Travelin´and Knittin

This was my travel car in the train from Madrid to Vigo last week. Tight quarters, but I was traveling in style with the top bunk and no one in the next bed. This view is from my bunk, in case you couldn´t tell.

On the way, I finished Julian´s bear with his Barca scarf. Here he is with my travel knitting kit. Floss to cut the yarn, a pretty bag my friend Wen Lei gave me from China that holds my needles, measuring tape, stitch holders and markers, and anything else I need along the way.

Rockin' the Holiday Gifts

Meridith and I made a gingerbread house today. I bought the house parts at Ikea (no kidding), and we put it together and decorated it. Note the gumdrop snowman to the right- isn't he cute?

It has been a busy day on the gift-making front. Here you have Julian's bear- he has yet to be named and clothed. I've decided to just go with the scarf instead of the whole football jersey, so I should be able to finish that today and he'll be ready for his trip overseas on Tuesday.

I also finished Juan's mother's scarf. Thank you to everyone who contributed their suggestions to my dilemma. I finally went with what I know- the basketweave pattern. I really like how it turned out. The basketweave is my favorite scarf pattern. Some of you may recall that I made one for Julian last year in this pattern.

Here's a close-up.

Pattern notes: I knit this with a cream 70% alpaca 30% acrylic blend, double stranded throughout on 10 1/2 handmade cherry wood needles. The ends are each six rows of seed stitch, while the rest is: three stitches in seed pattern on the ends and five boxes of four stitches each. It is not a super-long scarf because it doesn't really get that cold in Vigo, so you don't need to wrap it around your neck too many times. It is very soft and has a much better drape than the all-seed pattern would have had.

I also made some fingerless gloves in my own pattern for my sister. I took the "Fetching" pattern from Knitty.com and shortened the cable and did it throughout so it is very elastic and fitted to your hand. The yarn is double-stranded alpaca from my friend Margaret's very own alpacas in Minnesota. It is an extremely durable yarn, but super soft, so I think it will be perfect for Meridith's dog-walking activities. I also made a pair for Amy in cream alpaca- very soft and luxurious, but I forgot to take a picture. So imagine this in cream :)

Cookies and a new Teddy Bear

Even though I am on vacation, I have been occupied with various pressing matters over the past few days. I spent all of yesterday on the Internet researching my upcoming trip to Europe. I leave for Spain the day after Christmas, but first I have a day-long layover in Amsterdam, which I am very excited about. It is one of my favorite cities- I love the contrast of the quiet canals and beautiful traditional architecture with the modern, hip vibe of all the young people cruising around on their bikes. I managed to find a yarn store mention on the web- De Afstap, so I may pop in there to see what I can find on my jet-lagged ramblings. To the left here you can see my latest project-in-progress. I am making another Teddy Bear from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. This one is going to be for Julian, Juan's 6 year old son. I have been entrusted to make him (the bear) a tee shirt that looks like a Barça jersey. Right now I'm just working on getting the bear done before I see him next week- we may have to settle for a scarf in the Barça colors of red and blue.

Meridith and I spent the entire day out and about getting errands and last-minute shopping done. (Well, I was- she just came along- poor thing had no idea what she was in for). Living in the middle of nowhere, I don't get near commercial temptation all that often. I had intended to take a couple of hours and be home before the crowds descended on the mall and the surrounding area, but it turns out that we were gone for SIX hours! About five hours into the marathon mall trip, both us of realized that the only food/beverage product we had consumed since breakfast were a couple of pieces of peppermint bark handed out by a smiling lady in a Santa hat at Williams and Sonoma and a dixie cup of hot cider at the same local. Determined to finish up and go home, we pressed on for another hour, fueled by an almost-empty can of roasted peanuts in the backseat of my car, remnants from last week's road trip.

