My world is…

…bathed in white these days.

Thankfully, there is knitting to be worn for the occasion.

Details
Pattern: Whitfield Shorty by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Cascade 220, colorway 9454 (purple heather)
Needles: US 2.5 (3.0 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)
Wearer: 7 y.o. son

My son calls it his Rainbow Sweater, owing to the multi-color effect of the heathered colorway.

Kozue at Midnight

I wanted to make a simple wrap, because despite my attraction to lace shawls, particularly the triangular variety, I find they don’t suit me or my current lifestyle. In my ordinary suburban life, I am not going to be wandering the moors, and if I were to, I’d want something more substantial than a shawl, but especially, I have two young children to keep up with, so I don’t have time for something that keeps slipping off my shoulders. I’m finding the rectangular style works best for me, as it can fit under my coat or, as is more often the case, it can be wrapped around my neck as a scarf.

Kozue fits the bill, and I had some Jagger Spun in Ebony leftover from something that never came to be back in 1997, and they seemed like a perfect match. However, I messed-up (a common theme throughout the whole project, I’m afraid) early on, and realized that I would not have enough of the black to make a decent-sized Kozue, and I just kept going on as I pondered the futility of knitting something laceweight in stockinette stitch that may very well end-up as a blanket for my 3-year old daughter’s stuffed animals. Just kept knitting Kozue, but all the while trying to decide what to do. Clearly, finding anymore of the same dye lot was an absurd concept given two limitations: a) I bought the yarn in 1997, and b) I didn’t have the dye lot info., anyway. I went to Weaving Works in Seattle and looked at all the colorways in stock, and settled on Claret, a beautiful rich deep, deep pink, and added it on at one end of the wrap. Then I picked-up and started knitting it onto the other end, and that’s when it hit me: I was knitting a 1980s version of Kozue (you can see a photo of it in the previous post). The music from Psycho filled my head, you know that kind of shrieking music used in that movie, mixed with all the greatest hits from the ’80s. I was mortified. I didn’t even bother ripping it out, I cut the Claret off. Returned to Weaving Works, and this time settled for Indigo, a very muted blue, and definitely not to be confused with the cobalt blue of the ’80s. I was relieved that Indigo did the trick and I like the way the wrap turned-out, even if it is not the way I’d originally intended.

I added a band of Indigo to end of the shawl, and then cut off some of the beginning, picked-up stitches, and added Indigo, followed by the remainder of the black. Then, to cover the fact that adding a contrasting color was due to a mistake, I cut into a spot off-center of the middle of the piece, added Indigo there, followed by a few thin rows of black, followed by more Indigo, and then grafted it to the other half of the piece. Yes, it was a lot of work, but I kept telling myself that it would all work out fine, and it did. In fact, I think it’s my new everyday, go-to wrap.

Details
Pattern: Kozue by Kirsten Johnstone
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18 (Cone) in Ebony and Indigo
Needles: US 5 (3.75mm)

An Excellent Adventure

What a crazy few weeks it’s been. Where to start?

When I last posted, it was almost the end of August and Alex and I and the kids were off to the ocean for our summer vacation. Fast forward a few days with a rushed drive home from the ocean culminating in an emergency appendectomy (husband), in which we drove all the way back from our ocean trip straight to an hospital ER door. Follow that up with a last-minute, unplanned change of schools for our 7-year old (more on that some other time). Next was my trip to Los Angeles for Vogue Knitting LIVE! 2011 (more on that later, also). After that, I was home for 4 days before my husband and I flew to San Jose for a tour of the Tesla factory. Sometimes it’s just easier starting with the most recent thing first, so I’ll focus on the San Jose trip today, as well as some knitting..

So, Alex and I left the fall gloom of Seattle and landed in San Jose on a hot, sunny day—the sun felt so good. On our way to the hotel we happened upon a Japanese neighborhood festival and grabbed lunch. We had a hearty meal at Gombei.

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I had broiled mackerel—amazingly moist and buttery—with a side of cool tofu with green onion and bonito flakes, and Alex had soba noodles on a bed of ice cubes, which we found pleasantly refreshing on a hot day.

