no-slip shelf liner cut to fit the bottom of the bun feet.

And, look! More storage space.

Linked up to

The DIY Showoff
Modern Craftswoman Monday at Tools Are for Women Too!
Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative
We're Organized Wednesday at Organize and Decorate Everything
Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Hanky Haul (Part 2 of What a Bargain!)

2010-07-18T01:33:00.004-05:00

At this very moment I'm watching a singer on tv who barely moves her mouth. Ironically, that's what I'm about to do in this post. Writing-wise.

I took lots of photos of hankies. Photos of hankies--at least my photos of them--are not impressive visually. And what did I do to them in post-production? Turned them into Polaroids. Even better.

But that meant I got to write each photo's caption in the large white margin of the "Polaroid" frame, just like when I was a kid. So, without further blabbing, here is the hanky haul in its entirety and a few of the hankies I especially like. (By the way, the What a Bargain part of this hanky pile is that the hankies were a dime each. I know!)

And as a bonus…

By the way, the free software that converts photos to Polaroid-esque throwbacks is Poladroid.

This post is linked up at

Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest
Nifty Thrift Tuesdays at Coastal Charm

A do-over

2010-07-13T21:52:00.005-05:00

I interrupt your anticipation for more pictures of my bargain linens motherlode to present a sweater that had been languishing in my cardigan drawer.

Three years ago, I reported the completion of this kimono sweater:

What I didn't release was the photo of its disappointing sleeves.

Bat wings. Bingo wings. Whatever you call them, I called them unwearable and proved it by not slipping an arm through either one of them from then until now because, now, they look like this:

I frogged (unraveled) the sleeves and picked up half the stitches I did before to reknit them.

Now I won't scoop up small mammals when I walk by.

Such as this one in the larger picture…

I know, the sweater looks HUGE. And it is, but not awkwardly so. Some of the width contributes to the drop-sleeve look. The thing I shake my head at now is the collar. So FESTIVE, huh? This is my first sweater, the one I started first, anyhow. I started and finished a second sweater before this one, but both sweaters were predominantly black. I happened to be in mourning at the time, and colors were a challenge for me for a long time. Knitting itself was more of a therapy than creative outlet, so I won't take responsibility for color selection; there's just no accounting for it.

In the privacy of my own home, however, I will wear my bright vestment sweater. At least it's not as ungainly as a Snuggie.

This is linked to

Just Something I Whipped up at The Girl Creative
Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

What a bargain! I think I will buy some. (Part 1)

2010-07-11T16:42:00.003-05:00

When the stepmother of a friend passed away, she left behind an impressive collection of vintage linens. They weren't her family's heirlooms; they were simply pieces she'd accumulated over the years from estate sales and the like. My friend has been entrusted with the task of sorting through the stash to sell it, so she asked those of us in her small quilting group if we would like first dibs on what she and her dad had found so far. (Yeah, so far. Apparently, my friend's stepmom squirreled away things everywhere, so they're not sure when they will find it all.)

I went to take a look at the assortment last weekend. All the linens are in a spare bedroom, in boxes and on tables and the floor and overrunning the bed. Dresser scarves, table cloths, dish towels, napkins, doilies, hankies (the reasons why I was there), and gobs of other embroidered, embellished, and otherwise spiffied workaday fabric finery were all over, though each and every one of them were arranged in an orderly fashion.

I took home two (2) grocery bags worth of stuff. All for $20. I'll show my hanky haul in a later post, but in this one I want to share what was in a box of handmade trims my friend threw in for thirty cents. There are a few mystery pieces, which I show at the end. If you know what they are, please leave me a comment giving me a heads up.

First, some long pieces of filet crochet.

I think some of these are meant for pillowcases. The top, thinner one actually rests better in a circle, so I'm guessing it was meant for a neckline. The two trims wrapped around tubes are tatted. The filet crochet piece between them, with the ribbon running through it, looks like it could be a sachet since it has a front and back and is stitched together around the bottom.

A close up of the tatting.

What does one do with filet crochet butterflies?

This isn't the mystery piece, but I was puzzled by it. It looks like it could be a bikini top, huh? I wonder if it more likely came from an era when lace adorned dress bodices. Or maybe it's the top of a nightie. Was there a bride somewhere down the corridor of history who didn't get this in her trousseau? (I'm talking out of my ear, of course. I have no inkling what kind of clothing this beautifies.)

Finally, the head-scratcher.

I arranged these four things in a cross just to take the picture. I don't know how they're actually put together. Each one appears to have an upper tab, whether it be pink, blue, or white. One of my friends suggested they are scallops in a larger and never completed piece. She also wondered if they're dresses for a kind of filet crochet Sunbonnet Sue. It all sounds good to me because I am clueless. What do you think? If you don't know, make something up and jot it down in the comments anyway.

I've posted this to

The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Debbiedoo's Garage Salen

Happy Independence Day and lessons learned from a bulbous-bottomed bag

2010-07-04T04:55:00.005-05:00

A bag I began knitting in February, my Lucy Bag, is done. The bag isn't difficult, but I was disappointed in my little experiment and didn't want to face my deformed creation. A Lucy bag is supposed to look like one of these. Instead, I ended up with this:

I knitted a stranded colorwork basket weave in the middle. I had not tried colowork like that before so I didn't know that I would knit it more tightly, apparently, than the rest of my plain stockinette gauge. As a result, the design shrank into a green girdle when I felted the bag. Closer look?

It looks like a gourd, no? Well, I was bummed, though not surprised that my full-speed-ahead approach didn't produce something staggeringly beautiful. I sent it to time out for many a moon, but assured it that I wasn't going to let it languish; I bought lining fabric, something slippery since I promised I would use the bag for projects and I don't want the yarn of future shawls and scarves to stick in the bag's gullet.

So, the lessons learned:

Use larger needles when switching to colorwork from stockinette, and
Trim fingernails before working with slippery fabric. Snag snag snag.

By the way, the button? A ceramic find at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Its colors match much better in person than in photography.

I've linked this post to:

Occasus

2010-06-21T10:18:00.000-05:00

Last year, with a few other novice knitwear designers, I submitted a shawl pattern in a book proposal. The book was picked up for publication, but my shawl was not destined to be a part of it.

So, I have finally gotten my act together to publish it myself.

"Publish" is such a weighty word, isn't it? I'm offering it myself, really. For sale. The price and BUY NOW button are at the end of this post. In the interrim, the details...

Occasus Shawl

Approx. size after blocking: 57" x 57"
Yarn: Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Hand-dye Effect (fingering weight), less than 1836 yards/four skeins
Needle size: US 5/3.75 mm

Occasus is Latin for “setting of the sun.” It is the source of the English word occasion. This square shawl marks the moments when the sun sinks to reveal the night sky, and it offers the opportunity to make the most ordinary event in life into an occasion. (I've already worn the shawl to an art reception. I felt so very artsy schmartsy, you know.)

The shawl is worked from the center out. This is the field of stars.

The shawl’s size can be increased or decreased in the pattern section before the edging, the field of sunsets section.

Each edging piece (the flared “sun rays” border) is worked separately and grafted onto the shawl with the kitchener stitch. Tips are included to recalculate the edging cast on stitches if the shawl size has been altered.

This shawl was a challenge to design. It involved math. And while I love the results and tried to apply the transition of sunset to starry night to a novelty knits book, I agree that this project is a little too innocuous for the book's playfully macabre theme. Live and learn, right? I got a cool shawl out of the effort. If you'd like the pattern, too, the price and BUY NOW button are below.

Occasus Shawl

$6.00 US

Knitting swap loot and a view from the soapbox

2010-06-10T23:54:00.001-05:00

Recently I participated in a knitting swap based on the upcoming Eclipse movie. It's theme? Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Since I know how the story ends, I sided with the romantic winner, the very Mr. Cullen. This is what my swap partner sent me.

My partner is Martha of Green Mountain Knitting Bags fame. I've yearned for one of her bags nigh on...ever since I've seen them many moons ago. Now I have one. In blue. And I now have blue Ella Rae Lace Merino. And blue curly wool to make more thrummed mitts whenever I feel like it. Sense a favorite color theme? The necklace in the photo, by Jenifer Smith, is supposed to be a choker made to look like a bite mark. Alas, my neck's girth makes this subtle bit ot bling into a better bracelet, so that's how I've been wearing it.

In exchange, I sent Martha a shawl in wolfish colors, since she is on Jacob's side.

It's the Multnomah Shawl pattern, and the yarn is off a cone--one of two cones--from Spun Fibers Inc. Rocky Road is the yarn name, and London Town is the colorway. I have over 15,000 yards of this yarn. Yeah.

See? Lots and lots of it to be had.

The shawl pin came from The Shawl Pin Store, thank you very much Google. The mother of pearl circle, cut off-center, is reminiscent to me of an eclipse. So, cute, huh? See what I did there?

I also did these stitch markers to play on the theme.

You might not believe it from seeing these pictures, but I'm not hyperventilating to see the Eclipse movie. I'm fond of the "saga" and all, but I can definately wait until the fervor dies down to see the flick. I'm thinking that part of the reason for my indifference, after noticing all the Twilight merchandising that's been peddled in the last couple years, is based on burnout. I mean, people...werewolf pack tattoo PACKING TAPE? What? Did Bella use this stuff when she was moving out of Charlie's house?

I'll nip this rant in the bud right here. Suffice it to say, I like the story but can do without the peripheral drama the movie has stirred up. I will add, however, that I love the handmade stuff based on the books. I'm DIY biased, of course. Buying it by hand may be faster, but making it by hand is usually more entertaining...and proof via hard work that one is sincerely nuts about something.

Linked up to:
-- Just Something I Whipped Up Mondays

What I did during my summer cold

2010-06-03T16:58:00.002-05:00

Professionally, My dad was an auto mechanic. As a hobby, he tinkered. He liked to weld, re-engineer, and generally make do with what he had on hand to solve a problem. (For example, in his later years, he bent leftover metal siding to make a remote control holder which he attached with hose clamps to his torchiere lamp.) What he had on hand was a lot of doo-dads, widgets, and hoozywhatsits, all mostly metal. Some in metric sizes. All this assortment of little things needed organization, and I'm not talking baby food jars screwed to a board. Oh no, Dad's accumulation of bolts, washers, and nails far surpassed that meager means. With access to empty cans of chemicals needed to keep cars running, he fashioned himself an tinkerer's chest of drawers.

We inherited the entirety of his collection. We didn't really sort through everything before moving it out of his garage and into ours because we needed to sell his house before it aged another fifty years. But I think his desire to make his collection useful to him rubbed off on me recently. I sorted my button stash.

Uh, yeah, that's right. I sorted the button stash. Two large jars and three small ones. I think lots of times jars of mixed buttons are kept around as home dec curiosities, but I have dipped into my stash often enough to feel how much time I have wasted looking for just the right color...or something remotely close enough. So, when I came down with a cold last week, I finally spilled the buttons into an old stew pot and set to work sorting them. It doesn't take much physical effort or mental acuity. Just time.

And because I didn't want to re-use the huge jars--what would be the point of sorting the buttons just to throw them all together again--I made use of a collection I inherited from my mom: smaller wire-bail canning jars.

The red buttons in a half-pint jar.

The blue buttons in a green glass jar.

The stash.

Useless Generalized Statistics:
I have buttons made of bone and mother of pearl, early forms of plastic, porcelain, glass and wood. I have buttons on cards from defunk manufacturers and with price stickers from stores long since closed. I have tiny buttons one would expect to see on a bride's gown and giant buttons no self-respecting button hole would encompass. Lots of black buttons, even more white/cream buttons that I sub-divided into ones with two holes or four. The colors with the least amount of buttons are orange and purple.

So now I have a working stash of buttons. Me, the one who doesn't get along with button holes (see previous post). But as you can see in that previous post, I don't need no stinking buttonholes to use the buttons I have.

This post is linked to:

Hand Wash Cold, Line Dry

2010-05-29T21:58:00.003-05:00

As a wearer of hand knitted socks--some wool, some wool blends--I have been hand washing these precious pairs to save them from the ravages of the washer and dryer. (Read: To save them from being felted.) The thing is, I haven't had a place to keep the socks separate from the rest of the laundry except for on a shelf next to the bed. Imagine the beauty of hand-knit, dirty socks piling up in plain sight. Truly a travesty for a modern, renaissance homemaker such as myself.

