Second Yarns

From this: 

To this:

To this: 

I’m happier with my second attempt, although obviously I still need to learn more and practice lots.  I’m already spinning my third and fourth yarns, so I’m getting the practice in.  Stay tuned for more.

Yarn Pasta

My Knitting Hero’s

My first knitting hero would have to be my Grandma H. who taught me to knit in the first place.  (Personally, I think all teachers should be called Hero’s, but that’s a subject for another day.) Grandma taught me how to cast on, knit and cast off when I was fourteen years old.  Even though there were long stretches where I didn’t knit, I kept returning to it again and again because knitting is like therapy for me.

After Grandma H. it would have to be my good friend and Make One LYS owner, Melissa.  She is the reason I am a better knitter today than I was five years ago.  And not just because she taught me some knitting techniques or gave me good advice or answered all my questions or showed me how to do stuff either. (She did do all that.)

She’s my Knitting Hero because she is kind and patient and always willing to wait until I reach the point of readiness or of “getting it” even if that takes a while.

She also is my friend and therefore entitled to tell me straight up when I’m about to commit some act of knitting stupidity.  Being able to tell someone they are about to be stupid  is a great attribute, but not one everyone gets to employ, its acquired over time and you can’t find it in a book.

Melissa knitting 

Colour Lovers

Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour.

Do the same with your finished projects – do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern?

Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

Well, I have no confusion over color, or colour, as the case may be.  I love purple.  Or any variation of purple, or reds and blues, which, make…purple!  Pictured above is a skein of yarn that features nearly all of my favorites, except the red.

This is one of my favorite purple combo of all time, and this is how it looks knitted up and worn.

see how it has bits of teal amongst the purple?

 

Dark & Stormy Cardigan

And here it is, my first goal done of Knit thru the Seasons. This is my winter project, the Dark & Stormy Cardigan http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dark-and-stormy and even though it is now April, its remains imminently wearable.

While Yarn Crawling, I hit up a few Trunk Shows and scored my buttons.  These are handmade ceramic buttons, you can find your own over here: http://www.oneofakindbuttons.com/

We’ve had snow three times in March and Mother Nature played her own April Fools Joke on us by throwing a cold and windy and stormy day at us.

How To Yarn Crawl

First you get a good friend with a super-cute kid, add a passport and hop in the car…drive like mad all over the Portland Metro Area and get your passport stamped 19 times at the19 different Yarn Shops participating in the Rose City Yarn Crawl 2012. http://www.rosecityyarncrawl.com/

Stop for coffee and food sometimes, and keep going.

Win Prizes!

Take more pix of cute kid being super cute.

Let her take a pix of you.

Free Gifties!

Buy yarn and Roving

Enter to win one of the 19 Gift Baskets! Pick up some of the Free Patterns with Purchase.

We’re on a Mission!

We still have time to be goofy!  Cindy of Urban Fiber Arts with Rachel.

Turn in you crumbled Passport after visiting all 19 shops and kiss it for Good-Luck, because you want to win one of those gorgeous gift baskets.

Come home and admire your pile of loot and collapse with exhaustion.

This is my favorite find, Little Red Bicycle Tandem Lace in Blackberry Compote, isn’t it lovely?  I’m going to make a lace weight cardigan, like this maybe: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wispy-cardi

Chocolate may be needed to recover.http://www.enchantechocolatier.com/?page_id=16

And Another One’s Done

That’s two pairs of socks I’ve knit in less than a month…another world record for me!

Plus a third pair is on the needles.

and I finally blocked and took pix of a shawl I had finished long ago…

This Ceder Leaf Shawl or Shawlette, as we call them because they are not a full-sized shawl is my second one.  This one is knitted as a shop sample for Cindy at Urban Fiber Arts, featuring one of the locally dyed yarns she sells in her Pearl District shop.

I still have at least three shawls and two cardigans to finish.  For everything I finish, there’s more still to do.  I’m sure there is some profound philosophy in there somewhere.

Oh, and check this out:

 

This is my every happy to pose for me model, I fondly call him “Gorilla Guy” he is wearing my newly finished Raven Beret…from Blue Moon Fiber Arts Raven colorways, this one is called “Rook-y”.

Now look at this pix I took after I washed it and blocked it on a plate.

Now here is a pix of the yarn itself.

You think it lost a little black…maybe???

Log Cabin Slog-Along is over

Some of you know, I’ve been knitting on this darned Log Cabin Blanket for, like, EVER.  Finally I hauled it out of the closet where its been languishing for a year and finished the thing.

So glad to have this thing done.  Although now that I look at it, I may pick up and knit on a mitered border.  Maybe.  Or Not.

Beemer Guy may not realize this, but I bought all the yarn for this from his gift card to me Christmas 2007.  So now you know it was put to good use.

Now, back to some socks and shawls. I am knitting a Haruni Shawl for a sample for a new local alpaca yarn company.  Caress Luxury Yarns from Albany uses locally sourced alpaca and she dyes the colors after the fiber comes back from wherever it goes to get turned into yarns.

