50% mittens: WIP

Just an update to my last WIP post:



Entomology Mittens by Adrian Bizilia



One mitten down, one to go. This one needs blocking, but I'm pretty happy with it. I adore the beetles. Since I've been plowing through these rather quickly, I think I can keep my gauge the same, but I guess I'll find out! I hope the second one turns out a similar size and shape...

Check out more WIPs at Tami's Ami's!

Notes from the Unphotogenic Kitchen: Hummus

We recently got a hand blender as a gift from my parents. This is especially exciting because it has a small food-processor attachment thing. The reason this is so exciting? I can make my own hummus* again! I used to make it quite frequently at home with my parents' ancient food processor, but lately we buy it from the store. Which is fine, but too salty and not as awesome.

I'm weird about condiments and sauces. Can't stand mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, vinegar, or even salad dressing. However, I use hummus as a condiment often: in addition to dipping things in it, I spread it on bread for sandwiches, and eat it with anything really.


Lunch is never photogenic.

Ahem. Half-assed attempt at food styling. More delicious than it looks, I swear!

I almost never have tahini on hand when I want to make hummus, so I use sesame oil, and it is still delicious. It's probably not as creamy as it would be with tahini, though. I tend to like it a bit chunky, so I don't mind at all. I also love lemons, so I use a lot of lemon juice. I like how the fresh sourness cuts through the nutty oil. The recipe I use the most is below, but works equally well without the spiciness and is open to endless adaptations.

Please excuse the wacky wacky metric measurements - this is what it says on my teaspoon and tablespoon measures!

Spicy Hummus
(adapted from New Light Cooking)

1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed (540 mL)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
3 tbsp (45 ml) water (or more to achieve desired consistency)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp (15 ml) sesame oil or 2 tbsp (30 ml) tahini
1 1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) cayenne pepper

Blend all ingredients in a food processor. Eat with anything! Enjoy.



*I can never remember how to spell it the British way. Houmous? Hoummos? Hummous? Whatever. Also, I stubbornly continue to call it "pita" instead of "pitta." Transliterations are funny.

Zoom

Dramatic skies over Edinburgh today. Everything turned steel-gray, and then the Red Arrows showed up.



I was too busy watching to get many photos, but you get the idea!

Wedding Shawl search

I mentioned before that I'm more excited about knitting a shawl for my wedding than buying a dress. Is that weird? I am dreading dress shopping, but I'm quite looking forward to shopping for yarn and choosing a shawl pattern. I suppose shawl style / colour / pattern should depend on what the dress is, but that hasn't stopped me from queuing lots of options. Here are some of them!

I am drawn towards semi-circular shawls and rectangular stoles, it seems. One that caught my eye was the Vernal Equinox Shawl by Lankakomero. There are so many beautiful versions of this shawl on ravelry.

Photo by Emmuska, used with permission.

Emmuska's Vernal Equinox Shawl, above, shows off the beautifully detailed lace. I like the colour she used, too.

Photo by Orbfa, used with permission.

Orbfa's version is also gorgeous. The colour gradient she got is incredible: this shawl started out white. She blogged about dyeing it here.

In terms of rectangular shawls, it seems I've queued several by Kieran Foley. First up: Sound of Waves.

Photo by Nicolor, used with permission.

Nicolor's Sound of Waves employs amazing colours that completely fit the personality of the shawl. I think I love smooth colour gradients!

Another Kieran Foley design on the list is High Seas. Hmm, sensing a theme.

Photo by Watermel, used with permission.

It's fascinating how strategically placed holes in the fabric can create evocative patterns. Watermel's High Seas looks more like a tapestry than a shawl to me. Beautiful.

Although I don't really need an excuse, this does seem like the perfect opportunity to knit something ridiculously complicated and awesome. (Don't you dare suggest I knit myself a wedding dress.)

witty title

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my WIP Wednesday post! The mittens are continuing apace - I do love stranded colourwork - I've applied for some more jobs, and I'm feeling more cheerful about my prospects.

I'm on a bit of a ravelry fast at the moment, in an attempt to spend less time on the computer and more time doing real things (i.e. actually knitting instead of daydreaming about future projects...), but I'll be back on next week.

In the mean time, some flowers from the other week.



Sometimes I miss the garden at my family's home, but luckily there are many beautiful places to wander through here.

Making progress

The great thing about colourwork is being able to see progress with every row. Each row builds upon the previous, adding to a developing picture.



Right now, I find this progress very rewarding. I know with certainty that each line of the chart brings me closer to finishing a pair of mittens. When I finish them, I will have a tangible product representative of my efforts. (And warm hands next winter).



It's helpful to have a rewarding project on the go when other things seem like excercises in futility. I wish I could believe that each CV I distribute and each job application I submit brings me closer to getting a job, but I have yet to see the evidence. Haha. In the mean time, I have plenty of time to knit, I suppose.

