Actual knitting content!

I really, really like the scarf I'm knitting right now. Well, I still hate the yarn, but I love the lace pattern enough that I'm plotting when to knit one for myself.

It's only 35 stitches wide, and there are only two pattern rows in it. I can do it while reading if I'm in good light and The Baby isn't trying to play handball with the yarn. (She has discovered the joy of nice, soft yarn. Ugh.) And this morning, while cruising web sites for lace weight yarn for another project, I found alpaca-silk in variegated colors. I'm thinking pink or blue to go with my steeked jacket.

I've found the sweater I'm knitting my mother-in-law for next year's Christmas present. (I know it's not Christmas THIS year yet. So? You can never have too many pending projects to knit.) Carpathian Black Roses from "Norsk Strikkedesign".

Except, in peach and slate blue instead of black and red. (Am I the only one who thinks bordellos when I see black and red?) And I'd do something, anything, different with the collar and cuffs. It's fitted, but still steeked and circularly knit, so it would go fast. And I think I could knit it with Highland Wool, so it'd be reasonable, price-wise. AND, I could do the short-row fitted sleeve and half-graft it in, and take photos and show you guys. To give you all something else to put on your 'knitting techniques only crazy perfectionists do' list.

Otherwise, I want to go shopping today. WANT. There must be something in the air. A Friday right before Christmas? I normally hate shopping, at any time, let alone when it's a madhouse. And I find myself looking forward to it. Must be losing my mind.

The cat is starting to worry me.

More books that warped me.

The know-too much edition. (The first version, here, contains mostly knitting books that influenced me.) This contains more general books that made me go 'whoa' or taught me a lot. This was inspired by the protein-in-flour discussion in the comments (I can practically hear people thinking 'how in HELL does she know that?') and also, by drugs.

I'm babbling AGAIN! Aaaah!
"Professional Baking" from Cordon Bleu and Wayne Gisslen. I've got the third edition (this is the fourth). I bought this, oh, five, six years ago now. Everyone thought I was insane for doing it, but it taught me EVERYTHING. Not just bread flour vs. cake flour, but professional baking short-cuts that really save wear and tear on my hands. Do not swoon at the price... I got mine on sale, and you can still pick up the third edition in some on-line outlets for less.





"Cod", by Mike Kurlansky. Any subject can be interesting if it's written about by the right person. Including the history of cod fish. I'd learned that lesson before this book came out, but this book is a fine example of it. Don't believe me? Get a copy yourself. I even read the part about Iceland's 'cod wars' out loud to the husbeast and he laughed. The author also did a book on salt, and I see he's got one out on oysters that's new. Must get.

This book also really sparked my fondness for what I call 'pop history' books.




"The Universal History of Numbers" by George Ifram. It's a translation, so it's a little more dry than it might be, in the original French. This is the book that made me, if not like numbers, then quit hating them. I originally got it to read the explanation on why Babylonians used base twelve. (The book's explanation is not adequate, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't think anyone's explained it properly, yet.) Of course once I laid hands on the book I read all of it. It's fascinating, and you know what? Numbers are just a tool, like a hammer or a knitting needle. Use them for what you need and otherwise, don't sweat it. They aren't some great monument to logic, and they aren't the worst thing in the world either.

Blogger has quit uploading photos... fuckers...

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It gives a great overview of science. ALL of science. Not just the history of it, but how it works. What's the diff between evidence and proof? Stuff like that. It also demonstrates just how affected by the personalities of scientists the whole thing really is. (Unbiased, my ass.) And since it's Bill Bryson, it's hilarious.

"The Modern Mind" by Peter Watson is similar. It's a history of ideas in the twentieth century. Very thought-provoking, but Watson is no Bryson; the book is pretty damn dry. But worth slogging through for an understanding of IQ testing, statistics, and a host of other things.



I'm sure by now everyone's noticed these books are mostly about history. Yup. It's a major interest of mine... if you study the history of a subject, you know the subject. I'd say for the general reader, though, stick to the Bryson book, and the Cod book. The others are kind of esoteric unless you're sincerely interested in the subject involved.

I may be a moron.

I swore I wasn't going to mention the cookies again. (Except to keep the daily running total - and that's more for my own records than for youse guys.) It's a knitting blog, and frankly, I'm getting sick of the subject MYSELF, so we weren't going to have any more cookie talk.

Then I had my Great Revelation this morning. Followed by the Great Head Thunking On The Wall.

I figured out what's PARTLY wrong with the cookies from yesterday. (The oven is still a piece of shit, mind you.) That twenty-five pound bag of flour we bought? It's bread flour. No wonder I got it for cheap - who in hell buys twenty-five pounds of bread flour?? It's not that big a deal, I can tweak the recipes to make it work with this flour - in fact, if I do it right, the cookies might be better - but geez oh pete. Talk about unobservant.

I'm a moron.

Today's score.

-Six inches of lace scarf. The knitting's very relaxing. Even if it is fucking mohair.
-Three and a half dozen screwed up chocolate chip cookies (damn it, they would have been cute, too, the chips were red and green) that I'm unloading on the Navy tomorrow. The oven temp was screwy and they cooked weirdly. The husbeast works at a Navy school full of kids away from home for the first time. They'll scarf up anything.
-Five dozen goddamn mac-nut lace cookies. I will NOT be making them again.
-Three dozen lemon cookies. Those turned out perfectly. Somehow.

And a baby with peanut butter in her ears and up her nose. I swear, you turn your back for one second, and chaos reigns.

She's not stoned. Really. Well, all right, maybe. (Personally, I think the photo's hilarious.) Unfortunately the peanut butter is almost the same color as her skin, so you can't tell it's smeared all over her face. And in her hair.

A day of photos.

Because I'm a little nutsoid with all this baking, and the baby's cute, and I had the camera out.


