However, squash blossoms sauteed in butter with fresh oregano taste even better than I could imagine. 
and I watched a world record get set.
So they were 4 days of fun. Now back to the knitting.Sunday, August 24, 2008
Day 12
and I've dropped the batton, tripped over a hurdle, did not knit for 4 days. Not a stitch.
However, squash blossoms sauteed in butter with fresh oregano taste even better than I could imagine. and I watched a world record get set.
So they were 4 days of fun. Now back to the knitting.
However, squash blossoms sauteed in butter with fresh oregano taste even better than I could imagine. and I watched a world record get set. So they were 4 days of fun. Now back to the knitting.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Day 5
The Olympic baby sweaters are coming along
It turns out I am in love with CotLin by knit picks. I find the quality of their yarn to be hit or miss. This one was hit right out of the ball park. So silky, so machine washable, so light, I'll be making more baby sweaters out of it.
I am very pleased with this sweater vest too. It only takes 2 balls of Mission Falls cotton, my very favorite cotton yarn, and a touch of a third color. The pattern said I would need 2 balls of each color so I picked 2 colors I had several balls of. It turns out the other 2 balls are for the matching hat. I missed my chance to use up some of my single balls. However, I like it so much I will knit it again.
Lookie at that, a female squash blossom. My first squash.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Funnel Cakes
It's time for the county fair.
As a child I was active in 4H and I spent the whole week running from event to event. There would barely be time to change my cloths from washing my calf in time to show my dog. Then hand off the dog to Dad and rush to the cookie judging. After cookies I would rush my horse into the ring. It was hectic, it was wonderful, it was too much, but I wouldn't trade that time for anything or enter fewer events either.
Since then going to the fair has been more sedate. It a day to pet rabbits and to look at the things the children are doing now, nothing more. However, this year I had pressure from all sides to enter my work in the open class. So I did.
Yarn spun from the wool of a shetland fleece grown by a local farmer.
Mittens knitted from my multicolored multifiber handspun yarn. The easiest thing I made. Even if I did dye the fiber and spin the yarn myself. But easy doesn't mean bad. They are like 2 little watercolor painting.
Crop top sweater of my own design knitted from my handspun wool/silk yarn and trimmed with a understated crochet edging of silk. It not only won blue but some rosewood needles too. Yummy rosewood needles just right for lace. I'll post a better photo of the sweater when I have one. 
My only disappointment. This sweater knitted from a wool/hemp hand dyed yarn that I bought directly from the dyer is an original design that fits me to a T because it had front and back darts. Darts are hard. Mine are stunning. Of everything I entered this is the only one I am proud of. I worked very hard on it. It is perfection. However this sweater was beat out by a lace christening gown and a knitted suit so it didn't do too bad.
A baby hat with attached scarf. More photos here.
Not everything of mine received a ribbon. Ironically they photographed the best.
A lace scarf. I messed up 3 times knitting it and that really shows in lace. I knew it going in but thought there wouldn't be stiff competition at the fair. There was. I'm glad it didn't win. I'm glad there was better lace there.
And this scarf also didn't receive a ribbon. My blocking was shoddy and the edges rolled under. I thought long and hard about steaming it. I have a steamer for just that. It is very easy to use. I thought and thought about pulling it out and steaming it. It only takes 3 minuets. I did not. Maybe it still wouldn't have gotten a ribbon if it had been steamed but it would have helped.
Finally, in my bag at pick up bag clear down at the bottom I found these...
My favorite is the rabbits....
...the chickens...
... and the horses.
As a child I was active in 4H and I spent the whole week running from event to event. There would barely be time to change my cloths from washing my calf in time to show my dog. Then hand off the dog to Dad and rush to the cookie judging. After cookies I would rush my horse into the ring. It was hectic, it was wonderful, it was too much, but I wouldn't trade that time for anything or enter fewer events either.Since then going to the fair has been more sedate. It a day to pet rabbits and to look at the things the children are doing now, nothing more. However, this year I had pressure from all sides to enter my work in the open class. So I did.
Yarn spun from the wool of a shetland fleece grown by a local farmer.
Mittens knitted from my multicolored multifiber handspun yarn. The easiest thing I made. Even if I did dye the fiber and spin the yarn myself. But easy doesn't mean bad. They are like 2 little watercolor painting.
Crop top sweater of my own design knitted from my handspun wool/silk yarn and trimmed with a understated crochet edging of silk. It not only won blue but some rosewood needles too. Yummy rosewood needles just right for lace. I'll post a better photo of the sweater when I have one. My only disappointment. This sweater knitted from a wool/hemp hand dyed yarn that I bought directly from the dyer is an original design that fits me to a T because it had front and back darts. Darts are hard. Mine are stunning. Of everything I entered this is the only one I am proud of. I worked very hard on it. It is perfection. However this sweater was beat out by a lace christening gown and a knitted suit so it didn't do too bad.