Before we left the festival, I bought a beautiful pair of Big Sur blue jade earrings.

Later that day, we left for the Tesla factory.

What is Tesla? I can’t possibly get all the facts right, but it’s a car company founded by Elon Musk, and is on the verge of changing the way we think about electric cars. Gone are the images of little puttering electric cars that drive about as fast as a golf cart and have a range that takes you not much further than the confines of your city.

The sedan Tesla, Model S, will seat 7 people, will be completely electric, have enough charge to go up to 300 miles, and will be able to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 5.6 seconds. The current Tesla car, the Roadster, is a two-seat model, has a range of 245 miles, and accelerates 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.

Elon Musk, addressing the crowd.

It was quite an event, and we were there with a couple thousand future Model S owners for the tour and a ride in the Model S. The final version of the Model S has not been made yet and will not be available until 12 months from now, so we rode in a beta model. The test ride was fast, and demonstrated it maneuverability, low center of gravity (due to the lithium batteries on the bottom of the chassis), and responsive acceleration by taking it up to 70 in a short closed track. It was fun.

Knitting. I been using-up my stash of Zephyr 2/18 in black, making Kozue, and I thought I’d have enough for it, but I don’t. Having bought the yarn about 10 years ago, I couldn’t possibly match dye lots, so I bought some in a different shade, Claret. I decided that it would be best to add bands of Claret in various placed throughout the shawl. I’ve put a sizable band near the end of it, and now I’ll add a thinner band to the beginning by cutting into the earlier rows and picking-up stitches. Why do I always have to do things the hard way?

I’m trying to roll with the fact that final Kozue isn’t going to look the way I’d hoped it would, and find that inner easy-going me that never was, and love the new look.

In The Black

Just to prove I am knitting, here’s photo of my newest work-in-progress, Kozue by Kristen Johnstone.

It’s a super easy pattern and, other than a few rows of stitch pattern, it’s all stockinette. Nothing wrong with that, especially since it seems to fit my lifestyle these days. I would like to do something more challenging, but I just don’t have the time nor the concentration these days. Embrace the stockinette stitch, it is your friend, busy mom of two little people in the dog days of summer. Busy Mom. Busy, busy, busy.

Things I’ve been up to….
July was about summer camps for my son, though it’s up for debate whether he appreciated them and, truth be told, driving him hither and yon everyday just about did me in (thankfully, little sister had only one camp this summer). Upon remarking on just how busy we were, someone told me that this was just the way it’s going to be from here on. I maintain that not in my world will my children be so hyper-scheduled again, not if I can help it. Though I had a prescient moment back in June during the last week before the end of the school year indicating that I was in for a busy summer when I overheard another mom at a school event gripe that in a week her ability to accomplish anything would end until September. Wow. She was not kidding.

Pennsylvania sister-in-law and her daughter was in town for the first half of summer.

Cousin from France and her husband stopped by for a first visit. I’ve found that having small children in the family are a great lure for distant, long lost family members.

We made a family trip to see Thomas the Tank Engine at the train museum in Snoqualmie. The kids had a great time, of course, but my son enjoyed it more than he did three in 2008, and this was partly because with his sister along he had someone to enjoy it with. As a matter of fact, our 2008 trip was not very memorable, and thankfully this one was.

There were birthday parties, mine and my daughter’s (3!). Here are some pics from my birthday dinner at Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

This was some sort of heirloom tomato salad with some basil puree underneath it. Heaven.

This was a scallop with beets, and it too, was delicious.

Birthday gift from my man: an external keyboard for my iPad 2. Love. It. Flip the iPad over and the keyboard becomes a hard protective case. Love. It. Love my man for thinking of this for me.

Friend from California (NoCal, to be specific) came to town, and with her visit I realized how much I wished she and her family would move back here, but there’s no chance of that, they’re smitten with NoCal. She and her hubby are old friends of Alex’s from high school, and of all his friends, I enjoy them the most.

