Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog!

Quill

As promised, a finished project!

Project Details:

  • Pattern: Quill, by Jared Flood
  • Yarn: Acme Fibres Select 17 Merino Fingering
  • Needle: 3.25 mm
  • Started: February 1, 2020
  • Finished: July 4, 2020
  • For: Baby Shah (and his parents Steph and Paraj)
  • Modifications: I did the lace edging with a stockinette background instead of garter. This was a mistake that I didn’t notice until I had several edging repeats done, and I wasn’t about to rip that back. This is the large size, it took a little over 5 skeins of the yarn, just about spot on to the pattern yardage.

This is the second one of these I’ve knit. The pattern is well written, very simple to follow, and would be suitable for a novice knitter. Nicely formatted, it uses knit, purl, basic increases and decreases, picking up stitches along the edge, and doing a knitted on edging. It’s perfect for a baby blanket, but works as a shawl as well. I might make one of these for me someday to wear as a shawl.

This yarn is divine. It is from Acme Fibres, they primarily sell undyed fiber and yarn. This is their Select 17 merino, which is a very fine, lightweight fingering yarn. It is superwash but very soft and lovely.

Project Rating: ***** for both the pattern and the yarn.

Back in business!

After a lot of gnashing of teeth, I finally got this mess fixed. And I take back any disparaging remarks I may have made about my host server.

It ended up being a boat load of malware selling a variety of pharmaceuticals. At some point it loaded so much crap that the Bluehost tech whiz found two dozen processes running in the background. No wonder it finally just quit.

So I think I’ve got all the old posts. I need to sort out whether all the photos were reattached to the appropriate post. I think I still have some work to do on that.

So how about some knitting, since this is a knitting blog? I finished the last lace baby surprise thing, it just needs blocking. No photos of that, then. I started another lace baby surprise thing.

It’s hard to tell from that photo due to the background color, but that’s a cream merino. This is from Acme Fibres. I have a ton of their undyed yarn in the stash.

That’s all I have. Fingers crossed that this uploads!

Ye of little faith

I finally quit procrastinating and called my blog hosting service earlier this week to try to fix the blog. After close to an hour on the phone with a nice tech geek, he said that he’d have to escalate it up the ladder. I figured that was a euphemism for “I don’t know how the hell you screwed this up, but I can’t fix it”. He said to give it 48 hours or so.

I logged in today, and it is back to working. I had to do some tinkering, but if you see this, I’m back in business.

I have been knitting. I finished a sock for John this morning.

There you go. I’m off to get supper ready.

It’s time for summer knitting

I’m still mostly working on that mystery project which I can’t show you.

OK, here’s one tiny photo.

There is a deadline on this, which is a ways off, but I’m not dumb enough to say anything like “I have plenty of time”.

I dragged out an old project that has been marinating long enough.

This is my Hudson Valley cardigan, which got shoved into time out when last summer turned to fall and winter. I have the back nearly done. I’m hoping to get that finished so I can wear it this summer.

By the way, I hate my blog. Nobody will likely be able to read this post. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ve spent countless hours trying to fix it. We’ll see if this posts. If not, I may abandon the whole damn thing and move to a different blog platform.

Bandwidth

Like most of you, I have a lot of time on my hands when I’m not actually at work. Like most of you (I suspect), I don’t have a lot of brain bandwidth for anything particularly complicated or challenging. I don’t want anything that will take up too much space in my brain, and I definitely don’t want projects that will require too much intellectual capacity.

So I finished the last book I was reading (The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich–great book), and was rummaging around for a new fiction read.

I came up with this.

Right. That set has been on my book shelves for years, and I will eventually get around to reading it. But not now. I read a bit of the first volume, and put it quietly back on the shelf, then had a good laugh.

I chose the first of a new to me crime series, Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo. It’s perfect. Somewhat mindless, but not too much so. There is a murder within the first few pages, then the story spools out until I suppose Harry Bosch figures out who killed the guy. There are dozens more in the series, so I can just keep reading when I’m done.

I also don’t have much bandwidth for complex knitting. The lace has been neglected for weeks. Here are the current projects.

Two socks, both plain vanilla stocking stitch, a garter stitch Hitchhiker, and a garter stitch mitered square blanket. And a peek at the mystery white project, also currently in a garter stitch mode.

That should do it.

What’s new?

Here is my new sock.

The yarn is from deep stash. It’s from Three Irish Girls, when I was a member of the Sock Yarnista sock club.

