woolythyme

reading, writing, taking pictures...so where are the blog posts?

The last couple weeks, I've been reading.....a bunch.  Writing pages every day.  Taking copious numbers of photographs.  Collecting photos from the internet.  Editing and rearranging a whole lot of old photos.  And even squeezing in a little knitting every so often.  So why no blog posts?

Anyone want to read my 45 minute paper on the Great Wildebeest Migration?  I didn't think so.  (It's really quite interesting, though...at least, I'm hoping that the club I'm in thinks so next fall.)  The topic this year was 'Journeys'; I was torn between the wildebeests and the Monarch butterflies.  The wildebeests won because in 2013 I was part of a 'journey' to Kenya and I thought if my paper ran short, I could supplement it with my trip. (Always pays to plan ahead, right?)  As it turns out....the paper didn't need a supplement.  Those critters are pretty fascinating.  

When the reading and writing for that paper was finished (it was actually selective reading...how many textbooks on African ecosystems can one really attentively read?)...I turned to my pile of conservation books.  I'm starting a conservation book-club for my garden club, but I wanted to read some of them to be sure I wasn't recommending some real yawners.  (see the selective reading/textbook problem above that I had with the Migration!)

I started with a second read of Slow Death by Rubber Duck, and was rather appalled that I had managed to regress in so many areas since the first time I read it.  It would have been a real quick read, but I had to clean out kitchen cupboards and bathroom closets as I read.  I followed that with the Hidden Life of Trees....a lovely book, beautifully written, that everyone should have on their to-read list.

Of course, I'm a tree-hugger from way back, literally.

I've passed along these two books, but as you can see, I still have a nice pile I'm working my way through.  Second Nature will be a second-time-around read for me...I've just started The Blue Death.  If you all have any conservation-type books you think I need to add to my pile...!!!please!!! let me know.

I squeezed in a 'fun' read...Billie Letts, Made in the USA.  It was a disappointment.  Just couldn't compare to Trees and Rubber Ducks.

The picture taking?  I have a couple hundred photos of the ball players staying with us.  Maybe they'll be famous someday; sadly, I'm no Annie Leibovitz.  We go to most of the games...some days are so hot, it's hard to knit even socks, so I entertain myself with the camera.  Pictures of ball players in dirty uniforms, though, probably wouldn't entertain anyone reading a knitting blog, now would it?

So the little bit of knitting that I've been doing?

Another Searsport Market Bag from Drop Dead Easy Knits....requested by a couple granddaughters.  The bags must be done by beach-time in a little over a month.  The mitts..Strigidae...got temporarily set aside to make some progress on the bags, but they definitely didn't get sent to time-out. I like them too much.

Fun reading waiting in the wings?

If I actually get to these, I might never have time to blog again.

 

 

Don't worry.

Fred's ready to take over.

 

 

Sweet.....

The Feza Baby Gradient Blanket kit was one big, boring project.  I hate knitting with cotton, and this was a cotton/viscose blend that split terribly.  I would have switched to wooden needles if I had had #2 circulars, and  I think that might have helped.

So, what's on the needles now?

The same thing......in grey.  

Color makes all the difference in the world.

 

                      * * * * * * * * * * * *

I honor of our newly adopted 'pets'....I'm reading Sweetness and Light: the mysterious history of the honeybee by Hattie Ellis. Fascinating! 

 

joining yarnalong....it's been awhile!

yarnalong...

I finished the Turoa mitts from Drop Dead Easy knits, started before Christmas.  They were easy, and they were quick....and they would have been done much sooner if the yarn (which was dyed with cochineal) wasn't bleeding all over my hands.  A real mess.  Some instagram friends assured me that a good soaking (no vinegar, I asked....vinegar is used to set synthetically dyed yarn that hasn't been set properly.  Cochineal is pH sensitive and you risk changing the color if you add an acid to the rinse.  thanks, @sinceresheep!!! thanks, @leighsideknits) will remedy this problem.  

I've never knit mitts this long before....but they are sure to keep out the winter wind....that is if we ever have a good dose of winter around here.  

They are headed to their bath now.  