Upon getting home (and eating), I proceeded to bake two batches of cookies: molasses spice and chocolate peppermint. Tomorrow they will be sent to my cousin in Iraq- more of a New Year's gift than Christmas at this point. But this package has been in the making for a couple of weeks now, so I'll be glad to have it sent out and on its way. I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and not stressing too much. And for those last-minute gift knitters like myself- animo! They will get done in time. And if not, there's always birthdays :)

Knitting is Frustrating II: The Hourglass Sweater

I'm finally ready to talk about my other frustrating knitting project. As you may recall, I had started work about a month ago on the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. The body is knit in the round, as are the sleeves, and then you attach the sleeves to the body via a raglan-style stitch as you continue to knit the rest of the body in the round.

Everything was going fine until I got to the raglan decreases. The photo probably doesn't show it well enough, but if you have better eyesight than I, can you spot the problem below?

Here are the close-ups. You may have noticed that the right side decreases in a lovely left-leaning raglan slant.

And you may have noticed that the left side does not slant to the right.

As I was knitting this, I thought that things were a little off, but I have a really bad habit of realizing that something is not going well and just knitting anyway, hoping it will straighten itself out, until it gets to the point that there is no denying it anymore and something has to be done- usually frogging and starting over. (Yes, psych 101 analysts, this tendency could probably be a metaphor for life, too.)

There could be several reasons for this problem. I was doing it in the car, with no knitting references save the pattern book. For some reason, it does not include a stitch guide, so I had to remember what exactly "ssk" entailed. I'm thinking I guessed wrong, even though the right side looks fine. My other thought was that the pattern was wrong, and there are separate instructions for a right decrease and a left, though the book implies you can do the same for all sides. I've since checked the web and I've not seen anyone else have the same problem, so whatever it is, it is me. I left Hourglass at home in MN and I'm hoping that I will be ready to rip out all the yoke and do the sleeve attachment again when I return relaxed from my month-long vacation.

I usually do consult the web before starting a project to check for corrections or just to see if other people had problems or improvements, but for whatever reason, I did not do so with this one and I have learned my lesson. I will NOT start a project blind ever again- you have it here.

On the road

Tomorrow morning we're leaving bright and early for Maine. It'll be a two-day trip. I finished my last exam this afternoon at 5:30 p.m. and have already turned in three of my four class grades. I got a really cool package from my secret pal today- Thanks Secret Agent Sheep! I'll post pictures of it all in a couple of days and installment #2 of Knitting Can be Frustrating, too.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my mother's birthday, so happy birthday to her. She already opened her present over Thanksgiving, but since it is a panini maker and they only had carry-on luggage, she hasn't been able to use it yet. We've been having a great time making hot sandwhiches with it, though ;) (Just kidding :)

It is also the birthday of our little Mobi Ramekins. She is two years old today, which means she officially is no longer a puppy. In honor of her birthday, I am doing a little photo montage of her life with us so far.

Cooking Is Fun

While I have not been very successful in my knitting attempts lately (it is actually a multi-part series of frustrations, I just thought I'd save the next whining for a few days), my kitchen time has been GREAT. I recently made stroganoff with ground turkey, making it up as I went along, and it turned out just as I had hoped. If I have a particular dish in mind, I prefer to follow a recipe because I am not that confident in my own cooking skills yet, so this was a great ego booster. Especially as it was about the same time I was having so many knitting frustrations.

I've been making a lot of salads to boost our vitamin and mineral intake as it gets colder. They've been having arugula at the store lately, which is my all-time favorite green leafy veggie. I got some radicchio, too, and added some to get a great color contrast with the green. All our salads for the past couple of weeks have been these with some variation of orange wedges, golden raisins, pomegranate seeds, avocado, roasted beets, red onion, red pear and homemade salad dressing. This week I've been tending to simpler salads with just arugula, cherry tomatoes, feta, and avocado.

Next to the salad you can see Rachel Ray's black bean stoup from her 365 meals book. I had been craving black bean soup and realized I had never made it before. We had it with salad and quesadillas with salsa. Another recent cooking experiment involved adapting chicken piccata to tilapia. I thought the lemon butter sauce with capers would work nicely with a white fish, and I was right. We had that with a risotto of mushrooms, carrots, and peas, and of course, a salad.

