Blog about a pattern or project which you aspire to. Whether it happens to be because the skills needed are ones which you have not yet acquired, or just because it seems like a huge undertaking of time and dedication, most people feel they still have something to aspire to in their craft. If you don’t feel like you have any left of the mountain of learning yet to climb, say so!
The inspirational pattern I have chosen is Sylvi, by Mari Muinonen. I love the cabled vines on the back of the coat, and the relatively calm front design. Having never knit a coat before, this would be a massive project for me. But look at how awesome the results are!
What is stopping me from casting on right away is the level of commitment needed to finish such a big project, and the hefty yarn requirements. In addition, I'm not sure if a knitted coat would be at all useful in my life, since I live in a land of extreme temperatures; however, I am planning a big move across the Atlantic to a place with a different climate, so maybe I'll make it when I get there!
I want one in green.
Thanks for the comments on yesterday's post. I'm having lots of fun perusing everyone's stories!
For today's topic, "Starting Out," I found some objects associated with my knitting past to illustrate my reminiscences.
I've written about my knitterly beginnings on this blog a bit before, but chances are nobody has read that old post, so I'll reprise it here. Apologies if this seems like repetitive navel-gazing; this is a blog, after all!
baby sweater inspired by Knitting Without Tears, by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Knitting happened sporadically in my family growing up. My grandmother knit all the grandchildren intarsia animal sweaters - I remember giraffes, lions, and dinosaurs in sturdy acrylic. My dad even knit me the above sweater from Knitting Without Tears when I was a baby, although that may have been the first and last thing he knit.
My mom is primarily a sewer, but she is also a process-knitter, and she was the one who taught me to knit when I was a child. I can't remember whether I approached her with the request, or whether she offered to teach me, but I was probably 8 or 9 when I first learned. Then I forgot. Then she taught me again. Then I forgot. Then she taught me again. At some point it stuck. Conveniently, I've just moved back home, so I had a hunt for evidence of early knitting, and found a few things.
In between the learning and forgetting, I knit swatches from variegated acrylic yarn, almost exclusively. (Hello Red Heart!) That one could produce finished objects with a use or a purpose never seems to have occurred to me in my early knitting days. I was content to swatch away. I remember experimenting with beads, creating knitted pouches beaded on in inside: treasure pouches! I couldn't find any of these pouches, but I did find an early swatch that served as a doll blanket, pictured above.
My dad built me a knitting spool from a dowel with some nails with which I happily produced a family of snakes. No snakes remain, but I still have the spool:
One Chanukah, when I was 9 or 10 I received Sunny's Mittens, by Robin Hansen. This is a picture book about a girl learning to knit her own Lovikka mittens, including instructions for felted mittens from lopi yarn. This book eventually lead to my first proper FO, and I must have realized that knitting could be useful. It took me a few years of knitting on and off to finish them, and I grew out of the resulting mittens pretty quickly once they were finished.
But I made them, and I was pretty excited about that.
I dabbled in crochet in grade 7 and 8 after our Family Studies teacher taught the class to crochet, with the aim of producing an afghan for a homeless shelter. A friend of mine made some money crocheting squares for some recalcitrant boys who considered crocheting a threat to their 12-year-old masculinity, but were still required to hand in a square. I enthusiastically crocheted a lopsided rectangle for the cause, and went on to experiment. My favourite FO was a purse that I made without a pattern: it was sort of orange-y brown and cylindrical, and I was totally in love with it. Unfortunately, my locker got broken into in my the first week of high school, and it was stolen. I was heartbroken, and I basically haven't crocheted since. Haha. I'm not sure the two are directly connected, but hey. That's how I remember it.
Here's a weird crocheted pillbox hat thing from that era.
After that, I didn't knit much until university. I got back into knitting with Debbie Stoller's Stitch and Bitch, and got back into it in a huge way once Ravelry came along as an enabling tool for all things yarny. The rest is history!
I'm a pretty quiet blogger, and I don't really feel like part of any "blogging community" - I read lots of blogs, and I comment occasionally, but I'm mostly a lurker. I'm looking forward to finding new and fun knit/crochet blogs over the course of the week (because I clearly need to follow more blogs! Haha).
Anyway, I think the exercise will be interesting. Unlike November blog posting month, this one has daily suggested topics. So you won't be getting any random stressed out rambles. At least, that's not the plan.
