Knitting on Impulse

Things to Warm You

Due to spotty Internet service for the last day or so, I'm a little less organized than I would like to be; however, here's a couple of bits I've been promising:

The January Mitten:

Is clearly not going to be published today.  But the free Camera Mitten Pattern (particularly since WhipUp was kind enough to mention them!) may well be is in the right hand sidebar now, under free patterns.  Or go here: Download Camera Mittens . If the Internet connection doesn't go down again while I'm trying to load the file, that is.  The January mittens are, however, charted and well underway:

The Pepper/Apple/Peanut Butter Soup:

I'm not sure I've got my final favorite iteration worked out yet, but here is the gist of the recipe - it lends itself very well to experimentation:

Ingredients:

• 1 medium to largish yam - peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 apple - cored and thinly sliced
• 1 or 2 onions, peeled and chopped into 1 inch chunks
• several fresh sweet/hot peppers of various kinds (depending on availability and your heat tolerance) - washed and left whole
• a handful of garlic cloves - peeled

Toss these ingredients with a generous coating of olive oil, and roast in a single layer for 1 hr at 350 degrees F, turning 2 or 3 times during roasting so they brown evenly.

In a slow cooker, mix 1 can of beer and 2 cups of homemade chicken stock (or water or extra beer if you are vegetarian.)  Dissolve 1/3 cup of dark miso in the liquid. 

When the veggies have finished roasting, pull out the peppers, cut off and discard the stems and chop the peppers coarsely.  Add to the slow cooker along with the other roasted veggies and cook on high for 1 hour.

Add 1/2 cup of peanut butter and stir to dissolve (you can always add more if you want a creamier texture or something to buffer an overgenerous supply of peppers).  At this point, I also like to mash the yam pieces a bit.

Continue cooking on high for another hour - two if you want a thicker, creamier soup.  It is great on its own, or ladled over brown rice.

The key ingredients are the yams, onion, and miso, for a creamy texture and savoury-sweet flavour; and of course, the peppers.  This is a soup to warm you to the very core!

Study in White

Yup.  Still sick.  So much snow, so little energy.

Breathing In And Out has a body and 1.2 sleeves, and I think I'm going to like it very very much.

This afternoon however, will be given over to mitten charting.  Really.  There's still 3 days left in January.... Perhaps I should leave myself more wiggle room in these public resolution thingies.

Tomorrow: pictures from St. Moritz (he actually took some!), and the reason I will not be advocating for the formation of a local Cresta club.

Monday Consolations

Monday morning, and my poor little girl is missing one of her precious six sessions of ski school for the latest nasty virus to make the rounds of our house.  And because I am a total pushover as a mother, I gave in and created her consolation of choice:

Sugar, corn syrup and a dash of orange extract makes a treat with a surprisingly sophisticated flavor.  (She swears they help her sore throat, too.)  These are a wee bit more flexible than I think is strictly ideal - lacking a candy thermometer, I dusted off a vague recollection from the candy making days of my youth and dribbled sequential bits of the boiling syrup in a glass of ice water until it produced something one could reasonably call a "hard crack".  (That should drive up the Google hits... sigh.)  In retrospect, it could have boiled for another minute or two, but I rather like the freeform rolled versions.  I think if I planned ahead, I could make something fabulously floral with this. 

Speaking of sweet things, since I have now been nominated for the Make My Day award at least three times (thank-you VERY much), I should really emerge from the paralysis of social anxiety (will the folks I don't list hate me, how do I pick just 10, is it wrong to nominate a nominator, what if I do it all wrong, etc.) and make my own list.  Especially since I have already discovered a number of exciting blogs via other people's lists, which I think is the whole point of the exercise.