Lastly, as I've been indulging in my cravings, I HAD to make a batch of double chocolate cookies. Usually, I only get to have these when I buy them at a coffee shop or bakery, since had never tried to make them before. For this recipe, I consulted my Best Recipe cookbook- the ONLY baking cookbook, as far as I'm concerned. These cookies turned out fabulous. Amazing. So incredibly, dangerously good. I had to wonder if it was partly due to the Nestle baking cocoa I used instead of Hershey's, but I won't go back to Hershey's to find out. They also had chocolate chips (I forgot which brand) and walnuts. Needless to say, they are all gone already.

So, even if my knitting has not been successful, we have been eating well at the FIG household, and that is certainly more important. After all ,you cannot live by yarn alone.

Knitting Can be Frustrating: The Xmas Scarf

Welcome to a multi-part series unfortunately titled "Knitting Can be Frustrating." At the moment, I am working on a scarf for Juan's mom. I got the yarn at Loopy Yarns in Chicago a few weeks ago: it's Plymouth Yarn's Baby Alpaca Brush in a soft ecru color. I didn't realize this at the time, because I was juggling an over-excited dog, but it's 80% baby alpaca and 20% acrylic. I'm not too pleased about giving acrylic as a gift, but it is very soft. I just hope it doesn't pill with wear. I had intended to make the Daisy scarf from Rowan magazine #36, and was very optimistic about my ability to do it.
I had the whole car ride to Michigan and back last week, which would afford me ample time to concentrate on the pattern. You can see for yourself what the result was:

I have tried lace patterns before and just can't seem to get it right. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong and not sure how to overcome this problem. I must be reading a direction wrong somewhere, or I don't understand wrapping correctly- I don't know, and that's what kills me. I taught myself to knit from a book, and have mastered many a technique through written instructions, but there is something about lace knitting that eludes me. Not to be easily daunted, however, I ripped out try #1 and started again, suspecting where at least part of my erroneous ways had led me astray. Here is attempt #2:


A bit better, but I am supposed to drop a bunch of loops, and while some of them settled in just fine, many didn't. And this is the part that frustrates me- am I doing it right and they just need to settle and be blocked? Or is it wrong? It looked wrong to me and Juan and my sister Meridith, and since I had no lace knitters to consult and I already have too much stress in my life, I decided that I would only impart negative vibes into the thing if I kept working on it, which wouldn't do for a gift. So, I ripped it out again, determined to find a better pattern that wouldn't send me to the funny farm in the process. That in itself was not as easy as hoped. Most patterns just didn't work with the yarn I had, and the ones that did were.... lace. No way. I finally decided to use "Warm Fuzzies" from Stitch N' Bitch Nation, with pseudo-cables on one side and ribbing on the other.

The thing is, the pseudo-ribbing was hard to manipulate with the fat 10.5 needles required and my hands were really starting to hurt after this much had been knit. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of the many painful nights before me and I don’t really like scarves with different patterns on each side, sooooo… I once again frogged the whole project. Starting afresh, I decided to just go with what I already know, and started working a seed stitch pattern.

Two worries with this choice: 1) the seed pattern is a bit stiff, so I’m dubious about how it’s going to look when it drapes. 2) Since the cable pattern, I started knitting two strands together, but had only bought three skeins since that’s what the original pattern called for. I will probably need to hunt down more skeins to make this a proper-length scarf. Meanwhile, since having Internet access, I found out many people have had problems with the Daisy pattern and have found some helpful tips online.

So, dear readers, if there are any left after this long tirade, what should I do? Keep knitting the double-stranded seed stitch? Frog the already tired yarn once again and do a different pattern? (I was thinking maybe basketweave would drape nicely) Go back to the original pattern and try again? Any other good scarf patterns that wouldn’t require double stranding and hair-pulling? I await any suggestions, because lord knows, I really can’t look at yarn and needles right now.