I simply had to find a solution.

Or (ahem) I had to create a solution when I ran across the tutorial for a clothespin bag at My Lucky Chicken. I modified the instructions a bit to make a bag befitting several pairs of bulky socks, and I added an embroidered patch on the front. I've detailed my modifications below, but for now, for the sake of those visiting from Sew & Tell Friday, here's the finished product:

On the hanger, it's about 12" x 19". Rather than beginning with a fat quarter, as the instructions suggest, I had yardage to work with. So I cut off 13" from selvage to selvage and then sliced off the selvage edges themselves.

I hemmed the short edges and added the pink lace trim. About this time, my sewing machine broke. Or, rather, I helped it along when I got tired of the needle not aligning itself correctly, ka-chunking itself through the fabric, Hoping the problem could be solved by something simple, I tried to clean out all the fuzz from under the throat plate and from around the bobbin housing. Somehow, however, I think I didn't replace all the parts correctly, and now I get a loopy mess under the fabric when I try to sew, and everything binds up. Also, the needle still hits the edge of its opening in the throat plate--any needle does this; it drives me crazy.

I wasn't thwarted for long, thankfully. I pulled out my Featherweight and finished the bag. I had planned to zigzag the embroidered applique onto the bag, but straight stitching became the order of the day.

First I folded in the edges of the patch and then folded the corners into points.

I top stitched around the patch and then folded the bag into its parts, right sides together, so I could sew the long edges closed. I folded the top down about 7" and then folded the bottom up to meet the top edge, but I don't have a precise measurement for that.

I sewed the long edges and flipped it inside out. The clothespin bag at My Lucky Chicken has button holes and buttons as its closure for hanging from a line or hanger. My featherweight isn't button hole friendly. Quite frankly, neither am I. So I added large snaps and sewed buttons to the front as decorations.

Again, I don't have a measurement for how far I folded this flap; I just eyeballed it. I marked the placement of the snap components by slipping a folded sheet of dressmaker's carbon paper underneath the flap. As I marked the top of the flap, corresponding marks were made underneath, so that all the places for buttons and snaps were marked at the same time.

Marks in pencil for the buttons.

Blue carbon paper marks for the snap components. (This is a sideways view. The top of the flap is on the right in the photo. The fold runs down the middle.)

And, here's the bag again, all done. The bedside shelf is now safe from stinky, handmade socks. Thank you, My Lucky Chicken!

I've Linked to:

No pictures in this one

2010-05-24T06:19:00.002-05:00

Folks, if I've learned anything from touring the blogs in the Quilt Festival, it is that I'm out of touch with the quilting world. It has rocketed its merry way along one orbit while I've been putzing with yarn elsewhere. The last all-out quilt I worked on was a Sunbonnet Sue variation that featured vintage Sue blocks and 1930s repro fabrics I'd had in my stash for an age.

At that time, I was intimately familiar with the terms Fat Quarter and Charm Pack. I'd just heard of Jelly Rolls but was not interested in buying them when I could whip out the equivalent number of fabric strips from my overgrown stash.

But Layer Cakes, Turnovers, and Honey Buns? They sound like reasons one would develop a fat quarter. I had to google them to find this explanation. Schnibbles has evidently become a commercial label for a kind of wall quilt that can be made from two charm packs.

And the fashion of quilting has changed while I've been on hiatus. Many modern quilts feature more unprinted fabrics and almost primitive piecing designs. The favored fabric prints du jour seem to be large, simple graphics reminiscent of the late 1950s to early 1960s. I could be off by a decade--1960s to 70s--but I try to forget the patterns of the 70s. It was traumatic enough wearing those prints as a child, thanks so much. (Nowadays, I'm not sure I could bring myself to lay out money to take them home.)

I find I continue to gravitate to scrap quilts, and piecing or applique designs that let the eye move along the surface when it's got nothing better to do. (My standard for an interesting quilt is still one that could keep a mind busy while the body is sick in bed and the tv is out in the livingroom.) These two joys are my goals when I make a quilt. They're why I began quilting almost 21 years ago and why I am thinking of starting it up again. I'm already brewing an idea for a bed quilt, and it involves using applique pieces my grandma cut out decades ago…in 1950s/60s prints, no less. At least they're not from the 70s.

Bloggers Quilt Festival

2010-05-22T01:22:00.001-05:00

Behold, my first entry into the Bloggers Quilt Festival, a wee online quilt show organized by Amy of Amy's Creative Side. Thank you for the opportunity, Amy.

Lumberjack Butterflies II

Approx. 30" x 30"

finished June 2001

The lighting isn't so great in the photo because I took the picture where the quilt hangs, in my entryway. I was on a kick awhile back of making miniatures of bed sized quilts I'd designed…but had not completed because they are, well, bed sized. I hand quilt, as you can see in the photo below. Hand quilting a miniature is much quicker than tackling its full-sized counterpart.

Each butterfly sports a plaid fabric from my stash…or, more likely, from my scrap pile. I think every doodle pad flower on the quilt has a plaid, as well. These are manly butterflies, you see. Don't mess with 'em cuz they can take you out.

What I Learned in This Quilt

I think this is the first time I used a pieced background for applique.
I designed the butterfly pattern based on an illustration in a butterfly book I happened to have. In the bed-sized version, the butterflies were taken from someone else's quilt pattern in a magazine. So, designing my own butterflies makes the quilt feel more like it is mine.
I gave myself permission to use doodles in a quilt.
I'm pretty sure I used my Electric Quilt software to draw the curves in the sashing quilting and the quilted bunting along the outside borders.

Thank you! Please enjoy perusing the other blogs on the Quilt Festival list. Just click on the logo at the beginning of the post to find them.

Babies!

2010-05-16T15:34:00.000-05:00

Of my friends on Facebook, four have either just welcomed or are expecting the arrival of their latest family members. In my own family, two of my nieces will have their first babies this year.

To that end, I have learned to knit a few baby sweaters. My first one down was a Baby Surprise Jacket.

The "surprise" is in the constructions because the sweater is knit in one piece, and the only seams needed are along the top of the sleeves. The knitting looks like an origami nightmare while in progress, but then it magically becomes this little garment for a little body.

I ran across the buttons in my button stash (which overflows two quart jars, thank you very much). They are plastic, but vintage. On a card of originally ten buttons, the price sticker read $0.17. How far back is that price? 1960s? '70s?

My first BSJ doesn't have a specified recipient. I'm guessing it'll fit a 12 month old, though, so maybe when one of my niece's babies is older, he or she will get this one.

In the meantime, I knit another BSJ to fit a smaller baby. In yellow, as requested. But I added just a touch of fire to the sunshine.

I learned how to add the hood, and I would have added an i-cord tie and trim around the hood but I ran out of gas on this project. Mostly because I was knitting another yellow baby sweater that gave me fits. (Um, pun unintended and kinda stupid anyway.)

This sweater is knit from the hood down, and the yoke pattern is what hung me up. A few things were implied rather than specified on the pattern. One of them had to do with making a new stitch. For those of you indoctrinated in knitting, you have probably been taught, like I was, that when you make a new stitch by picking up the horizontal bar between two stitches and knitting it, you're supposed to knit into the back of it to twist the stitch and prevent a hole. This is second nature to me now. Well, in this pattern, a hole is supposed to be part of the design. A series of holes, actually, a pretty little line of them every few rows. I didn't catch onto this until well into the yoke. And I was not about to rip back to do the whole yoke over, so I just improvised. Two pattern repeats without holes, two repeats with holes, the last two repeats without. So, see, I meant to do that.

Not the best close up of what I'm talking about, but some of it is there.

So, now I'm baby-sweatered out. Done for now. They're fun, they're quick, but y'all are going to have to fend for your own baby clothes, you who are reproducing too quickly for me to keep up. ;)

Not obsessed enough

2010-04-17T00:16:00.005-05:00

To some, even to me, this truth about myself might be hard to believe. I can sit on my tuchus for hours in front of a computer screen, behind a pair of knitting needles or a book. Sleeping. (Sleeping takes dedication, ladies and gentlemen. I have to woo it with thunderstorms and sundry white noise recordings before it gives me the time of day. Early morning time of day, that is, when the sun is still high over Saudi Arabia and the edge of its light is barely farther away from Kansas than the width of South America.)

Another truth about me, however, makes my most recent failure plausible. I'm forgetful. I forgot, on some day early in March, to snap a photo for my Project 365 obsession. I forgot to do it the next day, too. Then, I think, I remembered. I forget what I took a picture of now, and I forgot to take another one the next day. I forgot again for, like, a week.

I was knitting this instead:

A drop-stitch scarf for a friend who now gets to use the "C" card, as she puts it, for when she wants to be ornery and a lady of leisure and not do something she can perfectly well get off her duff to do. (That's her plan, folks, so please don't write me letters.)

I've said all this to say I probably won't have any other blog posts dedicated to a week's worth of photos. Instead, they'll be solitary, random shots like this one of our Flowering Quince bush:

I had to use a tripod to get a steady shot of that sucker. And then I forgot I had on the super-saturation color mode. Or whatever that mode is called. I forget now.

Project 365, Week 9

2010-03-07T13:50:00.001-06:00

Never since 1888, when weather records began in south central Kansas, have we gone longer than ninety days without hitting 60-degrees F. We went 94 days this winter. It was cold--at freezing and below--for a long time this go around. Thursday broke the cold spell. Now that I can hear mourning doves in the back yard, now that I saw a little brown moth driving drunk above the dead grass, now that it's time to clear off the seed starter table in the basement, I should be more than ready for spring.

I'm not.

Cold weather has infested my brain, numbed it for too long, and it is telling me I've been pulled through a knot hole into this burgeoning season. That isn't a complaint against spring. I love spring; it's my second favorite season after fall. My hopes for it have just hibernated longer than usual this year, and now I'm groggy. I get clumsy and surprised easily when I'm groggy.

Now you know.

March 1

Tea with Lemon

March 2

Great American Aran Afghan (GAAA), block 1
I'm knitting 12 cable-intensive blocks from the The Great American Aran Afghan book this year. I hope. This block, designed by Judy Levy, was supposed to be January's block, and finished it early last week. I haven't begun February or March's yet.

March 3

March 4

Lace

March 5

Basketweave
I'm trying colorwork in my knitting for the first time. The Lucy Bag is a plain, felted bag, but I'm adding this swath of basketweave to mine. The glory of this scheme is that any mistake I make in the colorwork will be felted into oblivion.

March 6

Special Breakfast
Saturday is bacon and eggs day.

March 7

Tree Man

Project 365, Week 8

2010-02-28T09:17:00.001-06:00

February 21

February 22

First Birthday
Harry turned one this week. When we weighed him, he was over eleven pounds; BIG boy.

February 23

February 24

To cold to get up
At this angle, the geese look like they're huddled close. They're actually five or six inches apart on the ice. This photo was chosen for one of verb [ict]'s daily snaps.

February 25

February 26

Frosty Pods

February 27

Rising Moon
Backlit by the moon, the trees were also lit from the front by the camera's flash. It was unintentional, but I like the effect.

February 28

Ten Stitch Blanket, pattern by Frankie Brown, is soooo easy. I held two chunky yarns together, knitting them with huge US 15 needles. It is for my husband's stepdad who said he wanted a heavy blanket.

I started and finished this during the 2010 Winter Olympics as part of the Ravelympics fun at Ravlery.com.

Project 365, Week 7

2010-02-21T12:48:00.000-06:00

February 15

House Frog
This three-legged, black-dotted, blue frog showed up as trash in our yard several years ago. Up until three years ago it lived on an outside window sill next to the driveway because I just didn't want to throw it away. Unclaimed, it now resides in a glass dish in the house. The books are classics I inherited from my mother. Her dog Boots tore into a few of them.

February 16

What Now
Because I'm equal opportunity, here's a photo of the other cat, Rosie, to balance out the photo of Harry last week. This was almost the last one of several I took. She was a bit exasperated with her live-in paparazza.

February 17

Ash Wednesday

February 18

Shawl Pin

February 19

To Go
This week we have a lamp from Il Vicino restaurant.

February 20

Giant Slalom-ghan Progress
This is a blanket I'm knitting for my husband's stepdad. I'm using the Olympics' Closing Ceremonies as my deadline, and my inspiration for doing so has been the Ravelry.com Winter Ravelympics. The pattern is the very simple Ten Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown.