And if I didn’t need more to do, I volunteered to head our somewhat embattled neighborhood landscape committee; people are really passionate about our community gardens around here. Of course, for some reason I’ve taken the job so seriously that I’m actually doing some of the labor myself, including transplanting shrubs, pruning plants in-between visits by our landscape service and personally shoveling a 150 cubic foot pile of wood chips left to sit and moulder for the past 12 months. Call me crazy.

Not that it’s been all bad, because with August I’ve really enjoyed not rushing out the door every morning now that camps are done, and taking the kids to some fun stuff has been a blast. Although I could do without another trip to the zoo for the rest of my life. It’s a great zoo, don’t get me wrong, but a zoo is no place for elephants, giraffes, hippos, lions, tigers and bears, and I really saw how unhappy these big animals are, even in a modern, “humane” zoo. The trips to the parks and play areas have been fun and it’s been fun watching the kids really develop a relationship and enjoy one another’s company. Soon we leave for a few short days at the ocean, and we’re looking forward to it. It’s our only vacation this year, since although our kids loved our spring trip to Kauai in 2010, our daughter proved to us that we should’ve waited longer before traveling in a plane, because she pretty much screamed in terror much of the flight to and from. But we have our sights set on 2012, just you wait.

Still, not much time for knitting or blogging, but this will change, I think, when my son goes into first grade this fall and my daughter starts preschool. And with September comes my very first knitting convention. Yes, I will be going to Vogue Knitting LIVE this September, so this should be interesting. I’ve already warned Alex, knitters don’t leave these events empty-handed; he beginning to have nightmares about how he and the kids will have to move out if I bring more yarn home…

Final pic: One of our resident frogs hanging-out on the front porch window box.

Time flies…

Tomorrow’s my birthday, and I have accepted that I can no longer fool myself into thinking I’m still 25.  It just took me a good portion of my life to come to that realization.  Tonight I got a call from an old friend in Minnesota to wish me an happy birthday, and neither of us could believe how time has flown.

Speaking of “flown”, time has really flown since my last post and it seemed like it was time…

I finished Saroyan (which I never posted about previously). Fun shawl and I love the way it just flew along, but then how can it not go fast when using worsted-weight yarn on US 10 needles? I used Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage, which was leftover from my stupid attempt to use it for Jacob’s Delight, but which turned-out to be too lightweight for the project. I have a lot of yarn to use from that mistake.

Details
Pattern: Saroyan by Liz Abinante
Yarn: Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage (100% machine-washable merino) in Tern
Needles: US 10/6.0 mm

Modifications: I made an additional repeat of the pattern stitch on each end, adding an additional 6″ to the overall length while making it few inches wider at the same time.

Maybe it’s a sign of getting older, but I’m starting to do some stuff I would never have done in my youth.  Like use the word “youth” in reference to my younger years… Then there was the day I recently drove past my childhood home, ogling it, and took-up the current owners’ on-the-spot offer for me to come in and see how they’d renovated it.   It is fantastic what they did to that fabulous 1919 craftsmen style home.  The first thing I said when I walked in the front door was, “Wow!  You got rid of that awful ’70s shag rug my mom and step-dad put down in 1971!”  And there was, “Oh!  You took down those stupid white-washed floor-to-ceiling boards we’d put over the mantle to ‘modernize’ the living-room! Thank you!”  You cannot imagine what my parents were thinking back then in 1971 when they destroyed some of the good bones of that house and “updated” it; I couldn’t.  I was 11 and I kept asking them, “But why are you hiding the mantle?  I like it.  Why are you knocking-out that wall?  But, why are you taking out the French doors?!”

In front of the house in 1978. Chocolate Easter pig in hand.

These people, who bought the house from my mother years later, thankfully restored most everything we’d done and took it to the glory of its era.  The only thing we did right, was the exterior paint scheme (New England barn red with deep forest green trim), which my mom chose, and which remains on the house today.

Today, sans chocolate pig.

I thanked them for the tour and for not tearing down the house and for not changing the original structure in any way that would detract from it’s design.  It is beautiful.  You should have been there.

