Sorry, no pictures today, just a quick note instead.

I finished one front panel for Cabled Coat this past weekend.

I also finished one front side of Rib Knitted Shrug. Riding in the car. On the way to a family dinner. Sitting on the side of I-90 because the Toyota Prius ran out of gas. Just short of the exit ramp. Why? Oh, because my husband was certain we had 10 more miles left on the residual fuel in the tank after the low fuel warning alarm sounded. Actually, he says there is about 50 miles available for a Prius when the alarm chimes, but he forgot that there were four of us in the car (we gave my mother a ride) so that we went through the residual faster and the alarm had sounded about 20 miles earlier. Normally, I’m the secondary alarm and this was the one time when I didn’t say, “Um, honey, do you think we should stop for gas?” Luckily we didn’t sit there long before my sister-in-law came to the rescue with gas, and since our son was taking a much needed nap in the back, I was able to finish that part of the shrug.

After two weeks spent carefully frogging Grand Duchess (a.k.a., Orenburg Shawl), I’ve resumed knitting.

“Bloggers are just friends we haven’t met.” - Luke Burbank, Too Beautiful To Live

My mother came back from her 8-week trip to Turkey and brought with her all sorts of fun stuff.

Having recently, um, misplaced one of the earrings she bought on her previous trip to Turkey, I asked if she could find me another pair, and although she didn’t find the same ones, she did find a pair of nicely crafted gold hoops.

You’d think that living in the land that gave birth to Starbucks, I’d have at least one Starbucks mug in my cabinet (not counting the Seoul and Korea insulated cups we have), but up till now I didn’t, so my mother gave me a Starbucks Bursa mug.

Then there’s the really nice cookbook, Contemporary Turkish Cuisine:

This is a wonderful book with tons of high-quality photos and tempting recipes, all of them in English and Turkish.

I’ve come to the conclusion that among the best gifts to bring back from another country is food. I love to savor tastes from other places.

From Haci Bekir the absolute best, the softest, the freshest walnut lokum I’ve ever had:

She also gave me the best baklava I’ve ever had; not too sweet, not goopy, but with lots of pistachios from Baklavaci Bayramoglu
:

Lastly, a pretty pendant from one of her good friends in Istanbul:

I know, it’s been a long time since you’ve heard about Rib Knitted Shell, hasn’t it? Now that I’ve finished my on-the-go project, Okay-Shokay Scarf, I needed another one, and it just seemed to make sense to dig up the unfinished shrug from the bottom of the knitting bag and see what I could to do with it.

I’d messed-up on what I’d done so far on the right front, so I ended-up frogging down to the sleeve. I corrected my silly mistake, and set about knitting, and - whoa - What’s that? Yeesh, that looks bad (hint: there are not yarnovers in this pattern):

I guess this yarn doesn’t take kindly to frogging and re-knitting, but hopefully the stitches will straighten-out once it’s washed. Scary, though.

During the better part of the past week, the time normally dedicated to knitting Grand Duchess has been spent frogging Grand Duchess, because somewhere I went wrong on the yarnovers and it set the whole pattern on a snowball of errors, so I frogged 25 rows. It was painful to do. There was hair-pulling involved, both mine and the mohair. Here’s a picture before I frogged it:

I don’t have an after picture, but I took out about half of the above work.

With so many mistakes happening, either I am too distracted to knit, or I need more cappuccino.

Thank goodness for my new automatic espresso machine: the chance of operator error is minimal (some of you may recall the morning I poured milk into the water tank of my old manual machine).

And in keeping with things to drink, I got this great mug for my husband for Father’s Day:

(The picture isn’t mine, but is from the merchant I bought the mug from, Charles & Marie.)

It was just the right thing for him because he loves to have a cookie or two with his milk or coffee. Oh, and I got one for me too, since I knew he wouldn’t want to drink alone, only mine is left-handed.

Update: the way the mug works, is that the cookies stay in the pocket when as you drink from it, so in the instance of the above photo, that would be a right-handed mug and the cookies will stay in the mug ready for snacking as needed. I have to credit for Mariko at Super Eggplant for bringing this great find to light, so if you must blame someone for your being tempted to buy one of these mugs, I’ll share the credit with her.