Project 365, Week 6

2010-02-14T21:54:00.001-06:00

I have unraveled the red sweater I mentioned last week. Not only was the sleeve still too big when I re-knit it, but the body could have accommodated three rings and a few high fliers. The gauge swatch LIED to me. Most unforgivable.

So, I took this opportunity to enter the sweater's grand frogging* into the Aerial Unwind event in Ravelry.com's Winter 2010 Ravelympics. As my reward for finishing, the Ravelry Olympic Committee bestowed me with this badge:

Which now makes me a

*"Frogging" is another term for unraveling in knitting or taking apart a seam in sewing. You rip it, rip it, rippit, rippit, ribbit...

And now back to our weekly photos...

February 8

Fudgy Brownie
A Simple & Delicious magazine recipe. The light layer is a peanut butter pudding frosting.

February 9

Snow Peels

February 10

Rockwell Library Courtyard
Chosen for Verb [ICT]'s daily snap.

February 11

Cafe Flower
Another cafe lampshade shot. This time, Panera.

February 12

Reflection in a Denny's
More eatery lamps.

February 13

A song sung during my church's "Fat Saturday" service. The balloons are table decor for the Cajun meal we shared. This is easy irony, I know, but a girl's gotta get her daily 365 photo from somewhere.

February 14

Gratuitous Cuteness
A little something precious for Valentine's Day. I hope yours was a lovely one.

Project 365, Week 5...et al

2010-02-07T08:30:00.000-06:00

So, I've been posting mostly pictures and precious few words on this here blog. Probably the world could do with fewer words, but I'm not here right now to have that debate. Right now, I would like to share with you why I have been letting photo entries express my thousands of words.

I've been working on a sweater.

It's for me. The first sleeve is too long, even at 14" already. So, I'm ripping back to take another run at it, decreasing more rapidly next time. I'm thinking that for each photo I've posted lately, it's worth a thousand stitches.

And now on to this weeks' batch of 365 shots. (By the way, thanks to all who have been encouraging my efforts in person and online.)

February 1

The snow melting off my neighbor's awning reminded me of Mr. Snuffleupagus's eyelashes.

February 2

February 3

Hello
Our neighbors' Labrador

February 4

Sign of Life
Detail of one of our flowering quince bushes. This cluster is the largest one I found and is probably smaller than a penny...no larger than a nickel, anyway.

February 5

CHILL
The store window of my favorite yarn shop.

February 6

February 7

Alpaca Sea Sponges
This set of fingerless gloves is another project I started after the first of the year. The thumb gusset photo from week one was the first glove in progress. When they were done, the open fingers reminded me of...well, you read the caption title. See for yourself.

Project 365, Week 4

2010-01-31T11:35:00.000-06:00

January 24

Leftover Chili

January 25

Northern Light

January 26

Minced Words

January 27

Sunset at New Market Square

January 28

Diner Tea

January 29

snow + knot hole = snot hole
(Sorry. The runny-nose-inspired title doesn't quite match the photo's subject, just my attitude at the time.)

January 30

Scarves in the Snow
(Since I began knitting, especially knitting lace, I've seen lace patterns in odd places. Such as my driveway.)

January 31

The Firkin Bull
(Mirror mirror on the wall... The Firkin and Bull is a local pub-like establishment.)

Project 365, Week 3

2010-01-24T12:08:00.000-06:00

January 17

I inherited handmade, vintage linens from my mother and grandma. This is a detail from a table scarf.

January 18

Mead's Corner is a great local coffee house. Cinnamon adds a zip to their hot chocolate, like static electricity, before the chocolate takes over and does its job. The picture is one of the lampshades there.

January 19

Sunflowers and Self Portrait. I'm the one behind the camera. By the way, this is my quilt content for the week (month...year...in recent memory); the wall quilt was foundation paper pieced as well as hand-pieced and hand-quilted for a guild challenge. Almost ten years ago, when I had artsy-schmartsy quilty ambition.

January 20

The leaves in the birdbath finally thawed out.

January 21

January 22

January 23

Project 365, Week 2

2010-01-17T10:03:00.000-06:00

January 11

Ubiquitous Bubble Shot

January 12

Hoarfrost on a spider's thread

January 13

Seams Like Tin

January 14

Wear Pattern*

*This is one of the Fuzzy Feet slippers I made at the end of 2007.

January 15

Counter Seating

January 16

It's Alive!

Vine Lace Cowl

2010-01-14T08:44:00.001-06:00

I had decided to do no Christmas knitting. None. I didn't want the anxiety (Will so-and-so like this?) or the pressure to finish by a deadline during such a busy time of year.

And still I knit this cowl as a Christmas present; I just cast on for it during New Year's Eve.

I knew the reipient would like it because she requested it and okayed the yarn, and because she saw the lacey cowl I'd made for myself by re-engineering a lace scarf pattern.

Proof she likes it:

For her cowl, I chose the Vine Lace pattern in Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. It's a simple, easily-memorized, four-row repeat. I rewrote it for circular knitting, and here, I'm sharing it with you.

Yarn Used: 1 skein of Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Hand-dye Effect, color 06552 Blues. I used only 262 yards of it.

Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm circulars, 24" long

Other Tools: Stitch Marker, darning needle

Cowl measurements after blocking: 31.5" circumference X 12.75" long

Gauge: 1 column of the lace pattern = 1.75"

Cast on 144 stitches.
Join the ends, making sure not to twist the stitches. Place marker between first and last stitches.

Knit one round
Purl one round.

Vine Lace pattern repeat:
Round 1: Knit
Round 2: *K1, yo, k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, you; repeat from * to end.
Round 3: Knit
Round 4: *Yo, k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, yo, k1; repeat from * to end.

Work all four rounds for a total of 20 repeats.

Knit one round
Purl one round.
Knit one round.

Bind off loosely. Weave in loose ends.

Blocking measurements I used: 16.5" wide X 13.5" long. The pattern scallops naturally, so kept them.

More details about the cowl I knit can be found on my Ravelry project page.

Enjoy!

Project 365, Week 1

2010-01-10T15:32:00.001-06:00

Project 365 is a Flickr group dedicated to those who intend to photograph their lives every day in a year. I joined the group on January 2, and I joined in hopes that I will familiarize myself better with my digital point-and-shoot as well as my dSLR cameras.

Below are my first days' efforts.

January 2

Chenille Yarn

January 3

Hazelnut Crescents

January 4

Patio Dining

January 5

January 6

Some Assembly Required

January 7

Anatomy of A Thumb Gussett

January 8

Creepy Cute

January 9

Epiphany

January 10

Fragrance Water

Sprigs

2010-01-05T08:50:00.000-06:00

The last blanket of 2009 was Sprigs.

And now it is a free, frankenblanket pattern for you for the new year. Frankenblanket, because I patched together two existing stitch patterns; I give credit where it's due at the end of the pattern. Also, thank you to my friend Initsox2 for the Mary Shelley allusion.

PDF link to Sprigs.

The blanket is for friends of my dad who helped us sort through his estate. I originally dubbed it Mud Lace Afghan for its color; I was trying to masculinize (a real word?) the lace and ruffles. But maybe it just looks like I'd dragged it through a puddle.

No matter what it looks like, this blanket is heavy, squishy, and warm. Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick 'n Quick, baby!

From The Year of the Blanket...

2009-12-31T03:18:00.001-06:00

In 2009, I knitted six blankets (well, the Lizard Ridge was mostly done, I just finished it this year). I also knitted as many pairs of socks, but they didn't take nearly as much yarn as the blankets.

New techniques I tried this year:

Tunisian Crochet on a big scale (a big, fat failure)
thrummed mittens (a big, fluffy success)
knitting cables without a cable needle (link is to a video)
kntting strung beads
CROCHET
blocking lace
(my most awesome and scary accomplishment) writing a pattern for my Off Road Socks as well as a square shawl still being tested. I never in a million years thought I'd DESIGN knitwear.

After doing the math, I figure I burned through 15,791.6 yards of yarn in 2009. Some of this yardage did not come from stash I had on hand at the beginning of the year. So, as far as living up to my 2009 Yarn Consumption Plan (I can buy one yard of yarn for every two yards I use from stash), I was a failure. I kept to the plan for several months...until sometime in the summer, I think, but then I began to BUY. So, yay for me that I lasted as long as I did.

...to The Year of the Sweater

According to the patterns I have waiting in my Ravelry queue, it looks like 2010 will be the Year of the Sweater. I've got a lot of sock patterns in the queue, too. THOMY may even get something this time around the sun.

I don't have noble pledges to knit only from stash in 2010, but I do plan to keep an account of what I buy and use. I've got a ledger book for that purpose. I'm in the process of recording ALL the yarn in my stash, whether or not it's labeled, so I can have a full idea what there is to work with. The yardage count is staggering. In one lace weight yarn alone, I have almost 23-thousand yards. Yep, I sure do.

I don't have resolutions for any other area of my life, either. Not that I'm aimless concerning the coming year; I have a few goals, just not the kind I want to blog about yet. Maybe after the fact.

So to you and yours, please have a safe, happy, and productive new year.

The Christmas Card Recipe

2009-12-28T01:10:00.000-06:00

I sent out a dozen Christmas cards this year--a dozen more than I'd sent in probably the last ten years. I also resumed my practice of including a favorite recipe in each card. This year the recipe is for Cranberry Upside Down Muffins.

That's right. CRANBERRIES. Surprising, no?

Cranberry Upside-Down Muffins

1 C cranberries, stems removed
½ C butter, melted
½ C firmly packed lt. brown sugar
2 C all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 T sugar
½ tsp. salt
¼ C raisins or craisins
1 egg
1 C milk

Cut cranberries into halves; divide evenly into 12 greased, 3-in muffin pans. Spoon about 1 tsp. of the butter into each. Sprinkle evenly with brown sugar.

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, salt, & raisins or craisins. In a smaller bowl, beat egg; mix in milk and remaining melted butter. Add liquid mixture to flour mixture, stirring until dry ingred. are just moistened. Spoon butter over cranberries in pan, dividing evenly.

Bake at 400-F until golden brown, about 30 min. Let muffins stand in pan on wire rack for a few min. until bubbling stops. Turn muffins out carefully and serve upside-down.

Cranberry Candy

2009-12-23T23:08:00.001-06:00

I like to experiment on others. With food, ok? Around Christmas, I make candy I've not tried before and give it out to family, friends, and strangers like I knew what it was I was doing. This year I found a recipe called Coated Raisins. It's pretty straightforward--butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar (enough to make an elephant diabetic), cream cheese (food of the divine), and raisins.

Ugh. Really? Raisins?

Why use something so bland as...dried up, wingless fly carcasses? Raisins are for those too timid to use CRANBERRIES.

Not I. And it turns out that the tartness of the cranberries balances out the super sweet coating. The original recipe claims that it makes 4 dozen candies, and it does if you doll out heaping teaspoonfuls onto the waxed paper. I think that makes the candies too big, with too much sweetness in one serving. So I opted to use a 1.25-inch spring-operated cookie scoop. Doing that yields 100 candies. Just the right size.

Cranberry Candy

2 cups dried cranberries/craisins
8 ounces cream cheese
1/4 C butter
6 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1. Place craisins in a steamer basket or strainer. Place over boiling water, but not touching it.
2. Steam, covered for 5 minutes.
3. Combine cream cheese and butter in heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir over low heat until butter is melted, cheese is soft, and mixture is well combined.
4. Transfer to large bowl of mixer.
5. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, until frosting is thick and creamy but not dry.
6. Add vanilla. Stir in craisins gently.
7. Drop by small scoopfuls from a 1 1/4-inch diameter cookie scoop onto waxed paper. (Or scoop small amounts with a teaspoon.) Let dry uncovered, for four hours or overnight in a refrigerator.

From gathering the indredients to sliding the cookie sheets of candies into the fridge, I spent an hour making the candy.

Thanks, everyone, who asked for the recipe and made this year's experiment worthwhile. Merry Christmas!

0.1 oz more chocolatey-er

2009-12-18T08:18:00.000-06:00

THOMY's birthday was this week, so I made him a Chocolate Espresso Tart as his birthday cake.

