Can't Keep Up!

With anything, it seems these days.  I give up trying to predict when my life is going to normalize.  I did just finish a big project at work, and we're going on vacation in a couple of weeks.  And, oh look, there's someone new in my life!





Her name is Callie, she's an 8 year old Maltese rescue and she is fluffy and adorable and we love her to death.  I could gush for hours, but I'll try to restrain myself.  Know that she is as snuggly as she looks and then some.  Spunky, too!

Okay, I said I would stop.

I said last time I would show you Firebird and Zephyr Cove.



....Yeah, let's just move on.  The only WIP I'm even remotely on schedule with is Winter's Moon.  I'm on the edging, and about a third of the way across the shawl.  My goal is to finish this one before Romi releases the next Pins and Lace installment...which should be any day now.



I only made it through clue 3 of the Mystery Shawl, but I think that's working out in my favor, since the next clue can be repeated to enlarge the shawl and I have plenty of yarn, so I may do so.  The next clue introduces the second color, which I have to wind before I can start.  (I hate this picture. Ali's yarn is so gorgeous and my pics are so inadequate.)



I'd feel like I was in good shape, except I am determined to knit Misselthwaite, which currently looks like this.



Romi's next shawl in the Home is Where the Heart Is series is rapidly approaching as well, and I have no doubt it will be out as soon as the test knitters fling it off their needles.  I have no more time to blog! I must go knit!

I'm not dead yet!

Look for posts coming back soon, folks.  I have been up to plenty in the past few weeks and I have a ton of stuff to show, as soon as I can take some pictures of it all!

I had an awesome whirlwind trip out to Stitches West last weekend, where I helped the divine (and tragically injured) Romi and the ever-energetic Jeanne out in the booth Romi shared with A Verb for Keeping Warm.  I also got to meet Allison  and she is just as nice in person as she is online!  It was just like meeting an old friend and we had such a good time.  There were many others from Romi's group that made it to the show, like Dana (who was so gracious) and Caroline (who did a great job with the raffle at our Rominette dinner), and many more who were missed, and I didn't meet a single person from the group I didn't like.

Of course, there was loot...I thought I was exercising marvelous restraint, but I certainly didn't come home with any of my budget intact.  What can I say...I have expensive taste.  Sadly, my iPhone pics in hotel lighting didn't come out that well, but it's enough to give you an idea.



I only bought two skeins of yarn, but they were both 100% silk.  Yum.  One is Handmaiden Swiss Silk in fingering weight in a dark blue that will make a really pretty shawl, and the other is silk laceweight from Miss Babs in a lovely steel blue.

To the right is an interchangeable needle case from Chicken Boots, big enough to hold my two hiyahiya sets, for which I also bought some additional cables and connectors.  I also picked up a few more Puppy Snips, which are outrageously convenient to have.  I would love to put one on all of my project bags, but I didn't go that wild.

And, of course, a Jordana Paige Cezanne purse.  I'm afraid I went on a bit of an enabling spree and several of us walked away with a new bag!  I am not normally a fan of the messenger style bag, but when I saw the bag up close I found that the flap (and the bag) were not nearly so large as I was thinking, and it was actually a really good size to pass for a regular purse but hold a lot of knitting.  It can be carried cross-body, too, which can be handy for those of us whose shoulders seem determined to dump any bag we try to wear on the ground.  I also love that it has a couple of pockets in the front that are easily accessed, since I am constantly losing my phone and other little necessaries in the depths of my bag.  I'm a big fan of the handle on top, too, so it can grabbed and carried on the metro or getting in and out of a car without dragging on the ground.



Spending my budget didn't stop me from ordering more yarn when I got home.  Allison has come up with this gorgeous green color (the color of the year, naturally) and I ordered some crow to go along with it, to work Romi's new mystery shawl pattern. I love mystery shawls!

Just in time for stitches, I finished what was, at the time, Romi's latest pattern, Coyote Trail, so that I could wear it with pride.  Appropriately, I made it out of A Verb For Keeping Warm Creating, which some sweet group members sent me from Stitches West last year when I couldn't make it.



I did alter the pattern just a teensy bit.  Originally, I just intended to omit the two contrast color stripes right above the little flap edging, and do that whole section in the main color.  Unfortunately, I'm afraid years of being a super tight knitter had made me a bit overconfident that I would be fine on the yardage front even though the labeled yardage is a little short of what the pattern calls for, and this little "modification" caused me to have to get a bit more creative.  I ran out of the MC and had to do the flap in the CC.  I saved enough of the MC to do the bind off on the flap so that it would still stand out against the lace.  And since I used the CC to do the flap, I ran short in the lace as well.  That was no big deal, I just did 2.5 repeats of the lace instead of 3 full repeats. 



