FO Friday………

Two finished projects this week. One for me and the other is part of the Knitting Eileen”s Stash Project. The fingerless gloves are made from Blue Sky Alpaca Worsted Hand Dyes  and the pattern is also from Blue Sky Alpaca, One Cable Mitts. They are meant to go with the Burberry Inspired Cowl. The scarf is  made from Ritratto which actually has a glitter but is hard to see in the photo.

I’m working on another Knitting Eileen’s Stash Project that should be done by next Friday. I also started a cabled scarf that will be up on WIPW and I hope to get back to my Monkey III second sock. It makes me crazy having so many projects on the sticks and yet I keep looking for more!! I suppose it’s part of the fun of being a knitter.

Getting older but don’t rush me………..

I’ll be 64 in a few weeks. Apparently my HMO can’t wait for me to be 65 because they sent an advertisement for their Senior Advantage Medicare Plan. Wait, let me get through 64 first!! Friends tell me I’ll get lots of this kind of mail the next few months. Guess they all just want to wish me happy 65th  birthday early.

I’m already the only one at work collecting Social Security (I took it at 62). Soon I’ll be the only one on Medicare working there. I’m the only one at work with grey hair that doesn’t try to cover it up. I’m old enough to be proud of every grey hair and wear it with pride. I’m old enough to be mother to several of my co-workers  and some I could be their grandmother.

There are some advantages of getting older:

• Senior discount at the movie matinee
• Senior discount at the craft store one Wednesdays
• 5% off at some grocery stores
• Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
• In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
• No one expects you to run into a burning building.
• There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
• Things you buy now won’t wear out.

My husband and I were talking this morning about how time seems to go faster now than it did when we were younger. He remembers being in the Navy and how slow those 4 years went. On the other hand, he can’t believe he’s been out of the Navy for over 40 years. I’m hoping the next few years don’t fly by and that I can enjoy my Senior Years.

 

 

B’day Month

My Stitch Sister’s know me well!! We celebrated April birthdays on Wednesday (mine and carol’s) at Las Palmas in Morgan Hill and a good time was had by all. Among the knitting related booty I received were 3 books on sock making, sock yarn, a 40″ circular needle for doing two at a time socks (including a book on how to)  and a handmade caddy for yarn. Thanks to Carol, Bev, Martha and Carrie!!

FO Friday……….

With all the rain, thunder and lightening yesterday, it was a perfect day to stay in a knit. I finished the Burberry Inspired Cowl for my friend Eileen (with her yarn) BSA. It’s soft and squishy and warm. I had 3 skeins to work with so I used two for the cowl and am making a pair of FG‘s with the third skein.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Happy Knitting!

WIP Wednesday…………

NOTE: I don’t know why WordPress won’t let me post the pictures where I want them!!! So frustrating. I’ll  try to figure this out one day soon!

I have three projects. For those of you who know me, this is unusual. I pretty much just do one project at a time, except when I need a project to take my mind off a project that isn’t going as planned. The Project Not Going As Planned is the Burberry Inspired Cowl. Somehow my provisional cast on got screwed up when I undid the cast on and I only have 48 stitches when I knit 58 stitches for the pattern.I have to Kitchner the seam and can’t do that unless I have the same number of stitches on both ends!  I think I might just tink or rip it back one row to get the 58. I have to be calm when I do it!

The second project is just mindless knitting in some yarn I bought on sale last year in Seattle. unfortunately you can’t see the sparkle in the yarn so it looks pretty boring.

The third project is a completed Monkey by Cookie A in Hazel Knits Artisan  sock  yarn. It turned out great. The only reason I haven’t started sock two is I need to finish the Burberry Cowl and make a pair of fingerless gloves using the third skein of Blue Sky Alpaca. A gal at work thought she was going to be a knitter and bought tons of beautiful yarns but then decided she was too busy raising her dogs for breeding, showing and retrieving. She brought me a huge bag of yarn to knit for her (I offered) and I needed to get started on something for her.

Monkey by Cookie A

Burberry Inspired Cowl

Lastly, if you didn’t see my previous post, I hope you’ll watch and enjoy this video

This is so wonderful……………

 

Bundt….

evokes memories of Tunnel of Fudge Cake that I made in the 1970 and 80’s. It was a Pillsbury Bake Off winner You can’t make it quite the same way anymore as they have changed the prepackaged cake mix and frosting mix formula and it doesn’t work the same. You can find a remix of the recipe here.

But today I tried a bundt recipe I found originally by scrolling through the “time sucking” website known as Pinterest. I won’t go through the benefits (or not) of Pinterest because this is about my bundt cake. Somehow I’ve gotten hung up on Samoa type recipes, you know, like the Girl Scout cookie flavor. I made some bar cookies a few weeks ago that sounded better than they turned out. I thought I’d give this recipe a try. I read all the comments people made about Dulce de Leche and decided to use the one that Sur La Table carries

I didn’t have a bundt pan but I have a kugelhopf pan

So far so good. I got all the ingredients together a few days ago and made the cake this afternoon. You have to make two batters, one a brown sugar batter and the other a chocolate batter. The cake is supposed to be a marble cake. I think mine would have been a marble if I hadn’t added the 1 cup of hot water at the end to the chocolate mixture. Strike one. When I made the frosting, I couldn’t see why I had to use 2 cubes of butter. I used 1 1/2. I could have gotten away with 1 cube as I had left over frosting even after I nibbled some while frosting the cake. I only used about 1/2 of the jar of dulce de leche. I didn’t put the frosting in the fridge for an hour as suggested as I suspected the frosting would be too hard to spread.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like before and after frosting. We’re having it for dessert tomorrow, Easter, so I can’t give you a flavor rating yet. I suspect it is going to be really sweet and not the Samoa cookie taste I’m looking for.

