'Tis the season

My SP9 hostess, Shelby, just posted this Christmas meme in her blog.

(Wait a minute--it's almost Christmas already?)

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?

Um, does egg nog have chocolate in it? Didn't think so. So it's hot chocolate, hands down.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just leave them under the tree?

There's no lazy Santa around here. Santa wraps everything or else no one's leaving cookies out for him!

3. Colored lights or white lights on the tree/house?

I don't trust myself to use colored lights tastefully without turning my home into a baroque masterpiece that looks like it should be in a Liberace theme park. I play it safe and stick to just white lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?

I never have. Where do people find that stuff, anyway?

5. When do you put up your decorations?

Usually the first weekend of December or thereabouts. That gives us time to recover from Thanksgiving and still be able to enjoy the decorations for several weeks.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?

(You mean there are holiday dishes other than dessert? Are you making that up?)

Tofurky with extra tofurky gravy. ("Extra"? Who am I kidding--my ideal is to have a whole trough of the stuff on the side!)

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?

Santa Claus and one of his "assistants" visited my house in mid-December to ask my little brother and me what we wanted for Christmas. When I asked him about the Volkswagen Beetle parked in front of the house, he said that the reindeer were resting up for Christmas. I was in first grade at the time, so of course I totally believed him.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?

No way! That's just wrong.

10. What kind of decorations are on your Christmas tree?

We have a few hand-me-down ornaments (mostly stuff that Jan grew up with), a few "filler" pieces (ornament balls from IKEA), and lots of stuff that we've gotten together. We make it a point to buy a couple of new ornaments every year (usually from a place like Ten Thousand Villages). And whenever we travel, we always get a souvenir ornament.

11. Snow: love it or dread it?

Love it!

12. Can you ice skate?

Is "without falling down" implied in that question? If not, then the answer is yes.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

Not really. I'm always happy with the gifts I receive every year, but I rarely remember them. What really sticks in my mind is the whole Christmas-y ambiance: family, friends, lights, food, music.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you?

Pausing to reflect about the past and the future. Thinking about where I've been over the year and where I'm going next year.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?

Pretty much anything with sugar and fat in it. If pressed to name something that's made at this time of year, I'd say that I'm quite fond of a good buche de Noel.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Enjoying the homemade cinnamon buns (Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipe, natch!) that Jan makes on Christmas morning.

17. What tops your tree?

Nothing.

18. What is your favorite holiday book?

I don't really have one. But my favorite Christmas movie is Miracle on 34th Street--the original, black-and-white version, of course.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?

"Sleigh Ride"

20. Candy canes?

Only the red-and-white ones. And only in moderation.

You know the holidays are upon us when...

...you figure out what your elf name is.

Your Elf Name Is...

Grumpy Candy Cane Lips

What's Your Elf Name?

Moebius, part 3

One thing I forgot to mention earlier about my Moebius scarf is that the cast-on strip (it's not really an edge, 'cause it's right smack in the middle) is wider than the other rows in the scarf. I don't like how this looks--it wrecks the continuity of the scarf. My friend Beth is also knitting a Moebius scarf (using the same yarn, in fact), and she, too, has this loose row in the middle. Is this inevitable with these scarves? Or is there some way to avoid it?

May the Force be with you

A few months ago, a pattern for a knitted Princess Leia wig hat hit the bigtime in blogland. Everyone was talking about it, but I didn't think everyone was knitting it. Sure, it's a cool pattern. But really, what are you going to do with something like this once Halloween is over and the sf convention season has ended?

Apparently, several people decided to take on the challenge anyway. There's a Flickr photoset devoted to these knitted concoctions. All the people who are wearing them look like they're having a blast. Hmmm...I wonder if I have any dark brown chunky yarn in my stash...

Moebius, part 2

One week after I cast on, I finished my Moebius scarf. I used about two and one-third balls of Andean Silk (from KnitPicks) in cinnamon color, and I ended up with...well, not quite what I expected. I had carefully knit a gauge swatch and cast on what everyone said was the correct number of stitches to yield a "short" Moebius scarf. (I wanted something that wouldn't be double-looped over my head.) As I knit, I couldn't really tell how long this thing was because everything is all folded over and scrunched up (as you can see in the previous post). As I bound off the scarf, I was surprised to discover how long it ended up--this is definitely a double-looper! (Sylvia wears it as a double-looper, but prefers the loop-up-top-and-a-loop-behind-the-butt style that's all the rage these days. What do you mean it isn't? Well it should be.)

