Scarf and Soups

I completed the Flaxen Kernel Scarf and blocked it out Friday night with the new to me set of blocking wires that I bought from Maxfun. They were great to work with! I dropped it off this afternoon at Knit-Purl and promptly used some of my store credit to buy 'yarn' for Christmas projects for my mom and mother-in-law, Judy.
Scarf:

It was cool to find out that because of the Habu Silk Transverse Scarf sample that I had knitted for the store that it had been doing its job and inspiring people to buy the silk to make their own projects. Satisfaction!

Yarn, Habu Textiles A-60 Shosenshi Paper - 100% linen, colors, Eggplant & Apple Green:

Intended pattern is from AlterKnits and are paper shades for lights. You'll have to wait to see them if you haven't seen the pattern in the book. ;-)

I've spent the last couple of days making soups from these:

 

I have two different squash soups that are in the freezer and just waiting to be pulled out for lunch/dinner. I've also made a couple of 'beer' soups - cheese & potato and cheese & cauliflower.  The first one for Brandon to have to alternate his normal lunches he makes and the cauliflower for me. I'm the only one in the house that likes cauliflower. They seemed like nice fall soups to make and have around. Luckily I have an upright freezer in the garage to help store them until needed.

Norbert had his ear surgery on Thursday and currently wearing the 'cone of doom'. Turns out he also had two broken upper molar type teeth that might have been playing a part in his finickiness in eating. It was suggested that they be removed, one had pulp showing. The teeth of course were difficult to remove - breaking in bits when attempted, so took longer to get out and of course made for a more expensive process. Sigh. I thought he was a 'gold' dog before but he's definitely moved into the 'platinum' range with this last visit.

Finally have the cormo/silk blend that I've been spinning up as singles. I have the bulky head on the wheel and have started plying it. It's going to be a bit of time at the wheel before its done. I've started work again on Kaisha's Fairy Wings - yes, I do realize they are really late now, thank you. I also have a spider, spider geisha fingerless mittens and a Jayne hat to make all before the end of the month. Burning the needles on these! So you dear reader will have some more pictures of finished projects in the near future.

Finally some FO's!

I've been knitting, but haven't felt the satisfaction of completed projects. That changed yesterday. I was able to get the Simple Yet Effective Shawl that I was knitting up using the Schaefer Yarns, Anne colorway Toni Morrison that I won in a contest on Judy Becker's blog around Christmas last year. It had I think languished in her stash and she opted to find it a new home. I tried it out in the Woodland Shawl pattern but the short color changes were causing the actual pattern to be lost. So the search was on for a pattern that the short color sequences wouldn't overwhelm the pattern, so the Simple Yet Effective Shawl. It's going into the Christmas gift pile destined for a new home in the Bay Area with the step-mother-in-law.

It blocked out to a nice 32x62 inches and covers the back and comes to the front nicely. It can also be wrapped and worn more around the neck. I think it will keep anyone nice and warm with the mohair content.

I also finished up the scarf store sample for Knit-Purl. It's the Transverse Scarf by Miriam Felton. The yarn is Habu Textiles N-6B Konnyaku Sizing Silk in color #2 (khaki). One of the four skeins didn't take the dye as well and I had to figure out a way not to have it glaringly obvious. The pattern is fairly simple to do, but I found that I could only do two or three chart repeats before my brain started to wander and I made mistakes. Otherwise this would have been done much sooner! It blocks nicely and I think the soak helped round the silk a bit.

 

Tonight it all about getting all the paraphernalia all gathered together so that its not too difficult to get to the site tomorrow bright and early. Chair, wheel, 20 bags of Goodies, back pillow, catalogs, and anything else I think of between now and bedtime. I'd also like to see if I can finish up one of the bobbins of Cormo/Silk that I've been working on. Just a bit more to go to finish off 3.5 ounces of fiber. (Still have another 3.5 ounces to spin up, not sure if I'll get it done before OFFF though!)

We have Cedi and Nickel for the weekend again. Greta is off to Coeur D'Alene, Idaho for another Flyball Tournament.  

