Show Me Your Knits

Snow and Christmas Gift Musings

Snow to me is a given in Winter.  I love snow, actually.  Snow means skiing and a reason for wearing warm handknit items.  I'm not a big fan of ice, but it usually can't be avoided.  Yesterday morning it was freezing ice on the roads and the salt trucks hadn't been out in our area yet, but the kid had an orthodontist appointment.  I started out driving, skidded badly twice and then saw a Fed Ex truck rear end a car, all within two blocks from our house, so I turned around and drove home and rescheduled the orthodontist appointment.  The kid celebrated the fact that he gets a reprieve from braces tightening until after the New Year.  It snowed on top of the ice after that, and that helped the driving.  I hope that it snows again on Christmas Day, because a white Christmas just seems right.  Anyway, my point is that snow is just a part of winter.  My brother lives in Utah and sees even more snow than I do.  Granted, my dad lives about one mile from where President-elect Obama is vacationing right now in Hawaii, so he likes to tell us about his sunny weather, but he's retired and he's earned Hawaii.  Both my sisters now live in Portland, Oregon, which doesn't normally get much snow.  In fact, my sisters and I tend to make snarky comments about the way that Portlanders respond with terror to just a dusting of snow.  We may just be a bit sarcastic about it.  Yeah, one of my sisters lived in (obviously) snow-free Malaysia for a long time, but she used to live in Minnesota, and we're all from the midwest, so we know what real snow is.   That's why I was a bit surprised at the panic in my sister's voice when she told me that Portland had gotten over a foot of snow.  (Maybe it wasn't panic, but rather desperation from a mother who has been trapped indoors with two small children for a length of time.)  At first I thought my sisters were both being melodramatic.  I mean, hello, it's just snow, remember?  You've dealt with a foot of snow before.  But then they explained to me that Portland isn't equipped to deal with the snow like we expect from our cities.  There are no snow plows or salt trucks or even drivers who know how to drive in snow.  My brother-in-law doesn't even own a snow shovel, which is hard to comprehend.  I guess this snow has completely incapacitated their city.  One of our friends was stuck in the PDX airport for two days waiting to fly out.  There was a groom on the news stuck at the airport who wasn't going to make it home for his own wedding. (My sister said that she bets the bride is really pissed.)   A fire truck got stuck in the snow directly in front of my sister's house for an hour and a half.  She said that Portland's mayor was on the tv, asking people if they can walk to any small business, to do so and support the businesses that have been hit so badly by the snow right before Christmas.  Perhaps I wouldn't be such a fan of snow if I had to deal with all of that.

We're pretty snugged in here for Christmas.  I've got a pecan pie baking right now for my husband and plan on putting in a pumpkin pie for the kid.  I've laid in several bottles of merlot and a favorite cheap champagne for myself, heh heh.  (No, I won't be the only one drinking it.   Sheesh.)  Tonight we're cooking good cuts of steak and tomorrow we'll fry up shrimp using a breading recipe that my husband got from an old veteran who used it for frying his catfish.   I've got some guilt going that I didn't get around to Christmas cards this year.  I'm ferverently hoping that no one crosses me off their card list for next year because of my holiday indiscretion.  Our gifts are wrapped and under the tree.  There aren't that many gifts, not necessarily a reflection of the poor economy or the fact that I sort of feel like we've been hemorrhaging money this month with the house renovations and the taxes due at the end of the year, but honestly, we try not to overdo it with gifts.  It may be a reflection of how we were brought up.  I'm one of four kids, so my parents couldn't really overdo it.  My husband's parents simply didn't have the money.   I will say one thing about the kid, even though he often drives me crazy, he certainly isn't a greedy child.  His wish list included some books he wanted.  (Okay, not to digress here, but one of the things that I'm deeply thankful about is that my child is a reader, a true book lover.  Even though I stress, or obsess, constantly that the kid doesn't care enough about school and doesn't take grades seriously enough and I worry about his future, I am thankful that most nights I have to flip off his light in his bedroom because he's stayed up too late reading.)  His one big gift is an iPod Nano.  He's getting slippers because I'm tired of him always taking mine.  My husband, a man of few needs, says he doesn't want anything and that the fancy Japanese toilet can be his gift.  (I may put a bow on it.)  I just got him a few small things.  Me, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I tend to buy what I want.  If my husband is going to get me something, I'd want it to be personal, something I wouldn't buy myself.  I did get a fabulous early Christmas gift, though.  I found out that I got a spot for the Loopy Ewe Spring Fling in St. Louis in April.  My friend, Jane, got a spot, too, (hooray!) so it will be wonderful to room with her and visit again.  

