October Leaves

Although this could be a post about the glorious fall foliage display C and I observed this week in our travels, I am instead talking of the October Leaves fingerless mitts I just finished. My sister requested a pair of fingerless mitts for work. Since knitting requests from family are like kryptonite to me, I eagerly set out to find the perfect pattern. I've made several different mitts over the years and find my favorites are the ones knit with fingering weight yarn (sock yarn). They fit close to the hand so they are unobtrusive when you are trying to type or use your hands for any reason, yet they still provide plenty of warmth. I also wanted a pattern with a bit of interest. The October Leaves pattern by Abbie Tilden looked to be the perfect choice.

The color requested was grey or black and a quick search of my stash produced a gorgeous grey superwash sock yarn. I was off and running. The mitts only took 11 days to complete. The pattern calls for cables up both sides of the hand. But after a few rows in this fashion, I decided the outside cable was too much. I much preferred the single cable running up the thumb side and blooming into the leaves that frame the thumb.This pattern is super easy. I manged most of the 4 stitch cables without a cable needle. When I did need a cable needle I used a lightly sanded round toothpick since none of the cable needles I own were small enough for such fine yarn. This worked wonderfully. The only other modification I made was to knit the top (hand) ribbing on smaller needles to keep the fit snug around the knuckles. There's nothing worse on mitts than the top edge being loose and bunching up.

The only problem I had with this project was the yarn. The yarn was a gorgeous mottled grey handdyed sock yarn. It is delightfully soft and a pleasure to knit with. However, I washed the mitts and then laid them outside to dry. When I went back to check on them a few hours later, I discovered the side facing up had turned green!I've never had a yarn change color on me. It was so weird. After checking the yarn label, I found the dyer DID say to dry them out of direct sunlight, so it is entirely my fault. The green was an interesting color and had I been able to get the second side to fade the same way they might have been usable. However, the request was not for green mitts so I took to my dye pot and overdyed them. Two dyebaths later, the mitts emerged a fabulous charcoal grey.

They are on my hands now as I type and I adore them. Sis, I do hope you love them too. It's a wrench parting with them but it makes me feel good knowing you'll have warm (and I must say, smartly dressed) hands thanks to me.

Sherlock

A few months ago when R first told me about the new Sherlock coming to PBS's Masterpiece Mystery,  I was dubious. The preview looked flashy and I just couldn't imagine Sherlock Holmes set in current day London. Few can match Jeremy Brett's portrayal of the sleuth in my book. Thus I tucked it away in the back of my mind and more or less forgot about it. While browsing the channel guide last night I discovered the show had started so I decided to give it a watch. Wow. I mean, WOW. Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing as Holmes. He plays the fast talking detective to a T. The character observes everything and processes his observations lightening fast. Martin Freeman's Watson is an excellent foil to the genius. I love the way the show uses text cues to help the viewer get the clues. My one and only disappointment was the scene where they tracked the GPS location of the victim's cell phone and were stymied by it's apparent location. Given other clues in the scene, specifically Mrs. Hudson's announcement, it was pretty obvious where the phone was and who the killer was. But everyone was standing around scratching their heads. Sherlock does, of course, figure it out, and maybe it was just a dramatic pause to show his thought process. Other than that one minor complaint, I give the show highest marks.

Favorite line "Dear god, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring."

Sherlock is available on DVD as well as on demand at PBS.org (I assume this will only be for a while though).

Good stuff

My Future Primitive order arrived this week and as expected, this soap rocks.The soaps are all wrapped in pretty glassine paper with cigar band labels. They smell phenomenal (although you can not smell them through the wrapper, I opened up the ends to smell them.) In addition to the 3 soaps I ordered, Tiggy sent a sample of her White Witch soap which immediately found a home by the bathroom sink. I've been using it all week and it is simply divine. I know, I'm gushing, but really, this soap is quite possibly the best I've ever tried. Not only does it look glorious, but it is also darn good soap. The bars are nice and hard and work into a creamy highly scented lather. The scent is long lasting on my skin. The ultimate test is face washing. I can use this on my face with out even a hint dryness. I will definitely be buying more soaps from her.

Next good thing this week is applesauce. With local apples being dirt cheap and my co-worker extolling the virtues of homemade applesauce, I decided to give it a try. I washed and cut up enough apples to fill my 6 quart dutch oven (peels, cores and all go in the pot). I used a variety of apples...Rome, Macintosh, Stayman, and Yellow Delicious and just about an inch of water. Cover and cook on high until the water boils. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples are super soft. I let it cool slightly then ran the cooked apples through my food mill. From about 5 quarts of apples, I ended up with 3 pints of applesauce.
So so yummy and incredibly easy. 2 pints went into the freezer and the other jar will disappear in no time, I'm sure. I will definitely be buying more apples this week to make a big batch for the freezer.

