Year-end knits

I finished my Christmas knitting!

My brother received his socks on Christmas Day, blocked and wrapped. Here he poses with them up on his new parka:

Pattern: basic stockinette socks based on measurements of my bro's feet and legs
Yarn: Knitpicks Swish (Superwash!), 3 balls in Copper plus small amounts of the colors Fired Brick and Deep Ocean
Needles: size 5 bamboo circular in a length long enough for magic loop
Time: about two weeks
Thoughts: These were a lot of fun to make. And much faster with worsted weight than they would have been otherwise. My brother (as y'all probably saw in the comments a while back) liked the colors, and the socks fit him well, too. Yay! Mission accomplished. I hope the Knipicks Swish works out well. It's machine washable - a must for gift socks, I tend to think. I was a bit displeased with the yarn, though. A few times there were a lot of splits in the plying, so I had to cut the yarn and rejoin in order to prevent problems later of the whole sock falling apart on my bro's feet.

My other Christmas knit finished up just two nights ago: my mom's scarf!

It's very long!

Pattern: Basic Biased Scarf
Yarn: 1 skein Lorna's Laces Grace Boucle Mohair in "Douglas Fir"
Needles: Knitpicks Options size 10.5 on the 24" length
Time: about a week and a half
Pattern for biased scarf: Cast on desired number of stitches. Knit 1 row. Next row (R1): K1, K2tog, K til second-to-last stitch, KFB, K1. (R2): Knit. Repeat til desired length. Bind off. Etc.

Tied up on a lamppost

Thoughts: Mohair yarn isn't exactly easy to knit with. Your needles poke through the little loops and pull and get stuck! Luckily the Knitpicks needles are niiice and pointy, so I eventually got better at going through the correct loop. You can use the cast-on tail to keep track of when to do the bias row, doing that row whenever the tail is on the right. I love this pattern. It's mindless knitting (so long as you keep track of which row is biased) and it works really well with multicolored or semi-solid colored yarns and creates a very nice effect when finished.

Now that Christmas knitting is done, I have a little something to show you:

Clapotis! I've become kind of obsessed by this knit. The colors and softness of the yarn and the promise of future intentional dropping of stitches (wheee!) make for yummy knitting time. (Thank you, dear Coffeeboy, for such a wonderful gift!) I've done 5 increases so far, and i'm anticipating doing 1 and maybe 2 more, depending on quantity of yarn and desired width. My Clapster will be smaller than the original, because I'm using thinner yarn and much smaller needles (size 4 for sport weight yarn? Have I become a loose knitter or something?). I'd like it to function as both a wrap and a scarf, so I'm going for some kind of intermediate width (16-18 inches or so would be ideal).

Question: The next two skeins contain one that's somewhat darker (darker blues, darker browns) than this skein, and one that's about the same. Do I: 1) attempt to exchange it for one that's more in keeping with current colors? 2) Use it because I like the darker colors and a) put it in the middle between the two lighter ones or b) put it at the end? (I wish I'd snapped a pic of the two other skeins for you all!)

My but we're curling a lot, aren't we!

Needless to say, I'll be bringing this one on Coffeeboy and my trip to Panama.

Yes, you read that right. Tomorrow, we head off to Panama to visit some very dear family who've moved there in the last year or so. The temperatures will be in the upper 80s and very humid (say the weather websites), so I'm not sure how much knitting I'll feel like doing in those conditions. We'll be there for 10 days, though, so I plan to bring all the yarn for the Clapster, plus enough for 1-2 pairs of socks. I think that should be enough, given weather, sightseeing, and my inability to knit in a car without feeling ill. I promise to take lots of pictures of Panama! Heck, I'll have internet access and my computer, so you might even hear from me while we're away.

On that note, I think I will wish you all a happy New Year!

Yarn, glorious yarn

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases if you celebrate, and if you don't, I hope you at least had a nice day off from work! Thanks for all your holiday wishes over the past month! This blog is being brought to you courtesy of my same trusty old iBook, but now with a bigger (and oh-so-much brighter!) new screen! I have to say, working, blogging, and looking at pictures of yarn will be so much nicer with such a pretty screen. Thanks, Mom!