By the way, I'm finished graduate school. So that crazy stress? Should be lifting any day now... Stress has become habitual.
I promised yarn, so here we go:
This is Elann Sock It To Me 4-Ply - the last two skeins of the batch I ordered. I used PAAS Easter egg dyes (50% off, hurray), and I'm surprised yet pleased at the results.
I followed this tutorial, except instead of steaming the yarn to set the colour, I used the microwave.
It has been awhile since I dyed Easter eggs, so I had forgotten that dye tablets don't resemble the colours they produce. Hurray! Experiments with no idea how it will turn out! I'm pretty happy with it, and it reminds me a bit of rainbow sherbet. Mmmm childhood.
Tomorrow I will attend my last class of graduate school, which has turned me into a complete crazy person for the last few months or weeks. So today's word is appropriate.
I predict much cachinnation tomorrow starting at around noon. Possibly accompanied by consumption of fine ale, but maybe not. There might be cachinnation before that coming from various faculty members as I do one final group presentation... but that's kind of a worst-case scenario, since database design turns out not to be that funny.
What's a word for a mixture of excitement and trepidation? Because that's what I feel right now. So ready to be done this degree...
1. a. A coarse sturdy cloth made of cotton and flax. b. Any of several thick twilled cotton fabrics, such as corduroy, having a short nap. 2. Pretentious speech or writing; pompous language.
adj.
1. Made of or as if of fustian 2. Pompous, bombastic, and ranting
Nothing to do with the word, but it was a lucky picture the other day. Anybody know what this odd rectangular beetle is?
Most of the new words I learn come from trawling dictionaries, but this one I learned from literature.
"A thief in fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought of by persons of refinement; but dress him in green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and change the scene of his operations, from a thickly peopled city to a mountain road, and you shall find in him the very soul of poetry and adventure." ~Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
I used maybe a 1/4 teaspoon of Wilton's royal blue, and I could have used less.
The camera lies: the first yarn is a brighter magenta colour in unnatural light, and the second is really a deep Western purple: not navy blue.
The magenta yarn is the same I used for my Endpaper mitts two years ago. (TWO YEARS?! Gah!)
It's not really my colour, and I've been trying to find a project for the remaining skein ever since. This dyeing thing. It's addictive and terribly exciting. And now I have a colour of yarn I will actually use! This is only going to encourage me to dye more.
Twist Collective Spring/Summer 2010 is out, and the weather in London, ON is suspiciously summer like. I've been sitting on my tiny little porch brewing sun tea and knitting, listening to the birds, and avoiding my last few projects for library school. I'm waiting for the other shoe, as it were.
But anyway. I eagerly look forward to this online magazine for the usually beautiful photography as much as for the patterns and articles. Vivian is my only Twist project so far, but there will be more in the future, I promise.
I'm not really a spring/summer knitter, so I didn't expect to find much in this particular issue, but there are a few things I might make. Eventually. (It's a good thing I'm not in love with the entire issue, given how many Twist Collective patterns I have in my queue). Perhaps predictably, I've gravitated towards the more long-sleeved garments that I could see working for fall, rather than the airy summer tops.
Abrazo This shawl is sweet and pretty. I will keep it in mind, but there are so many sweet/pretty other shawl/shawlette/scarf things in my queue, and I think these will take precendence.
Tanis For me, this is one of the most wearable items in the issue. It's not super-duper exciting or groundbreaking, but it's totally wearable and I respect that. I like the button details.
Timpani This strikes me as a good fall jacket, maybe in something 100% wool. I think it's neat-looking, and I'm intrigued by the construction. Never thought I was into faux marching-band styling... but hey! Looks cool.
Vym and Wallflower are both socks that I think would be awesome as fingerless mitts instead. I don't think stranded socks are particularly summery, since they would be so so warm! But I do love the colour patterns.
I'm sure I've learned this word before. To me, it sounds like a word describing the exoskeleton of some creature of the deep rather than something associated with twilight, that mysterious, brooding, and romantic time of night. (note: I'm talking about twilight, not Twilight with a capital T :P).
I used Wiltons in Leaf Green and lemon-lime Kool Aid to achieve these cheery bundles. I hoped the kool aid would provide enough acid, but it didn't look like it would exhaust, so I added more lemon juice, which helped. I also added a pinch of salt to the dye bath; rumour is that helps with dye in which blue is involved. Hard to say whether it did or not.
