I think I might have it. In case you’re keeping track, I’m currently working (in order of cast on) the U-Neck Sweater Vest, the Cold Mountain Stole, the Red Lace Scarf, and now a pair of Mock Cable Socks. Sigh…I think I’ve caught the startitis bug. Happens to everyone now and then, I suppose.

Mock Cable Socks - trickier than they look

I started these as a travel project since I will be traveling twice this month. Tomorrow I leave for the ALA annual conference in Chicago. I’ll be getting back late Monday. In a few weeks I’ll be heading to Florida for the ACRL Immersion program. I’m excited about both trips, but I really wanted something small to bring with me. I’ll probably still bring the Red Lace scarf as a backup should the socks get boring though.

This pattern looks pretty simple, but it’s been a bit tricky for me. The pattern is from Socks from the Toe Up by Wendy Johnson of Wendy Knits. I decided to try Judy’s Magic Cast On for the first time and really liked it. The book has excellent instructions, but you can fine them here. The pattern is called a mock cable since only two stitches are actually being cabled in each column. Feeling extremely adventurous, I also decided to lean how to cable without a cable needle after “losing” my DPN cable needle stand in several times just sitting on the futon. Can you imagine how many DPNs I could lose between here and Chicago?

I used these instructions from Grumperina. It took me several tries to figure it out, but that fault lies squarely with me. For some reason I couldn’t comprehend the need to pull the right needle entirely out of the cabled stitches in order to switch them. I got it though, I’ve finished one row of the socks cabling without a cable needle. I’m not sure I’ll do it all the time, but it’s definitely useful for traveling while making small cables.

When I get back from Chicago, I’ll post progress pictures on all my other WIPs. It’s not terribly pretty. My short (knitting) attention span these days means I haven’t actually finished a project in months, though I do have all sorts of fun things on the needles.

If you have any suggestions for fun yarn shops in the downtown Chicago area, let me know. I’ll be taking some non-conference time to visit Loopy Yarns for sure, but I’d appreciate any other suggestions.

I got these from the Farmer’s Market this weekend:

Beets!

I’ve never made beets before, though I remember eating them out of a can when I was younger. I’m not sure what spurred this purchase, but I decided to try them out tonight. My How To Cook Everything cookbook recommended baking them for an hour, then slicing or even whatnot for serving.  As recommended, I cut the beets off with about one inch of stem left and wrapped them in foil.  They needed about an hour in the oven to be soft enough to cut easily.  I was surprised to see how easy the tops and skin came off after cooking.  Though I knew beets possess a bright red juice, I was a bit amazed at how easily it seemed to get all over the kitchen when I started handling them.  Thankfully nothing in the kitchen seems to be stained.

I also decided to use the beet greens.  After a good couple washings, I took the leaves off the stems and steamed them above the pasta water.  Then I sauteed them in olive oil along with lots of garlic and tomatoes.  All of this went with the pasta as a sort of sauce.  After the beets had cooked, I sliced them up and cooked them in a little butter, sliced onion and garlic.  I neglected to get a good pictures of the beets when they were done, but I did get the pasta:

Yummy pasta with olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and beet greens.

All this turned out really well, if I do say so myself. It was a very nutritionally virtuous meal, which is half the fun. I’m glad to be able to add this vegetable to my repertoire though.

I continue to love the Cold Mountain Stole, but my progress has slowed a bit. I’m a slow lace knitter, so eventually the slow progress got to me and I’ve set it aside for a few days after quite a bit of work while I was traveling last weekend. I’m sure I’ll pick it up again soon since it really is looking great. Here’s a look at the progress so far:

Cold Mountain Progress as of June 27

The alpaca lace that I bought in Madison last weekend had been calling my name, and conveniently enough I have a new book with some great lace project, so I decided to cast on for the Pygora Merino Lace Scarf from 101 Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders. I’m about about 1.5 pattern repeats and this looks great. The only problem is that I neglected to look at the errata until after I had finished one pattern repeat. There is a whole section missing from the center. I decided not to rip back though since I don’t think this will be that noticeable once the sweater is done. Looking at the projects on Ravelry, it appears that a lot of people actually just knit from the book and didn’t find the errata, or perhaps found it later into the project and decided not to care. I love how this is turning out. The picture below doesn’t show it stretched out, so you can’t see it in it’s full “lipstick red” lace glory, but it does give you an idea.

