Bella Knitting

Recipe for a Scarflet

Sarah

As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, scarflets appeal to my limited attention span and the common knitterly desire to have at least one easily portable project on the needles at all times. I made a few this winter, and gave a couple away as gifts. This one is probably my favorite -- a little Malabrigo scarflet for my friend CC, who lives in Seattle. A little linen stitch broke up any pooling (this is the Azalea colorway in the worsted weight, if you're wondering), and garter-stitch edges provided a nice finish.

A scarflet is nice because it just covers the bit of your neck that needs covering, without a lot of extra fabric flying around or forming an unsightly lump under your coat. Plus, it's a good way to show off a few pretty buttons. Want to make one? Click to continue through to the rest of the post for my linen-stitch scarflet "recipe" and a photo of this one in action.

Happy Feet

Sarah

Once in a very great while, it occurs to me that planning ahead for the holidays is a good idea. Such was the case with these socks, which were a joint gift to my mom from my sister and I (the link is to her new animal-training blog). I spun the yarn -- if you want to take a trip in the way-back machine, you can see that I blogged about it in July -- and Emily knit the socks. She chose a great stitch pattern, adding textural interest to the self-striping yarn.

The gansey I'm knitting for my dad was not as much of an unqualified success, however -- I had all but three-quarters of a sleeve finished by Christmas morning, but I had him try it on and the first sleeve just didn't fit right. So, I've finished knitting the second sleeve (correctly) and now I just have to rip and reknit the other one. How did everyone else's holiday knitting go? I've heard rumors that someone is going to be starting a project-a-month holiday gift knitalong -- I think I may need to join so that I can be better prepared next year!

Links to the Past

Laura

I have a soft spot in my heart for novelty yarns. No, I don’t knit with them (OK, OK, I don’t knit with them anymore. My pile of FOs do include projects that bling, blink or purr), it’s because novelty yarns had a profound impact on our craft; successfully luring many new knitters into the fold. Hopefully some of them (you?) stuck around. Fortunately, my weakness tends towards yarns that I can blissfully fondle so any eyelash used in my scarves were a light accent  - a touch of mascara vs. a full set of false eyelashes so to speak … but I digress.

Back then (all of five years ago) the yarn shop was filled with newbie knitters, all entering the store with an amazed but slightly dazed look in their eyes and one common thought in their heads; “I want to knit a scarf just like my friend Mary’s.” Some in the store found it annoying to sell garter stitch scarf after garter stitch scarf of brightly-colored sparkly, furry or squiggly yarn. Not me. That’s because I loved talking to the knitters, doing my little part to suck them into the black hole that is knitting obsession. So many of them had a similar story to my own, “I learned how to knit as a girl but haven’t knit in 20 (30, or even 40) years.” I quietly congratulated myself on the wisdom that lead me back to knitting a full decade before these I-want-that-too knitters but mentally scooted over to make sure there was plenty of room on the bandwagon for them too.

I was reminded, as we watched the kids and their cousins play and adapt to their new Christmas presents how quickly these women also relearned their childhood knitting skills. It didn’t seem to matter how I taught them to hold the needles and yarn in their hands. When they picked up their own soon-to-be-first-scarf they reverted to the way their mother or grandmother had taught them so many years ago.

And so I will battle with my I-so-do-not-want-to-knit daughter this vacation to teach her to knit, just so she has something to fall back in twenty, thirty or forty years from now when I will gracefully refrain from saying “I told you so!”

Holiday Travel

Laura

Although we may complain that holiday’s are too commercial, in our hearts we recognize they are really about family – why else would we all spend so many hours fighting traffic or security lines at the airport trying to get to our loved ones?

Those of us with kids are inextricably linked with millions of other families to the school calendar. As soon as that bell rings we will be hectically juggling schedules, secreting gifts into luggage (don’t forget the Christmas stockings), and arranging for pet feedings with a goal of getting everyone and everything piled into an overstuffed car so we can actually pull out of the driveway in time to ride over the hill to grandma’s house for a bit of Christmas Eve cheer and get those kids snuggled into beds so Santa knows where to find them.

In our case, the drive from San Francisco to San Diego (no hope of snow there) can take anywhere from seven to nine hours. That means seven or more hours of uninterrupted butt-in-seat time, a.k.a. knitting time. Long boring roads? No problem. Traffic jams? So what! They just mean more guilt free knitting time. After all, what else could I be doing?

