AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Tuesday!

It has been a dog's age since I last did a 10 for Tuesday. Somewhere along the line I got so busy that I didn't notice when I stopped receiving the emails.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the first one back is 10 books on my summer reading list. I just got a Kobo almost two weeks ago (yeah birthday!), and I'll admit that it has mostly been a vehicle for reading the most mind numbing drivel and brain candy possible. Though in a fit of frustration when one of my books didn't load (completely my fault for not wanting to read the instructions), I did read some classic Japanese fairy tales.

1. Silly vampire lit. Think teen and tween lit that is not Twilight, though I might read it on the ereader, but only if I can borrow it from the library. I'm so far enjoying my silly vampire lit via library-sourced ebooks. It's affordable and allows me to dabble in a new author before taking the plunge. I've already read the first P.C. Cast book on my laptop and it was fairly engaging and left me willing to part with a few hard earned dinari and rocks for a bit more.

2. Things Chris recommends. She has a wide and voracious reading habit, and tends to find a lot of free or discounted ebooks. I'm trying to see what the thrift factor of an ereader is/can be, and to that end I'm only buying books that are marked at high discount, are free, or can be purchased with gift certificates.

3. I will probably buy all of the Tamora Pierce books available for the ereader over the next six months or so, and then I will read them all. Even though that is way more than 24 books I expect it will only take me a couple of weeks if I don't have to worry about carrying one or two of them at a time. Sadly, unlike some popular romance/mystery/thriller authors, there is no option to buy boxed 'ebook' sets of the Tamora Pierce books.

4. I am planning to get the Pioneer Woman cookbook for the ereader. It will be an experiment in whether or not I get suitable levels of functionality from an ereader cookbook or if I should just chuck the cookbook idea in favor of the Internet. I already do a hefty amount of cooking via moving my laptop onto the bookshelf in the kitchen and reading the recipe off of it.

I'd have more items that than, but really the books that Chris recommends alone is a few dozen a week. I don't read that fast or constantly, having never learned to either read in my sleep or while I am rehearsing.

chronic overscheduling

You know it is bad when you need to schedule in sleep, and while I'm not quite there maybe I'd be a saner individual if I had already succumbed to that level.

Lately my life (outside of work) has been segmented into three main pieces: walking Victor, rehearsing (which also includes going to set builds and the like), and wrestling with technology. I know I've done more than that, but those are the only things I've really remembered funnily enough.

I finally found the time to put my new copy of Sweeney Todd on my iPod only to find that my little piece of technology insisted on putting all of the songs in order by their artist even in album view. Gah! So, I've been kicking my little iPod all over the proverbial landscape of updates and syncing. I'm hoping that the update/syncing that I left running this morning does the trick, and that Victor didn't get bored and decide that iPods could be food too. We'll see after I get home from the grocery store.

In other news, I got the Kobo for my birthday and have been reading up a storm without feeling like I'm carrying 2 million pounds of books. Now, I'll admit that the first thing I read was complete and utter drivel with more sex scenes than plot, but since then I've read a couple of really sweet books. I've also been enjoying the ability to multitask with my simple knitting (umm, stockinette without shaping for the moment) that being virtually hands free allows me.

This isn't to say that there are not issues with the Kobo. For example, I left it on today and it wasn't responding when I tried to do a little bit of reading over lunch. I figured I would add it to my tech wrestling pile for tonight and hopefully go back to enjoying my book by dinner.

I'm working on the Whisper Cardigan in the new Brown Sheep lace weight. It's simple, which is a good fit for the commute and breaks during rehearsals. As much as I love more complex knits, I know that something this simple and versatile will get used a lot more often than the top with the fancy colorwork and so I am plugging away at it. I'm about halfway done the back, and will hopefully be done the second sleeve by week's end and onto what at least one person on Ravelry called the never ending ribbing!

last tuesday

I signed up for the Loopy Ewe mini challenge last month, purchasing a few skeins of sock yarn I had been eyeing for a while to make a sweater.

Normally I have a problem focusing on a project. I'm one of those knitters who has 20 items in progress on her ravelry page, and quite likely a half dozen more that haven't made it into the list. For me to consistently finish things I need to monofocus. Stick to it, and not let another project or a deadline (usually for another project) get into the way.

When the three skeins of yarn showed up I was thrilled. It was also my Loopy Groupy order, so it was both an order and a present all in one. I was determined that I would finish this project, and only worked on this and a single pair of socks for nearly a month.

Last Tuesday, I wove in the ends before rehearsal. Wednesday morning I blocked the sweater in my tornado of a craft room (really, I decided to clean it up, and now it is in that worse than when I started stage).

