yarn tootin'

Joo-ly

     Oops, it looks like I missed June.  June is generally one of the crazier months of the year for me and Bob because Sequoia is in June.  For those of you who are new, Sequoia is a two week chamber music workshop (it's NOT bandcamp) for middle and high school kids and Bob is the director.  I am the Assistant Director which means that I am in charge of the music library, assorted administrative details, and most importantly, snacks.  Sequoia is fun, but also very exhausting and a lot of work.
     Before flying to California for Sequoia, I drove my car to Boulder, CO which is where I am right now.  I play in a music festival in Boulder most summers and there is never enough time between Sequoia and CMF (Colorado Music Festival) to go back to Big Texas to get my car, so I usually bring my car to Colorado ahead of time.  This year I did some yarn shopping on my way to Colorado.  My first stop was The Tinsmith's Wife in Comfort, TX less than an hour away from my house.  It might be my new favorite local-ish yarn store.  The town of Comfort is adorable and well worth the drive for San Antonioians who have yet to make the trek.  The store is bright and tidy and it's full of pretty yarns, many of which you can't find at other area LYS.  I went a little crazy and bought a sweater quantity of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Amy's Vintage Office...
  
   I have plans to make Ondule (Ravelry link) by Anne Hanson with this yarn.  The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea.  I also bought a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Turner, a yarn I'd been hunting for awhile.  I know I could have just ordered it on the interwebs, but sometimes it's more fun to just wait until you find it in the wild.  Here it is...
    
     After Sequoia was over, Bob and I spent a day in Danville, CA at his mom's house.  I wanted to go to Purlescence in Sunnyvale (a mere 45 minutes away) and my mother-in-law was nice enough to indulge my yarn habit and she came along for the ride.  She was also very sneaky and she paid for my yarn while I was in the bathroom.  Thanks again, Diana!  I got three skeins of Socks that Rock, two silkie and one lightweight at Purlescence...
 
     The colors are Alley-Oop, Korppi, and Bleck.  I would never have been drawn to the two silkies if I'd been buying them on the interwebs, but they look great in real life.  I plan to wind them soon and get started on Ulmus by Kristin Kapur sometime this week.  Unfortuately, I have no knitting to report.  I've only knit a couple of rows since arriving in Colorado a week ago.  We've had two challenging programs in a row here in Boulder and I've been rehearsing and practicing so much that my left wrist is bothering me a little bit.  I suspect that knitting will aggrevate it further and since no one is paying me to knit, I'm holding off on the knitting.   I'm going to go put some ice on it and take a couple of Advil and hopefully I'll be back in business soon.  

One for May

     I can't believe it's almost June.  I'm not entirely sure what happened to May, but here I am getting in one post for the month, just under the wire.  I was in the Yarn Barn the other day, and as I was putting my Addi Lace needle on the counter to pay for it, a woman I'd never seen before said "You haven't posted anything on your blog in a long time."  At first I wasn't sure she was talking to me, but neither of the women working at the YB responded and I was the only other person there, so I figured she was referring to my blog.  I told her that she sounded like my mother who also complains that I never put anything on my blog.  Well here it is ladies, something on my blog. 
     I recently finished this scarf with yarn from a previous trip to the Yarn Barn.  The yarn is Handmaiden Great Big Sea in Sangria and the pattern is a $1.99 download from WEBS called Falling Leaves.  Have I mentioned that I love the fact that the new Yarn Barn carries Handmaiden yarns?  They have a bunch of other nice stuff that the old Yarn Barn did not have and while I certainly did like the old Yarn Barn, the new YB is just a little bit more fabulous.  I bought two skeins of this yarn back in December and I ended up using only one for this scarf.  It looked a little small when I was finished knitting the first skein, but it grew a lot when I blocked it.  I don't know what I'll do with the other skein.  I will most likely trade it away.  One of the reasons I've been absent from the blog is because I have been consumed with swapping yarn in the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Swap Group on Ravelry.  

 

     As usual, I looked like a Muppet in all of the pictures which is why my head is cut off in the one above.  For some reason, I can't resist posting at least one Muppet shot...

 

     I've also finished a pair of socks that had been on the needles since February of 2008.  I love these socks and I am sure that I will wear them a lot, but I found the semi-solid yarn a bit of a snore to knit.  I am sure that is why it took me so long to finish this pair.  My problem is that I like the look of solid or semi-solid finished objects, but I prefer to knit with wildly variegated yarns.  This pattern is  Cookie A.'s BFF Socks and the yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in Dusky Aurora.

 

     I have a bunch of other stuff on the needles and some yummy new springy yarns, but I need to save something for June.  The Symphony season ended last night.  We made it to the end of the season and it looks like we'll all still be employed when things start up again in September.  Hooray for that.  I have 10 days before I leave for the dreaded chamber music camp and I hope to get another post in before I go.  Right now, I've got some chicken to grill and a pasta salad to make.  I will leave you with my favorite grilled chicken marinade...

1/4 cup EVOO
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
4 cloves minced garlic
basil, oregano, and parsley

Marinate bone-in chicken (Bob likes Pick of the Chick from HEB) overnight and then grill for maximum deliciousness.  This goes well with grilled vegetables and The Best Pasta Salad from Jamie Oliver.  It's all very summery.

