Distraction

If I could find a pair of size 5 needles, I'd so be casting on for this. 
With this:

From here.

Oh, wait.  I found a pair of size 4s.  Close enough...

The scarf is a-blockin'

And mango's a-rockin'!

I finished (finished!!) the red scarf yesterday, and immediately soaked and blocked it. It's still drying, but I'm going to make the deadline, with time to spare!
Yee-haw!
I'll try to remember to get a pic before I package it up for OFA. (I forgot with last year's scarf...)

I love the color of wool I used - and I've got a sweater's-worth of it left over and a powerful yen for a red sweater. I'll set the bag next to the bag of teal wool that I'm going to use to assuage my powerful yen for a teal sweater... Of course, both of those bags are behind the bag of handspun Cotswold yarn (because I've already started a sweater with that), and the bin of Goldie yarn (which I'm dying to knit a sweater with.)

And that's just the sweaters. I may be getting a little behind...

The Black Hole of Knitting

That's where I am with this red scarf.



It's a Palindrome. It's endless. I knit and knit and knit and knit, and it doesn't grow.
The deadline is looming.

Back to the knitting...

November 1st. Is it NaBloPoMo?

I'm three-quarters of the way through the second bobbin of the Merino-Tencel. Here's a look at bobbin one:The second batch of roving seems to have longer runs of the teal - not that I'm objecting. I'm dying of curiosity to see what it will look like plyed.
I've been working on the gray/black scarf, as well. I won't bother with a photo - it looks just like the last pic I put up, only about twice as long.

We've been wrapping up the garden. Madman dug the rest of the carrots, and has been rototilling diligently, getting ready to put it to bed for the winter.
Tonight for supper was the last of the swiss chard, which unbelievably was still growing, despite cold, snow, wind, and rain. Served up with baked potatoes, and a nice slab of mooseloaf.
Only in Vermont.

The Dark-side of the Scarf

Laurie expressed interest in seeing the back of my scarf-in-progress.


All those sl1wyif and sl1wyib stitches give you lots of little carries on the backside. There's a shadowy image of the diamonds that is sort of interesting, though. If I was totally insane slightly masochistic, I'd be knitting this in the round, so there would be no 'wrong side.' But I don't really need to be any crazier than I already am, so I'm continuing with the original plan.

Post 200. Whoda thunk it?

I was hoping to think of something special for a milestone post. But the most special thing going on seems to be that I put a knot in my back from spinning too much, and had to take a few days applying heat, resting, and mostly groaning. Alternating with grumbling. And jonesing for the wheel...

Here's what I've got so far:


One thing I've learned is that it takes a looooong time to fill a bobbin with singles for laceweight. I'm getting close to being halfway through that first 2oz batch of merino-tencel. At this rate, I may finish the plying in time for cake and ice cream at my 100th birthday party.

I did manage to get a little knitting done. The scarf moves forward:

It's actually a simple slip-stitch pattern, with only one color at a time in play. I like the way it looks more complicated than it is.

And today started with a cold rainy morning - perfect for staying indoors and baking. I invented a recipe for oatmeal/apple/walnut scones. Though, technically it's really a bannock, since it's baked in one piece.


Want a closer look?

I'm going to try to sneak in a little spinning today, now that my back is better. I just need to remember to step away from the wheel...

There's a word for that in German

Looky!Two and a half repeats! With no major errors!
Well, I did have to rip 2 rows and reknit. It was a Hubris Error. I thought I had the pattern down, and didn't look at the book.
You know that feeling of supreme-confidence-of-"I-know-exactly-what-I'm-doing"-that-suddenly-plummets-as-you-look-down-and-realize-you've-royally-screwed-up.
Yeah, there's gotta be a word for that...

Wine, Knittin', and Wrong (Only because that one was easier to come up with something than Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax, Cabbages and Kings)

The elderberry wine is happily bubbling away in its carboy. When a sufficiency of sediment has settled out, we'll re-rack it, then re-rack again if more sediment presents. Then into bottles it will go, corking will commence, and the wine will be laid down to age. Sometime around this time next year, we'll be tasting it. Then, and only then, will we know if we screwed it up or if we produced a wonder.

The ugly pillowcase that was sacrificed is now a new and terribly interesting color. It's still ugly, but it's now a prettier ugly.

