PDXKnitterati

Blogging, and more

Posted on July 20, 2010 | 16 comments

I’m so pleased to announce that I’m going to be blogging for Lantern Moon! I’ve been in a knitting group (the knit nite group) with Sharon Woodcock, one of the owners of Lantern Moon, for about three years. Our group grew out of an intarsia class that we had with Leigh Radford. I was thrilled when Sharon & Joel (her husband, and co-owner of Lantern Moon) asked me to blog for them. Please come check out the new blog here.

We went to the Tigard Knitting Guild meeting last Thursday; Sharon was the guest speaker. It’s a great group of knitters, and I even participated in the show and tell time, with my Pacific Shawl.

I still have to finish writing up the pattern; it’s been on the back burner for a bit. But I hope to have it out to test knit in the next few weeks.

So, not much knitting around here, but I’ve been cooking. This is our new favorite pasta salad. It’s just right for summer. You can put any of your favorite things in it, but here’s what I did:

Lemon Orzo Pasta Salad

Dressing: in a jar, combine and shake well:
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced or run through garlic press
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

(2025 update note: I also add the zest from the lemon, and maybe a sprinkle of lemon pepper. I like citrus zing!)

For the salad:
1 pound orzo pasta, cooked, rinsed, and cooled (this makes a LOT. Note: I’ve made this more recently, and I’ve used 12 oz of orzo with reasonable results, or 1/2 lb (8 oz) for a high goodies to pasta ratio. Anything goes.)
2/3 lb asparagus, cut in 1.5 inch pieces (add these to the pasta for the last 1.5 minutes of cooking)
1 14 ounce can quartered artichoke hearts, drained and halved
1/2 cup kalamata olives, sliced in half
1 pint grape tomatoes (whole)
3 ounces crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts

(2025 update: I’m now using 8 oz of pasta for a high goodies to pasta ratio. I no longer have teenaged boys in the house, so the salad doesn’t have to stretch as far. And I like the higher goodies to pasta ratio. I also halve the artichoke heart pieces, so there’s more chance of artichoke heart in every bite.)

Combine salad ingredients and toss with 1/2 the dressing. Store the salad, refrigerated, to let the flavors meld. Before serving, add more of the dressing to refresh. (You can use all, or part, of the remaining dressing, as you desire) We served it with grilled chicken, and really enjoyed it!

What’s cooking/knitting with you?

16 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit, pattern design, recipe

Tagged Knit, lantern moon, lemon orzo pasta salad, pacific shawl, tigard knitting guild

Knitting for the troops

Posted on July 18, 2010 | 8 comments

I recently received an email from Barbara Jennings, who took my class on circular hats in the round at Twisted last year. Since taking the class, she’s made over 40 hats for family and friends. Excellent! Now she wants to do more. She’s involved in an effort to knit caps for soldiers being deployed to Iraq in September, and she’d like more knitters to get involved with this project. Here’s what she has to say:

We need knitters! We recently became aware of a need for 2700 100% wool caps for soldiers being deployed to Iraq in September. If you can make even one cap before the end of August it would be a great help. Please read on to get the cap pattern and pictures and check out the videos of the Idaho organizer – Bea is a Rosie the Riveter from WWII and not deterred by seemingly insurmountable odds. We want to help her reach her goal and get a knitted cap into each soldier’s pack. A huge thank you to our area knit shops for supporting this project! The participating shops are listed on the pattern. Check out the yarn discounts. Barbara Jennings and Carla Harwood – Portland knitters

You can download the pattern here.

And here’s a link to the news story carried on Idaho news station KTVB.

No matter how you feel about the war in Iraq, you may want to knit to provide this bit of comfort to American soldiers. And now I think I know what I’m knitting at Stitch & Pitch on Wednesday night.

Off to find yarn in the stash…

ETA: Well, I really don’t have much stash. There wasn’t enough leftover earth-toned worsted wool to knit the hat, so I popped in at Twisted, and found this:

Lamb’s Pride Superwash 100% wool, colorway lichen. Soft, pretty/handsome, and washable, too. Wool is the requested fiber, so it’s perfect! And it also fixes my formerly picture-less post.