I finished reading Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton this week. It is the first in a knitting themed cozy mystery series. This was an enjoyable, light read. It is obvious it is meant to be a series as there were tons of characters introduced and a lot of story lines that didn't seem to have resolutions. The characters were all very likable and the setting a dream come true for a knitter (the knit shop is set side by side with a coffee shop/cafe in an old farmhouse, sigh). It was refreshing to read a cozy where the main character didn't end up at death's doorstep through their stupid heroics. I'm sure I'll be reading more from this series.

Now I'm trying to settle on my next book and having difficulty finding something to fit my mood. I've started several books this week and nothing seems the right fit. Instead, I'm watching season 4 of Corner Gas. Hilarious!

Scary Gary

I've been meaning to post about this comic for ages.

 Scary Gary follows the "life" of vampire Gary. Gary is reformed and doesn't hunt people. He lives with his henchman, Leopold, a goblin-type creature who is most definitely NOT reformed. The strip is hilarious and smart. Do check it out if you want a good laugh.

Soap p*rn

Everyone knows, I've got a weird obsession with soap (the stuff that gets you clean, not that crap on afternoon TV). My obsession with soap led me to start soaping a few years back. I've made a good number of batches of soap, some good, few unusable, most just average. Soap making is easy. Soap artistry, on the other hand, is something I have yet to achieve. I'm not giving up soaping. But I have allowed myself the luxury and shear pleasure of browsing (and buying) soaps from some mighty talented soapers. Here I'm highlighting the ones I ordered from recently. (pictures captured from each vendor).

I picked up a few melt and pour type soaps from Solstice Scents a month or so ago.

Monster Mash

Harvest Moon

Monster Mash and Harvest Moon.  These smell great and are quiet pretty to look at. She uses a good glycerin soap base that isn't at all drying to the skin. They leave a light scent on your skin as well. If you like M and P soaps, these would be great to try.

But what really makes my heart sing is fabulous cold process soap. And boy-howdy have I found some FANTASTIC examples.

The Morbid the Merrier has become my number one favorite indy perfumer. Her Sleepy Hollow scents are fabulous. And her general collection Absinthe and Cocoa Absinthe are my new favorite day to day scents. She released a few soaps related to the Sleepy Hollow series and I snatched them both up...

Baltus

Brom

Sadly, there are no companion perfumes, but I can content myself with soaps. These are generous 4-5 oz bars wrapped with a paper band adorned with Lysa's sideshow-esque labels. There's a sort of plastic half wrap that keeps the tops and bottoms of the soaps clean while sitting on the shelf but still allows you to smell the delicious scents. I haven't tried them yet but am storing them in my chest of drawers where they keep my tee shirts smelling yummy.

Next up I picked up some soaps form English Major Soaps. These soaps all have a literary theme. They come wrapped in pages from an old book. (For the life of me I can't get pictures to load so you'll have to click the links to see the soaps.) The 3 I chose are Cask of Amontillado, Beowulf and Dante's Inferno. The imbed in Cask is supposed to resemble the bars of a cell, awesome, and the scent is definitely wine like. Beowulf is scented with dragonsblood. Dante had the least amount of scent so I put that one to use right away. The soap lathers well and is gentle on the skin.

When I saw Future Primitive on someone's blog (might have been TMTM) I about fell off my seat. Now THESE are some rockin' soaps.

No. 11

One Ring

Lagoon

Her scents lean more towards nature (lavender, geranium, patchouli, etc). I pretty much want every scent she offers. She's in England and shipping can add up  fast so I limited myself to 2 bars and a sample. One Ring, Lagoon and No 11. I'm waiting for my order to arrive but I am sure they won't disappoint.

Beads!

I've spent a few nights this week working on stringing the beads for my Shipwreck shawl. As I said last time, the pattern calls for 5000 beads. I've strung about 1000 beads using a dental floss threader. It was slow going at first since the threader is rather flimsy and I wasn't able to just skim it through the jar of beads and pick them up. I was picking up a few beads between my fingers and more or less feeding them onto the threader. Very tedious. I've since discovered I can put a small pile of beads in the palm of my hand and pick them up with the threader pretty easily (note to self, get a big eye needle!) This has greatly speeded up the process, not to mention saved the fatigue on my fingers. The pattern calls for 8/0 seed beads, which is what I bought. I tested a few I had on hand before placing my order and thought they would work fine. Now that I have many strung, they seem a bit small. They fit rather snugly on the yarn. I guess that's good, they won't shift around when the are placed in the shawl. And with the number of beads needed, using 6/0 would add quite a bit of weight. I finished the Madeira pattern this morning. A few more knit rows then the stitch count doubles and I start the net. I'm excited to start beading. The shawl has been fun so far. The net is going to be tedious. 590 stitches per round. All yo/k2tog. For a jillion rows. For some people, this time flies, for others it's mind numbingly boring. I don't know which camp I'll land in, hopefully the first!!