I started The Last Damn Scarf. It's almost as easy as the light green one. Two pattern rows instead of one. Easily memorized (or would be if my brain were functioning), and kind of cool looking. Think eyelet honeycomb. And I like this color a lot too; beige/tan with gold highlights. If you're ever stuck knitting something with Doucer et soie (poor you), get a pastel color. They're very subtle and pretty, much more so than the darker colors were. For some odd reason they seem easier to work with, too. Though that may be because I'm finally getting the hang of working with this crap.


The Baby has two new hobbies.
One: toy throwing.


Two: dancing.

She circles around on her knees, waving her arms, in time (vaguely) to music as it plays. This is the best photo I could get (to 'The Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin). When I get out the camera, she stops and smiles. I'm working on getting a better shot of it. To call it cute is an understatement.

The inevitable happened yesterday, I think. I'm pretty sure The Baby uttered her first profanity in the grocery store. I was trying to find red and green colored sugar and they were out of the green. I said "SHIT!" and The Baby immediately said "-it!" with the exact intonation I'd used. Oh boy.


For those of you who think I have my act together, I am posting one last photo, of my kitchen counter.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I've trashed yet another batch of cookies (red and green chocolate chip, this time - not a big deal except in time expended, WHICH I CANNOT SPARE) because my landlord is a fucking cheapskate and we're saddled with the cheapest oven on the market. It's uninsulated. It makes the kitchen hotter than a summer in hell, I can't let The Baby near it for fear she'll get burned, and now it's got another hiccup - it heats so unevenly that I can only bake one tray of cookies in it at a time. Which DOUBLES my cook time on everything. Grrr. Snarl.

And I'm screwing with my medication again, hence the babbling and whining. But I'm much more awake than I usually am - yay. Seriously. Yay. I'm quite tired of feeling drugged.

Bah, humshit.

Warping space-time.

How did I make those cookies so fast yesterday? Here's how:

Parchment paper and cookie scoops. Gifts of the gods. (Well, okay, Alton Brown. Same difference.)

The parchment paper is available at most regular grocery stores, often near the foil because it's made by the same company that makes a lot of that. (Reynolds.) It is treated with silicon and resists temperatures up to 420 degrees farenhiet (in celsius, that's, um... a lot). You put it out on your cookie sheet, scoop your cookies onto it, and put them in the oven. When they come out, you scoot the whole sheet of parchment onto your cooling rack, all at once, and leave them to cool before you have to touch them again. Then you pick up the cookies by hand and put them in a storage container. No more mutilating warm cookies with a spatula.

Last night I lined a baking dish with this stuff, put really really sticky batter in it (it contained molasses and honey), baked it, and then lifted the whole deal out of the pan and plopped it on the cooling rack. Later I cut it into bars with a pizza cutter and froze it. The pan took maybe a minute to clean; a tiny bit of batter had leaked out the corners. Often I don't wash the cookie trays at all.

Then, there is the true secret: The cookie scoop.

If I had to choose between the parchment paper and the cookie scoop, I'd choose the cookie scoop. (Though I'd cry over the loss of the parchment paper.) This is a #40 (that's how they're sized). I've also got a #20 (larger) and a #70 (smaller - shown in the photo at the top), but this is the one I use most. It will make three and a half dozen perfectly round cookies from the standard tollhouse cookie recipe, in about ten minutes. You can pick them up at restaurant supply stores, or order them from the internet.

There are two common ways the scoops are built, if you look at the top photo. The all silver one has a squeeze handle, and the purple-handled one has a thumb key. If you've got hand problems, I suggest sticking to the thumb-key style. I used one of the squeeze-handle ones yesterday and today am calling my doc for drug refills.

Those two dozen macaroons I made yesterday? Did it in half an hour. And I'm talking start to finish, from separating the eggs to pulling them out of the oven. This stuff is really, really worth buying, if you ever make cookies at all. In fact, I wouldn't make cookies if I didn't have them.




Oh, and I've gone back and fixed the shortbread cookie recipe. I said that one stick of butter is 1/4 of a cup. It's not. It's a HALF a cup. (That's how I screwed up the lemon cookies yesterday.) The one stick of butter figure is correct for the recipe. Duh. Sorry if I caused anyone any problems with that. Really, really sorry.

Today's toll.

-Five dozen toffee-chip shortbread cookies. (I lost my head and ate half a dozen.)
-Two dozen macaroons. (The husbeast lost his head and ate three.)
-Two dozen ginger bars. (I hate ginger.)
-One trashed batch of lemon cookies in the trash; I'll try again tomorrow. (Too much butter. Duh.)

And, drumroll please, one green scarf done. Eeeee!

I now plan to goof off the rest of the night.

My feet hurt.

Oh, and a question.

What does one buy their sister-in-law whom they like but don't know that well?

She's a professional cellist and mum to The Baby's Cousin, who is three months older and looks enough like her to be her brother. (Twin brother.) She has no known hobbies (at least, not known to me, I'm sure she has them) and likes to wear earth tones.

Lacking a better idea, I'm going to putz out and buy her bubble bath and crap. One of you guys has to have a better idea.

Help!

I'm international!

Check this out. It's from my statistics logger, that keeps track of hits on this blog:

Nearly half of my visitors are from somewhere else. I'm all about diversity (in case you hadn't noticed) and started this blog to meet people not-where-I-am, so this is really freaking cool. (And if you ARE from the US, you ain't chopped liver, either. Really. But, I'm sorry, different cultures are interesting to me. I KNOW yours.)


This morning I suddenly realized it's the twelfth of December. (Yes, I'm a little slow these days.) Which means we're leaving for Ohio in a week or so. WHICH MEANS I NEED TO FINISH A DAMN SCARF AND A SHITLOAD OF COOKIES!!! So the oven's pre-heating and I'm going to try baking while The Baby is awake. She's completely blocked from the kitchen by a baby gate; safety is not an issue. But keeping an eye on her while IN the kitchen, ah, that will be a trick. We'll see how it goes.

