I have been in hybernation mode for a few weeks. Contributing to this lethargic state has been various weather systems; high barometric pressure, grey skies, rain, and other general conditions facilitating my lack of motivation for outdoor activities. Last weekend, however, some glorious sunshine poked out and I took the opportunity to go on a fun bike ride. This weekend, there was neither sunshine nor anything glorious about the weather, and yet Josh and I rode in the Owyhees - - a cold and grey ride that failed to lift our spirits.
In an effort to ward off the January blues I have been more of a home-body and am accepting that this as a natural hibernation period. My home-body coping mechanisms have included listening to music and knitting. In the way of music, I've been listening to a lot of alternative country. As for the knitting, here is an update on what I've been working up.
This is the latest installment of my Autumn Rose saga. You may or may not recall that it used to look different. I have had a few false starts with this project and am currently on my third version, having knit and unravelled two previous sleeves. Heavy sigh...
Despite the frustration of frogging such a time-intensive project, I am confident and satisfied that I have it right this time. As opposed to my two previous versions, this sleeve fits properly and has color changes that I like. The current "plan" is to make this into a jacket, instead of the pullover of the pattern.
Here is my take on the Alpaka Tunic, which I am working in Noro Cash Iroha, a silk, wool, cashmere, nylon blend. I am very excited about this yarn/pattern combination. You may recall again that I was using this yarn previously for a different pattern. That other pattern failed to hold my interest and I sought another pattern idea that would work well with this yarn. As I previously discussed, this yarn stretches about an inch over 30 rows, a quality that made me carefully consider my pattern choice. Ultimately, I decided that a drapey tunic would work nicely with this yarn. And voila!
This particular pattern is sized very large; the smallest bust size is at 43 inches. After fanagling with the pattern for a while, I omitted several of the lace panels, thereby taking out 11 inches of ease. For the interested, I am keeping my Ravelry page updated with the specifics. Overall, I have really been enjoying this project. It is a lovely, stress-free contrast to my Autumn Rose, and has been knitting up quickly and easily. I anticipate that I will be happy with the finished tunic.
This is another pattern in the Simply Shetland 4 booklet, along with the Autumn Rose pattern. When I purchased the booklet, I only had a desire to knit the Autumn Rose pattern, but was pleasantly surprised to find that I like many of the patterns, including this scarf.
I've been trucking away at this project for a while. It is my movie-watching project, or my on-and-off project that requires no mental energy. I have approximately three times the amount of scarf completed than what is depicted in the photograph. And I am about halfway done with the full scarf.
Pattern:Cocoon Scarf Source: Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Yarn: Berocco Jasper, repurposed
The yarn for this project is a repurpose project from an older project, my Neaty Cardigan. Having greatly enhanced my knowledge of wool and yarn since I knit my Neaty, I have ascertained that the Jasper yarn and Neaty pattern combination were a poor match. This is particularly true because I have worn the cardigan in ways that the yarn was not durable enough to handle well - - for example, camping. After years of solid use, the cardigan was looking very ratty. Rather than allow the cardigan to sit in my closet being unworn (because no one wants to wear a ratty cardigan), I decided to unravel the entire sweater and reuse the yarn to make a big scarf.
Over this past weekend, I went snowshoeing with a group of friends, to include Josh, Elizabeth, Amy, David, my Dad, and dogs Buddy and Lebowski. We shoed near Idaho City and had a fun time. It was not the most glorious day, weather-wise, but I was very pleased that we were able to get out of the rain that was happening at the lower elevations. The snow upon which we shoed was on the crusty side, but perfectly snowshoeable.
As can be imagined when one gathers a group of friends wearing silly footwear in the snow, the maturity level did not always remain at high levels. This was evinced by several snowshoe races. Wow, running whilst wearing snowshoes is extremely hilarious! In addition, later in the shoeing, Elizabeth abandoned all self-composure and ran down several hills with her arms, legs, and hips flayling everywhere. She explained to us that such form served to maintain the ideal stability when running down hills in snowshoes. To test her theory, I tried it, but did not feel particularly stable...
