AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

two days and one night

It's time for holiday treat bliss.  My husband is picking up ingredients for biscotti, cuccidati (or cuccidatti... I've seen both spellings), and pate de fruit.  I'm collating recipes, cleaning the kitchen and putting the stove to work.  I'm also making a couple of sauces that can be stored in little canning jars. 

One of the recipes is from the Green and Black chocolate cookbook.  I signed up for a random giveaway from G&B a gazillion years ago when I still lived in Braintree.  I was a bit surprised when I got a cookbook in the mail and it took me awhile to remember why I had gotten it.  Sadly, I looked through it and it went onto my cookbook bookshelf¹.  I wanted to make a couple of the dishes, but there was that critical confluence of time and money and desire for chocolatey goodness that never quite came together.  The recipe I remember coming to my attention was a pear and chocolate sauce. 

This is my alternative to knitting gifts for everyone in the family.  I'm pretty bad at knitting on deadline, and I have spent a decent portion of this fall doing charity knitting, which for me is a selfish choice.  I get to pick the nicest yarns I can afford and knit things I will enjoy.  Even with an organization's requirements, there is plenty of space for a wool lovely knitter to pick a new yarn and test it with a hat or a scarf.  It's like a chance to swatch without the distraction of wondering how the entire garment will look.  It's freeing.

¹Yes, and entire 4'x3' bookshelf dedicated to cookbooks.  It's where I store my cake decorating supplies as well, so it isn't all cookbooks and cooking magazines, but it is pretty close.

a snowy new year's eve

My first finished creature from the Creepy Cute Crochet book was the skeleton bride.  I shunned the extra work of making sculpey eyes (though I have the materials to do so, and will probably make a round of eyes some otherwise empty weekend) and instead used some of the black yarn to do the eyes and body as embroidery.

So, it really is not a sperm no matter what the head with the yarn tail looks like. 

2008 is nearly at a close, and there is a birthday party/ringing in the new year tonight.  Parties mean food, so last night I got myself to work researching and prepping my first homemade ice cream cake.

Not a perfect specimen at the moment, because the cake portion is still waiting for me to finish the ice cream portion and layer them before sticking them back in the freezer.  This morning's ice cream batch (maple brandy ice cream with vanilla) was a little too runny even after churning.  I'm going to stop by the grocery store on my way home and pick up some whipping cream and fix the ice cream batch. 

If this works, I'll have a few pictures of the finished product.  I love reading the food blogs, but I am not nearly so talented a photographer to have gorgeous pictures of the process (too bad, because that is one of my favorite parts of reading them).

Happy 2009 to everybody!  See you on the other side!

yeah, footsball!

My little fantasy football team, Extra Sharp Cheddar Monkeys¹, which started out the season with a pretty hefty losing streak, has risen above itself to become the League Champs!

I'm shocked, because so many of the teams were really good this year.  If my opponent in the last game had his optimum players in the last game, I would have been overwhelmed. 

Now that the fantasy football season is over, I'll actually have to pay some attention to teams rather than just rooting for my individual players.  That's OK, because football still makes a decent background noise for knitting and announcers exist for making people like me feel smarter. 

Footsball is not the only thing that has been on my mind lately.  Now that the bulk of the holiday crafting is done (I just have Henry to work on, which is both good and bad, because I haven't been working on it), I have been finding the time to work on my crochet skills.

During the pre-crafting rush, my hubby and I were at the local Borders and picked up Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!.  The book is not really ideal for the crochet beginner, because the only real instructions are for the magic ring technique and the clean finish.  However, if you already have the basics of crochet down (single crochet, reading charts/crochet abbreviations, slip stitch, chain, and reading your crochet), then this book is a cute addition to your crafting library. 

With my group of friends, I can probably make one or more of each little toy and gift them over the next year or so.  I started off with the ninja (still unfinished), and decided that my crochet skills were rusty enough that I really needed to work with a lighter colored yarn so I could see what I was doing.  So, I pulled out a skein of the white Encore that I had for another toy, and got to work on one of the other pieces.  A few components under my belt, I decided that one of my friends (who loves bears) needed a toy and that I could actually make it for her using the basics from the book.

