Frightful weather (and a December giveaway)

Today it rained so hard that it got brighter from the light reflecting off the sheets of water.  It didn't last for long, but it was definitely startling.  Now the temperature is dropping and it feels like December again.  I'm not sure why it's allowed to be December when I was just getting used to November, but there it is, December 1st, 2010.

This month's giveaway is a bit of a tease. See, I've got these fun red boxes.


So this month, I'm giving away a box. The contents of said box is a surprise.  Think of it as a mini swap box, it will contain at least 50g of fiber or yarn and some other goodies.

This month, I'd like to know about the best gift you've ever given.  I found this kind of a difficult exercise that sounded easier than it was, but that may be because I'm hit or miss with the presents.  So tell us a story! And it doesn't have to be fibery, although knowing this crowd I expect that more than a few will be.


For me, it is possibly this hat I made my cousin for after he had surgery.  Knit out of butter soft fingering weight Dalegarn Baby Ull, it covered up the incision and kept the cold off. Practical and simple, it's not the most impressive thing I've ever knit nor the most complicated or difficult, but I do think it's one of the most appreciated.

Now, you know the drill.  Post here and make sure I have a way of contacting you if you win. I'm letting this one play out until December 8th, since I'm up to my eyeballs in fest prep. I'll pick a random winner on Dec. 9th.  And yes, you can double dip with the Ravelry group. :D

Meanwhile, if you're in Boston this Sunday (Dec. 5), come by the Boston Bazaar Bizarre and say "hello".  It's at the Cyclorama and KnittinK and I will be in booth 110 trying to keep our gigantic piles of yarn and fiber from spilling out from the tiny, tiny booth and into the aisles.  This is my first "away" festival and I'm both nervous and excited.

*singing along tunelessly*

So my brain is full of sentimentality and a slight buzzing noise.  It's the combination of a new cd on repeat and having caught some bug or another that's making the rounds of the household.  But at least I was productive earlier in the week, right?  I need to get the latest batch of Arctic Hare photographed and up in the shop this weekend, and I'm planning to visit the Princeton YWCA Crafters Marketplace tomorrow to see if I should apply for next year. I have a friend who does it every year and says it's great.

Meanwhile, I've been knitting more.

I finished a baby blanket today, although it still needs a wash and block.  Blocking in this case will be throwing it into the dryer because it's a superwash.  The colorways for this were dyed specifically for this project and are Wine Jelly (red burgundy) and Sweet Tooth (blue pink), and it's in March Hare, my worsted weight superwash merino base.  Would you believe that that shade of burgundy took 13 steps?  I don't think anyone will ever realize just by looking at it how complicated it is to get something that looks so much like a semi-solid but isn't. 

This is one of my typical "organic design" blankets in that there's no pattern. I just start with 8st in the middle and change up the knits and purls on whim.  I decided to do Fibonacci stripes and I ran out of the burgundy one row short of finishing the sequence correctly. Still acceptable, I think, and not bad for not planning anything out ahead of time.  36.5in wide, it's got a slight bulging in the middle of the rows due to the increases creating a sort of slip stitch effect but it should block out.   I lived dangerously on this blanket and didn't even alternate skeins of the main color to minimize differences. Luckily in the case of this colorway they're pretty consistent.

Oh, and I bought myself a present last week.  I got myself a nostepinne/nostepinde.  See, I have 2 ball winders, but I like rewinding small partial balls by hand, often while they're still attached to their project.  While I can do it perfectly well without any special tools I decided I wanted something pleasant to hold that's pretty.  So I browsed around Etsy and realized something.  Nostepinnes can be, hm, naughty looking.  I can't be the only one who sees it.  (I'm not am I?)  That led me by devious routes to asking someone who makes adult toys out of wood to make me a nostepinne.  (What do you suppose has more demand? Going by the selection on Etsy, I'd say nostepinnes must sell better!)