I took the recipe from my new Family Baking Book by America's Test Kitchen. I'm a fan of ATK's shows on public television and I consider their word on foodstuffs as nearly gospel. According to one of their taste tests, the best bittersweet chocolate to use in a recipe like the tart is 60% cacao by Ghirardelli. The recipe calls for a 12 oz. bar, but we could find only the 5.25 oz bags of chocolate squares. Two+ bags later, the closest I could come to the recommended weight is 12.1. So I gave THOMY .1 to grow on.

I would like to register a complaint, though. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything, but the tart crust recipe didn't work for me. I followed it to the letter, but the dough would not solidify, gathering around the blades of the food processor, UNTIL I dribbled more cream into it than what was called for. I don't know how much I added, but I had to. Otherwise I was going to have a bowl of pretty pastry meal.

Even so, the tart seemed to please the birthday boy. And that's the important thing, right? I'm grateful he's been around for another year.

The first Christmas party of 2009

2009-12-06T17:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we homebodies gathered ourselves together and traveled to Kansas City to visit family. I can't remember if this is the third or fourth year my husband's brother and sister-in-law have hosted a Christmas Open House, but this one was just as fun as in years past.

Their concept of a Christmas get-together focuses mostly on the together part. Instead of exchanging gifts, we sit at their dining room table and swap ideas on such weighty issues as whether someone's gingerbread house should have pretzel sticks or M&Ms for roofing material. How do you tie a knot that will stay in elastic cord? Sculpey beads the size of acorns have to go into the toaster oven by themselves so the smaller beads won't char into dust.

It's kinda like how I remember girl scout day camp, but without the risk of bee stings and heat rash. And not every activity is mandatory. Both THOMY and I made Sculpey clay beads, though we didn't string them onto anything.

Instead, I fashioned two button bracelets.

I did this mostly for the love of the buttons rather than to be fashionable because, as you who know me personally are aware, I don't put on the ritz much, even button ritz. Anyway, I basically did the same things as in this button bracelet tutorial. I gave myself more elastic cord, however, to allow for all the millimeters taken up by weaving it in and out of the buttons. And I used a crimp bead to secure the knot at the end.

THOMY was the only one between us two who made a gingerbread (graham cracker) house. He made a house of God.

He also read The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry when everyone was tired of their own creativity.

I did have a small haul to take home--all my prizes from Family Bingo. In Family Bingo, the cards are rows and columns of family members' faces. Interesting facts (and sometimes embarrassing ones) are gathered about each member pictured. The caller reads the facts aloud, one by one, and everyone guesses aloud who that fact resembles. Cover the faces correctly guessed until there is a bingo. My favorite prize in my pile is the pot holder either my niece or nephew wove on their loom. (They couldn't ever agree who made it.)

All in all, a very fun day. This is the first year in two or three that I'm glad it's now Christmas time.

Let the Christmas baking commence

2009-12-04T02:19:00.000-06:00

THOMY and I don't have very many Christmas traditions anymore. Some years we hoist up the big tree, some years the small tree, once we draped garland in the living room and hung the ornaments from that. For a few random years, we didn't decorate at all. Not a single strand of tinsel.

Early in my marriage, I sent out Christmas cards. I used my wedding invitation list as my address list--big mistake--and it was such a behemoth that I broke it up into two groups: A-M would get cards on even-numbered years, N-Z who would get them on odd years. And then, somehow, and shockingly, they all ended up in the No Way I'm Cramping My Hand This Year list. Whenever I sent out cards, though, I included a holiday-relevant recipe. If I send out cards again, I'll continue to do this. I even have a recipe in mind, which I'll probably share on the blog soon.

Anyway, all those traditions were long, long ago. In recent years THOMY has pulled out his grandmother's peppernuts recipe, the HUGE stainless steel bowl, and cleared out space in the freezer to spend three evenings rolling, cutting, and baking a bushel of the tiny cookies.

Oh, and then there're the midnight Christmas Eve service and the one party we go to every year. But that's it for our traditions. We don't buy as many presents anymore, either. I can't stand the jammed parking lots and long lines. Staying home has taken a lot of stress out of the holiday, thankfully.

Without the busyness, however, I've felt adrift when the Christmas season comes around, especially since Dad's passing. Dad would have Christmas dinner with us, and now it's just THOMY and myself. And, actually, I'm okay with that. I like the quiet. I like not having to travel. We use the good china and my mom's crystal and spoon food out of pretty serving bowls. We take our time and enjoy the day.

All the days leading up to Christmas, though, seem too...ordinary. Because I'm not really observing the season. So this year I am. Through food.

Duh.

Recently I asked THOMY if there was one thing he remembers from the Christmases of his youth, and he mentioned his mom's thumbprint cookies. I have a recipe for them already, so today I made a batch.

He thinks him mom used green pepper and red pepper jellies. Well, those flavors will just have to stay in Nostalgialand. My version has red currant and mint apple jellies. I milled a quarter cup of sliced almonds in my coffee grinder to coat the cookies in almond dust. My pudgy thumbprints are clumsy for the small size of the cookies. I think I'll make the next ones bigger.

My second baking endeavor will attempt to recreate my mom's fried Rosette cookies. I bought a set of irons three or four years ago and now have the courage to heat up some oil and use them.

Flannery

2009-12-02T23:40:00.000-06:00

I love knitting cables, as I might have mentioned before. So when my local yarn shop owner sent out the call for someone to knit the sample for December's sock of the month, I twittered back "Oo, oo, pick me!" Something like that, anyhow. I definitely used exclamation points.

And so my first Flannery sock came into being.

Thank you, Shelly for letting me knit it and for letting me have a photo you took of it.

Flannery
pattern by spillyjane
Yarn Used: Cascade Heritage

I knit it with a size US 1/2.25mm set of 40" circular needles, Magic Loop style. I usually knit both socks in tandem (knitting the cuff for one, then for the other sock; knitting the leg of the first sock then the second; etc.), but I knit only one sock from cuff to toe, risking Second Sock Syndrome, since she needs only one sock for December. And I need two of them in order to wear them, so why bother right now. Yay. Legitimate procrastination.

Between now and starting the next sock, then, I'm finishing this year's final blanket. It is the last thank-you blanket I'm making for those who helped with sorting through Dad's belongings a couple years ago. Well, maybe the last one. I've just thought of one more recipient. But this blanket is the last one for this year, definitely.

And now, as promised, the report for the Ribs N Bids fundraiser is ready. Pam, the chairperson for the event, summed it up nicely at the event's blog. I've never been part of something that raised over a thousand dollars before. For a first-time event, I think its final tally meant great success. And I especially want to thank my friend Pat who placed the highest bid for the Spring Things shawl I made. I'm so glad to know its new owner.

I forgot my blogaversary

2009-11-19T22:14:00.001-06:00

Thank you to Teena who wished me a happy blogaversary in the comments of my last post. She noticed this red letter day when I did not. Three years today! Thank you, Teena.

I've been sick y'all--some virus that lays on the crud with a spatula. My doctor's office ran out of flu tests by the time I came calling, so I won't know the name of the bug that is still doubling me over with night time coughing.

And it seems that both the virus and the medicines for it have trained me to stay up nights and sleep during the day, mostly. I've become pretty proficient at Klondike 1 Solitaire...not much of an accomplishment, really; it's the easiest form of the game.

Speaking of easy-peasy, I also finished these.

Autumnal Jaywalker Socks
Yarn: Berrocco Sox

I had not intended to make a pair of Jaywalker socks, ever, since everyone and their invisible friend on Ravelry have made them. (Over 6800 projects racked up so far.) BUT I also didn't know what other pattern would have featured the self-striping yarn better. This was one of those patterns that is so easy to memorize, it's mind-numbing. Which is a good thing when one's head is already numb from codeine-flavored cough syrup.

I'm onto my next project, another pair of socks. They're called Flannery. It's a cabled sock pattern, and I love cables!

By the way, I'll update everyone about the Ribs 'n Bids fundraiser in a few days. In short, the event was a success. Details to come later.

Ribs N Bids Pancreatic Cancer Research Fundraiser

2009-11-09T15:27:00.000-06:00

As some of you are aware who know me in person, my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1991. Since then, and with no special effort of my own, I have met many family members of pancreatic cancer patients. One such person asked me if I wanted to help out with a fundraiser for research and patient support. Without much idea of what I was getting myself into, I said yes.

So...

On Saturday, November 14, a fundraiser for research and assistance to patients of pancreatic cancer will be held at Plymouth Congregational Church in Wichita, Kansas. The doors will open at 5:30, and award-winning BBQ will be served. From 6-7:30 a silent auction will provide more opportunities to not only support pancreatic cancer research but also to enjoy (and take home!) the handiwork of local artisans.

Below is just a sampling of the items up for bid.

More information and photos of auction items are on the Ribs n Bids blog. For now, here is the poster for the fundraiser:

Tickets can be purchased at the following locations:

Plymouth Congregational Church
202 N Clifton Ave, Wichita, KS‎

Twist Yarn Shop
607 W. Douglas Ave., Wichita, KS

Accent Interiors
511 S Woodlawn Blvd, Wichita, KS

Watermark Books
4701 E Douglas Ave, Wichita, KS‎

Fire on the Waves

2009-10-15T11:26:00.003-05:00

Remember this blanket from last September?

Since you've probably slept since then, you may not. It was based on the water rescue scene in Stephenie Meyer's bookNew Moon, the second book of the Twilight series. Bella Swan had previously taken a header off a cliff just to hear the disembodied voice of her beloved Edward, and Jacob Black--a teen werewolf and Bella's long-suffering friend with a whole muzzle full of unrequited love for our heroine--had just rescued her. For a brief and horrible moment, Bella realizes later that she glimpsed on the waves the firey red hair of her most recent vampiric nemisis, Victoria.

There. That's the background for the inspiration of the blanket. The purpose of the blanket was to be included in a book of Twilight-based knitting patterns. Alas, it's inclusion ain't gonna happen, and neither is book. (Yes, the socks from the last post was meant for this book, too.) So now I get to publish the pattern myself.

Gotta love the ease of vanity publishing.

Here is the .pdf download for Fire on the Waves. It's also listed in the blog's margin under Needle Knitting How To's. If you're on Ravelry, the pattern page with its download is here.

A few specs for the blanket:

Finished Measurements
Approx. 46” x 58”, unblocked

Yarn
Bernat Satin, 100% acrylic, 163 yds (149m) per 100g,
19 skeins of #04111, Denim Mist Heather
(The yarn is held double-stranded. It can be substituted with about 1890 yds of a bulky weight yarn.)

Tools
40” US 11 (8mm) circular needle
Cable Needle
Stitch Markers
Tapestry Needle

Gauge
12 sts/16 rows = 4” stockinette stitch

The pattern has been through the needles of a few test knitters. If you find a problem with it, however, please let me know.

Off Road Socks

2009-10-11T08:57:00.004-05:00

Awhile back, I designed a pair of socks based on the Emmett Cullen character in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. Why, you may ask. Well, because inspiration, provocation, and opportunity collided serendipitously in my corner of the Bermuda Triangle. My initial hope for publication of this pattern fizzled recently, but my local yarn shop's WONDERFUL proprietor asked to make the pattern her October Sock of the Month. I could tell you how thrilled I am about this, but I'd use up my lifetime supply of exclamation points.

Instead, I'll show you a big picture of the sock and share a link to the pattern.

Off Road Socks (.pdf link)
My Ravelry project page

The yarn I used for the sock pictured above, Maizy, feels great, but the Bittersweet color leeched dye horribly. It stained my fingers as I knit with it. It turned the wash water a shade of rancid grape juice. It inspired a limerick.

There once was a knitter with Maizy
whose yarn color drove quite crazy.
The Bittersweet bruises
on her fingers and toesies
provoked a more colorful phrase, see?

Knitting Hangover

2009-09-10T12:11:00.001-05:00

I woke up with a knitting hangover this morning: I could feel my eyeballs inside their sockets; the gravity of the moon was tugging and squeezing them out of shape. My prefrontal cortex couldn't have been more on fire than if I'd dowsed it with lighter fluid. And both fluorescent and incandescent light has been a spoon scraping under my scalp (oh look! alliteration). I shouldn't even be tempting the pain by typing these letters on a starkly contrasting background, but I'm driven to share.

Of course now that I've remembered to wear my close-up work spectacles, my eyes aren't straining quite as much as they apparently did yesterday when I knitted hour after hour without the proper eye protection. What I was finishing into the wee hours of last night is a scarf for the Red Scarf Project.