We shoed around for a while until a few peeps had to return to Boise, and those remaining chose to hike up into the mountains farther. The below photo is not the greatest of all time, but I like it because it shows the pre-existing snowshoe trail that we found and that it took us up some mountains and through the trees.
Once we quit the snowshoeing, we enjoyed some greasey food in Idaho City. I salivate just thinking about my onion rings... yum!
Today is the first day of the final semester of my masters program. I have been on holiday vacation from school this past month, and I am delighted to show off how I spent my spare time - - a mitten pattern, designed and knitted by me, and free to you!
The inspiration for these mittens came from how I decided to name them. Dionysus was the god of wine and inspirer of ritual madness. This combination of wine and ritual maddness was the foundation for my design process and color choices. The idea was to have the colorwork appear both chaotic and structured... hence, the ritual maddness. The colors and their movement was to suggest the flow of wine... for some of us, a source giddiness and rosy cheeks.
The possibilities for yarn combinations are endless. For my mittens, I used Araucania Ranco Solid and Kauni Wool 8/2 Effektgarn from my stash. This combines a soft yarn with sharp definition (ie, the Araucania) and a scratchy yarn that blooms (ie, Kauni). My mittens are very warm, but also soft.
The pattern might be suitable for a novice strander or a new mittener, but it does require some intermediate level skills. The color charts are small and manageable and the construction of the mittens is simple. They begin with an i-cord, after which stitches are picked up along the side and worked in the round for the cuff, followed by an increase for the hand, a thumb gusset, and a simple decrease and grafting. Skills required include knitting in the round, stranded knitting (including understanding of tension and color dominance), picking up stitches, i-cord, decreasing and increasing, grafting, and reading a colorwork chart.
Here are some details:
Pattern: Dionysus Mittens Subtitle: God of Wine / Inspirer of Ritual Madness Needles: US1, or size needed to get gauge. Yarn: approx 150 yards fingering weight yarn in two colors (300 yards total) Gauge: 10/12 stitches per inch in stranded charts Notions: stitch marker, waste yarn, tapestry needle Size: S, M, L Actual Measurements: 6.5" (8", 9.25") palm circumference; 6" (7.2", 8.4") wrist circumference; 10" (10.5", 11") length. Note on Fit: These mittens are designed to fit snugly. To determine your size, measure the circumference of your hand and choose the closest size. Pattern Format: PDF- 4 pages, 828 KB
On Saturday, Josh and I went out to the Wilson Creek area for a hike in the Owyhees. We started from the main trailhead and trekked along some various trails eastward, towards Reynolds Creek. We lost the trail a few times and had to bushwhack to our way to the next trail. The inversion over Boise had caused depression to accumulate, however, the clouds broke over the Owyhees and we were able to experience some glorious sunshine. The light was particularly stunning that day.
We hiked to the top of one of the buttes to take in the view and admire some interesting geology. There were odd boulders with distinctive striping. Later, we discussed how the Owyhees contain many fascinating geological features.
A few ridges later, we happened upon a trail that Josh hypothesized would lead us to the China Wall, a trail we have been trying to find. We hike and hiked, and just has we were coming up over a ridge, someone called out, "Hey, it's Josh and Jennifer." I was totally weirded out that someone would recognize us in the middle of the Owyhees. It was a group of friendly mountain bikers who were just coming out of the China Wall. We stopped and chatted and they suggested that we hike the China Wall and that we would be able to get back to the Wilson Creek Trailhead from there.
It was an awesome hike through the Reynolds Creek Canyon, along this rocky trail-bridge ("China Wall"). I was curious about the history behind this trail and I discovered that the trail is formally known as "China Ditch" and informally as the "China Wall," and that it was built by Chinese laborers who were diverting water from Reynolds Creek for irrigation purposes. The trail took us down to the bottom of the canyon, with what seemed like the cliffs of Mordor rising above us.