Knitting roundup

Finally, a finished object.

These are the Purl When Ready socks from The Big Book of Socks knit in Liberty's Yarn Bluetopia Tea Party. The color defies photography, they are much prettier in person. The yarn is a light fingering with a tight twist. Knit on US 0 needles it produced a dense yet still drape-able fabric. The socks are very comfortable and I hope the combination of tight twist yarn knit at a firm gauge will result in a long lasting pair of socks. I am not a fan of knitting socks at this gauge because they seem to take forever. My current sock projects are the Hermione's Everyday sock in Wollmeise Twin and a plain vanilla sock in Knitter's Brewing Company Sockaholic. Both of are true to heavy fingering weight, much more pleasurable to knit.

Most of my knitting time the last week has been devoted to my new obsession, the Shipwreck Shawl. I have no idea what triggered this wild hare, but I am smitten. Shipwreck is a circular shawl knit in fingering weight yarn. The center is a lace medallion made of 3 separate designs. The rest of the shawl is a randomly beaded net pattern. I'm knitting mine as the pattern calls for in Knit Picks Bare Gloss yarn. After the shawl is complete you dye it. I intend to dye mine similar to the original, a stormy blue/gray.

This picture was taken a few days ago having finished the center strawberry pattern, bleeding hearts pattern and just beginning the final motif, Madeira. I am now 2/3 done with Madeira. The charts are pretty easy to follow, 10 stitch repeats. There is some trickiness with some of the rows where you have to move your starting row marker. This was confusing to me at first, especially the rows where you move the marker to the right. I've had 2 rows with mistakes that I had to tink back (un-knit each stitch, one by one) entire rows. This is very frustrating and time consuming, but in lace you just can't fudge over mistakes. It is pretty easy to spot mistakes on the next row, though, so I've not had to tink back more than one row. I hope to start the beaded net by midweek. I purchased my beads from Artbeads (love them). I couldn't find a bead mix anywhere that floated my boat, so I made my own using 10 different shades of blue and black.

They are all Toho rounds size 8/0. Colors include: Amethyst Gunmetal, Navy Iris, Rainbow Black Diamond, Rainbow Moss Green, Iris Gray, Matte Gunmetal, Metallic Hematite, Matte Metallic Navy Iris, Silver-lined Sapphire, Deep Plum-lined Aqua. I think the mix is beautiful and am anxious to see how it looks on the shawl. The pattern calls for 5000 beads. Most of the tips and hints I've read advise not to string them all at once. I'll probably work on stringing later today so I'm ready to go when I reach the net.

Button jar

Hands up everyone that loves button jars. If you grew up with a grandma, mom or aunt who sewed, you probably know the joy that is a button jar. They are an endless source of fun for a child...sorting by color or size or number of holes, just rolling it around to hear the sound it makes. As an adult, I think they are aesthetically beautiful. Not to mention useful if you lose a button or are a crafter like me. And anyone who sews knows buttons are not that cheap any more. All the more reason my heart leaped when I found this little gem at the flea market today.

A jar full of green buttons marked $4.50 (although the vendor only charged me $4, sweet). C asked me what I had planned for them. Nothing really. They'll sit on the shelf and look pretty. I'll pluck a gem here and there when I have need. The kid in me could not resist dumping them all out when I got home and looking for treasure.

The jar did not disappoint. These were my favorites. Look at those colors! And see the nifty little 3 leaf clover on that one? Gotta find a special project for that one. Later I'll sort them and see how many are singles and how many are sets. The 8 year old in me is beaming.

Massive catching up post

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I posted! Summer leaves me lethargic and not all that talkative. But it's time for a bit of a catch up.

I read Mint Julep Murder by Carolyn Hart. This was the first time I've read one of her books. Sometimes her style rubbed me the wrong way but in hindsight I think it could be that I just didn't know the characters backgrounds (this book was #9 in a series) so some things were assumed the reader knew and understood, but I didn't. Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. Lots of red herrings and false leads so that it looked like just about ANYONE could have been the murderer.

