ASTITCHMATISM

December 30, 2013 · 9:58 AM

The last things of 2013…

I’m greeting the new year with ~~some~~ all of my same old knitting and sewing UFOs, but I also finished a few new things just in time.

And I jinxed myself in my last whiny post (because of which someone suggested I re-name this blog Abitchmatism) – despite avoiding public gatherings, pot-luck foods, and public transit, I still wound up with an odd little cold/flu, so my end-of-year output is slightly less than I’d hoped it to be.

A few weeks ago, I did a quick spin of Pigeonroof Studios Mixed BFL in “Dragon Days” for a birthday gift a couple months from now. The colors are downright nearly iridescent and change from turquoise to male-Mallard-head green depending on the light. I spun it a little thinner than I intended, but I was a little out of practice. I’ve already started another Hitchhiker out of it.

And the leftover Dream in Color Classy yarn from my Honey Cowl became a Calorimetry headband.

I have to admit I don’t love it, and I’m pretty convinced the pattern isn’t the same as the one in the picture on the pattern – it has to have fewer rows. I shortened mine by 8 rows and it’s still quite wide, and I didn’t do the hole-making version of the short rows except for the buttonhole either. I’ve worn it a few times during a warmer spell here (in the 50sF) and that’s about as cold as it can get for wearing this thing.

And my nostalgia socks came together.

(The yarn, though I generally really like it for socks, had 7 knots in this skein – unacceptable!)

Over Thanksgiving, I found a picture of the sweater that the yarn reminded me of – and it was sort of close.

The socks have some issues, and like the rookie mistake I made with twisting my Honey Cowl, I’m suddenly having rookie issues in my sock-making: ladders, weird toe grafting, and some general wonkiness with my ssk. I really don’t know what’s going on, but they still work as socks and the fit ended up being okay after all (they are the same length, despite what you see in the pic).

I was playing with different ribbing patterns too – if I had more patience, I’d rip it out and just keep it to K3, P1, but I didn’t.

And yes, they are proudly fraternal rather than identical.

And I’ve got the next pair lined up – some boring grey socks to replace some aging commercially-made boring grey socks.

I’ll be in sketchy territory for these too since I plan to go down two needle sizes… I’ll need to rip and re-start and repeat, I’m sure. And I take that back about the boring color – I like grey and some days bright colors are obnoxious, and all of my socks are a very basic “boring” pattern, but they don’t bore me. I love simple socks.

Here’s to many more made things in the new year!

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Tagged as calorimetry, FOs, green, grellow, grey, headband, knitting, knots, making stuff, mixed BFL, new year, Pigeonroof Studios, sock yarn, socks, spinning, wool

December 21, 2013 · 1:54 PM

Save me January

It’s been a winter f*cking wonderland out there.

I knew it was coming eventually, but I was feeling a little smug since it hadn’t happened here until a couple of weeks ago.

It’s not that I hate snow per se, it’s the immobility it causes. Or like a bad pet, it’s not the beast itself at fault, but the owner.

Shovel your goddamn sidewalks!

I’m not doing well with the lack of light this year (I’m not sure I ever do, but this year feels like the worst ever) and I’m overjoyed with the arrival and passing of the winter solstice.

I’m not a fan of Christmas* either.

I’m just not into the religion, commercialism, consumerism, greedy children, gifts, worship of fat beardos (Santas, not you my bear friends), waste of materials and electricity, varieties of anxieties, bad music, the pushing of the season to before Thanksgiving, and the food-sharing, traveling, and gathering of masses of breathing, snotting, vomiting bodies during the peak contagion period. But perhaps mostly because it is the deepest, darkest, dreariest time of year – and that is the reason people celebrate and I know worse winter weather is yet to come, but for me, the new year is what I’m excited for, and feel intense relief when it comes. It signifies that the holidays are f*cking over, each day brings a few more seconds of light, and the anxieties and societal ho-ho-ho throat-cramming go away.