Pattern: Asherton
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft, Autumn Red color

I'm not working against a deadline or anything (the Red Scarf folks are accepting scarfs into December). I just wanted to finish the dang thing. I'd been working on it for a month already.

And now it's done! And now I'm going to wear my Ray Bans inside the house for awhile. Until the needles I ordered for my new project show up. Soon, I hope.

I can stop at any time.

My first shawl

2009-09-02T10:42:00.003-05:00

My first lace shawl.

Spring Things by Susan Lawrence. This shawl began its life in cashmere yarn, lace weight. I now know lace weight yarn is, if not of the devil, then a spawn of his minions. I do not like it, Sam I am. My stubby fingers don't get along with it. So the yarn I used instead is Knit Picks Palette, a fingering weight wool yarn (one step higher and thicker than lace yarn). The colorway is Rainforest Heather.

I wet blocked it (stretched it into its proper shape after washing it) using my lace blocking wires, T-pins, and interlocking foam tiles. I left it to dry in my sewing grotto in which the floor paint is flaking up like mad and is a horror to behold. So don't look at it directly or you may turn to stone. Just saying.

This shawl will be donated to a pancreatic cancer research fundraiser, a silent auction and bbq dinner to be held in November. I will be posting more information about this event in the near future because I'm in charge of setting up its blog. There will be lots of handmade items there to bid on and lots of ribs to enjoy. And music. There will be a band, but I can't recall their name just now. Tune in later.

For now, enjoy the remaining pics.

Beading!

Those little bumps in the knitting are called "nupps." Rhymes with "pups." Their difficulty persuaded me to try the beading, and it was muuuuuch easier.

My, how her garden grows

2009-08-11T16:25:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since I posted, and the garden has been busy.

The plants outgrew their milk jugs, thankfully. Stuffed into the planting box we have miniature bell peppers...

...some are turning yellow.

Yellow is the theme for the garden this year, I guess, because we chose to grow Golden Nugget cherry tomatoes and lemon basil. The lemon basil is trying to flower in the left of the photo below (and it's not yellow, it's just REAL lemony).

And this is what all the waiting is for:

More orange than golden, don't you think?

There's a larger tomato variety growing in the box, too...Stiletz is the name, I believe. They are still green, and there are a modest amount, of which I'll take snaps later (I know, I know, you're palpitating with anticipation!). A fungus of some sort attacked our larger tomato plants, and their production is much slimmer. Overall, though, it's not so bad for a first time garden.

First teenie tomatoes EVER

2009-06-18T16:48:00.001-05:00

Not just this season, but the first I've grown in my whole adult life.

Juliet Hybrid cherry tomatoes. We didn't start this plant by seed; it was a freebie from a local nursery. It was a lot shorter then.

Do birds like cherry tomatoes? I'm praying not.

Garden Progress

2009-06-02T13:41:00.005-05:00

What's that in the table planter?

A healthy crop of milk jugs.

Or

A tomato plant in each one. The milk jug trick may be common knowledge among gardeners, but I learned it from my mom...ages ago, long before I ever cared about sweating over plants in June humidity. She cut the bottoms out of gallon jugs and used them as mini greenhouses while the tomato plants were still small.

I transferred these plants just today, and there's the prediction of a storm tonight, so hopefully these will get a good drink without being battered.

I haven't lost any of my plants yet.

Yet.

An addition to our household

2009-05-26T21:58:00.000-05:00

From the humane society, he came with the name Dipstick.

I called him Archie for a while, but THOMY kept calling him Harry.

So Harold Archibald Dipstick the First, it is. He's three months old and loves to be cuddled. He's probably the first kitten I've had who isn't too busy to stop and be held.

He's doing something

2009-05-17T20:42:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine is collecting baby hats to send to a ten-year-old boy who received a grant from DoSomething.org. His name is Andrew, and he is organizing a project to provide hats to newborns and preemies at Charlotte Medical Center in North Carolina. Heaven knows I have plenty of yarn to fill my friend's request for a hat. And during a road trip Friday, I produced two such items.

The left is a Tubey hat. I reworked the design to fit a tiny, preemie head. At least I hope it'll fit. I don't know much about babies' heads, but a knitter I know who makes lots of preemie hats told me once that if it fits an orange, it'll fit a preemie. I think the Tubey will fit a grapefruit. Or a two-cup Rubbermaid bowl, which is what's holding it up in the picture.

The other hat is a two-by-two rib. Both hats were knit to about seven inches in length and closed by the three-needle bind off method. The spiral tassels on the Tubey were added later.

If you're on Ravelry and want in on the project, go here.

Oh, and the road trip Friday? I went to The Yarn Barn in Lawrence, KS, something of a yarn store mecca, apparently. One of my companions went to test their spinning wheels and came home with one. I can tell you right now that I can't afford to be a hard-core spinner. I bought a drop spindle last fall, and that alone made THOMY's eyebrows struggle to stay even. [Love you, dear!] To be fair, the price of the spindle wasn't objectionable, just, "What? Another hobby and all it's paraphernalia?!"

What I did come home with however...

Lace weight cashmere. 2100 yards per cone, .003 cents per yard. I bought two cones. To heck for a moment with my solitary New Year's Resolution. It's cashmere. It did my cheapskate heart good.

Charity and penny-pinching extravagance in one blog post. That there's what you call ironic.

My Lizard Ridge

2009-05-11T16:01:00.002-05:00

Twenty-one months after I began, I've finished my Lizard Ridge throw.

It consumed twenty-four balls of Noro Kureyon and Plymouth Boku. After I knit all the blocks, I had almost 200 yards of leftover yarn which I spit-spliced together into a great big ball and used to seam together the blocks.

This is a reverse, single crochet stitch, a.k.a. crab stitch. Originally, I had though I'd use some sort of three-needle bind off process to seam the blocks. Don't ask me how I was going to do it, exactly, but it would've involved picking up stitches. Lots and lots of stitches. The crab stitch gave me a visible seam with a lot less hassle.

And because I used a Rail Fence layout (the design on each block is perpendicular to its neighbor) for my rectangular blocks, I stretched the shorter of the two blocks being seamed. This forced the seam to lie to one side and caused a woven look throughout the blocks. Unexpected design feature!

Eleven grams--all that's left over:

This is your brain on yarn.

Some New Things

2009-05-05T15:31:00.005-05:00

We are trying our hand at gardening here at Casa Scrapdash, and we have successfully jumped the first hurdle: sown seeds have sprouted.

Lemon Basil

Bell Peppers, a miniature variety.

We've assembled a planter table in which to grow our small garden. It's the ultimate in raised beds because I will not have to stoop or kneel to tend to the plants. We have seeds for shorter, bushier tomato plants, too, which I've stuck in the super special organic potting soil just today. I know, I know. I'm way late on planting them. Give this newbie a break; I've gotta act like a gardener until the plants believe me.

So far, so good.

Also, I'm trying to knit honest-to-God lace. In a rectangular stole, though, for crying out loud, not a triangular shawl or something 3D like a sweater. I'm not a complete adrenaline junkie*. So far, I've made a swatch of the stitches I'm going to use and the picot cast on edge for the beginning of the stole. I've taken two stitch patterns from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker--an entirely awesome book--and put them together because, baby, they were made for each other. Maybe, just maybe, if all goes well and I don't hang myself by my lifeline, I'll jot down the pattern to share with generations hereafter.

Another so far, so good...

*I just remembered that I did make lace in 3D last year, in the form of the Lightning Lace Jacket. But that was when I was younger and stupider. It had nothing to do with adrenaline. More like cortisol pumping into the veins.

Garter stitch plus no seams

2009-04-16T14:37:00.002-05:00

...equals one super-easy blanket.

Look Ma, No Seams Blanket
Yarn: Marble Chunky, Adobe color, 3 balls
Needles: US 11 circulars, 40" long

The design is based on an explanation of the technique at the blog Things Soo Likes. The trick is to find a variegated yarn that can make long bands of color. After casting on twenty stitches for the first panel, I knit in garter stitch until it seemed long enough for a sofa throw. I then weighed the remaining ball of yarn to determine how much yarn I'd used, which was about half. So I knew I could knit a 40-stitch panel out of one ball, and that knowledge helped at the very end when I had a throw that was not quite wide enough but I still had one ball left. I cast on 40 stitches for the final panel and had just enough to complete the blanket. Woohoo!

Santa Fe

2009-04-02T16:06:00.003-05:00

This time last week, THOMY and I were hightailing it out of Santa Fe a day early to avoid the snow storms that were predicted to blind us along our entire route home very soon. At 2:30 Friday morning, we rolled into our driveway without one drop or flake having fallen on us. When we woke up about eight hours later, and for most of the weekend, all was ice and gray skies.

In Santa Fe, we stayed in an apartment, in a four-plex building which was once housing for the military in Santa Fe...a verrry old place. Having such a casita within the edges of Old Santa Fe was supposed to be a big advantage since the narrow, confusing streets in this city center discourages driving. THOMY and I were just going to walk everywhere. I love doing that because I'm not so thrilled with driving in any unfamiliar place; it punches all the zen out of a vacation, you know?

So it was supposed to be a bonus. However, I had developed some trouble with my back before we left for Santa Fe, and it only got worse once we were there. I even brought my electric heating pad, which I began to endearingly call my tuffet. By Tuesday morning, though, I was in tears with pain.

I persevered, of course. I was on vacation, dadgumit--the farthest West and the highest up in elevation I'd ever been for a lowlands girl. So I pulled on my big girl panties--no trifling feat--sucked in the air-deficient air, and I loped from block to block. I sat every few hundred feet to calm my lungs, vertebrae, and occasionally my husband before hoisting myself up and doing it some more. Consequently, many of my touristy photos are close ups of things I found around me as I rested.

In my hometown, geese are more of an annoyance than pigeons. So the pigeons of Santa Fe's central Plaza amused me for awhile.

The left one seems to be looking at his neighbor, thinking, "Sheesh, man. Table manners!"

We went to see The Miraculous Staircase in Loretto Chapel. (Visit the website to read the story behind it.) The chapel is no longer a workaday holy place, but quietness remains in the atmosphere there.

Underside of the staircase.

On Museum Hill, I rested in the courtyard between four amazing museums. And this is what I saw near me.

Once again, I have no idea what the name of the plant is. But I like it.

And just to make this entry narrowly related to creativity, I found the most awesome yarn shop in Santa Fe: Miriam's Well, which is also the Santa Fe School of Weaving. Here is her courtyard.

I bought a purse there made by a Guatemalan woman who is named on the label inside. The label isn't in English, but I think the gist is she is part of a creative cooperative through the Methodist denomination. I like the personal weight of carrying around her name along with all the things I need in that bag.

The bag, the yarn, and a small glass vase I brought back from Santa Fe.

If you'd like to see more of my touristy photographs, you're welcome to view my Santa Fe Flickr album.

Gifts

2009-03-19T20:58:00.002-05:00

It's not even my birthday.

A surprise from a talented potter. Cobalt is my favorite color.

Another friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer recently. As someone in her quilting group, I made a few blocks for her comfort quilt.

It's a raw-edge applique quilt. I don't remember the quilt pattern's name, but the loose edges will ravel once the quilt is washed. Each block was quilted before it was sewn into the quilt.

Even the seams between the blocks will be left exposed to ravel up some. My favorite blocks to make were the squares. The circles kept cupping as I sewed them down, even when starched...though not as much. The quilt is a great stash buster, and the cutting and sewing laughs at perfectionism. I like laughing at perfectionism.

Another surprise came to me this week: thank you cards from a third grade class in Kansas.

Have you ever heard of DonorsChoose.org? Please go visit the site if you get the chance. It's "an online charity connecting you to classrooms in need." The donor gets to chose which project proposal to support, in full or in part, and DonorsChoose will purchase and ship the requested supplies to the classroom. It's awesome.

Finally, my next thank-you blanket.

It's based on the "Look Ma - No Seams!" throw on the blog Things Soo Likes. I'm using Marble Chunky yarn and size US 11 needles. I was worried all the garter stitch would drive me batty by now, but I'm holding steady. Progress happens more quickly with fatter needles.

At least something moves quickly when more girth is involved.

What's done is done

2009-03-13T11:13:00.003-05:00

I've finished a few items in the near month since I last posted.