It's been a yarn-happy holiday month here at chez Lazuli. From my birthday, to Hanukah and Christmas, I've been the very, very happy recipient of plenty of nice yarn.

Take the following, for example, from Coffeeboy and my MIL:

We have 2 balls of Waterlily (a beautiful variegated blue, perhaps almost enough for a hat of some sort?), and then 3 skeins of Brown Sheep Wildfoote sock yarn ( do we see Coffeeboy socks somewhere?), and a turquoise-colored ball of Mega Boots Stretch, all from my wonderful MIL. In front to the left, we see some lovely Lorna's Laces (yay! LL stash enhancement!) in the Gold Hill colorway after which I've been lusting. Next to the LL, finally, is a most wonderful present, from Coffeeboy (with the additional encouragement courtesy of a birthday coupon for my LYS): 3 skeins of sport-weight Claudia Hand Painted yarn in the very Lazuli-like Blue Sky colorway. This last one, my friends, is destined to become that phenom of the knitblog world, Clapotis.

That's right. I've never made one, and I've recently been introduced to the joys of the Clap - o - T by some of the wonderful ladies at my SnB. I'll be starting on that pretty much as soon as I finish my mom's Xmas present, which should be in the next day or so.

Given the yarny happiness that's been happening in my world, I've decided to join Knit From Your Stash 2007.

I've never officially put myself on a yarn diet before, since I've always considered my yarn acquisitiveness to be not bad enough to quite need a diet. But now, with so much wonderful yarn already in my stash, I think it's a good idea to basically make myself use some of it. I have many many pairs of socks in there, several shawls or scarves worth of lace-weight yarn, and even yarn for a sweater hiding in the stash.

What rules will I be following? Let's see:

1. My yarn diet lasts until March 31st, 2007. (It's not *that* long, but it should help me to knit some things I've been planning to knit, but won't exhaust my stash or my patience. It should also give me enough time to breath before, say, the Maryland Sheep and Wool so I don't go totally nuts at the festival.) The deadline may be extended (but not shortened) as willpower permits.
2. Regarding sock yarn: Sock yarn in Lazuli-like colors is not allowed. However, if I find sock yarn that's in a great colorway for Coffeeboy, I may buy it, because with the exception of the Wildfoote pictured above, I'm short on Coffeeboy-colored sock yarn. (If I start using this proviso as an excuse to buy lots of sock yarn, then I'm no longer allowed to buy it.)
3. I am allowed to receive gift yarn. (Going to a yarn store and having Coffeeboy "buy me yarn for a gift" doesn't count.)
   
4. If a need for a gift comes up that my stash really just won't fulfill, then I may buy it.
   
5. If I need yarn to complete a project, then purchasing more is also permitted.
   
6. Finally, like Wendy and L-B, I will allow myself one "oops! I bought it!" moment.
   

Wish me luck and happy knitting from my stash!

A knitter's Christmas

My all-time favorite Christmas poem is Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales. In the middle of his wonderful poetic sojourn into the Christmases past of our imaginations, the small boy pestering the narrator with questions insists:

"Get back to the Presents."

A litany of various woolen items of questionable quality follows:

"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

Until I became a knitter, I never quite saw the insult in these descriptions of woolen gifts; I hope mine surpass these, and become not just Useful (if odd) gifts, but the ever more enjoyable "Useless Presents," such as:

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds."

When all is said done, though, the last lines capture this winter month for me:

"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

Merry Christmas in this darkest time of year, these days of solstice. Whether or not you celebrate this particular holiday, I hope your darkness is holy (whatever you consider the holy to be) and that all around you feels close with comfort.

Not to mention - may all your knitted gifts be not only finished, but useful and thoroughly enjoyed!

Notions of Knitpicks

Are Knitpicks and Babies R' Us associated in some way? Because inside a package protected by this:

one finds this:

the Knitpicks options needles, from my MIL

I'm very excited, because I've been wanting this set ever since deciding I liked the classic circulars earlier this fall.

Eager to test out my new needles, I cast on for a very last-minute gift: a simple biased scarf for my mom, made of some of the boucle yarn she gave me for my birthday.