I'm very happy with it, though, I really like it, and though I wish I had been able to do the flap in MC as I'd planned.  Still came out great!  Major love to the hubby who stayed up way late with me to help me block, so I'd have the shawl in time to wear.

Anyway, I'm planning another update later this weekend with some better photos and, hopefully, a blocked Firebird (possibly a blocked Zephyr Cove too if I can manage it), so stay tuned!  I have a new fancy ultrabook that makes me much more mobile, so I'm hoping I can do a better job with the blog updates from now on. 

Oh, hi 2013, barely noticed you!

I feel like I barrelled into 2013 with barely a wave goodbye to 2012.  Perhaps it's the absence of my usual trip home at this time of year, or maybe it's just because we've been a terrible combination of busy and sick, but there was definitely no pause for reflection this year for either of us!  This weekend is the first in a long time where we haven't been committed to something.

So, I can now finally catch you up on what I've been up to.  Which, due to aforementioned busyness, is less than I liked.  I finished, but have not blocked, my Zephyr Cove shawl. 



To my dismay, Romi released not one but TWO new designs, "Heavenly," which is a "mashup." It's a stole that combines stitch patterns from her Pins and Lace designs, all in a single pattern, and it's a gorgeous way to cap off the year of knitting her beautiful P&L designs.  It's genious and I haven't had time to touch it.

The second design is Coyote Trail, the next in her 7 Small Shawls Year 3 series.  I have wound my yarn...



But haven't yet cast on.

I did manage to pick up Firebird and start working again.  It's a little hard to photograph, because I never actually put the second wing on waist yarn to hold, it's just sitting on the cable - which works perfectly fine, but makes it nearly impossible to spread out the project for pictures.  Also, the recessed light right over my couch is out, so I couldn't get enough light to show detail.



Primarily I have been working on Romi's Poinsettia Tam and Cuffs, a super cute little set that I want to make for my BFF.  Because she is my BFF and I know she will not forsake me forever because her Christmas present is late, I didn't even attempt to get them done in the chaos that was my life in the last few months.  Instead, I just waited until the fuss was over, wound the skein of Shalimar Breathless I had purchased just for this, and cast on.  After a few days of knitting (sadly interspersed with a number of days of non-knitting), I have a tam and a pair of cuffs waiting for me to pick up the sittches and knit the lining on each.





Except I had one little problem.



The yarn rubbed off on my fingers while kintting, and since the yarn for the lining is this tan Kid Seta...



I decided I had better wash the things and give the dye a chance to bleed off. 



There wasn't much color in the water, so I'm hoping I'll be okay.  A more patient woman would go ahead and soak them a second time to see if any more rinsed off, but, alas, I am not that woman. 

There's no scarf pattern with the set, but I wanted to make one to match, and as I was looking at the yarn, I noticed one of the sample knits hanging next to the shelf.  It was the Kid-Seta Gathered Scarf pattern by Skacel.  It was pretty, so I made a note of the pattern name on the tag, got enough yarn to knit the scarf, and when I got home, I downloaded the free pattern.  It's pretty simple, except that it requires you to change needle sizes, which is a little annoying for those of us challenged with chronic impatience (every time someone tells me I must be so  patient to knit the things I do, I laugh so hard, because that is deeply, deeply untrue).  So, while I wait for the tam and cuffs to dry enough for me to knit the linings, I started the scarf.



It's pretty, although it's chafing my tensioning fingers a bit.  Nexcare bandages are my best friend in this situation. It doesn't show in the picture, but there's a gold metallic thread, so it's also a little sparkly.

The only other Christmas present I made was this Permafrost Shawl I gave CodeMama for Christmas, done in Loft, colorway Snowbound.  I've never used a yarn like Loft before.  I found it a bit delicate for my tastes, but once knit, it blocked very crisply.  I don't think I'll be in a hurry to knit with it again, though.  My end result was quite a bit smaller than the pattern measurements, and I had a lot of yarn left over - SKS (supatight knitta syndrome) strikes again!

Guest Post - Christmas Cookie Bake

Things have been a little crazy the past few days Chez Ninja - we had some illness in addition to our other Christmas activities that threw the household into a bit of chaos.  But, as promised, and not too late, here is the guest post crafted by CodeNinja himself, to explain the tradition that is his family cookie bake.