Turkey Day in Kalamazoo

Juan, Mobi, and I drove to Kalamazoo, MI for Thanksgiving where many family members joined my aunt and uncle for the holiday. My parents and sister's trip actually did include planes, trains, and automobiles, but without any annoying pick-ups along the way. Lovely Ms. Jai came to have lunch with me on Wednesday, and it was great to see her. Here we are in front of the new Kalamazoo College library. Our Alma Mater finally renovated the library, only six years too late. I spent my requisite 10-hours a week work study job as a reference librarian at that library, but that's about it. I much preferred the 24-hour cafe down the street from campus for my study environment. But this building is gorgeous. I would have probably studied much more in the library if it had looked like this. Check out the reading room:

Leather sofas, velvet seats, little green reading lamps and two fireplaces! I'm a sucker for little green reading lamps- once I discovered the reading room at the Boston Public Library, I was in there every chance I had- mostly because of the lamps and the great cafe downstairs. (Are you sensing a theme yet? A+ studying for me always involves comfy surroundings and hot drinks :)

The long car ride afforded me some great knitting time, but I'm going to save that for another blog entry which will probably happen tonight or tomorrow. For now, I'm off to class *sigh* (just this week and next and then we're into finals!!). Hope everyone had a great holiday break, with lots of good food and company.

Weekend Update

I posted some pictures on my travel blog from our night in the Wisconsin Dells last weekend (See link to said blog on the right).

I bought my plane ticket to Spain over winter break, and I get to stop in Amsterdam for the day on my way over. It is one of my favorite cities, so I am very excited about that.

We had Nancy and Jeff over for a Spanish tapas dinner on Saturday and I finally got to do some real cooking, though Juan did half of it. The table was gorgeous, but we forgot to take a picture, so you'll just have to imagine it all: marinated olives, chorizo, jamon serrano, various cheeses, membrillo (quince paste), empanadas, bread with tomatoes (a Catalan specialty), tortilla de patatas (Spanish omelet), salad, garlic mushrooms, Terra chips (because we love them and would use any excuse to have them), stuffed eggs, patatas bravas, and roasted peppers. For dessert we had flan, of course, and washed it all down with some yummy wines. We then all danced it off at a ballroom dance event. It was our first one, and we were surprised at the variety of ages there- from high school to octogenarian. We learned tango and rumba and danced until my feet hurt too much.

Besides dancing, I also took Mobi for a two-hour walk and attended my Sunday yoga class, finally breaking completely the cycle of sedentary laziness and yucky food I've been plagued with for the past couple of weeks. Good thing Thanksgiving is coming up!

Hourglass Sweater

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on the Hourglass Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, a great resource for fun, fairly quick patterns. I have really been wanting a pullover sweater that can be worn with jeans, of three-season weight, not too fancy, but not too baggy, either- a weekend errands and coffee kind of sweater. I bought the yarn in Madrid last May, loving the tweedy texture and colors (a marine blue with various shades of other blues). It's Katia brand, mostly silk with some wool. I thought I would make Celtic, a zip cardigan from Rowan's latest magazine, but the gauge was way too off.

Than I found this pattern- it was exactly what I wanted, so I got to work. It's knit in the round on #7 needles and you start at the bottom and work up, attaching the sleeves as you go. I have the first one done and attached, and here is sleeve #2. The pattern called for #7 12" circ needles, but I couldn't find them that small, so I went with dpns. I just realized that I have been knitting the sleeve with #6s by mistake, but they don't look different, so I am not going to worry about it. Maybe I'm doing the body in sixes, too- hmmmm.... oh well. It looks like it's going to be fine, so no worries. If you look closely, you'll notice that there's a turning edge, so I'll sew that and have a nice even hem.

I also wanted to show you my new knitting basket that I got for the living room. My other one doesn't have a lid, so Mobi would get into it and it had to be moved upstairs. Since then, I have had yarn and needles strewn all over the coffee table and couch after a knitting/viewing session. I got this from a Ten Thousand Villages sale they had here at WSU. Isn't it nice? It was made by hand in Bangledesh.

Pelicula of the Week: Como agua para chocolate

This is an old favorite, but since Juan and I are both teaching magical realism this semester, we thought it would be great for them to see another example of that technique. It reminded me of college, watching this with the girls and swooning over Pedro. The acting is a bit overdone in parts, and the ending is the perfect example of completely failing to translate the beautiful concepts of a novel onto the big screen, but it's still a great love story.