Eventually, we hiked out of the canyon, where we were faced with several trail options. We decided to follow the bike tracks from the group of riders we had chatted with, a plan that proved very wise. Tracking their tire prints allowed us to navigate back to the trailhead with great ease.
During the hike, we also decided that we would return the next day with our mountain bikes, and with Elizabeth.
The bike ride was awesome. We rode a few different trails to access the canyon area, most of which were in pretty good condition. The trails were rougher than the previous day due to horse travel; Josh and I felt bad because Elizabeth isn't accustomed to the rough trails in the Owyhees, but she seemed perfectly fine. One trail traversing the backside of a butte was particularly muddy and we had difficulty riding to the top. I worked up a sweat and got my heart racing because I was dead set on riding it - - meanwhile, Josh and Elizabeth were hiking behind me, having faced reality in a more timely fashion. Otherwise, the trails were dry.
Descending into and through the canyon afforded us an opportunity to practice some technical skills.
Riding along the wall was fun. More photos on my photoset
Pattern: Ella Yarn: Drops Alpaca (2 skeins) Needles: US 3 Ravlink
Here is my Ella shawl, a free pattern from Knitty. This pattern has been on my list to knit for years and I finally cast on a few weeks ago with the Drops Alpaca yarn. What drew me to the pattern was the hybrid shawl/scarf construction - - by which one has the neat corner of a shawl and the long ends of a scarf. What also drew me to this pattern was the stitch design, with its nifty scale or armor appearance.
The yarn is lovely; so soft and warm. And I love the color. You'll be seeing a lot of this yarn come off my needles in the future, as I procured a ridiculous amount of it at 60% off during the LYS "GOOBS" sale.
Being of the mind that every day is a new day to live better than the previous, I do not normally go in for new year's resolutions. This year, however, will have a few notable milestones and turning points that justify a chronicling of my hopes and goals. In particular, at the end of spring/early summer, I will be both graduating with my masters degree and turning 30 years of age. Both of these events mean a lot to me personally and professionally.
Cycling
My primary personal goal involves putting in a lot of miles on the bike. With school soon no longer being an impediment to being able to ride my bike everyday, not only do I want to ride my bike everyday, but I want to ride it over longer and longer distances everyday. I feel a strong desire to embark on long bike adventures, including the multi-day/week variety. Additionally, I will continue to improve my technical skills, downhill speed, and I hope to complete at least one race.
Sometime around my birthday, Josh and I are going to go on a two week bike excursion. And I've recently been inspired to pair it with a brewery tour. The tentative idea being to drive down through Utah, stopping possibly at Park City and maybe hitting Arches, and then doing a tour of Western Colorado, camping for cheap on BLM lands, spending a day or two at each location, mountain biking the days away, and somewhere in between enjoying some quality beer. This plan is by no means certain, another strong inclination I have is to head north into Alberta. Furthermore, the plan seems to rest on my feeling inspired and excited, and I continue to search for exciting resources on the internet. My two primary sources for Colorado/Utah excitement include the Beer Drinker's Guide to Colorado and Mountain Biking Mayhem which has a lot of neat info about the trails in CO and UT (including fun videos!).
Food
Working full time and going to graduate school is a great opportunity to forget how to cook and to develop a love of processed foods. By the end of last semester, I was eating microwavable burritos every single day. The combination of my stomach virus and eating nothing but greasy food in Arkansas served as a reminder for me that there are better ways to eat.
Since my return from Arkansas, I have been cooking and loving it. Last night, for example, Josh and I made beef gorditas (a recipe from my my new cookbook) and they were delicious and satisfying. Over the weekend, I made an exciting chickpea stew. Tonight, I will make a curried sweet potato and chicken dish. No more microwavable burritos.
