This is a belgium wit beer kit from midwest brewing supply that we've flavored with raspberry-orange marmalade from my favorate marmalade maker, Sarabeth's. In retrospect, we should probably have gone with another style of wheat beer for this one. The raspberry flavor has gotten lost in the banana and clove flavors that go along with this yeast. It's still a good beer, and the perfect summer beer. One of the other grad students and I made this to drink and ease the pain of teaching summer classes. I got very lazy and didn't keep very good records on this one, but I'm pretty sure that ABV was around 4.7%, so it's a good session beer. I have to admit that as the summer session has dragged on, I've made a pretty good dent in my supply of it. I'm thinking about trying to talk K. into making another summer beer to get us through the rest of the summer. That's all I got in me to say about this one. Summer teaching is taking it out of me right now.
I started this sweater last year as a baby shower gift, got all but one sleeve, the hood, and the button bands done, but never finished it. I had thought I might finish it for my brother and sister-in-law's child, but then they had a girl and I lost my motivation again. A few weeks ago I was invited to another baby shower where the couple is expecting a little boy, so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to finish it up.
This is the Knitting Pure and Simple Babies Neckdown Cardigan pattern made in the 6 month size. This is the second Knitting Pure and Simple pattern that I've used and I love them. They are great basic garmet patterns. They aren't hard, and the finished product always looks great. As much as I liked the pattern, the yarn, on the other hand, I hated. I think the yarn is the reason that it's taken me so long to finish this project. I went with Berroco Comfort because it's machine washable and dryable and I think baby garmets need to be machine washable and dryable. This yarn knits up nice, but it splits like mad and it just doesn't feel good to knit with. I have since discovered Knitpicks Comfy, which is a cotton acrylic blend instead of just straight acrylic like the Comfort, is machine washable and dryable, and is wonderful to knit with. I'll be making all future baby projects with that yarn.
The only thing I wimped out on this sweater was putting buttons on it. I had even bought adorable little buttons, but I hate sewing on buttons and some ladies down at the knitting shop and I were discussing the safetly issue of buttons on a baby sweater, so I'm going to go with, I didn't put them on because of safety, but it was really just sheer laziness. I wanted to get some cute little khaki pants and a preppy little shirt to go with the sweater, but I couldn't find anything like that in the stores around here and I didn't have time to go anywhere that I had to drive far for. I settled for some cute printed onesies and some knit pants. It's nice to have one of the old unfinished projects that have just been sitting around done and out of the way. Maybe some day I'll get back to the tilted duster as well.
I'm hunting an assistant professor in accounting position.
I decided a while back that I should make some lace scarves to wear with suits when I am doing (hopefully) job interviews next fall. I have since decided it's going to be hard to figure out a way to wear the scarves I'm making with the styles of interview suits I have, but I'll still have some beautiful lace scarves to wear to work. This is actually the second one I've made. It's made out of Jade Sapphire 2 ply 100% Cashmere in the Camo colorway. I love the colors in this yarn and it's amazingly soft, and there's just something I love about the idea of a lace camoflouge scarf. I've been calling it my "job hunting scarf" and one of the ladies in my knitting group pointed out that I really want to stand out rather than blend in when looking for a job. I have some hunter's orange sock yarn, so maybe I'll make my next scarf in that... probably not.
Because this is a pretty varigated yarn, I wanted a nice simple lace pattern, so I chose the Lucious Lace Scarf pattern. The pattern and the yarn worked together really nicely. Between how simple the pattern was and the varigation in the yarn, it was very forgiving and hid mistakes very well. The only thing that I don't like about this scarf is the length. I used up all of the yarn that I had, but I would like the scarf to be a little longer. I also can't figure out why it's not longer. The picture of the scarf in the pattern looks so much longer than mine and even though I didn't use the pattern yarn, my yarn was the same weight and had the same yardadge on the skein and I knitted it with the same size needles. I even narrowed the scarf by one set of pattern stitches and did four additional lace repeats on the length. The only thing that I can figure out is that the scarf on the pattern looks to be very heavily blocked and with the gauziness of my yarn, I really liked how the pattern made the scarf sort of wavy, so I just very lightly blocked mine.
A couple of final pictures. I borrowed a photographer's backdrop from a friend of mine to take pictures of M. in her dance costumes from this year, so I had D. take the pictures of me modeling the scarf in front of the backdrop while I had it up. So here's a picture of me modeling the scarf and then one of the pictures of M. just because she is so darn cute.
I'm not going to be knitting much over the next few weeks because of summer teaching (boo), but I have three projects on the needles, so hopefully I'll be able to finish up at least a couple of those during summer school. We'll see. I have big plan for big projects that I want to get to.
My friend Salt left a simple beer bread receipe in the comments section of my previous post about my failed attempt to make beer bread with the overly strong cardamom ale. The great thing about this receipe was it's simplicity. The only three ingredients are self-rising flour, beer, and sugar.
I also liked that it's baked in a cast iron skillet. Here it is pre-baking:
And post-baking:
The bread was excellent. D. and M. thought so too. I'll definitely hang onto the cardamom ale to make more bread.
