How to Sew a Button

I just finished up the book How to Sew a Button by Erin Bried. This quaint little book serves up the wisdom of our grandmothers in easy to follow steps. The tips range from the useful for everyone...(how to sew a button, how to grocery shop and how to spring clean) to the useful for those of us who yearn to be more like our grandmothers...(how to roast a chicken, how to hang a wash line and how to play crazy 8s). There's practical tips about budgeting and saving. Cooking, cleaning and sewing tips abound. There's stuff you'd never think to find in a how to book, like how to make friends with the neighbors or how to greet your honey after a hard day (lest you feminists balk, she's quick to point out this tip goes both ways). Everything is presented with a light heart and charming attitude. Each tip starts out with a pithy comment from "the grandmothers" who contributed to the book. There a kitschy, retro drawings scattered throughout the book as well. All in all an entertaining but educational read. Downside, makes me REALLY miss my grandmas!

Squee!!!

Zero knitting

My hands are rebelling against me and I'm unable to knit. I've not knit a stitch in almost 7 days which is probably some kind of record since I've taken up the hobby. The problems I'm having were probably brought on by the new exercise routines I've been following lately, but knitting definitely aggravates the pain so it's off limits for now.

Instead I've been reading. I'm still on the aromatherapy kick and am working my way through a pile of books on the subject. Last week I finished the Aromatherapy Bible. The book is small in dimension but still nearly 400 pages. It is one of the best references I've read on aromatherapy. The topics are concise but thorough. The book covers various techniques for using aromatherapy, has a large essential oil reference section and plenty of recipes. I foresee turning to this book often.

I'm about half way through Essential Aromatherapy (the 1995 edition). This book is somewhat dated (there's a reference to Princess Diana using aromatherapy!) But the principles are still good. There are handy reference tables in various configurations making it easy to search for oils by name or by condition you wish to address. This too will be a book I keep on the shelf, but if you are looking to get a copy for yourself, perhaps consider the updated version.

On my Kindle I'm still reading Mossy Creek. This book is delightful. A perfect summer read. Each chapter introduces a new citizen of Mossy Creek and tells a story about them and their involvement in the town. The tales build on each other very subtly with previous characters showing up in the sidelines here and there. The characters are funny and smart and the stories are engaging. I'm sure I'll be picking up more books from this series as time goes on.

C and I made our first trek to Shupp's Grove this morning. We got there early, right when they opened, and found many vendors still closed. This flea market is very laid back compared to most where it's all a hustle and bustle. Located in what appears to be an old wooded campground, Shupp's Grove is a cool, dipped in nature oasis. The folks there are friendly. Bargains abound and we usually find something to spark our interest. I picked up an old Corning dish to use as a bird bath and C found some old comics. On the way home we found Burkholder's fabric store was open and stopped in to have a look around. Oh wow, what a store! There are 3 huge rooms STUFFED with fabric.

I picked up 2 one yard cuts of some vintage looking fabrics and a slew of fat quarters (you can get 20 fq for $25, that's half price!) Now I really have no idea what I'll do with 25 fat quarters, but since I'm not knitting at the moment, this will at least give me something crafty to play with!

The 5 yard quilt

Since I took up knitting, quilting has taken a bit of a back seat. I still love quilts and piecing tops, but I'm strictly a machine sewer and just don't find myself wanting to spend time squirreled away in my sewing room. Plus my craft/sewing room is tiny making the quilting of quilts an exercise in fabric gymnastics, constantly tucking and fluffing and stuffing and wrangling the quilt around my sewing table and into the machine. Normally I stick to smallish quilts, generally afghan size, which are somewhat manageable. But 2 years ago at the Quilt Odyssey in Hershey I fell in love with a 5 Yard Quilt Kit from Bolines and knew I had to have it for our spare room's twin bed.  The kits are great. You get 5 yards of coordinating fabric and 3 patterns to make a twin size quilt top. You supply your own batting, backing and binding. The top has been pieced for quite some time it's just been waiting for me to quilt it. So this weekend I took advantage of a day off and pleasantly cool morning temperatures and I soldiered through and got it quilted. I had started trying to individually quilt the large blocks, but this was proving near impossible with my set up. In the end, i just straight line quilted between the major blocks. I'll go back at some point and do some additional quilting in between, just to prevent the batting from shifting if it needs to be washed.

I adore the old-timey look of these fabrics. Feels very colonial to me. I intend to redo the room around the quilt. As you can see, the room needs a redo. The walls are do for paint this year and I'm leaning towards a rich, chocolate suede brown. Curtains will perhaps be navy or I'd love to find that brown floral from the quilt and make curtains with it. But seeing that the fabrics are a number of years old, this probably won't happen. I used wool batting for a truly decadent feel. The cost was a bit more than good cotton batting, but I do recommend it for a special project. Oh, and cats ADORE it too. It's been a long time coming, but I'm thrilled to bits with this quilt.