Furthermore, I am going to have a real garden this year. I've got a compost pile (sorta) going and a mulch system in place, and lots of enthusiasm. I also hope to buy more from the farmer's market.
Knitting
Over the past few years, I have developed a more meticulous attention to detail. I still tend to knit by the seat of my pants, but it is a little more structured and planned. A huge knitting goal for me is to implement a more rigorous approach to planning out my projects, which would facilitate my then being able to translate them into patterns. Last year, I succeeded in accomplishing my goal of writing up a real pattern - - I don't know if I'll ever make it public - - and it was a significant learning experience for me, instilling in me the understanding that a rigorous planning process would make pattern-writing A LOT easier. Lesson learned.
A second knitting goal is to expand my skills and learn new ways of knitting. I am pleased to have recently incorporated doubleknitting and seamless set-in sleeves into my knitting repertoire; my hope is to continue to expand it.
A third knitting goal is to knit exclusively from my yarn stash.
Here's a mosaic of my 2009 finished knitting projects.
I have a sense that my mosaic for 2010 will contain considerably less stockinette, more stranded knitting, more obscenely complex cables, fewer sweaters and more mittens.
I spent the past week(ish) with Josh's family in Bentonville, Arkansas. As far as visiting the family of one's partner in Arkansas goes, it was a decent trip. We spent much of the time at various family gatherings. The main downers for me included my inability to sleep at night and continued stomach distress (which I wrote about in my previous post). Most of the family gatherings revolved around the consumption of heavy foods. Because of my weakened digestive abilities and nonexistent appetite, I limited myself to small portions. But I did enjoy what I was able to eat. In addition to food, the family gatherings also tended to focus on cooing over the newborn baby, Josh's niece, and playing games. Below are a few adventures of the trip. Incidentally, the photo below is during the family bowling night, and Josh, his dad, brother Seth, and niece Ely imitating the expressions of the baby.
Josh and I maintained our sanity in Arkansas, wherein the population is considerably more religious and less physically active than we're used to, by enjoying some morning coffees and going on walks and hikes. One route we hiked a few times took us along a bit of actual nature, where there were thick vines hanging from the trees. Below, Josh practices his Tarzan.
One adventure was Saturday night karaoke at a local biker bar. The only beer served on tap was Budweiser, of which I had several in addition to a few tequila shots. Josh and I sang "Proud Mary" karaoke, danced and had a lot of fun. I shot several videos of the karaoke, as I found it culturally different than Boise, in a country-western sense. I was pretty toasted by the time that I filmed this video, as evidenced by my failure to keep the camera steady.
Another adventure occurred on Tuesday, when I went along with Josh, his mom and his brother Seth to visit the Pea Ridge National Military Park, which is a civil war historical site. At the visitor's center, we watched an interesting documentary about the battle site and then we took a driving tour to the various points of interest.
While we were headed out to the Pea Ridge site, we saw an interesting piece of property that was littered with old vehicles. One caught our eye; an old Model T with a tree growing out of it. Pretty cool.
That evening, the entire family gathered for a few games of bowling. I bowled my finest game, with a score of 114.
The final adventure of the trip was to visit the Walmart museum where we learned all about the rise of the Walton family and learned the secrets to Walmart's success. I found it to be a one-sided and biased interpretation of history and success, but it was nonetheless interesting. A few days earlier, I had lunch at a Walmart Distribution Center (a big warehouse that serves as a hub for the trucking distribution of goods, that houses enough goods to fill ten entire Walmart stores) where Josh's brother Jim works. This was also an interesting experience - - we had to go through security, were assigned "visitor" name badges, and were not allowed to take photos inside the building. Below is a photo of Josh, brother Seth, and mom Kathy on the outside.
This evening, Josh and I discussed how cooking can really be such a waste of time. And how we should give up trying anymore and just go for some microwavable burritos.
