One, Two, Three, Doh!

This whole learning a new craft thing must be good for the brain because it's making my head hurt.


Kumihimo, the ancient craft of Japanese braiding, is both "fun and relaxing" until the moment where you realize that the conversation in your head has gone from "one, two, three, four" to mentally yelling at the conservative guy Jon Stewart is interviewing. Then there's a pause. Then there's some pretend counting that doesn't really correspond to where you're actually at in the sequence. You're just doing it in the hopes that it will remind you of where you were and then you realize with horror that you're completely lost. This has happened twice. I blame Jon Stewart and my toddler.
After the shock and cursing had worn off I went back to the decidedly unhelpful little booklet to see if there was a "troubleshooting" section. There was no such section. I would like to take the time to issue a warning to all the new crafters out there. If a booklet has less than 20 pages it is like a good looking, rich, popular, high school sports champion. It will get you into trouble very quickly and it will feel no remorse. Maybe it should have been obvious that the secrets of the ancient Japanese art of Kumihimo could not be explained in a 10 page booklet, but I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to these things. Well, I'm somewhat of an optimist and I'm most certainly impatient.
Thankfully, the second time I made this mistake I had taken photos of each "point of braid". That's this...


and of the braid itself, as it was being worked. That's this...



So no all I have to do is find some quiet time when I can figure out exactly where I am in the braid...."Childrens do learn."

In other news, my husband celebrated another birthday recently. I made him some stellar chocolate, cherry, and black current cupcakes and a seriously tasty Greek spaghetti squash Spanakopita type thing.


The recipe for the cupcakes is in Nigella Lawson's book "How to be a Domestic Goddess". Boy do I miss watching her slink around the kitchen, plunging her finger into whatever unsuspecting bowl was silly enough to leave itself uncovered. She really is an Olympic champion of the Sunday morning lounge.
I substituted black current jelly for the cherry jam she calls for. The recipe was ridiculously simple for such a rich and sophisticated tasting cupcake. I'm sure there's a good argument against using the word "sophisticated" to describe cupcakes but I think that's a snobbish approach to food. These were gone in less than two days. Next time, it's marmalade.

Away

I've been away for a long time. There hasn't been a lot of time for knitting. I mean, how can you knit when you're chasing your children here?...


Or here...


Hawai'i was amazing even without the knitting. The colors and the smell of flowers are overwhelming.




Then there was the mad dash for Christmas presents and a last second toilet installation before we met my parents in Paris. Never underestimate the power of multiple toilets to soothe even the most savage of holiday family events.


Paris was lovely, as usual. We trudged through the cold wet snow with the expectant smiles of an Arctic expedition on it's first day. At the end of each day we were tearing through piles of food and pyramids of shopping bags. I managed a quick yarn stop, but no knitting.

Christmas morning was spent in the shadow of the 15 ft. Sequoia my husband slayed. We celebrated a very memorable Christmas in the shade of it's magical shadow. Santa was very understanding of my fiber needs. He'd been checking to see if I was naughty or nice and discovered that all I've really done this year is chase a two year old around the house with a pair of pants in one hand and a baby tucked under my arm. Santa really came up with the goods. There were mountains of yarn, a knitters loom, and a surprise gift.


I am learning the art of Kumihimo, that and chasing babies.

We're all finally over the summer of "big ouches", as my toddler would put it, and are doing some much needed catching up.


In these last couple of weeks there's been a whole lot of family time. When we're sick all we ever seem to be able to keep up with is the bare minimum of house work, so the last thing I want to do right now is stay inside. The boys agree.
We've been picking things in the garden, watching movies, eating lunch at kid friendly cafes, visiting with friends, swimming and generally trying not to sweat the small stuff. It's been a good month for all of us including the dust buffaloes roaming around the living room.
Yesterday at about 8:30 AM we saw a hot air balloon being inflated in the distance and threw the kids into the car with only about half the usual amount of back up clothing, caffeine, snacks and diapers. A bit of bad weather arrived and we lost sight of the balloon so we headed out to a plant sale ( I found a caper berry bush. I know, amazing. I'll talk about that later.) in a neighboring village. Because we'd left in a rush, we arrived a half an hour before the plant show was scheduled to open. We ducked into a second hand shop to pass the time and I found this.