On a foodie note,  I went into Bellevue Uwajimaya shopping for the ingredients for my family’s Sunday night favorite, Hot-pot with Chinese Barbeque Sauce and was shocked to find someone actually making fresh takoyaki.  I decided that such a rare find around here was worth going-off my gluten-free diet, so I took my order home and didn’t share it with anyone.  Not a soul. It was delicious.

Before I left with my takoyaki order, I grilled the guy making it, who told me he is going to different locations in the area to introduce people to takoyaki and, hopefully, open a takoyaki place someday.  I made my argument for takoyaki in Seattle, telling him that with the popularity of sushi in the Seattle area, people are ready for takoyaki and okonomiyaki and that the time had come to make them available.   If you are interested in finding out about where Shin and his team will making takoyaki next, please visit Tako Kyuuban for more information.

Hear that cracking sound?

That was the sound of my Western Washington amphibian-like skin cracking in the heat of the southern California sun over the weekend. Ahh, that felt nice….

I’m back home today, but I was in LA for an extended weekend for a cousin’s wedding. I felt sorry for the souls I’d left behind back home, drowning in the cool, wet, soggy weather of the Pacific Northwest. Not really.

The newlyweds had a photo booth at the reception for guests to use as a memory book of their big day. Great idea.

My mom was my traveling companion.

We met-up with Fluffbuff Francesca at Le Pain Quotidien in Manhattan Beach, and Ben was there too. I got to drool over Francesca’s latest swatch, done on really tiny needles. I wonder what my mother thinks of my curious life as a knit-blogger?

Of course, while there, I loaded-up on Le Pain’s answer to Nutella to take home.

I did almost no knitting the entire trip, save for the continuing, long, drawn-out process of binding-off Bird’s Eye of domesticshorthair lore (I started it 4 years ago), and that was only worked on in flight, coming and going. If it weren’t for my visit with Francesca, I could have said that I did nothing knitting-related; I didn’t visit a yarn store, I didn’t fondle a random skein of yarn, and I didn’t even buy a Japanese knitting book at Sanseido Books during a stop at Mitsuwa in Torrance. However, I did finish Wandering The Moor before I left home.

(sorry for the bad, away-from-home photo)

I like it, and I love the un-scalloped edge for being different. When I finished it, I thought I’d messed-up because it was so small, it looked like something for my 6-year old, but once I blocked it, it opened-up and became adult-size.

Details
Pattern: Wandering the Moor Shawl by Celeste Glassel
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine (just over a skein)
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm

Today I actually had really really good answer for a change when a cashier at the market asked me if I did anything fun over the weekend.

Movie Review: Old Goats

It was with some degree of reluctance that my mother coaxed me into leaving my comfortable home on a cool, rainy June-uary weeknight to watch the Seattle International Film Festival premiere of Old Goats last night, but it was hard to pass-up the offer since one of her friends was in it, and in the end I was glad I went.

Filmed locally on Bainbridge Island by Taylor Guterson, Old Goats is an entertaining flick about three men in semi-fictitious roles about their lives as senior citizens in a small town. The three men are depicted in different stages of their senior lives, Dave (played by David Vander Wal) is fresh into his retirement, Britt (played by Britton Crosley) has been retired longer, and Bob (played by Bob Burkholder, author of Skirting the Edge) has been living his retired life for so long he’s become a pro at making a new life for himself. The movie is quite entertaining for the most part and filled with many humorous moments, as well as a few that cause reflection. If all else fails, you find yourself watching because you’re just certain that at least one of the actors is going to die at any moment. Despite lacking the polish a bigger film, Old Goats is good entertainment, which is actually quite a feat because it was filmed with people lacking any training in acting, and Guterson pulls it together through good camera angles, direction and editing, but don’t even let his hand on the work fool you, these people actually do quite well on their own.  Admittedly it could stand with a little tightening-up of the first 30 minutes or so because there was a little too much build-up, and some of the humor about senior life seemed a little over-the-top, reminding me of the TV show Golden Girls, a production that often spent too much time making fun of senior living.  Aside from it’s rough edges, Old Goats is a must-see, for it’s not often you get to see an entertaining movie produced a shoestring budget that Guterson approximates at about $5,000 (minus the equipment he already owned).  Old Goats is a gem awaiting the discovery of the adventurous movie-goer.