Here is the ball band for reference. I have a crazy cat that steals ball bands and carries them all over the house. If you can’t read that, this is McClellan fingering, a merino, bamboo, and nylon blend. It doesn’t look like they carry this particular blend any longer. The color is Waterlilies, I think it looks like Easter egg candy.

Who, me??

The other new thing is at work. I have been working in the clinic seeing outpatients for the past few years. With the coronavirus outbreak, our local hospital and my medical group have been trying to plan ahead for the surge. So today I completed the last of the paperwork I need to do to obtain privileges to practice at the hospital. I surely hope I don’t need to do that, but if it gets as busy as expected, we’ll be ready.

I’m pretty proud of the company I work for, by the way. I was at my desk one day earlier this week, and kept hearing one of the medical assistants on the phone, having what sounded like the same conversation over and over with patients. It turns out that KPWA (Kaiser Permanente Washington) started a process for our nursing staff to methodically call all of our higher risk patients. They ask about who they have as a back up person if they need it, whether they have an adequate supply of meds on hand (if not, they order them right then for mail delivery), and whether they have adequate food on hand and if there is someone available to assist with that. They also ask about their mental health, ask how they are holding up with all of this. They connect them with our clinic social worker and community resource person if they need it.

The other thing that I’m proud of is the dedication of my colleagues. We have a hospitalist team that is part of our group, and they will of course keep doing the tough work that they already do. But when the call went out for volunteers to help out with the “surge”, there were so many more that answered that we will have a full team in place to step in, and a backup team on top of that. We all tend to bitch and moan about work and everything that pisses us off, but KP has had a formal disaster plan in place since COVID hit the US. Of course, there are always going to be parts of this out of our control, but I feel about as secure as I could in this situation.

Stay well, and knit on!

Bright side

And they are finished. Same old generic white bread pattern that I always make. I knit these on 2.00 mm double points, starting with 72 stitches. These are my current favorite knitting needles. The brand is Lykke, and I may have bought a bunch of the straight single point needles as well.

The yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn, color name Brightside. I love this yarn, it is nicely spun, comes in lots of fun colors, and is also nicely priced. I got mine here, this is a great shop with many tempting yarns, good service and fast shipping.

Stay tuned for the next sock on the hit parade.

Pantry

As with all of you, we have found ourselves stuck at home for the duration. When it comes time to plan meals for the next few days, we can’t just hop in the car and go to the market for one or two things. Earlier this week I stepped out on our front patio and noticed this.

It’s gotten warm enough that the sorrel plant has popped up. Fresh green stuff is not something to be taken lightly right now, so I harvested it and decided to make lentils.

Here’s my recipe:

  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic chopped
  • celery, 2-3 stalks, chopped
  • chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 tomato, seeded and chopped (can use canned diced)
  • sorrel, roughly chopped. You could use spinach or any other fresh greens (kale, chard)
  • salt and pepper
  • herbes de Provence, about a teaspoon
  • Bay leaf
  • Aleppo pepper*, if you have it, about half a teaspoon
  • Water or stock, about 4 cups
  • Lentils, picked over, rinsed, and drained, 2 cups

Saute the onion, celery, and garlic in a bit of oil. Add the tomato, parsley, seasonings, and the lentils. Add the liquid.

Bring to a simmer, partially cover and cook until the liquid is absorbed and the lentils are done. This will take 20-30 minutes. Stir in the sorrel just at the end of cooking. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.

Here is the finished product:

If you have any growing space, sorrel is a good thing to have on hand. I’m not sure it would winter over in a really cold climate, but it is a perennial, and even I can’t kill it. It starts to come up in the spring, and as long as you keep harvesting it, it keeps growing. You can use it where you might use spinach, though it is quite a bit more lemony and tangy. It is high in vitamins and antioxidants, and supposedly can lower your blood pressure, so it is good for you as well.

Beans and lentils, along with rice, already are a staple for our meals around here, so we had a pretty good pantry stock set up. By supplementing with a few fresh veggies and fruits, we should do just fine for quite some time.

What’s on your table for the coming week?

*Aleppo pepper can be found online and in specialty markets. If you don’t have it, just use a bit more regular pepper, or add a tiny bit of cayenne.

Not in the mood

Blogiversary! Sixteen years ago I hit “publish” on my first post. I’ve slacked off from time to time in keeping up here, but I’m still finding it a rewarding way to connect with the many friends I’ve made over those years.

