A Tale of Three Socks

I have been experiencing severe sock knitting ADD lately.


Now, I've never been a totally monogamous knitter, but this is ridiculous. Usually, I have a pair of socks on the needles, and then one other project, either something big, or something with a deadline. The year started out well. I participated in the mitten swap, and stayed pretty faithful to the mittens, since they were on deadline, and the stranded knitting was new to me. I think they turned out pretty well and were definitely well-received by Theresa in CA.


Meanwhile, I had started a pair of Nutkins for my mom. She loves her knit socks that I gave her last year. I made a new pair for her back in the fall. Unfortunately, they didn't fit over her heel, so she gave them back to me so they didn't just sit.


Then, just when the mittens were finished and on their way to CA, Geek Boy and I took a long weekend trip to Texas to visit his step-mom. As a general rule, I always start a new project when we travel. I've never had a problem taking my knitting on a plane, but just in case my particular TSA agent doesn't want to let knitting needles through that day, I don't want to lose work that I've already done. (I realize that this doesn't make that much sense, since on the return trip I could lose it all, but hey...)

So, I pulled out my Cherry Blossom yarn from Sundara, thinking it would be great spring knitting (plus, the yarn has been languishing for almost a year in the stash). A pair of Nutkins for me. I really like this pattern, and I had memorized it, so it would make for easy plane and car knitting.


And then, I decided I wanted to do the Sockdown challenge for April, and found a pattern with no picture, Judy Summer's Rustic Arrow, which called for sportweight yarn, and I had another Sundara yarn, Electric Pear, hanging out in the stash.


As if that's not enough. My fertile friends are at it again. There are six babies due between the end of this month and August. The first one got a little hat. The next shower is in two weeks, and I rescued a Haiku from the UFO pile and thought it would be perfect. The body and most of one sleeve were done. Finished sleeve one, and started sleeve two. Then it happened. Four rows left, but no yarn. Emergency trip to Finely a Knitting Party, since Cathy stocks Plymouth Wildflower. I figured for four rows, dye lot wouldn't be that big a deal. But she didn't have the color. Ugh!

I came home and re-examined. There was enough of the body color left to finish the four rows. Now I'll just have to undo the last for rows of the first sleeve so they match. (The first sleeve is camera shy, and I couldn't find it for the photo shoot...it was located later, hiding in another knitting bag.)

And now I want to start something on slightly larger needles because I just got these great stitch markers.

I was never a big fan of the "fancy" stitch markers. I mean, the little plastic loops work just fine, and are only a couple of bucks. But when I ordered from Zen String last year, she included a little set of stitch markers. I discovered I loved having them hanging from my project. And since I've recently become addicted to etsy, I finally ordered some new ones for myself.

So, that's what I've been up to for the last month or so. There were some other things. A little heartbreak (nothing serious), some travelling, some airport taxi service, new appliances and new beers (more on those later). Thanks for coming back.

Mindless Becomes Mindful

For the most part, I'm pretty easy going. One year, I was hosting Thanksgiving dinner for my family. I think that year we had maybe 19 people coming for dinner. Our oven died in the middle of cooking the turkey, and refused to be resurrected. Luckily my folks don't live far away, so we just finished the cooking over there and warmed all the side dishes on the outdoor grill. When my mom showed up with the fully-cooked turkey, she just looked at me and said, "19 people for dinner, your oven dies, and you LAUGH. You are *such* your father's daughter." (But, really, is there anything funnier than warm side dishes huddling together in a dead oven trying to keep warm?)

However, lately, I have been having trouble taking things in stride. So Geek Boy and I enrolled in the Penn Program for Stress Management (he took it many years ago). The program is based on mindful meditation and the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. It's been very interesting. The goal is to practice being present in the moment. Paying attention to your breathing, the physical sensations in your body, your thoughts (which you then let go of), and what's happening now.

It's been an interesting experience. I'm not usually someone who goes for things like this. In fact, when I first brought up the idea of taking the class, Geek Boy's first comment was, "You do know it's based on meditation, right?"

A side benefit has been one night out each week with Geek Boy. I take the train downtown after work and meet him at his office, we go to dinner and then to class. It's really lovely.

The train ride isn't very long, but with waiting time, I can get some knitting done. When this started, I decided to take the Nutkin socks with me as train knitting. Lovely yarn, interesting pattern, that was easy to memorize. Perfect mindless knitting.


Then something weird happened. I started getting mindful about my mindless knitting. Rather than just zipping away while looking out the window, I started watching my hands, the needles, the color changes in the yarn. Nothing new was happening. It's still just knitting. I just started using that time to just knit and not to think about anything else (well, as much as possible...it's only the 5th week I've been trying this whole thing, and I've got a long way to go).

