Tension and gauge

Hmm. I've been working on a gift sock while reading through my notes, mostly in an attempt at fidgeting productively. I think this was a bad idea. I just checked my gauge, and on size 0s with some Opal yarn, I'm at 9 spi. (9???! That's never happened to me before.) This would explain why the sock is looking much smaller (6.5" in diameter or so) than intended. The intended foot is size 7/7.5 (according to the boyfriend.) The gauge for the leg, knit last week before the massive stress kicked in, is 8 spi. Rii-iight.

When they call gauge "tension," they aren't joking! Tension in one's life can really mess with one's, well, tension!

I'm rather worried that this is going to be just too small. It's knit with 60 stitches in stockinette. I think I was assuming that my foot is a medium, it might work to do the same # of stitches I usually do, assuming someone's else's foot to be medium as well. A lot of people who presumably have bigger feet than I do seem to knit socks over 60 stitches. (Or maybe I'm imagining that.) I've reached the toes (actually gone past them, but that's a separate problem), so I thought I might finish the sock and then try to block it bigger, but I'm afraid that it's just not big enough. There's also the problem of having finished sock #1 a while back. I could frog 'em both, but...

If any of you out there have similarly sized feet and any hints, that's much appreciated!

Studying update: I think I'm feeling better than the other day. Yay! I can't wait to have this gosh-darn PhD exam over with. There's still quite a bit of review I need to do, but I'm in pretty good shape. Thanks for all your support!

Wake me when it's over*

You know it's bad when a friend calls and asks, "How's life? What have you been up to?" and you kind of half mutter/grumble/murmur, "Studying," unable to think of what else might be going on in a life.

She had to prompt me: husband, cats, garden, knitting, cooking, visit from the bro-in-law, flu shots, cats clawing around in the box spring of the bed... oh yeah. That "life" stuff. I've actually been doing small amounts of it, here and there. You know you're stressed when you need prompting. Somewhere on Sunday evening, buried under a mass of notes and a seemingly-endless project of sorting them, I kind of forgot about that other stuff. I just keep saying, "it will all be over soon... Friday, my exam will be over and I will be done!"

After Friday, I might begin to remember how to answer such questions as "What's up?" Currently, I'm suffering from what now seems like a bit of dementia: "I'd really like to deal with this historiographic category because it's been important in shaping my understandings of blah blah." Um, yeah. What was I thinking?! Said category can only be divided from numerous close cousins by a very fuzzy piece of mohair... I mean, fuzzy line. Why did I want to answer this particular question, again? How on earth am I going to talk about it clearly under pressure? Why did I think everything seemed clearer when my advisor said thus and such, and now, for the life of me, I can't organize an outline?

Regularly scheduled knitting and other fun content will return in a few days, including a posted copy of the speech from Thursday (which went well - thanks for your comments!) Until then, I just need to remember that I only need to answer the question (well, 3 of 6), not to reinvent the discipline.

*I meant for this to be a "I'm not posting much and this is why" but it came out a bit more, um, negative than I might have intended...

Knitting: The New Arts and Crafts?

We've all heard the book titles and the catch phrases: Zen and the Art of Knitting, "knitting, the new yoga," the new meditation, the stress reliever...

This Thursday I'm giving a speech at my local Toastmasters club, my project involves visual aids... and I need your help. A bit of background first:

They don't have an overhead projector, so using images becomes difficult. I thought about talking about topics from my general exam reading: the history of bibles in the US, images revealing the cult of domesticity in the 19th century, Warner Sallman's famous "Head of Christ" and other images of Jesus. But really, they don't want to hear me give an oral rehearsal of a general exam answer. They want to be entertained. And the main thing I think of these days when I think of entertainment and visual aids is (of course!) knitting.

Knitting as a speech topic raises another knotty problem: people know what a sweater is. A scarf. A sock. If they had to think about their store-bought ones for long, I'm sure they could come up with a guess or two about how it's put together. A few of them might even find the history of knitting to be interesting, but I rather doubt that they'd really want to know that much about different types of heels, shawl construction around the world, or traditional fair isle motifs. After all, I'm the only one who pulls out knitting during meetings, and usually I'm something of a curiosity ("what's that? It's pretty.").

So how on earth am I to do a speech (in 5-7 minutes) about knitting that wasn't totally facile or boring? Last night, as I was telling Coffeeboy about the Arts and Crafts movement and how it makes me think of knitting, he suggested doing my speech on knitting as the new Arts and Crafts.

