Kernel

Here's what I've been up to. Two weeks ago I was rummaging through my sock yarn stash. Socktoberfest is right around the corner, after all, and I wanted to find a pattern and wind up some yarn in anticipation of Oct 1.

I had a skein of Cherry Tree Hill that had been lingering there for some time, two years or so, I guess, never quite sure which pattern would showcase the color best.

I've been knitting a lot of blues over the past three or so years, so I wasn't too eager to get into another of the same, but something about the shades in this skein kept calling to me: the deep, deep turquoise that moved into magenta onto the most breathtaking cobalt one can imagine, all the way to a soft, sky blue.

In certain light, my Ott task light for example, the cobalt just renders me speechless. I brought the skein into the office/yarn winding room and sat down to ball the thing up. I figured I would knit a pair of stockinette-stitch socks to let the colors shine through, but fortuitously, I went to my blog to catch up on my blog rolls and noticed the new Knitty icon, which means, of course, new patterns.

To my happy surprise there was something new from Anne and Cookie, and I downloaded both of those patterns faster than you can say lickety-split, but there, at the bottom, was a scarf that also caught my eye. Behold Kernel. I NEEDED that! Almost everything I've had on the needles this year is meant for others: Christmas gifts and such, and though I have two long-neglected WIP scarves for me, I know neither will get finished this year. But this Kernel, well, I suddenly knew this was EXACTLY what the Cherry Tree Hill had been waiting for!

Winding her up proved to be a complete pain in the arse for several reasons, though. Most of the yarn I use (Hand Maiden, Fleece Artist, Koigu, Shaeffer's Anne) use scrap yarn to secure hanks, but CTH apparently believes in waste not, want not, so getting her on the umbrella swift was a bit of a challenge (unknotting all those small knots, grrr!!). Then the yarn was very twisty and kept getting caught on the lower-edge of the swift, which annoyed me to no end, but I was determined to cast on that very hour, so I persisted, and was glad I did.

I was also lucky enough to have been able to bribe persuade hubby to run up to Michael's and bring home three or four packs of seed beads; he was so sweet and lovingly obliged, despite being worried about being able to find the right colors (which he did as you can see), and all it took was the promise of Potbelly subs, and I had my beads in hand by the time I got near the first row where they would be needed (well of course you have to click to embiggen; they're seed beads, after all!):

The pattern is splendidly simple and easy to memorize, and I invented a new way to read it by propping the laptop on my chair's arm. My biggest problem with patterns is that I can't see them without getting them close to my face; reading glasses work sort of, but I can't see to knit wearing glasses, so usually I have to pick the pattern up, note the next few stitches, put it down, knit, repeat. This process if very slow and never allows me to build up decent speed or progress. But the balancing laptop strategy worked well, at least for the first chart.

In my zeal and enthusiasm for my new-found reading method and the Tiger's game that was on, I completely forgot that the first three stitches on either side were garter all the way. One side-edge had turned out garter, the other stockinette. Nuts! To frog or not to frog?

Depending on the project, I usually frog, but this time I was not inclined to do so. Instead, I channeled EZ's advice to be the master of my knitting, and I was determined to drop the stitches down to the offending row and reknit 'em.

Now, I've done this with dropped stitches when it's one stitch down any number of rows, but I've never dropped two in a row, so this was going to be interesting. Thank goodness I used to do fine crocheting when my eyes were better, so I sought out my thread-sized crochet hooks that took no small amount of time to locate:

and dropped those babies back:

Then I chanted to myself, back, font, back, front, and looped the stitches back ala garter and voila, I was good to go in no time at all!

I am SO enamored of this pattern and this yarn! What a PERFECT pairing!!!


See:

I tell you, I cannot wait to wear this!

Now all I need is a sock pattern.

A Sad, Sad Day for Puff, the Magic Dragon

For all the former hippies out there who were young enough to love Puff, the Magic Dragon, Mary Travers passed away today (well, officially yesterday since it's so late at night).

Quesdadillas

Hubby is an excellent chef. More often than not we have quesadillas for lunch, and that's what we had yesterday; they satisfy my cheese, corn, and black bean cravings:

I'm hungry!

Saturday Sky

Blah, no knitting going on, but today was certainly a beautiful end of summer day with a pure blue Saturday Sky. A CH-47 Chinook helicopter was flying overhead this afternoon:

It's hard for me to find anything more exciting than the sound of a helicopter just above after having spent many years on Marine Corps Airbases, especially at Kaneohe in Hawaii. Whenever I hear the air being chopped by the blades and the putter of the engines, I jump up, look frantically for the camera, and run outside, scraping the back of my calf on the stairs as I go, struggling to turn the camera on, the flash off, and flip the monitor screen around. By the time I get out there and lift my point and shoot toward the sky, the low flying birds are usually too far away to capture.

On August 23, Selfridge Air Force Base put on its annual flight show, which I missed, but we live sort of near enough to have some jets fly over in formation:

I'm always late getting the camera when these opportunities present themselves, and these digital cameras don't afford fast snaps like film cameras do, especially a camera with a fast feed like a Leica. Ah, well.

