Somewhere up above there’s a pig zooming around in the clouds, and somewhere down below they’re playing ice hockey, because surprise, surprise, I actually finished a knitting project.
Yes, I finally finished the Spectra (designed by Stephen West) that I started way back in August. It’s not that I didn’t love knitting it, I just took my time with it. I cast on during the dog days of summer, and knit from time to time in the cool days of fall. I let it languish during the frigid days of winter–when one needs a warm scarf the most–and picked it up to finish a couple of days before the official start of spring. Since there has been a significant snow storm nearly every week since February, and there’s still a lot of snow on the ground, I don’t feel all that guilty about finishing it in the spring. It’s still cool and gusty out, even though the sun is starting to feel a little warmer on my back. I may just get a couple of weeks’ wear out of this before retiring it until the fall.
I guess one of the reasons I worked on it so sporadically was due to the weight of yarn I used. The pattern calls for fingering weight. I chose sport weight yarn. I’m happy with the results, but damn, the more I worked on the scarf, the heavier it got. The solid color is Filatura Di Crosa sport weight wool; the multi is Noro Silk Garden Lite. This was my first time knitting with Filatura Di Crosa. The yarn is super warm, very soft, and very, uh, sproingy. It springs back just a little when touched. I’m a big Noro superfan, but the Silk Garden Lite, as with all Noro yarns, is scratchy and unevenly plied in places. It goes from thin to thick and back again frequently. I hate the really thick stitches that stand out among the thinner ones, but you can’t beat Noro for astounding color changes. A little Eucelin should take care of the scratchiness–it’s something Noro knitters know they’re going to encounter.
I wore Spectra today and I received a compliment on it from the cashier at the grocery store. She is also a knitter and appreciated a hand-knit when she saw one. She is a regular customer at Seed Stitch Fine Yarn as well. It proves once again that knitters are everywhere!
I don’t have any photos of me wearing the scarf because today I didn’t have anyone to take a photo of me. I took a few by holding the camera out in front of me but they didn’t turn out well.
I wouldn’t rule out making another Spectra in the future, but I’ll make it in the fingering weight the pattern calls for. So that brings me to my next crossroad: Which UFO should I finish next? I have a Noro sweater almost halfway done, but I’ll pick up something smaller first. In the running are the Cambrian Cowl from Coastal Knits, Lion Brand’s Cloudsong Cowl, and the Jaywalker socks. I’m leaning heavily towards the Cambrian Cowl. It takes bulky alpaca yarn, and it’s a very quick knit. The only reason I stopped is because the pattern called for blocking it a certain point before continuing so the cowl would lie flat when picking up stitches. I didn’t feel like blocking it.
And here it is. A skein of lovely Malabrigo kettle dyed pure merino wool in Tiger Lily. I won it from Hooked in Essex, MA. They called me on Tuesday, and I happened to be home that day thanks to a snow day off work. I drove to Essex today to pick it up and, man, I must be psychic because I kept thinking to myself all week, “Malabrigo would be nice, even if it’s just a skein or two.” I don’t know why I had Malabrigo in mind; I didn’t know what the door prizes were because I didn’t really peruse them when they were on display during the Crawl because they and the entry slips were positioned near the crock pots and baked goods. Hello, food?!?! Maybe it was just wishful thinking because Malabrigo can be a little pricy.
I’m happy to take home a free skein of Malabrigo. I’m going to scan the interwebs to find a nice one-skein project for this yarn. It’s unplied but super soft an snuggly. Any suggestions, dear knitters?
This is the first Yarn Crawl door prize I’ve ever won. My sister and I seem to be on a door prize roll lately. Back in December, a local movie theater held a fundraiser to raise money to pay for the equipment needed to go digital. My sister entered their raffle and won dinner and a movie for two. We saw The Hobbit for free and then had dinner afterwards! Both the movie and dinner were awesome.
While at Hooked I picked up a pack of sewing needles because, as usual, I can’t find the dozen or so I already own. I have small notions bags stashed all over the house with knitting projects I’ve temporarily put down. So naturally, when I actually finish a project for the first time in a year, I can’t find any. So I bought more needles because I finally finished the Spectra scarf I started last August. I just need to weave in the ends and she’s ready to hit the town. This occasion will be celebrated with another fabulous photo shoot at the same location as the first, Forest River Park. Until then, enjoy some beautiful Essex scenery, and a giant lobster sign.