Now all you knitters are saying, what's that? Why should I care? Well, the Arts and Crafts movement was a late 19th century movement that started in Britain with elite men who wanted to escape the sense of alienation and malaise brought on by industrialized society. Buying tables and chairs at stores rather than making them themselves made these corporate leaders of an increasingly capitalist world uneasy. So they went back to the land, or at least to the workbench, so to speak, creating beautiful tables, chairs, chests, and other works of art. Think of the popularity today of artisanal bread or farmer's markets, and I think you get a flavor of what these Arts and Crafts leaders were getting at.

Every time I read about Arts and Crafts, I feel a weird chill down my spine when I think of the knitting in my backpack. Why do I knit? Like these 19th century folk, I remain tied to the capitalist order: I still buy my clothes at major stores (and I have no desire to, say, live off the land on a farm, shearing my own sheep to eventually make clothes), but man, it feels good to dance around with a new pair of homemade socks!

Here's where you come in: does any of this resonate with you as knitters? Do you think an audience of non-knitters would find it interesting I'm always interested in how the past sheds light on the present, on where the world we live in came from, so *I* think it's interesting, but I'm a geeky grad student (we gave our Halloween pumpkin glasses. Seriously.) Does my brief description of the Arts and Crafts movement make sense to folks not currently in school studying the cultural and religious history of America? What other contemporary examples can you think of that involve a similar impulse? For visual aids, I'm planning to use both handouts of Arts and Crafts images, as well as a few carefully chosen knitted items on my own body, just for kicks. Nothing risque, of course, though I might go with a hat, scarf, and socks. I think a sweater might be too warm! Thanks for any and all comments you may have!

The Striping Sleeve?
For those of you following the saga of the striping sleeve, I frogged it. Not because of the dye lot changes, though; the friendly knitters at Woolbears and those who hadn't seen this blog said they didn't notice anything when I asked for comments about possible problems. So I decided to plunge ahead and pretend it was supposed to be like that. When I was a few inches from done, I tried on the sleeve and it was just too tight. I suspect I cast on an incorrect number of stitches at the armpit because something looked off. My gauge might have been a little tight, too. So, back to the drawing board with that one!

Dyelot dilemma

Dangnabit! As I believed I mentioned, I'm working on my Eris sleeve off two different dye-lots. And I can tell. There are stripes. I need honest knitterly opinions about whether they are noticeable, annoying to you, not likely to be noted by non-knitters, etc. The yarn is *just* tweedy and heathery enough where I think it *might* be okay, but on the other hand, it just might not.

I started knitting with the two dye-lots every other row right where the sleeve comes out of the shoulder join, at the end of the raglan seam. So, about 4" above where the needles currently are on the sleeve.

You can really see it, for example, in that first one on the upper left, if you click on it to go to the larger image in Flickr. Or on the one on the top right, just check out how different the balls of yarn are. Sheesh.

Well, I'm not going to do any frogging right now, but I will be taking this to SnB tomorrow night for some real-light opinions (though really, they are all relatively accurate color-wise). In the mean time, should I just learn to live with this? Is it not that noticeable? How do I go about getting another dye-lot when I bout the yarn over a year ago? What have you done in a similar situation?

I might hit the sack, or at least put this away, before it takes on any more larger-than-life, eschatological, end-of-the world proportions. Check your dye-lots, y'all.

Socks for Autumn

Not only have I had a cold in Socktober, but when this October hasn't been inappropriately up in the 70s, temperatures have dipped down into the lower 50s - a cold month - perfect for hand-knit socks!

I finally finished some socks for Socktoberfest!

Pattern: Feather and Fan socks from Socks Socks Socks
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in "Cabin Fever"
Needles: size 1 and 0s on the pattern; size 0 on the bottom of the foot and on the toes (bizarre, I know)
Time: October 8 - October 24, 2006
Thoughts: I really enjoyed making these socks. The pattern is super easy; you only have to pay attention 1/4 of the time, for row 1 of the 4-row repeat. I actually just borrowed this row 1 from the book; I didn't follow the pattern otherwise and just made socks with an ordinary heel flap and wedge toe. I ended up using a combination of needle sizes because size 1 seemed a bit too loose (and resulted in more pooling) and size 0s were too tight, but didn't pool as much. A combination seems to have worked well.