I hear a lot of people around here gripe about our spring weather this year, but it seems to me that it’s not that unusual. Not for the Pacific Northwest, a place synonymous with rain. I don’t know, but I think what’s really going on is that we have been spoiled by more recent years where temps have stayed well into the 70s and it was sunny in the spring, as opposed to 50s and rainy. I like the sun as much as anyone, but the weather seems pretty close to what I’ve experienced for as long as I can remember. It is cold, yes, it’s true, so don’t be so quick to put your cashmere sweaters away, and turn that furnace back on, it is only June-uary, after all.

And if it isn’t cold enough outside, I’ve found a place to put my wool sweaters to good use inside: I’ve been hitting the ice, literally. I’ve started donning my ice skates and returned to some form of figure skating. I say “some form”, because it’s been about 14 years since I stopped skating regularly, so what I used to do effortlessly is something akin to kamikaze flying now. It’s just insane, I tell you. With a rink so close by, my skates were calling to me from the skate bag in the back of the closet. If anything, it’s good to give myself a scare as I fly around the rink avoiding innocent bystanders.

Speaking of sweaters, Cabled Coat is slowly coming along, and I would love to wear it right now, but it’s just not happening. Yet. I wish I could explain what it is that makes it so hard for me to get this sweater done, but it’s hard to pin down, and when I work on it, it’s 9:30 at night and I’m too tired, to frazzled to carefully document what I think could be done to make the pattern work better for me. There’s just a lot of frogging going on, and this is not my first cabled sweater

Upcoming topic: Rib-Knitted Shrug returns.

Well that was satisfyingly quick and easy! In all I probably spent about 4-6 hours of time knitting my version of Ribbed Mini-Scarf (Raverly link or designer’s blog link), but life and other projects took much of my time, so it took a whole month to make.

It’s a good pattern and I recommend it if you are seeking a super-quick knit for a gift for someone.

The only thing I did differently was that I made the hole through which the end of the scarf should be strung through for wearing smaller, and made it more of a buttonhole for the really cool button I bought at Nancy’s Sewing Basket in Seattle. If you go to one of the links above for the scarf you’ll see that it’s meant to be worn in a manner that is far more interesting, than what I did, but I wanted the scarf to block-out more cold air.

Pattern: Ribbed Mini-Scarf by Celeste Glassel (free pattern)

Yarn: Shokay Shambala Yak Down in purple, one skein (100 grams, 164 yds/150 m - I had 15 grams left)

Needle: U.S. 6/ 4 cm

Finished dimensions: 4.5″ x 34″ (11.5 cm x 86 cm)

Gauge: 20 sts/4 in. (10 cm) in pattern stitch

Notes on the yarn: it is scrumptious to touch, but upon wearing it around my neck, it’s a tad bit scratchy which I find a bit disappointing, but that’s the nature of yak down, I guess. Also, it’s probably going to pill a bit, as when I frogged parts of the scarf as I worked to get the buttonhole just the right size, it released bits of fuzz, and then when I washed it, the water had a fair amount of fibers floating around; a bit of color also came off in the wash.

My son and I have been home sick with some kind of nasty cold lately, so I opened this mysterious package of tea my mother brought back from Japan last September:

Mysterious, only because I don’t read Japanese and all my mother knows is that it’s meant to be used when sick. I could break out my Kanji dictionary, but that would take about 2 hours of knitting time to decipher, and why would I waste my time?

Whatever it is, it’s quite good, and clearly has some green tea powder in it, some ume (plum), and maybe some yuzu (citron).

When one is sick, does one bake? Stupidly, yes. So as lousy as I felt yesterday, I made croissant from scratch and they were my best batch yet.

I have no idea why they turned out so well this time, except that there was the toddler factor: “Mommy, I want to see what you’re doing!” “Mommy, I want to stir!” “Mommy, what are you doing?” “Let me do it!” “Mommy, I need to go potty!” It’s a bonified miracle the croissant were so good.

“Progress?” You say. “What’s Okay-Shokay?”

Okay-Shokay is a scarf that is the result of pure lust and impulse buying, I have to admit.