And today, I finally wore it.

 
I love it. It is sparkly and red and comfortable. It isn't too tight and unlike a fair number of sweaters it isn't too short either. I don't feel this constant urge to pull it down and tug, tug, tug.

Details (theoretically will go on Ravelry):

Pattern: Drops top with shirred pattern on yoke
Yarn: 2 skeins Dream in Color Smooshy in Poma-grenade, 1 skein Dream in Color Starry in Poma-grenade

Modifications:
I hate casting on a huge number of stitches and then joining only to realize I've twisted them. Instead, I cast on 1/2 the required stitches plus one and knit the rows of garter stitch and then did the same thing for the other side. I then joined the two sides by knitting the extra stitches away in the first stockinette row. It creates two tiny slits on each side and if I was doing a similar top in the future I would do it again only with a deeper slit.

I have about a 1/4 ball of the starry left and 1/2 a ball of smooshy. If they mass out enough on the digital scale, I will probably make a pair of socks with the leftovers.

See, I do finish things (other than picot hems on socks)!

welcome to 35

Saturday was one of those busy days when you kind of wish that you could drop something and relax. Unfortunately, the one thing it made sense to drop was the one thing I refused to let go of.

Saturday was my birthday, the first day of World Wide Knit in Public (day - though it is going for at least a week), a game session and doggie training. I got up, sent my hubby to the grocery store, and proceeded to work on making ice cream. I kind of dithered all morning working on this and that and then 9:40 rolled around and I walked to Knit in Public day on Wollaston Beach. It was a really good time, though I was starting a new sweater (Whisper from IK Spring 2009). I got myself a birthday cupcake from Babycakes (gosh, this is a theme given that I worked on ice cream, had a donut and a cupcake).

After I got back from that, much earlier than expected due to a great lady who gave me a ride home (Thank you again!) I went to doggie training.

Then I got home and made cake.

I love to bake, so the idea of baking my own birthday cake is a requirement. How else will I make sure I get what I want?

I made this caramel cake from Smitten Kitchen.

I doubled the cake recipe, so I could make 2 9-inch rounds.

I made the caramel, which became an exercise in is my candy thermometer working. I swapped it out for the meat thermometer, which definitely proved that I was over the minimum temperature for the caramel sauce.

Heck, I followed the recipe almost word for word.

What I did differently:

I used the caramel sauce between the layers of cake rather than as a frosting. Before doing that, I made a butter cream frosting (1/4 c shortening, 1 stick butter, about 2 cups or more powdered sugar - till consistency is achieved). To the butter cream frosting I added 2 tablespoons of the caramel sauce and 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt. The hint of salt gave the finished cake a much more rounded flavor, rather than just tasting sweet.

Of course, my friends also provided cake, so there was an amazing amount of cake available! Yum!

getting it done

I have today off from work, which so far has been a mixed blessing. I'm getting to cook and knit and drink coffee, which are three of my favorite activities. However, I'm getting extra dog walking, and dog cleaning up after (he has discovered that the kitchen is a fun place, and now the big baby gate is back up to keep him out of fun land while I reorganize the kitchen to keep fun things away, away, away). 

Right now I'm working on a batch of ice cream, which if I make the custard mixture tonight should allow me to churn the batch tomorrow. I really do love ice cream. One of my friends goes to an ice cream con each year. I'm thinking that we will need to save our pennies to go next year, because I love the ice cream too much to not make a good faith attempt at tastiness! Between that and wanting to save up for Squam and Rhinebeck, I think I have all of the travel I could ever want for next year!

Outside of cooking, I am also trying to be a more consistent crafter. I will work on something for weeks and then I'll set it aside for something different, something fun or more exciting or whatever, and then the project lies there. I might still want it, but it is now fallow and it is hard to get back to it then. My Olympics sweater is like that. I stopped working on it, and probably won't go back to it until August!

I finished my mini challenge sweater with the Loopy Ewe on Tuesday and blocked it Wednesday. It is dry, but I probably won't take finished photos until I wear it to work next week (I did try it on before weaving the ends in and blocking over a t-shirt styled shirt, so I know it fits and is long enough). After I finished my mini-challenge sweater I moved onto the UFO pile.

What am I working on now? I have restarted the dress that my husband kitted for me for Christmas 2007. Thank goodness for Ravelry, making it easier to figure out not so much where I started but what issue of Vogue Knitting the dress was in. Super slow going, because the lace pattern is really wide. I've restarted this on the sleeves to both get them out of the way and to get back into the swing of things.