So, I did some online research and made my friend her very own Jewish Bear.  Now, I wasn't sure if the toy was completely recognizable, but when she opened it she immediately called it Jew Bear.  A job well done if I say so myself.

Crocheted from some brown Encore Worsted, the eyes are satin stitch from leftover Silken Straw, the nose and mouth are pearl cotton, and the yarmulke is leftover Regia Silk.  I stuffed the little bear with some basic polyfill that I bought ages ago (it's good that I'm finally getting around to using it).

When I sat the bear up initially it wouldn't stay upright.  The book describes using the pellets at the bottom to help weigh it down and then using polyfill for the rest.  Being sans pellets and having already stuffed and sewn up the creature, I took a bit of the brown yarn and crocheted a ring around the bottom of the bear to give it a sturdier base to stand on.  It works pretty well and is a quick fix.

Since then, I've finished a second creature and most of the body parts for a third (arms and ears left). 

I'm not a very skilled crocheter.  I've never made garments (other than scarves) despite the fact that I started off with crochet quite a number of years ago.  For a while I was doing some heavy dabbling in filet crochet, but even that went away.  Maybe that's why even though I am a better knitter I'm more comfortable whipping up with minimal pattern guidance something in crochet.

¹Hey, half the reason to do fantasy football is to make up funny team names. The loser league names are even more eclectic.

me, oh my, how happy am I

Saturday I finished the last pair of socks for my MIL, but I wanted to wash them in the washing machine and dry them just as the final test of quality.  So, I took both pairs of socks, turned them inside out, shoved them in my falling apart lingerie bag and ran a load of wash.  They weren't dry quickly enough to get them in the gift mailing on Saturday, but my hubby sent them out yesterday.

My MIL wanted two pairs of socks:  one red and one black and dislikes wool, so I bought two skeins of Comfort Sox in the appropriate colors.  Comfort Sox is a nicely soft yarn, but it is a bit splittier than any wool-based sock yarn I had worked with in the past.  I wanted to make sure that the socks would wash well, because I dislike including special care instructions with items.  Invariably at some point the instructions are missed or someone does the laundry who just doesn't know or understand that some things are delicate.

Happily, these came out of the wash and dry looking fine!  I was nervous, because I hadn't planned ahead enough to knit and wash a swatch in the washing machine.  I really need to plan ahead better in the future!

(See the pictures below the fold)

boston has snow

Or rather, Braintree!

  
 
 
 

Views from our windows (with more probably tomorrow).  

I love storms like this.  They start off a little slow, but then they get heavy and steady.  Our snowfall started around 1p.m. on Friday and was almost constant until about 3p.m. on Sunday when the snow turned into freezing rain. 

I spent the weekend knitting and reading (finished Monstrous Regiment and the socks for my MIL), which was really nice after the last week of the show.  Of course, I was supposed to go running on Saturday, which just wasn't going to happen.  Nothing gets shoveled or plowed quite fast enough to justify a run on the bike trail.

Christmas is in just 3 more days.  It feels like it couldn't possibly be here already! 

Thanksgiving joys

Food.  Oh, golly food.  No mashed potatoes this year.  Instead, I made twice baked potatoes.  It was also a bit of a pumpkin extravaganza.  Pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice pudding pie.  And I have more pumpkin and pie crust to go.

This morning was surprisingly enough another trip to the grocery store.  We are eating salad tonight, because we definitely ate too much yesterday. 

Yesterday wasn't all cooking.  There was my favorite TV event, the dog show.  All of the dogs are so beautiful.  Of course, a lot of my favorite dogs came in second, a very respectable showing.  There was also football and naps on the couch.  Eventually I did something other than snooze in my blanket bundle, and I pulled out one of the projects from forever ago to work on. 

Today wasn't going to be restful, or at least i didn't think it was going to be.  I needed to make sashes for the Pirates of Penzance costumes.  Easy peasy even for someone who doesn't spend much time on their sewing machine.  I'm done with them all, and I have plenty of time to go for another walk, read a book, see if the library is open, and work on my knitting.  A good day to have before the show finishes swallowing me whole.

cuteness before cooking

This was the cuteness that I came home to last night after rehearsal, so for all of the people who don't look at cuteoverload (all 2 of you) please enjoy!

