Another off the list

The lovely golden mittens are done! Really, it doesn't take much time to make a mitten, even one on little needles, with cables, and trying to match the first one. So, a year of waiting and a few days of knitting, and here are my pretty mitts. Unfortunately, it is still too cold for nice, light, wool mitts. (I have a pair of these.)

How cold is it, you ask?

There is one little stripe of "hovering around zero" green in the last week. I think we got up to -3º or so. Mostly the darkest, purplest blue, signifying less than -15º. I never did get a colder colour, but it has been below -20 some nights.

The last two months. They say the cold will last for weeks more; I am sad we didn't book a week in the Caribbean for March break!

A small accomplishment and big passings

First of all, let's look at a pair of socks I finished!

These are the cute little anklets for Elaine, in school uniform burgundy. (They really are darker, but it's a wretched flash picture...) It's not really ankle sock season, though, since it's been -15ºC or so for some days! But it's something off my master list, so that's nice to get them done.

I don't actually have pictures of most of the other knitting I've been doing, but I'll work on that. At least with the cold, it's been pretty sunny.

Last fall I was sort of out of sorts and didn't feel like explaining here, but now I will say my sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer in May and passed away in October. She died a week before her 56th birthday, way too young, and it all happened so fast. So, that explains why my brother got a whole big sweater for Christmas! And why he and his sons spent Christmas here. And so on...

But, one continues on. Then early this month my sister phoned to say my mom had been taken to emergency, her heart wasn't working very well, they'd taken her back home and she wasn't expected to live through the night.

It's slightly churlish to complain about a 94-year-old dying in their own bed with their family around them, without pain and peacefully, but still, it's a shock and the end of something. Her obituary is here.

My brother, his son and I flew out to BC the next day, with the usual winter weather-related catastrophes: cancelled flights, closed highways, long drives...

Lots of relatives arrived over that weekend and we had a get-together to talk about her, we learned some stories about my dad's attempts at courtship and got caught up with people we don't often visit with. It's curious to me how many of the men in the family are really good at playing pool, for example.

We lived on a pig farm in the Cotswolds in 1965

It was really good to meet up with everyone; I'm sorry we didn't pack up the kids and all go, but I hope we can go to a future gathering.

I am looking forward to a calm and non-stressful few months, now, please.

Just popping in

This morning I looked at the temperatures to knit into my scarf, and I have to use 2 strands of my -15ºC yarn at once. The high yesterday was -19!

Pictures and a bit of catch-up to come.

What a lot of stitches

Samen is done.

Well, I do still have to sew in a dozen ends, but I'll get to that this evening. 

Really.

That is not a baby shoe, but a proper size 7 or 8 adult shoe. Kind of a long wingspan, which is great!

Wedges of stocking stitch with a few eyelets to add excitement.

The last garter stitch chunk used up last bits of all the colours.

I even got some of the beautiful blue in on the cast-off row. The instructions for the cast-off are perfectly clear: k 2 tog tbl, then put the stitch back on the left-hand needle and do it again. I was tbl-ing along just fine, until I realised I was purling instead of knitting! No way I was undoing this... enough is enough! And it is fine. It's almost noon and it's -17º, so a big woolly scarf is just what I need!

Loving all the colour combinations!

A glitch overcome

I knit my two rows on my temperature scarf this morning, and thought, "Meh."

I've been worried since about Day 1 that the decrease stitch should be purled on the wrong side, so that it makes a nice sharp line up the scarf. And since I've been working on Samen and making M1R and M1L increases, I was not totally satisfied with my increases on this. I didn't necessarily want to do M1R and M1L, but I wanted to do something other than what I was doing. And, you know, I was still using a bit small needle. So, I ripped out three weeks worth of scarf, reminding myself that I have 49 more to go and I should get it sorted now instead of being dissatisfied while it just gets longer and longer.

Old garter chevrons:

New ones, all knit today! Sharp decrease line, yo increases, and I moved up to a 6mm needle.

As you can see, it has got much bluer, that is, colder! Those indigo bits near the top mean it was below -15ºC, at least overnight. Not much green these days, though yesterday's high was -0.2º, so I got to do some green today. Kind of looking forward to the yellows of +10º!

Samen is almost finished. If I hadn't spent all my knitting time today on this, it'd be done, I'm pretty sure. So, maybe tomorrow!

Plan A

Let's see now, how shall I deal with this over-abundance of projects on the go? From the lists I posted a couple of days ago, I will cull the "likely" things and start with them!

Samen is going steady and I'll finish that before picking up anything else. The rows are now interminable; it must come to an end soon.

Then it will be a toss-up between the mitten and the two socks. I just have to do one of each! It might be a bit much to do them all, one after the other, but I will endeavour to do one or two of them.

And you know what? That is all I'm going to commit to right now! The way I get into trouble is by planning and promising too much, so I'll just stop there.