I sort of liked winter as a child. However, I hated it as a very small child because of the tortures of plastic bread bags on my feet inside my boots and socks on my hands over my mittens. I looked forward to Christmas, though my excitement was tempered with dread that it would all be over too soon, and a feeling of watching something beloved die. In hindsight, my favorite day of the holiday season was St. Nick’s on December 6th when we woke to a few little presents in a sock – a tangerine, a couple of walnuts, a candy cane, and a little trinket like a flavored lip gloss or novelty eraser. I loved the simplicity and the lack of anxiety surrounding the day and some connectedness with the past. Didn’t the Little House on the Prairie girl savor only a nibble or two a day of her sole simple cookie gift? Or one of those characters in one of those books… Children can bizarrely identify with, and intensely feel, the grand sufferings of others – Anne Frank, dirt-farmer kids, sooty-city orphans – without ever having a moment of true sufferings themselves. Or maybe it was just me and a f*cked-up upbringing in an old religion where suffering and self-martyrdom was supposed to be a good thing. Either way, I still crave and appreciate the most simple aspects of the holiday – not much fuss and some citrus fruit.

And speaking of citrus and to break my no-cooking-in-the-blog-rule, I’ll share my candied peels. They’re tasty but take a long time to make – mostly because of multiple blanchings to temper the bitterness and then the hour+ cooking time in simmering sugar water. We needed some for a recipe but can’t find them in our suburban groceries – and if I did find them, I’m sure they’d be dyed and full of pesticides. I used organic pink grapefruit, orange, and lemon, and cane sugar – and then dipped some in dark chocolate and rolled some in pecans for good measure. (Yeah, the sugar coating is kinda clumpy, but whatever.)

And I am solidly anti-craft for the season. I don’t want to make something only usable for a few weeks out of the year. And I don’t really believe in exchanging gifts (especially to every known person) beyond a few edibles or drinkables. However, over my lifespan I’ve made exactly one ornament, one stocking, and this tree skirt.

N has a soft spot for the holidays, and will occasionally erect a tree. His tree needed a skirt and I didn’t have any appropriate fabric, nor wanted to waste a good yard or so on something that would be rarely used, so I cut up some felted/fulled sweater scraps. I think my original plan was something like a penny rug, but the cutting took long enough, so I just tied it all together.

I don’t know where it is now – probably in still in storage five hours away (and we no longer have lovely wood floors).

But things will be better soon, we’ll have the tiniest amount of more light day by day. And we’ll eventually get out for some winter woods activities.

*Our Christmases are a pleasant low-key affair limited to time spent with just a few family members, good food, dogs, a cool kid, and walks, so I’m quite thankful and look forward to them. It’s the larger sense of the season (and some past holiday events) I abhor. My second favorite Christmases were the years I spent alone with Chinese take-out in a quiet apartment with the neighbors away – sounds bleak, but it was awesome and always the most productive few days of the year for me.

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Tagged as anxiety, bundled up, candied peels, christmas, dipped in chocolate, dread, felted, grinch, hating christmas, holidays, icy, not enough light, over-bundled, penny rug, snow, solstice, tree skirt, winter, wool

December 15, 2013 · 8:15 AM

Yell-eew

I’ve never had an all-time favorite color. I went through a shameful lavender and pink phase as a young tween which sharply questioned my tomboyhood. Then I chose all colors at once, or no color at all, in my punk/grunge/post-hippie “alternative” years. These days if asked my preferred color, I usually say greens, or browns, or oranges, or greys since I like nearly all of the varieties of these colors, whereas I’ve established that I’m finicky over others.

But all along, I’ve generally preferred the secondary colors over the primary – maybe it’s the underdog name or their need to be blended to exist.

I’ve been reading Alexander Theroux’s The Primary Colors over the last decade or more. I can only read a few lines, or maybe half of a page, in one sitting. I’ve also misplaced the book in a few moves (including now – I’ve no idea of its whereabouts) and go a few months or years without opening it. I’m occasionally irritated that the book tries to sneak in secondary colors at times, but I also feel relief to see my old friends green and orange when it happens. Unfortunately, I also just read that there’s some controversy with the book due to some bits of plagiarism, yet with the fact-listing style of writing, I can almost accept the author’s excuse of sloppy note-taking, but bad editor, bad publisher! Theroux next wrote a book on the secondary colors, but I don’t have it yet, nor am I sure I want to commit to another decade-long read.

But after reading about yellow, I found myself considering the color more often, and a specific nasty bilious yellow has been tugging on my sleeve lately.

My main thoughts on the color are quite negative – it reminds me of pus, snot, stomach bile, infection, illness, sulfur, poisoned water, smoggy air, insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, tarnished things, slimy things, pissy snow, stench.

