Quiet Weekend

Sorry to those who read both my LJ and this blog, I’ve been doubling up lately.
I don’t know if I needed the alone-time or what, but due to motivation and finances my weekend is turning out to be very mellow and quiet.
I stayed in last night and did some housework, then knit while watching Pursuit of Happiness and What Not to Wear, and I fully enjoyed myself. The only disappointments of the night were a bad choice in white wine on my part, and not paying enough attention to my knitting and having to rip back 3 rows twice in one movie.
Yesterday Subi woke me up at 8:30 in the morning, which turned out to be not so bad, as it was a truly gorgeous day and I had my tea and breakfast out in the warm spring air on the deck, and had plenty of time to check email, make a white bean and cucumber salad, and enjoy myself before heading over to the yarn shop for a few extra hours of work. It was a very slow day, but I enjoyed getting to sit and knit with Jess, and chat about Ravelry and the Sheep and Wool festival coming up, even if being there did mean I couldn’t spend the day outside.
I came home to this view from my deck:

Then my dad called, and I got to chat with him about news, politics, religion, the environment, and everything else for about 2 hours which was really nice. I also bought a plane ticket to go up and see him for a weekend, as I haven’t seen him in nearly a year.
By then it was after 10pm, and I didn’t feel like spending the possible $50 to come out tonight when I’m trying to save cash for the fiber festival.

Books! And Steampunk Star Wars!

Steampunk Star Wars!

Go here for details http://www.sillof.com/C-Steampunk-SW.htm

Anyone own a copy of “Water For Elephants” that I could borrow until mine arrives? I really wanted the audio book so I can “read” while I knit, or drive, but it was $10 more, and the library is all out.

We started a book club at work, which I think is a wonderful idea I’m happy to say even though I spend roughly 40 hours a week with my coworkers, I still want to spend extra time with them outside of work. This pleases me.
Books we are going to read in the very near future:currently reading “Water for Elephants”
Next will be either “The Kite Runner” or “A Clockwork Orange” (we even have some people who have never seen the movie)
Then “The World Without Us”
and “House of Leaves”
All of these have been on my to-read list for some time, so this is good.

Also in the queue:
currently reading “Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at large in the World”, which is excellent
just finished “Once Removed”, which was a neat little story about two step-sisters, one American and one Japanese
also just finished (I’m not a monogamous reader) “The Poisonwood Bible” which was good, but about 100 pages too long.
When I have time I will read “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”
and “The Glass Castle” (I think that’s what it’s called…)

I used to be a voracious reader, but haven’t read something consistently in a while. It feels good to get back into it.
Also, a wonderful tidbit from Neil: The introduction he wrote for a book called “The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke”. I Love the man so much.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

I’ll post later today with a State of the Knitting Address

SPRING!

And I haven’t posted anything of substance in months! I’m going to try to post AT LEAST once or twice a week now. Sorry, no real knitting content in this post, but I promise to have fibery goodness in next weeks post!

J is going away on one of his trips for the month, starting Wednesday, so I will have more time to post. It’s hard to get anything done when he’s around, as he’s a cuddle monster and is always in my lap (not that I’m complaining).

Friday night J and I went out to dinner with two other couples to a lovely Italian restaurant on Charles St called Sotto Sopra. It’s on the expensive side, but I felt the food, the setting, and the service were worth the price. I had duck raviolli in a sweet, reduced veal broth, with a goat cheese and arugula salad with dried cherries. I had creme brulee for dessert. We also got a bottle of wine called a Vernaccia, from San Geminano, Italy. It was light and fruity, but also had a nice dry crispness that was perfect with my meal. We’re probably going to pool our cash and buy a case of the stuff.

The ritual of going to dinner at a fancy restaurant is still fun for me: the table arrangement, the order the waitress takes our orders in and serves us, the wine ritual… We remarked how it was both nice to be taken seriously at a nice restaurant, but sad because it means we’re getting old!

A few weeks ago I was really proud of us, as we spent the whole weekend cleaning the house top to bottom (except the backroom which only got tidied a bit). The house stayed that way for about a week. Now it’s back to it’s regular messy state. It’s just so hard to devote precious free time to doing stupid mundane things like dishes and laundry and tidying up, even though we feel better after they are done. I can cook and decorate and grow things and knit and all that fun domestic stuff, but when it comes to housework, I throw in the towel

I’ve been watching the weather the past few weeks as I was anxious to get my Calla Lilly bulbs in their pot. I have Caladium in another long pot as well. I only get partial sun, but I’m hoping for a luscious colorful deck this year. I’m also planting herbs, lettuce, and spinach.