Red Lace Scarf as of June 27

Fellow knitters (or other crafters)-

Do you ever find yourself encouraging non-knitters (or crafters) to take up your favored hobby? I didn’t think that I would be someone who does this, but I was mistaken. Last weekend in Madison, I met for coffee at Borders with a friend from college who has also recently expressed an interest in knitting. I do recall encouraging her to check out some of the useful videos on the web or to get on Ravelry, though I hope it was not to an annoying level. After we had finished our treats in the cafe, we headed upstairs to check out the knitting books – my idea of course. We spent quite some time browsing the decent collection, and I may have suggested that my friend look for a few of them at the library if she decided to continue knitting.

I wonder if this is her first project?

When we went to check out (I had decided to buy Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders and some great metallic purple note cards, the cashier asked if I was a knitter. When I responded in the affirmative, she said that she had tried to knit in the past, but her scarves had turned out badly.

I couldn’t help myself from offering advice. I’m a firm believer in avoiding long garter stitch scarves as a first knitting project. They are boring and simply take too long before you can say you have knit something. When one of the first knitting books I checked out called for a knitted hat, I thought for sure I could never pull it off. And while the finished object was rather awful (and didn’t even fit), it was a hat. I could say that I had actually knit a hat, even if I wouldn’t wear it out in public.

I really do have experience with both methods though. I first tried to take up knitting as a junior in college and after I had learned to cast on, knit, and purl, I embarked on the dreaded garter stitch scarf. It was a beautiful teal color, but I never made it long enough to wrap around my neck even once. It was simply too boring. I’m very grateful that my second attempt turned out much better.

Anyway, so the poor cashier didn’t seem too annoyed by my advice. She said that she had heard that knitting on circular needles was hard. While they can be a little trick to join correctly, I don’t think this is the case. You could knit an entire hat just knitting in the round (no purling at all) and a few simple decreases. I hope that the cashier was re-motivated to take up knitting, if that’s what she wanted. I’ve found knitting to be a really rewarding hobby, especially since I’ve never considered myself a creative person. But I also don’t want to be proselytizer. (You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to spell that word)

So again I ask you fellow knitters/crafters – how much do you encourage others to take up your hobbies?

I spent this last weekend in Madison. It’s odd to think that a place that I lived for six years has now become a place that I visit for long weekends. I did have a great time though, aside from the trip there. Some storms in Milwaukee delayed my flight into Madison, but overall it wasn’t terrible. I suppose as long as you can say “it could have been worse” about traveling, then it wasn’t completely awful.

I got into Madison about 1pm on Friday and got my rental car. I’ve never actually rented car before, but this worked out really well. I was able to get around town easily without having to worry about getting a ride or using someone else’s car. I has reserved one of the cheaper options, compact or economy or something like that. When the rental car employee told me that the car I had chosen wouldn’t have power locks or cruise control, I expressed disbelief. I didn’t really realize that cars are still made without cruise control. He offered me a “free upgrade” (which really was free, by the way) to a PT Cruiser, which might have cruise control. Jake has this car, so I decided to take it even though I’d prefer something a little smaller. Unfortunately no one told me the color, so I walked out to the stall and saw this:

Yes, it really was that blue. In fact, the shade kind of dampens the full effect here. I concluded that the color of this car should be called “my nail polish matches by prom dress blue.” I felt so conspicuous as I was driving around town. I’m used to driving the world’s most boring car, so this took some getting used to.

