A Room With A View

And the snow has started. The winter storm has finally broken free of the mid-western states and is moving east. The weather man has been threatening us for days but we haven't gotten anything but dark clouds every day, all day. I appreciated the view from the balcony for the better part of the morning but believe I missed the best viewing while I was gone to a friend's house. This evening there are a couple inches of white covering everything and tomorrow we may see the sun peek through. I missed my chance to go for a walk in the woods on the trail before dark; it would have been lovely with the snow.

A few hours were spent working with the Rowan yarn late this afternoon. I tend to be a tight knitter but went down two needle sizes from the recommended in order to get the gauge I was happy with. Although I'm thoroughly pleased with the yarn, I really wish they had had enough to make my vest because I want to get started so that I can wear it in the spring.

Bowl of Plenty

It has been a fantasy of mine to bring home an entire bag full of Rowan yarn that I could call my own and today I did just that. The quirky, crazy Mass Avenue Knit Shop had their annual blow-out sale today and I was invited to join some knitting group ladies for a drive up to Indianapolis to buy yarn. This store was so packed with ladies that one could hardly move and besides the two devoted (bored) husbands in the shop, I was the only guy there. They didn't carry the exact yarn for the sweater I'm going to knit and when I found a second choice in virtually the same colors, they didn't have enough stock. Ah well, I just bought enough for scarves instead and will get the sweater yarn online. Upon returning home to fill my bowl with all my felty, tweedy balls of lovely Rowan I felt satisfied with a good, full day.

While in Indy, we ate at a wonderful Greek restaurant called Santorini's. The place felt like home, the service treated us like family and if I didn't know any better, I'd say someone's grandmother was in the kitchen cooking from scratch. I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone coming through Indianapolis.

Butter, Sugar,and..........Wool?

The house smells like butter, sugar, toasted nuts and cherries. So much so that I haven't even eaten one of the cookies I baked because the heavy fragrance made me feel as though I'd eaten a dozen already.

The first batch (four sheet pans) was my absolute favorite as a kid, Cherry Winks. I always thought it was a secret recipe from my grandmother but later found out it was quite famous in it's time as it won a Pillsbury Bake-Off contest in the 40's or 50's. Although my mother baked them most years, I don't actually remember being around when she made them however the smell of them in the oven is an unmistakable memory. It just isn't Christmas without them.

Round two was a double sized sheet pan of pecan crescent sandies. I haven't made these before but remember them as a kid. Nutty, buttery and lightly sweet, they melt in your mouth. The ingredients were so few that I was afraid the recipe may have been misprinted. The photo was just going to be the picture of cookies but I couldn't help including the entire spread on the dining table. Yes, the wool and needles were already there, it wasn't staged. Good thing though because now I've included a nod to knitting even though I haven't made stitches for days now.

Bedside table for the sick

Man, I hate being sick. Whats worse is being sick in a lonely, quiet apartment. Having others in the house going about their own business was always comforting to me when I was sick as a kid. The normalcy of other's lives allowed me to feel that better days were ahead for my sick self.

I don't know what exactly is wrong. Last night I felt chilly and very definately, off. I gathered my arsenal of natural medicines in case things got really bad and I didn't want to get out of bed. I never got comfortable before going to sleep and when I woke in the morning, I felt pretty much the same, very off. Its feels as though I have half of the symptoms of the flu and when it came on last night, it came on quickly like the flu. Anyway, I couldn't take it any more so I went to the doctor this evening and she thinks it could be the flu in a mild form or some other virus and that I should just treat it like the flu. Fluids, Fluids, and more Fluids.

Red beet juice is supposed to shut down the flu virus, I read today. At the store I had the deli prepare me two beet/carrot/ginger juices and an all greens juice. Also in my cart were two "superfruits" juices, some lemon/ginger/echinacia drink, three large Smart Waters and and some more Emergen-C. I'm trying to hit the water hard for the electrolites and mix in some of the fresh veggie juices. For dinner I drank some hot vegetable broth which wasn't much considering I had only consumed a small amount of blueberry protein shake for breakfast/lunch. Just not hungry but very tired of going pee.

No knitting happened today, or since the day I ripped back the hat. I gots no motivation because I want to work on the hat to get it done but it isn't enjoyable right now and I can't figure out exactly what to do with anything in my stash for a scarf, figuring that a single strand of yarn and a basic stitch repeat would appeal to me. For now I should go to bed and hope the rest will help shake this virus from me.

Manna or Valomilk?

For the first time in my three years of knitting, I've ripped out a project. Surprisingly, it wasn't that painful but getting it back on the needles is going to be a new challenge. I didn't actually rip out the whole thing, just a little more than half a hat, and I got back to a point with the crown where I can stop increasing and just knit straight down. The first time I knit, I got carried away with the increase rounds and I knew the hat was going to be too big. Of course I just kept going, thinking it would be alright. Then when I realized how big the hat was, maybe blocking would take care of it. After two nights of sheer denial, I came to grips with the fact that the hat needed to be ripped back. I've placed the live stitches on a length of waste yarn and now need to figure out if the eight bar increases are set correctly in order to continue knitting.