Now, I haven't become a perfectly mindful knitter. Most of the time, I still just pull something out to keep my hands busy and have something to show for my addictions to Jon Stewart, Keith Olberman and Mike Rowe. But every now and then, it's nice to stop, breathe, knit.

And it doesn't hurt that the yarn is gorgeous. (Claudia Handpaint in a colorway I think is called Urban Jungle.)

In other knitting news...progress continues on the mitten swap mittens.


This is actually start #3. The first one was too tight. The second attempt, I tried double knitting, and it was too big. Now, I'm doing two handed color work with weaving and it seems to be just right. It's also going much faster than the double knitting. I'm further along than the picture indicates. I took it a couple of days ago, but haven't had a chance to post. I'm well into the third repeat of the pattern.

And today's fun in the mailbox:

Sundara Yarn Fingering Silky Merino in Blossom. New yarn! Yay!

Oh, and this week's soup is a fabulous Potato, Bacon and Horseradish soup from New England Soup Factory. Yummy!

A Week of Surprises

So this has been a pretty good week. Loaded with surprises.

New book, gift tags, and recipe cards

On Sunday I started a new cooking club with a group of friends. Some are friends from high school. One is my biking buddy; we met while training for a century ride four years ago. One is a relatively new friend, and she brought an old friend of hers. I love mixing friend groups and seeing how easily friends from different parts of my life fit together. All of these friends hit it off smashingly. It was wonderful. We had lots of good food (our theme for the dinner was "Mushy Foods" since one person had oral surgery about a month ago and is still recovering).

But to start the day off, Biker Friend, who is also a knitter, gave me a small gift from when she went to Stitches back in the fall. They are tags for knitting gifts. Without a good macro lens (and I can't even find my regular lens right now), I can't get a good clear shot of them. They have a cat tangled up in yarn and say, " Now I know this may be hard for you to believe but...I MADE THIS! Don't just stand there dumbfounded, get excited or something!" I can't wait to give my next knitted gift.

Tuesday night I found a package in the mail. My used copy of EZ's Knitter's Workshop. This wasn't exactly a surprise, since I had ordered it, but it was coming from a non-major retailer, so I had no idea when it would arrive. Like some other people, I'm just now really appreciating EZ. To cap it off, several friends have recently announced pregnancies, so Baby Surprise Jackets for everyone!

Then there was today.

A few years back, Geek Boy came home one night with this joke:

A guy gets on an elevator with a beautiful woman. Desperate to make conversation, he smiles broadly at her and says, "T.G.I.F."
She smiles ruefully and says, "S.H.I.T."
Confused, he replies, "T.G.I.F."
Again, "S.H.I.T."
Desperate, he says to her, "Thank goodness it's Friday."
She shakes her head and says, "Sorry, hon, it's Thursday."

Now, almost every week, on Thursday, one of us will look at the other and say, "T.G.I.F." just for the fun of the response. But today was a good Thursday. I finished interviewing candidates for the open position I have at work, and my top choice accepted. I have several community groups who have agreed to partner with us for a grant I'm writing, and write letters of support (there is the downside that I have only a few days left to write the grant, but I'm not focusing on that now). Another grant, that I have more time for, is coming together. Best of all, when I got home and looked at the mail pile, there was a little package for me. I didn't remember ordering anything, but since I've recently developed an addiction to Etsy, maybe I forgot about something. Nope. Return address: Secret Pal. Inside I found a great pack of recipe cards. Perfect for organizing the new variations on soup and new cooking club recipes. So, thank you, secret pal! You made my Thursday!

Now off to curl up with my mega-biography of Caron McCullers (one of the pending grants is for a community read of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, so I thought I'd brush up on all things Caron McCullers).

Yarn, Yarn Everywhere...

...but not a single mitten. At least not yet*.

I hit Finely a Knitting Party after work the other night to select the yarn for the swap mittens. Lesson learned for the night: It's really hard to buy for someone you only know from a few blog posts (and stalking her Ravelry profile). After wandering around for a while and going back and forth on the worsted v. sock weight issue (worsted will go faster...but there was a better selection of sock), I finally decided on this:

(Altered to keep my swap buddy from accidentally finding me out.)

My biggest reservation, for some reason, was that worsted would be warmer. Now, I'm having this debate with myself while my feet are nice and toasty inside some hand knit socks. Cathy (the owner extraordinaire) reminded me that it's about the fiber, not the weight. So, sock weight it is.