I'm not sure if I like how this turned out, but I'm not going to frog it--certainly not while Sylvia is enjoying it so much. I'm going to try another one, I think, but using much larger needles and an airier yarn.

There are some amazing Moebius scarves out there (take a look at the tons of photos at Flickr, for example). Here's one great site that explains both the knitting and the math.

Moebius, part 1

A week before Thanksgiving, my local knitting group had its monthly non-coffee-shop meeting, and two members showed everyone how to knit a Moebius scarf. This particular version (basted on Cat Bordhi's technique) results in something that looks like a knitted Moebius strip. That is, you end up with a piece of knitting that has no seam, a funky little twist, and only one side. I've checked out Bordhi's book on this from the library before, but could not understand how to do the freakily bizarre cast-on.

Apparently, I just needed someone to show it to me in person, because after a brief demonstration I had found my cast-on rhythm. (It reminded me a lot of the fly-fishing casting rhythm Norman Maclean describes in his memoir A River Runs Through It, which was a decent film but a much much better written work.) I was off and running, but the next day I hit a snag: my knitting kept bunching up to the point that I was practically wrestling with it just to knit the next stitch. I sent out a "Help me!" e-mail to the local knitters, one of whom suggested I tug on the cable (at opposite ends of a loop) to stretch it out. That helped a lot, but it was something I kept having to do every few minutes--definitely a rhythm-breaker.

I suspected that the Denise needles I was using were the problem. I adore these needles, but in this case I was using a size 6 needle, which isn't much thicker than the cable. Consequently, the loops weren't large enough to slide around easily.

(Bordhi has excerpts from Magical Knitting on her website, and I just spotted this part: "Your knitting will be a little slower with the Denise needles because the cable is thicker, and you will have to frequently push your stitches around the long path they follow." Aha! I was right!)

So how did it turn out? Read on...

If only I'd known...

The end of November is nearing, and I find myself almost fulfilling the requirements of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). That is, I've posted something every day so far. I didn't start the month intending to do this, but over the last three and a half weeks I've had a lot to say and, well, here I am.

I started this blog nearly fifteen months ago because I thought it would be a good place to keep notes and photos of my completed knitting projects. It ended up growing into something bigger (though knitting remains a focus). If I'd read this back then, would I have forged ahead with telling the whole world about my pointy-toed Christmas stockings and adventures in intarsia?

Probably. This is just way too much fun.

Recycle!

I do not own an iPod. But I'm half-tempted to get one, just so I can knit this cute little case for it. (Does anyone else see the irony in using cassette-tape ribbon to make a case for an MP3 player?)

I have a ton of cassette tapes. Oodles. I still play a lot of them, too, because my nearly-fourteen-year-old car has a tape deck in it. (No CDs for me when I'm on the road! It's mix tapes all the way, baby!) But there are several tapes in my collection that I know I will never play again--several that make me cringe with "good grief, what was I thinking when I got that?" whenever I encounter them. There's no longer a market for used cassettes, so I was thinking that one day I'd end up throwing these out. But now, after seeing that little iPod case, I'm inspired to knit those unloved cassette-tape ribbons into something fun. Definitely not a garment (too itchy!), but maybe a tote bag. Hmmmm.

Merci beaucoup

Today millions of Americans are spending the day with relatives, eating far too much food, and preparing for the upcoming holiday season (though if the appearance of holiday-themed stuff in stores is any indication, the holiday season actually started about three months ago...).

My family is no exception. First we drove three and a half hours to my mother-in-law's house to pick her up, then we drove another hour and a half to her brother's house. Yes, it was a lot of driving, but the good company and the good eats made it all worthwhile. Plus, I wove in the last ends on my latest project--my first moebius scarf! (more on that later)--en route, so that was a nice bonus to the day for me.

I brought along yarn for a new project (a kimino-style sweater for Sylvia in Green Mountain Spinnery's Cotton Comfort) but forgot to bring a toilet-paper roll. D'oh! So I ended up winding one skein by hand before dinner. The yarn is fine enough that the ball is pretty compact and seems tight, though, so I'm optimistic that it will hold together.

