General Yammering. Not Much Knitting.

Moved house this past weekend; lots of knitting and blogging were accomplished thought about. Moving actually not finished; the movers are coming back this coming weekend to bring the furniture that was in storage to the new digs. There is a Christmas tree outside; my family is going to decorate it on Christmas Eve. I'm making Beef Wellington for dinner, with garlic mashed potatoes and glazed carrots. The Beef Wellington is my brother's special request--one that I usually ignore, since it's so labor-intensive, but now I have this wonderful 48" Wolf range to cook on, so I figured I had better make use of it. If you are a serious cook, you will love a Wolf range. It really is that much better.

• I spent the past few nights doing this: Behold, the dutch oven full of chicken corn chowder with andouille sausage. Are you imagining it? Good. Now it's at a simmer. I turn the knob to high and in less than 2 seconds, it's at a full boil. I turn the knob down to low, and it stops simmering. Boil. Simmer. Stop. Boil. Simmer. Stop. Repeat until the novelty wears off, or someone yells that at this rate, we're never going to eat dinner.
  
• I roasted a pork loin, and used the integrated probe. It's genius, albeit a little fiddly to plug in when you're trying to lift the probe flap thing with an oven mitt.
  
• It has a setting for proofing dough. It will keep the oven at 80°F. No more worrying about finding the right temperature spot in the house to put your bowl of dough.
  
• After flipping through the instruction manual, I'm pretty sure that there isn't much this thing can't do.
  

Anyway, I was thinking about finishing up the sweater I was knitting for my mom (as a non-specific present) for a Christmas present. It's the "Belled-Sleeved Cardigan" I have on my Ravelry projects page. The trouble now is I have to figure out where I left off. I think it was on the armhole decreases on one of the front sections. What this really means is: An adventure awaits! That, and I will learn to mark on the pattern where I stop working the next time I'm planning on putting a project down.

I'm also trying to finish the second of the pair of "Spawn of Thrummed Mittens" for mom for an Xmas gift. I'm almost to the part where I hold stitches for the thumb. Should be no problem to finish these up.

Just finished up some online Christmas shopping for dad. I bought an assortment of things from Gardener's supply, including some composting accessories, a plastic mulch mat for increasing tomato yield, and a "Summer of Salads" lettuce seed mix.

My spinning buddy Anne (hi Anne!) came up with the brilliant idea to have a yarn/roving crawl in the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's like a bar crawl, but infinitely better, because being drunk on fiber involves far more giddiness and far less hangover than the alcoholic variety--for about the same economic impact, with lasting satisfaction. We're still working out the details, but I will be sure to post pictures of the adventure.

Tea, Art, Knitting, Spinning. (wit took the night off)

Boy, oh boy, do I have updates. Let's start with the most recent.

TEA & ART
I just bought the utiliTEA kettle from Adagio Teas for the office. I've wanted an electric kettle for a while and this seems to be the best for the money, since it has a variable temperature control. I haven't bought one before now because I've been getting by with my morning caffeinated tea and buying 1-2 unsweetened iced teas from McDonald's during the week. Now that the weather is colder I've switched to drinking hot tea all day long.

I took off this past week to paint trompe l'oeil. Painting full-time is the most marvelous thing I can think of. I loved waking up in the morning knowing that I was going to drive to the studio, brew a cup of tea, and sit down to my palette and paint until lunchtime, walk a few blocks to one of the many neighborhood eateries, pick up a cup of tea to go from my favorite tearoom, and settle back in for an afternoon of more painting. It wasn't exactly fun painting--the phrase that comes to mind is "brutally hard"--but it was intensely satisfying. I was really depressed on Saturday because it was over. I don't know when I'll have time to paint again in the near future, but I hope it's not too far off.Anyway, the painting is linked to the electric kettle-buying. Last week I averaged daily tea intake between 5-8 cups between 8am and 6pm: 1 cup chai in the morning; 2-3 cups of rooibos until lunch; 2 cups black tea after lunch; 1-2 cups assorted decaf late afternoon; 1 cup Egyptian Licorice Mint before bed. It was marvelous. My new favorite black tea is Golden Monkey. I want to keep up the tea intake at work, although the hot tab on the office water cooler is for crap and microwaving in the limited kitchen is a pain. (*side note* the GE Profile water cooler has a hot feature that really gets steaming hot enough for tea--instantly. If I were going to buy a new water cooler for the office, I would get this one)

I didn't finish my painting, but when I do, I'll post a photo of it. I painted it all from three--count 'em, three-- colors, plus white. Behold, palette before and after shots:




======

KNITTING

I picked the Thrummed Mittens back up. They had been hibernating for many months and in the desperation to have something hand-knitted to give away to family members for Christmas... Actually, I was trying to think of a gift for my sister-in-law. My brother buys her anything material thing she could possibly want (and many material things she didn't know she wanted), so it's not a matter of buying something really nice, pretty, soft, or useful. It has to be one of those, "from the heart" gifts. Damn. Those are always the most difficult. So I started knitting her a felted wine cozy in colors she likes. I know, nothing screams "I'm so glad to have you in my family!" like a felted wine cozy. It ranks right up there on the Charm Scale with getting an electric leg razor as a surprise gift on your 20th wedding anniversary. It is a damn nice wine cozy, though. My mom came to the rescue and said,

"Why don't you make her a pair of those wonderful mittens you showed me--the ones that are all soft inside?"
"The Thrummed Mittens?"
"Yes, those. Did you tell me, though, that you absolutely hate knitting mittens?"
"Yes."
"Ah well. It was a thought."

