Sassy Does It

Fifi is nearly off the needles and - oh, for pete’s sake - she’s been in that sad state for over a week.

I’m going to try to blame this on the whole Michael Jackson thing.  It took a good long while to peel my eyes off of the media coverage, as extensive as it’s been.  I think I was overcompensating because when the news first hit I was too busy and far away from a TV to immediately soothe myself with The Making of Thriller on loop for hours on CNN. 

Everybody else was getting their MJ fix with funky Motown compilations of Little Michael singing his way into Weird Michael, and poor me, I was left to suffer in silence, stuck in yucky meetings.

Well, I made up for it by subsequently planting myself in front of the telly with my dancing shoes on.  My knitting took the blow into the backseat.

Does that excuse fly?

A few parting words on MJ, because really, it does suck that he died.  I know he’d turned indisputably wacko and all, but still.

All I could think of last week was dancing with Sissy B in our Flashdance outfits on the shag carpet in the basement, rewinding and forwarding the Thriller cassette a few hundred times to get Billie Jean and Beat It to play ad nauseam. 

Those dance routines were in tip-top shape for our stage debut in front of Dad’s video camera.  I think I’ve mentioned this before.  I fell down a few times.

Not ready to post that clip yet.

Anyhoo.  Farewell, Michael.  Object of my teenage affection.  Source of my delight on the big Grammy night.  Enabler whenever and wherever I want to Blame It on the Boogie, from now until I just can’t boogie no more.

In the absence of knitting news, I did want to make mention of a little gem I discovered in the way of yummy treats.

Allison over at The Whole Ball of Yarn(s) is open for business with Lilah Bug Bakes.  She’s the kind of person who comes up with recipes for things like Mojito Truffles, so you can understand why this chickadee has my attention.

Holy Yummy. 

Check her out.   Totally bookmark-worthy.

Upon learning about her store (after months of drool-inducing evidence of prowess in the kitchen had mounted on her blog), I scurried on over to her website to see what she had on offer. 

And then I ordered. 

Oh, the goodness she delivers with fresh-picked berries and the occasional irresistible twist (chocolate! amaretto! ginger! wine!).

When I received my package after ordering, I tore into the box to find two jars of Agave-Sweetened Strawberry Vanilla Jam and a jar of Bittersweet Chocolate-Pear Sauce.  There was some Pear With Caramel, Lavender, and Vanilla Sauce in there, too.

I went a little overboard in my initial sampling of each.

It started out innocently enough.  I thought I’d have a tasting party.  Um, a party for one:  these were my own sneaky treats.  I opened them when no one else was home to bust me. 

I tried the Strawberry-Vanilla Jam on bread, on bread with butter, and on bread with peanut butter (so it goes, right?).  But then I cracked open the Chocolate-Pear Sauce and drizzled it on vanilla Häagen-Dazs that I went out especially to buy.  Hey, the sauce needed a suitable partner.

Then, a few hours and a Corona or two later, I waddled to the freezer for another scoop of ice cream (”Those containers need to be bigger,” says my tummy; “Noooooo!” says my waistline).  This time I put the Chocolate-Pear AND the Strawberry-Vanilla on top.  OK, and a tiny dollop of peanut butter, since it was already out.

What a little piggy!  Oh well, we all need a bit of excess now and then.  (Wait, can there be only a bit of excess? or does it have to be a lot of excess? or maybe just plain excess?) 

On a healthier note, my proto-garden is still taking baby steps.  Any forward progress I consider a victory.

The tomatoes didn’t take the first time so I had to re-plant the seeds when they didn’t show signs of life after two weeks.

The one plant in front has been flaunting its comparative girth in front of its tiny backup dancers. 

I’ll transplant a few of them now that they’re growing (note that this is well outside any gardening skills I even pretend to possess) to give them all a little more room to accommodate the fatty in front.

The beans took off running from the beginning, so they’re considerably ahead.

Let’s see if these guys can hold my attention long enough for me to notice if and/or when they actually bear fruit.

Bear veggies.

But technically the tomato…really fruit…right?  Whatever. Something’s growing.

I’m glad Christmas is over, and I’m not sorry I said it.

I had a good Christmas, really, but I’m just so done with it this year.