Entomology Mittens by Adrian Bizilia

Check out more WIPs at Tami's Amis.

yarn dyeing addiction

I dyed more sock yarn the other day (75% wool, 25% nylon). This time, I didn't attempt to keep the colours separate or mix them evenly. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I like it!



I used yellow, green, and blue - the other colours mostly ate the yellow, producing yellowy-greens. I used way too much green paste, and some bits ended up almost black, and small sections here and there stayed white.



I haven't reskeined it yet, and I look forward to some pretty crazy pooling when I knit it up.



I quite like the accidental approach to dyeing: pour some here, pour some there, spill some everywhere = awesome multi-coloured yarn!

So tell me. If this was for sale, would you buy it? Why or why not? ;)

That's better.

When I last posted about my Twisted socks, I was on the point of frogging them due to pattern-reading failure.

I did, and the difference is pleasing, though not especially obvious in the photos.

Before: note the loosey-goosey slip stitches


After:


(I don't actually have a pink kitchen table.)
Hurray! Twisted slip stitch rib, as it was meant to be. See how much tighter and cleaner it looks? For once, I'm happy I frogged.



The frogging adventure set me back quite a bit, but I'm catching up now. Yay for neon green socks!

future

It's hard to believe that in less than a year, I'll be getting married under these trees!

Don't worry, this isn't going to become a wedding blog, but I might babble about my wedding knitting when I get that figured out. I suspect the fact that I'm more excited about knitting a wedding shawl than finding a dress marks me as an obsessive knitter.

Yarn: Team Sweden?

Armed with a supply of citric acid crystals that may last me for years (provided I don't take up canning or something), I dyed some more yarn the other day! The citric acid was brilliant - no horrible vinegar fumes.



The base is 75% wool, 25% nylon, and it's not super duper soft, but did soften up after dyeing. It feels hard-wearing, so let's hope it is.



I used Wiltons golden yellow and royal blue, and Eunny Jang's tutorial for creating self-striping yarns, so I'm excited to see how it knits up. I plan to do a "vanilla" sock for the first time in my life...



Blue is darker than it appears in this picture, but the yellow is about right.

In my head I've been calling this Team Sweden, because the colours remind me of their national hockey team colours.

Twisted slip rib - ur doin it rong

Chugging away at my Twisted socks, I idly glanced through the pattern, something I have not done since casting on. (Uh-oh)

The abbreviations list caught my eye--specifically "Slp." Slip stitch purlwise? But... that's what I've been doing all along, when instructed to Sl1!

I'm so used to following patterns that assign the abbreviation Sl to slip purlwise that I automatically started slipping my stitches this way on these socks. Completely missing the whole "twisted" part of this slip stitch rib. Whoops. In fact, there's a bit in the pattern notes that specifically says Sl means slip knitwise... but since I only looked at the pattern to see how many stitches to cast on, I didn't notice. My bad.



What you see here is a regular, untwisted slip stitch rib, created by slipping the knit stitchs purlwise every other row. Pretty, but not what this pattern intended. I briefly considered leaving it and continuing in my nontwisty rib for the rest of the socks, since it looks okay. Ultimately, I think I like it better twisted, so I think I'll rip back and actually follow the pattern. (Deliberate disregard for pattern instructions is all fine and good, but since I chose this pattern because I liked it as written, I'm going to stick with it.) Sigh. Commence frogging!

oh, interweave

I received the Interweave Knits Summer 2011 issue recently. This is the first I've received as part of a gift subscription. I wouldn't have subscribed for myself, since I tend to buy individual issues that appeal to me, but I'll see how a whole year of Interweave sits with me now.

I rarely find stuff I like in summer issues, since I'm a winter-weather knitter for the most part. However, since there are a few wool items and it is not entirely packed with tank tops, I thought there might be more for me. There are some interesting articles, so I'm not actually that disappointed with the thing, but I doubt I will end up knitting anything from this issue. Still...

Yanked from the Interweave website in flagrant defiance of copyright.

Sorry about that, guys!

I quite like the Dockside Cardigan, above, and it's even supposed to be wool. The sloppy, looseness of it makes me think I'd never use it, since I generally prefer more fitted garments.

The Cumulus Tee also intrigues me. I like the weird thing happening at the neckline / sleeves, and it looks comfy. If I didn't already have a billion other things queued up with a sense of immediacy, I'd consider making this. Maybe I will one day!

Hahaha. Mystery solved?

So remember this neither-success-nor-failure I showed the other day?



Sock yarn that turned into bouclé when I hand-dyed it...

I realized that it's plied around elastic thread. Not sure how I didn't notice the stretchiness when I was winding it into a skein, but anyway. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but maybe the elastic didn't do well in the nearly boiling water, or maybe my poking and prodding messed around with it.

WIP: Twisted socks

I burned myself out on socks last year, making three pairs as Christmas gifts, and haven't knit any since. Needing a project that doesn't take too much concentration, I finally cast-on for some more.