Happy holidays to you and your family, regardless of the holiday you celebrate this time of year.  My extended family celebrates it all and it's all good.  Happy holidays!  

An Ancient Mariner

I'm glad that so many of you found my husband's idea of humor, i.e. putting the old toilet in the front yard, so amusing.  Har har.  I'm sure the neighbors are talking about us right now.  My husband had his camera out there, saying he was going to take photos of the toilet for our Christmas card photo, but he started laughing too much when I freaked out, so he (wisely) removed the old toilet from public view.  This morning when we went walking (I should mention here that I complained bitterly about exercising outside when the temps are so frigid and the only way he convinced me is by promising me if I walked to Starbucks, he would buy me a coffee.  I may be a big, whiney baby.) and ended up at the coffee shop, we saw my friend, Angie.  She and my husband entertained themselves with thinking up nice Christmas-y messages for our mythical family toilet-on-the-front-lawn photo Christmas card and I pointedly ignored their humor.  I did notice that Angie didn't look as enthusiastic when my husband offered to drop the toilet on her front yard.

Okay, enough about the stupid toilet.  This blog post is about my charity holiday knitting.  One of the women who is active on the Ravelry Sundara Love knitting group is also the program director for a volunteer knitting program that has been in action for 110 years called Christmas At Sea.   This group provides a huge amount of hand knit items for merchant mariners who are away from their family on ships at Christmas.  I only had time to knit two hats for the program, but I'm going to challenge myself to knit at least four pieces for this group for next year.  (Again with the time management issues.)  I like this hat pattern very much.  I found the pattern on Ravelry, called Rib-a-Roni.   It comes in a variety of sizes.  I really like how the decreases at the top of the hat cause the ribs to come together in a very decorative way.  (Naturally, I didn't think to take a photo of the hats that would illustrate that before I mailed them off.)  Knitting for the merchant mariners has made me reminisce fondly about my maternal grandfather, Morris.  This is not because he was a seaman in any way, but (stay with me here) because he used to recite poetry.  He used to recite a lot of poetry.  He favored Shakespeare, but he also often recited "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".     So in my convoluted thought process, knitting for the Christmas At Sea program, for the merchant mariners, made me think warm fuzzy about my grandfather, who has been gone for a number of years.  I think that's one of the nicest thing about knitting for others--you tend to think about a certain person or the recipient of your knitting with nearly every stitch.  Even though it was a bit mortifying when I was young to have a poetry-spouting grandpa, I'd give a lot to hear him recite again.  Anyway, charity knitting is really personally gratifying.  I don't suppose that it matters which group that you knit for; the important thing is that someone somewhere won't be quite as cold as he would have been without your knitting.  My friend, Jean, who is a simply amazing woman, took this to the next level this year.  She started knitting hats and other items for a local charity near her and suddenly started collecting handknits from people all over the place.  I'm proud of her.   

Winter Break, New Faucets, and a Fancy New Toilet

This was the last week of school for the kid and his school Winter Break has officially begun.  Since my last blog post, we've attended one holiday band concert and two wrestling meets.  The band concert was surprisingly good.  As my husband said, "it's not painful to go to these things like it was two years ago."  The kid's saxophone skills have come a long way since fifth grade.  The wrestling meets were as fragrant with stinky kid smell as expected, although at the risk of insulting  sweaty teenage wrestlers, it wasn't as bad as past meets.  I think both these gyms had better ventilation or something.  Anyway, wrestling season is over and I have a partially knit sock this week to show for it.  On to the next sport, whatever that is.  This is a basic broken rib sock knit out of one of the new skeins of Sundara sock yarn that I just received.  It's the Mint Over Chamomile colorway.  My husband conversationally asked me who these socks were for during one of the wrestling matches, since we still don't know how they score those things, and I was almost embarrassed to admit that they were for me.  I think it's ridiculous for me to feel guilty admitting that I'm knitting something for myself.  Perhaps it's because I'm feeling bad that I didn't knit socks for my knitting group this year as I have for past Christmases.  (Poor time management planning on my part.)  Maybe it's because these days all I can think about is knitting lots of sweaters and socks for me, myself, and I.  I need to remind myself that this is okay and not a reason to feel guilt angst.   