The Felted Windmill Bag

More or less, a failure. It's only a bag because I hammered a few jeans snaps up the sides. Otherwise it's an arm sling for the Jolly Green Giant. My wayward moment with this project was knitting each panel too widely, 40 stitches wide I think. I didn't have enough yarn to make each panel twice a long, so the felting produced this...thing.

Waterfall Throw

A much better result, even though I drifted from the instructions on this one, too. The pattern by Lion Brand yarn calls for a GIANT size US 35 set of needles and to double-strand the Homespun yarn. I tried it but I value the few strand of coherency I have left to me in my middle age. So I went down to a size US 17 set with very pointy tips, used a single strand of yarn, and cast on about twice as many stitches. With this yarn, needles with very pointy tips is key. They keep down the blood pressure. This is a thank-you gift for someone who helped tremendously with the work on my dad's house.

I have a few more items to show, but not enough time to write about them just now. They'll give me the incentive to update this here blog more often!

Eat your heart out

2009-02-18T08:35:00.002-06:00

The refreshments for my small quilting group last night came in three sizes: big guilt, bite-sized guilt, or no guilt (the strawberries).

Most opted for a large guilt with no guilt on the side. It all evens out, I guess.

I found the brownie recipe on Martha Stewart, but I replaced the unsweetened chocolate with Ghirardelli's Intense Dark, Twilight Delight. De-ca-dent.

In the Meantime

2009-02-12T17:34:00.002-06:00

Although I have all the projects I mentioned last week still in the works, I decided to knit a pair of socks for Valentine's Day.

Be Mine from the book 2-at-a-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. As with the last pair of socks I knit, I made both socks in tandem, one per pair of circs and using two separate skeins of Knit Picks Palette, fingering weight yarn in the flagrantly poignant color name Red. (It's actually refreshing to not see strained names such as Flashpoint Red or Hearthside Red on the ball band. If this hue had a more flamboyant name, it'd probably be Prickly Heat Red or Digital Clock Red, something bright, exuberant, and kinda annoying.)

These Be Mine socks ARE mine. No giving these puppies away. I do have to say, however, that while this pair of socks fit me, mostly, I think I'm going to knit socks in a tighter gauge from here on out. The bottom part of the heel on each foot still pooches a little over the backs of my clogs. I'd like the heels to be smoother.

Other than that, though, I HEART my heart socks. And they're wool! Another first for me.

Works in Progress

2009-02-03T12:39:00.002-06:00

We have way too many recipes. Most of the excess comes from recipe magazines we've collected over the years. So, one of this year's projects is to vet the mags and various internet recipes I've printed out. Here's one we're going to keep:

Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies.

Instead of icing them, I dusted them with powedered sugar. I've had the set of miniature cookie cutters for awhile, thanks to a sister-in-law. I won the set during one of her Christmas Open House games. The recipe makes hordes of miniature cookies.

I have several other works in progress going on right now. In my 2009 quest to use yarn in my stash before I buy any, I've got a bag and a blanket crammed into my chair-side knitting trunk.

Windmill Bag

The pattern is for a cotton bag, but I'm using wool yarn. I doubled the width of each panel and lengthened them so I can felt the bag to a normal size. I hope. I'm guessing the math, of course, so I've got nothing but adventure ahead of me.

Waterfall Throw (Ravelry link)

I'm hoping this one will turn out as a decent thank you blanket for someone who helped us tremendously on Dad's house. I have two afghans to make, and the first afghan was a flop. I'm not going to post a picture of it here lest looking at it turns you to stone. It was wonky, and the chenille yarn wormed wildly. It's kinda like cuddling with a shag rug that keeps whispering "Feed me, Seymour."

My last work in progress is a left turn, happy accident from what I had intended for the thrift store sweater. I bought the sweater--along with a boat load of other ones--during Goodwill's annual dollar sale at the end of the year. I was going to unravel the sweater and reclaim the cotton yarn. BUT I didn't notice that the shoulder seams had been serged (cutting the yarn in the process, rendering it useless for winding easily) until I'd already removed the collar. Sooo, I decided to make a bag out of the thing. It's got beautiful cables. Here's what I've done so far.

It's the first time I've used fusible Peltex. It fused to the back of the sweater without a hitch, but the thickness is a little hard on my sewing machine. So, I'm proceeding slowly to reduce the frustration factor.

Now for a confession... I have acquired some new yarn. Before I was allowed to. The first two skeins, however, I am not counting as a 2009 acquisition because it was set aside for me in 2008 as a prize from the yarn shop hop.

Sock yarn!

The next TEN SKEINS (of Wool-Ease Thick and Quick) are meant to replace the befouled blanket I might be too ashamed to give to a house fire victim. So, while I'm making myself count them in my 2009 purchases, I'm not feeling a bit of guilt about having bought them before I used up twice as much yarn from what I already have.

I think that's enough to keep me busy for a while. I'll try to post again before the month is out to let you know how it's going.

And, okay, Melanie... I KNOW I said last night that I was doing only practical stuff lately. I guess, not really. Lord knows I don't need another bag.

How'd we do and what's ahead

2009-01-01T09:00:00.004-06:00

In the interest of fair and objective reporting, here is the 2008 Resolutions list I published last January and how I did on them:

1. Settle on a blogland term of endearment for my husband. (DONE. THOMY: the husband of my youth. I've called him this for years already in cards and notes, even when I could still claim to be youthful.)

2. Knit THOMY a sweater. (DONE)

3. Quilt Lumberjack Butterflies. (NOT EVEN...but I did finish another quilting UFO.)

4. Dad's house: Finish renovations and place it on the market. (DONE and DONE.)

5. At every meal, except on Fridays, have more vegetables/fruit than meat and carbs on the plate. Why not Fridays, too? Cuz. (EVERY DAY TURNED OUT TO BE A FRIDAY...Well, most days anyhow.)

6. And, for crying out loud, finish reading at least 4 books that I've already begun, one per season. (This one is tricky because I can't remember when I began reading a few of the books I completed this year. I read ten books, mostly fiction. Mostly to do with romance...mostly romance for the vampiric, time-traveling, extra terrestrial, or the angelic set. lol. But I did squeeze in a book of poetry and a spin off, historical thriller about a Dickens literary character, Tiny Tim.)

7. Place one handmade thing for sale each month on etsy. (I decided to do a lump make-and-sell during the fall. At least twelve items were added to the shop. And a few even sold!)

8. Make and send my Pay-It-Forward gifts. (DONE)

9. Walk or ride bike each week day, unless I'm sick. (I guess I was sick A LOT. No. I was just on my tush making a kajillion things.)

So, six and half accomplishments out of nine...not so bad.

This year, I'm making only one resolution: For every two yards of yarn I use up from my stash, I am allowed to buy one yard in replacement.

That's it. That's the resolution. Some terminology definitions might be in order, though.

What do I mean by "stash"? The whole sum of yarn I have acquired and NOT USED IN A COMPLETED PROJECT by December 31, 2008. This includes thrift store sweaters I have yet to unravel and recycle. This also includes yarn that has been knitted in a project that isn't done yet.

What do I mean by "use up"? That I knit or crochet it, ideally, into a completed project. But selling, giving, or trading it away count, too. (Trading yardage for something other than someone else's yardage, of course, unless that someone else's yardage is half the yardage of my yardage. Capiche?)

And, "buy"? You know. With money. Or conch shells.

I'm tracking the yardage through the Stash feature in Ravelry. Yay, Ravelry!

And now, for other things I'd like to accomplish this year but will not promise anyone anything:

1. My first vegetable garden. I hate summer. I hate, despise, loathe, recoil from, and otherwise detest heat. Wet heat, especially. I sunburn in April on a cloudy day, for land sakes. My very atoms can't stand anything approaching summer. But...I love home-grown tomatoes. I love them more than I hate summer. So, we're going to try to grow some 'maters this year. Any suggestions for good varieties to grow in containers?

2. Work up to 10,000 steps a day by the end of April.

That should keep me busy, I think.

2008 DIY Retrospective

2008-12-30T13:40:00.004-06:00

I had no idea sitting on one's tush could get so much done.

1. NM needle case--closed, 2. New Moon Swap stitch markers, 3. Cherries Pendant, 4. Scissor Fobs, 5. Walls of Volterra bag, 6. Almost Amish Puzzle, 7. THOMY'S hat, 8. Fall 2008 Chatelaines, 9. October notecards, 10. PIF stitch markers for Denise, 11. Water drop stitch markers, 12. Fire on the Waves Throw, 13. Tunisian Simple Stitch Scarf, 14. Ravelympics Clapotis closeup, 15. Wavy Scarf, 16. Tunisian Trivets, 17. Bottoms Up Bottle Cozy, 18. Dad's House, 19. Helmet Liner , 20. Lizard Ridge Blocks DONE, 21. Lightning Lace Jacet, 22. Cattycorner Tunisian Washcloth back, 23. Too Much Work for Dishes, 24. Primordial Fish 2, 25. Leftovers Felted Pincushion, 26. Washcloths, 27. French Market Bag, 28. RPM socks, closeup, 29. Inside the Box Bag, 30. Christine & Albert 2, 31. CD Coasters 1, 32. Tray Slippers Felted, 33. Cobblestone sans Man in it, 34. Medallion Mitts, 35. Fuzzy Feet Soy Wool Stripes, 36. Hot/Cold Therapy Bags

The Pink Ribbon Socks, among some foodstuffs, didn't make the cut in the mosaic above because the mosaic maker doesn't create a 4 X 10 photo grid. So here's their picture, below. It's the first time a pair of my knitted, unfelted socks fit me. I was just the working model, though; they're not for my feet.

May they give you cheer, Tana.

And may all of you have a safe, productive, and blessed year ahead.

Peppernuts and other addictions

2008-12-13T11:46:00.005-06:00

Because several people have asked for his recipe, I am divulging it here. But, be warned, THOMY's Grandma's peppernuts take three days, quite a bit of space, and at least one great big bowl to complete. You have to really want them. But they're soooooo worth it.

Grandma Lawrenz's Peppernuts
(the big recipe)

3/4 pound butter
3 C sugar
1.5 C sweet cream (half & half)
1.5 C white syrup (light corn syrup)
2 tsp. anise extract

In a very large bowl, cream the butter until fluffy. Then add the sugar, half & half, syrup, and anise extract.

12 C all-purpose flour
2 T baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. mace
3/4 tsp. allspice
3/4 tsp cloves
(all the spices are ground spices)

Sift the 12 cups of flour into another large bowl. Stir in the baking powder, salt, and remaining spices.

Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, a cup or so at a time until the flour is mixed in. The dough will be quite difficult to stir at the end. Cover the dough in the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight.

The next day, roll handfuls of the dough into long "worms" about the width of your pan and to the diameter of a penny. Lay them on wax paper in pans to freeze. After they're frozen, slice them up and bake on buttered pans at 350-375 degrees F for sixteen minutes. (THOMY has discovered that 360 F works best for our oven.)

Yields gobs and gobs. THOMY uses his great big bowl to store the peppernuts temporarily after he takes them out of the oven. Keep them in airtight containers afterwards or in pretty bowls around the house so people can't avoid them but...must...have...more.

_______________

New Moon Swap

I promised pictures of the felted bag and other swap goodies that I sent my partner.

The Walls of Volterra bag, based on the Felted Slip Stitch bag by Michele Bernstein.

A verrry easy bag. It looks like a more complex colorwork technique but it's not. I also made stitch markers and a needle case for my swap partner.

(The bracelet to the left of the needle case is a wrist abacus/row counter. It's a variation of a few tutorials I've seen on the 'net, but I can't remember where I saw them right now.)

The tutorial for the needle case is on Multicrafty.

_______________

Beads can be just as addictive as peppernuts (though they'll break your teeth more easily). I made a cherries necklace pendant for my small quilting group's Christmas gift exchange.

And I haven't forgotten about my Almost Amish Puzzle Blogaversary guess-a-thon. The winner is Liz in Chicago. Congrats, Liz! The scissors fob and stitch markers in the photo below will be mailed to you this week. The scissors fob with the red leaf is for my longsuffering Pay-It-Forward recipient.

If I don't post again before Christmas, then I hope everyone will have a safe and merry one this year.

Blogaversary

2008-11-19T19:20:00.003-06:00

Thanks to Teena in Toronto, I was alerted this evening that today has been my blogaversary. This makes two years!