She's a little beat up, but that just means that I won't mind sharing her with little children. There are 11 dolls in this set. The smallest is about the size of my thumb nail and she opens. The patterns on their aprons and kerchiefs are made out of straw.
I've been thinking a lot about patterns lately. I think it must be the changing colors in my garden. With fall coming on I'm tempted to start some stranded mittens or maybe a stranded vest for one of the boys. I haven't the heart to start another sweater right now. I also lack the time and the focus to work on anything of consequence. I've channeled my color work desires into a men's scarf. It's posing with my sexy radicchio.


The color work is an easy to memorize slipped stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's first book, knit from odds and ends of Noro "Cash Iroha" and "Silk Garden". The other day I was pawing through my stash when I realized that I hadn't done any knitting since we recovered. I think these long days in the sun are leaving my brain a little scorched. My other projects are looking too fussy and complicated. I'm glad I started this. The Noro "Silk Garden" in this scarf is providing a little interest without demanding any actual work. I'll just keep on knitting until I run out of remnants. That's about all the planning I feel like doing after a long Indian summer day.

KAL

The Fall issue of "Twist Collective" is up. It's probably one of my favorite issues to date. I like this, this and this. Not to mention this. But a knitter has to be reasonable. There are only so many hours in each day, and my children make a good case for needing to be fed. Their case involves a lot of yelling, but there's some precedence to support their argument.
This is my swatch for Hallett's Ledge. I'm using "Imperial Stock Ranch 2ply".


This particular yarn has tried to be knit into sweaters three times. I was a little worried that it might be cursed, but now I believe it was just being picky about a partner.


In an effort to get this project finished quickly I'm bringing in a friend. My friend's name is competitive nature. I've joined a Knit - a - Long. I don't advertise the fact that I like winning. It always seems a little crass to be competitive, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that I like to win, and being a liar is way worse than being competitive. I guess I could just not admit to either, but that would make me sneaky. I'll end this train of thought before it goes too far. Oh no, it's gone too far.
I thought I might be able to come in second or maybe third, but was shot down on day two. Let me repeat that. Someone knit an aran weight, long sleeve, cabled sweater with a button band in two days. She must have cut her hands off and replaced them with super mechanized mini knitting machines. That's my theory.
I don't think I could knit this sweater in two days unless I didn't sleep and was cool with wearing a diaper. I'm not cool with that, so I'll have to wait.
I'm really enjoying the community of the KAL. It's wonderful to be able to chat about whether or not to use a P2tog instead of a K2tog. It's thrilling to see other peoples' swatches. It makes me feel less alone in my dorky-ness. Thank you internet. You complete me.

Jazzysocks

These are a pair of custom fit, no nonsense, top down, heel flap socks. I started them back in January, maybe you remember, and then there was a lot of baby having and leg twisting, etc., etc. In the wake of my shawl knitting frenzy I finished them off. Oh, and by the way, I was wretchedly ill when I finished them. This is no exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate. I thought you ought to know.


I was so wretchedly ill that I only managed a couple of hours sleep over a two day period. It was that kind of illness where you're sore deep down in your bones, and your skin feels sticky even when dry. My internal thermostat was going crazy and after some harsh bargaining with the Tylenol it opted not to go above 101F but not to go lower than 99F. My throat, however, was a real shark in the medicinal negotiations. It refused to compromise on anything. It made the homeopathic medicine cry.
I finished the foot of the second sock during the worst of this illness. There was a lot of one row, put the knitting down, stare at the mobile above my baby's bed for an hour, pick the knitting up, knit a row, repeat. My baby is also sick, and there was a lot of staring at mobiles going on. There were some points where we just stared at each other and telecommunicated about how much this bug sucked. He's my buddy.
Four days into this festival of germs, I'm starting to feel like the party's winding down. My throat is allowing for some solid foods and my body has cooled off. I have a throaty wispy voice which by husband describes as sexy, but which I would call contagious sounding. There's a lot of hacking and gasping for air, which I suppose just makes me sexier. The baby is still running a fever, but the doc says it's O.K. so I'll try not to freak out all over him and tell him that 4 days of fever is not O.K. for a mom, let alone a baby.
I'm going to sandwich this blog post about illness with a tiny bit of knitting and hope you'll still consider this a knitting blog. I don't want to have to change the title to "The Wendigo Gets Sick and or Hurt a Whole Lot, Plus There's a Little Knitting Going On". So, on to the socks.