 

I'm still reading Hamilton (and will be for a long, long, long time...) but have snuck in a few pages of The Beak of the Finch: the story of evolution in our time  and I'm really like this one, too.

yarnalonging....2017

Winding what I think will be the last skeins needed to finish this sweater....a generic top-down sweater pattern that hubby LOVES!  I've lost count how many times I've knit this, but I totally 'get it'.  When I find that perfect something, I want it in every colour, too.  Lucky for me, I get to start the new year off right with a lovely shade of....grey ('sweatshirt' in BT Shelter)!  I'm definitely in my happy zone.  The body is done, one sleeve is well on its way, so this should be a done-deal real soon.  And here it is....day 4 of the New Year, and I have yet to cast on some impulse knit (although there are several waiting in the wings for when the will-power falters.)  

The sweater actually could have been off the needles if not for the annual 'I've-got-to-get-organized' frenzy I've been on.  The refrigerator is cleaned...the freezer declared a disaster area and left alone (for now); houseplants have been purged from my life, combined and repotted or just repotted (I know it's the wrong time of year to do this, but the temps have been in the 50+ and the plants are as confused as we all are); furniture rearranged....rooms re-accessorized; and kitchen drawers and cabinets given a major Marie-Kondo once over. Today, I'm tackling the knits....getting shawls, mitts, scarves, cowls, sweaters all together in like piles----the socks, bless them, seem to stay together.  I've been putting this off.  They are stashed E-V-E-r-Y-W-h-E-R-e....but, in my defense, I believe they've been reproducing on their own.  Freddy may have helped relocate a few.

If you noticed....there is no book in the photo today.  That's because I'm reading Hamilton, and you will be seeing it a whole lot before I'm finished with it.  It seems I've been on a revolutionary war era kick lately....finished Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, and waiting in the wings is Washington's Spies, the story of America's first Spy Ring, and Gore Vidal's Burr.  I started reading Hamilton because we'll be going to see the play later this year.  In doing my 'homework'....I've found myself totally immersed in the story. If 800+ pages doesn't turn you off...I highly recommend this one. 

What IS in the above photo is my treasured antique swift with its carved bird decoration and painted grip...

bought in New England years ago. I thought it too delicate to actually USE, but after retying the slats, and finding a short wooden needle to replace the peg, it's been a true workhorse all these years for me; I just wish it would tell me stories about all the yarn it wound before coming into my life.

yarnalong....

Reading:  I just finished Boys on the Boat and Weight of Water...both were great reads. As so often happens....after reading a really good book, I have a hard time settling in on just a ho-hum one.   I sampled and rejected a couple before settling down with Flight of Dreams...the story of the last days of the final flight of the Hindenburg. So far----GOOD!

Knitting:  Hubby's Christmas/Birthday (oops) sweater....the Goat Herder Pullover by Ann Budd, knit with Shelter.  Not sure if this really is his gift, or mine----I love knitting with Shelter.  A joy.  And, for the portable project, I just cast on Tide Mittens from Knitting from the North by Hilary Grant. (I really LOVE this book!!!  And love Spindrift even more than Shelter, so I'm really in a very happy knitting place.)   I'm looking at about 10 hours in the car and since I have the attention span of a gnat, I know I'll need at least two diversions to keep me sane.

Why more mittens---when we're having another 50+ degree day (after setting a Christmas day record of 72?)

Because these turned out so darn cute!

can't see the forest for the trees....

 

 

Home again.  Home again.

I've just spent the most magical week touring the Christmas markets of Austria and Germany along the Danube...marred only by the tragic events in Berlin as we returned home.  My heart goes out to all effected by this horrendous act of terrorism.    

I'll share some of the trip with you when I've had a chance to wade through the photos (unless, of course, you'd like to see all 500+ pictures now??  No?  OK.)  

This book was in the stack of mail waiting for me;  I really want to knit just about everything in it.  To keep from having a major cast on party, I'm calling it a Christmas present....and refraining from casting on until next week.  (and you really believe that, don't you?)

Until then, I'm knitting a forest, with plans of stringing the trees on an I-cord and making a winter garland.  I thought briefly about decorating the trees, but that simply makes it too seasonal in a season that is nearing its end.  It will hang where my generic garland now hangs...

Back to lumbering.....

 

ho-ho-ho.....

ho-ho-holiday bumps....

This week is officially 'Cookie Week'.  I love making holiday cookies, even though a whole lot of our favorites don't look at all like holiday cookies.  (If I made the shortbreads and spritz and decadent chocolate ones that we all !!!LOVE!!! [love, love, love!!!!] more often than once a year, we'd be in serious trouble with the scale.)  So, once a year it is....I go through pounds of butter and sacks of sugar and flour.  

I bought it all last week. 

When my oven still worked.