It's actually about 2in longer than I had requested.  I like shorter and fatter nostepinnes than most of the ones being sold because I tend to wind too tightly when I use one, which is why I went custom.  But it fits my hand perfectly the way it is, and has a nice girth.  It has a nice balance when it's grasped around the rings. The narrow part of the handle snugs right along the curve of my hand.  And given the length of the handle, the shaft has to match. It's got a very smooth finish, no chance of snagging yarn on this, and came with a storage pouch. So I'm quite pleased with the results.

Actually, this seller does some lovely work and has a perfectly innocent shop (not that the other shop is particularly shocking): Goodys Folkart.  He's thinking of stocking more nostepinnes after the holiday rush on Santas.  Right now the shop is mostly really pretty wooden barrettes. 

The nostepinne was a nice "reward" to myself for another festival under my belt.  Montgomery Made by Hand was  last Saturday. This was very different for me. I've done the Garden State Sheep Breeders festival twice, and I did well my first year and really well this year.  But MMbH was the first mixed craft fair I've ever done.  They had everything, really, and as far as I can tell the only other yarn was the alpaca farm and no hand dyes.  I didn't walk around, though, as I was by myself for most of it. 

More ruminations about the fair after the jump.

Like bubbles in a fish tank

Little thoughts keep rising to the surface. I'm a bit scattered, I've got a festival on Saturday and I'm behind schedule!

*bubble*
If you happen to be in the Montgomery NJ area on November 13th, swing by Montgomery Made by Hand at the high school (1016 Route 601, Skillman, NJ). 10am-3pm, it's a holiday craft fair hosted by the honors society, and there will be 45 vendors in attendance.  Free admission!  Raffles!

*bubble*
One of my yarns was in an Etsy front page Treasury last night. That was a very pleasant bump in views and hearts. Statsy screenshot. I really like the coy little bird print in the top row.

*bubble*
Someone asked a question on the Rav forums yesterday about whether garter stitch or seed stitch uses less yarn.  My gut reaction is to say seed stitch, both from experience and from considering the mechanics of both stitches.  But in a bit of procrastinatory rebellion I also decided to swatch.

Cast on with the backwards loop co, slipped the first stitch of every row, and bound off in pattern. The total number of rows included the co and bo. Each swatch was made with exactly the same length of yarn on the same needles.  Tension differences are sure to influence this, of course.

Now if I can just avoid getting sucked in to figuring out how to adjust for giant holes in one's knitting, like those Swiss cheese holes at the start of the hemlock ring.  For some reason these puzzles are always more interesting to me when I've got a massive pile of other things to do.

*bubble*
In another bit of procrastinatory rebellion, I put together a clip for This Is Handmade.  If you haven't heard about this blog, it collects tedium.  Specifically it collects the tedium of handcrafting (an explanation of the project).  So here is slightly more than 5min of me making stitch markers last night.  It's not a tutorial and it's hard to see exactly what I'm doing, and it's quite dull. But that's kind of the point. YouTube link


*bubble*
And now for something completely different. Some ruminating about cake after the jump.

Sometimes you just want closure, and buttons can give you that.

First things first, the winner of the November 1 giveaway is (randomly) ilina! Please let me know where to send your bling!

Now, on to buttons.  My workroom is the coldest room in the  house. Two walls are mostly windows and the glass in those windows is single paned. We shrink wrap the windows for the winter, but the temperature of the space is still very much in synch with the great outdoors.  Because of that I've been cold, and when I'm cold I want to knit everything lightening fast and then climb under a huge pile of the stuff.

Needless to say, a big pile of woollies is warm but not very practical for getting work done.  For that, they need to be more garment-like and stay on when one moves around (and I don't mean like those backward bathrobe Snuggies).   Enter the humble button.  Only, in this case, they're not so humble. They're moderately huge buttons almost 2in in diameter. They're focal points, attractive in their own right, and just one will visually stand up to just about anything.  There's just one problem. I didn't add a giant buttonhole when I was knitting. But wait! There is a solution!  (I'm starting to sound like an 'as seen on TV' advert.)

The easiest, of course, is if the stitches are so gigantic that the button fits in between the stitches even without a buttonhole. To whit:

This scarf is too short to wear without something holding it closed. But at 1st per inch it really doesn't need to be any longer to be incredibly warm. (Buttons are vintage celluloid purchased at the Garden State Sheep Breeders festival this year.)