I really like the Cherry Tree Hill yarn; it's soft, very very squooshy, and the colors are just gorgeous. You can't tell well in the photos, but the darker colored areas are actually deep shades of navy blue, green, and purple. They seem to come out in sunlight and fluorescent light; under ordinary indoor light it looks black. (I haven't worn the socks yet, except for the photos). The colors here, as my friend S. says, are brighter than my usual, except for that whole fall leaves thing, which I adore. I've heard that CTH bleeds a fair bit when first washed, so I think that I'm going to give these a little bath and a "lying flat to dry" before wearing them for real. I can't wait, though!

Thanks for all the well-wishes about the cold. I think it's gone, which is fine by me! May it be the last for a while. I hope all of you get through fall without succumbing!

Cold in Socktober

I think this is the longest I've gone without blogging yet, and it's not even (quite) a week. Suffice it to say that last week, Coffeeboy and I traded having varying degrees of a cold back and forth between each other. Bleh. Depending on who felt better, we took turns making each other dinner or tea. Neither of us really felt like much of normal until Sunday, when I (I can't speak for him) felt a little less loopy-headed and a bit more able to think straight, although the cough and the sniffles were still there. I slept in a rather long time for several days and basically didn't do much except knit a sock and its mate, and read quite a few books for my upcoming exam.

I had a bunch of adventures, though, none of which probably aided recovering from the cold. SnB met in a different location (Barnes and Noble instead of Panera - woot!); I took the train into the big city (New York) for a high school event and then had a late dinner with a high school friend (this was probably a mistake, as I was out rather late). I finished a sock and started the second one on the train, though, which a great way to pass through the "countryside" of northeastern New Jersey. Finally, Coffeeboy and I went to a games night on Saturday that was a lot of fun. None of the adventures, obviously, involved Rhinebeck, but that's OK, since I spent part of Saturday napping off the cold. Next year, though, I hope to be able to go!

The cold is mostly better, now. I've got exams kicking me in the rear. I'm planning to take the first exam by November 10th, which will give me a week or so off before the big annual meeting of people in my field. I know I can be ready by the 10th; it just seems to be looming awfully close for the amount of reading I still have left!

Between now and then I imagine I'll get some sock knitting done, and that I'll make some slow progress on the sleeves for Eris. I'm working with two dye lots for the sleeves (oops!) and the two balls of yarn, plus DPNs and decreases make for awkward knitting compared to the ease of socks.

Nevertheless, in a day or two I promise there will be pictures! And a new sock FO!

On the possible value of stash

Around the knit blog world, there's a lot of talk - and a lot of anxiety, it seems - about stash. Do I reveal my stash to my fellow knitters? Show them how much of a backlog of yarn I have, how many planned, unstarted, unfinished projects? How many storage bins of varying shapes and finishes I've bought? Or how few?

Why are we so anxious about stash? Have we simply internalized the complaints of our families about cash going for yarn that's never used? Is there nothing redeemable about stash?

I showed you some stash last week, and I'm going to show you some more stash right now.

Granola-making stash, that is.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we made our weekly granola Sunday night. We started doing this during this past Passover, using matzah farfel (matzah bits the size of large breadcrumbs) instead of oats. Believe you me, served with some yogurt, this was a highly preferable breakfast to matzah with something spread on it.

After Passover, we'd enjoyed making granola so much that we continued, using oats instead, and Alton Brown's recipe from Good Eats. We don't follow the recipe to the letter, but it provides a tasty starting point. Now we find ourselves buying huge quantities of things we'd only needed sporadically before: a giant jug of canola oil, a rather large jug of honey (because really, that little squeezable bear isn't going to make it past a recipe or two), and larger quantities of maple syrup. Not to mention the several pound bags of nuts and of raisins from our local Sam's Club, as well as frequent trips to Whole Foods to get the oats themselves in bulk at 69 cents per pound.

We've long since realized that we do this because it tastes good, not because it's super economical. Which probably doesn't make much sense, right? It's just breakfast food. Who needs fresh granola all the time? I mean, once in a while is nice... but when you want to make granola...

... you need some stash around. Or else you doesn't get a yummy breakfast. And really, who wouldn't prefer homemade granola to stale store-bought stuff anyway?

Who wouldn't prefer a pair of perfect fitting, gorgeous handknit socks over some old floppy ones from Target (or wherever)? Or a scarf that matches one's hair and eyes and was made by a close friend? For that you need a yarn stash.