This looks almost like an Impressionist painting but I took it with my iPhone. I don’t know why it’s a little fuzzy but I like the effect.
Last week I baked a loaf of Rosemary Olive Bread from a Weight Watchers cookbook called Turn Up The Flavor. I didn’t have any olives but I had fresh rosemary and all the other ingredients so I made it without the olives. Let me tell you, fresh-baked bread is amazing. My whole house smelled like rosemary and cracked black pepper while this loaf baked in the oven. I’m proud of my freeform bread-shaping efforts here. I’ve only baked bread once before and I used loaf pans. This looks like a nice crusty boule from a bakery.
This bread is delicious and dense, especially when toasted and slathered with butter. I see more home-baked bread in my future.
The fiber is Mad Color Fiber Arts’ Blue Faced Leicester. The color is “Police Box Blue.”..wink, wink. I bought the notebook at my local comic book store the night before finding the fiber at Yarn Crawl. #proudscifinerd
It’s March, so once again it’s Yarn Crawl time! It’s time for the scenic drive from Salem to Gloucester and back again. This year’s crawl seemed a little scaled back for some reason. Maybe it’s the economy, the “sequester” or the cold weather, but the stores I visited were less crowded than usual. Even the Ravelry boards were quieter than usual as the Crawl approached. *shrug* I scaled back a bit as well, crawling on Saturday only due to impending bills and my dental payment plan of $330 looming this week. So I gave up my Sunday route of driving up Route 22 to Newburyport. Stupid root canal…
My sister/partner in crawling came along as usual but didn’t spend any money this year. I admire her restraint. I can’t say I practiced much of it myself Saturday, but compared to last year, I kinda sorta did. Saturday was a beautiful day; sunny but freezing. We started our crawl at our LYS as usual: Seed Stitch Fine Yarns in Salem.
For the second year local dyer Ana from Toil And Trouble had a huge table bursting with colorful yarn at the front of the store. Can I resist gorgeous sock yarn? No. No, I can’t. Look at this spread. Ana is a one-woman color factory! It was hard choosing what color I wanted, but I knew it would be sock yarn, and I knew I would pick up two skeins because I didn’t want to run out in case one skein wasn’t enough for a pair of socks. The sign to the left is cut off, but it reads “Need sweater quantities? Let’s do it!” I like the way she thinks! Unlike some of the other stores, Seed Stitch was pretty crowded. Andrea at the cash register greeted us when we came in and said with a smile, “I knew I’d be seeing you today!” I love Seed Stitch and I’m so glad they’re in my own town. I chose two skeins of single-ply Superwash Merino in the color Kelpie from the Mythos collection:
The flash on my camera’s obscuring the color a little, but you can see it pretty clearly. I like the little tags; they read “bookishly inspired.” At Seed Stitch I also picked up the Spring issue of Vogue Knitting–just in time for another storm and 8 inches of snow on the ground!
We left Salem and drove through Beverly on our way to Beverly Farms. I love driving through Beverly on Route 127 because the ocean is on the right the whole way. We pass beautiful houses; some were built in the 1700s, some are new and mind-boggling mansions, as well as the beautiful campus of Endicott College. I always sort of hold my breath before plunging into Yarns In The Farms much like a diver hitting the water because this store is very tiny and during Yarn Crawl it’s packed full of people. It makes me a little claustrophobic because the layout of the store means that people tend to mill around the entrance. I was pleasantly surprised to find the store fairly empty. There is a large table near the front that was switched from a horizontal position to vertical and that made a lot more room near the front. I was happy to have a little breathing room (literally) but I’m sure they had a ton of people in and out during the Crawl. I say this every year, but I love Yarns In The Farms for their eclectic vibe and funky attitude. Some day I’ll take a class here, I swear! My sister was disappointed that she didn’t see any CYE pattern booklets for sale this year. I didn’t buy any yarn but I bought two small packets of roving for needle felting.