Turns out I don't hate them nearly as much as I thought. In fact I plowed through the body of the mitten in less than a handful of hours today. I estimate that in two more hours, I should have the left mitten finished--which brings me to one completed pair of Thrummed Mittens. If I were particularly enterprising, I would also figure out how to make Thrummed Booties. But surely my SIL knows how much I love and appreciate her without me having to make Thrummed Booties. Yes, I think so.

Then I had the second thought: Hey, these things aren't so bad after all... maybe I'll pick up some other color yarn and roving while I'm at the knitting shop that looks more like her and whip up a pair, and give the finished blue ones to Mom. I'm brilliant AND a masochist, apparently. My main objection to knitting socks and mittens is that it tends to make my wrists sore... but that could also have been a tendency to strangle my knitting, which I have fortunately given up. Perhaps my wrists have also become stronger and less prone to injury since I've been doing hour-long weight-lifting sessions twice a week for the past 6 months. My shoulders are ripped and beastly, so why shouldn't my wrists (while lacking in obvious stunning musculature) be stronger too? That, or the weakness in my wrists was psychosomatic. Oh god--what if I'm a hypochondriac?!?

Anyway...

dost mine eyes deceive me?

'Sfaith, I see Thrummed Mittens by the pair.

I knew I shouldn't have left them alone unsupervised.

===========

SPINNING

Looky, looky! My very own handspun 2ply: 50% Corriedale, 35% Merino, 15% Tencel.

Meeting Notes, 16 July 2007

Hear ye, hear ye--this meeting of the Knit Goddingdom Alliance is called to order.
Courtney the Knitting Goddess (Alliance President, Secretary, Treasurer, Pontiff, Bailiff and Premier Baker) presiding.
*Knit Goddingdom National Anthem is sung*
All members please be seated.

First on the agenda: Courtney the Knitting Goddess will present the Old Business.

OLD BUSINESS:
I've perfected the art of making a pie crust that is both tender and flaky. I was going to say I've learned the secret, but there are actually about seven steps involved. It's incredibly time-consuming, but the result is worth it. The following pie was made using all organic ingredients! So, the plan was that I was going to cook dinner for my friend and myself, and then we would go see the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Well... the pie takes four hours in the fridge after making the glaze. So we decided that after the movie, we'd come back and eat pie.

The correct Southern pronunciation is... hmm, I don't know how to spell it.
It's some sort of ee-ah diphthong...
like saying "Pah" and "eye" at the same time.

This pie turned out so well that I baked another yesterday. I had to know whether it was a fluke, or if the results are indeed reproducible. Good news--it worked!

Some people went to the Harry Potter movie midnight showing. Some of them dressed up. I'm sure I wouldn't know who this person is:

"Raven hair and ruby lips
sparks fly from her fingertips..."

The Blue Baby Shawl is making progress... it looks essentially the same as the last picture, only longer. I'll post pics once I start on the edging.

Anyway, that's all of the old business. Time for the new business!

NEW BUSINESS:

Last Sunday I started knitting a pair of Thrummed Mittens at my LYS. Thrumming apparently means to knit in bits of roving in strategic areas, giving the mitten a decorative pattern on the face and fluffy roving innards that will not only naturally felt with wear but also envelop one's digits on a cocoon of luxurious hand-dyed softness. Not that one can actually see the hand-dyed beauty of the roving once it's on the inside, but the knitter knows. Yes, the knitter knows.

These are seriously bulky mittens...
which feel seriously fantastic on.

Maybe the reason everyone likes these mittens so much is that when you slip one on, you're essentially slipping your hand inside a gigantic bit of roving. Perhaps this is how we can convince more people to start spinning: have them put on a Thrummed Mitten. It's sort of like crack. They won't be able to keep their hands off the stuff. They'll want it around them always. It starts with wearing the mittens in April, even when the trees have blossomed and the temperatures are well in the 50s. Then the habit kicks in... starting up the wheel before breakfast, while everyone else is asleep. Slipping a baggie of Corriedale and a spindle into their desk drawer at work. Piling up half-pound bags, neatly labeled with fiber content, dye lot and exact weight in a corner of the stash closet.

fluffy innards.

accurate color portrayal

That's all the new business... Next week we'll have the results of setting in the thumb gusset!

If I have time, I'll put up a brief step-by-step tutorial on thrumming later in the week. Like most things with knitting, once you've seen it done, it's easy.

This meeting of the Knit Goddingdom Alliance is adjourned!