Don't Lose Your Head Over Mittens

I apologize in advance to all of you who froze through an unforgiving winter and are now sweltering through a humid, boggy summer and are reading this in disbelief at the temerity I'm about to exhibit, but I must now complain about the weather. Today is July 21 and I am in long sleeves, staring out the window at yet another gray and somewhat drizzly day in La Jolla - another in the long string of gray and drizzly days we've experienced since early June. Last week the sun came out for two days and people danced in the streets, only to be disappointed and resigned in their aspect when our 48-hour summer slammed to a foggy close.

It's been so chilly (don't laugh - our blood is thin, people!) I've been baking pies all week (more on that tomorrow) and today I'm seriously considering lighting the fireplace. It's been so chilly I've actually been knitting heavy woolen things and been grateful for their warm weight in my lap. It's been so chilly I think the girls are looking forward to leaving for Colorado to warm up.

These mittens are last week's project, in colors inspired by season one of The Tudors, which I've been watching on Netflix (and which, by the way, I found somewhat slow for the first few episodes and then wham! people started dropping like flies and Henry started looking really scary and now I can't stop watching...the betrayals! The beheadings! I'm a little disturbed imagining the personal hygiene issues they must've encountered, too.). They're from  Magnificent Mittens and I knit them up in some soft and warm Ultra Alpaca for Fiona to take to Boulder with her.  I love the patterns in this book and I'm already planning a few more pairs; I'm also planning to use the "toe-up" technique on other mittens as often as possible, because I really like the custom fit you can achieve this way. 

Geek Knitting

Baby booties, several pairs for homeless teen moms. Cascade superwash, various patterns.

Let's all cheer for a bit of knitting content on my supposedly knitting-centric blog! First, while you peruse some of my ongoing knitting (the tiniest tip of the WIP iceberg, my friends!), a link to some geeky knitting. You know, if my husband wasn't such a big guy I would seriously contemplate knitting him a periodic table sweater, just so I could watch him walk out the door every morning and say, "Wait, you forgot YOUR SWEATER!"

Then there's this one. I read a caption for this photo somewhere that called it the world's biggest bully magnet. Luckily nobody in my house is Mario obsessed so I don't have to commit that particular act of intarsia. And since I wrote this post a couple of days ago there are now a lot of other gaming sweaters making the bloggy rounds if you want to see more. (Edited to add: a Tetris blanket!!!)

In other knitting news, I helped someone cast off yesterday. Fellow knitters, do you remember those days? It's the scariest thing for non-knitters. The cast-on isn't such a big deal - you don't have too much time invested. But after slogging through miles of garter stitch rectangular knitting, screwing it up at the end is an overwhelming prospect.

Get Ziggy - the back. Not too Ziggy yet.

Imagine what it was like before you could go here! Seriously, my non-knitting friends, I'm happy to cast on and bind off (and pick up dropped stitches, or tell you why you suddenly have more stitches, or how a hole appeared out of nowhere, or whatever) for you as many times as you'd like. But some of you have expressed embarrassment at having to ask more than once...go to that link. Or go ahead and bring it by - you know I wouldn't tease you if I didn't love you.

Here Comes the Sun

Back in September I had some kind of flu that had me down for several days and I really haven't felt right since. I've been kind of tired and a little achy all over, but I kept attributing it to my sporadic workout schedule, since I've been traveling (where all I did was walk but no yoga or anything else) and then coming back and hitting classes to make up for it.

Last week I went for my yearly checkup and all was great except for one thing: my Vitamin D levels. Now, the one thing I try to be really good about is applying sunscreen and mainly staying out of the sun. Living here it's easy to get too much and while I'm trying to avoid getting skin cancer my real fear is of turning into Godzilla. Turns out all that sunscreen can actually be too much of a good thing...unless there's some other crazy reason for it, I'm not getting enough Vit D from our friendly UV source.

Vitamin D deficiency can make you achy and sore, depressed (SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder), lead to bone loss, osteoporosis, diabetes, give you insomnia (which I already have in spades), etc. Basically a big list of all the things I'm trying to prevent with all the stuff I am doing. Now I'm taking a supplement every day for six months and making an effort to get my Vitamin D the natural way, too. The natural way is better, I think. And after I sunbathe a little I can knit a little.