I think that they are hideous. They remind me of modern dance, or free form jazz, or eating too much candy and then going on a violent amusement park ride run by a very young person who seems frighteningly uninvested in their job. They are totally gross. They are jazzysocks. I'm calling them that, because bad jazz is my least favorite thing in the world. Really bad jazz being either the Kenny G. or the crazed squealing horn variety and about 70 percent of the jazz in between. Billy Holiday, you know I love you. I'm not talking about you. You're more blues, and I love blues. Back to the socks, I think they went from Missoni to Methuselah when I knit the second foot. The small stripes circling the first foot are cute. The large sludge colored stripe on the second foot is throwing everything off. It's jazzy.
I'm not going to blame this jazzy quality on the dyer, Farmhouse Yarns. They made a beautiful yarn with colors I love. The creamy white with touches of yellow, pale blue and pink with a dark vegetable green does in fact remind me of "wild flowers" (that's the colorway). I think that in my delirious sickbed knitting I made one foot two stitches smaller than the other one. It's totally my fault.


These will be the socks I wear when I just don't care what other people think, which is most of the time.

Fini, All Done, No More

That's what my two year old son says when he's finished with something.


This is "Haruni" in Blue Sky Alpacas "alpaca silk", colorway "ivory". It took me about a half an hour just to pin it out for blocking. I'm so very proud of this. I know my friend will love it.


It's such a relief to be done with it. My hands were so busy knitting this thing that they couldn't stop, and I've almost finished a pair of socks in the last two days. It's like knitting in the wake of a big shawl boat. Now, if the promises of our mail services are to be believed, it should get there just in time for her wedding reception.

Soldiering On

One week after I gave birth I fell into a small stone watering hole while trying to count the salamanders. I am aware of how impossible that sounds. Yes, it is true. One leg stayed on shore, while the other one went in. I pulled a bunch of calf muscles and was pretty handicapped for about a month. During our June knit night there was a small fire. This was due to too much talking and not enough paying attention to the candles. I burned myself while trying to put the fire out and lost a good bit of skin on the back of my hand. Thanks to some good witch doctoring by a fellow knitter (mother of 8, lives in a yurt) my hand healed in about two weeks. I had one week with a good right hand and then I sliced the back of that same hand open on an exploded champagne bottle. I know, all of my accidents are fun related. Try not to be jealous of how much fun I'm having.
It took four stitches to close up the cut. I thought that would be the end of things, but since then I've had an allergic reaction to the tetanus vaccine, then an allergic reaction to the stitches which in turn caused the cut not to heal properly. Then my husband had a run in with a wood chisel and had to have three stitches. That's seven stitches in one week. Today my cut is starting to look like it's healing up but.......it seems like I might be coming down with some sort of sore throat thing.
This is the point at which I am admitting defeat. I am not going to pretend that any of this is O.K. It's insane. I know it's not life threatening, or terminal and things could be a heck of a lot worse, but right now I'm feeling pretty put upon.
That's why this......(please ignore the mess on my desk)


should be making me strap on the ole' straight jacket. This is "Haruni". Well it's almost "Haruni". It's "Haruni" minus one row of knitting. I ran out of yarn one row short.

Do you see the pretty scalloped edging? That's the row I'm missing. It's not a row I can skip. This is a gift for my best friend's wedding, so it's got to be finished within the week.
The extra skein has been ordered. In my professional opinion, the other yarn that I ordered along with that one skein was a medical necessity. It's a small soft cushion between my psyche and the proverbial wall.