The light green scarf is nearly done (I expect to finish it today, even with cookie baking) and the last one (in beige/tan) isn't 'due' until the 26th of December, so I can work on it in the truck and in Ohio if I have to. I will also take along the Steeked Jacket to work on, but I can't work on it openly until after my father-in-law opens HIS, so that it's a surprise.

I'm babbling.


I think I finally figured out what the problem is with the migraines.

I'm a vampire.

It explains everything. Yesterday I went outside and as soon as the sun hit my eyes, it was instant headache. I've got a pair of super-dark sunglasses that I wear nearly everywhere but inside... see? Vampire. I've told the husbeast I'm in danger of disintigrating if I go outside, but he's not buying it. He wouldn't go to the grocery store for me (he's been working 18 hours a day), so I have to go today.

On the Air Force base.



Ohohoh. Almost forgot. See this hat?

(Okay, it's a bad picture, going up The Baby's nose at a strange angle.) My mother-in-law knit it for The Baby while I was pregnant. It was a bit large for last winter, but this year it fits just fine, and it even matches her coat! It's the only hat she'll leave on her head, too. Awwwwwww.

Language question.

It stands to reason that whatever words a child hears most, they learn to speak first. That's why so many toddlers have 'NO!' figuring so largely in their vocabularies. With that in mind, I want to know why The Baby's first sentence is not "Sekhmet, you fucker!"

So freakin' domestic.

It's making me sick. (Work with me here. I was always one of those kids who was going to get the hell out of my small home town and live the high life in a large city, juggling men and partying 'til the cows came home. Never mind that I don't LIKE partying any more, and juggling men got old fast.)

Anyway.

The new scarf pattern, it turns out, knits up REALLY FAST. I sit down and read a chapter of a book or watch Iron Chef (I prefer Iron Chef Japan, but Food Network isn't running it any more), while knitting, and the next thing I know I've got another six inches knit up. And the COLOR! It's a sea green, but it's got odd aqua blue overtones in certain light. I love looking at it. (It's color #8512.)

I'll post a formal pattern, such as it is, when I've got this thing done and a decent photo taken.



While I had the camera out, the baby was being cute, so I snapped a photo for the baby fans among us:

How do you stay in a bad mood with that looking at you?



And this brings us to cookies. I've had several questions about it.

When it comes to cookies that travel well, anything small, dense, and round works best. Without icing. Those types of cookies can take a beating. It's possible to transport cut-outs and other, more fragile things, but in that case I try to take them frozen (straight out of the freezer, into a cooler in the truck) and add the icings or toppings when I get to where I'm going.

In Hawaii, I would freeze everything as I baked it, and then in one rushed fit of speed, pack it all into pre-addressed boxes and take it off to the Post Office (which was a couple miles away). The cardboard of the boxes was fairly insulating, and usually when I posted them someone would ask why the box was cold. They would thaw within the first day or so, of course, but it gave them a slight edge on freshness. I suggest mailing in the US during the first week or two of December; that's when the post-office is geared up and ready for more packages than usual, but they aren't swamped yet. It would usually take less than a week for boxes to get to the mainland, if I mailed then.

Last night I made toffee-chip shortbread cookies, and had a request for the recipe, so here you guys go. (I'm so freakin' domestic.) These are really fast, really easy, travel well, and are rather cheap to make (compared to, say, fruitcake).

TOFFEE CHIP SHORTBREAD COOKIES:
-1 stick (1/2 cup) butter REAL BUTTER. It's shortbread, for crying out loud. Do NOT cheap out and get the margarine or I will hunt you down and make you knit Lion Brand.
-1/4 cup confectioner's/powdered sugar
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-handful toffee chips (if you can't get these, chop up some Heath bars or other toffee candies)

Mix it all together into a paste. That might take a little time. Scrape it all out onto a sheet of aluminum foil and roll it into a log shape. Roll the log in the foil and toss it in the fridge for an hour or so. When it's cold, take it out, unwrap it, and slice it with a thin knife. Lay the slices on a cookie sheet and bake at 325 degrees F for about 15 minutes, or until the edges just barely turn brown. Yum.

Le gauge swatch.

All rightie. The gauge swatch. Here is our chart:

THE PATTERN REPEAT IS OUTLINED IN RED.

You can click on it to get a larger version, then print it out (if you use a black and white printer, make sure to outline the pattern repeat with a colored pencil or something). Keep it near you at all times. Sleep with it under your pillow. Hug it regularly. Light candles to it. It's all you're getting from me in the way of a pattern. The rest you're doing yourself. (You, in the corner, quit hyper-ventilating. I'm going to lead you through it.)

Now. As you can see, the pattern repeat is 18 stitches, plus one (to put the vertical stripe on both sides and make it all nice and symmetrical - think about it). I also like to put two stitches at either side of the gauge swatch as a selvedge. So three pattern repeats, plus the extra stitch, plus four selvedge stitches:
(3x18)+1+4=59. (If math makes your head swim, just take my word for it.)

Using some kind of provisional cast-on (in this case, 'provisional cast-on' means anything that you can pick out again; I used a long tail cast-on, with smooth cotton yarn for the tail - a crochet cast-on is also good, or you can go crazy and use an actual provisional cast-on), cast on 59 stitches.

Using BOTH YARNS, knit into the back of the first two stitches. (This locks in the yarn and keeps things neat and in place.) Then knit the first row of the chart, doing three pattern repeats (plus the soild vertical stripe stich at the end), then knit into the back of the last two stitches with both strands of yarn to lock them into place.

Then cut the yarn.


Then skoootch the stitches back over to the other side of the needle so you're ready to start knitting on the right side of the fabric again:


Repeat this, working from the chart and cutting the yarn at the end of each row, pushing the stitches back over to work them on the right side again. Do at least two pattern repeats, or about thirty rows.