Knit on…

8 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged caps for soldiers, charity knitting, knitting for the troops

Baseball, hot dogs, knitting…

Posted on July 16, 2010 | 8 comments

Stitch & Pitch night is coming! The local Portland Beavers are having their last Stitch & Pitch event; the team is moving after this year.

We go way back with the Beavers. DH worked for them in the 1980’s. I used to sit behind home plate, knitting, knowing that the cage would save me from foul balls even though I wasn’t always paying attention. The Beavs were the Phillies AAA farm team back then; now they’re part of the San Diego Padres organization. DH went on to work for the NY Mets in 1986, a glorious year in which he earned a World Series ring. (I wish it were here for a picture, but it’s in the bank box. Sorry.) Talk about good timing.

My god-daughter is coming to visit from Seattle. She’s a big baseball fan at age 8, and she’s also a knitter! We’ll have a great time. What should I knit? Passiflora isn’t at a stage that would be good mindless knitting. I’m working on neck and shoulder shapings now. Here’s the back:

And the front is a little more demure. The shapings are the same, however, so it’s completely reversible.

Maybe I’ll start my Breezy Market Tote. I can sell the pattern beginning September 1, so it would be nice to have another sample around.

See you at the ball game?

8 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, passiflora, Portland Beavers Baseball, Stitch & Pitch

a little of this, a little of that

Posted on July 15, 2010 | 10 comments

June-uary was a long month here, with a record amount of rain, and chilly temps. July is working hard to make up for all that.

My hydrangeas are lovely.

They say that hydrangeas will be blue in acidic soil, and pink in alkaline soil. But what does it mean when both colors are on the same bush? Strange!

My blueberries have gone crazy this year. I have five bushes, and they are very happy. I’ve baked cobblers and banana blueberry bread (recipe at bottom of post), and put four gallons in the freezer, and we’re still not done. I guess it’s a good thing, but I’m getting tired of picking them.

Saturday we went sailing with a friend on the Columbia River. It’s been a bi-coastal water week; we went kayaking in Maine on Thursday. I have no kayaking pictures; I was afraid the camera would get wet. Here’s Saturday’s captain and pup:

CollegeGrad and I both enjoyed time at the helm.

I brought a picnic dinner, which DH was not willing to share with the dog!

Mount Hood at sunset was even more gorgeous than this picture suggests.

When the sun went down, the sky was pink and purple, and the mountain was sublimely lovely. My camera wasn’t up to the challenge, so it will just be a memory.

Here’s the recipe for the bread; it’s light and delicate, unlike my usual banana bread.

Blueberry Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar (I used a little less)
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (3 medium or 2 large)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Preheat oven to 325°F degrees.

Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add mashed bananas.

Measure flour, reserving 2 tablespoons of flour to coat blueberries. Stir baking soda and salt into flour. Fold into banana mixture. Toss blueberries with 2 T flour, then fold into batter. Transfer batter to loaf pans.

Bake about 50 minutes. If you use frozen blueberries, it may take longer. Toothpick should come out clean. Enjoy!

Knitting in the next post, I promise…

10 Comments

Posted in recipe

Tagged blueberries, blueberry banana bread

summer slow down

Posted on July 14, 2010 | 5 comments

I thought I’d have a lot more knitting to show you, since I had 3 hours in the car and 6 hours on a plane on Friday, but I’m just a little further than I was in the previous post. Why?

See how the lace pattern on the back gets wider every 6 rows? Apparently I forgot to increase the lace on the left edge on the last increase set, and then I knit merrily on for 30 rows. Oops. I blame it on the spa at the resort. I had a delightful body polish/mud wrap/moisturizing treatment, and was so relaxed when I came back to my knitting that I wasn’t really paying attention. But it was worth it.

We passed through Boston’s Logan Airport on the way back, and I met up with a friend that I’ve known for years but had never met in person. We frequent the same piano forums, and Ravelry, and we’re Facebook friends, too.

Not only did she drive to the airport to meet me, but she brought me a gift.