One excellent byproduct of the holiday nuttiness, however, is a spanking new baby blanket.

Little K was born last week, so this hot potato is ready for assignment overseas.

Pattern: Curlicue

Yarn: Blue Sky Alapacas Dyed Cotton (organically grown) in colorway 617 (Lotus), four skeins (150 yds each)

Needle:  US 3 circulars, 29-inch

Finished dimensions:
28 inches wide, 35 inches long

Modifications: I added a three-stitch garter border to both ends of every row.  To my eye, this was needed to keep the symmetry of the scalloped borders as written.

Clarifications: If this one is in your queue, double-check on how to properly end the even-numbered rows here (the last repeat is finished off with a ssk WHICH REPLACES the final sk2p as written). If you’re clever enough to have worked this out on your own, I hope your prowess is contagious.

Ravelry links: my project, the designer’s pattern

Verdict: Happy.  Easy pattern that doesn’t look super-easy, and it flew on non-Turbo US 3s like you wouldn’t think it would do.  Honestly, I felt like I was knitting on much fatter needles, like 9s.

The finished size was just what I’d hoped it would be (always nice, especially when you go to the trouble of knitting a gauge swatch).

I’m happy with the drape as well - gentle yet consistent.

The fabric is very soft; warm and substantial-feeling while still having the lightness of cotton.  It’s the nice fat feeling of the Blue Sky Alpacas fiber that makes the magic happen.

The finished blanket blossomed nicely with a 20-minute Eucalan soak, and behaved well during the blocking that followed.

The only silly-Amy moment(s) came about in the dash to complete my final rows as my yarn was running out.

Seeing as it’s a baby blanket that lacks the requirement of an exact fit, I should have just stopped when I knew I wasn’t going to squeak out another 5 rows and quit the pattern a bit early to finish gracefully with the final 3 rows of garter stitch.

But I like to live dangerously.

And I figured that blocking would cure all evils if I happened to stretch the yarn (too) tightly to eke out the final rows for a photo finish at the end of my fourth and final skein.

I pulled *really* tightly and finished all rows of the final pattern repetition and the border with only a couple of inches to spare.

Woo-hoo!  I whipped out my Eucalan wash, soaked, patted, and blocked.

But.

There wasn’t enough ease left in the fabric at that far end of the blanket to be able to block any sense back into it:  the width pulled in on itself and started to suck the life out of the rest of the project.

I started having flashbacks to my first baby blanket, a.k.a. The Trapezoid.

No one was ever going to notice that the pattern ended a couple of rows early, not even me.  Duh.

So I blocked all but the crappy end and once the remainder of the blanket was off the board, I frogged back 5 rows and finished with the garter stitch border in a more civilized fashion.

That said, I left out the evidence of my pre-frogged tight end and saved up my photo shoot for the happier times.  Pictured above is the (still sloppy) unblocked but re-knit trouble area which I subsequently prettied up in a second round of targeted blocking.

Below are a few pics of my just-off-the-UPS-truck blocking tools in action.

The Fiber Fantasy blockers I described in my last post did not disappoint.

Along with the curly end of a flexible blocker from this set, the tip of one of the straight-edge blockers is pictured here, next to the happy yellow yardstick that comes with the package.

During the first go at blocking, I ran two super-longshanks rigid blockers down the straight sides and T-pinned them 28 inches apart to set an even width.

Then I threaded a flexible blocker down the not-too-tight shorter edge until I ran out of wire (accounting for the extra length consumed by the scalloped edges, this was about 3/4 of the way across).

I finished off weaving this edge with the second flexible blocker and then pinned down the curves to set the shape.  The second scalloped edge (too tightly knitted, wearing the dunce cap) had to wait until I fixed it before it could be similarly guided.

Here’s a close-up of a flexible blocker in action on the second end after the rip-out-and-redo (you can see that I only re-soaked the last few inches).

You weave the blockers through outermost stitch all along each edge, every half inch or so.

And then you hook yourself up with ship-shape corners by pinning squarely at the joining point.

After blocking, even the reverse of the fabric has a nice smooth look.

Beeteedubyuh, did ya notice my sexy new blocking board along the way here?

Ohhh, it’s delicious.  Boy, did I feel professional voodooing my work down into submission with those T-pins.