(I will say, however, that I took a trip to Fabricland the other day and got myself a giant pillow form, which needs the finished Fassett squares to cover it. So that will be a large reminder to get back to those.)

Pictures of the temperature scarf coming soon: I had to add two more cold blue colours!

My Samen

When I finished the grey sweater -- lots of plain knitting in the round with a bit of action here and there -- I just had to move to something still easy (because Christmas) but colourful! So I had a wee bit of fun collecting up some fingering and laceweight yarns to make Stephen West's Samen.

It is a plain ol' shawl, garter stitch mostly, increasing at the centre and at the edges. But the thrilling bit is that every once in a while you work short rows on only one side, which makes a long, asymmetric scarf, and the second thrilling bit is that you use five colours, mixing them two by two, so using AB, BC, CD, DE and then EA, before starting all over again.

Since I did this all on the spur of the moment, I didn't have nicely graduated colours but I did manage to gather enough to get a good start.

I ran out of the orange (colour A) halfway through its second bit, so now A and D are very similar. Also, the one I chose for E is very dark. The whole thing makes me think, "Yeah, it's good, getting out of my comfort zone." I think the orange and the blue are marvellous and I wish I hadn't run out of orange. And I'm going to run out of blue! I have sparkly blue, and somewhere I have a teeny bit of navy Kidsilk Haze that might work.

See, thrilling, right? The suspense is killing me.

Around again

I was wondering about knitting goals for 2015 and looked back at my first post of 2014.

Let's just take a look at that year-old list:

1. second mitten  {oh, still to do!}
2. green sock   {got both of them done, yay me}
3. Elaine's socks  {done like dinner!}
4. the cotton shawl with the miserable edging   {yessirree, done!}
5. Malabrigo scarf  {it makes me sneeze! and I need the pattern with me so it's not subway knitting, but I shall persevere}
6. Botticelli {Oh, I want this! and don't have toooo much more to do}
7. Sunday Best  {This deserves a whole multi-paragraph explanation}
8. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it  {yeah, right}

So now. We could just take out the finished items from that list and get this new list:

1. second mitten
2. Malabrigo scarf
3. Botticelli
4. Sunday Best
5. that beautiful golden shawl you might not have seen but I have knitted about an inch on it

However, there are new things to consider!

1. Temperature scarf. This is ongoing and won't be finished till Dec 20, 2015.
2. I started Samen over the holidays. As is the way with top-down shawls, the rows are getting longer and longer, but I am enjoying the garter simplicity and the sneaky stocking stitch wedges. 
3. Those Kaffe Fassett squares. A finite project, one would think, but you know what happens when my attention is diverted.
4. I have one sock done for Elaine and one done for Arthur and they both need to be pairs. 
5. I have a number of bits of a blanket that have to be dealt with. I was going along just fine, and then some breeze blew me off course. 

Now, just leave this with me for a bit and I'll get all organized and sorted and arranged, get back to you with pictures and a plan. For one thing, I want that second golden mitten by March, when I will put aside my big winter mitts for something lighter!

Oh, look over there, pretty!

The first few days of the Temperature scarf

I must get back to my Kaffe Fassett squares, and all those other unfinished objects, but on the solstice, I started my Temperature Scarf. You can see the first day has pale blue -- that is the coldest it has been. The last few days I have used the green variegated, which is +4ºC or higher, but this warm spell won't last, and we can get back to the chilly blues.

I am using a garter stitch chevron pattern from 200 Ripple Stitches. (Weird prejudice: ripples are for crochet and chevrons are for knitting, surely!) I got this book from the library in an attempt to seduce Elaine into crocheting something other than straight lines, but I don't think she has had a chance to even look at it yet.

I started on 4.5 mm needles, but after a few days decided the fabric was too stiff, so changed to 5s, after carefully noting on 2015's calendar to go back to 4.5s a few days before the winter solstice, to make things symmetrical!

I get my data from here; at the bottom of the page it gives you yesterday's high and low temperatures. So since I started knitting on Dec 21, the first date represented is Dec 20. (The colour code is in this post; I use one yarn for the high temperature and one for the low. You can see in the middle there were a couple of days where it didn't get much colder at night and I used two strands of plain green.)

The Koigu is beautiful yarn; I'm quite looking forward to my one little garter ridge each day!

The sweater and a hat

I hope everyone is having a nice holiday. We had my brother and his sons here, and they each got some knitting. The guys each got a handy-dandy dish cloth (which led to a discussion of whether or not you should put your Teflon pans in the dishwasher. General consensus: no, use your new dishrag).

Of course, John got his new sweater!

He took off a blue-grey sweater whose elbows were very thin, and put on his new blue-grey sweater. It could have been an inch or two longer, but it's perfectly excellent as is.

Looking like the Rowan model

Stephen also got a piece of handknit loveliness, the Cuss Hat: 

The Cuss Hat selfie

It is for people who swear at the weather, a thing Stephen does a lot in the winter!

Tomorrow, the Temperature Scarf. 