BACKSTORY
This past Saturday, I spent most of the day in anticipation of a holiday potluck among friends. For the potluck bit, I cuddled up with my library of cookbooks and selected an item that sounded delicious and appropriate for a holiday potluck. Specifically, I chose an apple onion cheese gratin from one of my Moosewood cookbooks.
So, I actually do like to cook. But I like to cook my own way, which normally involves only a cursory attention to the recipe. Interestingly, my methodology for cooking mirrors that of my knitting - - using the recipe/pattern as a guide and then making it my own. As with knitting, this manner of cooking can occasionally not work out.
Josh also likes to cook and he was excited about a recipe that he had selected from my edition of the Joy of Cooking: ginger molasses cookies. The methodology that Josh employs in his style of cooking, however, is the opposite of mine and is a small source of contention and mockery between the two of us. Namely, he rigidly follows the recipes.
Despite our incompatible cooking styles, we manage to get along fine in other aspects of life.
ANYWAY, a few hours before the potluck, Josh and I went to the grocery store to gather items for our respective recipes. It was during the drive home that the evening took a turn for the worse... As I navigated the car through our neighborhood, I became aware of a grumbly in my tummy. After a session in the restroom, I found that the grumblies were increasing and making my existence very uncomfortable. I managed to slice up the apples just fine, but became severely nauseous while slicing the onions. Josh offered to grate the cheese so that I could lie down for a while. A while came and went and I was in no condition to attend a potluck, let alone position my person in any way other than remaining perfectly still on my bed. Josh went to the potluck as one. Neither myself nor his ginger molasses cookies were "up" for a potluck, the latter lacked a necessary ingredient.
It turned out that I had a contagious 24 hour stomach virus-thing. I spent all evening on Saturday, and until about 7pm on Sunday feeling MISERABLE. On Monday, Josh came home from work with the exact same symptoms that I had experienced.
THE PLOT THICKENS... or does it?
As of this writing, it is Tuesday and the sliced apples and onions, diced walnuts and grated cheese have been sitting in the refrigerator since Saturday when I gave up on life. Now that I can look at food without wanting to vomit, I've decided to finalize my dish.
Part of my frustration with "cooking" and "recipes" is that I am a novice. After work today, I whipped out all of the ingredients and the recipe and got to work on preparing what I hoped would be a delicious meal. In reading the recipe, there was an elusive set of instructions about "scalding milk" and continually whisking it with butter and flower until it thickened. Whatever. Sure, I don't have a clue how to "scald milk" nor do I understand its benefits in the cooking process, but I determined that was an unnecessary component to the recipe, so I merely added milk, flour, and butter to a pan and whisked away. Whisk, whisk, whisk. I continued to whisk for what seemed like HOURS with no discernible thickening before exclaiming to Josh, "What a waste of time!"
We then discussed how I would not be a good candidate for a cooking show.
Whisk, whisk, whisk.
Eventually, the sauce did thicken. And instead of following the recipe about drizzling the sauce over all of the ingredients once they were in the baking dish, I determined the better method was to first add brown sugar and then mix it all together before adding to the baking dish.
CONCLUSION
Apples, onions, walnuts, gruyere cheese, milk, flour, butter, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and my secret ingredient brown sugar. But really, wouldn't microwavable burritos have been better?
Photos from some nighttime excursions, hiking and biking.
On Friday night, Josh and I did a hike around the foothills. The trails were frozen but the air temperature was comfortable. We brought lights, and chose to hike in the darkness.
Fog limited what visibility there was and rendered the night eerie.
Later, we used our lights to search for nocturnal creatures.
Below is a photo from a night ride through the snow several days ago. The snow had good traction that night and we had an excellent ride.
Josh and I are not the wealthiest of individuals: notice how Josh affixed duct tape to his booties rather than purchase a new pair.