I also went back to my Pomatomus socks, which I started in September 2008. I finished the first sock yesterday and immediately cast on for the second one during my commute home. Go second sock, Go! I'm hoping to get reasonably far along with this over the weekend, but these are also complicated enough that I don't want to knit these when hanging out with friends. Of course, that means starting a new project (in lieu of finding another old project that is in the simple category). Windsor Button just got in some of the Brown Sheep lace weight. It's only a little more expensive than buying 2 skeins of the Classic Elite Silky Alpaca lace, but for that price you get a monster 170 gram skein with 1500 yards. In the skein (and the cake once it was wound), it feels wonderfully squishy and soft. It is enough yarn to make 2 copies of Whisper if you are small enough, or one Whisper and a lace scarf or shawlette. I'm looking forward to starting that sometime today, so I can knit it when hanging out with friends tonight, at Knit in Public day tomorrow and other fun social events that would make knitting pretty problematic. Horray!

the farmer's market

Yesterday after work was my first trip to the farmer's market at South Station. Like last year I gravitated to the bread (When Pigs Fly) and the fruit and vegetables (Kimballs Fruit Farm). I was looking for zucchini with the expectation that I was a bit early for that and left with a loaf of curry pumpkin bread and a quart of beautiful tiny strawberries.

Last night I took the strawberries a whack of sugar and some balsamic vinegar and made frozen yogurt. I don't normally make most fruit flavors for ice cream or frozen yogurt, because I find the ice cold berries a bit hard on my teeth. The initial assessment of the ice cream was pretty tasty, but I'm not sure if the balsamic vinegar note shows up. We, of course, were testing the batch by licking the dasher and eating the bowl scrapings after I had put all of the frozen yogurt into a tupperware in the freezer.

I think Saturday morning I will make the mix for my next ice cream, which is probably going to be root beer flavor. I plan on steeping the different herbs found in natural and homemade root beer in hot milk and sugar, then following the custard method for making the ice cream. I'm not sure how much of the herbs I should use, because when the mixture gets cold a lot of the flavor is lost to the taste buds. But even if I have a bit of a miss on the mix, it should still be delicious!

My sweater is still going pretty well. I keep doing the row count of how much I have left and I am at 28 rows in the yoke. Of course, I'm a little off on row gauge, so I might fudge in an extra row or two (I already did in the previous section, because I wanted it to match the first rows I did in the yoke better) just to get a bit of extra length. 28 rows is very doable over the weekend, especially if it rains enough over the weekend that I forgo going out a lot each day.

swing your razor high!

I've been knitting up a storm lately. I finished a pair of socks, and am nearly done with a sweater. The Loopy Ewe mini-challenge is to knit a short sleeved or sleeveless sweater by July 1st.

I'm about 50 rows from the end. Huge rows. The yoke of the sweater I'm working on has these shirred rows. The current shirred row is more than 400 stitches. They take a fair amount of time.

Thankfully, i have plenty of time to work on this sweater. I auditioned last week for Sweeney Todd, and made it into the ensemble. There are huge gaps between when the ensemble sings, so I have time during the rehearsals to knit. Well, that and I don't have another rehearsal until next week.

Yippee!

2:38:43

Sunday's race wasn't the worst finish I have had. I was slower in 2008 (the 2009 results on Active.com are still showing only the 5 mile race - how anyone could see the half marathon finishers with top times of under 30 minutes and think it was correct...), but not by much. This spring hasn't been my best training experience, and I made a couple of mistakes that resulted in sub-par results.

Mistake 1: I hate running in shorts. Yet there I was on race day in shorts instead of making sure on Saturday that I had the clothing I wanted to race in. I have never used Body Glide, so running in shorts means chafing. To minimize chafing that meant a lot of running.

Mistake 2: Poor shoe choice. I haven't gotten used to the Vibrams and had bought a new pair of Mizunos the week before the race. Because I hadn't broken in the Mizunos I wore my gorilla shoes. I had a blood blister on the bottom of one of my toes that had just finished healing, but at the end of the race I had two blisters, one on each toe, despite walking a large portion of the race.

The real problem with the Vibrams, at least for me, is that they make all of the small muscles around my ankles and calves ache. It wasn't a huge problem in the race, but it makes recovering after training runs a bit more challenging. Flexing my foot is hard on the day or two after a Vibrams run!

I consider my result pretty good for having walk-jogged from about mile 4 on, but I'm hoping for better training over the summer. The Applefest is a much hillier half marathon, and I would like to better my time from last year.

(Oh, and I'm up, because I didn't want Victor to freak out at the very loud thunderstorm. Gah, it sounded like it was right on top of us, and was only worse from the living room with the skylight.)