And unfortunately, I don't think I'll be making the trip to Rhinebeck to enhance the stash and meet all you bloggers in real life. It's been great getting to know you online, and it would be fun to meet more fellow bloggers in person, but I just don't think Rhinebeck is a good idea this year. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not experiencing last-minute temptations to throw caution to the wind and head up for a day of fiber fun! If I do decide to go, I'll definitely say something here, but for now, I think I'm going to simply have to wish everyone a wonderful time!

Autumn weekend

We had our first real cold snap and frost this past Friday and Saturday nights, with day time temperatures in the low 50s. Coffeeboy also had a cold, so Saturday found me making potato-leek soup* and lighting a fire for general coziness. After watching some TV with the 'boy, I settled in by the warmth of the fire to catch up with the long-neglected Eris.

Over the course of Saturday and Sunday evenings, I completed the final corner edging on the sweater, and all I have left are the sleeves.

On a trip to the library to pick up some books for my exams, I took a small detour past a local park to sample the fall foliage and enjoy the crisp air that's finally here. Every year, it seems, I feel a new need to photograph the fall, to capture the meeting of glowing orange, stark brown, and shining blue, or the convergence of fading green, crumpled yellow, and even tan.

- - -
*Soup isn't all that we cooked this weekend. For example, the basil got a bit frostbitten, so we picked the remaineder of it, and a corresponding amount of parsley, and made pesto. We made granola, which we do every week for our breakfasts. (I have a post about that in the makings, something about stashing). And then we made some ginger-molasses ice cream to share when friends come over tonight to watch Battlestar Galactica. Let me tell you, the kitchen has never seen so many dishes of varying sorts moving through it at so many different times (except for when we had 13 people over for Passover, that is)! All this cooking was above and beyond, you know, cooking dinner, breakfast or lunch.

Socktoberfest: Sock stash!

In the next set of questions for Soctoberfest, Lolly asks:

Do you have certain patterns planned for some of the yarns? Do you buy yarn and then choose a pattern?

I don't buy sock yarn with a pattern in mind... because I have a project in mind: socks. As I think about it, this is dangerous. Other yarn I buy with a pattern in mind: a specific sweater, a scarf for someone, a particular felted item, a lace project. I think this approach helps keep consumption down. But sock yarn, this gets tricky! A project is always in mind: socks! So buying sock yarn doesn't require a special idea, just a concept that's relatively general but specific enough to spur on the purchase of yarn.

Having seen some others' pictures, I don't think my sock yarn stash is that enormous. However, it's grown exponentially in the past few weeks, mostly through the generous gifts of fellow bloggers, or in the case of the newest acquisitions, through parental kindness during a recent visit. I'm still missing some Lorna's Laces, though. There are several colorways I like a lot, and my LYS has one skein of all of them. Argh! If it weren't for that, I could use the rest of the gift certificate from the parental visit to add some yummy LL to the stash, but that will have to await a greater quantity of skein pairs at the store.

It's a pretty small stash, but growing, especially since I only started stashing sock yarn this past summer!

Does a certain sock yarn you have in your stash take you back to a certain event? (where you were when you bought/received it? What was going on in your life at the time!)

I could say something about the history of every one of these yarns. Sometimes there's more to say, and sometimes less. One was supposed to be part of the Charlotte's web shawl. One I bought to use for fringe, before I started making socks, and now I have too little yarn for even anklets. Another I received in my SnB's yarn exchange. One I received as a prize. There's the one I passed by but went back for because I was struck by the colors. Several are the proto-socks of gifts. I could go on, but I think you get the picture! All of them are nice to look at, laid out on a pretty dresser, not to mention that they're nice to touch, and to image what socks they might one day become!

It's not October 10th

Well, yes, it *is* technically the 10th of October. Yes. I'll admit that. But it doesn't *feel* like October 10th.

Let me explain. Back when I was young, angst-ridden junior high student, I kept a journal. None of this public digital blog stuff, but a private, lined-paper diary stored in the unlocked confines of my top-left desk drawer. I seem to recall that somewhere in around my 12th or 13th year, I wrote an entry about October 10th, and what a perfect expression of fall the day was. Crisp, cool, sunny but somehow foreboding. Lots of wind blowing the cracked, colored leaves everywhere. Yes, even in Northern California, we got a bit of fall.