In anticipation of this glorious traditional family Christmas marathon....I decided to clean the oven.  Not only did it never make it to the 'clean' cycle, but after the door magically 'locked' the way it's supposed to....it refused to unlock....the way it's NOT supposed to.  

There are many many many wonderful reasons to live in a small town, but appliance repair is not one of them.  Our repairman is scheduled to come between 9 and 10 am on December 18th.  (I have a Viking oven...this guy is the only one in town who does repairs on it!) 

So, to get myself out of the holiday baking funk...I've been casting on a whole lot of stars...

and sprinkling them around town.

I cast on a Madalynn cowl; I knit this pattern several years ago and it's been my go-to-favorite-cowl.  I have an extremely knit-worthy friend who will now get this for Christmas instead of her birthday in August.  And then, Taproot came.....and I!HAD!TO!CAST!ON!THE!KNUSA!SHAWL!!!; just last week I ripped apart a sweater--- the yarn I rescued will be perfect for it---and I don't believe in coincidences.   This was destiny.

I really didn't have time to make cookies this week anyway!

# # # # # # # # # # #

Reading:  Taproot, of course.  I have every issue of this magazine and I know every time one arrives, I say it's the best one yet.  This issue?  THE BEST ONE YET....!!!!  Really.

Listening:  The Year of Living Danishly: uncovering the secrets of the world's happiest country.  I now know what all the hype and hygge is about.  Love it.

Just finished:  Fredrik Backman's  (Man Called Ove) And Every Morning the Road Home Gets Longer and Longer  This little novella is simply a gem.  A single sitting-memoir about the relationship between Backman's son and Backman's dad as his dad sinks deeper and deeper into dementia.  So far, this might be my 'book of the year'.  

the week of the shawl....+ giveaway reminder

I've settled into a rhythm this week after a crazy cast-on one last week.  (Blame it on the *giveaway book...if you haven't entered for a chance to win, you can still post a comment here; Freddy will announce the winner next Monday.)

Shawls.  Yes.  Plural.  It's the week of the shawls.

 

I've been hopping among...

 

Abide (from the new Drop Dead Easy Knits...see *giveaway)--the leaf edging is knit into the body of the shawl; when the last stitch is stitched you are DONE.  A brilliant pattern.  And it truly is easy.

 

Kelpie-2 (a Jared Flood pattern). The body is mindless garter stitch with a yarn over decorative border stitch added every 4 rows.  I have miles to go before the border is added, which will alter this from a totally mindless knit, to a not-so-mindless knit that might end up in time-out (like Kelpie-1, which has been neglected well over a year).  

 

Finally,  Peppered Stripes Wrap (a Purlsoho free pattern), knit in the hated, boring, linen stitch which, I swear, takes twice as many rows/inch than any other pattern.  But, you can get into a rhythm, and this yarn is yummy, and I love the finished look.   I must not be the only one who struggles with linen stitch, because in spite of the fact that this is an incredibly gorgeous finished wrap, only 7 of us are knitting it (according to Ravelry) and only 1 has finished it. I want to be #2. 

All three patterns result is a classic, simple shawl. 

 

Reading....

I think I'm re-reading Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell. Maybe I'm through the re-reading part and on the part that I failed to finish first time around. It's not a long book and it's really not bad.  (The story of a 40-year old schoolteacher from Ohio who takes her 'trip of a lifetime' in 1921 to Egypt, arriving just as the Cairo Peace Conference begins.  She's drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell.)

I've been listening to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. I LOVE everything Pollan has ever written, and somehow I missed this one (or read it in 2008 when it was published and forgot every single word...highly unlikely).  You would think that an 8 year old food book would be slightly dated, but if anything, I'm thinking that the industry simply hasn't learned a single thing in 8 years.  We still allow our choices to made through lobbyists and media (should we eat low fat? saturated fat? ban trans fat? low carb? high carb?) Shouldn't we actually be looking at the foods themselves???...oops.  (The meat and dairy industries won't allow THAT!)  Does it really take a rocket scientist (or nutritionalist) to see there is a serious  problem with eating manufactured food-like substances rather than real food?  In our western-culture attempts to 'improve' upon foods, we have created a diet that has resulted in the most obese, cancer-ridden, diabetic, heart diseased society in the world.

Pollan's advice:  Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

 

Simple.  I like simple....in my knitting AND my food.