Jake’s parents generously let me stay at their house for the weekend, so I had a delicious chicken salad with his mom on Friday after I finally got in. I should have taken a picture of it. It was beautiful, incorporating fresh picked strawberries and other fruits. After lunch I made plans to visit some friends from my home town, including one friend whose newborn is the recipient of my Owlet sweater. We had dinner in Wisconsin Dells, and I was so glad to see all of them. Sometimes it amazes me how rarely we get to see each other now that life has pulled us in all sorts of directions, but I’m grateful to still have these friends who knew me “back when,” even if our visits are far apart.

On Saturday, I went to State Street. I was late for the Farmer’s Market, but I did still walk up to the capitol. Here are some pictures – and it’s amazing how much easier it is to take pictures when the sun is shining brightly.

The dome of the Wisconsin State capitol.

Looking down State Street from the steps of the capitol.

Statues – I’m sure these have a meaning that I learned in fourth grade when we studied the state of Wisconsin, but their names escape me now.

After a trip up and down State Street, I headed to the Terrace, which was packed with revelers drinking beer and eating ice cream. I couldn’t even find a chair, but did sit for a while at the edge of the water.

By this time, I was starting to get a bit too much sun, having been wandering around in the sun for a few hours. I had arranged to meet a friend for coffee, and was able to fanagle a meeting at a coffee shop near The Knitting Tree. I had been trying to avoid buying yarn this month since my stash has been steadily growing, but I found some great Misti Alpaca Lace that will fit well with my entrance into what I think will be a lace phase. I also got some Addis to use for my Cold Mountain instead of my bamboo circulars – and they’re working out very well. I worked on Cold Mountain several times over the weekend and will have to take some pictures. I’m at 2.5 repeats of the first pattern and it looks great.

Misti Alpaca Lace in Lipstick Lace

Sunday ended up being much quieter. I met another friend for coffee at Borders, and since she has knitted a bit, I thought we could make a trip to look at the knitting books. Thankfully she obliged me, and we spent quite a bit of time looking at the decent selection of books. I wasn’t really planning to buy anything, but I found Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences” edited by Judith Durant. I was struck by this pattern for the Downtown Clutch (Ravelry), but there are lots of great projects in this book that look like they’ll be great for gifts.

On Sunday night, I had a delicious dinner with Jake’s family, who, as I said were great, and didn’t act at all weird that I was at their house without him. It’s great to be able to have that home base in Madison – it makes visiting so much easier.

This post is getting rather long, and though I have some more thoughts on the weekend, I’ll leave them ’til later, including my updated pictures of Cold Mountain and my thoughts on knitting evangelism.

I got a new iPod touch this week and downloaded the WordPress app. I am traveling this weekend and wanted to try it out. I don’t anticipate using it too often but being able to blog from my iPod would be handy in a pinch. Does this post look any different? Or just more poorly spelled than usual? I’m still getting used to the keyboard.

I have seen more of these “Become a Fan” ads lately on Facebook, which I attribute to the general increase in entities have a “fan” page on Facebook in general. I didn’t click on this ad, so I don’t know whether it actually takes you to a fan page or something else, or even if it’s someone affiliated with Nomar Garciaparra who has put up this ad. I do find the whole practice a bit curious – what benefit would a famous person get from having lots of declared “fans” on Facebook? Does it help them in getting endorsement deals by “proving” their popularity or something?

This ad in particular caught my eye though with the text under the picture that mentions Garciaparra’s marriage to Mia Hamm – “Married Olympian and World Cup Champion soccer star Mia Hamm.” Does that strike any one else as bizarre? Why doesn’t the text include information about his baseball career or achievements? Then, when I found his Wikipedia entry, I saw that the text from the ad also appears in the personal life section of the page, in a longer sentence. The sentence from the Wikipedia page is: “On November 22, 2003, Garciaparra married Olympian and World Cup Champion soccer star Mia Hamm.” (as of 6:41pm Thursday June 18, 2009).