Leaving Yarns In The Farms, we drive for miles and miles and miles through residential neighborhoods until we get to Gloucester. It’s only a half hour or so, but sometimes the remainder of the drive seems endless until I start seeing signs for downtown Gloucester and its tourist attractions. I get somewhat restless until I know I’m approaching Stage Fort Park and the famous Gloucester fisherman statue. (No, it’s not the Gorton Fisherman, but it’s down the street from their offices). Now Sis and I are excited: we’re heading towards Gloucester’s notorious Coveted Yarns–famous for staying open crazy late hours and during blizzards. Their Yarn Crawl hours this year for all four days were 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM. I know I can get quality spinning fiber here, and it’s become an annual tradition that Heather, aka Mad Color Fiber Company, takes over their back room with a huge rack of her hand-dyed yarn and fiber. She never disappoints and this year was no exception.
Coveted Yarns was not as crowded as usual for the crawl; last year the cash register line stretched back to almost the last room in the store. I counted 20 people when I got on the line and staff members actually went down the line distributing free yarn to make up for the long wait! This year there were only three people ahead of me in line. I picked up some amazing Blue-Faced Leicester in a color called “Police Box Blue.” Heh heh– It’s a special reference for special people. *coughscifigeekscough* Heather and I had a great fangirl discussion of the sci-fi TV show Doctor Who (it’s about an alien who travels through time and spacein a spaceship that looks like a blue old-time British police box, in case you didn’t know). My spinning stash was greatly enhanced on Saturday. In addition to the solid blue, I bought two braids of Shetland Combed Top in Acid Wash.
The batteries on my digital camera died so i don’t have photos of the Police Box Blue on my spindle. So sad.
It’s become an annual tradition to pick up another bumper sticker at Coveted Yarns. Look at my car! So classy!
This year, a new store participated in the crawl. Hooked Knitting in Essex opened their doors in January. I do love investigating a new yarn store. Foregoing Route 127, I took Route 133 over to Essex, and I could hop on the highway or stay on it to get home from there. I like to have my driving routes perfectly planned, so if I seem a little OCD about describing them, forgive me. 🙂
The first thing we did when we got to Essex was pull into Woodman’s Fried Clams. This family-owned business has been thriving for over 100 years and is famous for inventing the fried clam. But I don’t like seafood, so I go there for the onion rings. Best. Onion. Rings. Ever. Seriously. Look at them! Woodmans is open year-round. In the summer the lines are out the door and around the block for their fried clams and fresh lobsters, and even on a cold day in March the line was almost out the door.
Sated by onion rings, we set off to find Hooked Knitting, and, as far as Essex goes, the store couldn’t be more conveniently located. It’s on the first floor of a bank building, but in the back, right on the only public parking lot in town. Since this was where I had planned to park anyway, I was pretty happy. (The OCD thing applies to parking, as well. Sorry!)
Hooked Knitting is a small and very pleasant store. The owner stocks some high-end stuff like Malabrigo and Shibui, with a good magazine rack in the back. What set Hooked apart from the other stores on the crawl? Food! Yep–they had a lovely spread in a small side room with three crock pots, coffee and some baked goods. “Have some lunch!” the owner greeted everyone as they came into the shop. It was here that I made my most extravagant purchase, and, as my dental payment looms, I feel a little guilty about it. I bought this gorgeous ShibuiKnits silk scarf kit. Look at those beautiful colors! There was a sample knit in the store and the silk knits up beautifully. These colors just got to me, they’re so organic. This will surely be a classic wardrobe staple once it’s done.
So all in all Saturday was a good day. Lots of new yarn to spin, lots of fun stuff to knit. And the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem had some beautiful live Shetland sheep for visitors to greet outside the museum. They were holding a fiber and wool event! I don’t know if they held it during the crawl on purpose or not, but sadly, I didn’t go, deciding to buy yarn instead of learning about it’s history. Most of the events sounded like they were geared more towards children, but I would have liked to watch the woman who spun fiber from the Angora rabbit sitting on her lap. Oh well. Maybe she’ll be back next year.
I can’t believe today is the last day of August. It’s the start of the last weekend of summer. Monday is Memorial Day. I don’t know where the summer went, but I for one am always happy to wave goodbye to summer and to embrace fall. I look forward to some good sweater-knitting weather, but in the meantime, a scarf is a nice transition project to bridge summer and fall, don’t you think?