Chicago

I have to start by saying that apparently this is my 101 blog entry- yeah! I wish I had balloons and cake and streamers!!! (Or, I'd just settle for the cake ;)

On Thursday we headed to Chicago for the M/MLA conference (That's, Midwest Modern Language Association). I was so happy to get out of town, just to have a change of scene. Juan was presenting a paper on two Mexican poets. I heard some interesting papers at the conference and even ran into two old friends from college- Josh and Adela. She's from Spain and was my tutor back when I could barely put a sentence together in Spanish. Josh was an old roommate's boyfriend when we first arrived, but the two of them then ended up together, which was cool since that meant we also got to hang out in Caceres once or twice when I was on study abroad. They were also there for the conference, though we actually ran into each other on the street. She gave an interesting talk on Galdos and Desperate Housewives- (yes, there really was a connection there). It was great to see them and made me realize how small the academic world is- we'll probably meet again at another conference somewhere.

In Chicago I got to check out a LYS that was only a ten-minute walk from the hotel. Loopy Yarns was a saving grace for many reasons. First, due to its location in the Loop- the downtown section of Chicago where we were staying- I could easily walk there and not have to deal with the public transport system. Second, because when I decided to go it was downpouring outside but I did not know it because I had been in the hotel at the conference all day, and you know how they have no windows or other means for seeing the light of day. So, I took Mobi with me, thinking that she'd like the walk, and even when I realized it was pouring out, it wasn't too cold and she had her coat on, I took her anyway hoping they would take pity on her and let her in. We arrived soaking wet and frazzled from the dark, windy street of the run-down block. Opening the door of Loopy Yarns I felt like Dorothy discovering the Emerald City. It was a small but spacious shop brightly lit and full of women and fluffy, colorful yarns. Not only did the owner let Mobi come in, but she also held her while I picked out yarn for some Christmas gifts. Everyone oohed and ahhed over her, so of course she was in seventh doggie heaven, wiggling her little butt in that happy salsa dance she does. The third reason I loved Loopy Yarns this weekend is because I finally got the needles I needed to work on the sleeve of my unfinished sweater. (I'll have pictures-in-progess soon).

We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton, which is where we stayed last time we were in Chicago. This is a pic of its lobby, which has a beautiful decor. It's got a great location next to the Art Institute, Millenium Park, and Michigan Ave. It is pretty much the only hotel we've found downtown that allows dogs, so we were glad to see that that's where the conference was going to be. The people who worked there were so nice to Mobi and we couldn't get to the elevator without having ten people pet her and say how cute she was. (As if I needed to be told!)

All in all, I'd say it was a great little trip to the Windy city.

Finished sweater in Boston

When my parents went down to Boston a couple of weeks ago, my sister took a picture of my mom in her custom-made sweater. Meridith told me that they were down by Fanueil Hall, a very touristy area, and took the picture in front of a random restaurant. A bunch of tourists saw them and thought it was an important place for one reason or another, so as they were leaving, all these people lined up to get their picture in front of the "important landmark."

There's Hope for Us Yet

Go Democrats!

Happy Halloween!

I got a package in the mail on Monday from my SecretPal9. Yeah! Here are the goods (minus the candy because Juan ate it all!!!). Yes, it's true- he ate all my candy in about 5 minutes. grrrr. Anyway, it's been a crazy week, which is why I have not had the time to post or even look at my favorite blogs. In my lovely surprise on Monday I received a cute little fall scarecrow, a ball of brick-red yarn that I'm thinking would be great for socks, though I am not sure you can do socks with one skein since I've never done them before, a couple of cute little Halloween characters and a fun (homemade?) moon/bat magnet that now decorates my office quite festively, some pretty blue stitch holders, about which I am very excited since I've always been jealous of other people's pretty homemade ones, and the already-mentioned candy that didn't last too long. Thank you so much SecretPal9!

Below all this, you can see my current on-needles project. It's the hourglass sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I had to frog my previous plans for this yarn because it was too thick for the pattern and it was making my hands hurt trying to cable with it on too-small needles. This is what I have done in a week- up to the arms. It is knit in the round, so no side seams! Now I need to get another pair of needles for the sleeves, which I have not had time to do this week. It's driving me crazy, because I was really enjoying knitting this and would like to wear it! Hopefully tomorrow will calm down a little and I can run over to the Cinderella Shoppe- the only store in town that sells circular needles. It's actually a fabric store with an acrylic selection of yarns (i.e. I don't buy their yarn), but I do buy lots of needles from them. I would think I have every size by now, but no, there always seems to be more.