From the instant I put my hands on that skein of Shokay’s Shambala yak down, I knew that there was no turning back. I had never felt yak down yarn before, and I cannot describe to you how wonderful it feels. I’ve heard it described as a lot like cashmere, but I think it feels much better than cashmere (is that even possible?). It feels like a soft cotton plant somehow had intimate relations with a cashmere goat and yak down was the result. I love it. I could not say “no” to that skein, however I did say “no” to any additional skeins (the stuff is expensive). I have no regrets, though.

Caressing my single skein of purple Shambala that night, I searched Ravelry to find a pattern to put the 164 yards (150 m) to good use with. Some have suggested that I incorporate the skein into a sweater with other yarns, and I politely accepted their opinions, all the while thinking to myself, “Are you absolutely insane?! Why would I mix something so delicious to touch as yak down with another yarn? ” I did appreciate their input, really, but I just couldn’t do that. Through Ravelry I found the pattern for Ribbed Mini-Scarf by Celeste Glassel and I think it suits the fiber perfectly, as it just screams that it needs to be next my skin. The pattern is written for two lengths and I’m making the longer one (26″ or so) since I don’t want to waste too much yarn. A very quick and easy knit, and it’s about 90% done.

Okay, so a friend of ours who lives in Russia stopped by for a chat the other day with his Russian wife and, of course I just had mention my Orenburg shawl to her. Blank stare. And then she realized that I was talking about the shawls of Oh-rrhen-boorrg, and we proceeded from there. It’s funny how you learn to say a foreign word in you’re own native language, and then someone who speaks the language associated with that word corrects you, and you just realize, “Well, duh! How stupid of me to pronounce it with American English pronunciation!” I know, if you don’t speak that language, how are you to really know how it is properly pronounced? But then, one of my favorite obsessions throughout my life has been linguistics (I guess I should’ve majored in that in college). Okay, back to the shawl.

After we got my pronunciation of Orenburg closer to what it should sound like, I showed her my shawl. Her reaction was immediate: “But this is not the traditional color!”

“I know.” I wailed, and went on to explain how it is that I ended-up with that color.

So this brings me to the title of this post, because I’m thinking I should dye the shawl: what I’ve done so far and the other hanks of Orenburg. Is that crazy? Probably. I think of crazy things like this often. I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve never done anything that crazy. Well, maybe.

I’ve found that the Orenburg (a.k.a., Grand Duchess) is just too challenging for me at the end of the day when my attention span is less, my eyes are tired and my patience is greatly lacking, so Cabled Coat has become my evening project, and as bonus, when I make a mistake the yarn is a lot more forgiving. But Grand Duchess is the primary project I’d work on if I had more time.

Cabled Coat is coming along…slowly. I really would like to finish it; the design is so interesting. This is one side panel, and it would’ve been further along, but I frogged most of it a week ago when I realized I’d misinterpreted the instructions, once again. I hope I’m doing it right. I think it’s right….

Below is Matcha Market Bag. Not much to say about it, except that I like the stitch pattern:

Bird’s Eye (not pictured) is sitting at the bottom of my bag; a jealous child thinking it’s been forgotten. I’m letting her cool her jets.

Here is a picture of one corner of Grand Duchess, as promised:

The tulips are in abundance now and I would love to go to the tulip farms to see them, but it’s just not going to happen this year.

Luckily, my mother went to the farms recently and brought back a great selection to choose from.

My husband and I have just spent a good portion of Sunday in Neurology Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at a local hospital; by no means as much as many family members might. I can say even more than ever that I hate hospitals. I hate those places. I hate the way death hovers over hospitals. I hate it when I walk by rooms where patients have no one visiting (I know, maybe they went to the bathroom or to get something to eat). I love the healing and the miracles that abound from hospitals, but I hate the sadness, the sickness, the loneliness, the death.

I’ve spent a few days in a hospital bed, and I detested every minute of it, I wanted to heal so fast that I would be out faster that you could blink an eye. I mean, what strange place: you’re meant to heal in there and you’re supposed to rest, but in-between resident physicians making rounds and lab techs poking your arm for another sample, rest is anything but what you get. Oh, and then there was the time I was in the hospital and they were remodeling the floor below and for 8-hours a day I got to listen to the sound of drilling below. Yes, hospitals are good places and staff do what they can, but I just don’t like the nature of the beast. Some hospitals I have visited seem to have the unsettled souls of the disoriented dead hovering over them. That is what best describes the one I was in today. Dark, heavy, ghoulish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking death, it has its place and we’ve all got to face it, I just don’t like that feeling that pervades places where it often occurs.

