Knit & Nosh

tour de fleece - day two

I am amazed at how much spinning I am able to accomplish when I take the time to actually sit in front of the wheel and spin.  I had planned to spin 8 ounces over the next 3 weeks.  After 2 days, 4 ounces have been finished.

570 yards of an unknown fiber and dyer.  This is totally going to be an Ishbel.

You are not going to believe what landed on my doorstep this afternoon.  Pics in the morning.  My friends are the BEST!

days and days

It has been many days since I have read blogs and relaxedly (new word?) clicked here and there.  I usually read blogs in the morning, in bed, with tea.  But the past 7 days have been anything but normal and I am just now coming up for air,  realizing I better breath deep, because I am not sure when I will be up again.

Not a single knitting thing to report. Longest Night has grown, but it is lace, boring to look at right up until that final block.

Spinning has been happening.  I spun a bit to get in shape for Tour de Fleece (rav link).  Had a mild panic attack when my drive band broke and the car was gone for two days.  Followed by relief to know that my corner drugstore is good in ANY emergency.  A $2.49 spool of jute and I was off and spinning.

Yesterday I managed to spin 2 whole ounces of fine yarn.  2 ounces in one day.  Pretty darn good.  I do not imagine I will be able to replicate the feat.  My goal is simply to spin everyday, concentrate on quality and have fun.

Canning is on the schedule for the upcoming week.  Drunken Cherries, Blueberry Jam and Enchilada Sauce are all happening this week.  The cherries and blueberries and in now and need to be grabbed as often as possible.  The enchilada sauce can be made any time of year, but I refuse to pay $4.79 for a jar of sauce ever again.  I want the sauce, so it is also on the front burner.

No pictures, its too dark.  Pictures of yarn AND jars in the next post.

not knitting or noshing

This evening as I began planning the 4th of July weekend, I was struck by just how short the summer is for kids.  When I was a kid it felt like summer lasted three full months.  I spent those months at my Grandparent's house, eating popsicles, playing hide-n-seek (younger) or tennis (older).  I rode my bike to the pool and read every Hardy Boys book in the house. The room I stayed in for the summer belonged to my Uncles when they were boys.  I am grateful they left that shelf of Hardy Boys books behind.  The most difficult task of any day was choosing between playing board games in the porch or screen room.

My youngest daughter, the only one of the kids to chose to attend high school, has a very different summer.  First off, it runs just over two months.  She is volunteering at camp for a week in August, but she is a "old-timer" the planning and work are not hard for her.  The surprise is the homework.

Summer homework?  Yes.  Because she needs to have completed Algebra 2 in order to take one of her two Science classes next year, she is learning it over the summer.  No credit, she just needs the knowledge.  She is doing 2-3 lessons a day and will be up to speed by the time "school" starts.

In addition to the math that she chose to complete, she has summer homework for 3 other classes. IB English, History and Chemistry all have assignments.  What is up with that?  She may not have to get on a bus everyday, but she will spend her summer with her nose to the grindstone just the same.

summertime and the swatching is easy

Yesterday I was able to add 8 long rows to Longest Night Shawl and finish the second Swatch Me swatch.  This is testament to how little real work happened around here.

Let's talk a little about the Summer Swatch Me group.  I am not sure what lead me to this group.  You know how it is, you follow one link and then another.  I found the idea intriguing.  Every week of the summer a new "swatch" pattern is unveiled.  Knit the swatches and then the border as they come in and at the end of the summer you have a lace stole/scarf.  Also, every week the swatch pattern is used for another project.  Last week in addition to the scarf panel, there was a pattern for beaded mitts.  This week the bonus pattern is a hat in three sizes.  The beauty of it all is that every swatch is a 14 stitch repeat.  That means that any lace pattern can be used with any project.  Pretty cool!