Winding up for the holiday

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA. (Canadians celebrated their Thanksgiving a month and a half ago--a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you!) For many Americans, this means spending time with family and eating so much food that you feel uncomfortable. (This is the time of year when one of my personal mottos--"There's always room for dessert!"--is severely tested.)

I'll be heading out of town myself for a bit. My trip preparations include packing clothes, toiletries, and--of course--yarn. It's a tricky thing, deciding on which knitting project to take on a trip. On the one hand, you don't want to take so much that you're lugging around far too much fiber. On the other hand, you don't want to take so little that you actually (gasp!) finish your project and have nothing to do. (On the other hand, though, this might actually lead to an exciting opportunity for on-the-road stash enhancement...)

So I'm mulling over which of a couple of projects I want to start on this trip. All of the yarn I'm considering using (and already have) is in skein form, which means I'll have to wind it in balls. I don't own a swift or winder, so I wind my yarn by hand, using the technique Debbie Stoller presents in Stitch 'N Bitch (i.e., put your fingers in a "pretend gun" pose and wrap the yarn around your thumb and forefinger while holding the tail against your palm with the other three fingers). For the most part, it's worked pretty well for me, though it never achieves the uniform shape and tightness I'd like. I invariably have to rewind the ball a few times as I work my way through it because if I don't it loses its structural integrity, collapses, and turns into a very annoying tangle.

I just came across this Flickr page that describes--both with photos and text--how to use the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper to wind a center-pull ball of yarn. The part about rotating the tube to get a nice criss-cross pattern (thus avoiding lopsided balls of yarn) is particularly helpful. I think I'll be giving this technique a try this weekend!

(So how do all you ball-and-swift-less knitters out there wind your skeins into center-pull balls?)

A must-learn technique?

Has anyone out there tried knitting with two circular needles?

I first heard of this about two years ago, when a coworker and I were knitting away during our lunch break. She was working on a hat in the round and was decreasing at the top. The hat was too small for the circular needles she was using, and she mentioned that she had heard something about using two circular needles instead of four or five double-pointed needles. Her explanation of this was very unclear (I am pretty sure she didn't really know what she was talking about), so I figured she had just imagined the whole thing after being exposed to strong paint fumes or something.

So I was pretty surprised a while later to learn that, yes, this is a real technique! Now I have nothing against double-pointed needles...wait, yes, I do. I mean, I like using them, but I always have trouble at the joins and end up with loose stitches and gaps. I wonder if using two circulars would solve that problem for me?

Book review: Truth in advertising

Like many knitters I know, I have often fallen victim to the "oh, it's on sale and it's such nice yarn and I can't leave it in the bargain bin all alone" and the "I'll get one skein just so I can try it" syndromes of stash-enhancement rationalization. Fortunately, I mostly recovered from that when I stopped working within walking distance of a local yarn shop (two different ones, actually). What do you do with those single skeins and balls of yarn? There are only so many baby hats and striped sweaters you can make before you realize you need to do something else before your ears start to bleed.

I am always on the lookout for the "miracle book" by a knitter who has figured out how to transcend the boundaries of the space-time continuum and designed fabulous patterns that use only one skein of yarn. I'd love to be able to knit an entire adult-sized sweater, for example, out of one skein of Colinette Point Five, an incredible yarn that I have only admired from afar because it costs something like $16-20 per skein and who in the world can afford to buy ten skeins of the stuff just to make one sweater?

When I first heard of Leigh Radford's One Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit and Crochet, I thought I had found my miracle book. Like Mason-Dixon Knitting, this book has spawned a cult following and countless knitalongs. Everyone's raving about it! So of course I had to check it out.

First off, the title of this book is not entirely accurate: many projects do require only one skein of yarn, but one requires a whole cone (which is really more like several skeins), and a few require single skeins of several different yarns or colors. The Labyrinth Circle Rug is beautiful but needs 23 different yarns. Excuse me, but in what universe does this meet the definition of "one skein"? The Kid's Color-Block Cardigan, too, stretches the definition of "one": this pattern uses 4 or 5 different colors.

In other words, Radford is a big ol' cheater.

Once I got over my annoyance, however, I had to admit that there are some fine patterns in this book. The miniature knit cupcakes just don't do anything for me (what is the deal with knitted food these days? I don't get it...), but I ended up with six post-its (including one for that cardigan), so this book goes on my list.

I have arrived

This blog just received its first spam: a comment to yesterday's post. I deleted it right away, natch. It's annoying that my previously spam-free zone has been tainted...yet there's a tiny part of me that wonders if I'm on the verge of rampant fame now.

