Another use for felted slippers – furniture movers!

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Sneak peek

FO: Sundress and Tubey hat

I knitted up this little set for our realtor, who is 7 months pregnant (and has a 16yo already). She was sassy and funny and straight-up great to work with, so I was really excited to knit a gift for her little one. I splurged on some Spud & Chloe yarn (from the Fiber Gallery, natch) and it did NOT disappoint. It’s 50% organic cotton, 50% wool and I thought it was just lovely to work with. Very cushy, springy, and the color was AMAZING. So bright! and! pink! Just what I wanted. (I hate hate hate pastels.)

I grabbed two skeins because I wasn’t sure how much yardage the Little Girls Sundress would need and then made the little Tubey hat with the leftover yarn. Looking back, I probably should have made this Little Sister’s dress instead, so it would look more like a matching “set,” but oh well.

I really love this dress because it’s so simple and can be worn alone or layered over a shirt and tights. And when the recipient gets a little older, she can wear it like a tunic (as my friend’s daughter below, is modeling).

Oooh! And! We get our keys for the new house today. Our realtor actually emailed us yesterday and said the keys will be hidden under a rock in the front yard somewhere. Kind of anti-climactic, but what can you do.

We move in 4 days!

Well, 3 days if you count the fact that we’ll get our keys on Thursday and 2 days if you consider today basically over. Which I don’t. Because the night is not over yet.

Friday cannot come fast enough. Seriously. We packed up a bunch of stuff and put it in a storage unit two months ago because we weren’t sure if we were going to have to downsize to an apartment until we found a house and then we started packing up boxes in earnest about three weeks ago and I cannot WAIT to be able to access my stuff again!

Tonight I wanted to make these biscuits (the only biscuits I’ll ever make, really) to go with dinner and I realized I’d already packed up the cream of tartar. It was in one of these boxes.

Luckily I was able to find it rather quickly, but then I realized I’d ALSO packed up the shortening. Which was impossible to find. (Turns out butter works also.)

I am really trying to be POSITIVE and not complain so damn much because, hey, we’re moving! But man I have  hit a WALL and waiting these last four more days is really going to try my patience.

But on a different note… I bought some new hair products the other day (I think my hair built up a resistance to the Suave conditioner and Herbal Essences mousse I’d been using for the past 6 months!) and ohhhhh my god did it respond nicely. I snapped a little pic in the bathroom last night (after a very unusual encounter at our local bar).

(T said that my striped-shirt-and-fair-isle-sweater combo was kind of whacky (and that I had heretofore lost my right to criticize any of his outfits) but I liked it! And no, I did not knit that sweater, but SOMEDAY I will not knit its twin. I wear it all. the. time.)

See, this is how it usually goes

I want to contrast the last sweater I knit with the one I’m currently working on to give you a sense of what sweater knitting is USUALLY like for me. It usually involves a bunch of fits and starts, second-guessing myself, wishing I had gone with my gut instincts, and ultimately…. a lot of frogging.

I received the yarn for Ingenue (which, by the way, I recently found out is pronounced Ahn-Zhen-Ooo, not In-Jen-Ooo… oops!) last Friday and immediately ran into a snag.

See that skein on the right? See how YELLOW it is compared to the others? No? Well, trust me, it is. I decided to split up that skein and use it for the collar and cuffs, because I figured the ridge pattern might disguise the color variations a bit?

I don’t know if it helped. The ridges are basically striped – alternating yellow and brown.

(I emailed the yarn store and asked if they had any more skeins that were more consistently brown and they actually replied saying that they do try to group skeins of like coloring for shipments, so basically I got the best-matched skeins already. Harrumph.)

So at this point I knit on, thinking no one would probably notice the ridge sections when looking at the sweater as a whole.

And things were going well until I got to the bust darts. I didn’t realize at the time that my row gauge was horribly, horribly off, so my decreases ended up RIGHT ACROSS my chest. Which is not very flattering. I’d never done bust darts before, so I actually thought this is where they were placed? (That large arrow is also pointing to the huge swath of brown pooling that I was trying to ignore.)

It wasn’t until I reached the bottom ridge section that I realized I had to rip out the body and just start over on this one. There was just too much going wrong, and nothing going right.

Last night I ripped to the underarm and after an evening of non-stop knitting (and a very close game of Scrabble), I’m back to where I was just a few days ago. Here’s hoping everything else falls into place.

FO: Modified Cowl Neck Pullover

I just had to pop in to show off my most favoritest FO, a modified cowl neck pullover. I saw it hanging in my new favorite yarn store and had to knit it up IMMEDIATELY. But instead of knitting it out of Malabrigo Worsted, like the one hanging in the shop (which pills something awful), I splurged on some Dream in Color Classy (the colorway is Cocoa Kiss). It was heaven from the first few stitches (especially since I was knitting the size small (gasp!)).

I actually did run into a bit of trouble changing over from one skein to another. You could totally totally tell where I switched from one skein to the next, but I ripped back and cut in with a different skein, that more closely matched the first one. I then went back to the yarn store and traded in some less-variegated skeins for some more-variegated skeins (there is no dye lot for Dream in Color!), and once I got that sorted out it was smooth sailing.

Before:

After:

There is so much I love about this sweater… the color is gorgeous and rich, the yarn is soft and smooshy, and the fit is perfect. I finally trusted my measurements (instead of just knitting the Large, because that’s what I usually wear!) and felt confident to tweak the pattern to fit my body shape. This meant knitting a few more increase rows before dividing for the sleeves, knitting longer sleeves, knitting a more fitted torso with decrease & increases to fit my curves, and knitting 2×2 cuffs instead of the 1×1 that the pattern called for.