By keeping the right side facing you, you're essentially knitting this gauge swatch in the round. Since you're knitting the jacket in the round, that's how you want to do it. Make sense? Good.

When you're finished, DO NOT BIND OFF. Get a smooth, thin yarn (whatever you used for your provisional cast-on would be fine), and just run it through the stitches to keep them from unraveling. Leave a lot of space for the stitches to move around during the washing process; you want them to be able to spread out or shrink as they like. Do the same for the cast-on; pick out the stitches and put them all on another strand.

Then hand-wash your swatch, and leave it to air dry, spread flat.

Next up, measurement and calculating jacket circumference.

Steek-along signups!

Today's the day, gang! I'll be listing all our steek-alongers in the sidebar as they sign up, and dropping this link to a couple message boards, in invitation. (I don't know if I want a lot of signups or not. haha)

For those just wandering in, we're going to be knitting a stranded-color jacket, steeked up the front to be a cardigan:

Swatch knitting is from now until January second. On Janurary second, we'll cast on and begin knitting.

Anyone needing gory details can click away:
Skills needed.
Yarn requirements and closeups of the jacket.
Steeking how-to.
Stranded color how-to.

I'm following up this post with another one on how I did my gauge swatch, if you want to do it my way. You're welcome to skip that bit and do it your own way, I just thought I'd include the info in case anyone was interested.


E-mail me, or leave a comment to sign up.


And buttons! These are linked to an archive page at Samurai Patterns, where I'll be listing links to every how-to and direction on knitting this jacket, so that anyone not knitting along with us now, can go back and do it later. (This is my first-ever attempt at creating buttons, so, they kind of suck. You're welcome to make your own with a photo of your gauge swatch.)

But you're welcome to link the buttons to anything you want.

Hope to see you!

Just in time!

Sometimes I wonder if the blogosphere has some great psychic connection thingie going on. Because whenever I'm getting ready to do some kind of knitting project, all of a sudden, there's a kajillion other people doing the same thing, and articles out the woz on the subject. (Okay, it's far more likely that what I'm doing is in the front of my mind, and therefore I NOTICE the articles more often, but don't ruin it for me. We're psychic. It's more fun that way.)

Yesterday the knew Knitty came out, and lo and behold, just in time for the Steek-Along, is an article on stranded color knitting, and how to do it. With photos. (If anyone cares, I do stranded color by running the dark color through my index and middle fingers, and the light color through my middle and ring fingers, of my left hand. I never knew it was a legitimate technique until recently - I made it up myself in the knitting vacuum of the 1980's.)

THEN, when I was thinking I needed to drop that link to youse guys, who else is steeking, but the Knitting Curmudgeon herself. And she took photos. And did a crocheted steek, no less. Just like we're gonna do.

So if you're still not sure about your techniques, there are two more places to go look and have a read. And remember, I'll be doing tutorials as we go, also.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go do something about the 25 pound bag of flour I bought earlier today. And I just took some medication, so I may well be back later, swearing over the mathematician who figured out how to divide by zero. (Because imaginary numbers aren't useless enough. Terby, don't argue with me, they're useless. They ARE. ARE TOO. I don't care about the surface area of a sphere, and I don't need a freaking negative square root, and neither does anyone else. DO NOT.)

Time to bake!! Whee!

Last night I sat down and made the list of holiday baking to do. The last couple years I've gotten a little carried away with it, because we go to Ohio and I don't have to cook the actual holiday meal. And the cookies are a good thing to hand out to everyone - these days, hand made anything is considered a real treat.

By the time I made a list of all the old favorites, there wasn't much room for anything new and fun to be added (each year I like to try something new, which often gets added to the old favorites list, making the list grow every year).

Here then, is the proposed (NOT FINAL - stuff gets ditched as time runs out) baking list for Christmas 2006:
-Buckeyes (chocolate-dipped peanut butter candies)
-the date cookies
-toffee chip shortbread cookies (roll and slice, very fast)
-Snickerdoodles (rolled in colored sugar to look festive)
-cut out cookies (geckos - a tradition I started in Hawaii)
-lemon cookies (a successful experiment from last year)
-macaroons (really fast and everyone oohs)
-scandinavian orange bars (like soft biscotti - fast to make)

And the new experiments:
-chocolate dipped arrowroot cookies (a joke for my father-in-law)
-macadamia lace cookies
-ginger bars (I hope these work like fast gingerbread, 'cause I hate making gingerbread)


Other than the buckeyes, date cookies, and cutouts, nothing is labor intensive. I get out my cookie scoop (small-sized ice cream scoops, available at restaurant supply stores) and the silicon parchment paper, and can whip through a batch of cookies in an hour. I also start with the more classic 'cookie cookies' because they freeze well - do them two or three weeks early and chuck them in the freezer.

Once the freezer's full, I quit baking. That's the rule. Haha.

Before I had The Baby, when we were in Hawaii, I would mail out baked goods instead of Christmas cards... The baking would start the day after Thanksgiving, and everything would be in the mail (still frozen, usually) by the second week of December and I would sit back and drink Cosmopolitans while the thank-yous would roll in.

This whole waiting and baking fresh is a new idea, but it's kind of fun to hand the stuff directly to the people who get it.

I love baking.

I hope I don't gain 20 pounds this Christmas.

Oh, fine.

Here, The Baby greets The Husbeast as he arrives home from work. (Dadad is her favorite person. To hell with me.)


And here, the baby models the Surprise Jacket again. Hopefully without the zombified look on her face.
Okay, she's slightly zombified. I don't know what she's looking at in that photo. I suspect she's getting tired of the camera flash. She's quit looking into the camera.

You're lucky I was posting photos on the Zimmermania blog anyway.

Good news/bad news/good news/bad...

The knew Knitty is up. Always good news.

I am not in it. That was puzzling, because I'd sent in an article that I thought was good. I hadn't heard anything from Amy, but she's been swamped (appearance on Knitty Gritty, book tour, writing another book) and I knew she doesn't have time to hold the hand of every person who writes for her.