Last year sage overran our herb garden, yet the oregano, thyme, and chives still managed to spread like wildfire, but the basil and rosemary didn't do too well. We probably use basil and rosemary the most, except for maybe the oregano, so I really wanted some tall, leafy basil. This year I tried, nearly in vain, to remove most of the bedded sage, and I decided to try sage, basil, and rosemary in pots on the side of the house. I don't think anything is quite as evocative as the smell of freshly watered basil. It makes my mouth water. Hubby and I play this game where we drag our arms through the herbs and smell our arms throughout the day. It's intoxicating. Really.

I dug through the garden shed for medium pots for the herbs and planted three basil, two rosemary, and one sage. Ha, they didn't do anything. Usually I get monster herbs even in pots. This year, nada in the pots ~ hardly different from the day they were planted, but the bedded sage came back with a vengeance, and so did the chives and oregano. I think when fall gets into full swing, I am going to try to cut everything down in the bed, pull up as much as I can, and throw some landscaping fabric and potting soil down to see if I can't start over next year.

Merike Socks Part Trois

Finally finished the Merike socks that I started in July 2006. I completed the first sock on July 15, '06 but then it sat in the sock yarn organizer until the last week of August this year. I finished the second one fairly quickly, but my sketchy notes from three years ago were dicey to say the least.

I really THOUGHT I had decent notes for the significant mods I made to the heel, but alas no. The first sock is on top, and the second, while it looks a squidge wider in the foot near the toe, looks very similar to the first in the heel area. Until I put it on, that is. Then, the egregious weirdo thing that happened last time with the first draft of the heel also happened here. Way, way too much fabric around the heel. Grrrr!!!!!!!!!! If you think I am frogging back to the heel now, well, you should know better than to do drugs. Maybe I will snip the stitches at the heel and re-knit the heel and see if I can't figure out a way to Kitchener the foot to the new heel. I have been annoyed as hell by the second one after trying it on, so I had to have a time out before touching them again. Maybe I'll just leave them in a drawer forever or at least until I decide to burn them.

For the life of me, I CANNOT understand what the deal is with that sock and the heels.

Now, since I am obviously full of vitriol, I might as well rant about Joann Fabrics. Yes. Read that again. F.A.B.R.I.C.S.

Like hell. I wanted to make three or four pairs of slacks for work based on a couple of pairs of slacks I already have. I was looking for 2 and 1/2 yards of lightweight rayon, a most delightful, soft, nearly wrinkle free fabric with a lovely drape, usually in very pretty prints, that can be machine washed, line dried, and here is the important part: NOT ironed. Since going through the "change," I can't tolerate things like wool suits, gabardine suits, medium or heavyweight linen, or any fabric that isn't very lightweight, and since that three-month-long contact dermatitis problem from something in the garden last year, I need very soft fabric if it comes in contact with my skin. I don't mind cotton, but come on, even the softest cotton is going to require IRONING. Screw that. I don't mind ironing to death while sewing. It's a matter of course. You cannot sew without ironing. But after the thing is done, no more ironing for you.

In my prolific sewing days, I never went to a Joann's unless I was somewhere beyond the range of my local fabric store. They just didn't have the rep, if you know what I mean. Nonetheless, the place calls itself a fabric store; they even claim this in their name, so I figured, if that's all that is available now (the other good fabric stores have long since closed in Michigan), ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

On display in the sidewalk bins were piles of pink and purple fleece. No, don't get excited. It's not THAT kind of fleece. It was the other kind, you know, polar fleece.

Inside, the store was divided into quarters: the front right quarter devoted to fabrics. In a fabric store. There were five or six rows of quilting material, and the entire wall that the ran the depth of the store had more quilting material.

Then there was one half a row of bridal/evening wear.

A pod of costume material, a pod of holiday (Christmas) material. A pod of something that seemed to be back-to-school for tiny tots. Since fall is approaching, a pod of corduroy. A row of the ever ugly sports team cotton that looks like the team spirit sheets for eight year old boys.

Then an entire wall of fleece. Then two more pods of fleece. Then half a row of fleece.

There was, of course, the ubiquitous and very disagreeable polyester that tried to pass itself off as silk and satin (silkeen and satineen). If it wasn't fleece, then it was polyester.

Let's face it, rayon is a very common fabric. It's not Dupioni silk that can be tricky to find in the States, for heaven's sake.

Not a bolt or remnant in the store. Instead, miles of quilting fabric. Okay, that's hyperbole. The only thing they had miles of was scrapbooking crap and fleece.

There was one display of zippers, one of other notions like elastic, zigzag trim (who still uses that after 1965??), and bias-tape. A couple of displays of buttons, and two racks of thread that looked crappy. Oh, and the ever craptastic Fiskars scissors that should only be used by kindergarteners. Not a good pair of shears in sight. Not a pair of pinking shears in the store.

I was pissed. I guess I am going to have to try to order material online. What an absurd concept. At least the Tigers won.