I should mention at this point, that the day before the last day of school, I got a call from the vice-principal.  (My new BFF.)  It seems that the kid had racked up his 8th (yes, I said 8) tardy for the quarter, thus resulting in a three hour detention which he will have to serve after school when the new quarter starts in January.  The irony of the fact that if he had just made it one more day without getting a class tardy, he would have had a clean slate for the next quarter, doesn't escape me.  My sister just laughed and said that the kid is nothing if not predictable.  Nearly all these tardies occurred in fourth hour, the one directly after lunch.  The kid very  seriously told me that I didn't sound angry, just disappointed.  (At which point, I'm ashamed to admit that I looked at him pointedly and said "You think?")  He handed over his cell phone, as he loses it for a week when he gets a detention.  Sigh. 

Also new this week is that my husband has been home doing all sorts of handyman stuff around the house.  We spent a lot of time looking at new faucets and once again I am reminded that all that stuff looks identical to me.  I know that some people adore the thrill of picking new light fixtures and all the endless knobs and handles that houses have, but to me, it all starts looking the same.  I think building your own house and having to make all those decisions would be the stuff of nightmares for me.  Then in an act of solidarity towards the old crumbling faucets, the toilet tank in our bathroom cracked.  So that led to us looking at rows and rows of new toilets, which like the faucets, all look the same to me.  My husband, in his endearing way, got on the internet to research toilets.  (We are all about the sexy and romantic at this house.)  After all his research, today we got a fancy new Japanese toilet.  Only the best for our household, I guess.  My husband thought it was very funny to take the old toilet out and put it in front of our house, just to see my freak out reaction.  Yes, very funny. 

Middle School Wrestlers Smell Bad

It's early Saturday morning and I'm sitting here with a strong cup of coffee, trying to gear up for my day.  Today is a middle school invitational wrestling meet.  Our son is a 7th grade wrestler.  Each new season brings a new sport around here.  Right now we're in the middle of wrestling season, which meant that for about six weeks, the kid had daily practice after school.  I got a lot of knitting done waiting by the gym in my car for him to get done.  After all the practices, they go straight into about two and a half weeks of meets, with the long invitational meets taking up all the Saturdays.  My husband and I always attend the kid's assorted sporting events, because, well, we are fond of the kid and we like to root at whatever football, basketball, baseball, etc game the kid may be playing on.  The problem with wrestling is that my husband and I know as much about wrestling as we do about cricket.  That means, basically nothing.   A wrestling invitational takes stamina.  And in my opinion, having a poor sense of smell helps.  Try to imagine a gymnasium full of sweaty, loud 13 and 14 year old boys (and a few girls) all wrestling on various mats around the gym, all wearing their universally unflattering singlets.  And the smell.  It's the intensified, unrelenting stench of teenage boy body odor.  I tried to   breathe through my mouth, but that didn't help, because you can sort of taste the smell.  I brought knitting, naturally, because it's a long day of wrestling, but I made the silly error of bringing something with charts.  We were packed into the bleachers, so I didn't have the room to spread out with my charts.  (This may have been a blessing in disguise, as I'm sure that my knitting would have absorbed the body odor smell and then I would have had to air it out afterwards.)  So, now I'm gearing up for another wrestling invitational meet today.  Must pace myself by drinking another strong cup of coffee and finding a simple sock to knit, preferably one made out of non-porous, not odor-retaining wool.

Classic Cotton Cables

Today was the first "snow day" from school.  Not the first snow.  That happened Thanksgiving weekend, but this was the first time that they cancelled school.  The roads were pretty treacherous.  Last night when I drove home from work, it was pretty slippery.  I think the kid is hoping for another snow day tomorrow, but I think he's out of luck.