In low light, such as is now shining in my window, the yarn looks very bright green. In these photos it's a little more subdued-looking.
I'm having a hard time deciding what colour it really is. The close-up shot above is not colour-accurate.
You may be able to see the subtle semi-solid thing happening in this picture. I dig it. I'm tempted to say it's the only subtle thing about this yarn, haha. But in truth I wasn't going for subtle.
I'm considering overdyeing this to try to get a darker green, but the more I look at it the more I like it. I envision Twisted in a bright green like this, so maybe I'll just go for it and save darker green for another day. Two more skeins of Sock It To Me left...
If you dye yarn in your kitchen and you have housemates, chances are un-crafty housemates will think you are crazy. They might be right.
While I was soaking some white sock yarn in a big pot on the stove, this conversation transpired:
Housemate: I'm going to get some dinner. Me: Okay, enjoy. Housemate: Good luck with...er *eyes pot suspiciously* whatever it is you're... uh.. making.
I later found out she thought I was making an obscene amount of noodles. Indeed, white sock yarn in a pot might look a little like a crapload of vermicelli. Then she returned to find the big pot still full of "noodles," only now they were a vibrant shade of yellow... Good times.
Now I have bundles of sunshine and they make me super happy.
The yarn is Elann Sock It To Me 4 ply - a yarn so incredibly cheap, yet fairly highly rated, that I wondered how I'd never come across it before. This was my first Elann ordering experience, and it will not be the last. In a fit of madness I ordered 6 balls, which is enough for 3 pairs of socks. Plus shipping, it came out to just under $20 - the average cost for a hank of reputable sock yarn. At this rate, handknit socks are practically affordable. ;)
Now, I don't know how it will wear, although ravelry users suggest it's pretty good for the price. It's not the softest 4-ply ever - I won't be making any scarves out of it. But it dyed up pretty well, and I'm totally excited about dyeing more. (In truth, I dyed more today: pics forthcoming).
I used Wiltons icing dye in Golden Yellow. I didn't keep track of how much, to be honest. I kept adding until I felt like it was enough. This was also an experiment in using lemon juice as the acid. I've used vinegar before to set food colouring dye, and it has worked okay, but my current house has terrible ventilation, and my bedroom is right off the kitchen, and I hate hate hate the smell of vinegar... so I wasn't willing to try that in this house. I started out with the juice of half a lemon, and by the end I'd added the other half as well, so I hope that was enough. Apparently lemon juice is slightly more acidic than vinegar anyway, which suggests that I wouldn't need as much; I never measured the vinegar I used to use, so this comparison is meaningless to me.
Anyway. Fun experiment. Next time: green that may be slightly more neon than I intended...
It was too warm for a winter coat the other day, but too cold for no coat at all, so I put on my raincoat to keep out the wind.
Reaching into my pocket, I found a worn little seashell.
I guess I haven't worn my raincoat in a while, the last time being when I was in England over Christmas. I picked up this little fragment on a beach somewhere between Brixham and Torquay. Though it was a bit grim and gray, it was a fun walk. Here are some photos from that day in January.
Staring down at unreal-coloured seawater.
Wondering who lived here, perched high on the hill overlooking the sea.
Fishing from the edge.
Happy memories, all because of a shell forgotten in a pocket.
I can't remember exactly when I found Knitty for the first time, but it was a few years before I got back into knitting in a big way. It took me a while to get around to actually starting any projects, but I browsed Knitty and bookmarked all kinds of Knitty patterns before there was Ravelry. If I look at my finished projects for the last few years, I only have a handful from Knitty, (seven to be exact), but for whatever reason this free online mag has a place in my heart and in my queue.
Probably because it's free, friendly, and the designers/models generally seem like regular people. I can relate to it, you know? That said, I always have some "WTF?" moments when looking at Knitty, but to be honest I have those moments when looking at any knitting publication.
Here's what I like from the Spring/Summer issue:
Twisted These socks look like leaves/petals enfolding the wearer's feet. For some reason that really appeals to me. Flower toes! Too precious?
Petrie So, I don't know if I'll ever knit myself a tank top. But if I do, this one is in the running. I'd need to add waist-shaping, and not make it in sunshine-y yellow (alas, big sigh).