Next question...which pattern? I had one picked out. I did my swatch. Consulted Ann Budd for the number of stitches I would need. Redid the chart on graph paper to make it easier to follow. Then started looking through Stitchionary again. Not sure why. Lo and behold, there's a pattern that will exactly fit my stitch count. How lucky is that?

*You know how there are some movie lines that just stick with you for no apparent reason? One of my oldest movie quotes is "Bubbles, bubbles everywhere. But not a drop to drink. At least not yet," from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I've been quoting that, in one form or another, since I saw that movie for the first time, way back when.

Sundays Are for Soup

Okay, it's Monday, but I was busy making soup yesterday, so I thought I'd get caught up.

A few years ago, I would have told you how I most definitely did. not. like. soup. It goes with the whole not liking hot liquids thing. I don't like hot coffee or tea (although I'll drink both iced). And while I love chocolate milk, hot chocolate holds no appeal.

The Geek Boy, however, has always been a soup fan. After Christmas, he would traditionally make bean soup using the left over ham bone. And my family loved this. My Nanny always made bean soup. And even though I didn't eat it, I loved when he made it because it made our house smell like my Nanny and Grandpop's house when I was little. As my Nanny got older, her soup making skills, shall we say, deteriorated. So, all of my family's ham bones came to Geek Boy to keep Nan from destroying it. (The last bean soup she ever made was completely inedible, according to my mom.)

One Christmas, when we dropped the requisite container of soup off at my folks' house, my Nan (who lived with my mom and dad) asked me how I liked it. I told her I didn't have any because I didn't like soup. She let me have it. How could I not at least show Geek Boy the courtesy of trying the soup since he went to all the trouble to make it. So, shame-faced, I had a bowl when we got home.

And I liked it.

That's when it hit me. It wasn't so much that I didn't like soup. I just didn't like the stuff in a can. (Although, to be honest, when I'm really sick, it has to be Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and nothing else. I need those soggy noodles and itty-bitty bits of chicken.)

At that point I became a soup fanatic. Scouring the cookbooks on cold days to see what I had the ingredients for. And then this fall, we took a trip to Providence and took a soups and sauces class at Johnson and Wales University. Now it was serious.

So, since the fall, every weekend I've made a different kind of soup. After Thanksgiving, I took the turkey carcass and made a freezer full of turkey stock. One Sunday night, while dining on that week's soup, Geek Boy looked at me and said, "I'm really glad you decided you like soup."

Following that thought, I was gifted with many soup cookbooks this Christmas. From the Geek Boy I received The New England Soup Factory Cookbook. And from my folks, 500 Soups. Now every Friday night I pour over both books, making my grocery list.

So, I thought I would start documenting my soup journey each week. This week, it was 500 Soups. Spiced Lentil, Chickpea and Chorizo Soup. A few years ago I discovered chorizo and find myself drawn to any recipe that calls for it.

This used just two links of chorizo, which I decdied to completely remove from their casings and cook up loose, which as definitely the way to go. That, with the cumin, corriander and cinnamon, just warmed the house all day long. This was also the first time I workd with dried lentils. Usually I go for canned beans of any kind, but it only takes 20 minutes to prepare lentils, so it didn't seem that intimidating.

The spices make this a very warm, not spicy soup. Perfect for this week that is starting to feel like winter again.

In other news...I got my mitten swap partner yesterday. Tomorrow will bring a trip to the Finely a Knitting Party to see if I can find the right yarn. I'm thinking maybe Lamb's Pride. But we'll see what's available.

Mattress Stitch - The Cornstarch of Knitting

I'm easily amused/amazed by the simplest things.

Back at Thanksgiving, we had lots of bags of fresh cranberries, so I decided to make some fresh cranberry sauce for dinner. This was the first time I had ever tried this, and was disproportionately amazed to see how quickly things thickened up once the cornstarch had been added. I'm a dork, and i freely admit it.

So, right before Christmas, I was finally able to get Fitted Knits from the library. And I fell in love with the Alexandra Ballerina Sweater. My goal became to knit that sweater before my time with the book was up. So, armed with a handful of 50% off coupons for Michael's, I bought up their entire stock of Patons Rumors in Dewberry Heather ball-by-ball and got to work on December 26th (the book needed to be returned on January 4th, and since two other people had holds on it, there would be no renewals).


The evening of January 3rd, I had one sleeve to go and was up seaming the final sleeve and weaving in ends until 10.30. Admittedly, 10.30 isn't that late, but I'm usually doing my pre-bedtime ritual by then.