As you can see, she folds up real nice so that a gal like me can clean up after herself when the blocking’s done.  Or at least have the potential to…do that.

Some call it cluttered, I call it cozy: I’m currently happily surrounded by knitting items, both old and new, and I’m hunkering down to get some things done here.

In spite of my slight tendency toward bah-humbuginess this year, Santa was very kind.

It’s not about the gifts, I know, but my eyes did get all misty when I unwrapped a shiny new ball winder and a gorgeous swift to boot.  Eureka, my heavy hinting worked!

It’s all I really wanted, so I figured the hinting was justified.

If I don’t do it, birthdays get forgotten and it ends in tears.  It’d be easier if gifts weren’t even involved, you know?  But I digress.

I do like gifts.

Oh joy, I felt like a kid - as soon as it seemed socially acceptable to do so when everyone had finished opening gifts (I gave it about 30 seconds), I bee-lined for my knitting bag and whipped out an unballed hank of Mongolian Cashmere and got to work.  I just happened to have this on hand.  Just in case.

That swift spinning away with a steady whir and a gentle breeze was glorious.  After I got it going.

I wasn’t sure quite what to do since I hadn’t done it before, but I figured I’d better just stick the little end into the big end and go for it* (before Tommy came back and hit me over the head with a tack hammer).

I felt like Ralphie on Christmas morning with his new Red Ryder BB gun, with his dad standing over his shoulder asking him if he knows how to load it.  That kid had been dreaming about loading it for so long, he tuned out all extraneous noise, nodding and smiling (maybe drooling?) and just got down to the business of enjoying it.

And then he went outside and (almost) shot his eye out - but thank goodness I didn’t do that.

I did quickly get my fix, however, and then moved the new goodies to the corner (still where I could see them) while I watched Mamma Mia and squealed for nearly two hours like the girl I am.

Now on to the New Year.  I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to ring it in doing anything exciting, but that doesn’t mean that something couldn’t come up.

Right?

I could just knit it in while others are ringing it in.  That would do.  I’ve got a lot of projects coming down the pike (in theory), so that would suit me just fine.

Old. Boring. Lady.

Emphasis on the Lady, thank you very much.

Toodles, dears.  TTYL.

When I was a kid we had a humongo garden in the backyard. Nice to have enough of a backyard to do that - easier in the Midwest than in the more populous areas toward which I gravitate now. These days I feel lucky to have a few blades of grass to wiggle my toes in.

On the left, our early summer garden, circa 1984. In the middle, my sisters and I, definitely not weeding.

That backyard garden was so awesome, but at the time I took it for granted, because, of course, that’s what kids do. Memories of our garden conjure up the smell of fresh cut grass, since Dad would usually whip out the tiller to work in the garden after he’d mowed the lawn. This usually ended up being later in the day (since the lawn got cut first), so I have visions of the sky shifting to dusky hues as Dad made the rounds with the tiller, shirtless skin completely sun-burned. Always he was donning the tried-and-true cut-off jean shorts he wore for pretty much the entire summer (except to work, duh). No protective gear, though.  Nah!  Unearthed rocks flying into eyes, detaching retinas - no biggie. 

 

A kinder, gentler version of our trusty Toro

Tiller. Tiller. It’s a funny word when you think about it too much. Tiller. As I was typing above I got all nostalgic about the old tiller. It was red. I think it was a Toro (not that I know anything about tiller brands, I swear; this name just popped into my head). I went so far as to Google “old garden tiller” to find something that looked similar to what I remember. What I found is a bunch of new-fangled ones that are a lot shinier and less dangerous-looking than what I remembered. But I was small at the time, so everything looked big.

Apparently as a tot I used to run around in the garden behind Dad in the parts he’d already tilled, singing my little no-one-will-hear-me-because-the-motor-is-so-loud song of, “Runnin’ in der dirt, runnin’ in der dirt”. I don’t remember this, but I do remember my imaginary friends, Peach and Rake, who I had with me all the time at that age. Hey, my sisters hadn’t been born yet - I needed some company.

Now I can appreciate how wonderful it was to enjoy those fresh-picked, still sun-warmed fruits of my parents’ labor (heaven forbid I should help out in the garden - ever - no, the credit goes entirely to them). Corn, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beets, melons, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, beans, radishes, onions. A couple of years we did pumpkins. Early on my mom had sunflowers growing along the back edge, too. But as I grew up, schedules got busier and the crops got scaled down, understandably. Tomatoes and beans were pretty much it by the time I was in high school.