Duck Gaaaah teh cute. These are completely ridiculous, but what's cuter than baby feet and duck feet combined? Mutant duck-baby creatures. Awesome. I don't know anyone with babies at the moment, and I have a feeling a lot of people wouldn't appreciate the hilariousness of these... but if I find someone who would, I'll totally make them.
Emmaline This is really growing on me. When I first saw the Knitty cover, it didn't grab me at all. But now I kind of like it. I like that it is empire waist styled, but also has proper waist shaping. You know me and my waist-shaping fixation... It's like an empire-waist thing I could possibly get away with wearing. Maybe. Not sure if I could pull off puffed sleeves in bulky yarn, though.
A little fluffy pink cotton candy cloud on a chilly, gray day.
I excised this handful of Noro from my skein after I couldn't take the pink any longer and I was worried my sock would end up entirely pink with the lovely purple hidden inside my shoes!
I was slow on the uptake, and didn't realize what had happened until it was too late. The chartreuse arrow marks where I found a knot in the yarn and had to rejoin it. In doing so, I screwed up the colour repeat: I knew this was a common occurrence with Noro yarns, but since everything was so pink already, I didn't quite realize that I actually restarted the pink section! Gah. That's why the pink seemed endless.
I haven't ripped back, but by cutting away a handful, I've managed to ensure that there is lavender on the horizon, and I'm optimistic that deeper purples will follow.
The handful of pink yarn looks better on my windowsill than on my sock. It makes me happy. Maybe keep it there.
I'm working away on my Noro Delicious sock. I'm finally at the calf shaping, but at this rate I'll be finished by fall. So much for spring knee socks! This has become my coping sock. I bring it to university and knit between classes, during class breaks, in the hallway, at Tim Hortons, wherever I am when I feel like I'm about to start twitching. Ahhh knitting as a relaxation technique. Only a few more weeks... Do you have a special project for relaxation?
The colour is a slight hindrance to relaxation, though. As you can see, the sock is going through a pink phase. So pink. There's an impressive number of pinks represented so far, from pale baby pink to fuschia, but many of them fall into the category of "shocking," I think. I'm excited for the purple to come back; I don't want all the purple hidden in my shoes!
I may have mentioned before that I don't generally wear pink these days - my face is pink enough as it is. However, I figure I can get away with pink on my feet. The endlessness of this pink segment is bogging me down a bit, since I'm sort of tired of looking at it. My next project may be something gray.
Here's an awfully contorted shot to show the cable up the back. I haven't been counting rows between cable crosses, so they are not the most even, but I don't really care at this point. What worried me at first was that it looked like the cable wasn't actually in the centre of the back of the leg, even though there were the same number of stitches on each side. It looks more centred now, though. So I'm just going with it. I'm so slow, I couldn't bear to set myself back another month by frogging!
Eclose (Entomology) (of an insect) emerge as an adult from the pupa or as a larva from the egg. ~Oxford Reference Online
I saw my first two squashed lady bugs on the sidewalk today. I guess they had already experienced eclosion - the first to eclose of spring? I have no idea if I'm using that right. Please correct me. Anyway, it was unnerving to see, since there is still snow on the ground in places, although it has been reaching 10 C over the last few days. I keep waiting for another blizzard.
On that note, I finished my last hat of winter, but it's way too warm to wear it.
My eyes are tightly closed because they are not yet used to bright sunlight! squint squint.
Flora, by Margaux Pena This pattern is full of errors, but they aren't too bad, and they are well-documented on Ravelry. I couldn't resist the cute little leaves, and I would knit this again despite errors.
Yarn: inherited handspun that tends towards DK weight, undyed and dyed blue with food colouring.
Needles: 3.5 mm for the garter stitch band, and 4.0 mm for the rest.
Mods: After the colour pattern, I knit 2 rounds of stockinette before the decreases, rather than the 5 specified in the pattern. It's still a little big, but I like to pull my hats down to my eyebrows, so it's fine.
Turns out I'm terrible at photographing my own head. I took about 15 photos and didn't manage to get any centred shots. Whoops. I blocked it flat, rather than over a balloon or something spherical since I didn't have anything on hand, so there's a bit that's slightly bulgy. I hope it will come out with wear.
I was so frustrated when I dyed the yarn last year, since I was trying for a darker blue. I got two large skeins to be turquoise/blue and then (attempting) the same formula dyed another two that turned out completely different - blue/purple. Ah, dye lots to the extreme. So much for a sweater's worth of yarn! Anyway, I left the crapload of bluish yarn under my bed for months, since I was mad at it, but once I started knitting Flora, I fell in love with this yarn. It's much brighter than I had remembered it, and it's semisolid, and quite fun. So, good news after all.