• Enchanting Juno - because she is a terribly cool person, an engaging writer, and feels rather like a kindred spirit.
• Celtic Memory Yarns - I love the way she conveys her connection to the land and history of her Irish home, and her husband takes the most divine pictures.
• Brenda Dayne's Cast On - I have just discovered podcasts, and if CBC Radio One were to do a weekly knitting program, I'm pretty sure it would sound exactly like this.  (Except, you know, with more Canadian content.)  I can give no higher praise.
• Ysolda - she has an impeccable design sense, but at the same time a manner of presenting her work that is accessible and unpretentious.  Plus I love the glimpses of Scotland.
• Tiennie - totally inspires me to do a better job of knitting for my family.
• Red Thread Studio - I discovered recently when she linked to me - she has a passion for what she calls Slow Cloth (something of a correlate to the Slow Food movement). Textiles made with care, craftsmanship, and attention to detail, made to last, made in mindful awareness of their impact on the environment.
• Dogs Steal Yarn - writes about her writing and her knitting - very inspiring.
• Graine de Memere - the first blogger I ever met in person - all the way from the South of France!  Knitting has been sparse lately, but her photos of Provence are inspiring, and her recipes are divine.
• Dances With Wool - a well rounded artist, with thoughtful posts, inspiring knitting and other textile arts.
• Knitting in the North - like Tiennie, Charity inspires me with her generous heart and commitment to her family. 

There are many many more, of course (which is why I have a blogroll in the sidebar) - some that are so popular already that I can't imagine anyone who hasn't already discovered them, and many (sadly) whom I followed avidly but have lately either drifted away or gone on to become so successful in the fibre world that they no longer have the time or inclination to blog.

Weekend

Saturday morning, and the clouds have come to roost in the treetops once again, dusting the smudged and trampled snow heaps with an insubstantial flurry.  (The greater part of roadside accumulation was recently hauled away in enormous dump trucks, when the piles grew higher than the reach of the plows, threatening to overwhelm the road.)

It is a good morning to wake up with strong coffee and a morsel of dark chocolate.  The children never fail to remind me about the chocolate. 

In our tiny kitchen, the dishwasher hums to itself, completing what I was too fragmented and bleary to finish last night, and the adjacent living room carpet is given over to the imaginings of a pair of transportation engineers who wait patiently for the promise of apple pancakes. 

But will they be as good as Dad's?  We can only hope the red bowls will work their magic.

Breathing In And Out

Sometimes you just have to push your body and senses down the path of sanity, and the mind will tag along. 

It was a brilliant blueberry day, so I treated myself to a morning on the slopes.  There are no pictures of the actual skiing because Rob has taken the little camera to St. Moritz (where he will doubtless forget to use it) and I am not nearly confident enough to ski with my precious SLR.  It was quite wonderful (and I did not even fall down and suffer incapacitating injury thus stranding my precious children at their schools as de facto orphans.  Anxiety sucks.  Doesn't stop me from doing things, but it sucks nonetheless.)

I came home, heated a lovely bowl of peanut butter/apple/hot pepper soup and downloaded my very first podcast. I know I am the last person on earth to do this - I thought I had to load it onto my ipod that I don't yet know how to work in order to be able to hear a podcast, but... I don't.  The computer played it for me quite obediently and I curled up on the couch by the fire and knit on the bulky blue and white cardigan and felt... happy.  Peaceful, even.

This will be a simple stockinette raglan, with a twisted garter stitch border for a dash of texture and whimsy.

Maybe I'll even chart a mitten tomorrow.

What Day Is It Again?

Totally out of sync these days.  Nothing tragic, just a miniature storm of disruptors, anxiety triggers and button pushers, as a result of which my neck and face have gone all tight and hard and squinched my brain.  And if I breathe and move around so as not to think too much, they back off ever so slightly, and if I think or calculate at all (even in a good way) they snap back into place like a steel spring.  (I used to live my everyday life like this, and I haven't now for over a year, so I am trying to think of it as an encouraging reminder of how good things are.  In the big picture.)  So anyway, the designing and the knitting that would make interesting blog fodder are not so much happening.  My house however, is getting very very clean, and I am sure I will thank myself for it next week.

The easy cruising portion of Cedar Serenade has gone as far as it can, and is now awaiting a clear head with which to calculate its deeply scooped neck:

I also need to steam block it again before continuing - this business of drawing on stockinette with purl stitches is tricky, because they have their own independent elastic properties, and tend to look all distorted until tamed.  The border settled down obediently with a few puffs of steam, but I will not feel easy about the body until I block it. 

And since that was (until now) my avoidance project, I spent a few minutes last night flipping through stitch dictionaries and haphazardly swatching something else:

I might even pour a cup of chamomile tea and cast on tonight once the kids are in bed.