Recently, I've been going a little crazy with the sweets. Since losing weight and noticing that my skin tone has evened out I've been shoving candy bars down my throat on a fairly regular basis. (for those who don't know, sugar and fat normally make my skin look like shit though they don't seem to effect my weight) Anyway, I've discovered Valomilks which are pudgy little chocolate cups filled with flowing marshmallow and although I've never been a marshmallow fan, these Valomilks are AMAZING!!! (insert jazz hands here) The filling is somewhere between a marshmallow and a sweet flowing caramel and you must try them. In addition to the valomilks, Hershey now has big milk chocolate bars with corn flake crisps in them. I've always loved simple, basic corn flakes and found the corn flake Ritter Sport candy bar a few years ago but they are pretty spendy. Not only do I indulge in a candy bar each night, I've also been eating a chocolate almondbutter rice crispy bar with lunch at work.

It may seem ridiculous to go on for a whole paragraph about eating candy bars but you need to understand the sense of freedom I'm feeling with this. My entire life has been filled with candy bar deprivation for reasons both clear and unclear. First of all, my parents didn't like us kids eating candy because it wasn't nourishing and it was full of sugar. They then moved on to the arguement that we were chubby and didn't "need" any candy. Sprinkled throughout this time was always the excuse, "we can't afford it". Growing up with these messages I learned to view candy as delicious and evil. It was a bad thing that only unhealthy people could eat and that it would make me fatter. I also realized in my teens that the quantity of blemishes on my face directly correlates with the quantity of sugar I eat. Now, at 35 years old, I'm realizing that I am eating candy and sweets like they are going out of style and I'm losing weight and my skin looks fantastic. Maybe middle-age has it's benefits?

Good Technique

Woo Hoo! The library secured a copy of Twined Knitting and I picked it up the other day. Talk about a rich history. I think in the long run I'm going to use this technique more often than double knitting to make warm hats and such. Reading about the tradition through hundreds of years and seeing the artifacts uncovered has made me fall in love with twined knitting. I want to tend sheep in the mountains wearing a wadmal bodice waste coat with knitted sleeves and drink hot tea by the fireplace at night in a stone cottage.

Knit has been happening but not every day. The twined hat is getting close and I'll probably work a few rounds when I'm done typing.

On the fence

For some reason I've taken a liking to having a walk on the trail behind my house in the evenings now that it has gotten really cold outside. The cold sucks but at the same time it is nice, crisp and calm outside with very few, if any, other walkers. I've been feeling warmer in the house due to walking out in the cold and getting my blood pumping. This is nice because I've felt colder in the winters the past few years due in part to my lack of activity.
Today at the mall, I was stunned to find that I fit very, very comfortably in size 34 jeans. I probably would have jumped up and down at this realization had I been trying to lose weight but it ended up being a balance of excitement and inconvenience. Knowing now that 34s look and feel better than 36s makes me not want to wear any of the trousers that are already in my closet. Making up for this lackluster experience was the cutest damn fleece jacket EVER. This fleece has the body flattering accent stylings that one usually finds on women's sporting gear but it is for men. The nice, dark cocoa brown color that is in style this season with exterior seam overstitching done in kelly green creating flattering lines down the torso. It's about f*ing time someone made flattering mens sport clothing for the average guy who doesn't happen to have a gym chiseled bod.

I'm not the first...but may be the most excited!

At last, a learning experience that is going to turn out a beautiful, wearable garment. Everything with this hat is new for me from the handling of the yarn to the number of needles involved. (I've made a mental note that whenever I purchase double-pointed needle in the future I must buy 2 sets of 5.) As you can see in the picture 9 needles are involved and no stitch markers. I did transfer the work to magic loop (circular) for a couple rounds but noticed that the curve of the round knitting with the tightness of the twisted stitches makes it very uncomfortable to knit on circular needles unless I used a 60 inch cord and broke the hat up into quarters instead of halves. Imagine the juggling of four pieces of work on a cord using magic loops - Yikes! Transferred back onto it's 8/9 needles, the technique has become quite hypnotic and enjoyable. The top of this hat pattern has been done by many folks and although at this point I plan to "borrow" a fellow knitter's pattern for the sides, I may dream up something of my own by the time I get there. The inside is almost as pretty as the outside although my orange floats are longer than in traditional twined knitting because I've broken up the orange stitches with two gray stitches rather than one. This is so exciting.

As the working yarns twist ever tighter together, I find myself speeding up my knitting in a vain attempt to out-run the coil. The only part of this knitting that isn't enjoyable is the untwisting of these yarns which involves stopping every quarter of the way around the work to secure the skeins and untwist the mess. Every time I take this pause my brain tries to come up with a way to easily, if not automatically, untwist as I work. Something will be figured out - someday.

Because of my current obsession with this traditional Swedish folk craft, I've renewed my library card. I neglect my library because I'm a clean freak and library books are filthier than money in my opinion - for christ sake, people take them to bed! They are a hell of a lot cheaper than money though and the knitting books I want are damned expensive. The friendly folks at the library are now reaching out to other libraries around the country in an effort to secure me a temporary copy of Twined Knitting which has been out of print for many years and has now reached $65.+ on the used book market. This book will help develop my skills and hopefully get me over the fear of creating thumbs on mittens.

Off now to dream of moving to Sweden and knit adorable accessories on a comfy couch for the rest of my life. I think there is a cute man in there somewhere too.