Truffles from Dante Confections, made by Santi Falcone, her neighbor, the ex-piano maker. How cool is that? I read about him in “Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventures” by Noah Adams, way back before I ever went to piano camp. Thank you, Kerri!

Flight home was uneventful, but I didn’t do a lot of knitting there, either. There was free wi-fi on the plane (in-flight wi-fi seems so wrong, since they’ve always told us to have our wi-fi OFF before this), so I caught up on my blog reading. Now I need to go knit, instead of reading about knitting!

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged Dante Confections, Knit, passiflora

people will talk…

Posted on July 7, 2010 | 11 comments

Martha! Some crazy lady is out back taking pictures of her knitting!

Yup, it’s true. I’m at a resort on the coast of Maine for DH’s work conference, so the neighbors don’t know me. They can talk all they want. This is the back lace on Passiflora.

We came here via Boston, so I had a lot of knitting time on the plane and in a car. We spent a night in Boston, and took a quick tour through the North End before coming up by car. I had to see this.

One if by land, two if by sea at the Old North Church, right? Do you remember which it was? No peeking! In the meantime, here are the organ pipes in the church.

The organ was built in 1759 and was the first organ made entirely in the Colonies. The organ has been rebuilt several times, but the case is original. The clock was built in 1726, and is the oldest functioning clock in a public building in the USA.

And it was two lanterns, signaling that the British were leaving Boston for Lexington and Concord by sea. Points to you if you remembered! (I forgot.)

Here’s just after sunset last night.

We took a boat tour this afternoon; here’s the lighthouse and dock from the water.

You can stay in the lighthouse, but it’s not air conditioned. We’re having a heat wave on this coast this week, so I’m happy to be in a room with a/c!

Dinner tonight was a traditional lobster bake.

Doesn’t it look delicious?

I’m looking forward to seeing how Passiflora shapes up. The lace you saw in the previous post goes up the sides of the garment. There’s a little bit of lace on the front, but not as much as on the back. The lacy holes should be nice air conditioning. The yarn is fuzzier than I thought it would be, but it’s the yarn specified in the pattern. I wouldn’t want to wear it on a super hot day, but I can see wearing it in Portland…Oregon, that is.

What’s your summer knitting? Or winter knitting, for those of you down under?

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, travel

Tagged lobster, maine, passiflora

Passiflora update

Posted on July 5, 2010 | 11 comments

Well, these are really clematis, not passion flowers, but I love them passionately.

They’re growing on this spring’s new trellis. I love how the leaves and buds echo the metal ones.

But that’s not what you’re really here for, is it?

Here’s Passiflora. I’m ready to start the detail at the front and back neck. Gauge has been an issue for me on this piece; I went down two needle sizes, and it’s still a little wider than I anticipated. The second needle you see there is me starting over with the next smaller size needle, just to see what would happen. It’s too small, so I’ll just soldier on with the first piece. I think I’m now knitting more tightly, and that may take care of it.

What else is new? The Teen decided to brew some ginger beer (non-alcoholic). He likes the spicier varieties like Fentiman’s, which we don’t get very often. He got champagne yeast and these cool re-sealable bottles at FH Steinbart here in town. They were very helpful there.

We did a tasting on Sunday, and it was pretty good! Great ginger flavor, but he realized that he had put in too much water, so it was more dilute than he expected, and less fizzy, too. Round two will happen after we finish drinking round one…we don’t have more bottles!

The kitchen has been humming. CollegeGrad made dinner that same day, fried rice with Chinese sausage. It’s nice to have someone else make dinner sometimes! He’s hard at work, looking for work.

And the sun finally came out of hiding, just in time for the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival, an annual event here. Saturday was glorious, and fun. How was your weekend?

Super Chikan with his gui-jo made from a ceiling fan and a guitar neck/headstock, and lots of bling.

Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble

Sunshine means party time!