The Pi Are Squared shawl I was working so diligently on turned out to have a major flaw, all because I don't follow directions. I was periodically doubling ALL the stitches between the diagonal increases instead of just the middle stitches. I'm not sure if it speaks to my idiocy that I thought that was right for as long as I did or to my brilliance that I realized that made no sense, geometrically speaking. Anyway, I frogged the whole damned thing. It was cursed, and I do know better than to work against the curse. I started from scratch instead.

November is for Pie

I'm till working on my red shawl, but yesterday I justified casting on a new project because I needed a nice piece of non-thinking knitting to take out on the town. Sometimes I'm in a meeting where people persist in actually talking to me, or where they truly expect me to pay attention...It's just not always compatible with lace knitting. Yesterday I knit four rows on the Gaenor shawl before realizing I'd left out the kfb increase called for on all the right-side rows - i.e. not even in the lace portion - on the first row I touched. I'm still hoping it is magically correcting itself in my knitting bag so I won't have to rip it back.

This is my big fat piece of comfort knitting, no thought required: Pie Are Squared from EZ's Knitting Around, on relatively big needles (10) with pretty fat yarn (Cascade Eco-Wool left over from Bella's Mittens).

Belated Birthdays

I finally gave my friend her birthday Aestlight. Isn't she the very picture of fall? And she gave me this beautiful new project bag, stitched with her own hands. I needed a new bag, too - I'm all in Ziplocs right now!



Belated birthdays are so fun - presents when you least expect them!

Purple Aestlight

What's not to love about this little shawl? It starts with a garter stitch triangle, so you can take it with you and knit without worrying about screwing up a complicated part. It continues with a fun-to-knit lace panel that stretches like crazy when you block it. It ends with a knitted-on border so you only have a few stitches on the needle at any time so you think you're making a lot of progress. It can be worn as a scarf, so you never have that moment where you wonder where the heck you're going in a shawl or whether you're the kind of person who can pull that off. It's made with Koigu, which is always fun to fondle as you knit.



And it's purple, just as an added bonus. Timeless, regal, and oh-so-in this season (Okay, my fashionista friends, I know it was oh-so-in last season, but I live in SoCal. We're three timezones and a full 365 days behind New York. Be happy I'm not wearing white after Labor Day, at least today.)



I've had to wait on posting finished pictures of this project because it's a belated birthday gift for a certain redheaded friend of mine who gave me this, and yes, it's taken me over a year to reciprocate with a handmade of my own.



I enjoyed knitting Aestlight so much that I've already cast on and am well through the garter triangle of another, this time in a golden yellow. I'm hoping to have it done in time to wear it in Boston when I cheer on the ZLAC girls, but hey - no pressure!



I'm also still plugging away halfheartedly on a Lacy Baktus in Malabrigo sock. I'm not really feeling it, though, so it might end up frogged yet. I don't know why certain projects take off like your needles are on fire and others just putt-putt along like that...yeah, I'm talking to you, navy scarf, and you, all you other half-finished projects lurking in drawers.

Blocking Aestlight

Love that bird's-eye lace...

Now that it's finally fall in La Jolla (temps below 70, heh - and that doesn't include the Santa Ana or two we're sure to have any time now) all I want to do is cocoon in my house with something warm on the needles and something warm in the oven. If it would only rain I'd be so happy.

Disclaimer: This image was photoshopped to cover a little more of my skin than actually showed because much as I love you, you just didn't need to see it. I did resist the temptation to give myself the much-needed tuck-and-lift, though. PS I'm the one on the right, in case you were wondering, "Which one of these women has had three children?" - HA! My partner is in the middle, and the hottie on the left is one of the professional dancers, too.

Perhaps you recall me talking about my crazy "celebrity" appearance at Malashock Thinks You Can Dance? Well, it happened, and I'm happy to have lived through it. If you missed it, I'm so sorry - there won't likely be a repeat performance because there's no way I'm getting in that outfit again in this lifetime unless Fiona marries someone I don't like, in which case I think it will make a perfect mother-of-the-bride getup.

This was the day after the Malashock event. I already had chipped salsa nails, because I'm apparently still not grown-up enough to maintain a decent manicure for more than a day.

