I have a new nephew! He was born in the wee small hours of this morning, and mother and baby are both doing very well. My brother, of course, is a walking grin! No name yet, and I’m still waiting to see pictures, but I am led to believe he is absolutely beautiful (what baby isn’t?), and has big hands and feet and a full head of curly dark hair.
Expect to see a Baby Surprise Jacket in the works in the very near future.
I realise that there has been little actual knitting content in this so-called knitting blog lately, and while the comments on the baking have all been positive, I still feel a little guilty because after all, knitting is the thing that brought us all together, isn’t it?
This being the case, I have extracted promises from those involved not to look at the blog until after the weekend, and besides, the person most likely to peek (my Dad), will be busy with a new grandson within the very near future (by which I mean hours – I’m expecting a phone call to tell me I’m an Aunty again before the end of the day! Yay! BSJ, here I come!), and therefore completely uninterested in socks for the next several days. Which is lucky, because his Father’s Day socks haven’t even seen the needles yet. I do actually have a little leeway here – my parents are coming to visit us in a week or two, after they’re done hogging the baby, so I’ll be giving Dad his socks then (assuming I’ve actually knit the buggers).
However, I do have some knitting to show you:
First, these are my Father-in-law’s socks, blocking on a towel because I don’t have a sock-blocker big enough.
The Vital Statistics:
Pattern: Generic toe-up garter-rib socks.
Yarn: Cleckheaton Country Naturals 8ply in Colours 1812 (navy) and 1832 (brick red).
Needles: 3.25mm DPN’s
Notes: I actually worked these with an afterthought heel and toe. What’s an afterthought toe? I used a provisional cast-on, and then came back and worked a standard decrease toe. Thus, if the toes or heels wear out, I can just knit new ones.
Second, this is two-thirds of the first of my Mother-in-law’s replacement socks (you might recall her first pair were lost in the mail back in May). There is exactly zero chance of them being finished by tomorrow, when my husband is driving up to the Central Coast for work. He will be staying overnight with his Mum and Dad, and delivering FIL’s socks (I am strangely reluctant to trust these socks to the tender mercies of Australia Post again). These socks are doing me in: endless plain vanilla stocking stitch. I wouldn’t mind if there was some decent TV to watch, but it’s a total wasteland lately.
Here’s a scary little insight into my psyche: I was hoping to get four pairs finished before Sunday. This would mean I might need to actually knit on them to meet the deadline, right? What have I spent the majority of the last two weeks doing? Dicking about on the internet Researching patterns and planning future projects. Reading blogs. Emailing friends. Checking my progress up the Ravelry list (If I had received my invite, I might actually have an excuse, but I haven’t. And I don’t) (by the way, I am #2304 on the list as of 12.00pm AEST today) . Baking cakes. Baking bread. Baking more bread. I love knitting, but lately I cannot stick to it.
And what am I doing right now? Blogging when I should be knitting. Sigh. I’m going now.
I have a new friend.
This is my new bread machine (for those of you who may be thinking “Hey, isn’t this supposed to be a knitting blog?” I have included the sock I cast on this morning, and some daffodils – happy Daffodil Day). His name is Mr Big. I don’t generally name my benchtop appliances, but this guy makes a 1.5kg loaf of bread, people. I think he deserves a name of his own.
Ever since the lamentable loss of my dear old bread machine a couple of weeks ago, I have been enduring an extended period of mourning (read: going over the budget trying to figure out how to scrape together the $250.00 to pay for the big bread machine I wanted, when I was now paying for bread on a daily basis). Then yesterday, my lovely husband picked up Mr Big at a garage sale for $10.00! Yay! He makes a really nice loaf, and the manual is full of scrumptious recipes, and I get to have my house smell like fresh bread again.
I am a happy woman.
P.S. Mr Big is busy making a loaf of Sourdough as I type this. I’ll post pics later today when he’s done.