An Hour Gained

How did you spend your extra hour yesterday? We had a lovely brunch (that is usually Juan's area- what that guy can do to eggs!) and later Mobi and I went for a nice walk through the bluffs above the cemetery (very peaceful there :) The Y is back to being open on Sundays, so my 4 pm yoga class is back, too (yeah!). After class, I like to soak in the hot tub and relax in the saunas with a great book. I've been reading Camille Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn which are close readings of supposedly "Four-three of the World's Best Poems." The subtitle is a BIT of a stretch, considering they are all British, Irish, or North American authors. Not exactly "the world". But the book is great for my purposes- I can read a poem or two and her commentary and then pick it up again a few days or months (ahem, summer) later without any break in the rhythm or pace. Having read Paglia's other books, (see Sexual Personae, Vamps and Tramps, and Sex, Art, and American Culture), I was expecting more controversial, bold statements that would have me reeling, but since I am supposed to be reading this and relaxing, I am glad for the departure from the norm.

I hope you all had a great extra hour and this week goes well. Keep in touch!

My Oh My - Even more finished projects!

Here are the last of the finished projects. First up, we have the fabulous fingerless gloves, Fetching, from Knitty.com. These are very easy to knit up in a weekend, and are a lot of fun- I love the cable detailing. I knit them up on four, size-six double-pointed needles with a blue Jaeger Shetland Aran that Doris, my SecretPal8, sent me all the way from Singapore. These are great to have on hand in chilly places (which are most places to me), or when you need warmth but also use of your fingers.

Since I had some of the Shetland Aran left over, I decided to make this fun little neckwarmer from Stitch N' Bitch Nation. It is a pretty frivolous item, and Juan told me I look like I am wearing a sock around my neck, (which probably explains the look on my face here), but it was fun to do. I also used some leftover Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk for the leaves. I had used that yarn to make the sweater you can barely see here- the Lara cardigan from the Alpaca Silk book. Incredibly soft, warm yarn that is great to knit with. The flower is left over yarn from Juan's alpaca Aran sweater I knit him last winter.

Last, but certainly not least, is probably my favorite FO this week. I introduce you to Benny, the stuffed bear (short for Benito). I have really been wanting to make a stuffed toy lately, and found this pattern in the Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book. I almost bought it at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, but then decided I didn't want to spend the money for one pattern, so I got it from the library. I actually really like the book, and have started on a sweater from there, which you will see later. The stuffed animal pattern is actually for three different ones: a bunny, an elephant, and a bear. This guy, though I love him so, will be going to NC for a newborn baby there. It's going to be hard to part with him, but I hope he will be just as loved in his new home.

Ok, folks, that's it for now. Stayed tuned for works-in-progress in the next few days!

More Finished Objects!

Blogger was not cooperating yesterday, which is why I had written "objects" and then only showed the hat. Here are two more FO that were completed this week:

This scarf is knit in a 2x2 rib with some fun yarn a friend gave me. It has a ton of colors in it, and seems like the perfect kid's yarn. So, I decided to use it for the Dulaan Project, which sends knitted items to Mongolia, especially for orphans there. I have some other yarns that would also be great for this project, which I will start working on soon.

Here, next to the Dulaan scarf, you can get a glimpse of another international scarf- this one I made for myself. I used sari silk yarn, which is made from recycled saris in India, and then spun into yarn in Nepal. (This business has allowed women in those countries to empower themselves and to feed their families- gorgeous stuff you can feel good about.) I also knit in a strand of fushia Kid Silk Haze, which my Secret Pal 8, Doris, gave me. It makes the texture even softer and also gives a certain color consistency throughout the scarf. You can't tell from the picture, because I have a terrible, horrible, no-good camera, but the scarf has a variety of colors in it, ranging from greens to blues to oranges and yellows. I used the "Yo, drop it" pattern from Stitch N' Bitch Nation