Nah.

Um, can anyone explain this to me?

Several years ago, a friend and I were discussing the definition of "art." He's a high-school art teacher who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, so he's certainly got more credentials on this subject that I do. At the time, the Art Guys were in the headlines (though they seem to have disappeared since then...), and he spent a good half hour trying to convince me that two guys wearing business suits emblazoned with the logos of paid corporate sponsors were actually making art.

I'm willing to be pretty flexible about the definition of art. Can I define it? Not precisely. But (like Pierre Bourdieu) I acknowledge that it's a form of expression with an important place in a democratic society.

So, being very generous in answering the "Is this art?" question, I'm left with the "Is this good art question?" And I do think it's possible--and important--to make a distinction here. "Good art" isn't synonymous with "art that I like"; there's a lot of stuff out there that I dislike but still think is good. Good art, I think, has to do or say something that makes us pause and reflect and maybe look at something in a different way.

A few weeks ago, I came across this piece. Is it art? Sure. But is it good art? I just can't see it.

Bad influence

My friend Gina has blogged about her neverending stash enhancement. I was feeling pretty good about my big plastic storage box half full of yarn until I saw Gina's stash...which takes up pretty much an entire room. I swear I am not making this up. I am but a mere peon next to the Queen of Yarn Acquisition.

Fortunately for her, she's very good at scoping out good deals on yarn, especially on eBay. It's gotten to the point now that if I am looking for a particular yarn, I just ask Gina to tell me where to buy it online. She always finds the best prices--and usually manages to find free shipping, too.

So you can imagine my annoyance this morning when I read her latest e-mail to our local knitting group. Not only does she say that she found an eBay store that sells Rowan Kidsilk Haze (a yarn we were all drooling over at last night's knit-together) for a measly $11/ball, but she also mentions that the vendor--who is located in the UK--offers free shipping. I visited the website, and as I clicked through several of the links I found myself growing increasingly peeved at Gina because I kept finding more and more yarn I wanted to get.

Gina, you are a very, very bad person.

(Um, let me know the next time you want to get something from KnitPicks so we can combine our orders and get the free shipping, okay?)

I need an intervention

I just stumbled upon the website for Earth Friendly Yarns, whose banner declares that they "offer a great array of organic, vegan, recycled, fair-traded and related products for knitting and crochet." Just as I was starting to get annoyed at the lack of a serial comma in that sentence, my inner-hippie alarm went off.

Earth friendly? Fair-traded? Recycled?

The stuff on this site was made for me, I'm sure. They have hemp! And yarn made from seaweed! And aloo (which is made from the fiber of the nettle plant and surely has great texture for washcloths) and soy and corn and stuff made from banana trees

(Must not buy more yarn...must not buy more yarn...must not buy more yarn...)

It's 15 November...

Have you written to your Secret Pal yet?

Book review: UninterestingKnits

I'm not sure how I feel about Jil Eaton.

On the one hand, I think that many of her patterns are adorable.

On the other hand, I really can't stand her use of "MinnowKnits" and "QuickKnits" and "SuperQuick." Writing those words closed with a capital letter in the middle just grates on me for some reason.

Her questionable editorial choices aside, she does have a unique way with yarn. I think she's best at designs for children, which almost always use medium- or heavyweight yarns. (In this way I find she complements Debbie Bliss, who prefers teeny-weeny yarns for her children's designs. Not that one yarn weight is better than the other, but it's good to have options.)

This is very evident in Simple Chic: Designer Knits, SuperQuick!. Aside from the clog socks that are knit with Lamb's Pride Bulky (one of my favorite yarns), I found only the kids' stuff appealing in here. Here is where I found "Tree Topper," the Christmas-tree-shaped hat I am making for Sylvia.

I put only four post-its in this book. I just didn't find a whole lot in here to inspire me. Once Sylvia's hat is finished, I don't think I'll be looking at this book again. So it is not going on my list.

once this hat is done, dont' really need book--won't buy

Book review: Hat's off!

I first saw Hip Knit Hats: 40 Fabulous Designs, by Cathy Carron, at a meeting of my local knitting group last April. One woman brought it to show everyone, and during the evening it was passed around. I had flipped through it for all of three seconds before I knew that this book was a must-have for my knitting library. After I wiped my drool off the cover and handed the book back to its owner, I didn't think about it much until recently, though (really--who gives a lot of thought to knitting hats during the summer, right?), when I spied it at my local library. So I brought it home to take another look and make sure that it is as good as I remembered it was.