I finished a baby sweater today, and at the risk of sounding vain, I love it.  This is the third time that I've knit this "Get Ziggy" pattern, but I think this version may be my favorite.  The mom requested cotton for her baby, so I used some Debbie Bliss DK cotton from my stash in an off-white colorway.  This yarn knits up at a worsted gauge and the pattern calls for an aran weight gauge, so I knit the 12 month size to get the right width for the 6 month size that I wanted and just made the lengthwise measurements for the 6 month size.  It really came out just how I wanted it and was a good way to compensate for the difference in yarn gauge.  My photos aren't great, but I love how the sweater turned out.  The cream cotton cables look classic, but the  unusual cabling makes it look modern. Of course, even better than knitting for babies, is getting photos of your sweaters being worn by the babies.  My friend sent me a bunch of photos of her gorgeous son Benjamin, right after his first haircut, wearing the striped cotton sweater I knit him.  Isn't he a beautiful child?  Some of the photos cracked me up because he was crying in them.  I don't mean that they cracked me up because I'm some sort of horrible person who enjoys seeing babies cry, but it made me laugh because I was wondering if the kid was crying because his mother forced him in the handknit sweater for the photo shoot.

Tacos Are The Opposite of Turkey

The day after the Turkey Leftover Rebellion, I made tacos.  It seemed like the polar opposite to turkey.  Of course, when the kid asked me what we were having for dinner, I naturally responded, "Turkey again."  He seemed utterly grateful when he realized that I was joking with him, so perhaps I should pull his leg more often.

The day after my last post about Sundara yarn, I received my Artist's Choice Sock Yarn  subscription from Sundara.  I was very pleased with it.   Sundara dyed up small lots of ten skeins each of sock yarn.  I think you have the option of choosing warms or cools or a mixed palette, which is what I chose, in three skein increments.  I got six skeins of her sock yarn, and overall, I'm very happy with them all.  The colors are much more intense than they appear on my computer screen.  There have been tons of photos of the different Artist's Choice Sock yarns on the Ravelry Sundara Love board these past few days.  I love nearly all of them, as there are over a hundred different new colorways that came out in this last subscriptions.  The photos do give a new meaning to yarn porn.  They are luscious.  It's been amusing, too, because the skein trading on the list has reached epic proportions.  Some of these knitters trade skeins like preteens used to trade Pokeman and Yugio  cards.  It's very enthusiastic.  Sundara has a new Artist's Choice sock yarn subscription  opening on December 15th.    If you're interested, I would sign up fairly quickly.  Given the positive response on the Sundara Love ravelry list, it wouldn't surprise me if the subscriptions filled up in a day or so.    I'm definitely going to try to sign up again.  I think that I'm not going to renew my Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock sock club for 2009, so I'll do this instead.  It's not that I don't care for Socks That Rock.  In fact, quite the opposite.  STR sock yarn is probably one of my favorite sock yarns and that's saying a lot.  I just have been lukewarm about the sock club choices this year and I'm going to try something different.  Blue Moon Fiber Arts has so many amazing colorways, that I think I prefer to just choose the ones I want.  Unfortunately, you can't really do that with the Sundara yarn since she's subscription only, but I do like this Artist's Choice sock yarn option.  (If you're curious about the colorways I received in the Artist's Choice subscription this time, from top to bottom on the first photo is:  Songbird, Mint over Chamomile, First Blush.  The second photo from top to bottom is:  Jubilation, Denim over Indigo, Espresso over Slate.  Great knitting potential here in these skeins.)

I finished up a baby sweater and matching hat out of Mission Falls 1820 Cotton, which has a great nubby texture and the added bonus of machine-washability, which is always a plus in baby knits.    The pattern is called Zen, from one of the Mission Falls Wee Knits books.  The hat is just a rolled-brim hat I made out of the leftover yarn.  The hat is supposed to be a 6 month old baby size to go with the sweater, but it looks a bit big to me.  I can't really tell and I don't have a baby to try it on to check.  I've knit this sweater before, and honestly, this is the last time.  I am so done with intarsia and all the ends you have to weave in.  This is it for intarsia, at least for a few months until I forget how annoying all the end-weaving in is and start another project with it.

