Getting Knitfaced

My So Called Scarf

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:31:37 -0400

The name of this pattern is actually My So Called Scarf, which I have never really gotten. I tried to connect it back to that old tv show My So Called Life, but it has nothing to do with the scarf pattern name. There is a story behind the pattern that I think is supposed to be the origin of the name, but it still didn't make a lot of sense to me. Regardless, this is another project marked off of my Christmas knitting list. I made this scarf with Manos Del Uruguay in colorway #118.

My So-Called Scarf 1

Manos is a very popular yarn for this scarf because the varying thick and thin texture of the yarn and the varigated colorways really show off the stitch pattern. Purple is not really my color, but I do really like this colorway. I like the contrast between the so dark that it's almost black dark purple and the light tan. This is knitted on size 11 needles and once you get the hang of the stitch pattern you can pretty much knit on auto pilot, so it really flies off the needles. I also limited myself to two skeins of yarn for this scarf, so it is a much more reasonable length than my last two scarves. I have two skeins of the yarn left that were going to be a hat, but neither of the hat patterns that I was going to make panned out the way I thought they would, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that yarn now.

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Knitting in Secret

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:28:00 -0400

Wristwarmers for S. - 1

My friend S. who taught me how to knit and who has been coming over on a weekly basis since January to knit and watch British television with me is about to finish up her degree and has taken a job at a university in Indiana, so she'll be moving this week. I decided to knit her a pair of Rose Tyler Wristwarmers in one of the school colors of her new university for a going away gift. Of course the problem with knitting something as a gift for S. is that she reads my blog and looks at my Ravelery account, so I've had to be very careful about keeping any mention of these off of the internet until I gave them to her. I started these back in February, but because I had to be so secretive about them and because I was pretty burnt out on the pattern after finishing the pair that I made for myself , the knitting was pretty slow going and I just finished them up last week.

These were basically done exactly the same as the pair I made for myself. I knitted them on size 4 double points and used two skeins of Debbie Bliss Cahmerino dk in colorway #18004. I love the Debbie Bliss Cahmerino for these wristwarmers, and it has the added benefit of being S.'s favorite yarn. The only thing that I did differently for these was instead of making a rib on the palm side between the thumb and fingers like I did on mine, I continued on in stockinette stitch. I think I like the stockinette stitch better. It looks a little more polished I guess and the gloves have enough structure that it doesn't curl like I feared it might.

Wristwarmers for S. - 2

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Family Knitting Update

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:12:53 -0400

Well, look at what a great knitting instructor I am. My brother has gone and knitted a baby hat:

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A Scarf by Request

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:24:01 -0400

A Scarf Askew - 4

This was knitted for a friend's husband, T., who asked if I would knit him a scarf. After several emails back and forth, we decided on an A Scarf Askew. They picked out the yarn and mailed it to me. It was kind of fun to have someone just send me yarn to knit with.

Cascade Ecological Wool

They chose Cascade Ecological Wool, the yarn recommended by the pattern, in colorway #8063. This was the first time I'd ever knit with this yarn. It was nice. You can definitely tell it's wool, but it's not as scratchy as I thought it was going to be. The really nice thing about it is that there is tons of yardage in a skein of this stuff. I think it's something like 478 yards. The scarf was knit on size 8 needles as called for in the pattern. I really like this pattern. I think it's very elegant in its simplicity. I also think that it could almost be reversible because I like the back of the pattern almost as much as I like the front of it.

A Scarf Askew - 2

The only issue with it is that because it's bascially stockinette stitch with some strategically placed purls, it curls like mad. Here is a pre-blocking picture of the scarf where you can see how badly it's curled, and even in the post blocking picture above, you can see that the edges still want to curl over a little bit.

A Scarf Askew - 5

The only pattern modification that I made was to skip the tassles. I got the scarf to the specified pattern length and decided that it would not be long enough to wear in the way that T. wants to wear it. Plus, I think the garter stitch edge that the tassles would have been attached to looks nice just as it is.

A Scarf Askew - 3

I ended up just knitting the entire skein for this scarf which made it very long. The scarf was much longer after blocking than I had anticipated. In fact, I had to block it in my upstairs hallway because that was the only place that I could find enough floor space to lay it out flat.

A Scarf Askew - 6

As you can see, the scarf would be too long for me, but T. is several inches taller than me, so hopefully it won't be too long for him. And yes, I realize this whole getting the scarf too long thing has become a trend for me.

A Scarf Askew - 1

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Not Your Cheerleader's Chevron

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:51:45 -0400

Chevron Scarf Completed - 4

I might not have made this scarf had I not seen the picture. The term "chevron" always makes me think of cheerleaders. Not that there is anything wrong with cheerleaders, I was one a long, long time ago, but I'm a bit old and square to try to dress like one now. This is a very popular scarf pattern from the book Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

Chevron Scarf Completed - 1

I knitted this on size 5 needles using medium weight Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in the Lemongrass and Rolling Stone colorways. I started the scarf with the Rolling Stone colorway, but I wish that I would have started with the Lemongrass. Because of the knitting pattern, one of the colorways is more visiable than the other. The way I made the scarf the Lemongrass is the more prominent colorway. I would have liked for the Rolling Stone to be the more prominent colorway.

Chevron Scarf Completed - 2

I used almost all of both skeins of yarn, so this scarf is LONG. Even a little too long for my tastes, but I'll be gifting this one to someone who is a bit taller than I am, so hopefully it will be an appropriate length for her. This pattern is simple, but very time consuming and a little boring since it's made with a lightweight yarn. I have two more colorways of this yarn that I'm going to make myself a chevron scarf with, but I'll be taking a little break and working on other projects before I start the second one.