Knitting, spinning, and canning

Last week was spent working on both the Transverse Scarf (finished one skein) and the Simple Yet Effective Shawl. I also pulled out my Borscht Greenjeans cardigan and added a few rows to it. I had brought it along to Judy's dr. appt that resulted in a three hour wait in the lobby for me. I went through all three of them entertaining myself, besides the people watching. ;-)

I've tried a couple of approaches with a skein of the raw silk that didn't take the dye as well as the other three (I didn't pick out the four, or I wouldn't have taken this particular skein). I wanted to see how obvious the change in skeins is so did a chart repeat and saw this:

Pretty freaking obvious! So I frogged that and pulled out a second skein and have been doing two rows of each and alternating them so that its less "LOOK AT ME!"
You can still see the end of the first skein, but less glaring.

I finished up the Gotland by plying it and finished spinning the Norwegian and also plying it. Wrapping up the Tactile Ancient Breeds Sample Pack. Still love the Finn, the Shetland, Icelandic and Gotland were all itchy for me. The Norwegian was less itchy but felt softer after working with it. Here's the collage of them all:


William went with Luke and his father on the trip to Moscow, ID to deliver Luke to his college apartment. He had a great time and now is contemplating going to Washington State University for his nursing program (Pullman is only six miles from Moscow). We'll see. When he got home Luke's parents brought him home with some vine ripened tomatoes from their garden (ours haven't turned out as well because someone sprayed some lawn fertilizer or something on them and now they're a strange yellow/orange).

Since I had some peppers (jalapeno, banana and chili) just waiting to be used, I opted to make the first batch of salsa for the season. Canning the results so that we can enjoy it longer. I did use smaller jars so that I can share too.



I fell off the no adding to the stash wagon a couple weeks ago in Susan Pandorff's Destash Sale. My thought was that I could use them for Christmas gifts so I was saving money. I got both for less than the price of one. They're the Mountain Colors 4/8's Wool in Mountain Twilight and Sweet Lavendar:


I had thought to do a shawlette with them but I've also found a mobius cowl that would be cool too.

OFFF Vendor Booth organization continues. We're getting all the payments in so that a group payment for the booth can be sent in before the end of the week. Still need to get out into the garage for one of the projects I have in mind. I'll have to see if I can afford an order for some supplies for other projects. We'll see. ;-)

This week's plans involve more knitting on the Transverse Scarf, hopefully finish it too. More work on the Simple Yet Effective Shawl, really would like to finish it also. Put the tabs on Stained Glass Window Quilt so it can be hung. Start spinning either the wensleydale or cream alpaca. I'd like to get some peaches and either marionberries or blackberries for more canning fun. Jams of course. Need to save money too so that I can enter in the Walk for the Cure Knitters for Knockers team - just $25.

Forgot to mention that I tried out Smitten Kitchen's Blueberry Boy Bait Cake from a cup of blueberries picked from my late season bushes. The boys are enjoying it. Next time though I'm splitting the batter between pans. I'm currently constrained from using a 9x13 and so used an 8x8 - took forever to cook! Tempted to try out The Pioneer Woman's Coffee Cake, but don't have any heavy cream on hand and trying to wait for groceries until later in the week. Very tempting!! I might be able to do it if I liquefy the espresso in the frosting.....oh no. There might be another cake before the end of the week.

Progress

I'm in charge of organizing a vendor booth for the PDX-Knit-Bloggers at Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival, but for legal purposes our booth is going to be the PDX-Knit-Co-Op booth.

We're going to have a variety of things for sale - fiber - amazing batts and rovings, yarns, patterns, stitchmarkers, row marker bracelets, soaps, spinning related wood items, bead orifice hooks are some of the items we'll have.

Since we have at least a dozen people pulling together items we've decided to go with two booth spaces. Now it will be interesting getting everything into the space at the event! All the sellers have thought about how they'll display things so that's a big help.

Next up is coming up with a shift schedule so that everyone also helps out in the booth but doesn't feel overburdened.

Just six weeks until OFFF! No pressure at all.

I've also started working with the Habu raw silk with the Miriam Felton scarf pattern. It's interesting to work with. I'm using my Harmony needles and and they still occasionally shred the strand. Like a lot of lace, blocking will be the key.

On a separate note, I've been having problems being monogamous in my reading. ;-) I currently have four different books going. One is an owned book put aside for library books. One is a non-fiction book that really is interesting, I just had to switch it up with a book that has an earlier due date. The final book is by a local author that lives up on Mt Hood. I've enjoyed her series, but for some reason feel like I'm having to work to read the story. Three out of four will be read before their due dates. LOL