Recently, I've started a mental observance of October 10th day, on which I usually take note of just how wonderfully autumnal the world has become. I think, though, that I might have conflated a teenager's anxiety with my later experiences of wistful New England falls after I went to college, because I don't remember performing this mental observance until the past couple of years.

Nevertheless, today is decidedly a conundrum. The leaves are beautiful, on the trees and on the ground. Colorful, crunchy. But there's no blustery, crisp wind requiring a scarf and wool socks! No ominous feelings of Halloween being only a few weeks away! It's in the high 70s, for crying out loud! It's really not October 10th... I hate you, global warming. Go away now. (Oh, wait, there are... certain hindrances... to that. Bah. Bah humbug.)

And for all I know, I could have the whole thing wrong. Maybe it's not the 10th at all that makes me stop and think. Maybe it's the 20th.

Regardless, what I do know is that I've cast on for yet another fall sock...

Like trees in the strong morning sunlight

And that I have a gift sock (for someone who, so far as I know, doesn't read this blog) that's been languishing on the needles.

Snow falls in winter sky

I'm very touched by all the kind, flattering shawl comments! Thank you so much! You've all been great moral support as I've worked through the very long rows. Finally, in about 2-3 weeks, I will most likely be done with reading for exam #2. Then I just have to take the exam. ;-)

Up next: sock stash?

The shawl is DONE!

The shawl is done! And it's freaking awesome! I'm so, so pleased! Yes, it took a heck of a lot of work, but the transformation that occurs in blocking is simply amazing.

Pattern: Pacific Northwest Shawl, by Fiber Trends (link here)
Yarn: KnitPicks Shadow in Lost Lake, 2 skeins and a few yards of a third skein
Needles: size 6 Bryspun circulars
Time: mid-June through October 5, 2006

Thoughts: I'm done! I love, love, love how it turned out. As soon as I removed it from the blocking pins and held it up in front the mirror, I couldn't help but think, Wow. It was so worth all the effort, the long, long hours of knitting the final rows.

I love the Knitpicks Shadow yarn. It's soft, heathery, and quite reasonably priced. Did I mention it's soft? And that when we took these pictures outside on a chilly morning, the shawl kept me really warm despite the lace? I'm definitely going to use this yarn again for lace shawls/stoles/scarves.

I do wish I'd picked a better background for the photos, and that the day had been sunnier. Yet the shawl made a speedy trip to the post office and is in the mail, winging its way to California to catch up with Jen on her trip out West before she heads back to Panama. Where hopefully a wool shawl will come in handy and remind her of her other home in Washington state. Here, this picture should show off the pattern better.

Sea gulls, trees, sand dollars, watery waves, little fish, and shells
Happy Birthday, Jen!

Before putting it in the mail, of course, I had to check for coziness and warmth...

Yeah, I'd say it's pretty cozy!

What, you didn't think I'd send it off without at least a little bit of flouncing it around in a joyful finished object bliss of yay happy shawl wearing, did you? *Grin*

Early fall in New Jersey

This past Wednesday, when shawl recipient Jenny was here, we took a little drive to the pretty parts of New Jersey! Yes, such places do exist!

Pretty, isn't it!

I live right on the border between ugly (Trenton and suburbia) and pretty (northwestern NJ), but the friendly folks at the Foliage Network said we needed to go further north to move from "low color" to "moderate color." High and peak color haven't yet made their appearance in this "garden state," but a couple hour's drive north to High Point State Park provided us with a little more beauty. It's not quite peak yet, though the cold front of the last two days will help speed things along.

High Point State Park

If anyone knows why they saw fit to build an obelisk on top of the state's highest point - besides to make sure it wouldn't be topped by any other possibly higher point - let me know!

Yours truly on the left, Jenny on the right

Finished shawl pictures in my next post!

Socktoberfest: sock history

Lolly, Ms. Socktoberfest herself, has asked us to write about our past experiences making socks...

When did you start making socks? Did you teach yourself or were you taught by a friend or relative? or in a class? I first started knitting socks this past holiday season (so, late December 2005). My first socks were a pair of basic ribbed socks in Cascade 220 in Christmas colors - perfect for socks finished December 24th! And I was so proud of those little green toes sticking out of the red feet! I used this Knitty tutorial and off I went!