Officially Sick of Turkey

I think we've officially reached the limits of our leftovers accepting ability.  Last night when I was trying to pass off the leftover Thanksgiving turkey in a turkey barley soup, no one was very enthusiastic.  In fact, the kid flat out said, "I'm sick of turkey."  My husband was more subtle, glancing hopefully over at the box of Raisin Bran cereal.  I know how they feel.  I'm turkey-ed out.  Thanksgiving itself was nice.  Very laid back.  My mom came in for the long weekend.  I let her make the gravy.  We did our traditional going-around-the-table-telling-what-we're-thankful-for and the kid said he was thankful for his new hairstyle.  I'm serious.  No parental guilt over here that I'm raising a self-absorbed teenager.  Sigh.  My favorite was when he was little and he told everyone at the table that he was thankful for Mickey Mouse.  Now it's his hair.  Again, sigh.  Mom's thanks were stridently political.  She didn't mention her hair.  At any rate, it was a nice holiday.  I didn't knit that much, but visited with my mom and read a lot and watched movies with the family.

I have this lace scarf to show off.    The pattern is called Gothik and I found it on Ravelry.  It was definitely a fun knit.  I finished it sometime mid-November and I've been wearing it non-stop.  The yarn is a skein of Sundara sock yarn in a colorway called Lenten Rose.  I've had it in my stash for a while.  Sundara is a talented yarn dyer out of Seattle.  She has an amazing eye for color.  Most of the yarns are less variegated.  She seems to do a lot of overdyes, i.e. this color over that color.  Some of her combinations are really striking and unusual.  Quite honestly, I find her yarns expensive.  Her sock yarns are probably comparably priced to other high-end sock yarns, although I think her sock yarn yardage is rather meager per skein.  I certainly don't begrudge what she charges for her work.  She really is an artist.  I do think you get what you pay for in this case.  It's just that a large project is a serious chunk of cash.  Do I think my knitting is worth it?  Yes, but I'm practical enough to know that I need to alternate pricey projects out of Sundara yarn with stash-diving projects using yarn I already own.  I've got some indulgent Sundara yarn subscriptions coming up, so I'm anxious to try her other, non-sock yarns.  She definitely specializes in luxury yarns.  I bought a skein of silk lace weight Sundara yarn from a ravelry member.     I think the color is called Burnt Sienna.  It's so gorgeous that I'm almost afraid to knit it up.  I'm afraid I won't do the yarn justice or something.  Back in September or August, I joined a Ravelry group called Sundara Yarn Love.  I wondered when I joined it because there is a lengthy warning about "playing nice".  At the time, I thought that was odd, given that a group specializing in projects out of one dyer's yarn didn't seem very controversial to me.  Whoa, was I wrong.  The first couple of weeks that I was on the list, it seemed like someone was always getting their nose bent out of joint and someone else was hell-bent on flaming other posters.  It was bizarre.  I may be totally wrong, but it seemed to me that most of these arguments stemmed from the fact that at the time, this highly coveted yarn was available on a "first come, first served" basis.  Sundara would make random yarn offerings and there would be a mass feeding frenzy.  (My few skeins of Sundara yarn were from a while ago when she was less well-known or bought from generous Ravelry members.  I'm not much of a yarn stalker.)  Anyway, it always seemed like arguments would break out after that.  I thought about unsubscribing, because I hate fighting, and jeez people, when it's all said and done, it's just yarn.  Gorgeous yarn, to be sure, but still just yarn and not worth all the drama.  I stayed on the list because the vast majority of the posters were lovely knitters.  And not only are they lovely, but they are incredibly talented.  I don't know if it's the marriage of fantastic yarn and incredible skills, but the projects I have seen out of that group are jaw-dropping.  Sweaters and accessories and lace (oh my gosh, the lace!) that is so incredibly inspiring.  So sometime this fall, Sundara did something that I think is very smart.  She switched all her sales from these random availabilities to subscriptions.  Basically, you pay ahead of time for different groupings of yarn and they're mailed to you at a later date.  This is how I've been able to indulge in some Sundara goodness that will be coming to me later, for projects in 2009.  After she stopped the feeding-frenzy craziness, all the nastiness on the list seemed to evaporate.  It's been a very pleasant place to be inspired since then.  I'm glad I hung in there.