So I e-mailed and asked what was up. While I was waiting for a reply (not that long - she was quick), I started thinking, maybe my article got lost in e-mail heaven, and I could re-submit it for the spring issue and not have to write another one by January 2. That started sounding pretty good to me.

Then Amy replied. I'm in the surprise part of the issue, so my article will, eventually, be up. Which is cool.

But this means I really do have to write another article by the second.

Anybody know how I feel about all this? I don't. Haha.

Anyway, I'll give everyone a teaser for the article. It explains how to choose colors, and I used that method to choose the yarn I just got for the Geometric Star. (In fact, I would have explained it here, except I knew the article was pending.) And a photo tease:

(I did all the swatch photography in the driveway, for natural light, and got some seriously weird looks from the neighbors.)

I have gone to the dogs.

Me, the least domestic person I know, the person who vowed to never settle down, has a kid, a cat, a husband, and a knitting blog.

And now I'm posting recipes. Life, as I ever knew it, is over.

Ah well. Maybe another tattoo will cheer me up.


BUZZY'S DATE COOKIES FROM HELL: (Buzzy was my mother's nickname.)
Mix:
1/2 cup butter
2 beaten eggs
1 cup white sugar.

Heat in a good-sized skillet. (I use a #10 cast iron skillet.)

Add an 8 oz package of dates, cut into small pieces.

Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly. Your arm will want to fall off.

Gradually add 1/3 cup of flour, still cooking and stirring until thick, seven to ten minutes. At this point it will look like boiling vomit. You were warned.

Stir in:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts (I say pecans, she always said walnuts)
2 1/2 cups rice crispies (yes, rice crispies)

Mix it all into a sticky, unholy mess. Keep slightly warm so it doesn't congeal, and roll into small strawberry shapes, using greased hands. It's best to get two or three people at work on that, or you'll wind up with the rest of the gunk solidified in the bottom of the pan.

Roll them in red sugar, and pipe on little green leaves. (Lazy method, roll into balls and cover with colored sprinkles.)

Best eaten at room temperature.


I have no idea where my mother got this recipe (though it may come from her sister, the woman who makes sauce for Swedish meatballs with hot sauce and grape jelly). It's unlike anything else I've ever encountered. But if you have the patience to make it, a few little strawberries tucked into a cookie plate gives it real pizzaz, and you can play 'guess the ingredients' with people for hours.

More knitting stuff.

There's a clever title for a knitting blog, "more knitting stuff", because, you know, I never discuss knitting stuff around here.

Ugh. The temperature's started to fluctuate again and the migraine is back. I feel like I've goth an elephant standing on the bridge of my nose. It's supposed to freeze tonight, and I hope it gets damn cold and stays that way. Then only my asthma will bother me. Ha.

Anyway, I sewed together the Baby Surprise Jacket and got a couple bad photos of the baby in it:

The top photo, you can see the length is a bit on the long side, and get a feel for how the shoulder seams go together. The bottom photo doesn't show a lot, but you can see the sleeve length is okay. I think the gauge is wonky because I knit this really loosely and the garter stitch stretches out in all directions. (And get a load of that pink leopard-skin sweat suit. Yes, Ang, I thought of you when I bought it.)

Better photos will be forthocoming; the Baby was zoned on "Go, Diego, Go!" and when I tried to get her to stand up for me, she had such a whiny hissy fit she wound up getting put down for a nap. I need a good photo to post over at Zimmermania, a group blog I'm part of that's a bunch of people knitting Eilzabeth Zimmerman and Meg Swansen projects.


I started another damn scarf:

The dark green one was bound off last night; it's as long as my outstretched arms, unblocked, and I decided that was long enough, regardless of what seemed like a half ball of yarn still left. This new light green one is simple lace netting. Yarn over, knit two together across, then purl back the other way. I can read while doing it, and hope that I'll get it done faster, because of that. (That was the great attraction to the Baby Surprise Jacket.)


I've also suddenly realized (last night) that we have a little less than two weeks before we leave for Ohio, and if I want to do any Christmas baking, I need to do it soon. Normally I enjoy baking (to the point I once considered it a hobby, before my weight hit 150 and kept going up), but not with a baby to ride herd on. Which means I'll be doing my baking in the evenings, when the husbeast's around to watch the baby. Fun, fun. Not to mention, my brother's family has requested date cookies. Since my grandmother and mother died, I'm pretty much the go-to girl for any traditional family recipes, so I always try to take requests when I can. But the date cookies are hell. (Maybe I'll post the recipe here so you can suffer too.)

Why can't they ask for chocolate cake? I'm good at that.

I'm blogging and I can't shut up!

...mostly this is due to the husbeast working lots of hours this week and leaving me to deal with a small human who has a vocabulary of five whole words. It's making me squirrelly. (More squirrelly.)

One deadline met:

The gauge swatch for the steeked jacket. It's currently soaking in the sink, so it'll be all nice and clean and dry by the time I need to measure it in another three weeks. I'm not thrilled with the dark blue color, but I ordered it on line without a shade card, and shit happens.

Another blocking job came in the mail today. (April, I can't find your e-mail address. I got the package and it's already soaked and pinned out, drying. If I take my time, I'll forget it and feel like a shit later.) April apparently slipped and fell on her wallet in the children's section of some store, because the box contained baby gear, among them, a lovely tee shirt. Here The Baby models it while doing her Gloria Swanson imitation:
If you can't read the shirt, it says "Cute but stinky. Things balance out."

And here, The Baby says "Thank you!" (So do I.)

Her mouth isn't really THAT crooked... she's missing a tooth on the lower left side (we think permanently), and whenever she smiles like that she looks like a goof. Heredity has nothing to do with it. Really.