What was your first pair? How have they "held up" over time? Those same socks work very well as "house socks" now that the weather is cooling down again. My first "real" pair (ie, w/ "real" sock yarn) were for Coffeeboy out of Meilenwiet Mega Boots Stretch; and then, for myself, out of Lorna's Laces. Both seem to be holding up great!

What would you have done differently? Nothing, I'm happy with what I did! (Except the fiddly hole by the ankle, but I (mostly) don't do that anymore.)

What yarns have you particularly enjoyed? I really like my Lorna's Laces socks. I also enjoy working with Trekking and Regia. I have some Fleece Artist socks that are also very nice, but a little fragile. I have some Cherry Tree Hill and some Mountain Colors Bearfoot that I'm looking forward to trying out!

Do you like to crochet your socks? or knit them on DPNs, 2 circulars, or using the Magic Loop method? No crochet here (except for borders). I'm just learning the magic loop, but otherwise prefer DPNs.

Which kind of heel do you prefer? (flap? or short-row?) I think I find the short row less bothersome to knit without the pesky heel flap, which always slows me down, but I think the heel flap fits better.

How many pairs have you made? 7 pairs and counting!

Shawl progress...
3 shells remaining! It will be done in the next day or two! And now that it's mostly off the needles, I see how gi-normous it is!

The limits of obsession

This weekend, Greta Jane at Ivory Needles told me I was more obsessed by knitting than she, as she would never have the patience to just sit and knit for hours on end till a thing is done. I discovered that in some cases, I don't either.

Apparently, there are limits to my knitting-and-yarn obsession. Shocker!

This limit is interesting to know about, as I hadn't thought it possible, especially given how gung-ho sock happy I've been the last few weeks. I even was getting to the point where I was enjoying the very, very long rows in the Pacific Northwest Shawl, long rows that for the last couple of weeks have been all I have worked on.

But then came the shells that broke the camel's back. I have 3/4 of them finished. Yes, they'll be pretty. But why must I check blogs at the end of every row? Or insist on actually looking at the TV screen while watching Star Trek with Coffeeboy as I knitted shells? Shouldn't I have spent the weekend in some sort of well-lit knitter's hermitage, a state of trance and frenzied activity at the same time, madly knitting like the weekend warrior I needed to be?

Apparently not. I would have gone nuts. Instead, there was school and a dinner with a visiting scholar whom Coffeeboy networked with. And a departmental pot-luck to cook for. And a houseguest to clean up for. Life got in the way. Knitting became frustrating.

I knit for much of Saturday afternoon and pretty much all day Sunday, plus a few hours early yesterday afternoon and a couple while Coffeeboy's football team (the Green Bay Packers) had a miserable time of it on Monday Night.

I think now I know why people complain about how much time flopping large pieces of knitting back and forth takes. (Too bad said rows involve slipping stitches, YOs, k2togs, and purls, or else I'd have checked out knitting backwards by now!) And I now know even more about keeping a shawl's length of stitches on the needle as a stitch holder, and at the end of every row on the short DPN, moving the stitches to the end of the long circular, taking one off, knitting it together with the last stitch on the DPN, flopping the knitting around, over and over.

Jenny is here. She says she loves the unfinished object. I keep trying to demonstrate how much better it will look when blocked ("If I just tug here, and here, see how the stitches stand out so much more? That's what it will look like!") I will probably be sending it to her after she's off to her next destination, a wedding in CA after a stopover in WA. Today we're off to the Philly Art Museum for some sightseeing... maybe I will read a page or knit a stitch somewhere in here. And in a few days, when this shawl is done, I wonder if my obsession will need a rest?

Happy Socktober!

Happy Socktober, everyone!

October is one of my favorite months, whose flavor is well-captured by the Socktoberfest button I'm using. The leaves turn magical colors, the wind blows, and there's a feeling of things moving and changing as the world turns.

I have a mug from Walden Pond with a quote by Thoreau about this season:

"October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight."

I have 1/4 of the necessary shawl-edge shells done as of yesterday. Needless to say, there will be no exuberant sock casting-on today, at all. Not even of a fall-colored sock in a feather-and-fan type of pattern, echoing the golden rolling hills and stone walls of the Berkshires in Massachusetts. That will have to wait. Phooey!

That said, my plans for Socktoberfest involve knitting the fall sock just mentioned, finishing the gift sock that's on the needles, and then starting another gift sock and/or working perhaps on my long-postponed blue Trekking Jaywalker. I really meant this to be my next sock after the shawl is done, but I really can't bring myself to start the somewhat icy blue sock when the world is turning red and gold. So the Jaywalker will have to wait.