A Little Knitting

     As I said in the last post, I've recently finished a couple of socks.  The first is a basic Jaywalker in lightweight STR, Dixie Chick colorway.  I love this pattern and I'm not sure why this is only the second time I've knit it.  It's perfect for handpainted (i.e. loud) sock yarn which is my favorite kind.  I'm not sure I will actually wear these socks, but that's not really the point, is it? 

    The second sock is a Monkey sock with no purls.  I'm certainly not the first person to eliminate the purls (and therefore the hassle) from this pattern and I'm sure I won't be the last.  As far as I'm concerned, losing the purls only makes this pattern better.  Here is my No Purls Monkey with an adorable picot edge in Pagewood Farms Denali.  I think the colorway is called Prism, but I'm not positive about that.  The second sock has is already on the needles which is a testament to both the pattern and the yarn.

    Because my college students had their recital last Tuesday and my kid students had their recital on Saturday, I didn't have to teach lessons today.  I discovered long ago that teaching lessons so soon after a recital is a waste of time.  I'm positive that none of my kid students practiced a single note yesterday and most of the college kids are now done for the semester.  The last time I had a free Monday was months ago, so I decided that after going to the gym, the day was mine to do whatever I wanted.  I ended up doing a lot of laundry and and between loads, I worked on my Imogen/Cookie Monster sweater and watched episodes of Greek and the new 90210 on the DVR.  I cast on for this a few months ago using some Araucania Nature Wool Chunky that I got from a WEBS closeout.  It's a very simple pattern and since much of it has been knit in dim lighting while watching DVDs I failed to notice that  not all closeout skeins of Nature Wool are equally variegated.

 

     That bit on the left has been frogged and reknit with alternating skeins. I know this picture is terrible, but even in a terrible picture, the stripe on the left sleeve is just too obvious, even for me.  The other yarn changes bother me less, partly because they will end up on the back and on the side.  If I'd been diligent in my Ravelry research, I would have known to change yarn every two rows all the way through, but frankly, that sounds like way to big of a pain in the ass.  I think I'm just going to embrace the homemade look of this sweater and go with it.  My hope is that it will be finished in time for Sequoia so that I can wear it before next December.  I think that I will fit right in in Arcata, CA in a sweater like this.

Batter Blaster

     I've been a bad blogger.  It's been over a month (gasp!) since my last post.  I've also been a slacker with the knitting as of late.  I've been so busy that I think I recently went the longest I've ever gone without knitting.  I knit a bit on Easter Sunday and then I didn't knit a single stitch until late last Sunday night.  That is a whole week with no knitting.   Even though I do have a couple of finished socks to show y'all, they are not what I want to talk about today.   Today, my favorite thing is the Batter Blaster.

    The Batter Blaster is a can much like a can of Ready Whip, only it contains organic pancake batter.  The Batter Blaster can be found at HEB stores near the cookie dough and the tubes of crescent rolls, though my sister-in-law tells me that in Minnesota and Florida, you find it by the Ready Whip.  In any case, I urge you to find the Batter Blaster.  I don't even like pancakes very much and I love the Batter Blaster.  I'm just sad that I didn't discover it in time for the last New Years Eve Posse celebration.  If I had, I bet I could have talked Bob out of Egg Nog French toast which was one of the more disgusting culinary experiments I've had the misfortune to witness.  Instead of mixing eggs and eggnog and then dipping the bread in it and cooking it, Bob and his two partners in crime mixed eggnog and some sort of alcohol (was it Rum?  I don't remember) and dipped the bread in that and then tried to cook it.  The bread was both soggy and scorched at the same time.  I didn't know that was possible.

    Anyhow, here are two pancakes fresh out of the can.  Here they are after the flip...

    They look pretty good, don't they?   They've been compared to McDonald's pancakes, but since I've never had a McDonald's pancake, I can neither confirm nor deny that.  I can tell you that the Batter Blaster pretty much rocks because there is no mess involved (though Bob did manage to get pancake batter between the stove and the counter).  When you're finished making pancakes, you just rinse the tip of the Batter Blaster under the faucet and put it back in the refridgerator.  How fancy is that?

Bob's Lakers Jersey

     My husband Bob has seen this commercial a few too many times...
     

     He's decided that I should knit him a Lakers jersey and I don't even know where to begin.  Every time I talk about yarn or knitting or going to a yarn store, he asks me when I'm going to get started on his jersey.  At first I thought he was kidding, but now I'm pretty sure he actually wants me to knit him a Lakers jersey.  I tried to explain that while I love the color purple, the techniques involved in knitting a garment that says "Lakers" on it, not to mention the great big number 32 that he has requested are tricky and don't interest me.  Unfortunately, I don't think he's going to shut up about it until I knit the thing and he sees how ridiculous a knitted basketball jersey is in real life.  If anyone has a pattern for a great big man sized basketball jersey, let me know.

One More Thing...

    I just got my Wollmeise Sock Club yarn.  This yarn doesn't count for 2009 because I paid for it in 2008.  I think this is the best shipment yet.  Check it out....

     The colorways are both in German and all I remember is that they both start with the letter O.  This shipment came with a pattern for colorwork socks that uses both of these yarns.  It looks really cool, but I'm not even considering going there.  I'm pretty sure that colorwork is not my friend.