I was lucky enough to get some Suri Baby Alpaca to knit with and it is Noms, or Yummy, as far as yarn goes.  Glides so smoothly thru my hands, over the needles, it practically knits itself!  Well, not really, but you know what I mean, if you’re a knitter.

Did I mention I got some fiber in exchange for knitting the Haruni shawl?  Look, pretties to spin:

Then, because of Melissa, at Make One, (my local yarn shop) I sort of started a sock knitting streak.  She started it, I say!

This is my third pair of socks I’ve started this month.  One pair are finished, the other pair 80% done and then I just had to start these.  I don’t know what’s got into me about the socks, Melissa said she needed new ones and I saw hers and I just started in.

Its an obsession, I know.  At least its an obsession that produces beautiful things…eventually.

Christmas Knits

Lately I’ve been knitting a pile of wee Christmas Ornaments, which are like candy, you can’t just make one. This  on goes towards my long term LMKG Project, knitting everything in the Last Minute Knitted Gifts books.

These wee ornaments only take a short while to knit, and if, say for instance, you’re watching a Law & Order Marathon via Netflix, pretty soon you have a pile. These simple mittens and stockings come from designer Barbara Albright, who has now left us.

One is limited only by my yarn stash and imagination.

I’ve also knit this large Jester Stocking for Chris, who claims its not big enough.  We’ll see about that when we go to stuffing it!

I also knitted up this Oak Leaf sample to see if I could do it.  I could, barely, with a bunch of help from my Cable Guru friend, who can whip out a cabled thing about as fast as I can knit wee ornaments.  This is the for the Gnarled Oak Cardigan from the lovely Coastal Knits booklet.  I’m in love with this cardigan and really want to knit if up for myself…only the cables are a bit daunting for me.

 

So instead, I’ve knitted not one, but Two…Sand and Sea Shawlettes!

And that is about all I can share here on the blog, its Christmas after all!

Fall Harvest

Here it is, October already, it was just August the other day, and now the leaves are turning pretty colors and falling off the trees and the walnuts are dropping with irregular “thuds” and the squirrels are racing up and down the fence trying to grab as many as their fat cheeks will carry.

Mom and Jack decided to become snowbirds and moved to Arizona, yesterday I stopped in at their place to check up on the state of things and managed to pick an entire bucket of tomatoes.  Would you look at these?

Insane, I know.  I will be roasting these and putting them up in the freezer for future use.

Since the price of bread is reaching up to 5 dollars per loaf, Jeff and I have been getting together on Wednesdays and baking breads, trying different recipes in a search for a good sandwich loaf.  I read up on all the different methods used to make and rise dough and decided to try mixing up the dough in my food processor when I made pizza dough last nite.  It took about 1 minute to make/mix bread up in the processor, and then, instead of bothering with a bowl, I just left it on my flour-dusted counter to rise, which it did, beautifully.  So, I will definitely be trying the food processor method next Wednesday.

My favorite part of Fall is the Hood River Apple Harvest, Fresh pressed apple cider and, well, pumpkins.  First, I made Apple Cider Pie with Gala and Jonagold apples.

after you cut, core, peel and dice the apples, you cook them a bit in the apple cider, this has the benefit of making a full pie, because it doesn’t slump down in the pie baking phase.

and then you top it with a crumb crust, its really delicious!

In addition to knitting a pumpkin, stuffing and lightly felting it, I also oven roasted one, (quartered, scooped out, placed on cookie sheet and baked at 300 degrees for an hour or more, until I could easily slide a knife in it) let it cool, scooped it out into the food processor, pureed it and baked a pumpkin cake with caramel frosting, as per Fannie Farmer.

Pumpkin Cake

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup pureed pumpkin

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven at 375 degrees, grease and flour a 9X13 pan.

Cream shortening and sugar, add eggs and mix.  Add baking powder, soda, salt and spices and mix.  Add pumpkin puree and mix, alternate milk and flour, stir until just combined, adding walnuts if you choose.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for aprox 30 minutes. Cake should spring back when you touch it.

This recipe is from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham.  One of the reasons I like Fannie Farmer is that it started out as an update of the original Boston Cooking School Cookbook. Over the years Marion has gone on to collect some of the best old-school recipes and updated them for our generation.

Caramel Frosting

In a microwave proof bowl, melt 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, add 1 cup packed brown sugar and cook on high for 1-2 minutes.  Add 1/4 cup milk and microwave another minute.  Whisk in 2 cups powdered sugar until smooth and creamy, add 1 tsp vanilla and let it set while the cake cools.  Whisk again when cake is cooled and pour over the top, spreading with a spatula.

This recipe is modified from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

Aside from Fannie Farmer, I would never do without America’s Test Kitchen’s Cookbooks and James Beard’s Cookbooks.  Those are my Go-To Cookbooks, although I have an embarrassing amount of cookbooks really.

Thunk!  I hear more walnuts hitting the ground, I’d better go get them before the squirrels beat me to it!