Now. What else can I make with 800+ yards of various bluish scratchy DK handspun?!
No knitting content today, but if all goes well I'll have an FO in the coming days!
I just thought I'd share some musings I've had, since ultimately that's what blogs are for. This post is link and video heavy, just to warn you.
I received the soundtrack to Watchmen for my birthday, and I've been listening to it a lot. I don't often find that movie music sticks with me after I watch the film (any score by John Williams is an obvious, if cliche, exception). But when I saw this film, one of the things that struck me was how awesome the soundtrack was--there were many songs I was already familiar with that struck me as completely appropriate for the given scene but mostly for the bleak atmosphere of the film in general. I love that there are three Bob Dylan songs in the official soundtrack, for example, even if two of them are covers. I have no quarrel with Jimi Hendrix's cover of All Along the Watchtower - brilliant. But I sort of wish Desolation Row was the original, rather than a cover by My Chemical Romance. (As a side note, every time I listen to it at a certain point I think my microwave is dinging. But no, it's a guitar. Gets me every time. Anyway). Upon listening to the official soundtrack, however, I noticed that many of the songs I remember from the film aren't on the CD, and I wondered how they chose the 12 that were included.
Then I started thinking about the songs that weren't in the movie, but maybe should have been. It occurred to me that a soundtrack made up of Leonard Cohen songs only would have been quite convincing. There were a few Cohen songs in the movie, but only Hallelujah made it to the CD. (I love Hallelujah, although it's definitely overdone - kd lang's version is awesome, but a bizarre choice for the Olympic opening ceremonies in my opinion...)
Anyway, in the name of procrastination, here's my version of the Watchmen soundtrack with Leonard Cohen songs only.
Note: the following may contain spoilers for Watchmen! You have been warned.
First We Take Manhattan (Embedding is disabled for the official video on Youtube, but the video is kind of cool in a hilarious 1980s way, so check it out! Lots of people with suitcases on the beach.) This one is cheating. It was in the movie during the credits, but I think it deserves a more prominent role in the film. It's so brooding. And 1980s. I know, the song itself only came out in 1987 while the film is set in 1985, but whatever. That's no concern of mine.
Democracy
Maybe this goes without saying. The refrain is "Democracy is coming to the USA," and it's ironically hopeful tone adds to the delightful satire. I think it fits the mood and storyline of the film, since most of the action concerns the Cold War and America's own democratic posturing goes right along with that.
Closing Time Embedding disabled, but this video cracks me up. Ah, backup singers. While this doesn't come through quite as well in the film, the gritty, grimy, drugged out, and depressed condition of people New York in the graphic novel is clear and pronounced. It reminds me of this song, in some ways, although the song is kind of cheerful about it all. The way love happens in this movie is kind of desperate like this song.
A Thousand Kisses Deep
I think this is a more appropriate song for the sex scene than Hallelujah was, but maybe it's too bleak and depressing.
Alexandra Leaving Video may not be safe for work since it includes nudes and partial nudes When Laurie leaves Jon. That's a very literal application of this song, but I think it works, especially because of the line "As someone long prepared for this to happen..." since Dr. Manhattan sees time all at once.
I'm Your Man
Okay, so admittedly the first reason I picked this song is the line "If you want another kind of love / I'll wear a mask for you." Literally and figuratively, since there's a character who at one point *ahem* finds himself impotent (literally) until he dresses up in his superhero costume and has an adventure. A preoccupation with masks and how they affect identity is important to the whole story, though perhaps moreso in the graphic novel than in the movie.
Anthem
Anthem also has a hopeful tone, but I'm not sure if it's ironic or not. "The birds they sang at the break of day / Start again, I heard them say" fits well with the ending of the film.
The Great Event
I think this is one of Cohen's most bizarre songs, although Dear Heather is pretty bizarre. Recited by a computerized voice, it declares that some Great Event is imminent "which will end the horror / which will end the sorrow." Hello, Veidt Enterprises!
That was longer than I'd intended, but I'll stop before I think of more songs to add. There are so many; it helps that most of Leonard Cohen's repertoire is bleak and depressing to begin with. Ack, just thought of The Future, and Everybody Knows. So good...