Nonetheless - how cool is that? Now I’m gagging for a garden and I’ve got no space. Serves me right for grumbling about weeding in my adolescence. But I dream about becoming a proper green thumb - I know it’s a lot of work, but I feel like I’d be up for it. If I only had the land. Sigh.

In the mean time, I stick to the farmer’s market. There’s a great one nearby on weekends, and this morning, upon realizing we were fresh out of fruit, Bidie and I headed over there and loaded up. This is the perfect time in the season to get good deals on things that are still growing in abundance: veggies - yes, tomatoes (I looove the heirlooms) - and, oh la la, fruits. Peaches and nectarines of every variety imaginable, with samples that knock you out with flavor. We’re exploring the pluot recently, since more versions of them keep popping up to try (pluots, I discovered, are a hybrid of three-quarters plum, one-quarter apricot). Apples for two bucks a pound, mix and match - so many kinds to pick from with names I’d never heard of - all of which I wanted very much to crunch. And strawberries. Oh, the strawberries! I found myself drooling for at least a minute after I tasted the first one. We bought a whole bagful.

All of this was organic. It all tastes so much more alive than what I’ve been eating for, well, years. Each taste makes you feel like a kid, probably because that was how long ago it was before the mealy, chalky taste of produce predominantly grown from GMO seeds drowned the market. Long live real food - I’m rooting for the comeback of the underdog.

Anyhoo. We came home and had a picnic of fruit. Got out the chilled tea, rolled up the sleeves, and got down to business. As you can see, my knitting is in the foreground, waiting to be pounced upon after I get the fruit down my gob.

Today's iced brew courtesy of Celestial Seasonings: 1/ 2 black cherry berry + 1/2 cran-apple zinger

By the by, isn’t this a great little tea pot? Put the tea in the steel strainer in the middle (for me, this is two bags), pour in the boiling water, and voila - it steeps for a few minutes while becoming an elegant centerpiece with which to top up your cup (the lower part of the strainer ends before the bottom of the pot so that the last inch or two of tea doesn’t get over-steeped if it sits there for a while). It comes with a little brushed chrome stand with a tealight holder to keep the tea candle-warmed.

I think the reason it looks so cool is because it’s European - they do make everything cooler-looking over there. This was a housewarming gift from my sibling-ishly close friends Kymber and J. Incidentally, these are the parents of Little J, plus the bun-in-the-oven/to-be recipient of my not-yet-knit baby blanket (the design for which you are helping me choose).

Right. So on the knitting front, I’m rounding the heel flap on the second Braided Cable & Broken Seed sock. That’s a fancy way of saying I’m still about halfway done with this sock, which is where I was at the time of my last post - busted.

Want to do my knitting for fall, including continuing with the Fisherman’s Sweater, but it’s still too stinkin’ hot here to do it. I know I shouldn’t complain about the weather in California, but the fall air should be smelling a bit more like college football by now, according to my Midwestern roots. I’ve been out here for five years, but I miss my seasons no less than that first fall. Boo-hoo, I live in California, where the sun shines too much. OK, I’ll stop.

My happy place

This is my happy spot for the afternoon, a seat with a few blades of grass around it, a laptop with an internet connection (sad, but I get nervous without it in reach), my knitting, some yarn to daydream about, and my reading.

Shocker, the reading is also knitting-related: Zen And The Art of Knitting, by Bernadette Murphy. I’ve only read the first bit, but already I feel a pleasant kinship with the author. Will report back when I’ve finished it, if I can manage, at some point, to put my knitting down long enough to give the book a chance to be read.

Speaking of pleasant kinship and books, Allison and her mates at On My Bookshelf are having a book giveaway - check it out! Allison’s knit/superwoman blog, The Whole Ball of Yarn(s), is a good friend, and was the source of my learning about the book blog. Allison reviewed a few Jane Austen-related books this week (including Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, which I own but haven’t read yet) - I was beyond delighted. Hooray for Jane!

OK. Back to my happy spot, my knitting, and my chilled tea. I like it a lot.