So far the lace patterns are REALLY simple.  I am hoping they get a little harder as the summer progresses.  Even though the patterns are simple, I do not think I would recommend the project for a brand new lace knitter.  The instructions can be a little confusing.  But if you are comfortable with how lace works, and being able to read the fabric, this is a really fun summer knit.

can jam 2010 - June - erries - take 2

It seems I was a little confused about the timing for this month's post deadline.  I totally thought we had to get things done last week, and I did.  I made 12 jars of raspberry jam and a rockin' bottle of raspberry vodka.  You can read all about it here.

When I put that jam on the shelf I felt confident there would be raspberry jam to last all year.  Boy was I wrong.  It has been a week and Youngest Daughter has already opened a second jar.  I am going to need to make at least one more batch.

On to the strawberries.  Having that additional week gave the local strawberries a chance to come in. The variety of strawberries grown in Washington is the BEST.  I remember eating California strawberries that were grown on a lot down the street and picked a couple hours before they landed in my kitchen.  They were good, but they do not have a thing on our Washington berries.  SO good!

I picked up a 1/2 flat at the local Co-Op.  No, I am not going to tell you what I paid for them.  "Somewhere between Ouch and Boing."    I wanted to try the no pectin recipe from the current Edible Seattle.  I followed the recipe precisely.  The first day I let the berries and sugar and water and lemons sit, then I warmed them, then they sit some more.  The next morning began like this.

The recipe said to check the gel point after about 15 minutes of boiling.  I did.  Not even.  I added more plates to the freezer.  After about 10 minutes I checked again.  Nope.  10 more minutes, still not close.  I repeated this pattern for over an hour.  In the end I was able to get a wee bit of thickening.  I am going to assume the thickening happened not because of pectin, but because of reduction. 

The recipe told me to expect 12 half-pint jars, I got 8.  I am assuming that is because of reduction as well.

Out of the fridge it is a soft jam.  Tastes great!  I am not going to post the recipe because I do not want to break any copywrite rules and because it did not work.  No reason to send you down that path.

yarn and whiskey

I have a new Patons post up.  It was actually written a couple of weeks ago and contains a reference to cold meds and whiskey.  It made my Editor laugh, which I consider to be a really good sign.  From there it went to the Marketing Person who was not so amused.  In the end they kept it in.  Woo Hoo!

and a two

I know, I know, but I could not stop myself from making another one.

I think I am done, although I reserve the right to knit a wine bottle cozy army in the future.

dark

About 3:30 this afternoon Youngest Son wandered in to the kitchen and asked what was for dinner.  The dark skies made him think it was much later than the clock read. Cliff Mass explains the whole thing.  "A scan of the last 15 years of rooftop June solar radiation data shows today (20 June 2010), just one day short of the summer solstice, to be the darkest June day over at least the past 15 years on campus."  Did you catch that?  THE DARKEST JUNE DAY EVER?  I am having a hard time getting pumped up to do the happy summer solstice dance tomorrow.  A couple of years ago we had a summer that lasted exactly three days.  Please, oh please, do not repeat.

ee gads

It is a well documented fact that I am helpless when faced with a project for an unnecessary cozy.  I can not imagine making a useful cozy, say for the teapot. I think I waited all of 10 minutes before seeing this pattern in Pints & Purls to cast on.

The yarn is some of my first handspun.  It has been sitting on the shelf for years.  The fiber is Icelandic, WAY too itchy for a live person, but perfect for a bottle of wine.

I have enough yarn left to make another impractical cozy.  I think I will go do that right now.

 

tools

I have been struggling for weeks (too embarrassed to say months) with a particular design.  The swatch for this design needs to be part of my book proposal.  It was clear in my mind, but turning it into a knitable object was not working.  Try this, nope, try that, nope...

Last week I checked out Barbara Walker's first Treasury book.  I have flipped through the book before and thought that I should probably own the entire series.  At $30 bucks a pop, that never happened.  What made me check out the book again, I do not remember.  Tuesday night I open it up and there, right there, was the answer to my problem.  Why did it take me so long to turn to a stitch dictionary?  Problem solved, swatch blocking. 

Time is valuable and I wasted WAY more than $120 worth of time trying to figure out this design.  I will not make that mistake again.  I will call the LBS in the morning and have them order a set of books for me.

The right tool for the job.