And there have been several requests for a tattoo photo, so here you go:

I was warned by people when I got it that the detail would blur and I'd wind up with a solid blue stripe around my wrist, but that was over ten years ago and it still looks fine. I've been meaning to get another one for a while now, and just haven't gotten around to it. Hmmm.

Now I'm going to go work on meeting another deadline.

Bah, humshit.

Eeek.

The Elann yarn got here. You know, the stuff for the Geometric Star. I ripped open the box and dumped it all out on the couch.

My head swam a little bit and I swear I got dizzy. But I separated the colors into piles and put it in a more orderly pile and turned on the full-spectrum light, and, well, I think the colors work.

Even having written a couple articles on color theory and knitting, I'm amazed it looks this good. The blues on the left will be used for the stars and the backgrounds of the hexagons, and the other colors on the right will be used for the small patterns inside the hexagons.

This is going to be either the coolest project in the whole world, or an utter disaster. I can't see any middle of the road, here.

I hope I have enough yarn. (That was a joke.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go knit like crazy on something. Anything.

Slob or perfectionist?

Or both?

I've been documenting my swatching process for everyone (photos by the husbeast) and it's the first time I've ever really thought about it. It's really an obnoxious process. I mean, it works, but the attention to detail is ridiculous. And I find myself wondering, how is it I'm sitting there, turning that little swatch into a work of art, and then turn around and knit other stuff with no gauge swatch at all?

I washed the Baby Surprise Jacket last night, and the yarn relaxed, and, well, I laughed and laughed. The jacket's now big enough to fit the baby on through to high school, I suspect. The whole thing was an experiment, so I don't care. It's drying, I'll put buttons on it, wrap her in it, and roll the sleeves up. It really doesn't matter to me. If it had been too small I'd have given it to someone with a baby. Just didn't matter.

And the scarves. I start knitting, and if it's too wide, I just rip back and start over (in mohair, no less). That does annoy me, but not enough to make me knit a gauge swatch.

Yet here I am with this jacket swatch, picking out the cast-on and putting the stitches on a string, so the gauge can spread out properly.

Maybe I have multiple personalities?

Feeling better.

I don't know if it's because the weather has steadied and the temperature has been in the same ten-degree range for the last twelve hours, or if it's the unholy amount of caffeine in my system (it'll be a miracle if I sleep tonight), but the migraine has backed off.

I celebrated by finishing this:

The Baby Surprise Jacket. Yes, the only project I had on the needles (of, um, four?) that wasn't on a deadline and didn't NEED to be done. So of course I worked on it.

I'm not sure if the surprise involved is that it turns into a jacket, or because it's designed to accomodate girls or boys, and you can wait until the baby is born and sew the buttons on whatever side that needs them. Either way, the thing is a wonder of engineering. I'll get a photo of the baby wearing it when it's seamed; at the moment it's soaking in the sink with baby shampoo, to get the rest of the food coloring out of it.



Tonight the husbeast spent about fifteen minutes bouncing a nerf ball off the baby's head.

That's riotous laughing she's doing, not crying. I swear. Sometimes it's hard to tell in still photos. (I take an excellent action photo, if I do say so myself. This one only took three tries.)



I just (as in, fifteen minutes ago) got a massive virtual pile of comments from my blog today, so I'm sorry if I haven't responded to anyone, if they needed responded to. Blogger is apparently fucking up.

Gasp.

Bloody, buggering, pig-fucking hell.

That one's for the profanity afficionados I've got around here.

The husbeast just called. He's got leave for Christmas.

It's official. I've got to finish these damn scarves. By the 20th.

Fuck.

More whining.

Well, hopefully not THAT much more.

Thanks to everyone with ideas on the migraine situation (April, really liked the tequila suggestion - the husbeast agreed), but I already know what the trigger is, and there's nothing really to be done about it. It's all about the weather. We're at that seasonal point where there are huge differences in temperature between day and night (today it's changed twenty degrees in four hours) and that plays hell with my sinuses, which trigger mild migraines. Fortunately these are not the killer, blinding migraines that I was having for a while, but after a week, any kind of migraine sucks. Anyway, I've had these all my life, and there's really nothing to do but hunker down and feel like crap for a while. (Well, massive doses of caffeine and Excedrin Migraine help, but then I can't sleep at night.) I've had, oh, sixty-odd sinus infections, lifetime. This just goes with the territory. For a chronic problem, it beats cancer or rheumatoid arthritis, at any rate.

I'm babbling.

KNITTING NEEDLE QUESTION: (Sorry I missed this one yesterday when I was answering the yarn thing.) I've had some questions about what kind of needles to use for the steek-along. Obviously you're going to need circulars. The size depends on your yarn weight; use what the ball band suggests, or what YOU want to use. (I often use needles larger than suggested, but for a jacket I want to wear as outerwear, I'm using smaller.) You'll also need some double-points for the cuffs. For the hems, you need something a size or two smaller than your planned needle size, in double-points for the cuffs and either single-points or a circular for the body hem - the body hem is knit flat. (For instance, I'm knitting mine on size 7/4.5mm needles and I will be using size 5/3.75mm needles for the hems.)

As for LENGTH of circulars, well, that's a tough question. I prefer a 26" needle for everything. It crams the needles together and that way I don't have to waste time smooshing the stitches around as I knit. (This may be a partial cause of my alleged knitting speed.) HOWEVER, if you're not skilled at stranded color, mashing the stitches together will give you a really tight, puckered gauge. You need to keep the stitches spread out on your right hand needle, spread to approximately the final gauge, so that the floats on the back of the fabric are the proper length. (Does this make sense? Let me know if it doesn't.) So it's up to you; if you aren't experienced and want to spread out a bit, try a 30" needle, or even longer. But make it at least 4" (uh, 7cm? about? you want me to do metric conversions with a migraine?) smaller than the circumference of your sweater body. Jumper. Sweater. Whatever.