Swatching for Iona

I found a lovely seller on Ebay who specializes in chenille yarns. She carries a bulky cotton chenille that seems comparable to Rowan Chunky Chenille, so I purchased one of her four packs to do some test knitting. The yarn arrived super fast. (I give Chenille Shack highest marks for customer service. If you need chenille yarn, this is the place to go!) I wanted to give the yarn a thorough test with the pattern so rather than doing a swatch, I decided to just cast on a sleeve as written for Iona. This way I could test the color work cuff as well as the cable section. 

At first I found the chenille hard on my hands. After an hour or so of solid knitting, my hands were aching. Chenille has no stretch or give like plied yarns do because of its construction and cotton itself is inelastic as well. Furthermore, you're knitting with bulky yarn (eh, maybe closer to heavy worsted) on US 5 and 7 needles, that's a somewhat firm gauge. The next day I tried again, loosening my tension a bit and I did not experience the hand fatigue. I'm getting stitch gauge, spot on (4 st/inch) but my row gauge is off (5 row/inch instead of 6). This could be a bit problematic because of the nature of the cable motif (the whole thing needs to fit in a specific amount of space. Since I'm getting fewer rows than called for, the motif will take up more space.) There's enough background I think I could adjust though.

The question is if I like the yarn enough to do a whole sweater with it. Here's what the swatch looks like so far. 

The yarn is moderately soft, but I've heard it softens considerably upon washing. It feels a bit heavy although it is cotton. The drape is ok and I imagine will only improve with washing. My issue is the reverse stockinette (the part above the checkerboard).

That is how the sweater is designed, with the "wrong" side of the stitch to the front. I've just never been a fan of reverse stockinette. It makes me feel like my sweater is inside out. And with chenille yarn it feels even more so. I'm not going to rush to a decision. Having picked up some yarn to test the pattern has scratched the Iona itch for now and I'm satisfied to think about it for awhile before making a final decision. I think the next time I place a Knit Picks order I'll pick up 2 balls of Comfy bulky and see how that looks. If I feel the same ways about the ugliness of reverse stockinette then this pattern may be out of the queue.

There's still plenty of other knitting going on. I'm working on a pair of socks in that Bluetopia BFL I picked up from Liberty during her sale.

This is the Tea Party color way (the picture is not doing it justice) and the pattern is called "Purl When Ready" from the Big Book of Socks. It's mostly a plain vanilla sock with a few purl stitches thrown in randomly for interest.

I'm also working on a Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig.

The pattern calls for laceweight yarn, but I wanted a slightly more substantial yet still lightweight sweater so I'm using Knit Picks Comfy fingering weight yarn. It's a super easy knit and I am loving the fabric it's producing. Knitting sock yarn on US 6 (4mm) needles produces such a fabulous drape. The sweater feels like the softest tee shirt. It is moving along at a pretty decent clip and I would hope to be able to wear it this season yet. 

The Multnomah shawl, Bitterroot shawl and Sleepy Hollow socks all get a few rows knitted on them each week, but there's no visible progress there. I enjoy having this variety of projects (from mindless to challenging) at hand to suit my mood at the time. 

Lastly, the Wollmeise count is up to 4 and holding. After I received my first order, I was around for another Saturday update and managed to grab a Kunterbunt and a Gemischt small grab bags in Twin (and 80/20 merino/nylon blend sock yarn). The intention was for them to go to Jen since at that time she still didn't have any WM. But as it turned out, by the time they came, she had managed to order 6 skeins for herself (which is producing much frustration do to a shipping problem, but that's another story). When the 4 skeins arrived, I found the Gemischt was the exact same colors I got in my first order a few weeks prior. Jen happily took those 2. She was nice enough to let me keep the Kunterbunt set.

So here's my current inventory.

My Old Blue Jeans, Campari Orange and 2 Versuchskaninchen. Jen is leaving me in the dust. She's already balled her's up and has started knitting socks! I still can not bear to unwrap them. In fact they still live in their original bag. I still want to get a big Kunterbunt or maybe Gemischt bag one of these days. But there seems to be a lot of duplicate yarns being shipped right now and I'm really hoping for a variety. So I'm holding off for at least a month or two before trying for more.