Madman decided to re-pitch yeast in the mead and add some honey. (His avocation is beermaking, so I defer to him in all things brew-y. We are both masters of yeast - I bake, he brews, and life is eternally good.)
(Just as an aside, we hauled out the mead carboy at around 9am yesterday. After looking, and smelling, we decided to taste. He siphoned out a good sample, we tasted and tasted. "Hmmm... Not bad..." "Much better than the last time we tasted it." "Is there alcohol left in here, ya think?" "I think there is! Here, have another taste." Is it decadent to be sampling mead at 9oclock of a Sunday morning?)

I ripped out the failed swatch, shifted down a needle size, and cast on again, with one less repeat of the pattern stitch. I've got this much done. Help me now pretend I don't see a rather large mistake on the left side...

I said, we're ignoring that...
*Sigh*
So, if for every repeat of a diamond, I have to rip back half a diamond, how many repeats will I have to knit before
a) I finish the scarf, or
b) I commit hara-kiri with a set of size 00 dpns.

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Sundays are for Busy

It's a typical fall day in Vermont - cold and rainy, wet and miserable.
So Madman and I played indoors instead of outside.
Today was the day for straining off the gooshy fruit from the elderberry wine.
We sacrificed an ugly pillowcase to the cause.
We used it to line another 5gallon bucket, dumped in the elderberry goosh, and tied it up.


Then we hung it high:
It took a little adjusting to get the string length just right. Too long, and the bag dipped into the surface of the wine. Too short, and the corners of the pillowcase stuck out and dripped on the outside of the bucket. (Note to self: next time sew the corners to box up the bottom of the pillowcase. No corners = no problem.)
It was fun for the next few hours, listening to the dripping. At times it was playing a merry little tune that made us both smile.
We dragged out a glass carboy that held a long neglected batch of Apple Ginger Honey Mead that I had made a zillion or so years ago, that we thought had failed. We figured we'd dump it so we could use the carboy for our new efforts.

But it looks good... And it smells good (not so listerine-y as it did when it was younger.) As an experiment, Madman put a fresh airlock on it and actually got a bubble.
Scratch the plan to dump it. We might re-pitch yeast, add a little more honey, and give it another shot. Or, if the jostling around re-activated what yeast was in there, we might just go ahead and bottle it...
We used our only remaining carboy to rack the elderberry when the dripping stopped.


But soon, we'll be needing something to put this in:


It's a combination of blackberries and our own concord grapes. It smells divine. Madman's turning into quite the winemaker.

In between all that alcoholic goodness, I used up some apples to make a nice apple gallette:
And there's currently a loaf of bread baking. I think we have the best-smelling kitchen in Vermont today.

And in knitting news,
There actually is knitting news. (Hey, look! I remembered how!) I finished this hat. Just have to tuck in the ends and block it, then it goes in the For-Christmas-Gifts pile.
And I have a lovely failed swatch. Wicked Good Stepmother wants a scarf made from the gray and black alpaca. I found a stitch pattern I loved in Barbara Walker's The Craft of Multi-Color Knitting and cast on.
Too wide. And too loose. So I'm going to eliminate a repeat, and go down a needle size. I love ripping out failed swatches. Truly I do...

Once more, with feeling!

This summer has been hard on my knitting. Granted, I got a lot of spinning done, in fits and spurts, but the knitting has come hard.
I knit a little on the sleeves of my Cotswold sweater while sitting with my mother, but they got set aside when I got home, and I haven't been able to pick them up again yet.

I knit a square for this project right after losing Mom, because it felt right.

I had joined Summer of Socks on Rav at the beginning of summer. (It's all Cookie's fault...) Good thing the theme was Low Stress, because here's how much I got done:

In my defense, that's double-knitting, and I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it for more than a few stitches at a time. It required a lot more focus than I was capable of this summer.

The only thing I've been able to pick up and actually work on is this:

A red scarf for Norma. AnnaMarie gave me the yarn.
Here was some knitting that felt right.


(ETA: I screwed up that last post - hit enter too soon and the little devil published with just the title. Imbrium hit at that moment & commented, and I just had to leave it, after that beautiful comment...)

New! Improved! Now with actual knitting content!

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