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but the whole thing just seems fishy. I would definitely never click on this ad out of fear that someone just put this together to draw someone in to some bad spam site or something like that. Or if someone really is trying to advertise Garciaparra’s Facebook page, they might consider rethinking their method here.

Work on the Cold Mountain continues. I’m at about 1.5 repeats of chart A. It’s taking me about two days per repeat. That is really slow, I know, but as previously mentioned, I’m rather obsessive about counting the stitches on each row repeat, since I do forget a yarn over fairly often. See full progress on Flickr.

I’m really enjoying the knitting, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve pretty much given up on everything else I was knitting. However, I am increasingly frustrated by the ladders that are showing up where I have stitch markers. See below:

They’re not as obvious as on the first repeat, but they’re still visible. I suppose once it’s done and full length, perhaps I’ll notice them less, but I do think that this will be a gift knit at some point, so I want it to look great. I bought smaller stitch markers, but apparently not small enough. I tried to tighten up the tension after the markers, but this is difficult, and once I even managed to break the yarn doing this, so you can imagine how frustrating that was.

TECHknitting has some suggestions for reducing ladders, but they mostly relate to knitting with DPNs. The suggestion for stitch markers is to use scrap yarn as a marker, since they will be even closer to the size of the yarn. I think I might have to resort to this, though I really do like my little markers. I feel like yarn will be harder to use, but I guess you never know until you try, right? Anyone else have this problem? What do you do to solve it?

I’m going to be traveling more than usual in the next six weeks. This weekend, I’m making a much anticipated trip back home to Madison, where I will get to see many friends. I can’t wait. I’m even going to be going to my actual home town to meet up with some friends from there. I haven’t spent any time in that town for ages and have done little more than drive through it for several years. It’s strange in a way to realize that you could live some place for more than a decade (about thirteen years) and then have it become alien to you so quickly. This trip will be great though. I’m definitely bringing the camera, so you can expect many great pictures of Madison in the near future. If you can’t wait, check out the Madison tag on Flickr to see some great pics from the place I consider my true home town.

It’s amazing how preparing your knitting becomes a part of packing once you’ve become a knitter. At the moment, I’m deciding whether I should just bring the Cold Mountain Stole (I love working on this!) or if I should bring the Back to School Vest along with me as well. I’m still about 2/3 of the way up the ribbing on the vest, but it’s taken a bit of a backseat with my foray into lace knitting. Since it’s such easy knitting, it would be good for any time that I can’t break out my plastic protected lace charts to work on Cold Mountain. But I’m only bringing a small carry on bag and a large purse, so I guess the final decision depends on how much space there is in my bags.

Speaking of the Cold Mountain, here is a picture of my progress after knitting tonight. I finally finished a full repeat of the A chart.

Can you see the slight color variations? It looks great, and the cashmere is delightfully lacy. The only problem is my need to use stitch markers between the three row repeats. It lets me obsessively count to thirty after each repeat and make sure that I haven’t lost or gained an extra stitch, which happens about 1/3 of the time.

You can’t really tell when it’s on the needles, but when stretched out (and blocked in the future) the laddering will definitely be visible. My stitch markers are a little large, but I’m looking for some smaller ones tomorrow. Perhaps my blocking will have to me more length-wise rather than width wise, to de-emphasize the ladders. However, if I get them fixed, I hope to forget about them after all of the rest of the knitting there is to go on this one.

I started the Cold Mountain Stole today. It’s rather slow going, but that’s because I’m new to lace and tend to obsessively count the repeats in each row to make sure that I haven’t added or lost a stitch. So far it’s been OK though, so I’m hoping to take out the stitch markers after the first repeat and start knitting a little faster.

The yarn is holding up very well and looks great knitted up. The color variations are very subtle. I should have known that they wouldn’t be as obvious as they were in the drying skeins, but I’m thrilled at how it’s turning out nonetheless. Here’s a picture of the ball I’m currently using and the other skein.