Added later: Here’s the pic of finished sourdough. As I have always found with this particular premix (Laucke Barossa Sourdough), it rose up too high for the bread machine, so I took it out and finished it off in the oven. Thus, we have a free-form loaf of what Sasquatch likes to call “Blob bread”. No matter the shape, it is damn good bread, and I recommend it highly.
Sasquatch helped me bake a cake yesterday.
He took care of Quality Control.
And this is the finished product:
Cream Cheese Strawberry Cake. As you can see, the vultures were circling, and three pieces went missing before I could take a beauty shot. It was damn good.
Now, I realise there has not been much knitting content lately, but the reason is this:
This bag of wool (plus two more balls of navy, already on the needles) has to be turned into four pairs of socks before Father’s Day, and I can’t really show you progress as the recipients, while not knitters, occasionally stop by the blog.
Bear with me, there will be plenty of pics to show after the socks are gifted. Now, if you will excuse me, Father’s Day is only twelve days away. I have knitting to do.
At least I’ve read it. It would be kind of embarrassing if I turned out to be a book I’d never even heard of.
You’re The Mists of Avalon!
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
You’re obsessed with Camelot in all its forms, from Arthurian legend to the Kennedy administration. Your favorite movie from childhood was “The Sword in the Stone”. But more than tales of wizardry and Cuban missiles, you’ve focused on women. You know that they truly hold all the power. You always wished you could meet Jackie Kennedy.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Actually, it’s pretty spot on. Except for the Jackie Kennedy bit.
It is with great sorrow that I must report the sad demise of my very favourite kitchen appliance. My beautiful bread maker gave up the ghost today, and I am bereft.
I loved my bread maker. It meant I could wake up to the smell of fresh bread every morning with very little effort on my part. It also made fresh pizza dough and any number of other baked goodies very easy indeed.
Unfortunately, this morning’s bread was a gluey mess of unmixed ingredients, and testing revealed that the motor has well and truly carked it. All it can manage is a sad little whirring noise. So we are buying bread again until further notice.
Sniffle.
During the whole Sockapalooza experience, my lovely friend Mandie volunteered to take Murphy off my hands, so that I could finish the Reptilian Lace socks sans drama. Last night, she emailed me that I could have him back, which went a long way towards explaining the following.
After the Opal socks misbehaving so badly, I put them in the Naughty Chair, and picked up a skein of cashmerino from The Knitting Ninja, in ‘Camo’. It’s kind of a blokey colourway (that doesn’t bother me: I’m not a particularly girly girl), so I thought I’d knit a pair of Charades, make some nice butch boot socks.
I did have a few qualms about casting on for myself, since I still haven’t got the second pair of MIL socks underway, and Father’s day is rapidly approaching, but I looked at the Camo yarn and thought “Screw that, I’m not wasting Cashmerino on Man-feet!” (you can justify almost anything if you try hard enough).
I knit a swatch (which is totally out of character, but I’ve had several frogging incidents lately, and wanted to avoid mishaps), did the maths, and cast on for a toe-up version.
I got a decent way along, enjoying how the yarn was pooling in a spiral, and getting a real kick out of the herringbone rib, and thought I’d try them on to see how they fit.
Too big. As in, Sloppy Too Big (swatches are filthy little liars).
So I frogged, fully intending to start over in the same pattern with fewer stitches. Then I had another attack of the Guilts, thinking Father’s day really is very soon, and this colourway would be just right for my Father-in-law, but managed to salve my conscience with the thought that he has very big feet, and this yarn is only a 4ply, and Morgan does a 5ply superwash merino sock yarn, which would be much kinder to my Mother-in-law, as she’s the one who’d have to wash them, and I could knit them up quicker on 3.25mm needles….
And while all of this is rattling around in my head, somehow I inadvertently cast on for….
Monkeys (that peer-pressure is powerful stuff!). As you can see in the above pic, they are off the needles. Guess why? Too small! Rrrrrrrrriiiiippppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!
At first I thought it was the Knitting Gods telling me that casting on for myself after getting such scrumptious Sockapalooza socks is just greedy (which it is), but then I got that email from Mandie, and it all came clear.