This book was everything I remember--and more. I didn't even bother putting post-its on here, 'cause I know I will be getting this book soon.

For anyone who says, "I can't wear hats! I look terrible in there!" there is a very useful discussion at the beginning of different face shapes (round, oval, etc.), with hat suggestions for each type. I was also glad to see minimal basic knitting instructions at beginning. (One pet peeve of mine is when pattern books have dozens of pages of basic instructions. Leave that stuff to the beginngers' books and reference books!) Another handy feature is a chart describing how to combine different weights of yarns to get the weight you want. Want to use up some stash yarn, anyone?

There are lots of different types of hats in here: caps, berets, buckets, and more. There is sure to be a hat (or two or three...) for everyone. I am eager to try my hand at several of these patterns. With luck, I'll have them ready for next winter...

N.B. If you get this book, check with the publisher (or in online forums for knitters) about errata. A previous borrower of this book printed out (on a computer) corrections and very carefully taped them in place over what I'm guessing are incorrect directions. There were a number of these "corrections" in place when I looked through the book. I don't know if they are accurate or not, because I didn't try any of those patterns.

King of the Internet

Is David Hasselhoff a good actor? Of course not. Is he a good singer? Good grief, no. But does he have a good sense of humor about himself? You bet.

But he still can't hold a candle to William Shatner. He's the perfect marriage of cheesiness and self-deprecation.

Book review: These books hurt my brain

I recently got my hands on two books whose titles alone have been tantalizing me since I first heard of them several months ago: Inspired Cable Knits: 20 Creative Designs for Making Sweaters and Accessories, by Fiona Ellis, and Knitting Nature: 39 Designs Inspired by Patterns in Nature, by Norah Gaughan.

Both of these books are beautifully photographed and laid out. Both of them have amazing-looking projects in them. And both of them hurt my brain. Why? Because the projects are mind-bogglingly difficult!

Let me clarify. See, after I completed my first cable project a few months ago, I decided that cables were a piece of cake. My next cable project, I decided, would be more challenging than a scarf. So when I borrowed Ellis's Inspired Cable Knits from the library, I thought for sure I'd find my next cable project among the twenty patterns in there--a stylish sweater, perhaps. Never mind the fact that the publisher describes it as for "intermediate or returning knitters."

Let's just say that looking through this book was the equivalent of a knitting smackdown. I think "advanced" might be a more accurate description of the patterns, because nearly all of them looked pretty difficult! The patterns are organized along four themes: change, nature, energy, and time. Ellis advocates a "mindful" approach to knitting (which reminds me quite a bit of Sally Melville's Knitting Experience series)--a change from the usual "let's cut to the chase and get to the patterns" approach most books use. I may return to this book at some later time, when I'm feeling more confident in my knitting ability and patient enough to work through some of these patterns (which almost all use smallish needles and nonbulky yarns). For now, though, I don't need to add this to my library.

Gaughan's Knitting Nature was also disappointing, but in a different want. Going by the title alone, I was expected patterns that evoked plants and landscape and animals--not patterns that draw on the geometry of nature. This isn't a criticism of Gaughan, though, because geometry is an aspect of nature--just not the one I was looking for here. Fractals and pentagons are cool, but I don't think I want to wear there. Most of the patterns were intriguing, but none of them struck me as anything I'd want to knit (either to wear myself or to give away). I'll pass on this one, too. (Caveat emptor: Apparently, this book is riddled with errors. Corrections are available here and there from individuals, but the publisher has yet to make an errata list available.)

Knitting men

No, I don't mean knitting objects that look like men. I mean men who knit!

There's a new DVD out called Real Men Knit. I'm not keen on the title, which seems needlessly polarizing and defensive. ("Yeah, I knit! So I'm a real man. What, you don't knit? Wimp.") The descriptions I've read say that the DVD also has a "take back the knit" (that's a quote from the DVD) angle, saying that it was men who invented knitting. That is true (and in many cultures, men remain the main knitters), but why inject gender debates into this? Why not just say, "Although most people assume knitters are all women, there are lots of men who knit (such as this fellow), too?" and talk about how to get more men interested in this.