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Family Knitting Lessons

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:13:00 -0400

Here are the pictures of my brother's knitting lessons. Please note that these are some very unflattering pictures of me.

Getting Started:

Helping out:

Perplexed:

Back on track:

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The Budweiser of Ales

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:17:49 -0400

I'm finally getting around to putting up my pictures from the all-grain brewing process as demonstrated by my brother. Apparently he has been giving some of his homebrew to one of his neighbors, a big light american lager fan, who disliked most of them becaue he found them to be too sweet. R. decided to try to find a beer that his neighbor would like, so he bought the Liberty Cream Ale all-grain kit from Midwest Brewing Supply because he had heard it described as the Budweiser of Ales. I had told him that I wanted to see the all-grain process demonstrated, so he brewed it while I was in Missouri visiting.

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You might notice that I don't have pictures of the entire process. This is because in the middle of it a severe thunder and hail storm blew through. We just kept on brewing. I told R. that he was hardcore brewing in a hail storm. He pointed out that he wouldn't be if it weren't for his little sister. Here is a shot of the entire set-up. R. brews in what he calls his "Jeep garage", which is the cargo compartment of a used moving truck that my father bought and turned into a feed mixing truck. My brother parks his rebuilt Jeep in it now.

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I have some sort of mental block when it comes to remembering all of the appropriate names and terms involved in all-grain brewing, so I'm sure that I'll get this wrong, but R's basic process goes something like this. First he heats water in old keg up on the highest platform to a certain temperature, which will vary based on the recipe. I'm not sure the exact amount of the water, but it's enough to give him 15 gallons of beer when he's finished.

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While the water is heating to the specified temperature, he mills the grains.

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The basic idea now is that you run the hot mash water through the milled grains to extract the sugars and enzymes, but it's much more difficult than that. All of this happens in the mash tun, which is the blue bucket in R's set-up. First you have to put a certain amount of the heated water in the mash tun. This is called the strike water and the amount you use again depends somehow on the recipe. Here R is measuring the strike water to make sure he has the correct amount.

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Then the grains are added to the strike water.

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Here's where things get a little fuzzy for me. At this point, the grains stay in the heated water for a period (mashing??), then the water is run off into the boiling pot (lautering) and more hot water is run through the grains into the boiling pot (sparging) until the grain no longer tastes sweet. For extract brewers, this is about where we start in the process. From here the water (now with sugars and enzymes in it) is boiled with the hops for about an hour and then cooled and yeast is added. This is about the point in the process that the hail storm started, so I don't have any more pictures of the actual brewing. I do have this picture from earlier in the evening, just to show how big a 20 gallong brew pot is.

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So what was I doing while R was working so hard here? I was doing this.

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And a little of this (R's homebrewed ginger mead)

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And a little bit of this as well (New Belgium Trippel - yum and not distributed around here)

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There was also the low point of the night for me where R convinced me that any brewer worth his or her salt has chewed up a hop pellet before, so I did. Yikes. Thank goodness the camera wasn't around for that. The only disappointment for me was that my dad called during the boil and asked me to bring his car back home so that it could go in the garage and away from the hail, so I didn't get to see R's counterflow wort chiller at work. Now that I've seen what is involved in the all-grain process, I'm perfectly content with my little extract brewing operation.

Up next: I teach R to knit!

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A.B.D. Baby!

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:06:11 -0400

I got the official word today that I passed my comprehensive exams! I finished up my coursework this spring, so now all that stands between me and my PhD is that pesky little dissertation thing. I realize this has nothing to do with either knitting or homebrewing, but I did go out and buy a mixed six pack in celebration (apparantly dark beers seem more celebratory because all but one is either a stout or a porter) and I'm too excited about this to post anything else this evening. There is more knitting an homebrew coming. I still have pictures from Missouri and I hope to get a hefeweizen brewed this week sometime.

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Classic Styles

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:59:21 -0400

My mom used to knit on a regular basis, but hasn't really done it much in the last 20 or so years. Earlier this week she offered to get out her old knitting patterns to see if there was anything I would want to borrow. I took her up on it, but mostly because I thought it would be fun to mock the fashions of the 70's and 80's, not because I thought I would find a pattern that I might actually knit. There were plenty of mockable things in her pattern file, but I was also pleasantly suprised to find this little set of patterns:

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There are three, maybe even four of those sweaters that I would actually knit and wear. I checked to see when the pattern was published. It's kind of hard to see because I was too lazy to change the lens on my camera, but the copyright was 1966.

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I guess there really are some classic sweaters that never go out of style. I am going to take these patterns home and add them to my list of things that I'd like to knit someday. It's nice to know that even if it takes me twenty years to get around to them, they'll probably still be in style.

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I will have it all someday

nobody@vox.com(Mollie) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:20:22 -0400

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This is my friends J. and S.'s beer fridge. I couldn't get a very good picture of it because their furnace was in the way. It's in their basement and they keep a couple of corny kegs of their homebrew in it. Currently it's stocked with a Red and a Brown ale, although they couldn't remember which was in which keg. I sampled a little of both, but drank mostly out of the left keg, which if I had to, I would guess was the Red. Both were quite tasty. Regardless, this little set-up is pretty high up on the wishlist for when I finish my degree and we once again become homeowners.

My daughter and I are on our annual two week spring trip to Missouri to visit friends and family. There has been a suprising amount of homebrewing and knitting happening while we have been here. My brother demonstrated the all-grain brewing process for me and in return, I taught him how to knit. Last night he and I and my mom were all sitting around knitting and talking. I told them it felt like we had our own little family stitch 'n bitch group going. Pictures will be forthcoming.

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