Latest Activity

Knitting:  Wandering the Moor shawl

Yarn:  Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine. Had to unwind the pull-skein I’d made of it and ball it up because it kept getting tangled.

eBay Purchase: I think I got a bigger kick knowing that it came from a small town practically at the northernmost tip of Scotland.

Movie:  Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides (3-D).  I actually liked this more than #2 and #3 Pirates movies. My knitting companion was Wandering the Moor. Why is it I always take dark knitting projects to work on in a movie theater?

Internet Find:  London Fruit & Herb Company Green Tea & Blackcurrant.  Love this stuff!  I first bought this tea in Canada and had been meting it out carefully over 4 years until I found it available at Mark T. Wendell Tea Company.

Eating:  Gluten-free pão de queijo (pronounced something like “pow d’ kayju”) from the local Brazilian espresso/soccer-viewing joint.  I’ve been gluten-free for about 3 months now and this cheesy tapioca bread has become my guilty pleasure, and it’s “guilty” because I’m also allergic to dairy, but no where near as much as I am to wheat. Recently discovered I’m also allergic to potatoes, corn and chocolate, but I ignore those allergies for obvious reasons.  I’ll get around to trying to bake my own once I get over my funk.

Happiness: My new bright red Fermob (I think it’s pronounced sort of like, “fayr-moe”) French bistro table and chairs; even on a dark rainy day they bring me joy.

Favorite Sight: Mount Rainier from Interstate 90 floating bridge in Seattle (I wasn’t driving).

Smelling: Lilacs at the kitchen window.

Planning: A quick trip to Los Angeles for a cousin’s June wedding.

Juicy Red Melon

Despite my frequent bouts with blogger’s-block I’ve been hard at work finishing projects that have been hanging-on longer than they should.  In fact, I’ve been quite the monogamous knitter of late and it’s paying-off.  I present Red Melon using Melon Pattern from Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby.

Corners got a bit wonky because I had a hard time getting around the bend.

I started Red Melon at the end of March 2010, and I think I just mentally assigned to the same category as other big shawl projects, most notably Bird’s Eye Shawl (too boring and too big) and Grand Duchess (too complicated and too big), both of which remain in Hibernation Hell. By which that translated in my mind that this will get done—never, but with Jacob’s Delight done I felt like revisiting some things that have been lurking in dark corners of the house looking at me with big doleful eyes. You know, sometimes you just need a confidence-building project, and Jacob’s Delight was that.

Melon Pattern is really very enjoyable, especially for a lace project, and despite the repetition of the same two stitch patterns for so long, the rows were short enough, the stitch patterns are easy enough to memorize, and the progress fast enough that it made for a pretty good knit, when I actually gave it a chance.  The yarn is a dream—so soft.

Details
Pattern: Melon Pattern for a Shawl or Scarf from Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby
Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca Wool Fingering (four skeins)
Needles: US 6 (4.0 mm)
Finished Dimensions: 21” (53 cm) x 82” (2.1 m)

Many of the pictures in this post would not have been possible if it weren’t for my new photographic assistant, Joby Gorillapod Magnetic Flexible Tripod. What a wondrous thing!

Fair Isle workshop follow-up

Well, it’s been a month since I last posted. What can I say? Except that my blogging is at an all-time low. I’ve just lost the zeal for blathering on about stuff as often as I have in the past, and I guess the writer in me is all worn out. This sounds like a break-up: “It’s not you, it me.” I’m not hanging it up yet, but blogging is definitely taking a backseat these days as my knitting time continues to get further reduced and as I work with the doctor to figure out what’s up with my health issues, and of course, there are my sweet kids and their needs. Because my knitting opportunities have been cut back I have to ask myself everyday, With the time available, would I rather blog or knit? Hands down: it’s knitting. I will still blog, but it’s looking pretty spotty these days.