This gives me something to add to my long list of pre-holiday travel to do’s. No bulky projects or complex tables to read (guaranteed to bring on car sickness). Last minute gifts are my usual project of choice but I have joined in on the ‘no knit gifts’ concept so I think I’ll just pick something that interests me – how fun. Maybe I’ll finish up my winter hat so I can tell you about it or play with some new ideas I have for that Venezia wool/silk that’s just so yummy to fondle.

Car knitting. Check. √

Not a Creature was Stirring

Laura
Winter Hat (Part 4) and still going!

I’m an idea dreamer. Some of my best ideas (all right, some of the strangest too) are born in the middle of the night. They’re usually labors of love, commingling with unrelated thoughts, slowly taking shape in the back of my mind, waiting to cross the barrier into conscious thought and a life of its own come morning.

Sometimes, however, an idea will barrel into my brain like a bull in the proverbial china shop, dominating all available processing power, crashing madly around, demanding that I wake up “now!” regardless of how deeply I am snuggled under my cozy bedding. Like last night.  It was my own fault. After much sketching and swatching in the afternoon the hat design was still elusive; the shaping and colors were not flowing into each other with the grace I had imagined.

The solution, a join and i-cord bind off all at the same time. Perfect!  It’s a combination of the standard 3-needle join with an i-cord bind off.  There it was, the perfect conceptual solution at three in the morning so I gazed at the shadowed ceiling pondering my options:

(a) get up and knit in the middle of the night (not going to happen),
(b) pick the idea apart in my mind, step by step looking for flaws,
(c) simply go back to sleep and see what happens in the morning.

I voted for Option C, certain that a good night’s sleep would help clarify matters of such grave importance. The bull in the china shop had other ideas and continued to rampage through my poor beleaguered brain hopping nimbly from new design ideas back to poking holes in the i-cord join idea.  Slumber proved as elusive as the original design had been and so I settled back to listen to the sounds of the night, the peaceful breathing of my spouse, the not so gentle snoring of the puppy and let my mind play it’s little games hoping it would eventually tire of the repetitive cycle of thoughts. It did and I woke at the much more reasonable (ha) hour of six ten anxious to try a bit of knitting before it was time to pack school lunches.

So did it work? Here’s a peek at the minute little swatch I knit to test it (sorry, I was too impatient to make it bigger);  testing how it looked with a different color on one half (this is what I would need to join the superhero ear flap to my hat).

I am ready to declare this experiment a total success!! The i-cord sits nicely in/on the fabric; it can be subtle or made more dramatic with more stitches and the color change is invisible.

I'll ask Sarah to help put together a picture tutorial with all the little tricks. In the mean time that bull is on the run again coming up with lots of fun, unusual and downright weird  way to use it. If you have some too I'd love to hear them! :)

Stick a fork in me...

Sarah

I'm done! Rather than forcing those of us who commute to drive up to campus just to turn in our projects, my professor was nice enough to let us mail it to her, so I finished it up today and did just that. I'm very relieved: that ends the semester for me, and now I have the rest of December and most of January off.

Thanks so much to all of you for the comments about Annie; my family and I were really touched. We'll miss her a lot on Christmas morning -- it was always her job to get a jump start opening up any packages which she thought might contain food!

Since I was so busy with the news about Annie and my project for school, I didn't get a chance to share with you my exciting news: Jason got me a new camera lens for an anniversary present! (December 16th was our second anniversary, but as Jason said: "is that it? it feels like a lot longer.") Apparently the traditional gift for second anniversaries is crystal (according to Jason's grandma, who very kindly got us some champagne glasses), so I guess Jason's gift is in keeping with that theme! For the curious, it's this lens, and the photo above totally doesn't do it justice. I think I could be standing inches from the base of Coit Tower and get it all in frame. It's awesome. Speaking of the photo, that's me and Measure at Houston's in San Francisco; Jason and I thought it would be a good place to go for our anniversary dinner, since that's actually where we first met. His sister and I were roommates at UCSB, we decided to take a road trip up to the Bay Area, I'd seen a photo of Jason and thought he was cute...the rest is history.

Holiday Gift Idea! Shhhhh...

Laura

It’s the holiday season. A time for school parties, charity giving, holiday cheer, beautiful lights, good will toward men and …  full parking lots, crowded stores, confusing internet sales!  Fighting the crowds and finding the great sales won’t do you any good if you don’t know what to get. My husband and I sat down to discuss gift strategies last weekend. This high power summit was called to head off an impending case of Present Panic since we had not yet purchased one single item, not even a stocking stuffer!