But it also makes me think of wheat fields, green-golden light during magic hour in the late afternoon, summer turning to autumn, gilded things, tarnished things, slimy things, mosses, eyes, and old flannel shirts.

So with my mind in a mildly insane yellowish haze, I whipped up a Honey Cowl out of Dream in Color Classy Strange Harvest (my dye lot is more green) and Cascade 220 Birch Heather (my dye lot is more gold).

This was one of those projects I felt like I had already made, and more than once actually looked for it to wear – especially with my plaid jacket.

But now I actually have it.

I liked the pattern and might make another eventually. However, for the first time ever, I twisted the round when I joined and accidentally turned it into a mobius (maybe it’s not technically, but I don’t know). I left it that way because I don’t have a twisted cowl yet and thought I’d like to play with the different draping possibilities. But it’s a little disconcerting that I’m making a lot of rookie mistakes lately that I never made in the beginning…

But back to yellow. I had this awesome mustardy-saffron merino sweater for a year or two (you can see just a peak on the left).

Before I shrank the hell out of it. And how could I possibly make the mistake of shrinking a sweater? I really don’t know how it happened. And I also don’t know where it is now, but I know I saved it to turn it into something else. The scarf is a Drop Stitch Scarf – I really love it, though I don’t wear it as often these days, but it has a bit of gold in it too.

My favorite yellow project was the shawlette from last winter. I wear it often, and still think about making it bigger.

And people are calling grey and yellow “grellow” these days. I hate color fads, but I like grey and yellow. This is an opportunity to fess up to another UFO – a sweater I cut up, re-sewed and I’m knitting the cuffs and trim in grey. Or rather I started to, didn’t like the gauge, re-started and still didn’t like the gauge, and then put it aside for the last year or so.

Maybe grellow is also green and yellow. This has been a favorite color combination of mine for vintage-inspired kitchens like this one:

(Pic from here).

And influenced my purchase in New Mexico last Spring:

And some spinning from a year ago that I need to finish.

(Also one of my favorite color combos in Fiestaware).

And an early natural dying attempt with saffron, turmeric, coffee, and god knows what else on bulky yarn frogged from a hand-knit thrift store scarf.

I’m still not sure if I can wear yellow though, sometimes I think I can pull it off due to my own semi-sallow complexion, sometimes it gives me a surprise ill-like pallor.

I remember my beloved high school teacher discussing The Yellow Wallpaper and vehemently denouncing the color as sickly and maddening; at the time she was wearing a beautiful buttery colored pair of paints and coordinating sweater. When someone pointed this out, she was mildly shocked to discover it was true that even she liked some of the yellow family members.

Such is the sneaky dual nature of yellow – I’ll continue to let it tease me a bit.

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Tagged as color, cowl, grellow, honey cowl, knitting, plaid, portland, shawl, shawlette, slipped stitches, slug, spinning, wool, yarn, yellow, yellow-green

December 10, 2013 · 7:30 AM

Anniversary assessment

I first posted to this blog a year ago today.*

I wanted to keep a journal of the things I make and get into the habit of writing again.

On that point, I’ve stayed on course.

I wanted to publicly declare my unfinished objects (UFOs) in order to shame myself into finishing them.

On that point, I’ve utterly failed.**

And I wanted to keep true to my mission statement/manifesto.

That one had mixed results – I’ve slipped up on whining about my personal woes.

But woes affect workflow and the creative process – occasionally for the better, but most often for the worse.

Of physical states and habitation, nothing has changed from last year.

Of mental states, artistic paths, and new careers, I’m still lost.

This was also a year spent in mountains around the country and world and those were the good parts.

Otherwise the suspended animation-ness of the rest is maddening.

But I’ll continue to putter about and ramble on all things fiber for a bit – I’ll even fess up to some more UFOs in the new year.

*Thank you for reading.

I won’t brag about my reader statistics because I can’t – I know most of you in life or ravelry, so consider yourselves a special, intimate, elite group!

**In case you’re keeping track, I have not finished Long term UFOs – part I, part II, part III, or part IV. And I recently and completely forgot about part IV, but I’m closest to finishing that one and the quilts will have to wait until I have more space.

