Depending on everyone's schedule, at least once a month, but preferably once a week , my knitting group gets together for the day. We meet in a commons area at a senior living center where one of the group lives. This is actually a good set-up because:
1. No one has to clean her house.
2. We eat lunch in the dining room so no one has to prepare a meal.
3. It is air-conditioned, which my home is not. It's a treat for me to be cool indoors all day in summer.
There are now 5 of us in the group: Bonnie V, Janet, Nancy, and Sarah M. Sarah is refreshing her knitting skills, and gets more than enough advice from the rest of us. Ever notice how one person can have several opinions, some of them contradictory, on any given subject?
Just in case one project is not what we want to work on, each of us usually brings another that doesn't require too much concentration. It's essential to be able to converse and work at the same time when one is in a group, because one of its functions is to be consulted.
Since I design my sweaters from scratch, I tend to second and third guess myself, so having a sounding board of more objective observers helps me figure out what to do: is this close enough? Can I live with this one little thing that may not be ultimately what I had in mind? That question contained the answer, didn't it? Rats! More ripping!
Sometimes I have to leave the group early because I have to get to work. I work part-time at a yarn shop in Victor, NY, called New York Knits. Currently the shop (separate from the website) is having its 5th anniversary sale, which has been extended through the end of the month. If you are in the area, please stop by. Some yarns are as low as 60% off.
There are five employees plus the owner, Tracey. Besides me there are Bonnie W, Martha, Wendy, and Sarah K, who has just been hired full-time at Paychex after being graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology. It's been interesting having a college student working in the shop and getting her slant on styles and colors and so on.
All of us knit, of course, and have varying preferences in what we like to make. Each of us (except Tracey) has knit a bag, and customers are being asked to vote for their favorite. The same voting slip enters them in a drawing for a gift certificate at the shop. The winning employee gets a gift certificate too! Pick mine! Pick mine!
Yes, that was a blatant ad, which I won't do very often.
In the kitchen:
Nothing much has been happening in the kitchen Chez Jeanne. (Chez, pronouced "shay", is French and means "at the place of.") It's been too warm, and I've been too busy this week. I look forward to cooler weather and fall, when I will be much more inclined to cooking and baking.
The word 'baking' reminds me that I was going to give Bonnie W at work a copy of a carrot cake recipe I have. Will post that later, I promise. It is very good: flavorful and dense with goodies without being oily. It disappears fast.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Welcome
Welcome - today is opening day. I will blog about handknitting and about food, sharing some simple knitting patterns and easy recipes. Since I occasonally search for these things myself, it is only fair to share! :)
On the needles:
Currently I'm working on the left front for a lightweight cardigan out of Discontinued Name Brand Yarn Supersock. Yes, it's a sock yarn, but it should make a lovely sweater too. The colorway is called Wild West, and is kind of a reddish-pink with some mauvy-taupe. At any rate, it is knitting up beautifully in an eyelet pattern on a size US 4 (3.5 mm) bamboo needle. The eyelet pattern was inspired by an old issue of ZAZA, a Japanese machine knitting magazine borrowed from a knitting friend. When there is more of the sweater done, I will post a photo.
Designing sweaters:
A while ago when my personal size exceeded the usual knitting pattern size range, I taught myself how to adjust existing patterns. Since then I've taken up designing my own sweaters. That means I do a lot of knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, and knitting as my ideas evolve. Frequent ripping is the reason why I start with a front when making a cardigan - less to rip.
The above cardigan, let us call it Zaza in honor of its stitch inspiration, has had a few false starts to get just what I want. First it started with a K 1, P 1 rib at the bottom edge, then a few inches into the body I decided that a turned hem with a picot edge would be more interesting, and started over again. (I can hear my friend Janet chortling. I'm afraid I have something of a reputation for ripping things out to get them right. Sometimes "close enough" just will not do.) Of course, it took a few tries for the bottom edge to behave in the desired manner, that is to say not curl up, wretched thing. The part that would be turned under to the back was cast on using the crocheted provisional cast-on and knit on a smaller needle so it would fit better when the edge was turned, but I finally realized that when knitting the live cast-on stitches together with the body, I should do fewer rows above the picot row (the turn row for the hem) than before it. Also a garter ridge is needed above the hem to help it lie flat. Fortunately this is also more aesthetically pleasing.
In the kitchen:
During the summer I prefer to avoid heating up the house by turning on the stove, so we usually cook dinner on the grill. Tonight we are going to have leg of lamb steaks. These are just slices of bone-in leg of lamb ready-to-cook from the supermarket. Since lamb has sufficient fat on its own, there is no need to brush the steaks with oil first. Just sprinkle them with plenty of garlic salt, and close enough. Grill them to desired doneness. We like ours about medium, maybe medium-well if the grillmaster got distracted.
Afterwards, our lucky puppy gets to gnaw on the bones for a while till all the remains of meat are gone. We have to push the marrow out for him with a finger. It's a gooey mess, but he likes it. Yes, our dog is spoiled.
On the needles:
Currently I'm working on the left front for a lightweight cardigan out of Discontinued Name Brand Yarn Supersock. Yes, it's a sock yarn, but it should make a lovely sweater too. The colorway is called Wild West, and is kind of a reddish-pink with some mauvy-taupe. At any rate, it is knitting up beautifully in an eyelet pattern on a size US 4 (3.5 mm) bamboo needle. The eyelet pattern was inspired by an old issue of ZAZA, a Japanese machine knitting magazine borrowed from a knitting friend. When there is more of the sweater done, I will post a photo.
Designing sweaters:
A while ago when my personal size exceeded the usual knitting pattern size range, I taught myself how to adjust existing patterns. Since then I've taken up designing my own sweaters. That means I do a lot of knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, and knitting as my ideas evolve. Frequent ripping is the reason why I start with a front when making a cardigan - less to rip.
The above cardigan, let us call it Zaza in honor of its stitch inspiration, has had a few false starts to get just what I want. First it started with a K 1, P 1 rib at the bottom edge, then a few inches into the body I decided that a turned hem with a picot edge would be more interesting, and started over again. (I can hear my friend Janet chortling. I'm afraid I have something of a reputation for ripping things out to get them right. Sometimes "close enough" just will not do.) Of course, it took a few tries for the bottom edge to behave in the desired manner, that is to say not curl up, wretched thing. The part that would be turned under to the back was cast on using the crocheted provisional cast-on and knit on a smaller needle so it would fit better when the edge was turned, but I finally realized that when knitting the live cast-on stitches together with the body, I should do fewer rows above the picot row (the turn row for the hem) than before it. Also a garter ridge is needed above the hem to help it lie flat. Fortunately this is also more aesthetically pleasing.
In the kitchen:
During the summer I prefer to avoid heating up the house by turning on the stove, so we usually cook dinner on the grill. Tonight we are going to have leg of lamb steaks. These are just slices of bone-in leg of lamb ready-to-cook from the supermarket. Since lamb has sufficient fat on its own, there is no need to brush the steaks with oil first. Just sprinkle them with plenty of garlic salt, and close enough. Grill them to desired doneness. We like ours about medium, maybe medium-well if the grillmaster got distracted.
Afterwards, our lucky puppy gets to gnaw on the bones for a while till all the remains of meat are gone. We have to push the marrow out for him with a finger. It's a gooey mess, but he likes it. Yes, our dog is spoiled.
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