Ideas for the kids fell into place pretty quickly, and a brilliantly strategic move had me buying holiday show tickets for all 7 young nieces and nephews (true one click shopping) but what about our parents, you know the ones that sweep in to care for grandkids, who are there when you still need help from mom and dad even though you’re a parent yourself, the ones that say they don’t need anything just to see you … what to get for them? We are lucky enough to have two sets of such parents, both approaching their 50th wedding anniversaries, both involved with the grandkids and ones we all get along with! Now that’s a gift.

I finally figured out the perfect give. I am going to give a ...   STOP!! If you are my mother or mother-in-law (and you know who you are!) do not click the “read more” button until December 26th!

An Ear Sock or a Winter Super Hero?

Laura
Winter Hat (Part 3)

An ear sock? Not really but close. It’s hard to keep the ears warm without an ear flap but how to make one that can really do the job? Let’s face it, if your ears are cold and wet you’re just not going to be happy, so flaps that curl just won’t do and do you know anyone over the age of six who really uses those dangling ties?

Double thickness seemed to be a possible solution so I knit a toe up sock starting with the Magic Cast On (shown beautifully in this Knitty tutorial), increasing as needed and closing the top with a three needle join (I'll need the live stitches later).

Since I have pledged to use some new and innovative ideas (Winter Hat; Part 1), I had a few more tricks up my sleeve.

The first a small piece of fleece inserted before joining. But wait, there’s more! ...

Hidden inside this everyday looking ear flap is a winter super hero – ready to combat cold, chill and floppy ear flaps ... it’s a piece of pipe cleaner.  Not only does it prevent ear flap flop it also allows said flap to be bent slightly inward – gently cradling the ear in warmth!

The kids think I'm nuts but were quick to hold it up to their ears to test it! Two ears up for this idea!

One Thing Leads to Another

Laura

Ahhh! We have a new look. It was not my plan at the beginning of this quiet Sunday evening to change everything. We are very excited to bring the new PayPal store widget online. It will allow our customers to order some of the easy things like PDF patterns or the ever popular Viking Hat kits right from the blog (especially helpful as the main web site is still down!). However, the new widget is a bit too wide so while I was changing that I decided to add our new logo and match the color a bit better. And there it went .. one thing lead to another but left me without what I was really planning for. I'll finish up the rest on Monday - but if you pop in and it looks a bit funny it just means that it is work in process! :)

p.s. the yarn is one of Sarah's hand spun yarns. It previewed in one of our earliest posts (Jonathan Swift) but also the next day in one of my favorite posts (A Grand Unified Field Theory of Stash)

p.p.s Sarah's going to let me be a guest blogger on her amazing food blog, Nibbling Along, this week! Given my lack of cooking skills that is pretty brave of her!

Goodbye

Sarah

Thanks so much for all of the thoughtful comments on my last post -- I really appreciate it, as did my whole family.

After perking up a little bit the day before, Annie took a serious turn for the worse yesterday. When my parents took her in to see the vet, she was found to have a tumor in her abdomen causing internal bleeding and, no doubt, discomfort. So, yesterday afternoon, Annie was put to sleep with my parents by her side.

The vet's office gave my parents a room to stay with her so they could take their time petting her and saying goodbye. To make her more comfortable, they'd brought a quilt my sister Emily had made for her (with lots of doggy-themed fabrics, naturally) so she was completely at ease when she went.

Annie was a truly great dog. She was sweet, adorable, and very bright. She knew how to sit, stay, shake, "high-five," cover her face with a paw, and would balance a baby carrot on her nose until given the ok to toss it up and eat it. She loved to shred her chew-toys, strewing their filling around the living room like patches of snow. She was incredibly patient with small children, and had her own special algorithm for determining the one person in a room most likely to give her food. She was a classic mutt -- definitely a bit of Spaniel, likely a bit of Golden Retriever, and who knows what else. Whatever her parentage, she certainly had all the best qualities one looks for in a pet.

This year, when Jason and I make our annual donation to the local animal shelter where we got Syrus, I'll be thinking of Annie, and hoping that all the orphaned dogs find families to love them as much as we loved her, and as much as we love Syrus. I'll miss her terribly, but I know that she was fortunate to live the best of all possible canine lives, and I'm glad I was a part of hers, and that she was part of mine.