Merry Christmas from the Ninja family to yours, and in case you are wondering, yes, I finished the stockings in the nick of time.



And now, I give you, in his own words, CodeNinja and the Great Christmas Cookie Bake.

A Brief History of Cookie Bake

Since time immemorial, we’ve always baked cookies at Christmastime, and given them away as presents.  Growing up, I’d take in a plate to my teacher, GeekBoy (my brother - a self-selected title) would take a plate to his, and CodeMama and CodePapa would take some in to their respective offices.  When young, my brother and I would ‘help’ more than help – Mom wisely incorporated a couple of recipes where the two of us could go off and be ‘productive’.  The mouse cookies were a particular standout – they required hand-rolling and shaping for the body, with licorice tails, chocolate chip eyes, and extra little bits of dough for the ears.  Needless to say, with two young boys doing the shaping, the first tray or two would be relatively plausible – but then our nature would take over, and the mice would become increasingly mutated.  Three eyes, multiple tails, two-headed mice….later trays would not be suitable for inclusion on gift platters.  Aside from that, though, it was a fairly normal thing – we’d bake a few batches of cookies and give most of them away.

Cookie Bake Unleashed

As time went by, cookie bake began to…evolve.  Expand.  Grow.  When we hit high school, there were suddenly a lot more teachers who needed cookies.  And GeekBoy and I were able to actually help more.  By this time, cookie bake consistently involved a dozen or more batches of cookies, expanded from one day to two, and was getting into “this is sort of ridiculous” territory.  In 2001, we added a supplemental chapter to the family cookbook with the recipes we made that year.    Over the last few years, it grew even larger – featuring several days of prep work, multiple stand mixers going concurrently, and extensive use of my parents’ convection oven (which was bought essentially solely for this purpose – the ability to have 3 sheets of cookies in the oven at once.)  The last two years saw Cookie Bake exceeding two thousand cookies.

Cookie Bake: This Year’s Crop

We did end up scaling things back a bit this year – my job has been completely nuts, so my ability to help out with the prep was limited, and the rest of the family is likewise busier than normal.  Mom had to make the entire grocery run herself:



Things got going around 10 AM, when I showed up at my parents’ place.  First up were David’s Dream Bars - one of my favorites. A full recipe involves more than a pound of high-quality chocolate (milk, white, and dark), along with coconut and pecans. 



Once those were done, I made the fudge, while my brother started on all of the batches that needed refrigeration:



(From left to right - hazelnut sandwiches, cranberry shortbread coins, and world peace cookies.  Not shown are the two types of spice cookies, which came along later and also needed a stint in the fridge.)


The last thing we took care of before lunch were the nutmeg logs.  At this point, we could tell we were behind schedule - the table only looked like this:



Fortified with pizza, we started working on the rest of the cookies – starting with the Russian tea cakes.  (These are one of CodePapa's perennial favorites.)  In the last few years, we've also added a chocolate variety of these - I'd be hard pressed to decide which one I like more.



CodePapa also wound up taking a more active role than usual this year – his normal job is simply chief tasting officer and president of emergency grocery runs, but we actually handed him a cookie scoop and made him lay out the trays of peanut blossoms and molasses cookies.  As it turns out, this eventually lead to a backup that not even three sheets at a time in the oven could keep up with:



Once we finished up with those, we basically declared ourselves done for the night - except for decorating the nutmeg logs.  These are one of the cookies we’ve been making since forever – a lightly-spiced cookie with icing on the top.  Growing up, my brother and I would spend hours making detailed decorations on a batch – writing holiday words/phrases using jimmies, arranging tree-shaped sprinkles with snowflakes falling down on them, carefully applying colored sugar in diagonal stripes to make candy canes.  We still make these every year, though we make far fewer of the extremely carefully decorated ones than we used to (and even less than normal this year - we were all kind of tired by this point!)



By this time, we were all wiped out and called it a night.  It'd been a long day of baking:



CodeMama and GeekBoy finished dealing with the roll-‘em-out cookies on Monday, and we packed everything up over the next couple of days.  Basically all of the cookies have been given away by this point - mailed out to friends, taken in to offices, or eaten by us.


Merry Christmas!

Busy busy busy

Our Christmas preparations continue.  I was so excited to decorate our tree.  I am very sentimental about my Christmas ornaments as it seems like each one has a memory.  Like these, which I brought back from my parents' house:



These are silver Reed & Barton Christmas crosses and, except for a few that have been misplaced over the years, there is one for every year I have been alive up until the last few years.  My great aunt and uncle sent them to us every year while they were alive.  I love hanging up each year and thinking, "that was the year I graduated college," or some such.  I have a lot of other ornaments that are still at my parents because I am afraid of damaging them trying to bring them back.  Over time, I'm sure I'll get them here.  But the Christmas crosses were pretty secure coming home in my carry on, so they were the first to make the trip.