In this case, I sewed two lovely vintage buttons together like a cufflink, making sure that the shank separating the buttons is long enough for the thickness of the fabric.  It's easily repositioned and I can take it off completely when I want to wash the scarf.  This also means I can switch out which button is facing out.
 

But what if 2 buttons that go with the piece aren't available?  Or if the piece fits in such a way that a button on the inside would be uncomfortable?  Or even more insurmountable, what if the fabric is too closely knit to admit a giant button?  There is yet another solution! (and it's after the jump.)

Exercising my franchise (and a giveaway)

It's November!  I'm still not entirely sure where all the time goes, but we're due for another giveaway here on my wee blog and this month I have some fun handmade jewelry to kick us off.

I'm giving away this necklace from Lady Sisyphus' Free Time.  Lady Sisyphus brings together all sorts of beads and charms into some really delightful pieces, and she crochets too. *softly chants 'one of us! one of us!*

This necklace is a generous 38in long and will come with a set of coffee bean stitch markers....

... and one of these sets of earrings.



So I did notice that today is November 2nd, but this time I'm starting a day late deliberately.  I don't think anyone in the US can be in ignorance that today is election day.  I don't want to get into the politics of who and what to vote for or against.  I just hope that everyone who can does. 

So, this time, to enter into this drawing, comment that you voted.  If you're a US citizen, have you voted in this mid-term election?  If yes? Comment!  If you're not from the US, did you vote in the most recent government election? If yes, feel free to comment as well.  I'll take comments through Friday and then announce the winner on Saturday.  And if green and blue isn't your style, check out the Rav group to see what I'm offering there.

That's it, nothing more complicated than that and making sure that there's a way for me to reach you if you win.  Now, for me, I have to go to bed so I can get up bright and early so I can exercise my franchise and then run some errands.  There's lots to do and I have another festival to do in less than 2 weeks!

Oh, and to note a little milestone. My shop has reached 600 listings sold. :)

Knitting up the raveled sleeve of care

I've been knitting a lot recently, it's gotten brisk out and my office is the coldest room in the house. Finishing a project as the days get shorter and the nights get colder is a very specific kind of satisfaction, and one I really love.

One of the things I've done recently is work up a variation of the Wizarding Incognito Hat that is a standard Muggle toque.  It's really very simple and works for any stitch count as long as it's evenly divisible by 8.


hat (with gauntlets), 104st, wool.

A general hat recipe after the jump.

In cake there is truth

(Because saying "the cake is a lie" has become a little tired.)

This is late, because I actually baked this cake a week ago for a reception on the 23rd. Cake is an evanescent art form, and also participatory.  I'd go so far as to call special occasion cakes performative.

It tasted really good, although it fell apart when cut due to several factors. And I should have used more syrup to moisten the layers all the way out to the edges. And I rolled the fondant too thin for the first tier I covered, so it ended up being overly pleated. 

But, cake!


The next big baking I have to do is a teetotaler's rum cake for my father's birthday banquet in December (teetotaler because we can't send people home drunk off cake, mostly), but that's only one layer, even if it's big.

Details of the wedding cake after the jump.

In other things

I haven't posted about food in a while because I became swamped with festival business and then fell into a blue funk.  I'm actually still in the blue funk but I'm working on snapping out of that.

In the meantime, one of my two favorite kinds of food needs to happen and I need to make it happen.  I like two kinds of food, which may or may not be clear by now; the really simple and delicious, and the really complicated and delicious.  Really, I just like delicious food but this falls into the latter category.  My cousin is getting married this month. I'm baking the cake.  I've had very little notice (which would be why I am baking the cake), but that's actually OK. Three weeks is actually plenty of notice given that I don't have a scheduling conflict.

I'm fond of spectacle food as long as I don't have to be too creative with the decorating.  I can do the actual baking and such, but I've never really practiced the art of compound moulding or piping or any of the delicate bits that elevate a cake or pastry into a sculptural art form.  But damned if I can't make it melt in your mouth.