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Tagged as alpaca, anniversaries, assessment, blue bucket, contemplating, frustration, goals, making things, work, writing, year in review

December 1, 2013 · 10:23 AM

Doin’ the but… tin…

I had to save my biggest and best tin for a post of its own.

I first saw this tin in a photographic negative I was cataloging in my old job. The tin was on the counter in someone’s kitchen in the 1940s. I read the writing through a tiny loupe and was aghast at the boasts of “scientifically processed” and claims of healthy hydrogenated vegetable shortening! And what is that graphic? A woman on a scale inferring that potato chips were diet food? Hells yeah! I love potato chips, though they’ve done nothing for my figure, unless of course I eat enough to cause severe anal leakage, but I’m a snob for the olive oil chips anyway. I started seeing this tin in antique/junk stores but they were often rusty, or the lid didn’t easily come off, or were just too damn overpriced. Generally, if I want something that isn’t really needed, I wait for serendipity to take over or to lose interest in it. However, after a year of looking for this in the right condition for the right price, I broke down and found one on Ebay, so it all worked out. Maybe serendipity is just an online market.

But in my quest for simplicity and curing former impulses and diseases of the hoarding of neat sh*t variety, I have a general rule for visiting antique/junk shops – buy nothing bigger than what would fit into my hand.* In theory I like some kinds old jewelry so that could be allowable, but I’ve never actually bought any old jewelry and it is usually more than I want to spend. I have more tchotzkies than years left in my statistical lifespan, so I generally resist the cute/weird but useless item. And I have nearly a zero interest level in military, presidential, I-am-man-and-hear-me-roar (or just destroy your lives and countries) artifacts, so old bullets, campaign buttons, coins, pins for distinctions, etc. don’t get the slightest glance from me.

But what else is little and can be extremely practical, and thus 100% approved?

Let’s open that giant tin, shall we?

Oh yeah, hells yeah, buttons!

I buy buttons that I think will look good on knits I’ve never knitted (nor will).

I buy buttons that I think I can re-sell for decent money (though I haven’t yet).

I buy buttons to replace those already on my clothes (which I’ve done once).

I buy buttons to use in my “crafts” (I do this occasionally with singles, but would never break up a set).

I buy buttons to repurpose them as jewelry (though not to make country button necklace shittery).

I buy buttons to one day feed my burning desire to amass them in a giant heap and then catalog them one by one.

And I buy buttons because some are nearly art and quite frame-able or worthy of display on their own.

(I didn’t tear off that one button in the upper left, it came that way)

I’ve had to start a new jar nearly the same size as the tin for the buttons I remove and save from clothing I cut up and turn into other things.

(And yes, I do have another boxful of buttons that you don’t get to see).

*I’ve got some big paws, so my fingers can really wrap a decent-sized find, and I do break this rule constantly if I find things that are fiber-oriented and thus can be considered a business, art, or research expense (but really, I can only kid myself so far…)

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Tagged as anal leakage, antique stores, buttoned, buttons, cataloging, clothing, collecting, finds, obsessions, potato chips, recycling, scientifically processed, sewing, spending, thrifting, tins, vintage

November 25, 2013 · 8:04 AM

Tin, tin, tins…

I love old tins.

I love finding them and I love storing things in them and I especially love finding them with things already in them.

This one is from my childhood home – it looks old timey, but was from the 1970s or ’80s… which sadly, might in fact be old timey to some.

I don’t remember the marshmallows, but I like marshmallows.

It is perfect for the storage of zippers and various purse/bag hardware.

This was a lucky thrift store find of a tin with something in it – mostly needles and a lovely bent-to-fit sterling thimble. I use the needles from time to time but get pissed when I don’t realize I have a rusty one until it leaves a mark in my fabric.

Also inside are some nice bone tapestry needles – I think? And a “Tyton” tool at the bottom. Anybody know what that is? All I get is a Polish football (soccer) player.

This tin came from a thrift store and was probably $ .50 or less. I think I bought it when I only had $ .50 in my pocket. It previously held fruitcake from New Orleans. I thought you got sh*tfaced in New Orleans, not hang around and eat hard cake. But I guess you have to “feed” fruitcake with brandy or rum or something…. that could explain it.