Telling short tales

The current issue of Wired has a piece inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote a six-word short story ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn."--very poignant) and supposedly said it was his best work ever. Wired asked a bunch of writers in speculative fiction (fantasy, sf, horror) to pen their own contributions.

My favorites:

• Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket. -- William Shatner (Shatner is cool)
• Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time -- Alan Moore (clever!)
• Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses. -- Richard Powers
• Epitaph: He shouldn't have fed it. -- Brian Herbert
• Bush told the truth. Hell froze. -- William Gibson
• Leia: "Baby's yours." Luke: "Bad news…" -- Steven Meretzky
• Dorothy: "Fuck it, I'll stay here." -- Steven Meretzky

My contribution: "Didn't ask Martin, Pullman, and Fforde?" (I'm curious to know what George R. R. Martin, Philip Pullman, and Jasper Fforde would've written.)

Where's Waldo?

The San Francisco area has a lot going for it: nice climate, near both water and mountains, wine country, progressive politics, and good food. Much of this is tempered by terrible traffic, insane commuting times, and a very high cost of living. I've visited the area twice and each time thought, "Nice place to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live here." Until now.

Knitting + coffee + pastries + friends = HEAVEN

(Well, maybe not heaven. If the Democrats took control of the House and Senate and kicked Rick Santorum out of office, well, then that would be heaven. Oh wait a minute...HELLO, PARADISE!)

My local knitting group meets on the third Thursday of each month. Some of us were interested in meeting a bit more frequently, so about two weeks ago I sent out an e-mail asking if anyone would like to get together on the first Tuesday of each month as well. I figured that would give us about two weeks between meetings (not this month, though: because November started on a Wednesday, the first Tuesday is less than a week and a half away from the third Thursday).

I also suggested that we meet at a coffee shop. (I'd called this place--a nearby Starbucks--to ask if they'd mind having a group of knitters hang out there on a weeknight once a month. They replied by inviting us with open arms.) I did this for two reason. One, it's often nice to have a little drink-and-munch while knitting, especially if it's a social affair. And two, I love hanging out in coffee shops. When I was in graduate school, I practically lived in one particular coffee shop. I read social theory there. (It's a lot easier to plow through Foucault, Bourdieu, Benjamin, Gramsci, and the like if you have a good cup of coffee at your side.) I graded papers there. I held my office hours there. Lucky for me, everyone thought both the date and the venue were a good idea.

So yesterday six of us gathered for our first Tuesday night meeting. In attendance were three fellow bloggers (and also SP9 participants!), Katie, Beth, and Gina (who actually took a nearly-one-hour train ride from the city to the suburbs to join us), as well as two other friends. We had a blast, talking about knitting and pretty much everything else that came to mind.

After we'd been there for about half an hour, one Starbucks employee approached us. "Oh no," I thought. "They've changed their minds about the knitting and are going to tell us to pack our needles and go." But no, Mandy just wanted to know if we'd be interested sampling some coffees paired with the appropriate pastries.

*blink*

Um, hello? Would anyone in their right mind actually say no to something like that?

As it turns out, Mandy is working on a "coffee master" certification through Starbucks. From her description of it, it sounds not unlike being a sommelier for coffee. She brought out three different coffees and pastries for us to try. After instructing up in how to smell the coffee properly (cup your hand above the back rim of the cup, then inhale) and how to taste it properly (slurp it--yes, audibly--through your front teeth), she gave us some House Blend with blueberry cake to pick up the blueberry notes in the coffee. Then we tried Yukon with oatmeal-spice cookies and the Christmas blend with ginger-spice cake. In all cases, we could really taste the flavors she told us to look out for!

Lucky us: Mandy has promised to do tastings for us every time we meet there! Next month, she may focus on coffees with citrus notes. Yum!

A dyed-in-the-wool yarnaholic

Bare yarn from KnitPicks? Check.

Big mason jars? Check.

Microwave oven? Check.

Kool-Aid packets? On the list for tomorrow's outing to the grocery store.

I'm on the verge of making my first foray into the land of Dye-Your-Own-Yarn. I'm not sure what colors I will try--that will depend on which Kool-Aid packets are available at the store. It's been a long time since I bought Kool-Aid, and after looking at this list of flavors, I still don't. What the heck kind of flavor is Great Bluedini or Rockadile Red, anyway? I know, I know--Kool-Aid doesn't actually come in different flavors, just in different combinations of FD&C Red No. 3, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Yellow No. 6.