He and his fiancee are stopping in today to talk cakes so last night I stayed up and baked a test run of the preliminary idea for proof of concept.   It allows me to test out how the raspberries in the filling will hold up, and quantities. It's already a good test because I've decided 2 layers is plenty per tier and that the whipped ganache holds up perfectly. It's quite fluid until it sets.


This it the 9in test run, rather haphazardly decorated as I don't have the fondant yet and I wouldn't have used it for a test run anyway.  I'm still undecided about raspberries in the filling, and I'm a little concerned that the whipped ganache is too stiff. It's as firm at room temperature as chilled buttercream (and I'm not talking those gritty powdered sugar buttercreams, but a proper buttercream made with whipped egg yolks and a boiling sugar syrup).  But I'm used to those silky room temperature buttercreams, so I could be biased.  The frosting on this cake is quite literally a whipped truffle, after all. The whole cake exhales chocolate.  The final cake will most likely be 3 tiers, 6in, 9in, and 12in, and covered in chocolate flavored rolled fondant over the ganache.  Recipes for all the components are coming from the Cake Bible, except the fondant. I'm purchasing that as making it from scratch is simply too much work for not enough return.

I've also baked a few wedding cakes in my past.  I figured I might as well put up a little gallery.  So, after the jump are some Cakes I Have Known.

Tetris

First things first, the winner of this month's fibery giveaway is OneOfTheHive!  Please let me know where I should send the top and I'll get it right out for you. Thanks for all the great ideas, everyone!

Meanwhile, I've got interlocking cubes on the brain.  See, I'm supposed to do the Bazaar Bizarre Boston with KnittinK in December.  The problem?  The space is 1/4 what I'm used to filling.  For two of us.

You can see where this is going, can't you?  My own stuff fits comfortably into about 24cu.ft.  That's just my stuff. In 18 wire cubes. Comfortably.

Yeah.

At the height of the madness of trying to eke out some extra space without making it impossible to assist shoppers, I came up with this. Please disregard the mess that is the room and look instead at the blatant crazy.


*sigh*

The one good thing coming from all of this is that I'm getting really good at figuring out how to assemble these cubes without having to remove the ties and reposition them. But any more of this and it's going to be like when I got hooked on Tetris in undergrad. I started seeing interlocking cubes everywhere.

ETA:  Oh yeah, today I reached 1,000 Etsy shop hearts.

It's what? It's October already? (a slightly late giveaway)

I can't even believe it. I'm not sure where September went, but since I'm wearing a shawlette I finished this week, and a sweater and socks, it must be true that it's October.

I was going to give away some fun bling from lovely Lady Sisyphus this month, but I'm going to save it for next month when we can all use a bright pick-me-up.  Instead, today I'm giving away fiber.  I think you'll forgive me for being a day late when I show it to you.


American Silksheep, in my attempt at the Poseidon colorway.  Pictured here is white roving and brown top that I wound together and dyed at the same time in the same pot.  What I'm giving away here is the top on the right, about 2oz.   The Ravelry group is getting the roving, and yes, you can enter for both.  Here's your chance to try out this wonderful fiber. Hopefully I haven't done any mean, nasty things to it in the dye process.  Personally, I want to make a bed out of it. I can't imagine anything more cushiony and cozy.

I've made a few inroads into dyeing the silksheep fiber:

Some of this was pulled into Phatfiber samples.  Some of it was divvied up for swap recipients. Some of it I'm giving away here, and some of it is destined for the shop once I dye up some more.

I have my own ideas for colorways (I always do) but I'd like to hear what kinds of colors keep other people awake at night.  Sooooo, to enter this giveaway, please comment below with any colorways you'd love to see. Remember, the roving is white but the top is brown!  Respond by Thursday, October 7th, and I'll get the random number generator to pick a winner on the 8th.   And remember to leave some way to reach you, or come back on the 8th to see if you've won!

Meanwhile, the shop is getting a little bare as I haven't updated in far too long, but I have done a few things recently that I wanted to mention. Maker Faire and knitting below the fold.  And I promise, I'll update the shop this weekend.