Last month's reading

I finished up Sweater Quest, in which the author writes about her "quest" to knit an Alice Starmore sweater. The book started out well, as many knitting projects do. There's all the excitement of deciding you want to knit something, the adventure of finding the materials (in this case a true adventure since the book containing the pattern and the yarns called for in the pattern are no longer being produced) and the joy of casting on. But after it gets going, the boredom and tedium set in. When knitting a fair isle sweater in a fine gauge, no matter how how intricate the pattern may look in the end, you are essentially just making stitch after stitch after stitch, thousands of times. You do need to keep track of which color stitch to make, but even so, there's only 2 colors in the row, not exactly rocket surgery. The book suffers the same monotonous cadence. Once it gets past the fun stuff,  the book becomes page after page after page of the same questions being asked of various knitters, most of whom have very similar points of view. Perhaps because all the interviewees were knitters who's blogs I read and have heard the exact same answers and stories before, this was exceptionally boring. I stuck with it till the end because I wanted to see if she would finish the sweater and how it turned out. The answer is given, of course, but even that I found disappointing. I had high hopes for the book. I love knitting. I love AS. But this one just didn't come together. If you want a good knitting read for summer, read Rachael's How to Knit a Love Song and give this one a skip.

I've set Dead Witch Walking aside for the moment. Ah yes, another reason to love my Kindle.  So easy to skip between multiple books without losing my place or having to lug them all around! Anyway, DWW is very good, but it's moving too slow for me. I'll come back to it at some point, but for now I have a taste for something lighthearted. So it's on to Mossy Creek. I'm only about a fifth of the way in but am finding it delightful so far. Another southern charmer in the vein of the Biggie Weatherford books.

I caved and picked up another Alice Starmore book in the midst of Sweater Quest. This time The Celtic Collection. Where Fisherman's Sweaters is devoted mostly to cable and textured stitch patterns, Celtic Collection contains more Fair Isle designs (although there's still a good dose of texture in here as well). Lismore (you can see a scan of the sweater photo here) is one Fair Isle design I may someday endeavor to tackle. Absolutely stunning. The cabled sweaters call most strongly to me. Iona is high on my queue. (See it here, second picture). The yarn called for is, as expected, discontinued. It would have been cost prohibitive anyway, so I'm looking for an alternative. The original is chenille yarn, a yarn with a dubious reputation for being unpleasant to knit with. I've ordered a small amount of a similar cotton chenille to do some test swatching before committing to a sweater's worth. Other options include Knit Pick's Comfy Bulky which would have a much different look but would, I still think, look stunning. Wool is always an option too, but I'm leaning towards a cotton since the yarn is bulky weight and I'd like to wear the sweater more than one day a year. More on my little Starmore journey in future months.

The kitchen witch in me

I have long been into homemade bath and body products. I've been making my own beauty products off and on since high school and though there are many commercial products I use and like, there's just something special about the homemade. I know exactly what is in what I'm putting on my skin and can pronounce and recognize each ingredient. Plus the act of creating these potions speaks to my inner alchemist. Using pure essential oils provides aromatherapy as well as skin healing properties.

The last few months has seen a resurgence in my interest in homemade skin care. I discovered fabulous cold cream on Etsy from Cataphract. I've not been able to duplicate her product, but I've discovered I can make a mighty fine night cream for myself in the process of trying. A mention of natural deodorant on the now defunct Lime and Violet podcast got me investigating recipes for that as well. I found it is super simple to make and works wonderfully. Now that our weather is starting to creep into the 80s and 90s we'll see how well natural holds up to the heat!

My latest adventure in homemade natural is trying to create some infused oils. Our lavender is blooming in abundance and smells divine. I decided to try two blends...

The first jar is stuffed full with lavender buds and mint leaves topped with olive oil. The second is lavender and rose petals with sunflower oil. The jars will need to sit in a dark place for several months to infuse the oil with the flowers' scents. I started the lavender/mint oil a week or two ago and the oil is already starting to absorb the scent. I'm very much looking forward to having these infused oils next fall and winter to (hopefully) create some great smelling soaps and lotions!

One word

Wollmeise

You nonknitters might as well stop reading now. By the end of this post you'll be convinced I'm a raving lunatic. But, you knitters out there know what I'm talking about. This much ballyhooed yarn is pretty darn difficult to come by. It's a German yarn sold almost exclusively by the dyer (although I understand Loopy Ewe does carry it occasionally). Claudia usually stocks her shop once or twice a week and stock sells out in minutes. MINUTES I say. I've known of the yarn for months. But the extreme difficulty in obtaining it from the source and generally astronomical prices being charged on Ebay have kept my interest marginal. About a month ago, I decided to start watching for site updates. I downloaded a tool for Firefox that monitors websites for you and notifies you whenever they update. The few times I was actually in the vicinity of my computer when an update went up, I wasn't able to get an order off in time. That was until about 10 days ago. May 1st must have been my lucky day because I managed to score a 2 skein grab bag, known as We're Different. I really had no idea what I was ordering. The color names are mostly German and the updates go so very fast it's hard to figure out what's what. So I rather blindly ordered a 2 skein We're Different Gemischt. After ordering I joined the Ravelry group of Wollmeiseholics and did some research. I discovered that Gemischt bags include yarns of complimentary colors (either 2 or 5 skeins, depending which size you order). There are also grab bags known as Kunterbunt which will included unmatched colors, true grab bags. Grab bags are also available in individual colors if you are so inclined. All the We're Different grab bags are "Surprise-Bags with our rebels (colours that don't correspond to the photo exactly), wallflower (skeins that were put aside as standby for previous online updates) and guinea pigs (test-dyes)." Since I love surprise, this is perfect for me.