I almost missed it, I’ve been just a little preoccupied with work, and when I’m home, I have tended to just go brain-dead in general. I’m working three days a week in clinic doing primary care internal medicine, so don’t have the exposure that I would if I were working in the hospital, but it is still very stressful right now. It doesn’t help that I’m in that “over-60” group, and so is John. I am very fortunate in that I work for Kaiser Permanente—we’ve had a somewhat heroic response to the pandemic in the past few weeks, in terms of getting ready for what’s undoubtedly coming our way. I think we are miles ahead of other medical groups elsewhere, and certainly anyone that is in private practice.

As someone who likes things that are nice and orderly, and doesn’t enjoy big changes, this has been a challenge, but I’m doing OK. John and I certainly are in a privileged position in that my job is pretty secure, we’re both healthy despite the age thing, and we have enough “stuff” of every variety to outlast any epidemic. I certainly have enough yarn around here to last through an apocalypse.

Since this is in fact a knitting blog, here is some knitting.

I’d like to try to finish those this week. Since I can’t leave the house until Monday, that is a possibility, even for a slow knitter like me.

I think I actually have managed to match the stripes on these.

I still haven’t fixed all of the older photos from the blog after I deleted everything earlier this month. It’s sort of tedious going back into individual posts, finding the photos (if I still have them), and uploading. Right now I’d much rather be doing something less annoying.

Take care of yourselves, wash your hands, and stay home unless you have to go out. There, I’ve covered both the “knitting” and the “doctor” part of the blog!

Sock yarn blankie

I think I posted about this one, but I think it got trash-canned in the Great Blog Deletion of 2020. I have a bunch of leftovers from socks I’ve made, along with a bunch of sock yarn mini skeins that I bought a long time ago thinking I was going to make one of those ridiculous “hexipuff” blankets.

This is much easier.

Mitered squares! They are somewhat insanely addictive to knit. And it’s not like I don’t have sock yarn around here. And time to knit, at least while I’m not at work.

And yes, I am weaving in the ends every few squares so I don’t have a huge mess to deal with.

In troubled times, it is comforting to have an easy, yet satisfying project to knit. The only decision to make is which color I’ll pick up next.

Sigh

And the blog is sort of fixed. The posts from the past 2 weeks weren’t backed up, but I think there were only one or two. I have no freaking idea how I managed to delete the blog, but I’m very glad that on a whim I added a blog backup plugin in February. I’m going to upgrade that to something more robust, since it took all freaking afternoon to get things restored, and lots of photos didn’t get reattached to the blog posts they were supposed to accompany. I’ll probably fix at least the more recent ones. We are busy “socially distancing” ourselves here, so it’s not like I don’t have time.

This morning we woke up to this:

Covid-19, Friday the 13th, a full moon (which I apparently won’t see due to the weather), the fact that I live in one of the epicenters of the US epidemic (as a front-line primary care clinician), and snow. With all the recent commotion, I might just have ditched the no yarn-buying policy and added some things to the stash. I’ll take pictures when it arrives, assuming we still have mail service.

Stay warm, stay well, and keep on knitting!

Wooly bully

My yarn stash is taunting me. I already have close to a dozen projects going. I have three lace shawls, two sweaters, two socks, one hitchhiker mindless garter stitch shawl, a pair of color work mittens, and a linen washcloth. And a partridge in a pear tree. Oh, and the mystery gift thing that will likely take months to complete.

I shouldn’t be rustling around in the stash boxes looking for distraction.

Yet here I am. My stash is bullying me into starting something new. That is a perfectly lovely skein of Dream In Color Smooshy fingering weight, the color is called In Vino Veritas, which is I’m sure why I bought it in the first place. This has been in the stash box for over a decade. I even have a pattern picked out.

Isn’t that pretty? It was written for this very yarn, and it’s free! Free is always good. Of course, I’ve been telling myself that I don’t need another project on the needles, but really, who’s counting? The pattern is Larch.

You do know what happened next, right?

A blast from the past

Since I finished the Winter Solstice shawl, I needed some lace in my hands. I am knitting a secret project that eventually will have some lace, but don’t really want to post about it until it is done and gifted. It is currently in the witness protection program. And currently it is just endless garter stitch, so not particularly interesting anyway.

I have three other lace shawls in various stages of progress. I found the oldest one and pulled it out to work on.

That is the Cathedral Stole, pattern by Birgit Freyer. I’ve renamed it Ruby Slippers, since it is a glowing ruby red.

According to Ravelry, I started this almost exactly four years ago. I remember when I bought the yarn. This is a handspun mohair lace yarn spun by women in Tajikistan.

This is lovely yarn, and the pattern is delightful. The designer has about a million lace shawl and stole patterns available, this likely won’t be my last one.

Since it is hard to imagine what the finished lace will look like, here is a photo from the designer’s pattern page.