The halls of NICU seem to abound with red, weepy eyes, lots of hugging; vacant stares. That’s if you look at people, because after being there a while, you meld into the crowd of loved ones avoiding eye contact as much as possible. People walk past each other without bumping into one another all the while avoiding looking at the face of the oncoming person. NICU staff members, in between the light social workplace banter, are subdued as they read the faces of every loved one passing by for signs of breakdown.

My husband’s mother is gone. I don’t think she’s one of those lost souls hanging around the hospital tonight: she found who she was looking for.

Out in NICU reception a group gathered for a patient, sometimes breaking out in a mournful song in their native Samoan language; it was such a lovely sound, and in stark contrast to the beeping of respirators and hushed voices in the patients’ rooms. Not meant for my ears, not for my entertainment; I walked by barely registering notice.

Tonight a glass of Warre’s Tawny Porto will do. Who can sleep after a day like this?

I continue to do battle for the Grand Duchess. It’s not that bad really, but when I mess up, what a rat’s nest it is figuring out where I went wrong, what I did wrong and undoing the error because of fuzzy mohair. Suddenly, my intention to do just one more row and then go to bed becomes an hour-long project when an error or two is at hand.

This week marks a milestone in Grand Duchess: I have successfully rounded not only Corner 1, but also Corner 2, and now am working on the body of the shawl. Make a mistake here and a row that would’ve taken about 30 minutes to complete suddenly becomes an hour fix-up job, but this doesn’t surprise me a whole lot. I’ve done lace before, although it’s been many years since I did anything of this complexity and size, and that was back when it was my first lace project, the Gibbie Shawl. Here I am, not having knitted the requisite smaller and easier shawls in the book before launching into the grand dame, just making Medallion anyway. Am I a glutton for punishment? Why, yes, yes indeed I am. Look at my other knitting projects: there’s Cabled Coat (a pain to follow the pattern for) and then there’s Bird’s Eye (which has become monotonous). And now Medallion in Orenburg yarn, which would be much easier if I’d just done it in some gossamer-weight merino or something and if the pattern were written with a little more explanation and charting that doesn’t add to confusion with one row being Row 2 on the right side of the shawl, but becoming Row 1 when you get to the left. It does make sense that the rows on the right are numbered ahead of those on the left, but only because of what happens at the beginning of the body, but this adds to confusion when looking at such huge charts. I can’t help but wonder if the first few rows should be numbered differently to accommodate the number shift, and then, once that point is past, the numbers on rest of the shawl (we’re talking hundreds of itty-bitty rows on charts) could be numbered so that the right is the same as the left.

What do I do to get around the fact that I haven’t done either the Diamond Trianglular Shawl or Pine Tree Pallatine Scarf, the introductory patterns it the same book, first? What do I do when I’m not sure about the instructions for Medallion, I go back and study that specific point in the other two patterns, both of which are written with more explanation and more charting than Medallion. It’s crazy, I guess, but I do stuff like this and end-up regretting it later. Hopefully I won’t regret it later this time. But I wanted to do Medallion and I wanted to do it in Orenburg yarn, and it will be a much richer experience for it.

As I knit, I imagine Russian knitters knitting just such a shawl, perhaps a 10-year old girl knitting her first one. I hear the voices of women speaking a language I cannot comprehend, perhaps I even smell a bowl of pelmeni soup with a dollop of sour cream in it as I go. Ah, I wax poetic. These are the things that come to mind when I do anything associated with a cultural tradition, be it making Armenian Easter bread , or Japanese okonomiyaki or sakura mochi, or pasta the way my Italian grandmother did, or French croissant: I hear the language, I see the country (or what I imagine it looks like), and for a moment in time I experience a brief culturel expedition, a mental vacation.

Sorry no pictures now. Sorry if my writing is rough no time for final proof.  Family emergency, check back later.