Today I took my knitting to the park for a photo shoot. It was glad to get out of the house, and cooperated with me fully while I subjected it to a variety of artsy fartsy, yet always dignified, poses. This is Stephen West’s Spectra, a nice unisex scarf that can be so different from one knitter to the next due to the staggering color possibilities! Why, there are over 1500 projects on Ravelry, if one cares to scroll through all of them. I began knitting Spectra on August 12th in a short-row class at one of my LYS’s, Cranberry Fiber Arts in Hamilton, MA. I had never yet taken a class at this particular shop and I was eager to do so. I was not disappointed. The class was small, only four of us, but Laurie gave us the benefit of all her wisdom and skill, making sure everyone had at least one wedge of the scarf done so that everyone understood all the steps and could continue at home. Laurie rocks!
I am so in love with knitting this scarf. Stephen guarantees that knitters won’t be able to resist watching the colors change, and damn it, he’s right! I’ve become addicted to what I call “wedging.” Wedging is fun! Wedging is fabulous! Wedges are handy because they provide a great stopping point when I put the project down. There’s only one little, teensy, rather daunting detail of this scarf: it requires 86 wedges total. There’s no doubt the results are worth it, judging by all the incredible photos on Ravelry. It just takes time to get to the end. It’s all well and good to count by hand the first few wedges, but once they accumulate, there’ s no way I’m going to run my hands up the scarf, counting each and every wedge once I get to, oh, twenty? Thirty? I could use a row counter to count each wedge instead of row, but I opted for an even lower-than low-tech solution to my counting conundrum. Behold. —>
Simple (and sticky) yet effective. I was using the sticky note to cover each row as I knit it when I began the pattern, but the progression is easy to memorize once you get the hang of it.
The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn. Laurie knit a sample for her shop in sport weight, so I picked out similar yarn for my Spectra because her sampled used Noro Silk Garden Lite, and I loved the colors. The solid color is Filatura Di Crosa’s Sportwool in medium gray. The variegated yarn is Noro Silk Garden Lite in color 2o38.
I’ve been knitting this for the better part of the past two weeks. I’ve had to put it down a couple of times when the yarn started sticking to the needles because it grew too hot in my sad, air conditioner-less little house. Autumn can’t come soon enough.
Spectra wasn’t the only one enjoying the last days of summer.
Another August, another Fiber Revival has come and gone; the chance to sit, knit, spin and shop on the beautiful grounds of the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm in Newbury, MA. The weather for Saturday had been forecast as rainy with severe thunderstorms all week so I wasn’t sure I would even go until yesterday morning. The sun was shining and there weren’t any black clouds in the sky so I took a chance and drove up to the Merrimack Valley early in the morning, hoping to get an hour or two in before the weather broke. Fortunately, it never did. Yesterday was warm and glorious. There was yarn! There was beer! There was vintage baseball! Fiber enthusiasts gathered together in circles with their spinning wheels, and set up chairs under some awnings to work on their knit and crochet projects. One lady walked around the farm spinning on her drop spindle. Walking and spinning! As far as I could tell she didn’t drop it once. The farm’s MSPCA-rescued animals basked in the sunlight and the attention from the fiber-crazy (mostly) women who took over their stomping grounds for the day.
The festival seemed a little smaller to me this year, with fewer vendors. A few local shops who set up in past years were absent yesterday. The vendors who attended did a brisk business. There were plenty of spinning wheels to try, and The Yarn And Fiber Company brought spindles made by the shop owner’s fiance. They were beautiful. I certainly don’t need another spindle, but that’s never stopped me before. There was rosewood and kingswood and–be still my heart–purple heart! I was very tempted by the beautiful kingswood spindles, but I’ve been dying for an all-purple heart spindle for ages, plus I liked the whorl’s shape, sort of like a medieval scepter. A new spindle purchase must be accompanied by a new fiber purchase (my own rule) so I picked out this beautiful lavender and blue merino/silk blend in a color called Watercolor from Enchanted Knoll Farm. There were so many beautiful braids to choose from!