Cats are so helpful, aren't they!

This scarf is knit using the size 10.5 needles and the 24" cord. I love the flexibility of the cord, the pointiness of the needles! They're great!

Except... one of my size 5s didn't screw onto the 32" cord, which I was all set to use to finish up this gift:

Knee socks of brotherly love

I did some testing and figured out that the needle, rather than the cords, was the problem. I've contacted the company, and they are sending me a replacement needle. I've read that people have had some problems with the set (usually where the cord attaches to the metal part that the needle screws into), so I wasn't terribly surprised to find a defect. I'd also heard that Knitpicks has very cooperative customer service, which I found to be the case (so far). The woman immediately said they would send me a new needle; this was on Wednesday and I'm hoping it arrives soon!

Happy holidays, and merry Christmas eve's eve to all!

Finished Hanukah knits!

I can't reveal several Christmas knits yet (besides, they're still being worked on) - but I can reveal two finished Hanukah items!

First, the one that has been gifted, my husband's socks. He loves them so much he won't allow a proper photograph so I had to capture the socks hiding on his feet, under his jeans and slippers. I guess that makes them a partial revelation of holiday knitting:

Pattern: plain ol' stockinette, 60 stitch circumference, 2" ribbing on cuff, heel flap, wedge toe, kitchenerned off.
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot, in the color "Yellowstone" (isn't it pretty!)
Needle: Knitpicks Options size "1" (so, 2.5mm or 1.5 by "normal" reckoning)
Thoughts: I love the colors on this yarn! It's so soft, with the wool, mohair, and nylon. Maybe that's why he's barely taken them off his feet since I gave them to him on Friday? The softness made it a delight to work with, and there was definitely no awkward pooling or striping. The colors are gorgeous, browns and deep reds with little bits of gold flashing through.

Secondly - The recipient of the super-secret-sock is now in her car winging her way north for a brief visit en route further north, so I can post her socks now!

Pattern: Red Herring by Knitty
Yarn: Elann's "Sock It to Me" yarn (4-ply), in colors 7139 and 9800, a black and a burgundy red. I used one full ball of the black and only part of the red ball, with one full ball of black left over.
Needles: size 2 for the colorwork, size 1 for the rest.
Thoughts: This is such a fun pattern! (Thanks, Cookie!) The colorwork - which was a new experience for me - was really fun. I think it was made easier by none of the floats being more than 3 stitches long, making it easier to keep tension even. I do think that I probably pulled the floats tighter than necessary. They've evened out some with blocking, and will do so more, I expect, with wearing. You can see the floats here, on the left:

I hope she likes them! But now, back to work and to Christmas knitting! I'll have a few Hanukah gift pictures to show you over the next few days, pretty yarn and intriguing new needles from Knitpicks (oops, did I say what it is?!). Did you know they use paper from Babies R' Us as protective shipping material? They do. I have pictorial proof coming in the next post!

My cookies look like Whitman

I had a very nice day Saturday. I spent the afternoon cleaning house in preparation for a party, doing a bit of reading, and talking to a dear friend about the holidays. In the evening, Coffeeboy and I hosted a latke party. About 10-11 friends, mostly from my department, came over, and everyone seemed to have a good time. It seemed to be a good mix of people, with enough in common to have something to talk about, and enough new people and topics left unexplored to have something to talk about. Coffeeboy, being the Jewish half here, served as latke chef, and cooked up some delicious latkes. Yum-my! Everyone ate lotsa latkes, and we sent a few home as leftovers. (I served as dishwasher, cleaning up the grease afterwards).

No one, however, commented that my cookies look like Whitman, as the title of this post implies. (Don't worry, I didn't expect them to). That only happens within the strange confines of my brainwaves, apparently. I'm not joking either! Look at this:

The snowman has a crooked hat... Whitman has a crooked hat.

Santa has a beard... Whitman has a beard.

I even showed the first Whitman image to Coffeeboy, who confirmed that I'm not just seeing things in the snowmen.

Or maybe I am.

Holiday knitting pictures will return soon! I have a Hanukkah knit to show you all (after I remember to photograph it, if I can borrow Coffeeboy's feet long enough), and pretty soon a semi-super-secret sock FO. Stay tuned! I hope your weekends are going well!