Hard to believe it’s been a month since I took the 2-day workshop taught by Janine Bajus, a.k.a. Feral Knitter on Bainbridge Island and I thought I’d report on my doings there, but first, some iPhone pictures around Bainbridge.

The torrential rains I’d experienced the day before gave way to a dry, mild weekend, and even some blue skies.

When I was a kid Bainbridge was a sweet little island that didn’t have a whole lot going on.  These days the old island charm has been replaced with nice restaurants, lots of big designer houses, and the old stores one might expect to find in a small community, such as the appliance store, the mercantile, and the hardware store are long gone.  In the town of Winslow (more or less “downtown” Bainbridge) the houses are tightly squeezed together for every inch of real estate and shoreline available.  So many people have moved here from other places.   Speaking of people from other places, during my visit to Bainbridge, I discovered during a trip to the market that the worst boss I’ve ever worked for now lives on the island it seems—creepy, and it makes the place suddenly less appealing to me.

Some recent additions to the marina I noticed were these curious rock sculptures, and there were a lot of them.  Not my taste and it kind of ruins the view, in my opinion.

I guess this is T-Rex giving chase.

Looking at the sculptures I realized that people have a habit of putting everything along a shoreline in just about many of the places I can think of, and I don’t know why we can’t just leave the shoreline alone.  If we’re not putting a building right on the shore, then there has to be sculpture, because heaven forbid we have nature to look at.  Of course, in this instance, nature is all but gone anyway with the marina there, but personally, I’d rather look at the boats in a marina than someone’s artwork cluttering my view.

About the workshop:  it was wonderful and I’m really happy I went. It was such a great class, I don’t think I can even give it justice here, but I’ll give it a shot.

What I had planned to be a simple workshop on Fair Isle knitting turned-out to be a therapeutic course in self-discovery about my creativity…along with a lot of wonderful guidance into the world of colorwork creation. Janine brought her bin of over 200 different colorways of Jameson Spindrift (fingering/jumper weight) for us to play with as we learned about working with colors and creating the eye-pleasing stranded colorwork that is Fair Isle. With so many colors to choose from I found it really hard to narrow down my choices and realized that when I’m given such artistic freedom, I get lost and have difficulty getting out of the starting gate.

I so loved this bin of yarn! So much fun to be had.

Janine asked us all to bring a photo as a source of inspiration and mine was a photo I took of cherry blossoms against the backdrop of the cherry tree trunk.

With that in mind, we selected yarns that represented the overall feel of the photo and made speed swatches. Here are mine.

Colors I selected.

Speed swatch.

From there we selected a Fair Isle motif from one of two of Janine’s patterns to use to put the colors in a pattern stitch swatch.  I’d show you mine, but it’s somewhere around here and I don’t know where, but if I find it, I’ll let you know.

It was a fun opportunity to just play with color, and I made many visits to the yarn bin when I decided a certain color just wasn’t working for the swatch.  What a great opportunity that was!

Will I do any stranded colorwork design? Maybe, if I can find the time. Do I feel more comfortable about using swatches? Yes, and I’ve never liked swatching before, but I now have a greater appreciation of it now that I’ve experienced firsthand how the creative process depends on it. What was the key thing I learned from the class? That I have an highly critical inner voice that hinders my creativity.

Finally, and totally unrelated, while watching scenes from Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding a few days ago, I was struck by how amazing this scene was.

I snapped it on my iPad while watching via Slingbox.  I don’t ever remember The Mall looking that spectacular for the few occasions I’ve watched on TV.  I’m not sure if it’s any different from Charles & Diana’s wedding day, but it seems to me as if the flags are bigger.  Having said that, looking online I see that those flags are always there, but somehow it just seemed so special this particular day, I had to capture the scene.  I love the contrasts of spring green against the black of the uniforms, with the splash of blue, white and red, and soft mauve of the pavement.  I wonder how this scene would swatch?