I see knitting everywhere

I went for a walk while Thanksgiving dinner was cooking. This tree bark reminded me of cables:

oak cables

I stopped at Starbucks on the way back, and finally saw some of the yarn decorations I’ve been reading about on other blogs. The yarn balls don’t look real; maybe because they’re wound more tightly than I wind mine? Or maybe they’re wound around styrofoam balls? I didn’t squeeze them; it was probably weird enough that I was taking pictures with my phone.

wreath

I didn’t have my regular camera with me today. Tomorrow!

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We had a great time with three generations of family. I’m thankful to be a part of it.

Knit a purple square

or two, or three…

I’m knitting a few squares for Anne’s Knit A Purple Square project.

squares

These go pretty quickly in worsted weight yarn. The upper left square is the same pattern and yarn as my Checkerboard Scarflet. I measured my scarflet, and it’s 6 inches wide, which meant no refiguring gauge to get a six inch square! The Mitered Square is the same gauge as my garter stitch log cabin blanket; I just counted to find that 27 stitches = 6 inches, so this mitered square starts with double that, or 54 stitches.

The third square, still in progress, is based on Joan Schrouder’s afghan square in XRX’s Great American Afghan. It’s a twirly square! I’m going to rip it out and do it again with fewer rounds of the stockinette/reverse stockinette per stripe, so it can have more stripes within the 6 inches. Instead of 6 rounds, I’ll cut it back to 4 for each stitch pattern. I’ll stop at 5 inches, and add a garter stitch border. It didn’t take long to do (I was standing in line at student/teacher conferences this morning) so it’s an easy re-knit.

How was *your* weekend?

I’ve been thinking about this picture for a week. I didn’t have a camera on my walk last Sunday, and then the rains came. My next chance came yesterday.

ghostleaves

I love the way the ghosts of the leaves remain, long after the leaves are gone.

cam1

The brown leaves caught in the camellia hedge look bittersweet.

I like these late afternoon walks. The slanting light makes everything look slightly magical. There’s not time for a long walk, but it’s pretty invigorating anyway, because of these:

stair1

stair2

The neighborhood is built along a ridge, and there are public staircases between some of the hillside lots. Three are close to my house. They’re like secret passages, and they get the heart pumping!

Report card

I finished the back for Hey, Teach last night. I love the way it looks. The yarn is kind of splitty, tinking is a pain, and cotton is tiring to work with. My hands felt stiff when I woke up this morning. But look how pretty!

backdone

laceback

Yes, it’s sunny this morning, but everything is wet outside, so I’m reduced to chasing the sunny spots on the floor, much like the cat does.

I also finished the blue checkerboard scarflet, and took it over to Twisted to be a shop model. But I forgot to take a picture of it, so it’s not pictured here or on Ravelry. Yet.

I’m going to be knitting some purple squares for Anne’s Knit A Purple Square project. She’s making a purple afghan in honor/memory of her husband, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer last June. The afghan(s) will go either to a local cancer ward, or to raise money for PanCAN (Pancreatic Cancer Action Network). Can you knit a purple square, too?

purplesquare

We have lift-off

I swatched and started Hey, Teach. I didn’t think I liked the 1×1 ribbing at the bottom, so I tried it with two garter ridges (4 knit rows) instead. It looked ok, but it was going to be too heavy when I repeated it at the edge of the sleeve. Then I tried 1 garter ridge, but that didn’t provide enough stability to keep the stockinette stitch above it from curling. So I’m back to the original 1×1 rib. I think it looks fine! I guess I just needed to consider all my options, first.

ribbing

Here’s the rest of what I’ve done so far. Not bad for a few days work.

back

And a better view of the lace. I’ve finished one repeat of the 12 row lace pattern.

lace2

Last weekend, we took the Teen out for some driving practice on the Old Columbia River Highway. It was pretty late in the day, and it looked like the sunset would be pretty, so we drove up to Vista House at Crown Point.

vista house

From here you can see up and down the river. Here’s the view east:

crown pt east

And the view west:

crown pt west

It was pretty chilly out, so we didn’t stay long. I love the reflection of the clouds in the windows.

reflection

This weekend is dry. Finally. Temporarily. I took a walk on Friday, savoring the last bits of fall color. There are still some flowers:

anemone

flower

And the remaining leaves are glorious.

maple

branch

Even after they’ve fallen.

sidewalk

What did you do with your weekend?

Winner!

I’m a winner! KnittedWit had a contest on her blog, asking for voting stories. Here’s the prize: four ounces of her yummy hand-dyed yarn, 185 yards, color “passion,” 100% merino bulky weight.

purple

close 2

The color in this picture is a little more true:

purple close

See all the lovely shades of purple in there? I love semi-solid colors. I think this may become a new chunky scarflet in some interesting texture, but you never know until the yarn speaks. Thank you, Lorajean!

Knit night was fun last night, but there was a stray dust bunny. Godzilla-sized. Yikes. I showed Cathy how to short-row shoulders for her DH’s vest. This is a complete rip and re-do, and she’s almost done. Can’t wait to see the finished vest. It was good to have to explain short rows to someone else; it really solidifies the process for me. I’ve done it twice, explained it once, and now it’s internalized.

The pianoworld.com Adult Beginners Forum online recital goes live tonight at midnight. I squeaked in under the wire at number 64. Here’s a direct link to my piece; it’s Valse No. 1 from Valses Poeticos by Enrique Granados. I’m working on a couple others from this set, too, but they’re not ready for prime time!

Like the fat man in Dune…

Knit nite is at my house tonight. The house is, um, untidy, and there are dust bunnies (rabbits? lambs?) everywhere. I need to pick up a bit, go to work, come home, pick up some more. I’ll be flying around the house like the fat man in Dune. (I never saw the movie, just the trailer, with the…well, you get the picture.)