Flaum...still

Flaum.  sigh.  I've finally reached the second sleeve.  I feel as if I've been working on this sweater half my life.  The fisherman ribbing is finished. yay! what a pain!  The pockets are in (although not attached until after blocking.)  wooo-whooo!  The sleeves on double points are not.  boo.  

I was reading a blog earlier this week and Meredith had many of my same laments....hers resulted in five lovely large balls of yarn that will someday be something else.  Flaum won.

I know I'll love this sweater. Actually, I already do.  It's simple, cropped, swingy....and of course, grey.  I've tried it on (of course I have) and it's good (although my tubular cast-off was a bit wonky in the beginning and needed a good 'adjustment' which fortunately worked....ripping that out would have been reason enough to ditch the whole project!!!  surely, I've done that cast-off before???????)

It just looks so silly with the skinny ribbed sleeves and ribbed, puckery pockets. (That's why I keep stopping to try it on.  Yep.  Still looks fine ON...still looks ridiculous OFF.)   I know a good blocking will work the same miracle for this ribbing as it does for lace.  It will, won't it?  (please confirm this...please?)

Flaum will be done this week.  In spite of dozens (literally) of other things on needles scattered willy-nilly around the house, none are screaming to be worked on.  Flaum has no immediate competition.  (This could dramatically change any minute as we all know.)

It's probably taken as long as it has to knit thus far, because even though I knew it was NOT a good idea, I tried to read while knitting.  Fisherman ribbing (how many k1b did I miss??!?) ...plain ribbing (pockets)...then fisherman again resulted in missing the change---and of course, needing to rip back.  Then, the ribbing got off when, after a decrease round  I  had k1, p1, a k2 (stuck in the middle), p1, k1, p1 ---the k2 I totally missed which mucked up the rest of the whole round.  (blah, blah, blah, blah) 

A Gentleman in Moscow was totally worth all the knitting angst it caused.  You would think a book that takes place over decades in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow...our hero is on house arrest...couldn't have action, intrigue, and mystery---and you would be so wrong.  Great story.  Well written.  Read it!

My book club (which I can't attend because I now have class when they meet) is reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  I found it in the public domain and started it yesterday (it's nothing like I thought it would be)...and then my internet connection went south.  If I have time to get to the library or bookstore today I'll solve this problem.  I need a BOOK in hand.  With pages to turn.  

And a reason to use a bookmark!

a gnat has a longer attention span..

The last 24 hours, I've been merrily casting on---willy-nilly.

First, this cowl--using yarn I was gifted a couple years ago.

Then, 

the shawl Ginny showed last Yarnalong...

 

And finally, some fingerless mitts (Christmas gift)

WHOA.  I did the ribbing with the 'smaller' dps, then went to change to the larger ones.....and (you guessed it) none to be had.  Now, I'm a knitter who not only has knit a very very long time, but one who has accumulated an insanely large collection of needles in every imaginable size, shape, and in every available material known to mankind.  And to not have a single size 6 (although what I'd do with only one...??) is of course unthinkable.  Not even the old icky plastic ones---or the despicable aluminum ones were to be had.  There must be at the very least three (probably more) unfinished projects hogging (and hiding) these needles somewhere.

I'm on a mission.  (I now sort of know how Freddy feels when he's on a ball band mission.)  T-O-T-A-L-L-Y focused and T-O-T-A-L-L-Y obsessed.

I yanked out all the projects not deeply buried, luckily (rather quickly) found some 6's in the process of knitting a sleeve....which allowed my obsessive search to end----but wait.  What's that grey goodie? FLAUM!!!  My missing Flaum.  I loved Flaum.  Maybe Flaum would like to go to Rhinebeck? Why did I ever put it away?

OH, yeah. yuck.

It only took tinking 660+ stitches to get back on track...silly me.  Doing a k1tbl instead of the k1b...totally screwed up three rows. (Steph, you must R-E-A-D the directions, not just glance at them!!!)  We're sailing now.

(Until the next shiney thing enters this magpie's line of vision.)

 

Reading....I've been a bit more dedicated.  

Still enjoying A Gentleman in Moscow. And I'm listening to Last Days of Night (by Graham Moore)...the story of Edison's lawsuit against Westinghouse over the incandescent light bulb.  I never realized what a conniving, sleazy character Edison was...or the part Tesla played in all this.  

I'm really engaged with the story...

 

Flaum is making great strides. 

 

and the 'winner' of the passalong book from last week is.....

AsKatKnits!  (Hope you enjoy!)