FO Friday ……

and WIP Wednesday all in one!!! I didn’t get my WIP post up on Wednesday so I’m including it today as well as the FO I finished last week.

The FO is Trixie Cowl made in Brooks Farm alpaca, mohair and merino. I got the yarn at Stitches West 2012. I used about 325 yards. I know the designer, Dolin O’Shea Bliss. She worked at Bobbins Nest before it closed a few months ago. She is a talented knitter/knitwear designer as well as a  pattern designer/seamstress for fabric.

The WIP is Monkey by Cookie A. You can still get the free pattern from Knitty. I’m knitting it in Hazel Knits yarn. The only problem with the sock is the heel. It is supposed to be the Eye of Partridge heel but I started on the WS and I should have started on the RS!! Oh well, it looks fine the way it is. The original pattern for the heel comes from Go With The Flow that has you turn the sock inside out after knitting the heel (so the zig zag matches when you go back to knitting the instep) and I forgot that part when I did the heel flap.

The square empty kleenex box has become my new “yarn bowl” I usually keep my working ball of yarn in a baggie but didn’t like the way the yarn rubbed against the edge as it fed out of the bag. I thought of this when a friend recently  mentioned she had just broken her yarn bowl that had been an expensive purchase. The box fits into my yarn bag nicely. I started a thread on the Tools Forum on Ravelry if you’d like to follow what people are saying and using for a yarn caddy.

The roses are the first of the year from our yard. The red one has a beautiful aroma.

Happy Passover and Easter to you all.

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C is for

Cowl. One of my “instant gratification” projects is knitting a cowl. They don’t take much yarn or much time to make. I decided to look up the definition of cowl and found out something interesting; the definition doesn’t even match what I know as a cowl.

• The hood or hooded robe worn especially by a monk.

When I think about a cowl  I see a circular neck scarf. Just something to keep my neck warm without lots of bulk.  Recently there have been some “copy cat” cowls patterned after popular retail establishments items. Two of the most popular retail inspired cowls have been the  GAP-tastic Cowl and Burberry Inspired Cowl. I’ve made both of them as gifts (too bulky for me) and several lighter, smaller cowls for myself.

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The orange cowl is one of my favorites. I made it to wear during the World Series in 2010 when the SF Giants played  …and they won!!

Maybe during the Blogging A to Z Challenge this blog will inspire someone to pick up their needles and knit or inspire someone to go to their Local Yarn Store and see about taking lesson to learn to knit.

Have a great day.

B is for

Bison. One of the things I have found most interesting about knitting is all the different fibers from which yarn is made. When I first started knitting I was told to buy the best yarn I could afford and stay away from Acrylic yarns.

Acrylic fiber has been in production in the United States since 1950 when DuPont introduced Orlon. Acrylic is a synthetic fiber that has a chemical base of 85 to 90 percent vinyl cyanide. The remaining percentage determines the unique characteristics of the particular brand of fiber. Now, acrylic fiber is produced all over the world, and is used in clothing manufacturing as well as for craft yarn.

My first yarns were mostly cotton so I could practice my tension (how tight or loose I knit) and stitches (knit and purl). I soon found myself in lovely shops that had a lot of different yarns that I knew nothing about. Looking back at my knitting and yarn history on Ravelry I can see how I’ve  grown and matured as a knitter.

 For those who don’t know about Ravelry:

Ravelry is a free social networking website, beta-launched in May 2007. It functions as an organizational tool for a variety of fiber arts including knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving. Members share projects, ideas, and their collection of yarn, fiber, and tools via various components.^[1] As of February 29, 2012, Ravelry had over 2 million members worldwide.

Now about Bison yarn. Bison (American Buffalo) down is an extremely soft, comfortable product much like cashmere. It is strong, soft and very insulating and therefore warm – warmer than wool. Any item you choose to make out of this yarn will not pill – an added feature. Bison yarn needs no dying – we create the yarn using its rich, natural, chocolate-brown color. http://www.sbfarmsinc.com/yarn.html

I first saw this as fiber about two years ago at the knitters convention known as Stitches here in Santa Clara, CA. There were one or two vendors selling it. Now I wondered, how do you get a bison to stand still so you can shear it like you do a sheep or an alpaca? I was too embarrassed to ask. Last year I did ask. The Bison naturally shed during certain times of the year.  You really only want the undercoat of their hair. Hand gathering tufts shed onto trees and bushes in the spring is one way to get it. Often the ranchers place structures for the bison to rub against in the fields so the farmers can easily locate the loose hair. I think this is what makes it so EXPENSIVE. It is very labor intensive and doesn’t seem to yield much fiber. I also read that there is a plant in Oklahoma that sheers the bison and separates the coarse hair from the down. Most of the yarn I have seen at yarn shows and conventions are hand gathered, cleaned, carded and spun by small indie yarn purveyors.

The cost of bison yarn averages about $50 for 2 ounces of about 250 yards of 2 ply lace weight yarn. I am not a lace knitter so I won’t be having this yarn in my stash anytime soon.

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