I think I need to go work on shells now.

Miles to go

The shawl is lovely, dark and deep / But I have promises to keep


And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep.

I'm "almost done" with the Pacific Northwest shawl! It's coming off the needles, slowly. As you can see, I have two shells of the border done; they get added to the stitches on the circular needle as I work across the shells. There are 12 more to go till the center point shell, then 14 on the other side... ("this will take forever!" I keep thinking). It needs to be done by Monday, as the recipient arrives then!

I might get very little schoolwork done this weekend. Blah. But this shawl will be done. "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Queen of the pie

Ever since I mentioned this weekend that some of the apples might become a pie, Coffeeboy's been asking me when the apples might spontaneously jump into a tasty pastry shell.

They made that transformation this afternoon, with a little bit of help from yours truly on the crust* and filling, and a lot of help from Coffeeboy on peeling and slicing up the apples. Yes, there's a picture down there, but first I have to tell you about when I was crowned Queen of the Pie.

Several years ago, when I still lived in Boston, some friends invited me to a "pie party." Everyone was supposed to bring a pie; I brought pecan. Several partygoers selected themselves to be judges, and they tasked savory pies, sweet pies, super easy pies made of whipped cream and a store-bought crust, pun pies (there has to be at least one pie in the shape of the number "pi," doesn't there!) Entertainment was provided by a little bluegrass band from school, who called themselves the Jeremiads.

After the judging and feasting, the organizers announced the winners. They came up with some amusing "prizes:" the "pie that looks and tastes the most like toothpaste" for a grasshopper pie, the "pie with the least stability," the "pie most likely to cause death by chocolate," the "best pun pi"... and then they announced Best Overall Pie.

I won! I was the Pie Queen! My homemade pecan pie was the winning pie of the evening!

Now, I'm usually a pretty quiet person. The requirements of winning were to wear a crown made of tinfoil and to act queenly. The entire gathering sang a song (with the help of the Jeremiads): "She's the pie queen, the queen of the pie! She's the pie queen, the queen of the pie!"

As they sang this (rather badly and languorously... come on, where were my trumpets!) I walked around the room, waving my hand a la Princess Di, shaking people's hands and thanking them for their support and generally trying to ham it up as much as possible. Because really, how often does one have an entire party singing to you when it's not your birthday? How often can a shy person feel completely authorized to act as strangely as possible in front of a crowd? Not that often, at least for me... and it was a ton of fun.

The next year the same friends had another pie party... and I won again! This time with a butternut squash tart.

So you see, every time I make a pie, I have a reputation to maintain.

Slab of sharp cheddar cheese with that? Vanilla ice cream?

The pie needs to cool and then we'll see if I'm crowned again. Since the judge is none other than (the rather biased) Coffeeboy, I have little doubt this will be hailed as another triumph!

*Update: a word on pie crust, in answer to Danielle'squery:
I follow the Joy of Cooking recipe for Flaky Pastry I, as of the edition that was out in 2000. Basically, I've found that if I take them seriously with the instructions, it comes out much better! This means: cut the shortening (of whatever variety) to pretty small pieces; I usually go smaller than pea-size. Do use cold water. Do cut the water in to the shortening/flour mix using a spatula. Do let the dough cool in the fridge before rolling. I used to not do things quite like this but usually... though not always... when I do, there's less patching. And finally, most importantly, even if I need to use ice water to patch it up like the California ground after an earthquake, it always tastes good no matter what, because there's nothing like a homemade crust and the tongue has no knowledge of patches!

Generosity

There are some incredibly generous people in this world. For example, this sock yarn surprise arrived in the mail yesterday:

A package of beautiful sock yarn!

Last week, I mentioned that I needed solid sock yarn; in response, Julia at Knitting History packed up this sock yarn suprise package for me! That's two balls of black, one of burgundy, two of red, two of navy, and two of purple! Wow! I am now more than set for Socktoberfest and beyond! Thank you so much, Julia! You are truly one of those amazingly kind people who make the world - knitblogging and otherwise - go 'round. (For those not in the know, she's been doing some destashing lately, with many blog contests offering yarn, knitting books, you name it. Want to knit for the menfolk? There's yet
another contest ending Monday.) I feel I'm accumulating many debts, large and small. I only hope one day I can repay them!