A baby hat with attached scarf. More photos here.
Not everything of mine received a ribbon. Ironically they photographed the best.A lace scarf. I messed up 3 times knitting it and that really shows in lace. I knew it going in but thought there wouldn't be stiff competition at the fair. There was. I'm glad it didn't win. I'm glad there was better lace there.
And this scarf also didn't receive a ribbon. My blocking was shoddy and the edges rolled under. I thought long and hard about steaming it. I have a steamer for just that. It is very easy to use. I thought and thought about pulling it out and steaming it. It only takes 3 minuets. I did not. Maybe it still wouldn't have gotten a ribbon if it had been steamed but it would have helped.
Finally, in my bag at pick up bag clear down at the bottom I found these...
size 17 ebony needles. I have always wanted ebony needles. I think they were placed in the bag because I volunteered for a shift at the fair. I spent saturday in the fiber arts building spinning. It was supposed to be a 4 hours shift but so many people were stopping to talk and ask questions I was there for over 7 hours. I think that's why the needles are there. Or it goes with one of the blue ribbons. Either way I have always wanted ebony needles.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Day 3
I cast on 4 of the 5 sweaters and have been working on each in shifts. The only reason I don't have all 5 on the needles is I don't own enough size 3 needles. I'm really regretting not signing up for 10.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Summer Olympics
July I spent knitting baby hats for Hats For Alex. They are draped over my herb garden planted the same day I cast on the first hat. Both crops are doing well. The Watch Cap in back is nestled in thyme. The two hats in the middle are supported by catnip and sage growing in the same pot. The large hat is smothering the Marjoram. My favorite hat with the ribbing and rolled brim is on the Greek Oregano, the empty spot left by the Golden Oregano clearly shows. It drowned in all the rain we had this summer. Finally the hat in the right corner is supported by rosemary. I could send them in now but I hope to knit a few pink hats. They would look nice with the basil plants.
My first tomato of the summer. I hope it ripens before first frost.
My summer and winter squash are growing fast. Three weeks ago they were mostly dead plants being sold a quarter a six pack. Or I should say a quarter a two pack. That mostly dead thing. 
I have been gathering yarn for the Summer Olympics on Ravelry. I'm using stash yarn with the goal of knitting 5 baby sweaters. At first 5 seemed like a hard but completely doable amount. 17 days, 5 sweaters, if I knit a sweater every 3 days then i could take 2 day off. Easy Peasy.
In fact maybe too easy. Maybe I would have all five finished by Monday. What then? So I pulled out all of my stash yarn odds and ends. In that box there is enough to knit at least 10 baby sweaters.
However, on Ravlery all entries have to be filled out in advance. I stuck with five. A sweater every three days with two days off. It better to have a realistic plan. Even if it's large enough to make everyone I've told gasp. It is the Olympics.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
2 months 1 week and 3 days...
...is how long there between yarn sales at my LYS and the number of days I can go without buying yarn. However, it seems that I am a sucker for 30% off yarn. Or I should say any % off yarn but 30% and more just makes my day.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Good Books
This was stolen from Needlefingers :
Apparently, the National Endowment for the Arts believes that the average American has read only 6 of the books on the list below
.1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE (mine would be in red)
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Yes, the whole thing front to back. It's very long and very shocking)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (perhaps the worst book ever)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (are you kidding? He wrote 35 plays. I have read 19 and his sonnets and I am so counting it)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I wrote a most awesome 10 page paper about the color of underpants, and my only A+ ever)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (The funniest book I have ever "read" love books on tape, I'm still counting it)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (I read it in french, the second worst book I had to read for scool. Go look at the top for the first)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
So, I have read 39. I think that proves I'm over educated. Many I read for school in The Novel, American Lit, The Short Story, Shakespeare 350, Lit For Adolescence, and Modern Utopian Lit(the best class ever, I mean ever). I graduated before I ever got to Medieval and Renaissance, Great Books, Fable and Fantasy, Women and Science Fiction and missing those classes still makes me sad 8 years later. So why did I take all those classes? Because Art classes are hard. Very very hard. Lit classes are easy and fun. I took one lit class a semester to keep my brain from exploding. You, genteel reader, can tell from my blog that I did not take any writing classes.
But while I no longer get to explore book thoroughly in a class room setting. I read the book strait through the day it was assigned, I read it chapter by chapter with the class for discussion, and then I read it again before the test. Yes, I have to read it 3 times to get it since my LD gets in the way. Yes, reading 5 to 10 books a semester 3 times each is still easer than art classes.
Anyway, while I no longer get to know books that well I still read and I still read a book at least twice to know what happened. But best of all I have discovered books on tape. I can knit and listen. Also while listening I retain it better so I don't need a do over. And I knit. That can't be stressed enough. Knitting. While. Listening. Knitting. mmmmm Knitting and books.