11 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged clematis, ginger beer, passiflora, portland blues festival, waterfront blues festival

Just in the nick of time

Posted on June 27, 2010 | 16 comments

I was knitting the Sweetie Pie hat for a Sunday baby shower. It’s been a busy week. Saturday came and the hat wasn’t done. I had work in the morning, a wedding to attend on Saturday afternoon, and the wedding reception on Saturday evening. Saturday night found me reading blogs in bed with my laptop, madly knitting i-cord. I was getting to the end of the ball, and I wanted the two i-cords to be the same length, so I knit one with the inside of the ball, and one with the outside. I’d show you a picture of this little trick, but it was 1 a.m. and the lighting wasn’t great. Next time!

So cute! There was a bit of a setback when I was working the heart motif. The last three rows crossed the transition between blue and black, and it offended my sense of order. I ripped it back down to the beginning of the blue, and started the lacy hearts earlier.

The hat is supposed to have bobbles on the top color stripe. I don’t enjoy making bobbles, so I left them off.

The topknot is cute!

When I bought this yarn, I wondered how the transitions between the colors would be handled. It turns out that the colors are just tied to each other, so I cut the knots out and did my own joins and weaving.

I also wondered how that lace motif would fit into the stripe sequence, and as you can see from my comment above, it didn’t! So I changed it to suit my own tastes.

If I were to do this again, I think I would start from the inside of the ball and knit with the pale pink first, which would give me a pale pink picot edge, and a purple stripe with the lacy heart motif. But by the time I thought about this, I was halfway done with the hat, and wasn’t willing to start over. Blue hearts are cute, too.

Details:

Sweetie Pie Hat by Tanis Gray, knit with size 6 Lantern Moon ebony circular needles
Be Sweet Bambino Taffy yarn, 70% organically grown cotton, 30% bamboo

Done in time for the baby shower!

16 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged be sweet yarn, Knit, sweetie pie hat

Sweetie Pie

Posted on June 24, 2010 | 14 comments

On Tuesday, I remembered that I’m going to a baby shower this Sunday. I dashed into Twisted to get some yarn for an Elsa hat, and while I was there I remembered that I may have designed this hat for baby’s big sister two years ago. Oops. I cast about for a different hat project, and spied this.

It’s a cute skein of Be Sweet Bambino Taffy yarn, and the pattern for the Sweetie Pie hat by Tanis Gray is on the label. What could be simpler?

I like that there are several colors in one little 100 yard ball.

The provisional cast on and picot edge would have been easier if I’d had the right tools with me, but I just took the yarn and needles to cast on at knit nite without reading the instructions. It all worked out, eventually.

Speaking of sweetie pie…

This strawberry icebox pie is a hit around here. I’ve made four in the past two weeks for various events (birthday party, graduation party, knit nite, just because). It’s really easy, absolutely gorgeous, and tastes divine. Most of the berries are uncooked, so the flavor is out-of-this-world fresh. Go ahead; you know you want to make one! I saw this in my local paper, the Oregonian, but it turns out to be from Martha Stewart.

And one more sweetie pie…

I found this picture on my camera. Apparently the Teen likes taking pictures of the cat. Who knew?

Have a great weekend! I’ll show you the hat when it’s done.

14 Comments

Posted in Knit, recipe

Tagged be sweet yarn, Knit, sweetie pie hat

origami cranes

Posted on June 19, 2010 | 10 comments

Last week I happened to be downtown by the Ace Hotel, which was displaying Seann McKeel’s Knitnotwar 1000 project. This is based on the legend that if you fold 1000 origami cranes, your wish will be granted. Wishes are traditionally for health or peace. The twist in this project is that the cranes are knitted and felted yarn instead of folded paper.

A closer look shows that they’re not crisp like a traditional origami crane.

But they’re pretty, anyway.

I like the novelty yarn on the one in the center.

I didn’t participate in this project; I know it was years in the making. But it reminded me of a project I spearheaded several years ago, for the pastor of our church at that time. The goal was to have the congregation fold 1000 paper cranes as a wish for his health and healing, and to have it be a surprise. We ended up with about 2000 cranes.

He was very moved when we presented these to him. He didn’t recover his health, but he was heartened by this sign of love and affection. A little bird can mean a lot!

10 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, knitnotwar, origami, origami cranes