Interfaith holiday cookies

As I mentioned in my last post, Coffeeboy and I have been working on making holiday cookies. Yum! Actually, these were done on... Monday (?) night; I've just been slow about updating my blog.

Un-iced cookies

Turning into... iced cookies!

Between baking and icing, these took a long, fun, worthwhile evening!

Santas, trees, stars, and dreidels!
So they're not totally interfaith... we don't have any pagan symbols for Solstice or images for Kwanzaa or, well, you get the point!

This December has been a strange month. I have all these illusions of free time that I'm forgetting are really quite insubstantial. I'm only auditing one class, so it hardly feels like the semester is ending. I've been trying to get myself sorted out for finishing two incompletes I have, both of which require writing 15-20 page papers. I'm not feeling terribly inspired by either of them, since they're not in my major area of interest and have little to do with possible future dissertation topics. Thus, I'd much rather be digging around in potential dissertation topics right now than working on the incompletes! Nevertheless, I've been working on both papers a lot, leading to things like forgetting to blog about cookies, falling behind on holiday knitting, and the like.

In between sorting out what I'm actually writing my papers on, there are all the holiday events: parties, concerts, shopping, family arriving later this coming week, etc. Every time I think, "classes are over! I have two weeks to work on papers before we go away at New Year's," I forget just how little working time there will actually be in these next two weeks!

Regarding commenting: I've read if you hit "preview the comment" (or whatever it says) that's one workaround that lets folks comment. I suspect the real issue, though, has to do with signing up for a Google account to replace one's old blogger account.

Hanukkah starts tonight! Have a happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it!

Comments in blogger beta

As I said in my previous post, I've switched to blogger beta now. I've already heard from Danielle that comments aren't functioning properly - but they're obviously working for some of you. I've checked my settings and everything looks ok, so we'll just have to play it by ear. Thanks for your patience!

O, arboreal friend!

We got our Christmas tree - excuse me, our arboreal friend, as Coffeeboy has been calling it on behalf of the cats - this weekend! Thus far, the kittens like it a lot; they're extremely pleased with "their" new toy:

Actually, they've been very good. They haven't drunk from the tree's water bowl. They haven't knocked over the tree or electrocuted themselves on the lights. They've only crawled under the tree skirt and taken naps there... a few times in the last day or so. But hey, since the tree hasn't fallen over, I'm happy!

I love the holidays. We're an interfaith home here at chez Lazuli and Coffeeboy, and it's been an interesting and enjoyable process learning to celebrate our two traditions. We always adorn our home with lots of light - on the tree, around the menorah, framing the windows, along the fireplace, up the stairway railing. I love how the light looks in the darkness, how whether it comes from a menorah's candles or a fireplace or even a colorful electric glow - for a short moment at least, the light drives out the darkness of the winter and the world.

Tonight we engage in my other favorite part of the holidays - baking cookies! Tonight we'll make a type of cookie that my mom's family has used for generations (well, at least back to my great-grandmother), a sour milk cookie cut in shapes of Santas, trees, dreidels, and Jewish stars. We used to call them the "Santa Clauses and Christmas trees," but now I don't know what to call them, since that list of four holiday symbols gets rather long! Over the next few days, I promise there will be lots of baking going on in the Lazuli household!

(Apologies to those using blog aggregating services: I've switched to blogger beta, and now it reads "26 posts" in bloglines! All should catch up soon; let me know if something isn't working.)

Holiday knitting progress

I'm using:

this Knitpicks Swish yarn

to make a knee sock of gigantic manly proportions for my brother. It's coming along quite quickly; since taking this picture a couple of nights ago, I've already done 12". Such are the glories of size 5 needles and worsted weight yarn.

Cell phone included for size comparison

I'm a little concerned, though, that the colors are a little too on the funky side. That bright blue looks very interesting next to the "copper." Coffeeboy has kindly called them "very 70s colors" - true indeed. I think my brother will like the colors. They're for keeping warm around the house (so far as I know) so if they look a bit like strange lederhosen, that might be quirky in a good way. I'm planning to do one sock with blue ribbing and toes, plus red heel, and the other with red ribbing and toes, and a blue heel. Maybe that will balance out the brightness.