Once I master solid-color yarn dyeing, I may try creating my own self-striping yarn (to use for the gazillion socks I am planning to knit one day, of course!). Eunny Jang has a great tutorial--with helpful photos--on how to do this. (Via the good folks at Craft.)

Snakes in a yarn shop!

My friend Beth brought to my attention this bit of news. Yup, Julia Roberts just agreed to star in a movie called The Friday Night Knitting Club:

The film is based on Kate Jacobs' upcoming novel, centering on a single mom who juggles the demands of running a Manhattan knitting store with raising her spunky teen daughter. Her regular customers gather once a week to work on their latest projects and chat, but when a tragedy occurs, the customers realize they've created more than just a knitting club.

Is it just me, or does this sound a bit...well...pedestrian? I mean, how many more of these "women who bond together over X and then one of them experiences tragedy and the others all support her" movies do we need? Okay, it's got knitting in it, so that might be interesting (unless all of the "latest projects" are simple garter-stitch scarves). But still...

Personally, I'd like to see an action movie about knitting! Maybe Samuel L. Jackson could save the day with a pair of #8 straight needles and a cable cast-on. Now that is a movie I'd pay to see!

More holiday knitting

I'm still rather annoyed about the Christmas stocking, so I've decided to avoid it for a while and start a new project: a holiday hat for Sylvia. It's the "Tree Topper" from Jil Eaton's SimpleChic: Designer Knits, SuperQuick!. Sylvia will look like she's wearing a Christmas tree on her head--if she deigns to wear the hat, of course. (If I'm lucky, she'll keep it on her head long enough for me to get a picture of it before she throws it to the ground. That's really all I ask.) I decided to be a Very Good Knitter and knit a gauge swatch for this--good thing, too, 'cause on the recommended #8 needles the swatch was a half inch too wide. On #7s, however, it was perfect! Hooray! I even read Eaton's instructions for knitting a gauge swatch and learned something new. She tells you to cast on six more stitches than you're supposed to have (for a four-inch section), knit three rows, do four inches in the pattern (but knitting the first and last three stitches of every row), then knit three rows. The result is a little swatch with a garter stitch frame that makes the swatch (mostly) lie flat. The part in the middle should be exactly four square inches, if you've done it right.

(It occurs to me that perhaps this technique isn't so new but is just new to me, since in the past I have never bothered with gauge swatches, preferring instead to get right down to the fun knitting. It's still hard for me to motivate myself to knit gauge swatches, but I really wanted to get a good fit with this hat.)

Two gauge swatches later, I've cast on, knit the red border at the bottom, and started on the main part of the hat, which is green. I'm using Lamb's Pride Bulky--a yarn that I adore but is impossible to find near where I live. (Let's hear it for Internet shopping!) It's knit flat and then seamed, and I might have used straight needles but I don't own #7 straights. So this is on Denise needles (and working quite nicely). Here's a photo of where it is now, with a cat nearby for scale and cuteness.

Quick! Call the Guinness people! We have a new world record!

One of my efforts to tread lightly on the planet includes hand-washing ziplock bags and reusing them. I buy the freezer-weight bags, which can endure quite a bit of handling, and generally get months of use out of each one. Today, while stacking some freshly washed bags on the counter to dry (that's the only downside to the practice: drying bags can take up a lot of real estate on the counter), I noticed that one had ripped on the side seam to below the zipper closure, making it no longer airtight and therefore useless. Looks like this one was in the rotation for about two years--not bad. Maybe it's not a world record, but I definitely got my money's worth with this one. Farewell, old friend!

Life among amphibians

I reached the end of the Christmas stocking I'm making for Sylvia. Sort of.

A couple of weeks ago, when I had removed the waste yarn, picked up the stitches for the heel, and done everything but kitchener stitch the toe shut, I realized that the distance from the heel to the toe was just way too short. I tried very hard to convince myself that it would look all right, but in the end I had to admit to myself that I needed to frog that section and knit it again. I was a little bummed at this prospect, hating to see the joy of project completion slip from my grasp, so I put the stocking down for several days while I cranked out four washcloths from Mason-Dixon Knitting.

With the washcloths done, I had to find another excuse not to finish the stocking. So I finished up the second sleeve for Sylvia's cardigan that's been a UFO since early summer.