For the sleeves, you'll need double-points or two circulars or a magic-loop type needle for the cuffs. Once the sleeve gets long enoug you can shift over to an 11" circular, or knit the whole blessed thing the way you do the cuffs. I've knit entire sleeves on double-points before, it's not that horrendous. Not to mention, with the way this pattern works, you'll only be knitting the sleeves up to the arm pits, after that we join the whole thing together on the circular you're using for the body. So the sleeves aren't that long, all things being equal.

I'm still babbling.

If any of this is confusing, let me know and I'll go over it again.

In other news, I'm a horrible mother. The Baby woke up this morning, I parked her in the Pack-and-Play, laid down, and fell asleep. I woke up two hours later when The Baby yelled "MUMUM!" at me. Her diaper had overflowed. I suck.

You can see how traumatized she is by the whole thing:

I'm thinking it's nap time for everybody.

Has anyone seen my brain?

I'm on day seven (eight? I'm trying not to keep track) of a sinus-related migraine and am getting a little fed up. (For 'fed up' read 'taking increasing doses of migraine medications'.) So this post is probably going to lack pizaz. (Or, for all know, be chock full of rude profanity, for the entertainment of you all.)

YARN CHOICES FOR THE KNIT ALONG:
This seems to be a tough one for a lot of youse guys out there. Boy, give people unlimited choices and they go all to pieces. I don't know what's up with that. Here are some relevant points to keep in mind. I am STILL not telling you what to buy.

-Use wool or a wool blend. We're steeking, and wool is best for that. Best not to get into weird complexities on steeking until you've done it once or twice; make it easy on yourself. Get something wooly. (Woolie? Whatever.)

-Worsted weight or heavier is best. You CAN use sport weight, or, hell, even fingering, if you feel so inclined, but it will take FOREVER to knit and we'll all be off doing sleeve decreasing while you're wildly trying to keep up. For a light jacket intended for cool-but-not-cold weather, use worsted/DK. For a COAT, use something heavier, like regular weight lopi. (I am using Lite Lopi on size 7/4.5mm needles, for a jacket to wear in a warm coastal climate. I'd say that's about as light/thin as you should go on the yarn - remember, I knit pretty fast.) Also remember, by doing all-over straded color, you're in effect doubling the thickness of the fabric.

-A related question from the Aussies amongst us was regarding five-ply vs. eight-ply for yarn. I've used Aussie eight-ply and it would make a fine jacket, but it would be fairly warm. Up to you; you know what the weather's like where you live.

-I suggest getting an extra skein of each color for luck. If you don't need it, you can knit a scarf or a hat or both to go with your jacket, when you're finished. Or mittens. Or a matching dog coat for your critter.

Photos are being taken of the swatch-knitting process so everyone can experience the glory of my nit-picking gauge-measuring methods.


Otherwise, um, today sucked, and I'm drugged. Yup, I think that covers it all. Before anyone can e-mail and complain, here's a baby photo. She's really asleep.

Art is what you make of it.

In this case, carved crayons.

I don't know why I think they're so damn cool.

Steek-Along News!

Just a reminder, the Steek-Along will be starting in another couple weeks, so it's time to make a decision on that yarn and get fired up to knit your gauge swatch. If you use my method of gauge swatch knitting and measuring (which I will describe), I warn you now: it's nitpicking and fussy, but the odds are good that your sweater will fit when you're done.

For those just wandering in, beginning in January (mid-December to January 2 is gauge swatch knitting time), we are going to do a step-by-step knit-along to make one of these:

A seamless two-color jacket, steeked up the front to make a cardigan.

A summary of skills needed is available here. (I will be describing and doing tutorials on a lot of the methods, including grafted hems, steeking, and seamless sweater knitting.)

A discussion of yarn requirements is available here. Also included are close-up photos of the stitch pattern to help you figure out what colors you want to use. (I'm using denim blue and pink Lite Lopi from Reynolds, if that helps you any.)

Other suggested reading, if you want to get in the groove:
My article on the Percentage System, which is the basis for our pattern, though we'll be using a different shoulder-decrease method.

My discussion on alternative gauge calculating methods, which we will be using.

Eunny's discussion of steeking methods; I suggest using the crocheted steek, but whatever you use, pick a method and make sure you've got the equipment avialable to do it (like a sewing machine for sewn steeks).

And if you've got a copy of "Knitting Without Tears" by Elizabeth Zimmerman, read up on how she does the saddle-shoulder decrease sweater, because that's what we'll be doing.

Plus, measure your favorite cardigan and decide what size you want to knit your sweater.

The previous record holder.

Remember I said that before the planned Geometric Star Jacket, the most colors I'd used in a project was twelve? Well, here it is: (and oh, dear heavens, do not notice my double chin)

The Stary Night Ruana Thingie. I used twelve shades of Brown Sheep Nature Spun sport, on size four and five (3.5 and 3.75 mm) needles. It took me about five months of knitting, while working on nothing else. (At least, not that I remember.) This was before I'd had The Baby and could actually concentrate on things. Yes, there are three colors in some rows.


The pattern itself is taken straight from "Poems of Color" and is one of the Bohus designs, 'The Large Collar'. (In the book it's done in shades of beige, tan, and brown.) The colors I ripped off from 'Starry Night' by Vincent VanGogh. (I've got a print in my dining room and literally slapped a yarn color card on top of it and ordered the yarns.)

Construction method is seriously weird; I made it up myself and went for simplicity of knitting, not ease of finishing.

I cast on 300+ stitches at the wrist, and knit inward toward the center back, steeking what became the bottom of the jacket. I did two of those, then did a three-needle bindoff down the center of the back to join them together. Then I picked up some center stitches at the cast-on edge at the wrist and knit downward to make the cuffs. The rest of the cast-on stitches at the wrist were joined together in a three-needle bindoff. Then I cut the steeks and picked up stitches all the way up and around the front opening and across the bottom (860 stitches, if I remember correctly) and knit an edging. (Is this making sense?)

