Who would've thought that my cowl mania would've rubbed off on Scott, but it did! Upon request I knit up a cycling cowl for him to wear on his daily commute. It was a simple, improvised pattern.
Cast on 100, did 1" of 2X2 ribbing on either side and knit about 15" or so. Scott wore it yesterday during a sunny, but cold cold day and said that it worked well. Now there are two cowl maniacs in our house!
This is totally unrelated to knitting, but I thought I'd post since well, it's the holidays after all. I took a buche de noel class at the Cambridge Culinary Institute.
When I was growing up, holidays were a truly international affair. My mom's Spanish, Dad's German, had Swedish au pairs, French friends. . . so we adopted many different holiday traditions including the buche de noel (aka yule log). Of course, I can't recall that anyone in my household actually undertook the elaborate cake (and trust me, it is elaborate), but we almost always had one.
It's a multi-part undertaking:
-genoise cake
-chocolate butter cream filling and icing
-meringue mushrooms
-marzipan moss, leaves, berries
-chocolate plants and fences
Whew! Anyway, this was partly the reason I decided to take the class. This way I'd have someone to walk through all the components. The class was SO much fun, taught by a very charistmatic Frenchman. He kept saying, "Now zeez ees a sexy butter cream!"
It was a 4 hour plus class and we went so fast. I suspect that if I ever made it by myself it would take about 8 hours to complete. A long time and lots of effort for a fleeting cake. . . but I sort of love projects like that. Ephemeral and lovely.
I finally finished the sweater I'm knitting for my Mum for the holidays. Stacie's going to help me out with the (loads!) of seaming and blocking that's required. As soon as it's complete, I'll definitely post pics.
In the meantime, I'm continuing my quest to bust stash. This little tea cozy (or, is it cosy?) pattern is from the second "Stitch n' Bitch" book. It actually fits our teapot perfectly and was a good use of scraps I had in my vast yarn collection. I think, though, my cozy/cosy might look a tad sporty with these stripes.
I'm in desperate need of another yarn review with you ladies. I've been diligently knitting from stash (for the most part) this year, but still. . .SO. . . MUCH. . . YARN.
Hi all! I went to Chicago for a few days this week. My friend, Don, moved there a year ago and I've been meaning to visit and the time finally came. He had warned me that it was cold, but I thought living in Boston would've prepared me. It didn't! It was in the 20s, but I swear it felt about 20 degrees colder. Bitter bitter cold!
I did a lot of sight seeing (Millennium Park, architecture boat tour, all the 'hoods) and even got to go see a taping of "Oprah." It was so fun and just great to get away for a few days. Oprah was actually kind of amazing--she looked great! She enthused about Obama! Suze Orman was on the show and now I don't want to spend any money at all.
My only knitting related news from the trip is that I did go to Nina knitting boutique in Wicker Park (which, by the way, is an awesome part of town--cool shoppes, restaurants, etc.). It was a lovely boutique and early on a Saturday morning it was buzzing with excited knitters, which was fun.
You can see all my pics here.
It really was amazing.
In addition to the great conversations with Simone and Brianna on the trip down, I was really lucky to meet and/or hang out with severely awesome peeps, including the folks from Spunky Eclectic, numerous cool Canadians, MickeyO from Hudson Valley Sheep & Wool Co., Sean and Stephen from Sean's Soapbox and Hizknits (respectively) and of course the fabulous family of Mistress njstacie, who were kind enough to let me stay and brought my considerable haul back into the Boston area.
Rhinebeck the Fair turned out to be a quite traditional fall festival (with the addition of insane-o fiberaddicts). Then Ravelry.com threw a most excellent party on Saturday night and the next day, Lesley of the Dolin clan treated us to a tour of a friend's beautiful home restoration AND some delicious squash and apple soup.
SO, while the people were the true heart of the experience, the fiber was pretty fantabulous as well. To whit:
4 oz of gorgeously dyed cormo from Foxhill Farms, in process.
Icelandic and Shetland batts from Hudson Valley.
I was instructed by my spinning guru, njstacie, to pick out 2 oz of stuff I wanted to try and go for the gold with the stuff I knew I liked. So here are some bits - Lamb and Llama on the top and Corriedale on the bottom. Ironjohn showed me how to spin the Corriedale on Stacie's spindle on Saturday night. You can see by how much is left over how great a drop-spindler I am.
Gorgeous lace-weight icelandic that Seanie gave me. SO nice of him since I very much coveted it but was trying to be controlled in my yarn purchases.
George McFly's favorite merino/angora blend from Delly's Delights Farm.
The yarn I couldn't resist. 1 cone of from Bartlett's and 2 skeins of a natural dyed spun mohair/wool blend.
A good time had by all. And I think the gods are still with me, as I went to the Goodwill in Davis Square recently and got all these great books for less that $10!
I'm praying the luck holds through Tuesday!
A co-worker of mine had surgery last week and I wanted to knit something comforting. The Simple Yet Effective shawl was on my Rav queue for a while.
So, I picked up some Noro Silk Garden Light. When I picked it up I tried to push through to see all the colors. I know that Noro always has a few surprises, but boy was I surprised when
these skeins had this bright pink and acid green/yellow colors. I kept knitting because I know all the colors are intentional and critical in the Noro yarns. I kept knitting; I love the pattern. After I finished I realized that I didn't like the pink and acid green colors. . . the more I looked at it, the more I hated it. Like, really hated it.
I ended up turning right around and re-knitting this pattern in Hempwol in this great tweedy green. I'd been wanting to use this yarn for a while and this seemed like the perfect chance. I just knew it would turn out to be more satisfying. No surprises with the Hempwol, but I'm so much happier with this shawl.
The pattern is great because it's simple and sort of hypnotic. Good to knit while watching TV. If anyone wants a new wave shawl, let me know!
So, last weekend Briana, Alayne and I drove out to the lovely Hudson Valley to take in the NY Sheep & Wool festival in Rhinebeck. We met up with Stacie, too. So many sheep, rabbits, goats! I wasn't really sure what to expect in the event, but it really was like a cross between a 4H show and a craft/yarn/wool fair. We arrived just in time for the Ravelry meet up, but I know I didn't really meet too many people.
There was really so much to take in. We took a few spins through the several of the buildings. It was incredibly overwhelming. I'm actually glad that I don't spin because then I would have had even more to take in. I've been so good this year with not buying any yarn. (full disclosure: OK, so I did break down a couple times this year. . .during a visit to Purl Soho and at the Woolcott sale, but honestly that's a huge improvement over my yarn intake of previous years!). I'll have to photograph my newly acquired stash. . . as soon as I borrow Stacie's ballwinder and wind up all the yarn! I got some gorgeous charcoal grey alpaca for the apple-picking capelet which will be my next big project. I've also decided to start taking on some colorwork mittens. These are totally inspiring.
Stacie correctly predicted that I would fall in love with all the bunnies at the show (how did I not take any photos of them?), but Briana made a little friend, too. 
He was so in love!
We saw lots of FO showing off, which was actually fun. Definitely the pattern of the day was the February Lady Sweater. That one is, of course, on my gigantic Ravelry queue!
Briana and I had an exciting (well, exciting to us anyway) celebrity sighting: Jim Jarmusch. What was he doing there?!?