Surely this delectably enormous full moon couldn't have anything to do with... anything?

Because it has made me very happy these last two mornings, appearing low and luminous through the front window, and sliding down the mountain to disappear into the notch between Cougar and Rainbow.

Rainbow Surprise

First though, let me say thank-you for all the lovely and complimentary comments on Friday's post.  I haven't managed to respond to each of you personally yet, but they were each savoured, chuckled over, and greatly appreciated.  Rob may be slightly insufferable for some time though, especially since Lee Ann referred to him as a "beefcake".

I haven't forgotten about the January mittens, but since a new nephew arrived late last week, I took a couple of days off "regular knitting" to make my very first Baby Surprise Jacket. 

It is fully reversible:

I am a little partial to side 2, with its impression of decorative top stitching:

The back:

For the shoulder seams, I picked up stitches knitwise on each half of side 1, then grafted them together with side 2 facing, thus preserving the continuity of the garter stitch progression and creating a fully reversible seamless effect:

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket (perhaps the most famous baby sweater in the world?)

Yarn: Knitpicks Crayon - a plush, machine wash-and-dry-able cotton in brilliant primary colours to delight the little guy's senses and camouflage his blurps.

Gauge: At 5 stitches to the inch, this works out to about a standard 12 month size, though since he weighed 9 lbs at birth, I suspect it will be useful sooner rather than later.

Modifications: I went for an i-cord tie rather than buttons.... because I'm paranoid like that.  And the collar is not part of the original version, though it has been done by others many times over.

Eye Candy Friday: Husband Socks

Here it is: the first hand knit that my beloved husband has ever actually worn!

They have been pronounced warm (already test-driven with long undies), quite tolerable, and possibly even.... (drum roll)... comfy!

And since it's Friday, and I am slightly jealous of Tiennie, who regularly gets to show off her gorgeous hubby in fabulous sweaters, here's the eye candy:

Go on, tell him how handsome he is!  (I almost categorized this post under Natural Beauty, but I thought that might be pushing it....)

Slower Than....

... in January, no less... is how time goes when one's Internet connection is down AGAIN.  This time it wasn't the usual culprits: 1) "we were upgrading our system for the 12th time and forgot to tell you", or 2)the delusional driver who heads up from the coast, believing that his bald summer tires will adhere him to a seriously snowy road Just This Once and predictably, spins out into the bridge, severing the fibre optic cable which then cannot be reached for repair because the road is blocked and highway traffic has backed up for countless miles of gridlock right back into the Village proper such that residents can't even drive to the grocery store, let alone get home from work. OK, there's also 3)avalanches, mudslides and the like - these at least, are not acts of human idiocy.  Anyway, this was a new one - a rival provider of cable infomercials installed their system in the building, and their frequency just happens to be uncomfortably close to that of our Internet provider's, thus blotting out our signal.  So we spent the first sunny ski day in months hanging out watching the (very nice) cable guy figure out the problem.

I did however, resist the urge to race down to the Internet cafe and reassure you all that I am still here, because... you likely haven't noticed that I wasn't.  I have come to the conclusion that time in Tragically Offline world moves very differently.  It's a little like Narnia - you know the scene where Lucy comes racing out into the hall, breathlessly reassuring her siblings that she's OK, and their response is bemused and a little patronizing because it was really no time at all?  Like that. In Offline world, kingdoms rise and fall, things of immeasurable value vanish from all thought or knowledge as the long ages pass.  Meanwhile, folks online have had time to finish their coffee and blink several times.  It can be a little humbling to lurch back into reality.

I got a fair amount of knitting done in lieu of surfing Bloglines and Ravelry (funny how that works) - if it's sunny tomorrow I might even take a picture of it.  After I ski.

PS - I have not ever actually worn a wet (or dry) dog on my head - admittedly I was extrapolating in a somewhat unscientific manner.  But wet alpaca does smell considerably more canine than wet wool. 

Cedar Serenade

Sometimes you've just got to scratch that itch - you know?  (Not literally, the Elann Uros Aran is divine.)

Here's a fun fact I learned this morning: an alpaca hat in heavy rain is exactly like wearing a wet dog on your head.  Happy Monday!