I'm off to buy the last round of groceries from the store and then it is pie, cheesecake, and all of the things I don't want to work on too much tomorrow!

What is your favorite Thanksgiving treat you are making (or just eating) this year?  I think mine will be the Pumpkin Half-Moon pockets from Baking and Books.  Yeah, I just started finding the foodie blogs in the last few months.  It would have been safer if I had never done so!

counting my knitting hours

I didn't get anything I wanted to finish done over the weekend.  Not too surprising.  I am in the slog part of the rehearsal schedule, and all I wanted to do this weekend was sleep. 

What I did was work on my hat.  It's waiting for me to get home and finish up the decreases with double points, as it is getting a wee too spread out on my circular.

What I didn't do was work on the socks or on my sweater.  Heck, I stuck my backpack (aka, roaming boredom survival kit) in the closet and really didn't pull it out all weekend.  With that, I ignored the deadline knitting.  I ignored the random crochet project I started, and I just sat down with a skein of yarn and some beads. 

Now, I am working on Le Slouch, which is a reasonably fast project.  About 200 yards worth of yarn-y goodness, made into a much slower project by the introduction of beads.  I favor Grumperina's method of stringing beads, but that does make for a much slower project as you slide beads down on a relatively frequent basis.  I would be done, except no dpns.  C'est la vie.  I will be able to wear it tomorrow or Thursday if I get lucky enough to have some extra knitting time.

Otherwise, it probably won't be until Monday.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays (it's a cook's holiday), and there will be cooking Wednesday and Thursday (I started Monday morning with crack of dawn cookie fiesta).  I will be sewing sashes for Pirates on Friday, and probably helping with Light Hang on Saturday.  Put in is Sunday.  The hours at the end of a show get compressed, each one becoming correspondingly more valuable.  We are at that stage.  I will get to surface again in mid-December.

Huckleberry Ascot

The Huckleberry Ascot was from the Holiday 2007 Interweave Knits.  The yarn called for was Blue Sky Alpaca's Melange, which Windsor Button had recently started stocking.  Melange was a dream to work with (I will probably want to do another project in their yarns - maybe the Alpaca & Silk or their regular sport weight alpaca), soft and non-splitty.  The color is slightly heathered and just enough purple to make the recipient happy.

The project is a good practice in short rows, bobbles and picking up stitches making it a good choice for an adventuresome beginner.  Because the base of the project is garter stitch, you can concentrate on the techniques involved without worrying about the differences in stitch tension. 

I bought 3 skeins to work this project (the pattern called for two, but paranoia suggests that I should buy an extra skein and keep the receipt).  I used just under the two full skeins.  Now I just need to decide if I'm going to make something else with the other skein of yarn or if I'm going to return it for store credit.  The yarn is nice enough to want to keep the extra skein for myself and the weight of the yarn is light enough to make it a good choice for projects like Fetching.  Of course, before I make another pair of Fetchings I should finish the first pair I started last year.  Maybe I'll get that done before the new year.  They still only need the proto-thumbs after all.

a gift for my husband

I normally refer to my really old unfinished projects as "shame" projects, and I've been trying to finish at least one a month (usually I limit it to one even if it was a really easy finish).  Last year I started and nearly finish a bag for my hubby.  It was going to be a prototype in my geeky craft store.  I loved the idea, but the bag needed a lining and a closure (and some ends woven in).  I am not a big sewing fan, though I like handsewing more than I enjoy sewing by machine most of the time.

The monster, a beholder, wasn't hard to make.  I made the mouth opening out of a picot bindoff, picked up and knit the tongue, and used bobbles as a bit of a surface for the eyestalks.  I did a lot of waste yarn in the body of the monster and went back later to pick up stitches to knit the graduated icord.  I probably should have stuffed a couple of the bigger icords to give them more roundness.

I used a large piece (though less than a half yard) of gauze to line the body and black snaps to close the mouth.

There are a lot of things I would do differently if I made another one, including making sure that the mouth opening was at least 6 inches to 7 inches around.  This mouth is a little too small to allow easy access to the contents.  Beholders normally have big mouths!