But the loveliness inside is my collection of vintage thread. I got the thread way back when at my old favorite thrift store in a dusty old bag (perhaps once actually belonging to a dusty old bag of another sort). One day I may frame some of these in a shadow box of some sort, but I do use a teensy bit of them from time to time since the colors are wonderful and often match my clothing in need of repair. And good god, I love wooden spools. I know it’s a waste of a tree but they serve so many purposes after their intended one and just look finely aged and patinated on their own.

This is an estate sale find of a tin with something in it. I was excited to find this small stash of embroidery floss until its horrid camphor odor assaulted my sniffer. I got it anyway, cleaned and aired the tin, aired the floss, and thought it was good to go. I added a few odds and ends of my own floss too.

Sadly, it still smells.

And finally, the loveliest tin of them all, and the one I uncharacteristically paid the most for – I believe it was a whopping $12.

But $12 is no longer an insignificant amount of money to me, and I feel pressure to put something priceless and special inside of it instead of the tiny yarn balls and clippings currently in there.

Maybe I should have a candy while I think about it.

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Tagged as bone, colorful, embroidery floss, floss, fruitcake, gadgets, marshmallows, needles, New Orleans, notions, sewing, spools, stripes, tea tins, thread, thrift score, thrift store, thrifting, tins, tools, tyton, zippers

November 17, 2013 · 3:30 PM

Of veggie weenies and small epiphanies

The growing season has ended for my mutant anthropomorphic vegetable friends.

I think a mandrake got a bit randy in the carrot patch…

I’ve been struggling with that large quilt since the summer.

But no longer.

Though I thankfully received some helpful suggestions on how to finish it in my limited workspace, I still didn’t want to deal with it. But then I had a head-smacking moment when I realized it didn’t have to be a quilt. I wanted it to be a functional bed covering to fully realize its concept, but it made no difference whether it was a quilt, or a coverlet, or a comforter, or a duvet cover. I am loudly sighing with relief. Though I also went to 13 stores (even thrifts) trying to find a cheap comforter that I could use as filler instead of spending an ungodly amount on 4 or 5 layers of high-loft batting and failed to find one in my budget. So duvet cover it became out of thrift, necessity, and for the sake of my sanity.

Most of the other things I’ve been working on are finally coming together as well – it will be a welcome relief to stop thinking about the things I’ve been thinking about for the last few months. So now I’m allowing myself to fall backwards into a bottomless [happy] pit of multiple projects.

My vacation knitting socks are further along, and might even conclude by the end of the year.

I’ve gathered some acorns to use as dye (still no luck finding a tree infested with galls).

While I was in the woods, I saw several really cool vine yarns.

And I’ve started a couple of gifts for upcoming birthdays and holidays.

But thankfully I do not fully participate in most holidays apart from cooking and eating (mostly just the eating) so I have none of the pressure that others do to complete x projects in x time for people who might not want/like that hat, pair of socks, scarf, pillow, toy anyway.

As some may say, woot!

Or yippee!

Or hell yeah!

Or yee hah!

Or the excitement is so short-lived it will be over by the time I finish shouting.

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Tagged as acorns, black, carrots, dpns, duvet, dyeing, epiphanies, fingering yarn, gifts, hiking, knitting, mutants, quilts, sewing, socks, stripes, toys, trees, vegetables, vines, weenies, woods, wool, yarn, yellow

November 10, 2013 · 4:12 PM

Lana blu

I think I’ve gotten all of the post-vacation brain fog and re-adjustment whining and rambling out of my system.

I’ve spent the last week attending a training session and conference in my field, a grad school open house, and doing some networking. I’ve been getting up at an ungodly hour to take trains to the nearby cities. It almost felt like I was working again, but it also made me feel lucky to work the few hours I do from home – I haven’t really seen daylight apart from a quick lunchtime walk for the last few days. I’m a terrible commuter too – knitting, reading, and doing anything other than staring out of the window on buses and trains gives me motion sickness, so I spend the majority of the time fidgeting and stewing about how much time is being wasted.

But on to more important things, like wool.

A few posts ago, I wrote about meeting Valeria last year in Italy and buying her yarn. And quite luckily, I was able to meet with her, and fellow fiberphile Antontella again this year. You can read more about the Damiani Ovid and AquiLANA wool business in one of her recent posts here (Google translator is your friend). She showed me many new yarns she’s produced this year – from delicate laceweights, to a gorgeous drapey one-ply fingering, to multiple plies in increasing weights up to bulky, and including a one-ply bulky that would probably felt/full quite well. Luckily for her, she’s sold a good portion of the year’s stock (and for me or I’d spend myself into ruin) so I stuck to only a few skeins of the yarn in the new weights, and more of the aran/bulky I got last year in case I want to do some colorwork.