I have been wanting to try my hand at felting for a while, and then a month or so back, I went into a knitting store while traveling and saw a store sample of the Sopie Bag by Black Sheep Bags. I really liked this bag and decided to make one using up a bunch of my leftovers and scraps. I knitted it up out of leftover cascade 220 from my Bella Mittens, one skein of Noro Silk Garden leftover from my clapotis, some Claudia Felt Me from my grandmother's vest, and some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride from some Christmas hats. The pattern knitted up quickly and easily and I loved the color combinations. It was beautiful before it was felted.
Then I attempted felting it. Apparently the high silk content in Noro Silk Garden means that it doesn't felt up very well. The other yarns felted very well. The bag still looks very cute, though I need to run a sweater shaver over it, and I think it's usable.
It's just a lot floppier than it should be. When you sit on it's bottom it just sort of collapses. Also I don't really like the way the handle came out.
This pattern was great, and I will definitly knit it again. I'll just be a little more careful with my yarn choices and I'll make the non-twisted handle option next time I make the bag.
This is the "A Good Stripe Dress" from the spring 2008 Interweave Knits. I've been planning on making this since last spring when the issue came out. I wanted to make it then, but felt like I would finish it too late for M. to get much good out of it last summer. The yarn called for in the pattern is linen, but I hate knitting with linen, so I made it with Knitpicks Shine Sport which is a cotton/modal mix. I ended up really liking the yarn. It's nice and soft and washes well. The yarn is sport weight, but the dress is knitted on size 2 needles, which makes a really dense fabric which is good for a dress, but it took for-freaking-ever to knit.
I let M. pick the colors that she wanted for the dress. I tried to push M. towards a khaki color, the pale pink, and a deep burgandy for the accent, but she wanted the yellow, pink, and bright cherry colors. I was really skeptical about the choices when she picked them out, but I think they turned out awesome. My friend C. says they remind her of Starburst. I think she has a point.
The construction of this dress is really neat. You do a provisional cast-on across the top, knit the back down to the bottom of the armpits, pick up the provisional stitches at the top and knit the front down to the bottom of the armpits, and then connect the peices and knit in the round to the bottom of the skirt. The only thing that bothers me is that you put 6 rounds of garter stitch at the bottom of the skirt and it flips up at the bottom. I only made one modification. You are supposed to increase a bunch of stitches (I never could get the increases to work out right) on the third row of each color stripe on the skirt. By the time I got to the second to last stripe, I decided the skirt was flared enough, especially given how willowy M. is, so I didn't do any decreases on the last couple of color stripes. The skirt is still big enough to flare out when she spins around, so that is all M. needs to be happy.
Remember the cardamom beer?
I've decided that I don't like it. The cardamom flavor is just too strong. If it were about half strength, then I think it would be good. I was contemplating dumping the whole batch out and washing the bottles when I had a thought... I bet this would make good beer bread. I went to work searching the internet for a beer bread recipe and found one that I thought looked simple and reasonable.
This was a quick bread recipe where you simply mix up flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, and then add the beer. Everything seemed to be going pretty well.
And then the receipe said to put the batter in the pan, melt a half a cup of butter, and then pour it over the batter.
It seemed like a huge amount of butter, but I went along with the receipe. I should have cut it down by quite a bit.
The final product turned out ok. The flavor is good, but the bread is a bit overly chewy and the outside is way too buttery. I still think this is a good way to use up some of this beer, but I think I need a better receipe.
Mosaic got in another shipment of Claudia Handpaints in the Hokies colorway shortly after I finished the pair of Hokies socks that I was making for myself. When M. found this out, she requested a pair of Hokie socks for her. I wanted to do something a little different than a basic ribbed sock, so I looked up the instructions for a spiral rib and did a spiral rib on the cuff.
After getting past the cuff of the first sock, I sort of wished that I had stuck with a basic rib. The spiral rib mixed the colors up oddly and without the spiral rib they were actually striping nicely. I asked M. what she thought and she said she was happy with how the cuff looked, so I left it as it was. Beyond the spiral rib cuff, this is just the basic sock pattern written by S. down at the knitting store, adjusted in size to fit a child's size 12-13 foot. I'm actually not terribly happy with how these turned out, but M. seemed very pleased with them, so that is all that matters.
The other project that I've finished up recently but didn't blog about at the time because it was such a small little thing was some to-go cup cozies for the administrative staff in my departmental office for administrative professionals day.
I had enough of the Hokie-ish colored Malabrigo left over to make each of the ladies in the office a cup cozy. Then all of us PhD students chipped in for Starbucks gift cards to go with them. We'll be giving them out tomorrow. Hopefully they like them (and drink coffee or at least tea or hot chocolate). As much as I love the Hokie colors, I think I've about OD'd on knitting with the Hokie colored yarn for this year. I still have three more skeins of the Claudia Hokies sock yarn from the last round, but it will have to hang out in my stash and wait for a while before I knit with it.