In any case, now that the salsa is behind me and I've retired into advisory status for Las Patronas, you might be thinking, wow - Lydia must be so bored, right? Well, no. I am so behind on so many things that I'm actually filling my time with as much stuff as I can to avoid doing everything I've procrastinated for so long. Today, for example, I'll be at the La Jolla Wine & Art Festival manning the LJ Historical Society table in the afternoon. I'm taking Anna and Mary with me so that I may even be able to accomplish a little knitting between visitors. Aestight is blocking and I've cast on a Lacy Baktus which will be a perfect project to take with me.

We know it's fall because the tourist have gone.

In addition to Baktus, I'm starting to plan some other travel knitting for later this week. On Thursday I'm heading to Boston with Anna and some of the other ZLAC girls who are rowing at the Head of the Charles. I'm excited because not only is it an amazing event, but Fiona will be joining us over the weekend and I haven't seen her since August! On Sunday Anna will fly back with her team and I think Fiona and I will drive up to Portland (Maine, my west coast friends, not Oregon) for a day. Then she will go back to Vermont and I'll have a day in Mass before I fly home...should I go to WEBS? Or where? Suggestions?

Wait, Isn't This a Knitting Blog?

Lookit - knitting. Yarn on the needles, 10 minutes into an Aestlight shawl, using some Koigu that I have frogged from probably five projects already. It may be cursed from the start, and you'll notice I'm not showing you the metric assload of unfinished knitting strewn all over my house, but still.

Just Enough Ruffles

Here's another Malabrigo worsted project, a Just Enough Ruffles scarf.



This takes under two skeins of Malabrigo and results in a luxurious, warm scarf.



You do have to be prepared to knit across 600 stitches in stockinette and then bind off in purl, but it goes very quickly and it's completely worth every stitch.

A Quiet Hat

This is just a simple hat made from the leftover Malabrigo I used for the Target Wave mittens. The color is Frost Gray, and the merino wool feels like cashmere. Quiet and soft.

Twilight Mittens

Happy New Year! I'm just checking in quickly with a pair of mittens inspired by the movie Twilight. Fiona's a big fan of the books and I think she's seen the movie...is it three times now? I'm not sure, but I got dragged out of my cozy house one evening for one of the viewings, which is a testament to her persistence.



Did you see the mittens in the preview above? I will say, if you're a knitter, Twilight is worth seeing for the mittens and scarves, and of course if you liked the books you'll have to see the movie, right?



I read the books while I was down with the flu over the holidays - they have a strangely compelling hold once you start them. The writing isn't that great and I wanted to smack Bella through 90% of the 1600 pages I waded through, but there you go - I read them just the same. Those books are literary crack.



There are a couple of patterns for Bella's mittens out there; you can find the pattern I used for these here. The yarn is Cascade Eco-Wool - very soft.

Target Wave

Isn't this a great pattern? These Target Wave mittens are from Knitting Nature, one of my favorite books for knitting inspiration. I'll admit I haven't knit very many Norah Gaughan designs, but I love the organic quality of her creations.


The gray is Malabrigo Worsted in Frost Gray, and the cream is some wool I had in my stash...Lana Gatto, I think. The pattern calls for knitting these mittens flat, but you know me, I hate to seam. I adjusted for the seam stitches and knitted the cuffs in the round, knit back and forth for the thumb hole, and joined again for the fingertips.


For the thumbs, I picked up stitches all around the thumb hole, adding a couple of extras where it looked like there might be gaps. Those I dispatched with a k2tog on the first round of knitting and then continued to the thumb tips.


The finished mittens were a little wobbly looking, what with all the curves and color changes, but I cut out a hand shape from an old Amazon box and steamed those babies smooth. I love them!

Care Package Knits

Just a quick post today - I mailed a care package off to Fiona this last week containing the multicolored scarf I finished last week, a brown cabbage rose scarf based on this design (and modified to be a little asymmetrical in the points) and a Noro striped scarf based on this. I think she's keeping the sideways striped one so the other one's for her Thanksgiving host, and the cabbage rose scarf is for her roommate.



I had to have cataract surgery this week (!!! Get your eyes checked! I'm not that old!) so I've been taking it easy and getting used to my new bionic eye. I'm still adapting to reading and looking at my computer screen and focusing properly, but knitting and TV are definitely doable so I'm entertained. And I can drive, so hurray for that. I'm more than halfway through a pair of mittens I started yesterday, so stay tuned for more knitting before our thoughts turn to Turkey Day cooking!