PS. it chaps my hide that Mark Twain isn't on the list.
PPS. After all that talk about reading them for school I went and counted. I read 26 of them for my own pleasure.
Apparently, the National Endowment for the Arts believes that the average American has read only 6 of the books on the list below
.1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE (mine would be in red)
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (Yes, the whole thing front to back. It's very long and very shocking)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (perhaps the worst book ever)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (are you kidding? He wrote 35 plays. I have read 19 and his sonnets and I am so counting it)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I wrote a most awesome 10 page paper about the color of underpants, and my only A+ ever)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (The funniest book I have ever "read" love books on tape, I'm still counting it)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (I read it in french, the second worst book I had to read for scool. Go look at the top for the first)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
So, I have read 39. I think that proves I'm over educated. Many I read for school in The Novel, American Lit, The Short Story, Shakespeare 350, Lit For Adolescence, and Modern Utopian Lit(the best class ever, I mean ever). I graduated before I ever got to Medieval and Renaissance, Great Books, Fable and Fantasy, Women and Science Fiction and missing those classes still makes me sad 8 years later. So why did I take all those classes? Because Art classes are hard. Very very hard. Lit classes are easy and fun. I took one lit class a semester to keep my brain from exploding. You, genteel reader, can tell from my blog that I did not take any writing classes.
But while I no longer get to explore book thoroughly in a class room setting. I read the book strait through the day it was assigned, I read it chapter by chapter with the class for discussion, and then I read it again before the test. Yes, I have to read it 3 times to get it since my LD gets in the way. Yes, reading 5 to 10 books a semester 3 times each is still easer than art classes.
Anyway, while I no longer get to know books that well I still read and I still read a book at least twice to know what happened. But best of all I have discovered books on tape. I can knit and listen. Also while listening I retain it better so I don't need a do over. And I knit. That can't be stressed enough. Knitting. While. Listening. Knitting. mmmmm Knitting and books.
PS. it chaps my hide that Mark Twain isn't on the list.
PPS. After all that talk about reading them for school I went and counted. I read 26 of them for my own pleasure.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
A Dirty Bathroom Mirror and Some Sweater Love
Shutter bug
And crop the photos better...
But my oh my, look at that sweater...
It was a about a year ago I counted up my sweaters and realized I was unhappy with my success rate. That hard look about overlooking things that were just sort of good enough has made a huge difference in my knitting. Since then I have knitted my best sweaters and this is one of them.
Stripes Go Round from IK summer 2004, size small.
Knit in SWTC bamboo, no that yarn won't knit to the pattern gauge but that's ok I did the math.
Size 3 needles for the body and size 2 for the yoke to tighten the row gauge.
Knit the pattern as written but kept going at the yoke for a few more inches and added 2 more decreas rows to raise the neck.
I love everything about the yarn. I love the waxy feeling, the crisp hand, the drape, and how it softens with washing.
I love everything about the sweater. I love the 4 inches of negative ease, the way the stripes curve around my neck, the way the body hangs.
I wash it as soon as I take it off just so I can wear it again.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The trip home
The rest of the trip by popular demand. Cool that anybody is reading this.
So after leaving the Grand Canyon we drove until mid-afternoon and stopped at a volcano. The hike up was all lava.
Our little shutterbug in a lava cave.
The oldest tree in the NM growing out of the lava.
Looking into the crater.
And if the volcano wasn't enough there was also an ice cave. Yes, in this cave it stays cold enough that the pond in the bottom never melts. In fact every year the ice gets deeper. It felt good in there after all the hiking. Like stepping into a freezer. The only photo that turned out doesn't show the ice, only us, but what a handsome group.
Even an hour later, along the side of the road, we could see lava spewed by the volcano and it's brothers.
The next day and last day was all driving. However in the late morning we needed a pit stop and took a chance on a billboard add and stopped at the Dinosaur Museum. What a lucky break for us.
As pretty as the southwest is...
There is no place like home.
So very green. I love it.
So after leaving the Grand Canyon we drove until mid-afternoon and stopped at a volcano. The hike up was all lava.
Our little shutterbug in a lava cave.
The oldest tree in the NM growing out of the lava.
Looking into the crater.
And if the volcano wasn't enough there was also an ice cave. Yes, in this cave it stays cold enough that the pond in the bottom never melts. In fact every year the ice gets deeper. It felt good in there after all the hiking. Like stepping into a freezer. The only photo that turned out doesn't show the ice, only us, but what a handsome group.
Even an hour later, along the side of the road, we could see lava spewed by the volcano and it's brothers.
The next day and last day was all driving. However in the late morning we needed a pit stop and took a chance on a billboard add and stopped at the Dinosaur Museum. What a lucky break for us.
As pretty as the southwest is...There is no place like home.So very green. I love it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)