This is another pair of socks that started with the yarn. Our LYS got ShiBuiKnits Socks yarn in a few months ago. My friend C. and I were both drawn to this colorway (#5001) and both ended up buying it. Then we decided it would be fun to cast-on with the yarn at the same time even though we were making different sock patterns. We cast on at our Wednesday night knitting group. The reaction of the other groups members was something along the lines of "So, you two are knitting with the same yarn at the same time, but making different patterns???.... Well, that's just nutty.". On top of that, this is the Nutkin sock pattern. Thus these have become my Nutty socks.
While I love the colors in this yarn, when I looked at projects made with it on Ravelry, it pooled really, really bad in most patterns. My goal was then to find a pattern that would control the pooling in the yarn. I had heard that Nutkin pattern did a nice job of breaking up pooling in handpainted yarns, and it certainly delivered. I made a few modifications to the pattern. First the pattern as written has a fold over edge on the cuff that requires a provisional cast on. I've done this type of technique on a hat before, but didn't want to mess with it for a sock, so I did a standard 1x1 twisted rib.
This pattern was also written with a short row toe. I was in the middle of a basketball game (March Madness!) when I hit the toe of the first sock. I've never done a short row toe, so I would have had to have waited until after the game was over when I could focus on the knitting and I didn't want to wait, so I just did the same old toe I normally do. The pattern sort of makes the toe twist up, but I don't know if it would have also done that with the short row toe or not.
The one thing that I did keep the same is the short row heel. This was my first attempt at a short row heel and I think it's a bit of an unusual version of a short row heel because it uses yarn overs instead of wraps. I've got to tell you that I wasn't a big fan of the short row heel until I got to the end of it and realized that it meant I didn't have to pick up gusset stitches. Suddenly I saw the appeal of the short row heel.
I do think it gives the sock a bit of weird appearance. It's just this flat tube of knitting and then suddenly there is this heel sticking out.
This yarn is really stiff. A lot of people rave about this yarn, but I'm not sure I like it that much. I'm going to see if it softens up some with washing, but so far I think it's been my least favorite of the sock yarns that I've knitted with. I do like the socks though. I wish they were just a little bigger, but they fit. Also, I've noticed that when I first put them on, something about the pattern or just the way I put them on makes the cuff twist around my leg some.
This has been a big finishing week. I tend to go in cycles with my knitting. For a while I'll be casting on and then working a little bit on multiple projects and then I just can't handle it anymore and power through some projects just to get them finished up. I'm trying to keep myself from casting on anything new until I finish up the dress I'm making for M., but then she also wants a pair of Hokie socks and I was thinking those would be a perfect project to work on while I proctor an exam Thursday night. We'll see... We'll see....
Last fall I picked up a skein of Tilli Tomas Pure and Simple in the Ruby Wine colorway in a great little yarn store while I was at a conference in Providence, RI. This yarn is 100% spun silk and 100% fabulous. The color is just amazing especially with the fantastic sheen of silk, and the yarn is as soft as a cloud.
I decided it would be a perfect yarn to make a nice little dressy scarf to be worn with suits for the upcoming interview season. I struggled to figure out what pattern I would use. I looked at some really fancy and complicated lace patterns, but in the end decided that with a yarn this luxurious, simple was the way to go. I actually started a couple of different patterns with the yarn and then ripped them out. I eventually settled on the diagonal lace scarf. I did everything according to pattern with the exception that I went up a needle size and knitted the scarf on size 8's.
I think the pattern really showcases how wonderful the yarn is and emphasizes the beautiful little variations in the color. It was an easy to memorize pattern and by the time I'd completed two pattern repeats, I could carry it around and work on it without the pattern in front of me. I did manage to mess up the pattern on the first repeat, because apparently, I can't read. I didn't think it was too noticable and after having started multiple patterns and ripping them out, I couldn't stand the thought of ripping it out and starting it over again.
As always I had a hard time deciding how long to make the scarf. Yesterday morning, I dug out the suit jackets that I planned on wearing it with and tried it on, wrapping it a bunch of different ways trying to figure out how I would be wearing it. I finally decided that the way I liked it best was to wrap it completely and then tuck it into the jacket so that it has a bit of a choker appearance. Try to ignore the tye dye shirt that I'm wearing under the jacket.
I decided that if I was going to tuck it into the jacket, I didn't want it any longer than it already was. Binding the scarf off at this point was really hard for me. First, you know I like a long scarf, and this scarf was much shorter than the scarves I normally make. Second, I had only used about half of the skein of yarn, and a yarn this fantastic shouldn't go to waste. I stuck the half skein back in my stash and maybe later I'll make another short scarf either in a different pattern for myself or in the same pattern to give to someone else. Anyway, I did bind it off and it's done. It needs to be blocked, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm sure I will soon.
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tinebeest said:
At the risk of being banned for being an anal knitpicker: it's supposed to be BelgiAN if it is an... read more
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salt said:
I got this from my mother-in-law (who I believe copied it off of some packaging--it's an old recipe but not... read more
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Ha. No banning here. You are obviously correct. And I knew it felt off as I was typing it. I'm... read more
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