Crapulent (literary) relating to the drinking of alcohol or drunkenness. ~Oxford Reference Online
I just think this word is funny in a sort of "I'm an 8 year old boy" way. No crapulence in these parts lately, for good or for ill.
A slightly more topical, relevent word, since I'm feeling wordy:
Prevernal In the early spring. ~Oxford Reference Online
Maybe that's wishful thinking, since March in Canada generally brings more snow before it brings spring, but it has been very bright and shiny out there today!
Before starting these socks, I hadn't realized how subtle Noro Kureyon is in the colour transitions. Photographs really don't capture all the colours involved. It's even tweedy in places. I know I'm the last person to discover this, but whoa! I'm a fan. The thick-and-thing nature of the yarn is a little bizarre since it varies from lace-weight to almost DK in places - I've snapped it once, but after that I was more careful. I don't know how it will wear, though.
I quite like the magic loop as well, although DPNs and I are friends most of the time, and I'll definitely knit socks on them again. The reason I learned magic loop for this project was because I received 2-at-a-Time Socks for Christmas. At first I intended to try these socks two at a time, but I got scared since the pattern isn't written for that, and the technique in the book is explained for top-down socks. So. Noro socks are my introduction to Magic Loop, and I'll attempt two at a time at some later date.
Yesterday I mentioned a chocolate monkey that I received in the mail. I called it a monkey because that's what it said on the box, but I soon began to have my doubts.
I took it out of its box to make sure.
As you can plainly see, this primate has no tail.
So, correction: not a chocolate monkey, but a chocolate ape!
Because I'm fixated on yellow right now, here's a yellow word.
Gamboge 1. Also, cambogia. a gum resin from various Asian trees of the genus Garcinia, esp. G. hanburyi, used as a yellow pigment and as a cathartic. 2. yellow or yellow-orange.
Quite unexpectedly, my new word of last week, incunabula, came up in one of my lectures today. Perhaps it shouldn't be so unexpected since I'm in library school; it may be a case of hearing a word everywhere once I've learned it.
In other news, yesterday our toilet flooded and leaked (luckily clean) water through the floor and out through our light fixtures in the living room. That's a sign of a brilliant house design! I'm hoping nothing is ruined. Then today we got a notice from the city threatening to shut off our water, hopefully due to a misunderstanding. Things are awesome, you guys! I love my house in London! Blah.
I feel like all I do is complain lately, so I'll finish this with some happy things.
-Yesterday was my birthday: I'm happy to be alive! (Even if yesterday's birthday festivities consisted of sitting through a boring night class and frantically mopping up toilet water - I'm trying to take it in stride) -I have nice friends who regaled me with facebook birthday messages -I have two new CDs that I'm enjoying: Heart of My Own by Basia Bulat and the Watchmen soundtrack. -There is a lot of chocolate in the house, but I don't feel guilty about any of it! -Right now a sizable chocolate monkey made of chocolate is peering at me curiously from my desk -The monkey was a present from my lovely boyfriend across the sea who is wonderful even though he's so far away. -The snow on the ground is dry and not slushy at all. -Noro Kureyon Sock is so pretty, and eventually I'll have knee socks made of it. -I'm going to the gym tomorrow. -In about 7 weeks I will be finished graduate school!
I bought some yeast soon after I moved into this house, with the intention of trying to bake some bread, but never got around to it until yesterday. Here's my first bread-baking attempt.
Other than leaving out the wheat bran since I didn't have any, I followed the recipe pretty closely. The lack of time table for this bread was liberating, and I could see myself making it again even on a busier day than yesterday. I used buckwheat flour, like Deb did, but I'm not sure I'd do that again. It has a very distinctive taste that I wasn't really prepared for. Still tasty, though. Very dense and moist.
I suspect the oven in this house runs hot, since the bread was pretty much done in half an hour on 450F, without the extra 5-20 minutes at 425. I left it in for another 5 minutes anyway.
The loaf turned out kind of lopsided, but that's okay! Now, what to make next? As if I need encouragement to eat more carbs. Heh.
I found out that the local bulk food store carries a large array of cake decorating materials, including many colours of Wilton's icing dye. My past forays into food colouring and kool aid dyeing have been interesting, and I've wanted to try more, so I bought some Wiltons in Golden Yellow for another experiment. I've also wanted to trying hand painting for a while, so I thought I'd give it a go. (#17 on my 101 in 1001 list).