I am happy to announce that the school semester is over. The past few weeks have been uniquely stressful in ways that I look forward to forgetting. The good news is that I have one semester until I graduate! This has been a rewarding program, but I am ready to be done. The semester was essentially over for me on Tuesday at 7:07 pm, when I submitted (what I thought was) my final paper (see above: uniquely stressful). At that point, I began considering what to do with my spare time during the next five weeks of school-free-dom. As you might expect, some of this involves new knitting projects - - and so, here is an update on that...
This project has been on the needles for about a month. I have oogled the Autumn Rose pullover for YEARS and finally decided to go for it. For those who haven't considered this pattern, it is a FITTED fair isle RAGLAN. This is awesome because typical fair isle sweaters tend to be boxy and not at all figure-flattering. Inspiration for my colorways came from a Ravelry user and yarn availability at the LYS.
One significant yarn/gauge issue revolves around the fact that I somehow purchased the wrong yarn weight. I have been having some MAJOR BRAIN ISSUES lately, and for this project I purchased DK weight instead of fingering weight. Along with my other major brain issues, I don't have a clue how I managed to do this... It should also be noted that I purchased the yarn at 60% off (yay!) during a going-out-of-business sale at an LYS (boo!) and I cannot return the yarn. To compensate for the yarn weight, I recalculated stitch counts in the stranded pattern. I will keep my Ravelry page updated with my mods.
Due to the aforementioned LYS "going-out-of-business sale" (heretofore referred to as GOOBS), I have procured A LOT of yarn over the past few months, most of which I bought without having a specific pattern in mind. This Noro would be a prime example. By the way, the color is difficult to photograph - - it's a dark blue/black, with a metalic sheen. You may be interested in the fiber content: 40% silk, 30% lambswool, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon. Yum. It is soft, has a lovely hand, and a wonderful drape. In contemplating an appropriate pattern for this yarn, I noted that many knitters experienced significant growth lengthwise after blocking. Having learned my lession a few too many times about effective swatching, I knit up a sizable swatch, traced an outline of it, washed the swatch, and then traced a new outline of the dried swatch. The below photo shows the results of that - - namely, that the 36 row swatch grew an inch after blocking. That is a significant amount of growth.
I decided that the yarn might be best suited to a simple garment that would make use of the drape, and one that I could carefully monitor the growth of the yarn. I chose the pattern Everybody Knows (a free Knitty download) because I liked the punk-styled garter stitch. I anticipate that the metalic sheen of the blue/black yarn will add another punkish element. I love the collar on this sweater, however, I'm thinking about adding a Ninja Hood instead.
This alpaca is another GOOBS acquisition at 60% off with no plan for its use. I have two skeins of this particular color, which should work for a scarf. Ella is another free Knitty pattern that I've admired for a while. It reminds me of lizard scales. And one of the reasons that it appeals to me is that it is a triangular shawl divided in the center to produce a scarf-like construction. That is a little different from the typical lace shawl. Furthermore, that the lace of this shawl is simple also appealed to me, as I am a very novice lace knitter.
Pattern: Linnaeus, my own design Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock and Colinette Jitterbug
Linnaeus is an asymmetrical stranded jacket... or, it will be eventually. I presented Linnaeus in another version several months ago, and afterwards decided that I didn't like it. This is a new version with a much simplified stranded motif (16 stitches by 18 rows) and I've inverted the yarns.
In stash news, the Type A nerd in me salivated excessively earlier this week upon realizing that one can export one's Ravelry stash information to an excel spreadsheet. During my GOOBS yarn acquisition, I decided that it was imperative for me to update my stash records so that I would know its exact contents. Since then, the challenge has been deciding what yarn to use with what project - - I find that having A LOT of choices makes the decision process very difficult, especially when it involves lots of nommy yarn. Anyway, I spent some time with my excel spreadsheet yarn inventory and added a column to identify appropriate pattern ideas. In thinking about my excel stash inventory, I DROOL.