On Easter I made Spinach Quiche! It was my first quiche, but I learned from my mom that to avoid a soggy quiche you need to pre-bake the crust:

Spinach, onions, bell pepper, swiss and cheddar cheese.

I also have some pretty pictures over on Flickr from when J, M and I went to Longwood Gardens in PA. My camera battery died soon after we got there, so I used M’s camera for most of it:

When J gets back we’ll start new-apartment hunting in earnest. We’d really like to rent a house, but we’ll see what we can find. We want a place with 3 bedrooms, or 2 bedrooms and a finished basement so the snakes can have their own room and I can still have a studio. I wish we could afford to buy, but it’s not going to happen this year.

Tucked behind Old Ellicott City, a bit down the river is Oella. The apartments in Oella that they built in the old mill look absolutely gorgeous, and are in a wonderful location, but are ridiculously priced! We were pretty sad to discover we couldn’t afford to get something there in a space we could use. I’d still like to tour them though. http://www.oellamills.com/

Meander Double-Knit Scarf

The image of melting ice and snow meandering down the mountains, filling the rivers and winding away to the sea, was my inspiration for the rivulets of cool blues and greens looping across this scarf. The colors and spiraling pattern will have you thinking about Spring, but its two cozy layers will keep you nice and warm during those last cold-snaps!
I wanted to create a stitch pattern that was rich and organic in appearance, but geometric enough to lend itself well to knit stitches. The Greek Key design fit the bill, being a squared spiral, and is a perfect motif to use with Double Knitting. Double Knitting is an extremely versatile technique that creates a reversible, double-thick fabric, ideal for flat pieces such as scarves.
The double-knitting technique is explained in the pattern, but a brief tutorial can also be found HERE

Pattern available for purchase! $5.00

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Length: 72 inches
Width: 5 inches

MATERIALS
[MC] Cascade 220 Heathers [%100 Peruvian Wool; 220yd per 100g skein]; Lake Chelan (sea green), color# 9451, 1 skein
[CC] Cascade 220 Heathers; [%100 Peruvian Wool; 220yd per 100g skein]; Mallard (blue) ; color# 2448, 1 skein
NEEDLES
1 set US #7/4.5 mm straight needles

GAUGE
20 sts/28 rows = 4” in stockinette stitch using one color
17 sts/18 rows = 4” in pattern (Double-Sided stockinette stitch using Meander Chart)

Also on Ravelry!

The Blog is Moving!

Currently in the process of moving the blog to a new home here on WordPress, with a cleaner new look, and hopefully we’ll be a bit more organized More coming soon!

Sources for Help with Rogue Grafting

First of all, for Beth:
PumpkinKnits wrote a cheat sheet for grafting the Rogue hood! It’s linked on the right hand side on her blog.
Also, Wise Hilda wrote a basic explanation of grafting ribs or cables as well.

More FOs, WIPs and Orchids, coming up next!

Little Red Riding Rogue

OMG IT’S DONE!
DONE! Over two years in the making, and the sweater is finally done!
I’ve been working on this sweater for over 2 years. I knit it, then procrastinated the seaming, and then it sat on the bookcase in the hopes that it would install its own zipper for probably about a year.
Being too big didn’t help its case any either, but a good spray-down and a careful run through the dryer took care of the extra long sleeves and some of the extra fabric.
So here she is, my FINALLY FINISHED OBJECT

This is my cardiganization of Girl From Auntie’s Rogue Pullover, minus the pockets. There’s info on the pattern site about converting it to a cardigan, and links to other bloggers who have written out the modifications. I also added an i-cord edging to create a zipper..placket? I don’t know what else you’d call that. I kinda wish I’d still added pockets, but whatever. It could also use some short rows at the back of the neck, IMHO.

Yarn: 6.3 skeins of Plymouth Galway Highland Heather in rust
Size: 38″ this pattern runs BIG. I wish I’d made the smaller size, and I definitely wish I’d adjusted the size of the sleeves and the depth of the armholes. They’re huge! The circumference of the sleeves is VERY large at the top, and the armholes come down to the bottom of my chest, and I don’t find that very flattering, and neither is the 7 or so inches of positive ease, but the darn thing IS warm and comfy The sleeves were also very long before I threw the thing in the dryer.
I didn’t realize the original design included a lot of positive ease anyway, and wanted something I could wear a bit like a jacket, but it’s much bigger than how I usually like my sweaters.

I sewed the zipper by hand, as my seamstress friends were too intimidated by knitwear to help me But I think I will have one of them go over the stitches to reinforce them (I’m not the best at hand-sewing either).

I very fun and fairly quick knit, but it does have some fiddly grafting on top (which was kinda fun, once you get the hang of it). Very well written pattern!

On Ravelry too! I’m RedThread!