At least dinner is ready. Mom likes to go to Olive Garden for lunch when we’re out running errands. I love the Zuppa Toscana (sausage/potato/kale soup) there. I found a recipe for it last week and tried it. It’s pretty close; I did leave out the bacon, though. The sausage is enough! I made it again yesterday for tonight’s dinner; it’s better on the second day.

Not much knitting to show; the log cabin blanket is bigger, the secret project is longer, and the Hey, Teach is still in swatching mode. Second scarflet is done except for buttons. Maybe I’ll get some knitting done tonight.

It was wash day for the Fetchings here. I washed Mom’s for her; she once shrank a beautiful star tam that I made for her, and so now I’m in charge.

fetching

The darker ones are mine; I wear them all the time and have been missing them this week!

Beadazzled

I spent some time on Friday putting some things together.

markers

These are the stitch markers for the January event at Twisted. I made 16 of each kind; they’re in school colors. I ended up not using the beads that I bought for the project, because they just didn’t look that good! So these are freshwater pearls on the top row, and blue crystals on the bottom row, plus some miscellaneous beads.

I also made a bracelet for a holiday gift (no names! no hints!).

copper2

I love this bead; the whole piece was built around it.

nautilus

And one more gift. The shell in the middle is from our trip this summer.

beach

You can see the sand inside!

detail

That should be a nice souvenir.

Turkey in the oven. I’m using my Dad’s oyster/Chinese sausage/water chestnut fried rice stuffing. He’s been gone since 2001, but I remember him in little ways, always. Baba’s Bed Socks were designed for him, way back when. Mom’s coming for dinner. It’s Thanksgiving preview; she’s going to LA for Thanksgiving!

At loose ends

That’s how I feel, now that my Central Park Hoodie and the related Checkerboard Scarflet from the leftover yarn and buttons are done. I finished writing the pattern for the Checkerboard Scarflet, and Marie was kind enough to look it over for me. I’ve incorporated most of her suggestions, and the pattern is now available through Ravelry download/PayPal for $4.

I have another scarflet on the needles, the mindless log cabin blanket, and a secret holiday-related project, but no sweater. I’m antsy. Apparently I’ve become accustomed to bigger projects, and feel bereft without a sweater in progress.

What to do?

I think I’m going to have to make Hey, Teach. I even bought yarn for it. The pattern calls for four skeins of this yarn, and I hope it doesn’t need more, because this is all they had in this color at Yarn Garden. I usually have to shorten garments, so for once in my life, the fact that I’m not tall and willowy should work in my favor. At least the not tall part, anyway. 😉

2 time cotton

The music behind the yarn is what I’m working at the piano. Which means not often lately! It’s from Valses Poeticos by Enrique Granados. Granados has usurped Mozart’s place in my affections, at least temporarily.

What else is going on? I’ve been taking a harmony singing class at the local community college. Just for fun! The day after the class started, the local paper had a feature on the teacher, Anne Weiss. Sweet! It’s been a great class, but it’s only four sessions and next week is the last one. I’ve been using my Zoom H2 digital recorder to record the songs we sing, and it’s been great to have those recordings for practice. I’ve loaded them onto my iPod, and there’s always a song running through my head these days.

I think I see my hat…

The Mason-Dixon gals have forwarded the Tiny Hats to Innocent. (Does that ever sound like secret code! “The Bird Flies High.”) Kay took a picture of the 342 hats before she sent them on. I think I see two of my hats:

tinyhatsaerial

That would be the green with white check and rather sorry looking pompom, and the white gull wing lace (of February Baby and February Lady fame) with topknot. The third hat is a generic strawberry, and there are several of those.

hats

All in all, a cute fundraiser and fun project. I think the smoothies-with-hats go on sale tomorrow, November 5, at Sainsbury’s stores in the UK, to raise funds for Age Concern. They’ve received more than 500,000 hats. That’s a lot of hats, and a lot of $! Or pence, to be precise. 50 pence per hat given to charity, which is more than $250,000. (Don’t know how to make the British pound sign, but that’s worth even more than dollars, anyway.) If you want to see the Hat-o-Meter click the link; widgets of that sort don’t work with WordPress.

Happy election day in the USA! Go vote!

Checkerboard Scarflet

I’m helping with a knitting party at Twisted in January. The party was a buy-in item at our high school booster club auction. Participants will receive yarn, Lantern Moon needles, and a lovely morning of tea and treats, as well as knitting instruction. I wanted to add a little more to the package, so I’m making stitch markers in school colors, and a pattern for a relatively simple project.

I had some leftover Louet Riverstone worsted from the Central Park Hoodie, as well as the almost perfect buttons. I needed a pattern that has some visual/textural interest, but wouldn’t be too hard for relative beginners. A lot of beginners start with an endless garter stitch scarf, but I know a lot of beginners lose interest in that endless scarf! So how about a shorter scarf? With buttons, because I have some that are perfect with this yarn?

And so the Checkerboard Scarflet was born. It’s pretty simple, just a knit/purl checkerboard pattern. Writing it was harder than knitting it!

folded

It’s very cozy to wear. It will be great under my wool coat when it gets cooler.

scarflet

It’s hard trying to take a picture of your own neck without seeing the viewfinder!

I thought about moving the buttonholes to the beginning of the project, rather than the end. But that made the beginning of the pattern more confusing for a beginning knitter. Also, I figured that if one were a relatively new knitter, the end of the scarflet would be better looking than the beginning, and the buttonhole end is the end that overlaps on top. We wants the pretty on the part that shows! So I’m leaving the buttonholes for the end. Isn’t it interesting what goes into deciding these things?

Pattern coming soon.

eta: Pattern information has been added here.