I also finally got around to finishing Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot. This was another good read. Not a diet or exercise or motivation book, despite the title. It's a cozy mystery set on a college campus in New York City. The story revolves around a now-grown pop singer, Heather Wells, who's trying to make a go in life after her singing career ended. This murder was much easier to solve pretty early on, but Heather is a fun character who is easy to relate to. It looks like there may be more books in this series too which I think would be worth a look.

I started The Something That Happened in Pepperville but have set it aside. I'm all for quirky towns and quirky characters, but this one goes to extremes. Not a character or place was introduced that didn't have some weird foible. I need at least a bit of normalcy in there somewhere. Now I'm on to Frankly My Dear I'm Dead. Not far enough to make comments but chapter one was good. Oh, that is when I'm not playing word games. Amazon released 2 word games for Kindle this week which I'm finding WAY too addicting.

Sewing...I'm once again making bags for my Etsy shop and hope to get them listed in the next month or so. They still need buttons and photos taken, but I'm getting closer. I also just sewed the cutest little pair of house slippers.

The pattern comes from Amy Karol (Mail order #9). The sizes included are S (5-6), M (7-8) and L (9-10). I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe so I fall right in the middle. I tried the medium, but it's too small. Will try the large next time. I also used polar fleece for the soles rather than the cotton duck/canvas she calls for. So much cushier. The top fabric is a vintage cotton found at Shupp's Grove a few weeks back. These are perfect summer slippers.

I'm back to knitting. I finished the Multnomah shawl.

Used about 1 1/2 balls for 100purewool lace weight held double on US 5 needles. I did 13 lace repeats rather than 10. I could have done more for a larger shawl, but I just wanted it to be done. The pattern is easy and it's a cute little shawlette. I'm not crazy about the garter stitch middle. If I were to knit it again I'd probably do stockinette stitch.

I've been longing for a denim sweater since I first heard about the yarn (indigo dyed cotton yarn that fades and shrinks like denim jeans). There are several companies that produce denim yarn. When Elann announced a bag sale of True Blue denim yarn, I jumped at the chance to get a sweaters-worth for under $40.  The color is medium blue and I bought 2 bags of the same dye lot. I found the dye to be very inconsistent throughout the bags though. Some balls are much lighter than others. They evened out a bit in the wash, but I can still see where I changed balls.

I designed the pattern myself using Knitwear. Knit on Bond USM, keyplate 1, ribbing handknit on US 4 needles, 13 balls of Elle True Blue Denim yarn. Took only 5 days to complete (over the course of 3 weekends, working only a few hours at a time). I love my sweater machine for plain sweaters! After washing the sweater is so incredibly soft and light. I've got 7 balls left and am debating ordering another bag to make a sweater for C as well. I'm not really into matchy/matchy couples, but we could just make a point not to wear them at the same time! :)

Not even trying anymore

Remember way back in December when I talked about going on a yarn diet? How I was going to be good and knit from stash and not just buy yarn for the sake of buying yarn? Yeah, lets just try to forget that lofty goal. I've failed AGAIN. And with the whole not actually knitting thing going on, I feel strangely compelled to buy yarn so at least something is happening in my fiber world. It's a sickness, I know.

So here's the current fail. A week or so ago I got a ding on Ravelry that my name was mentioned on the Knitter's Brewing Company group. So I clicked over to see why. Lo and behold, I won their monthly drawing for a free skein of yarn. Sweet! I had only just discovered the site a week or two before that and signed up for the drawing on a whim. Lucky me! The indy dyer behind KBC, Wendy, uses a micro-brewery theme for her collection and has based all her yarns on cocktails. She has multi-color skeins as well as semi-solids. All sock yarns (75% superwash wool/25% nylon). I couldn't narrow my decision down to just one color and since she runs sales every Thursday (and this just happened to be a Thursday) I went ahead and ordered 2 skeins along with my freebie. The yarn arrived super quick, and adorably packaged.

Each skein is wrapped in tissue paper and nestled into its own foil stamped bag. I need to get pictures of the yarns unwrapped so you can see their gorgeousness, but there was a bit of an accident (involving a cat with a hairball, 'nuf said) so one of the yarns need to be washed (yuck) so no glamor shots just yet. The colors are lovely. The blue is called "Old Fashioned" and the grey is "Greyhound". These are both semi solids with subtle variations in tone. The pink multi is "Cabernet Harvest". It was much more pink in the skein than I had anticipated. However, when I unfurled the hank I discovered rich burgundys and dark olive greens hiding. Wendy includes a free pattern with each skein of yarn you buy. I chose Stashbuster and With a Twist. I also picked up a Knit Happy notepad which contains little post it notes, post it arrows and a notepad. Can't wait to get to knit some of this up!!