I mixed up some wiltons golden yellow solid as well as with some red food colouring with vinegar and water, painted and poured it on a small amount of inherited handspun and this is what I ended up with.
It's not exactly what I was going for and my first thought was bog people. It's not as intense as I had hoped, since the yarn didn't take up the dye very well with handpainting. I steamed it to set the colour, and ended up pouring more dye over it as it sat in the steamer basket. It's growing on me, though. Maybe marigolds are more pleasant.
Basically, it was fun, but I still hate the smell of vinegar. Star Athena suggests using lemon juice, but I'm skeptical. Has anyone tried this and does it actually work? I will try to track down some straight up citric acid or colourless kool aid at some point anyway. I need to try dyeing with Wiltons in a pot for more intense colour, and try a different method of handpainting at some point.
I'm back in London after a fun few days in Ottawa. The break was too short, of course, but I had fun and got to catch up with a few people I hadn't seen in a while.
Fun things included skating the length of the canal twice in one afternoon. It was warm, but the ice wasn't soft yet. There were lots of people out, since it was "Family Day" on Monday, but the ice was much better than I expected it to be.
Skating is my favourite athletic activity, and for a long time it was the only one I felt like I was any good at. I miss having an outdoor skating space nearby now that I'm in London. I'll miss it more once I go to England, but maybe I can schedule my vacations in February.
I also went to see Basia Bulat in concert. My only experience with her prior to the show was on youtube, but it was lots of fun seeing her live! She has a great voice, so I was disappointed to find that she tends to swallow it sometimes. I think this is a stylistic choice, but I wish she'd sing out instead! Anyway, it was a fun gig despite my annoyance at that part - I love how she played ukelele, autoharp, piano, and guitar. So cool. A while back I shared her song "In the Night," but here's another fun one.
And it's time for a word:
Incunabula
the early stages of the development of something; in particular, early printed books, especially those printed before 1501 . The word comes from Latin, meaning literally ‘swaddling clothes’.
~Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Appropriate, since I spent Wednesday pretending to do research in an archives. I'm pretty sure there are no true incunabula among the corporate and historical files in the municipal archives, but I did find some really old library cards.
Mods: -Stockinette striped cuff instead of welts -Changed colour chart at the top to shorten mitten -Started decreases slightly earlier for the tops -No third colour duplicate stitch accents
It wasn't necessarily the best idea to do a stockinette striped cuff, since it rolls a little, and the 2x2 stripes clash a little with the 1x1 strips on the mitten palm. I love the look of the duplicate stitch accents on other Snail Mitts I've seen, but I didn't have a third colour around that would have worked with the blue and purple. I think it still works, but because the yarn is a bit fuzzy and loosely spun in places the purple swallows the blue sometimes. This is not the crisp stitch definition intended, since I definitely did not use the recommended yarn. But I'm okay with it, and I think my mom (mitten recipient) is too. She gave me this yarn that has been sitting in the basement for ages, and I was happy to put it to use.
This marks the 9th item out of a required 10 that I resolved to knit for other people.
Pattern: My So-Called Scarf, by Allison Isaacs Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend, (300 yd skein)
I cast on and bound off with 6 mm needles, but still got a little bit of flaring on the bind off end. I don't really care that much. For the body of the scarf I used 7 mm needles.
Because Manos Silk Blend is dkish weight, and I only had one skein (300 yds), I was a bit worried that my scarf would end up short, but when I ran out of yarn the scarf was a modest 160 cm (63 inches?). Nearly as tall as me, and plenty long to wrap around my neck.
I think this will get a lot of wear. It's so incredibly soft (obviously), and I love the colors. I've been thinking of this scarf as an "I miss the sea" scarf, since the colours are rather oceanic.
echt Authentic, genuine, typical. ~The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English
Despite some examples in Oxford Reference Online (thank goodness for a library subscription), I'm not really sure how to use this word. Does anyone out there know?
In completely unrelated news -
Things I wanted to take pictures of today, but didn't have my camera:
-a Wet Floor sign usually posted in or near the washrooms in my building at university that has been modified to read "Don't Slip on the BS" -a rusted out muffler lying abandoned on the sidewalk
Essay time. Ugh. I have such a bad attitude about my studies at the moment. Not sure if I'm prepared to enter the working world in earnest, but I am definitely ready to finish graduate school.