As a hastily-conceived kind of celebration, I'm going to pose a challenge. Out of all those who provide a correct answer to it in the comments section to this post, I'll draw someone randomly to win a prize. What prize? I don't know. Something handmade, no doubt. Just include in your comment whether you are a quilter or yarn fondler (via crochet or knitting) or whatever else is your favorite creative endeavor. That may influence what I send you. Oh, and you need to be sure I can contact you via email or through your blog if you have one, so please provide that information, too.

Now for the challenge question:

If my Almost Amish Puzzle quilt was an actual puzzle, how many pieces would be in the box?

Take a look at the photo in the previous post to help you. You can either guesstimate or give me a calculated answer, but the answer must be exactly correct to go into the prize pool.

I'll draw the winner this coming Sunday, about noon Central Standard Time.

Best wishes!

With an enemy like this

2008-11-15T14:05:00.002-06:00

First, thank you to those who told me my little mystery plant is a Prayer Plant. I now have a better idea how to get it started in its own pot.

____________________________

Onto recent news...

The box from my Ravelry/New Moon swap partner came yesterday.

This is the first knitting swap both my partner and I have participated in. All the participants in the swap are divided into three teams: Pack, Volturi, Coven, which no doubt will mean nothing for those of you who haven't read the books in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer.

Without explaining ad naseum, I am a member of the Pack (of werewolves...no snickering in the peanut gallery for those of you who know me personally). My swap partner is one of the Volturi...a ruling class of bad, people-hunting vampires. In the books, these two groups are enemies.

In reality, my swap partner had already kindly volunteered to test knit my blanket pattern when we were assigned to each other. So, this is the kind of enemy I like. I especially like an enemy who plies me with Heath bars. And beautiful, cobalt blue stitch markers such as these:

I plan to box up my swap goodies for my partner this week. After she receives them, I'll post a picture of the kit here. (Yay! Something to look forward to.) ;)

And who is in the Coven, you may wonder? Good vamps. They live as families and don't hunt people. They go for big game like bears. Cranky bears are the best.

______________________________

Another nemesis of mine is now one of my favorites.

Here is THOMY holding it.

Almost Amish Puzzle

Just a recap about this project, since I haven't mentioned it in awhile. This was a block of the month quilt back in 2002 through a local quilt shop that has since changed ownership once and location twice. As of this summer, three or four of the blocks were still not pieced. But when I won a machine quilting gift certificate through my quilt guild, I was inspired to finish this little beauty with a layout I slapped together all by myself. After it came back from the quilter, I didn't finish the binding until this Tuesday, which was guild meeting day. It has now been shown to my fellow quilters, and it has now been shown to you. I can strike this one off the TODO list and give it to my cat, which is her right as Royal Recliner onto All Things New and Soft.

Mystery Flora Theatre 3000

2008-11-08T11:54:00.002-06:00

Since I have been clued in so faithfully here to the names of growing things, I have two more mystery plants to present.

#1. A house plant.

This specimen grew out of a pot with a variety of plants in it. For some reason, the stem was crushed or just quit drinking, and the leaves began to shrivel. I removed the new growth and cut off the crushed part of the stem. It's been in a glass of water for a few days now and looks like this. But I'd like to promote root growth so I can re-pot the plant. If I knew the kind of plant this is, I could do some care and feeding research.

#2. A volunteer tree.

Through Freecycle, we were allowed to dig up chunks of Periwinkle one summer. I planted them in a big, wooden pot so, as they grew, they'd cascade over the side. Well, they died. In their place sprouted this tree. It's two or three years old, getting bigger while I was too preoccupied to pay it much mind. It's almost four feet tall now.

I'm guessing...elm?

Scary Post

2008-11-01T21:29:00.004-05:00

Nope, this is not about Halloween. Just a confession of sorts.

I traveled up and down the central part of Kansas last weekend on a yarn shop hop. (This isn't the confession part.) In Abilene, I ate lunch at the Kirby House. (Neither is that.)

A rather cheerfully spooky-looking place, huh?

I don't know much about the Kirby House except they make a good chicken salad sandwich and the guests are free to roam about the place on a self-guided tour. You can even climb the extremely steep steps to the third and fourth floors found only in the center tower.

Before the Kirby House, the place where I'd climbed the steepest staircase was in my grandma and grandpa's farmhouse. At least there I didn't have take the stairs like ladder rungs. I didn't know until the day after my little hike to Laputa land, however, that the Kirby House and its table for two on the uppermost floor would provoke my left thigh to threaten a strike. It colluded with my knee and wouldn't let me cross a room without me grabbing something for support.

I thought this was so ridiculous--can't climb a freaking set of stairs without requiring sports rehab afterwards--that I've done something radical. Phenomenal. Considering my loathing of excercise equipment...if not excercise itself.

I'm walking.

Yes, it's true. (THIS is the confession.) I'm walking. On a treadmill. My very own.

Or, at least, I will be walking on a treadmill when it gets delivered and installed later in the week. At the fitness equipment shop, I tried to make myself like an elliptical machine instead because it takes up less space, works more muscles, is more efficient, etc., but I couldn't get myself to quit singing "climb every mountain" in my head when I took one of the machines for a test drive. I might've sung it out loud, too, but I was way too out of breath. And I'd been on the machine for a sum total of two minutes. (This was the embarrassing, scary part of the confession.)

So, it's baby steps for me on the treadmill. And perhaps at a 15% incline when I'm feeling reckless.

Funny how a lunch in a creaky old house can change the course of one's life. At least, I hope it will.

More pics of the Kirby House:

A horse hitch by the front picket fence.

Oh? And the results of the yarn shop hop? Here's my official haul:

I especially love the Straw Into Gold pyramid of Crystal Palace Yarns' Merino Stripes I found at the shop in Salina. (Pronounced "Sah-LIE-nah," not "Sah-LEE-nah," in these parts.)

And, no, my yarn haul was not a part of this confession. I'm very proud of it.

So.

2008-10-24T06:12:00.004-05:00

The closing on Dad's house came and went...a lot like a drunk driving a wheelbarrow...but now it's over. A tip, my friends: even if termites are long dead and gone from the house you're selling, expect to have the place inspected in triplicate--at least once ON THE DAY OF CLOSING--and that you have said inspections ON THE CORRECT FHA FORM. Nothing else will do.

It's nice to have standards that raise the bloodpressure of law-abiding and otherwise non-murderous citizens. But, mostly, it's nice to have the house sold, considering the real estate market everywhere else.

I am itching to show you a couple projects I'm working on. But I can't show you the projects I'm working on because one of them is for a knitting swap partner (a bag that is turning out narrower than I'd anticipated...um, the project, that is, not the partner) and it must remain in the blogosphere shadows until the partner has recieved it with all manner of neat stuff inside.

And the other project... Well, I don't have a picture of it.

Okay, I have a picture of my first crack at it, the Fire on the Waves pattern in fingering weight yarn (sock yarn) and needles that were much much too small in gauge...US 1s, I believe.

It's supposed to be a stole when it grows up. Knit as tightly as shown in the picture, however, it would require roughly a bazillion repeats of the pattern to make it long enough. On US 4s, which is what I switched to, I need to do just a zillion. In real numbers, that's 15. I'm almost a third of the way through, but I took a break to make things with thicker yarn. Like a felted bag. And, hopefully, a "helmet liner" mask for THOMY for when he is out defending our driveway from snow. I say hopefully because I still need to acquire the yarn.

So these things are keeping my hands busy while I live in my house with no heat.

Oh, that's right. We have no heat until next week. Our furnace is old enough to drink now but has decided to retire instead. Guess what our first major purchase is going to be now that Dad's house is sold.

Let me assure you that I'm feeling the irony here more than sarcasm: I'm thrilled beyond reason to have this happening this week and into next week instead of when it's ten below zero outside and the budget is at its normal snugness. I keep telling myself this, anyway, while I wear my beloved fingerless mitts and felted slippers which I completed last winter. I'm feeling so much more like the ant than the grasshopper right now, and I'll enjoy the moment until it passes. It shouldn't be long...

Uh, no, I'm not smoking. That's just my breath.

Closing Day...NOT...and chatelaine content at the end of the post

2008-10-15T17:07:00.003-05:00

The weirdness started Monday night when THOMY and I had our final "walk through" Dad's place. The next day the buyer was going to have his final "walk through", and the day after that (today, now), would be Closing Day.

The weirdness, as I call it, is this creeping sadness. I know why it's here: my dad's house is going out of our lives. It's a final stage of good-bye. It's a milestone in grief. Blah, blah, blah. I didn't expect it, though. I'd been so focused on the process, saying along the way, since July, "Finally! The house is done...now a buyer has been found...the house passed FHA inspection, the buyer wasn't laughed out of the loan office during this hellish financial time. (I'm emphasizing to keep the rhythm here.)

"Oh, thank God, the closing day has been set."

Only...no.

We walk into the title office today, a very responsible ten minutes early, to be told the closing day has been postponed.

And, do you know, I had had one of those fleeting thoughts not twenty minutes earlier that our agent was trying to get ahold of us to tell us about some calamity that would yank the bittersweet rug out from under us...just like she had been trying to do for the last ten minutes before we walked through that door. I had this thought because we had left THOMY's phone home on the charger, and his phone number is the one our agent uses to get ahold of us. It isn't often that my great, subconcious love for irony gets realized. But, there we were, standing dumbstruck for a couple seconds in the title office before we could come-to and begin asking strained but responsible questions.

Something financial didn't come through in a timely manner for the buyer. But it *will* come through, we have been assured. He still wants the house. We just have to wait until sometime before 2pm on Monday to close on it.

Kinda sounds like a time frame the cable guy uses.

So, we wait until then. I hate this feeling of being dangled, but that's how it is. I'm just still terribly thrilled there's a buyer at all.

In the meantime, I'm going to relax from the frenzy of listing more stuff in my Etsy shop. New chatelaines, this time.

I made this

2008-10-07T20:36:00.005-05:00

Remember I said I have the patience of a five year old? Well, maybe I've matured recently. Maybe now I'm ten.

Stitch Markers

I finally sent one of my two Pay It Forward gifts. For the knitter, no-snag stitch markers. Pictured are two of the six markers I made.

And then thank-you markers for my Fire on the Waves test knitters.

Hopefully, all recipients have received their packages in the mail, so it's safe to unveil these now.

Notecards

More recently, six sets of A2 notecards and one set of mini notecards have found their way into my Etsy shop. Below are four of the six. I got to fold, glue, stamp, and use tools that heat up. Oo-RA.

Reclaiming Yarn

Instead of creating something here, I deconstructed it. What was once a thrift store wool sweater...

is now over 1700 yards of lace weight wool in my stash...

wound around the PVC niddy noddy THOMY made for me.

Yes, here is something I didn't make. THOMY also made the niddy noddy able to fold flat so I can store it. And I'm sorry I didn't take a picture with the yarn on it so you can see how it works, in case you're going "What the-- is a 'niddy noddy'?". Here's a video of one Goody Colonial Housewife using the device. (Hers isn't made of PVC.)

Annnnd that's what I've been doing since I finished the blanket. It's all helping me ignore the mud slinging we call our Presidential Campaign.

Blanket Statement

2008-09-26T12:53:00.003-05:00

As a longtime quilt maker, I have been conditioned to cringe when the word "blanket" is used to describe a quilt. Quilts are not blankets; three layers--top, batting, and backing--held together by hand or machine quilting or even by tufts of floss knotted here and there across the face of the thing constitute something more than a...blanket. Or, if not something more, something other than. (Heaven help me that I should be labeled a quilt snob.)

Help me, that is, because I have now knit a blanket. Of course, if I am not supposed to call a knitted, body-sized rectangle of coziness a blanket (seeing as how I'm a knitting novice and not properly conditioned to this craft's mores yet), perhaps afghan will do. Or, more casually, throw since the one I've made is too small to cover a bed and too big for a baby's blanket.

Besides, the word "afghan" for me conjures up brown, orange, harvest gold, and avocado green monsters. Only a little did they soften the scratchy brown devan my parents had from the Sixties into the Seventies.