Apple picking revealed a similar abundance; we came home with sixteen pounds of apples, most of them Macintoshes as that's what the local farm had still on the trees. (The Fujis, which are some of my favorites, were pretty picked over, or had already fallen to the ground in preparation for becoming ground apple sauce.) Coffeeboy and I have been scheming on what to do with all of them: applesauce? Pie? Apple cake? This morning's solution? Pan-fried apples with brown sugar and cinnamon (served over challah French toast, no less!) This afternoon, we had a small snack of apples with slices of cheddar cheese, a tasty combination.

Even though today is a little warmer than it has been (high 70s), the wind is blowing in the trees outside, blowing with that characteristic crackly shushing sound it gets as fall approaches. I wonder if the wind sounds different in different seasons depending on the shape, size, and water content of the leaves? They've definitely started to turn, with a falling yellow leaf here, a red branch there. My drive to school runs along an old state road, past farms and under the branches of trees. It's always pretty, but no more so than in the height of spring and fall. Right now it's still green, but with that fading green of late summer, not the lush, vibrant green of midsummer foliage. In a few weeks, my daily drive is sure to be strewn with golden colors, and that is what I wait for eagerly, every summer. You can bet you'll hear from me again on the foliage, hopefully soon with pictures!

Spinning!

First of all, I passed my first general exam! Yay! One officially down and boy am I glad I don't have to do it over again. Not that I was really worried, but if I didn't have the occasional nonsensicalfear that I wouldn't pass, then I'd hardly be an academic, now, would I?

I also don't think I failed spinning class. The fibers are twisting, and that's all about all I need to start with, right? I certainly have a lot to learn about drafting and not over-twisting and many things I've never heard of, but with so much encouragement and enabling out here in blogland, I'm probably going to keep working at it.

Here I am (dressed for cold, wet day that ended sunny and warm) trying to figure out how to hold the roving, how much to hold, where to hold it, why I'm holding it sideways instead of up and down: in other words, all the oddities that come with learning new movements.

I wasn't sure I wanted to reveal my extreme beginner's "yarn" to the world, but then I discovered that when you set the camera on macro and have the CD part of this little CD+dowel spindle as background, you get a interesting picture, regardless of the quality of the yarn found therein.

(Rather neat, isn't it!)

To those of you celebrating the Jewish New Year, L'shana Tovah (Happy New Year!), and to the rest, have a wonderful weekend! it's traditional to celebrate the new year by dipping apples in honey, so Coffeeboy and I are going to celebrate by going apple picking. (Chances are, some of those apples might not-so-spontaneously jump into a pie in the near future, too.) I hear a rumor that the Coffeeboy is at home making some challah, too, which will be a wonderful treat for this weekend! I hope to somehow find time for all this plus plenty of knitting and equally plenty of reading.

Week-and-a-half socks!

They're done! Actually, I finished them this past Friday, but only took the pictures yesterday. And yes, you've seen them before... making this an obligatory FO post.

Pattern: short row heel, wedge toe. Cuff motif comes from the Traveler's Stocking in Knitting on the Road.
Yarn: Fleece Artist Merino in the colorway "Autumn"
Needles: size 0, dpns and magic loop
Time: a week and a half!
Thoughts: Hmm. despite my intention of doing a short-row toe, I decided the wedge works well enough, so I went with that and all is well. The short row heel feels OK, except that it seems to cause the stitches to stretch a lot over the top of my foot. I'm not sure what to do about that. It's also interesting that the short row heel leaves a shorter sock than the heel flap, by about an inch. Next, I think the stranger looking short rows, on the left in my previous post, were on the purl rows; I must be doing something odd with how I pick up the stitches. Finally, the Fleece Artist yarn is really pretty. The pooling was slightly unexpected, but I think it's all right. The stranger thing was that the dye didn't always appear to go all the way through the yarn, but that might have just been where the colors changed.

Close up of the "tree" motif

Not to mention, I now have cute new shoes to aid in the showing off wearing of my socks! (It was really hard to find these in my size. Even Zappos.com was sold out of size 5 and I had to explore other options - oh no! Luckily, though, they fit well, with and without handknit socks!)

These might be my last socks until Socktoberfest, as I need to finish up a certain shawl by the beginning of October, and that's taking up pretty much all my knitting time. Until then, I'm dreaming up Socktoberfest projects and feeling a lack of solid-colored sock yarn. Any suggestions?