This evening, I bit the bullet and ripped out the last one-fourth or so of the stocking. I redid the section from the heel to the toe, adding a few non-decreasing rows in an attempt to give it a bit more length. Before, I had followed the pattern's instructions very carefully about the decreases here and ended up with something too short. So I figured maybe the pattern had a mistake in it that adding some more rows might fix.

A couple of hours later, here I was. Sure, it looks like a Christmas stocking...but something isn't quite right. The toe is pointy, and the heel is square shaped. Wait a minute...everything from the heel to the toe is rotated ninety degrees from the long part of the stocking. How in the world did that happen? (And why didn't I notice it before?)

Rather than give my daughter a misshapen stocking and try to convince her that Santa's elves have bizarrely misshapen feet, I'm going to frog everything from the heel down and do it again. If you'd like to follow along with the fun, this pattern is from Christmas Stockings: 18 Holiday Treasures to Knit, published by Interweave Press in 2001. You can also find it in the Interweave Knits holiday knitting issue that was just published.

Blast from the past

You know how when you're looking at a website and one link leads you to another page, which leads you to another page, and so on? (I always encounter this whenever I'm looking up something at the Wik. Because I have Firefox configured to open links in new tabs, I start clicking on stuff that looks interesting and often end up with a dozen or so open tabs before I finish reading the original article...)

Look where I ended up recently:



Good ol' Shona Laing and "Soviet Snow." Raise your hand if you remember this staple of MTV's 120 Minutes. (Okay, now raise your hand if you remember when MTV actually played music videos all of the time.) Now that's something I haven't seen in well over a decade. Believe it or not, though, I listened to it just last week: it's on the mix tape that's currently residing in my car's tape player!

A happy surprise for me

This is an overdue thank-you to my friend Beth (my partner in crime during our college days--though if the feds ever question me, I'm gonna say it was all her idea), who sent me an amazing box full of fun stuff. It arrived on Saturday, but Blogger has been misbehaving (again) and not letting me post photos until now (grrrr)--and I wanted to include photos of everything.

I grouped the items into three photos--partly because that seemed thematically appropriate, and partly because if I used separate photos for everything I'd end up with gobs of pictures (and a lot of white space!) in this post. Here's the first set, what I call "More Fun than You Can Shake a Stick At." It contains two way-cool mummy-shaped candles, a Badtz-Maru eraser, Halloween cat stickers, and a tea sampler (which I am very much looking forward to, uh, sampling).

The next set is "Stuff I Will Probably Have to Share with my Eighteen-Month-Old." Admittedly, the book, Dog Food, by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann, is specifically for her. The glow-in-the-dark magnet letters are officially for me, but because of their tremendous educational value--and the fact that Sylvia seems to have inherited my obsession with magnets--she will surely get her hands on them soon; ditto for the magnets with quotations from Napoleon Dynamite and the animal- and food-themed magnets.

Here are the items that fit in the category I call "Knit-o-Rama." There's a set of itty-bitty #1 double-pointed needles. Time to start some socks with those! What's this? Sock yarn, too? There's a ball of Austermann Step sock yarn in a beautiful green-purple-colorway--right up my alley. This yarn has aloe vera and jojoba in it, too, which makes it super soft (and apparently the aloe vera and jojoba stay in it through at least forty washes--nice!). I can't wait to try it!

My days of storing my circular needles in a gallon-sized ziploc bag have ended, because Beth also sent me a beautiful circular-needle case. It's hand made of wool in Nepal, and it's exactly the sort of case I've been looking for! And last, but not least, she also sent me a pair of #15 straight needles. But these aren't ordinary needles--they are those nifty light-up-tip needles that everyone is talking about. I first encountered these in a shop in Vermont nearly three months ago and was intrigued by them. Since then, I've read several reviews of them, and the verdict is overall pretty favorable. I've been thinking about picking up a pair for myself...but Beth beat me to it!

Beth and I have been friends since our first year of college, and we were roommates during our last year. Even though we live in different parts of the country and see each other only every few years, we still keep in touch regularly. I've convinced her to join the ranks of knitters, and now she wields the sticks, too (though she's managed to exercise enviable self-control and avoid building a serious yarn stash...maybe I will have to do something about that...) When I win the Powerball, I'm going to build my dream house, then build one right next door for Beth, so I can hang out with her all the time. Yes, she is that cool.

Thanks, Beth!