So when I say colorwork, I mean one color would be this intense lovely shade of blue – the exact color of the mountain sky.

I’ve shied away from blue in the past – it’s one of those colors that I don’t like in the lightest or darkest shades, or in an “electric” form. But it is also a color I’ve been gravitating to more and more in the past couple of years. And I love that I have the creamy wool from the colors of the earth and sheep and now the blue wool of the sky. Even better, the yarn is dyed naturally from Guado (Woad).

This trip was all about the blue sky – perfect weather and intense clarity day after day (at least after the first day which had an intense stormy sky that didn’t amount to much.)

And several of the alpine plants are blue too (along with the butterfly). This one is Cardo, a thistle – perhaps also known as Sea Holly – it makes a yellow dye.

And the ubiquitous old door – I wish I had a dollar for everyone who “just loves to shoot doors.” I like old doors too, but I’m not out to make a calendar or something. But I saw that the faded blue paint was the same color as my new yarn and had to snap it.

And one of my trusty water bottles and favorite wool zippered jacket/sweater thing are blue too.

And though we haven’t seen it since our first Abruzzo trip in 2008, the Adriatic hugs the region’s eastern boundary, so the blue reminds me of the sea as well.

Valeria also showed me some gorgeous caramel colored yarn and the oak galls she used to dye it – she recently posted about it here too. I got a couple of natural laceweight skeins with the thought of trying to dye it up myself with galls as well, though perhaps I’ll have to use black walnut since now that I’m looking for oak galls, I can’t find any – perhaps suburban pesticides keep the wasps away?

The other three blue skeins are a heavy fingering to sport weight.

And along with the aran/bulky skeins, I’m thinking about some hats, or a shawl, or there might even be enough to eek out a short-sleeved lace pullover…

But whatever it might become, the yarn will certainly remind me of the amazing land, people, history, and animals from which it came.

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Tagged as Abruzzo, AquiLANA, blu, blue, doors, dye plants, dyeing with plants, hiking, Italia, Italy, knitting, L'Aquila, natural dyes, oak galls, plants, sea, sheep, sky, travel, wool, yarn

November 3, 2013 · 1:08 PM

[Jet] lagging…

I made it to 5:12 a.m. this morning and feel triumphant! Then I realized it was daylight savings,* so the jet lag beast has been tossed a scrap and is still pacing a bit around the room. No more middle of the night pancake dinners/breakfasts though, but the last one was quite tasty with the last of our White Mountain edible souvenirs.

My brain is still buzzy and unfocused and my body mildly flu-like. I came home with mountain legs as firm as two well-aged prosciutti, but now they’re returning to their younger non-dead jiggly piglet state. My body and mind are out of synch with my reality and just want to put one foot in front of the other until a pleasing distance and vista and lunch spot have been reached.

I know it is incredibly pretentious, but I feel more culture shock returning to the U. S. rather than being outside of it (at least in the European bits). Americans weigh too much, they are sick, they are loud, they drive enormous machines, they wheel enormous luggage, they can be demanding of bedraggled clerks and service workers, their children are wild, and worst of all, they build and live in suburbs – vast expanses of land without sidewalks or farms – utterly purposeless and ugly.

But this is where I was born and legally reside and thanks to N we can leave it once in awhile.

But I’m also just another American wishing she could eat, pray, love (mostly the eating part) under the Tuscan (I’d prefer Abruzzo) sun. But there are a few things in Italy (and probably Europe in general) that are downright magical that even more increase my desire to stay.

Dairy. I have dairy issues in the states – I don’t know if it is lactose or casein or something else, but even when I get the organic grass-fed hoity-toity localish stuff here, I can have problems. I can tolerate milk, ice cream, cream, etc., about 15% of the time here, so I usually just forgo anything not aged or fermented – cheese and yogurt are ok-ish. In Italy, I have about a 99% tolerance rate – the only bad dairy experience I’ve had there was from a mediocre cream-based pasta sauce at an even more mediocre tourist trap restaurant in Rome a few years ago. So I load up on the stuff while I’m there – cappuccino, gelato, cream sauces, oh yeah! And of course cheese – I especially love the sheep and goat stuff – pecorino dolce, ricotta di capra, caciocavallo etc., etc., etc….