I digress. My blanket:

Fire on the Waves
Yarn: Bernat Satin, Denim Mist Heather, held double
Needles: 40" circulars, size US11/8.0 mm
Pattern: designed by me

I haven't been blogging this month because I've been working on this. It's my pattern submission for a book proposal--knits inspired by the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. My blanket fits in with New Moon, around the time Bella was dragged out of the water by Jacob after she'd dabbled in cliff diving. I have three test knitters graciously working on their versions of my pattern. If the blanket isn't accepted into the book, I'll publish the pattern here on the blog. Somehow I'll make it available to my fan-base. (A.K.A. mostly those who stumble across this site because they're looking for a tutorial on CD Coasters or how to weave in loose ends while knitting.)

And, I suppose I should've kept this project quiet until a big unveiling about the book or a weepfest about my rejection, but I have the patience of a five year old when it comes to "I made this!" situations. I can let two Christmases pass before I open a gift, but I've just gotta show you right now what I've been cramping up my hands to finish.

Oh, and remember how I'm no Jared Flood when it comes to photography? Yeah, so my close up of the blanket stinks. No cool shadow play or depth of field fuzziness, I'm afraid. Everything turned out fuzzy, in fact. Apparently, all that fancification is above my camera's pay grade.

Next up, then, is a scarf or stole made from the same pattern as the blanket, only in fingering weight yarn and much smaller needles. Stay tuned.

Roadkill Practice?

2008-08-30T13:09:00.001-05:00

The other day when I was taking a photo of a finished project, I opened up the blinds for more light and eventually spied this fella stretched out in my driveway, munching an early acorn.

I have mature oaks trees in my yard, and they're chock full of critters. Tenement buildings for squirrels.

Ravelympics

2008-08-23T06:01:00.002-05:00

Creativity, as many of you "creative types" know, cross pollinates. Many quilters I've met started out as cross-stitchers (hardcore or no), and the majority of knitters I've gotten to know have been or are still quilters. So, for those of you who stop by my blog for quilting content (sorry to disappoint you so often), the word "Ravelry" may very well be in your vocab already.

If not, then be enlightened. Ravelry.com is a free, social networking site for knitters, crocheters, & spinners. Although the site is still in beta testing, it is bustling with activity. Members log their projects' progress in their accounts; add and search through patterns of all make, model, and practicality (some, not very...like, knitted seaweed???); join discussion groups that may or may rarely bring up a fiber-related topic, unless it's about grinding your own flour in a Grizzly Adams kind of group (of which I'm a member, so I can say); OR fess up to how much exactly is in one's yarn stash/horde/investment-grade insulation.

Ravelry has also hosted its own olympics these last two weeks. Not as a contest among the membership, per se, but as a personal challenge accepted en masse: cast on a project during or after the opening ceremonies in Beijing and have it bound off before or during the closing ceremonies. You could join one team or more. You could cast on for more than one project; events aptly named Sock Put, Afghan Marathon, Cowl Jump, and Glove Decathlon have been among the choices.

I entered the Scarf Stroke and Shawl Relay. And, more importantly, I crossed the respective finish lines. These glorious emblems are what I received:

...for completing these:

Wavy Scarf

In about a month or so, I'll send this to the Red Scarf Project.

Clapotis (clap-oh-TEE) shawl

This is for me. I'll never work with this yarn again, but I loves its results. I nearly sprang an index finger purling this sucker, but I pressed through the pain. I persevered. I'm a ravthlete.

Embarrassing Split Ends

2008-08-07T08:09:00.011-05:00

Let me take a moment to be contemplative--and perhaps exasperated--here. There aren't any pictures accompanying the following words; so, if blocks of type cross your eyes...by all means, don't throw off my sitemeter's mojo by staying longer than five seconds. We'll understand.

A famous author of sparkling hardbodies fame has described herself as a storyteller, not a writer. There are those on various discussion boards about said bedazzling superhumans who agree. They compare her style to high-end fan fiction, implying that her work is of an amateur who got lucky. Now that her latest book has been released, some disappointed readers might imprison her work among the unvisited web pages of mediocre or are-you-trying-to-use-English-as-a-first-language fan fiction. My opinion on that matter isn't the topic right now. What the word writer means, is.

Cuz, I'm not sorry to break it to these critics (even to The Author herself), but a book's words don't just apparate onto the page. They get written there. And, the last time I dropped in on Webster, Oxford, and dictionary.com, the person who writes words on a page--a real or virtual page--is called...wait for it...

Uh, huh. You see where I'm going.

There are different kinds or writers, of course: journalistic, humor, screenplay, playwright for stage, avant-garde, letter (a dying art, probably), anecdotal, analytical, gossip, technical, biographical, and fiction of all genres, among others I'm overlooking.

And there is a spectrum of quality for writers, from those who burn out readers' eyes with literary toxic waste to those who burn through bone and marrow via a finely-fired turn of phrase again and again.

I would like to assure everyone, here and now, that the English language has already made accommodations for our need to categorize and assess; it is okay to use adjectives. Not all adjectives at all times are dead weight. It's okay to say that someone is a "good story writer" if he or she does not also delve into the human psyche by means of haunting metaphor or resonating pearls of wisdom. And, guess what? If you've written something that hasn't been published yet or that may never be picked up by anyone other than yourself, you're still a WRITER. Yes! Glory be! The word "writer" is not a bejeweled tiara. It's a working-class designation for people who take the time to add to the variety we humans all seem to crave.

So what if there are appalling writers and timeless writers, story writers and "Literary" writers? They all get to be called writers. It is really as simple as that. No, really. It is. Honest.

Mark Twain was a storyteller, by the way. He drew in crowds when he spoke, but his fan base was populated mostly by readers...of his writing.

And that's not such bad company to keep, now is it, Ms. Meyer?

Bottoms Up Bottle Cozy

2008-08-01T15:57:00.001-05:00

What do you give a sweaty water bottle on a hot summer day?

A sweater, of course.

One made of wool is even better. I take my Tazo Zen iced tea with me to my favorite yarn store when I'm going to camp out there for an afternoon. As I gab and stitch and sip and stitch, my bottle sweats. It doesn't prduce a water ring; it leaves a puddle in its rubber coaster. I was so embarrassed for the little thing that I simply had to cover its nakedness. Wool can absorb condensation off the bottle without becoming soaked—unless of course your bottle perspires like a couch potato in a Tae Bo class. Mine may do just that. But, hopefully, the only thing cascading down this bottle cozy anymore will be it's split cables.

I've provided a link to the pattern--free--in the right hand column, under Needle Knitting How To's. Let me know of any miscalculations or typos. Enjoy!

Next stop on your staycation: Urban House Tour

2008-08-01T00:29:00.003-05:00

We're walking, we're walking. We're stopping.

Come on in. Take the tour.

July's Final Friday

2008-07-27T12:33:00.004-05:00

My foodie photo shown--h-hmm--at The Museum of Modern Art. Your photos can be featured there, too.

The final Friday of each month, in my city's downtown area, is a progressive dinner of art. One can be shuttled (for free) from gallery to gallery via our town's fleet of adorable trolley buses until one's eyeball's a completely full of artistic endeavor. I have a friend who makes the circuit almost every month. I had never gone until this week.

And, of course, it rained. I think that's because I wore my Lightning Lace Jacket. The irony was irresistible to the clouds.

I didn't mind, though, because that day had been a particularly good one. Here's why:

It was my wedding's 160th mensaversary. (THOMY keeps count because he's a math guy.)
It was my half birthday. (I still keep count cuz any moment for celebration is welcome.)
I had finished blocking my Lizard Ridge squares.
I had finished the Almost Amish quilt top.

And last, but not least...

DAD'S HOUSE IS NOW FOR SALE.

We signed the papers Friday evening. When there's an actual sign in the yard and a 360 house tour online, I'll post those tastey tidbits here. Until then, WHEW!

And now for a few pictures.

Pre-blocks Lizard Ridge squares curling themselves into little burritos.

Almost Amish quilt top done.

Have you seen?

2008-07-20T11:33:00.000-05:00

Struck by Lightning

2008-07-19T01:35:00.003-05:00

And at the completion of the Lightning Lace Jacket, I feel a little fried.

But in a good way. I wore it to my LYS* Friday afternoon to much cheering and a couple of "Oh, it was so worth it." It being the weeks of my calling this project the Lace from Hell. But, yes, the over-my-head instructions and the counting and recounting and triple counting of stitches--think hanging chads--were all worth it. They'll have to be. I'm not making another one.

I feel compelled to apologize for the boring finished project photo. I'm no Jared Flood, and I know that garments show better in 3D, on a body, in natural light. My body is not photogenic, however. I laugh even to imagine. Oak flooring under pot lights is my best option.

Here's a close up of the knit side. I ended up wearing the purl side out since I like it better.

I have more comments about my experience with this pattern on Ravelry. I have to say that this is the first sweater I made that fits like it was meant to. The major lessons I learned were SSP (slip slip purl) and the general process of knitting a sweater in the round without the need for a seam anywhere. There is a three-needle bind off along the shoulders that finishes it.

*LYS=local yarn store. And in my locality's case, occasional art gallery, and wine and wool hangout.

This time last year

2008-07-13T06:13:00.007-05:00

The old garage was a-comin' down.

Last week, we made our own laundry detergent for the first time.

This is shredded Ivory soap. Looks like albino ramen noodles to me. I've done two loads with the new soap, and the clothes are coming out clean so far. I added a half-ounce bottle of lemongrass essential oil to the batch, and boy does it add something special to the air when the washer is working. By the time the clothes come out of the dryer, though, there's not much scent left.

I've also made some progress on the Almost Amish BOM.

Still have the vertical sashing and borders to add. I was interrupted by the brief adoption of one five week old kitten. Ava.

She'd had all her current shots; we were given the papers to prove it. The family from whom I adopted her said they'd gotten her from a local vet's office. They said she was the kind of cat that went limp in your arms and was quiet most of the time. She had a problem getting to her litter box in time and keeping herself clean. But for a long-haired orphan, I wasn't surprised.

I was surprised to see her go into a seizure not more than two hours after I brought her home. Turns out she was hypoglycemic, malnourished, couldn't maintain her body temperature, and probably had some brain damage. We discovered all this piecemeal as we tried to help her get well. In the end, though, she wasn't strong enough.

Weeks ending like this just drain me. It doesn't help that sick cats seem to go downhill faster the later it gets. At about midnight Saturday morning, THOMY and I had left the off-hours vet. clinic and were at the Village Inn decompressing. We ended up having a useful, coherent conversation about prayer, disappointments, pat answers, and the day to day gravel path that is trust. And Ava was a bit of a catalyst in all this.

(Heh. Just saw the pun there. Sorry.)

No need for deet

2008-07-04T08:03:00.006-05:00

The quilting bug has bitten again. At long last.

I won a machine quilting gift certificate at my quilt guild meeting last month. It has spurred me to finish one of my UFOs*, an Amish-style dollar-a-month block-of-the-month**. (Ah! I broke out in hyphens!) The original quilt shop from which I acquired the kits has changed ownership and locations, but three of the twelve blocks were still unpieced in my UFO stash. Two of the twelve now, as of yesterday afternoon.

Here is a sneak peek of the layout:

Not much to look at without the blocks. But I just wanted to shout out my joy. My knitting therapy must be working; I'm back to quilting now.

ETA a glossary for the quilting uninitiated/nongeek:

*UFO--(n.) an acronym for UnFinished Object, a craft project abandoned at some point in its creation due to boredom, frustration, family emergency, or unmedicated attention deficit disorder.

**block-of-the-month--(n.) a system of quilt creation during which one quilt block is constructed per month. The block pattern and fabric are normally sold together (by quilt shops, mail-order catalogs, quilting internet commerce sites) in monthly kits, and usually by subscription. The price of dollar-a-month has been adopted by some quilt shops as an incentive to bring customers into their stores. In the case of the abovementioned BOM (an acronym), a quilt block would be finished by the customer, brought into the shop as proof of completion, and the next kit would be sold for only a dollar (or some ridiculously cheap price...it's been so long ago now).

Wordle Wednesday

2008-07-02T12:22:00.002-05:00

I've been introduced to a new time waster. Wordle.net. It creates word clouds from text you enter into a dialog box or from an entire website address.

Here is the word cloud from a few snippits of Scripture I've been dwelling on. The largest word, the word that appears most frequently throughout the quotes, captures the ambivalence I often struggle with.

Click on the image to see the full-sized version. And you can click here to see others I've spent minutes of my life creating.