Biscuits and a Vest

Run, Patty! Mommy said TREAT!

In typical fighting Irish fashion, our dog Patty feels compelled to bark her head off about twice a day in response to the insulting presence of some neighbor dogs way up at our back fence. She's not very food-driven, but we have finally trained her to abandon the barkfest and come back to the house when we call her by giving her a treat when she comes through the door. Snoopy, who's very food-driven, loves it when she goes up and starts barking, because he's learned to anticipate the T-R-E-A-T. (That's what we have to do - spell it out - that and the word D-I-N-N-E-R, both of which set him off in hysterics.)



This morning, I prompted the same response from Anna, propelling her into the kitchen from a dead sleep at 10:00 am (remember, it's summer, and she's a teenager) by saying, "Anna, fresh biscuits!" They're a little craggier than Tyler Florence's biscuits, but they tasted great with fresh strawberries.



I only had about a 1/4 cup of buttermilk so I made some with a cup of milk and a tablespoon of lemon juice; the biscuits had a very faint lemon note that was actually quite pleasant. A word of caution - I only used 1 teaspoon of salt in the recipe, not the tablespoon listed, and it was plenty.



In knitting news, I am done with the ribbing on my Back to School Vest. That was a LOT of ribbing. I'm now ready to start the patterned top portion, which will be a very welcome change from K2P2. I'm knitting the smallest size and I had just a few yards left of my first skein of Cascade 220, in case you were wondering.

Can I PLEASE have a biscuit too?

Where Did April Go?

And how did it get to be the middle of May, I ask? I swear I blinked and a month was gone. Anyway, in my last post I promised yarn content, so here it is - the long overdue trip to Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins in Boulder. The day we were there, it snowed! So exciting for two La Jolla girls...a little over an inch by the next morning, beautiful big mountain flakes of snow, which we were able to leave behind by getting on an airplane - the perfect kind of snow.



So, you get to Shuttles, which is in a little strip mall, you open the door, and this is what you see. Spinning wheels! That was a thrill. One of these days, when I have some free time that doesn't get sucked up instantly, I'd like to learn how to spin. The store is large and has another big room for classes that's filled with looms, too. Very cool.



Above you see the magazine racks and bookshelves. I scored several back issues if IK, which I wrapped like babies and jammed into my carryon, creasing clothes without a care. Wrinkles in clothes I can steam out, but wrinkles in my magazines - heavens no.



The other cool thing they had was a lot of roving, which Fiona was very taken by - Mommy, look! They have giant yarn! All in all, it's a very nice shop with friendly staff. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.



One last thing - we did see lots of wildlife on our trip. We saw deer and foxes, but also - penguins! We were on the inaugural nonstop flight from Denver to San Diego on Southwest, and we had SeaWorld penguins on our plane! Yes - Penguins on a Plane - loose! There's Pete the Penguin right by my knee!!!!!

Mystery Cast-on

So after swatching the green Koigu for the Mystic Light mystery KAL I decided I wasn't crazy about that particular yarn for this project. Instead, I ordered some Dream in Color Smooshy in Lipstick Lava (isn't that a great name for a color?) from the Loopy Ewe. If you haven't ordered from LE before, I give it a high recommendation. Shipping was fast and along with some little knitterly extras there was a note in my order thanking me for my business - how cool is that? The internet has give us a vast number of choices, but in many cases it has removed the human touch from our dealings. Great customer service will definitely earn my loyalty.



Anyway. The first Mystic Light clue arrived on Wednesday, so I wound my Smooshy and then a bunch more yarn that was still living in LYS bags in my office. Can you tell I like red and blue? The off-white was kind of a fluke...it's Ultra Alpaca Light and some very soft Blue Sky Organic Cotton. I put the various other yarn cakes away and left the red, white & blue out so that I can say I'm ahead of the holiday game for the first time this year. As opposed to saying I'm still cleaning up remnants of 2007 and my stash is so out of control I'm pretending it's decor. Hey - at least it's not dirt.



Re: My knitting. I cast on with the red Smooshy and knitted through the set-up rows and about a third of the first clue-chart, and like it much better than the Koigu. Still love my Koigu, but now I love Smooshy too. Plus it's fun to say.