Now, normally, I hate, loathe, despise, abhor, abominate seaming. I don't like it at all. That was one of the reasons I was attracted to this sweater, because it was knit in the round. Except for the sleeves. And I couldn't really see why the sleeves were knit flat, but hey, I was willing to do that little bit. As I was oh-so-carefully working my mattress stitch, I was amazed at how neat it was, and at the little neat ridge it formed inside the sleeve. And it was very similar to my awe of how cornstarch nicely thickened my cranberry sauce.

Like I said, I'm a dork.

This, however, has not convinced me that I like seaming lots of little parts. In fact, if anything, it reinforced the fact that I really don't want to have to do a lot of it. So, in an effort to start the new year off with a somewhat clean slate, I went back and looked at the progress I had made on my Tilted Duster cardigan.


I love the look of this sweater. I did from the moment I saw the fall issue of Interweave Knits. But the thought of seaming all the parts and then picking up all those stitches for the skirt...ugh! (Picking up stitches is my second least favorite knitting task...I even modify most of my socks to have short row heels for just this reason.) So, I frogged. And tonight I may cast on instead for the Cobblestone Pullover. I've seen this with a modified yoke (ravelry link) to have a button band, so I may try that in order to use my very cool devil buttons which go perfectly with the orange Cascade.

In further dorknitude, today is the deadline for the No-More-Humdrum-Mittens Swap. I am so excited for this. Can't wait to see who I will be knitting for here. I've been scouring mitten patterns, as well as spending time looking at colorwork patterns from the Stitchionary. I've even found a sock pattern that could be fun to convert. Plus there's the challenge of finding other little "stuff" to include in the package.

I'm just a dork, what can I say?

No-More-Humdrum Mittens Swap

Okay, I've joined my first swap. I never was a big fan of hats or mittens until I started knitting. Now, I'm ticked off when I can't wear my fabulous hat because it's too warm out. So, a mitten swap seemed the perfect place to jump into the on-line swapping world.

How long have you been knitting & how did you learn?
I've been knitting for about 5 years. When my sister-in-law told us she was pregnant with the Chickpea, I got it into my head that I had to make something for my soon-to-be niece or nephew. As a librarian, there was only one way to learn...check a book out of the library. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting.

Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
Intermediate. I've got most of the techniques down, but I've still got a bit to learn.

What are your favorite colors? Any you dislike?
Red, purple, green...really, I like them all. Deep shades and bright shades most of all. Pastels are okay, but not the first ones I'd go to.

Do you like Latvian type patterns? If so, what are your favorite patterns?
I like them, but don't know them well enough to have a favorite.

Do you desire mittens for yourself, your "special someone else" or your child?
For me, please!

What is the measurement from your wrist to the tip of your longest finger?
8 inches

What is the circumference of your hand at it's widest point?
7.5 inches

What other things do you enjoy knitting?
Socks, hats, sweaters in the round...I hate seaming. But mostly socks and hats.

What sort of needles do you enjoy working with? (straights vs circs, bamboo vs aluminum)
I made the switch to circs early in my knitting career, after losing straights mid-project to my cats. I'd get up to go to the bathroom and come back to a missing needle. There's one that I still never found. I use DPNs for socks and hats. And mostly I use bamboos.

What’s one project you’ve not yet tried but are dying to make?
Lace. I've got Eunny Jang's Print O' the Wave Stole in my queue, and some gorgeous Cornflower Sundara Silk Yarn. I'm just a little nervous about starting it. I've never done lace, and I've never worked with silk.

What’s one yarn you’ve not yet tried but are dying to work with?
Silk, see above. And bamboo.

What other hobbies do you have? Do you spin? Sew? Garden? Cook?
I love to cook. And now that it's winter, I get to do a lot of soups and breads. I'm trying my hand at sewing again (waiting for my copy of Bend The Rules). Does beer count as a hobby?

Besides yarn, do you collect anything?
Geek boy and I collect pint glasses from local breweries. Other than that, not really. I'm trying to beat the clutter.

What kind of goodies do you enjoy? Sweets? Salty? Anything you hate or are allergic to?
I'm lucky enough to live without allergies. I'm definitely a fan of the salty...nuts, pretzels, trail mix, stuff like that. Not a big fan of chocolate (unless it's coating some nice salty pretzels).

Do you have any kids? Pets?
We are owned by two cats. And, while we don't have kids of our own, we time-share four of the five kids next door. This means that they love to "help" the Geek Boy with his outdoor projects. In return, he does things like helping them build a quarter pipe skate ramp for their driveway.

What is your favorite part of Winter?
Soup and bread on cold rainy/snowy days, curled up on the couch with Geek Boy. Wearing hand knit scarves, hats and mittens.

What is your least favorite part of Winter?
Shoveling snow, particularly at work. Driving in the snow.