Bells, remember when I said it's possible to do seed stitch borders, it's just a pain in the butt? Well, this is the edge that taught me that lesson:


Though I dare say at 860 stitches, anything would have sucked. You can't beat seed stitch for color blending, though. (To make this work, I had literally four square feet of gauge swatches, and it STILL came out a little puckered.)

So, there you go. Proof of insanity.

The real reason the Geometric Star scares me is because it's intarsia. After this project, stranded color never worried me again. After the Geometric Star I'll probably feel the same way about intarsia.

Knitting, priorities, and baby cuteness.

I try to keep from turning this into a motherhood blog, but what with constant demands for baby photos, well, it's your own fault.

First, knitting.

I measured the current mohair scarf and it's 52in/114cm long (unblocked - it will grow), and I'm thinking that's long enough, and to hell with how much yarn is left. (Normally I knit to the end of the skein.) So one way or another, this scarf will be done this weekend, and I'll be down to two left. And I think I'm doing the easy one next.

I'm also still working on the Baby Surprise Jacket:

It's about halfway done, and I about halfway understand the construction. There's also a lot of crossing my fingers and just following directions going on. But it's a REALLY easy knit (I've been doing it while reading) and if it turns out the right size, I may make one for my nephew, take it to Ohio as-is, and let everyone puzzle over it for a while before sewing it together, like a party trick. (Yes. I am desperate for entertainment.)

Reality has also settled over me, in terms of the Geometric Star Jacket. Do not be alarmed, I do intend to knit it. But I want to finish the blue-and-black one-armed sweater first. And don't forget, we've got the Steek-Along coming up January 2. What will probably happen is, I'll start the Geometric Star sometime mid-January and that will be my alternate project while working on the Steeked Jacket with youse guys. (This will be my fourth steeked jacket. I can knit one pretty fast, now.)

So, priorities right now are the two scarves, the gauge swatch for the steeked jacket, and the blue and black sweater, with baby surprise jackets thrown in for relaxation. We're broke right now, which means lots of time at home, which means lots of knitting, so I have hope.

There is an unholy amount of yarn sitting around here. (Normally I'm one of those types who buys yarn with a purpose in mind and then knits it up. My 'stash' is 90% leftovers from old projects or odd balls bought for swatching.) I think we're at the lifetime high-water (high-wool?) mark for yarn in the house; three sweaters' worth and another one on the way. I've GOT to knit some of this up.



Anyway, baby cuteness. I know that's really why I have readers.

Last night The Baby was in my office playing and Sekhmet was on my office chair, and I was knitting. The Baby took one of her toys over to the chair and laid it next to the cat. I told The Baby that was very nice of her to share, but kitties play with cat toys, not baby toys. The Baby crawled out of the office and returned a moment later with a catnip mouse, and tucked it in beside the cat.

There is a scary level of smart going on around here.

She's also decided to talk and seems to be picking up a phrase every couple days now. "Bye-bye" with waving around Thursday, and "Hi Mumum" sometime this week. She's also actively looking for animals and calling them all 'kitty'. We went for a walk, she saw a squirrel, and spent the rest of the walk pointing to the side of the road and saying "kitty?", wanting to see another one.

Baby fix.

So you can all get through the weekend without any strange twitching problems.


This was last year's Halloween costume. She was two months old.

I did it.

I ordered the yarn for the Geometric Star Jacket from Elann. Twenty-two balls of yarn in twenty different colors.

My previous record for colors in a project is twelve.

I have lost my mind.

Botany rant.

There is no knitting content in this post. None. If you're looking for it, wait until later today.

This is about apples. With a side trip into potatos.

No, I'm not kidding. And yes, as a matter of fact, I am drugged. And have a migraine. Nyeah.



Oookay. Quick botany lesson so the rant makes sense: There are two ways for plants to reproduce. Sexually and cloning. (In a nutshell. I'm simplifying this so we aren't here all day.) Sexually means flowers, pollen, and seeds, plus a whole genetically new plant at the end of the process. Cloning means all kinds of things; planting bits of potatos for new potatos, splitting a big plant into smaller plants, growing roots on violet leaf cuttings, or for our purposes, grafting the branches of old apple trees onto new root/stems.

Now. With sexual reproduction, you get genetically new plants, and from that, ADAPTATION. Plants evolve with the bugs that eat them, they develop new defenses as the bugs develop resistance to their old defenses, etc. With cloning, nothing happens. You grow the same damn plant you've always grown, in some cases for a hundred-odd years, while the bugs and other pests evolve and develop a sweet tooth for your ancient plant. (If you watch Stargate, this is what happened to the Asgard. To put it all in a pop culture frame of refrence.)

This results in spraying massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic crap all over acres and acres and hectares of the world, when if we just let the damn things evolve, most of the problems would solve themselves.

Case in point: The Russet Burbank potato. It has been cloned, and cloned, and cloned again, every year, for every crop, and the bugs just ADORE them. It is to the point where it costs more to grow potatos than people will pay for them (leading to the government subsidization of potato growing, but that's a rant for another day). McDonald's and other fast food joints want Russet Burbanks because they're big and make long french-fries, so the world gets Russet Burbanks and to hell with the fact that vast tracts of Idaho are being turned into a sterilized wasteland.

This leads to my comment that if you want to save the environment, screw the snowy owls; quit eating french-fries.

Anyway. Where was I?

Right. Cloning crops and pesticide.

Another crop having major problems, like the potato, is the apple. The 'youngest' strain of apple commonly available these days is the Granny Smith, and it's about a hundred years old, if memory serves. (And it's originally from Australia. Go, Oz!) Apples are another crop that is extremely costly to grow, due to pesticide and herbicide (and fungicide, and bacteriocide and everythingcide) spraying.

So what do the idiot scientists do? Map the apple genome. Do they figure out ways to create new, more viable apple strains? Fuck no!

THEY FIND A WAY TO MAKE APPLES REDDER.

Fucking morons.