I found this today, and have been listening to it over and over. So fun.
If an angry mob ever tracks me down, I hope they are as cheerful as this one. And I hope there are drumming bears and skeletons involved. Awesome.
This weekend there was another Librarians Without Borders knit-a-thon. Obviously I went, though I didn't raise as much money as last time around. There were knitters, crocheters and embroiderers - inclusive fibre arts bunch. It was lots of fun watching silly movies, knitting away, chatting, and ignoring the fact that we are all in graduate school swamped with work.
I brought My So-Called Scarf to work on, since I haven't touched it in a while. Nearing the end, now! Manos Del Uruguay Silk Blend is a gorgeous, gorgeous yarn. This was Christmas present yarn: it's much more luxe than what I usually use.
On that note, I'm a bit scared of what I may be becoming. Over the last few months I've acquired quite a bit of yarn, and much of it is fancy stuff, or at least fancier than my normal. I wouldn't call myself a yarn snob: I am perfectly happy to use Patons Classic for hats and mittens, for example. (though it sounds pretty snobby to have said that at all.... er). Anyway, let's have a look:
But no worries. While I'm enjoying this foray into the fancy, it's not really a sustainable habit for a jobless grad student, so rest assured my next yarn purchase will probably be an inexpensive work-horse yarn like Cascade 220. (I have actually never used Cascade 220, which is strange given the fact that I'm usually cheap. I fully intend to one day). There's also a lot of recycled second-hand sweater yarn in the future, I think.
Pattern: Ishbel, by Ysolda Teague Yarn: DIC Smooshy, in Gothic Rose Mods: Did stockinette for the small size, but lace for the large size.
So much fun to knit! I took a gamble and didn't use a single lifeline, and I had to fudge the pattern a few times, but nothing too horrendous happened. Towards the end the rows were so long that it dragged a bit, but the lace pattern kept it interesting.
This turned out bigger than I expected. I wanted to use this beautiful yarn efficiently, so I opted for the large lace section, thinking it wouldn't be quite so large. It still works as a scarf, though.
Please excuse the crappy mirror shot. My bathroom is crooked, not my photography ;)
This one shows the colour most accurately, and you can see it was snowing outside this morning when I took the picture!
I've been wearing it all day, and I know it will be very useful. The yarn is quite soft, but still sturdy, so I hope it holds up.
Ishbel is finished and blocking, but that's about the only thing that has gone right today. And even then, I had to make a trek out of my way to find some sewing pins because they weren't where I thought I'd find them. Maybe I'm being overdramatic, but things aren't lining up the way I'd like them to. My timing is off, my motivation is low, I'm accident prone, and all I want to do is curl up with a cup of tea and something chocolate. (And maybe some knitting.)
Tomorrow: -a less whiny post. -pictures of Ishbel (hint: she's unexpectedly huge!)
Last night I got together with some friends for a night of jollity, including a rousing game of Balderdash, which led to me learning several new words, so I thought I'd add on the ones I remember. (Yes, Balderdash is rousing!) This puts me at 38 out of 150, in case anyone is keeping track.
biltong (chiefly S. African) lean meat which is salted and dried in strips. ~OED
tamarau a small brownish-black buffalo similar to the anoa, found only on Mindoro in the Philippines. • Bubalus mindorensis , family Bovidae. ~OED
sprod (N. Amer.) a young cod, haddock, or similar fish. ~OED (The Balderdash definition specified salmon...)
gundalow a form of river barge, long obsolete, used in the USA. It had a high carved bow and a large lateen sail set on a short, stumpy mast. The lateen yard was very high in the peak and the lower end was heavily weighed and balanced so that it could easily be lowered on deck. The small offshore fishing schooners of Maine, USA, which had high sterns, were also known as gundalows. They, too, are obsolete. ~The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea
(The best thing was two separate players submitted definitions for Gundalow that involved one storey houses--i.e bungalows-- filled with fire arms. Good times, good times.)
contango (Brit. Stock Exchange) the normal situation in which the spot or cash price of a commodity is lower than the forward price. Often contrasted with backwardation. ~OED
craquelure a network of fine cracks in the paint or varnish of a painting. ~OED
There were more, but some of them I can't actually find definitions for, and some of them I don't remember. These words are obscure and specific enough that I'm sure I'll never use them, but hey. Words!