My package arrived today. I was thrilled to bits. Here's what was in the package.

The yarns were packed inside a delightfully illustrated paperbag. The front side looks like knitted fabric and the back side has English / German knitting translations. There was a free scarf pattern and a bag of German gummy bears.

The yarn is phenomenal. The hype? Totally not hype. It's all true. The color is gorgeous. It defies photographing, but trust me, it's outstanding. Someday I may be able to unwrap these skeins and actually knit something with this. For now, I just want to stare at it. To pet it. To put it in a safe where no one can touch it but me.

2010 garden starting line

We've had some nice weather lately and we've started getting the garden in. I'm changing the layout quite a bit from what we did last year. This year the onions are going in the side bed.

The eggplant remain at the far end and in the little space between I've planted out the Tom Thumb cherry tomatoes I started from seed. The seedlings suffered a dose of stress when I moved them out to the garage to harden off and the same week we were hit with 80 degree temperatures. They got a bit fried in the sunny window. I've since repotted them and moved them to my patio where they seem to be reviving. At least there's some new growth coming out above the withered leaves. Fingers crossed they pull through. The onion seedling also don't seem to be fairing well after being transplanted. I'm having the best luck with the onions sets I've planted, but they don't come in nearly the variety you can get in seeds or plants. Since this was my first year trying onion seeds I'll be keeping an eye on them to see how they turn out in the end.

The big bed is also very different.

We've planted the tomatoes and peppers around the perimeter. In the middle are squash, broccoli and cucumbers. I've used old cat litter jugs with the tops and bottoms removed to protect the broccoli from the cruciforous loving bunnies. Along the front edge I'm planting kohlrabi and radishes at 2 week intervals to extend the harvest. Next week I'll put out the okra seeds in the long bed that runs along the wall to the right of the big bed. This is my favorite part of gardening. I love getting the plants in with all their promise of yummy goodness to come.

I was the lucky winner of a Barnes and Noble gift certificate recently and expanded my library with these lovely books

First up is Sweater Quest about a woman's quest to knit an Alice Starmore fair isle sweater. For the uninitiated, AS has written some of the most stunning and highly sought after patterns in the knitting world. Her books are mostly out of print and some frequently sell in the hundreds of dollars range. I'm excited to read Adrienne's account of knitting one of these masterpieces.

Next is How to Sew A Button, a delightful little book full of grandma's wisdom.

Rounding out the foursome are two cozy mysteries...Knit One, Kill Two and Town in a Blueberry Jam. Somehow I found I have the second in Maggie Sefton's series, but I really prefer to start at the beginning in a series. Currently I'm finishing up Grime and Punishment which was the April cozy selection in the Ravelry Whodunit? group. It's a good little mystery, nothing too shocking or gory.  Next up for the group is Crewel World which sounds great. But I'm undecided if I'll read it with so many other books already in line!

I decided to treat myself to a few knitting books as well.

With a 50% off coupon at Micheal's I snagged Cookie A's Sock Innovation. And I picked up one of the few attainable Starmore books, Fisherman's Sweaters, from Amazon's used books options for $10. Both of these books are mainly eye candy and inspiration. The patterns are to die for. Drool worthy. Stunning. I could go on and on. I will someday knit a Starmore. Likely one of her cabled sweaters and not a fair isle. And I will certainly knit more Cookie A socks (I've already done her Monkey socks twice).  For now I'll just enjoy the view.

Fail

Guess I should have kept my mouth shut last week when I said I had been good about not buying yarn. Oops.

Well, Liberty's Yarns is running a 35% off sale on all her stuff for the month of April. That's just way too good to pass up. I got two skeins of her Bluetopia (BFL) Sock yarn.

The first is Tea Party. Yummy shades of nearly every color of the muted rainbow. I can not wait to see how this will knit up!

The second skein is Halloween. I loved this colorway the first time I way it back in the fall in roving form, but it was sold out then. Classic Halloween colors of orange, black, purple and green. Gorgeous, saturated, and dark. The yarn itself looks to be a fine fingering weight with a tight twist. It is soft and lusterous. Should make absolutely stunning socks.