Merry Christmas

I figure if you like a big choir, you can't beat the Mormons. Well, King's College is pretty good, I agree, but they are always outnumbered by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.



Merry Christmas to one and all!

Baby Arthur in his little ball!

I am writing this on the 24th, so I have time to throw in a few pictures of what's been going on here. Primo: Eddie is done! Right now it is drying downstairs, all its little ends sewn in and armpits grafted and everything. This is what it looked like just after I had cast off the neckband.

And this is the yarn that was left!

I worry that the body is too short, but really, tough luck if it is! 

Some cookies have been baked. I think I have driven my family crazy with all the plans and shopping and baking, but they will all be happy when I finally let them eat the cookies!

We are not getting a white Christmas, but there has been rain, and we've been promised wind. Just what we need.

My cabbages never did very much. But now they look pretty with raindrops on.

Now, back to your knitting, everyone!

What would you like for Christmas?

I ask Arthur what he wants for Christmas, and he always replies with this little ditty. All I can say is, You better watch out!



 (Actually, do you know how hard it is to find a hippopotamus in downtown Toronto?)

Getting to the real classics now

This is an old favourite. I see that lots of other groups have done this as well, but I think this is the original, and despite the not-great angle and the choppy beginning, I love the guffaws from the audience and the delightful performance.



Elaine and I went carolling the other night. We walk around the neighbourhood and sing at pre-arranged front porches, and then end up around the piano at someone's house. The finale of the evening is when they take away the carol sheets and give us the four parts of the Hallelujah Chorus. Oh, my, those sopranos are high! Elaine and I struggled to keep up with the altos, and there were moments in there when no-one knew what they were doing and there was a bit of confusion. Luckily the words are kind of repetitive!

Another old favourite is the snowflake cutting page online. You can make these and e-mail them to your friends if you have forgot to send cards!

And the latest on Eddie the sweater: knitting is finished, just the ends and blocking and so on remain. 

Blues at Christmas

Another rockin' sad Christmas song.
Why can't these people be home for Christmas? They never seem to say.

The Solstice has come

And I say, thank goodness!

I have started my temperature scarf. I cast on this morning, recording yesterday's temperature data (high of about 0ºC and low of -6º). Not much to see, but I think I'll aim for weekly pictures through the year.

And, we interrupt this holiday advent songfest to throw in an ad for pop:

More Ella and more sweets

It's another song asking Santa for one's beloved, which seems to be a rather large subset of Christmas songs. Fine by me.

 

My Scrabble-playing friends and I exchange gifts, and this year I made them all some Chocolate Swirl Espresso Bark. Very easy, and quite yummy, I must say. You just melt dark chocolate and white chocolate separately, swirl them together in a pan, and sprinkle with the chocolate-covered coffee beans.

melted, swirled chocolate and white chocolate

For me, the hardest part was finding the dang coffee beans! Coffee shops didn't have them and chocolate shops didn't have them. I finally got some at Ten Thousand Villages, and they were fair trade and organic and rather expensive. Then, of course, I found them in a bulk food store for much less, so I'll know in the future!

chilled and hard and ready to go

I hope my friends like it!

In order to a) not forget and b) get some other stuff done, I have scheduled up the songs for the next few days. This is not cheating, really, is it? Cheating what, I wonder.... I'll surely pop in to say when I finish Eddie the sweater!

There are so many songs; I'll have to do this next year.... or maybe in July.

Tom Jones Mary's Boy Child

We can't really have a musical event here without a bit of Tom Jones. He doesn't seem to have done lots of Christmas music, but this one is rather lovely, and actually about Baby Jesus and all.

The folks sitting around him crack me up; I guess it's supposed to be just Tom and his friends hanging around at home.

I think he's even got his old nose here!



Here's his modern look, more than 40 years later!

Elaine's requested song

I didn't know this song, but Elaine suggested it, so here you go.

Instrumental dancing jolly music

This is one I am taking from the musical advent songs my friend is sending. Just try to not dance, at least in your head.

More from New York, and cookies

The singer is singin' and the baker is bakin'.

These are called "Chocolate Spice Hearts," but you don't have to make just hearts, you know! So we have airplanes, rocket ships, pigs, teapots and trees, as well as a few hearts for good measure. They are quite good, so I shall give you the recipe, which I copied out from somewhere, around 1991, I believe. No idea to whom the credit should go.

Chocolate Spice Hearts

Stir together:
2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Set aside for now.

Beat together till light and fluffy:
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla

Beat in flour mixture until blended. Between two sheets of wax paper, roll out the dough to 1/4-1/2 inch thickness.
Refrigerate the dough overnight, or for several hours, until firm enough to cut.
Heat oven to 325ºF.
Cut shapes out of the chilled dough, prick a few times with a fork and bake for 17-20 minutes, till cookies are firm to the touch.
When they are cooled, you can sprinkle them with more icing sugar.
Makes about 2 dozen.

Voilà!