Murphy is back. Although he’s obviously a bit tired, because after the week he’s given Mandie, this is nothing.
Sockapalooza socks are arriving every where! My downline pal got hers a couple of days ago, so I can now reveal that I was knitting for Elizabeth at Gee,You Knit! Go check out her blog and see what they look like on. I’ll wait.
My socks arrived this morning! I may have used my teeth on the box while my husband was looking for a pair of scissors to cut the packing tape, ( I can’t quite remember – it’s all a bit of a blur). My sockpal is the lovely Becky AKA Knitasha von Stashenskeins (one of the best blog names ever!), and look what she sent:
That would be a little bottle of vanilla body lotion, a fridge magnet shopping list pad, and two skeins of Knitpicks Simple Stripes sock yarn in a gorgeous faux-isle print of orange, green and purple (I can’t wait to see how it knits up), and in the noodle box (drum roll puh-leeze)…..
There are no words. Just bask in the glory that is violet Bayerisch. I took this pic at the park this afternoon, and Mother Nature obviously loves them too, because the sun came out for the first time in a week.
I hereby declare Sockapalooza to be the best fun I have ever had from knitting, and I am very glad I signed up. I have met so many cool imaginary friends, I’ve found a ton of brilliant patterns, and I’ve been braver about knitting than ever before in my life. I am totally on board for next year.
I just wanted to share this with you.
This is a Chocolate Cheesecake Brownie. That’s right. It’s chocolate and it’s cheesecake! What genius came up with this concept, I hear you ask? Donna Hay, of course. It’s from her book, Modern Classics 2, and the best part is, it’s one of the quickest, easiest recipes I’ve ever baked. Six ingredients, no hassles.
Mr Coffee’s school is having a cake stall at our local Community Markets tomorrow, so I made a batch for the stall, and because there would be an armed uprising in my house if I didn’t, a second batch for us. They are unlikely to last the day.
So I’ve been knitting away at the Lorikeet-in-a-Blender Sock, and it has not been progressing without its share of hiccups. I am trying out a reverse gusset heel for the first time (Cookie’s, because she had the right stitch count for the Anastasia pattern I’m working), and the first time I finished working it, I put it on to see how it had worked, and it was too short. As in, couldn’t get it over my heel. So I checked gauge, and it turns out that my row gauge (which I don’t usually check for socks, because you try it on and work a few extra rows if necessary) is FOUR rows per inch shorter than called for in Cookies pattern. So when she said to start the gusset increases when “work measures 3.5[3.5, 4] inches less than length of foot“, I was nearly an inch out of whack. So I ripped back, worked an extra inch (and a bit extra for luck), and redid the heel.
I should say right here, I really like the reverse gusset heel. For me it is the perfect solution to a problem. I like toe-up socks. They just make sense; you can try them on as you go, and you never have to worry about running out of yarn. I also really like a gusset heel. I love the way it hugs the foot, and I get to do the very groovy slip-stitch heel flap. But I hate picking up stitches for the gusset, and that little ridge that you get where you picked up the stitches, I find it irritating. Therefore, the reverse gusset heel really is the answer. And I like working it. Does that make me odd? Am I the only one who gets a real kick out of the magic of short row shaping?
Long story short, it took me three goes to get the heel right, but I finally got there, and I launched into the leg. That’s when I noticed something that had escaped me before, probably because I had been so focused on the heel.
I’m not actually that fussed on how this colourway works with the Anastasia pattern.
I like the colours, but it turns out that the plain stocking stitch panels between the yarn-over spirals just aren’t doing it for me. But the slip-stitch heel, now that I like. Which is making me think about slip-stitch patterns like Crusoe, or Rock and Weave. Or maybe even something in a mosaic….
So the end of the story?
Frogged.
Note: Once again, I am forced to apologise for crappy photography. Apparently my somewhat elderly camera doesn’t like high-contrast or bright coloured yarns.
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