My final purchase of the day was some gorgeous blue laceweight wool/silk yarn from Pinestar Studio. I have a shawl pattern I want to start making, but I’ve been re-thinking my choice of dk cotton yarn. This will be much lighter and prettier for a shawl. I know I sound like a broken record, but there it is, that turquoise blue color again. I know. I can’t help it. I’m fixated on it.
Speaking of being fixated, please welcome once again: chickens!
I know I post about chickens more than a person has a right to, but check him out! You have to admit he’s stately and magnificent! Look at that regal bearing! 🙂 His name is Rusty and he had full run of the farm, hanging out with the festival goers, allowing farm staff to carry him around, and generally coming thisclose to everyone so he could emit the loudest cock-a-doodle-doo right in everyone’s ear. Here, he’s standing right in front of me while I sat and ate lunch. He stood about a foot high.
He was especially drawn to the spinning wheels. Here’s Rusty holding court with the ladies who spin:
He milled around happily in the center of the spinning circle. As you can see, everyone got a big kick out of meeting Rusty. OK, that’s it with chickens. For now…
There was a vintage baseball game taking place on the grounds, Essex, MA vs. Brooklyn, NY. I was born in NYC, and I now live on the North Shore of Massachusetts, so I was really confused about who I should root for! Both teams seemed to be in white and blue, and I couldn’t tell who was who, so I went back to yarn buying.
I left the farm and headed down the street to Tender Crop Farm, a wonderful farm that has a huge indoor farm stand on premises. There are animals in the fields and a small petting area, and a very New England-y gift shop on the second floor above the farm produce. I picked out some beautiful peaches and asian pears, along with some small eggplants and a few ears of fresh corn. Did you know that you can cook corn quickly indoors without having to boil it in a pot simply by leaving the husk on and microwaving the corn for 5 minutes? Neither did I! But I’m going to try it now.
Thanks for reading my blog. Please enjoy some bucolic images of the beautiful Massachusetts countryside.
I never get tired of photographing this beautiful farmhouse. I want to live in it!Barn and field, Tender Crop Farmdried flowers hanging from the ceiling.Llama!Vintage baseball teams. Old-style rules, no gloves.Yarn for sale!Beer truck’s here!
I had a rare burst of energy yesterday (Sunday) that included some much-dreaded but much-neede housekeeping and some lightbulb changing, topped off with a little domestic goddess-ness. Godliness? In other words, I baked homemade bread. For the first time ever. And you know what? It was easy. I’ve always assumed it was somewhat of a chore, with the yeast rising and the kneading, but it was a cinch. Forget those fancy bread-making machines. All you need is a big bowl, an oven and a pair of (clean) hands.
I pulled out a 1972 edition of Sandra and Bruce Sandler’s The Home Bakebook of Natural Breads And Goodies andfollowed the basic whole wheat bread recipe. All that it required was whole wheat flour, dry yeast, a little salt and a little sugar. First I dissolved the yeast in warm water for 10 minutes. After that, I poured in all the dry ingredients and mixed well. Kneading the bread was a lot of fun, and very satisfying. I felt like a professional baker! Now the fun begins.
Shape the dough and place into loaf pans.
Cover with clean dishtowels and let the bread rise to double its original height.
The dough has risen. Make decorative cuts if desired.
Voila! Fresh, warm, toasty bread!
The best part: It’s eatin’ time!
According to the Sandlers, the bread should have lots of tiny holes, if kneaded and prepared correctly. Otherwise it’s full of large holes. Looks like small holes to me! The whole house smelled like fresh bread, it was incredible. I’ve never eaten warm, just-baked bread before. It was fantastic with a little margarine on it. There’s no white flour in this,only whole wheat, so the bread is incredibly dense. I’m happy because now I’m all set for sandwich bread for several days.
The recipe made two loaves. I made the full recipe so I could freeze one loaf. But I posted pictures on Facebook and a co-worker Liked the photo last night, then complained to me today that he had expected a fresh loaf of bread and some jam by the kitchen area this morning. I felt bad. 😦 I don’t know how well this would go over with morning coffee for my co-workers. I’d like to bake some molasses-sweetened anadama bread next. Autumn will be here before we know it, and pumpkin puree will be more readily available. I’m dying to try the pumpkin bread. Maybe I’ll bring that into work one of these days. If my co-workers are nice to me… 😉
Happy Ginger Home 