The secretive sock project continues along nicely. This spoiler picture is a little garish from the flash; sorry about that.

I have a few more holiday gift projects in the works (3, to be exact) which I'm confident of finishing in time for Hannukah and Christmas. 2 of those 3 are started; the third isn't, but it should be pretty simple (a simple boucle scarf on the bias).

Thanks, everyone, for all the kind birthday wishes!

Birthday! (aka Yarn Pr0n Day)

Today, in case you're curious, I stop getting older, at least according to usual women's reckoning. Yup, for the rest of my life, I will remain 29, at least if my mom is any example. I don't feel old yet. The sense of impending change of decade (in about 365 days) hasn't quite hit me yet, and for now, I think I'll just enjoy the yarn pr0n that came with this birthday!

First of all, we have the sock yarn:

Left to right: 2 skeins of Koigu, 2 of the new Colinette yarn, and 1 of Cherry Tree Hill. Coffeeboy picked out the really bright blue and colored one in the middle, and the others were from the yarn store trip with my mom last weekend. Thanks, both of you!! It'll be fun to try the new Colinette Jitterbug yarn and see what it knits up like! Three of those future pairs you saw poking out of wrapping paper last week; now they can come out of their shells!

And then, of course, the non-sock yarn:

The boucle (Lorna's Laces in Douglas Fir) is destined to be a scarf for my mom. The Rowan I've set aside for... something nice. Hat? Scarf?

Finally, knitting books:

Coffeeboy gave me the Knitting Vintage Socks (yay!) and my friend Ivory Needles sent Knit One, Kill Two, a knitting mystery for some fun, light reading!

Those are just the knitting presents! I had a few non-knitting presents that were also very nice, but less interesting to a knitting blog. We had a quiet day: slept in, went out for brunch, played with presents yarn. We braved the holiday malls and were singularly uninspired (Hannukah starting on the 16th means we have to think early about what to get half the famiily... Christmas gives us a little bit more time for the others!) We discussed various means of introducing large, upright greenery to the house despite the presence of rambunctious kitties. While Coffeeboy cooked me a nice birthday dinner, I read over a paper for a friend. We watched a Star Trek movie (#4, the one with whales), and afterwards started putting up a few holiday decorations.

All in all, a lovely birthday. If the weatherpeople are correct, I might even get some snow tonight for my birthday, too - but I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see.

Don't cry over spilled milk!

Yes, I've finally gathered enough info to give you the second installment of the Spilled Milk Saga. (In case you missed Part 1, look here.)

When last I posted on this topic, my clothes and knitting things were covered in milk, and the Barnes and Noble manager had promised to reimburse me with a gift card for damages. I received the estimate from the dry cleaners on Thursday, the day after the spillage and the day before I left for the conference in DC. It would have paid for, let's say, a medium-priced knitting book. I received a gift card from the manager and told him I was still working on the fate of my knitting and my knitting bag (which he was pretty sure would be irreparably damaged).

I picked up my clothing from the dry cleaners on Tuesday (before Thanksgiving) and noted that while my knit top and corduroy pants were fine, my beloved corduroy blazer (with a shiny purple lining, the best part!!) still had crusty milky bits in it! That was definitely quite annoying, and worth a call to B&N.

I meant what I said about milking this for all it's worth, folks.

I called the B&N guy and told him about the jacket and its value. He asked about the milk-covered knitting bag, which he thought had looked totally ruined. I explained that yes, I washed it and it still had milk in it, and gave him the value of the materials I'd used to make it. (I didn't tell him that it's actually fine, but since he was so certain it would be ruined, I figured... as far as he knows, it's ruined, right?) The knitting I'd been doing was actually OK, so I didn't include that in the total.

The end result is that another gift card is on hold for me, worth about 2-3 more knitting books. My birthday is this Sunday - I think I just might enhance my book stash, courtesy of B&N!

As they say, "don't cry over spilled milk" - especially if it brings one knitting books! There's no crying here, that's for sure!