Allergies. I barely have them there, and leave behind my constant ropey mucous companion dangling down my throat here. That probably has a straightforward reason about the different climate and fewer useless expanses of lawns and less proliferation of non-native species with their companion herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

So now that I’ve established that my brain is broken, my body atrophying, my nose dripping, and I’m suffering from a vague yogurt induced gut cramp, I must mention fiber – specifically my travel knitting.

I started the first pair of socks since my sock knitting debacle months ago. Again, my sock mojo is off – I used a bit bigger yarn on my preferred shorty wood needles with my 64 stitch vanilla pattern, thinking it would firm things up and be ok, but they’re big – baggy ankle big. But I don’t give a damn and still have to finish the leg parts, so I can firm up the upper ribbed section. I’m constructing them in a strange fashion, but it makes sense in my head and should allow me to use up all the yarn. I’ve dubbed them my “Nostalgia Socks” as the color reminds me of old quilts, 1970s sweaters, and now my trip.

The colors in this pic are wrong, but accurately portray the weak blue light that just barely stretched down to our nearly subterranean Italian apartment.

This is how the color should look – and if you look closely you can see one of the two knots I’ve found so far.

And remember my giddiness over Pigeonroof Studios Mimsy BFL roving? And even more over the Hitchhiker pattern? I can call it a finished project now since I shoved it in my bag at the last minute. It was one of those that ended sooner than I was ready to finish, and previously I only let myself knit a few rows here and there as a reward for meeting some goals on my portfolio pieces. Ok, I may have over-rewarded myself, but this is my favorite handspun yarn to date – the softness and drape are wonderful (if I do say so myself) but most of that is due to the inherent qualities of the fiber itself.

My yardage was less than the suggested amount and I used bigger needles, so I didn’t quite make it to the original 42 points. Mine is 41 1/2 – instead of a half a point, I just made the last one wider. I watched 42 on the plane over and hoped I could have that numerical reference as well, but I didn’t quite make the team.

I finished it in the first few days we were there, so I was able to wear it again and again and again – it’s finally taking a rest drying from a light blocking to stretch it out a little.

As for acquisitions, I bought some cheap (but ugly) sock yarn, and some cheap (but lovely) mohair in the market.

But of course I bought more of the real thing.

It deserves a post of its own next time.

* Daylight savings happened in Italy last weekend. We spent a day wondering why none of the cafes were opened when they should have been, rushed to return the rental car when we didn’t have to hurry, and even left for the airport an hour before we needed to – but none of it was the problem it would have been in the spring.

** I love this picture that N took – in the camera it appeared that I had been steamrolled, but now it looks more like a Nancy Drew book jacket for “Murder on the Mountain.” I love sleeping on mountains – some bedroom designer should get on that – forget beds – rig up a soft inclined meadow and mimic warm sun and chilly breezes in a room instead.

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Filed under hiking, home decor, knitting, spinning, travel

Tagged as Abruzzo, blue, brain dead, colorful, culture shock, daylight savings, food, hiking, Italia, Italy, jet lag, knitting, maple syrup, mountain meadows, mountains, nostalgia, out of place, pancakes, polly's pancake parlor, scarf, shawlette, socks, spinning, steamroller, Sulmona, trekking, yarn

October 30, 2013 · 7:28 AM

Trekking, face-stuffing, and of course, wool

I’m back from our few weeks sojourn to Abruzzo.

(And yes, those last posts were pre-written and hastily posted from an internet cafe – I wonder how much longer those will exist, and/or how long it will take me to get a smart phone?)

Being away meant I couldn’t go to Rhinebeck this year, but um, I don’t care – though I’m enjoying reading about it.

I’m now suffering through the haze of jet lag (pancakes at 3 a.m. seemed like a good idea at the time…) and clogged ears, the depression of leaving a land I love, and the bureaucratic shitstorm and other items of work I left behind (and which gathered strength instead of my unrealistic hopes of dissipating). So just a bit now, but more later – especially the wooly bits.

First I must take a moment to praise the porchetta panino.