Then there is this one, a handpainted ornament we bought on our honeymoon in Alaska.  I think we bought it in Anchorage from Cabin Fever, but if I recall correctly, the artist is from Homer.



Our Hallmark First Christmas Together ornament.



And we have several painted by CodeMama, which are all very precious. 



Love it.  In fact, here's some pics of a few more, because they are all so cool:







It's okay to be jealous.  But they're mine (well, ours) and you can't have them.

We have many many others that make me sigh - gifts from friends, or from each other, and also, ornaments from the yearly ornament exchange organized by the women's ministry at my church.  I have brought some form of handmade ornament every year (some more successful than others) so of course, I had to make some time to do it this year.  It doesn't take very long, actually, the most tedious and time consuming part is counting out and prestringing the beads.  I have seen kits for these around but I have a Leisure Arts booklet that I use.  The yarn is a red sparkly metallic, but I've lost the ball band, and I used #6 gold beads.

Basically, following the pattern instructions for bead placement, you knit a little drawstring bag.



Then you work it up over a glass ball ornament, and pull the top tight.



There's a hole in the bottom.



Sew it closed and voila!  All done.



I did make a little oopsie and missed a bead...but I decided not to worry about it.
 


Right after I finished it off and took these pictures...I knocked it off the couch and it broke.  Arrrgggghhhh!!! I was able to painstakingly undo the top of the ornament and loosen the bag enough to get it off the broken ornament, and thankfully, the yarn wasn't cut anywhere.  I had exactly one intact glass ball remaining, and you can bet I was careful with that sucker afterwards and breathed a sigh of relief once it was safely on the table at the exchange.  Gifts are assigned randomly through a series of games (none of that swapping stuff) and this is what I got in exchange:



Cute no??  (Sorry about the blur...) Very appropriate for my bakerly household.  Stay tuned next week - I may get CodeNinja to guest blog the traditional family cookie bake.

On the knitting front, progress continues.  I have some stuff I can't show, but I can show you Stocking the First, which is progressing well.



And my third pair of socks for the mission team going to the Czech republic, which is almost done.



I don't think I'm going to get the fourth pair done as I had intended, but we'll see.  The Christmas knitting has to be finished first, and then if I still have time, I'll make the 4th pair.  I'm afraid I've found these a little frustrating, because it takes 2 balls of yarn to make a pair of socks, and in every single pair of the three I've done, one ball has been fine, and the other has had blotches of one or more of the darker colors in the light areas.  I don't know if it shows in that photo, but there is quite a bit of red in the light grey areas of the sock, enough to make it look like the socks have been washed and the color bled - even though they obviously haven't.  It's annoying, but I don't have time to do anything about it - replacements won't do me any good, especially because every stupid time, it's been the second ball I used that was messed up.  I'm not reknitting three pairs of socks and I wouldn't finish before the mission team leaves, so I've pretty much just got to live with it. 

I hope everyone else is enjoying whatever holiday preparations you are accustomed to making!  I could use a little more time before Christmas and I feel like I've still got some shopping to do...but I still love it.  I did have one little incident though - of course, since we have a real tree we had plenty of needles on the floor once we finished all the decorating.  I was using our canister vac to clean some of it up when I accidentally nudged the ottoman and some leftover yarn that had been sitting on it fell off.  Before I could react I had managed to suck it into the vacuum.  Of course it got stuck in the hose and I was left trying to figure out how I was going to get a wad of yarn out of this.



At first it was pretty close to the straight end, where the hose connects to the vacuum, but in the act of looking for it, I stretched the hose out and the yarn fell out of reach.  I was lost as to how I was going to get the stuff out.  I tried pushing it out with a broom handle but that didn't work, and I didn't see how, even if I could get it down the hose, I would get it past the bended part in the nozzle.

So, I thought about it for a bit, and came up with a solution.



I used highlighter tape to fasten a crochet hook to the end of the broom handle, stuck the broom handle down the hose, and managed to pull up a few strands of the yarn, which I was able to use to pull out the whole wad.



Thank goodness it was leftovers.  It was actually all the yarn I had to pull out of the middle of the second ball of yarn for the Czech socks to get to the right place in the color repeat to start the second sock.

And now...I really need to get back to my knitting before I get behind!