I dyed the yarn last year (apparently I like green), but have been hesitant to use it, since the base is the same as the yarn I dyed with easter egg dyes that faded horribly. If this fades similarly, I'll just dye it again, I think.



The pattern is Twisted by Jodie Gordon Lucas from the Spring+Summer 2010 issue of Knitty.

Check out more WIPS at Tami's Amis!

Return of the Wiltons

I went diving in my mom's yarn stash when I was home, and came up with some neat stuff. My mom isn't really a Knitter with a capital K (though she did teach me to knit back in the day), but she still has a stash, and lucky for me she is very generous with it.

I walked away with some weird sock yarn.



Gedifra Fashion Trend Sportivo is apparently discontinued, and although I wasn't too keen on the colours of these skeins, I can always use sock yarn.



Thinking this would be a fantastic candidate for overdyeing, I attempted my first hand dyeing since moving to Edinburgh, using some Leaf Green Wiltons icing colour.



It turned green, as hoped, but I'm not sure this counts as a success for a few reasons. First, I had a hard to getting the dye to set and I have lingering fears it might just all wash out later. Secondly, the yarn was really loosely plied to begin with and seems to have unevenly unplied itself in the dye pot. It almost looked like a bouclé yarn when I took it out, so I'm not sure what happened. I tried weighting the skeins when I hung them to dry and that helped a bit, but I'm not really sure how it will knit up. Good thing I'm not heavily invested in this yarn. Has this happened to anyone, and how did you deal with it?



So. A fun experiment that wasn't altogether a success or failure. I want to do some more dyeing soon, but I'll need a bigger pot and I may invest in some citric acid. (I say this every time since I hate the smell of vinegar, but I never get around to it.)

Yarn time

I alluded to acquisitions of the yarny variety on my trip home, and now I'll start rolling them out.



This is my first ever purchase of Lorna's Laces yarn. I've wanted some for ages, but I don't frequent many places that carry it. (Other than on the internet). On a mini yarn-crawl with a friend of mine, this skein of Shepherd Sock in the Lakeview colourway jumped into my hands and wouldn't be put back.

I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Haha. I love yarn, and I also love hyperbole, so there you go.



Mmmmm yarn. I suspect this will sit in my stash looking pretty for a while before I figure out what to make with it, but I'm okay with that.

FO: Simple City shawl

Pattern: Simple City by Eskimimi

Yarn: Zauberball in "Cranberries", from Stephcuddles



Mods:
Almost nothing. I moved the KFB increases on the ruffle edges in one stitch because I didn't like how they looked when done at the very edge. This is practically inconsequential, though.



Notes:
Appropriately, this was a simple project. The ruffle nearly drove me crazy and has made me wonder if attempting a Citron would send me over the edge entirely. Haha. Ten rows never took so long until I tried ruffles! Still, I love the result. The Zauberball is gorgeous, although it is a brighter red than I usually go for. Watching the stripes develop was super fun. I love how the bind-off row ended up being darker most of the way around.

The pattern isn't written with a garter tab cast-on, so if I make it again I'll probably add one. Doesn't really bother me, given how I'll wear it, but the top edge of the shawl has a bit of an indentation.

The finished shawl has a wingspan of about 1 m, and it wraps cozily around my neck bandit-style!

See more FOs at Tami's Amis

win

I recently won a giveaway at Ohdessa Knits.

Not only did I receive two awesome mitten patterns (Regal Mittens and Memento Mori Mittens), but I also won a kit to make some colourwork coffee sleeves.

Check out the adorable mini-skeins! So fun.



I am especially excited about the Memento Mori mitts - skulls! Day of the Dead! I definitely want to use a yarn with long colour repeats for the background colour, like in the original. Hmmm.

Thanks for the generous giveaway, Ohdessa!

What I've been up to

I got back yesterday from a visit to my hometown across the pond.

It was great visiting family and roaming around my old haunts, showing my dude what the place looks like when it isn't covered in snow.




When we left Edinburgh, spring was well underway, but Ottawa spring started while we were there, so I got to see the first flowers twice.


And I dropped in on some friends.



I also did some knitting and acquired some yarn - more on this another day!

WIP: Outside the Comfort Zone

I have been feeling the need to challenge myself more in my knitting, since I've fallen into habit. Not that habit is bad, but I'm craving some more knitting that requires thinking.



On that note, I've started the Honeybee Cardigan by Laura Chau - this has been in my queue for aaaaages. The main challenge is the lace pattern, which is active on both right and wrong sides of the knitting, involves dropped stitches, and all kinds of manoevering. Whee! Of course, I'm only on the bottom ribbing so far, but I did do a lace swatch to get the feel of the pattern, and it was pretty interesting.



The other thing that pushes this project out of my comfort zone is the colour. Raspberry pink! I don't usually wear much, but I got this yarn super cheap and I couldn't resist. If it turns out I really can't handle the colour, I'll see about dyeing it. I'm kind of looking forward to having such a bright cardigan, though.