The fit was pretty good before blocking:

And damn near perfect after blocking (the yarn relaxed a lot, and the collar is a lot floppier now, the sleeves lengthened, and the body fits more closely now).

I’ve already worn this several times. And I can’t wait to wear it when we close on our new house! (More on that later… )

Thank you, Gramma!

Dear Gramma,
Thank you soooooo much for the scissors! I love them. They’re beautiful. I will treat them with care, as they have been so obviously cared for. It means so much to me that you have given them to me. I really do appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Love you,
Vanessa

p.s. I’ll be sending a real thank-you card in the mail when I get back into town next week!

Sew crazy!

I went a little crazy with the sewing yesterday. It was my “last day of work” but they didn’t make us work, and I just wanted to lose myself in some sewing. (Plus, the weather looked like this…)

The view from Richmond Beach Saltwater Park

I finished up this skirt I was making, even though I knew I wasn’t going to LOVE it. I just don’t want to start leaving WIP’s around,  otherwise I’ll NEVER finish them. Plus, I’m still new at sewing, so I really need the practice.

This is a modified Burda 8090. I tried it on halfway through and realized the butt pleats were AWFUL (and it wasn’t fitting at all) so I ripped out the back pleats and trimmed down the back piece to match the A-Line skirt pattern from Built By Wendy, sewed in some darts, and sewed it back to the front. I then had to create my own facing piece for the back, and it turned out all kinds of awesome.

I got really lazy with the finishing, though, because I knew I wasn’t going to be wearing it much.

Used pinking shears instead of tucking in 1/4" and sewing

Once I was done with that I STILL wanted to sew, so I made some lunge pants from Amy Butler’s “In Stitches.” This is the 3rd time I’ve made them, and I think all that practice has finally paid off. I sewed them up in a few hours and was able to wear them to bed that night!

Run, Fat Cat, Run!!!

Mixed berry sorbet

Based on this recipe. Makes approx 1.5 quarts.

* 1 3/4 cups water
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup fresh blueberries
* 1 cup fresh strawberries
* 1 cup fresh raspberries
* 1 cup Newman’s Own Lime-Aid

1. In a medium saucepan bring water, sugar, and the blueberries to boiling.
2. Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved and blueberries are tender (1 to 2 minutes).
3. Remove from heat.
4. Drain blueberries, reserving liquid; set aside to cool.
5. Meanwhile, in a food processor bowl or blender container combine strawberries and raspberries.
6. Cover and process or blend until smooth.
7. Press pureed berries through fine-mesh sieve; discard seeds.
8. Place the blueberries and 1/3 cup of the reserved cooking liquid (do not discard remaining liquid) in food processor bowl or blender container.
9. Cover and process or blend until almost smooth.
10. Press blueberry mixture through the fine-mesh sieve; discard skins.
11. In a large bowl combine the pureed mixtures, remaining cooking liquid, and Lime-Aid.
12. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or until mixture is completely chilled.
13. Freeze mixture in a 4- or 5-quart ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions.
14. Ripen 4 hours.
15. Use within 2 days.
16. Serve individual scoops of sorbet with fresh berries and mint, if desired.

Road shrimp!

(Before I go any further, please know that the title of this post won’t make any sense until you see the “Road Trip” clip from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Good Job. It is sporadically available on the internet. Go watch it. Now.)

T and I took advantage of having last week off together to go on a little road trip of Oregon. It didn’t exactly work out as planned, but we made the best of it. Here are a few highlights.

Day 1. We stayed at the Oregon Caves Chateau. I’d been wanting to check this place for years. Years. YEARS. I saw a piece about it on PBS before I even moved out to Seattle I think. I mentioned it to T when I first met him and he remembered more about it than me! When we realized it was the Chateau at the Oregon Caves, we booked a room and included it on our road trip! (Road shrimp!)

Oregon Caves Chateau

Day 2. The Chateau is located right next to the Oregon caves. The cave (caves?) is (are?) amazingly complex, long, windy, and so incredibly cool. I would highly highly recommend checking it out. I took some photos, but NONE of them do it justice. It’s so HUGE inside.

My favorite room - Paradise Lost

That night we “camped” at an RV park. Awesome.

They put us ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way at the end.

Day 3. After checking out 5 different campgrounds, we ended up going back to the first one we checked out. And by then the campsite we had wanted was taken. So we set up camp at the next best one. A couple hours later, we toured the campsite and discovered the one we’d wanted was now available. So we packed up and moved.

Yes we bring an air mattress camping. Got a problem with that?!

We moved the tent too.

Day 4. We slept.

Day 5. We checked out Crater Lake. Stunningly beautiful. Crystal blue water. Serene surroundings. But I was hot and tired, so I didn’t take too many photos.

The view from the Lodge. (Which we didn't stay in.)

Kissy kissy

Day 6. Leaving camp. Did I mention it was buggy???

Too sweet for Deet

We also checked out the Lava River Cave (we are all about caves lately!!!), which is the longest known uncollapsed lava tube in the world. And when I say long, I mean looooooooong. It was a mile long. And completely pitch black.

They had lanterns available for rent for $4 at the entrance. I’m actually surprised they didn’t charge more. Because you NEEDED one in the cave.

We then checked into our second and last hotel, St Francis School in Bend, OR. I cannot rave about this place enough! They have a microbrewery, pool hall, whiskey bar, soaking tubs, movie theatre, and COFFEE ROASTERY on site. And delivery fresh grounds to you every morning. I am daydreaming about opening my own someday…

Day 7 (last day). We putzed around the Mt Bachelor area for a bit before heading back to the hotel for beers and 4th of July fireworks. I think both of us were a little road weary at this point.

Clink!