Linen somethings

And sort of a blog fail. I finally finished all the Euroflax linen gift somethings yesterday. I had this grand idea to knit a bunch of them, finished four.

Now that they’re (mostly) gifted, I can tell what they are. Don’t be too excited, I spent all of December knitting garter stitch linen face cloths.

I know, right? Those shouldn’t be too hard. They are just big garter stitch squares. And I forgot to take photos of the first three (the green, pink, and lavender ones) before I mailed them off. These are for my sisters, I packaged them with some nice bath soap. Linda just got one, the yellow one was finished yesterday so I’ll get it in the mail when we figure that the crush at the post office is over.

I’m not doing a whole finished project thing for those. It’s Euroflax linen, sport weight. I used this pattern. It starts with 3 stitches, increases every row until it’s wide enough, then decreases back to 3 stitches. “Wide enough” for me was 89 stitches.

You would think that with as few things that I finish around here, that I’d remember to take pictures. Oh well.

I organized all my knitting projects today and got them out of the jumble that they’d turned into.

That is 4 lace shawls, 2 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, a Hitchhiker, and another linen washcloth. And Ripley. My plan is to finish one of the sock pairs, one of the sweaters, and one of the lace shawls next. We’ll see how that goes. Ripley said she’d help.

Longest night

Winter Solstice is one of my favorite days of the year. I’m not a huge fan of the cold and dark, so even though the days are barely perceptibly longer from here, I still know that they are indeed getting longer. For the last decade or so (twelve years actually), John and I have done a huge solstice sit down dinner for friends and neighbors. It always turned out to be a 5 or 6 course meal for a dozen people, that involved days of planning and cooking.

Last year, we just decided not to do it. And we’re not doing it this year either. I still love to cook for people, but it had gotten to be more about the production and less about the fun of being with friends. The winter months are also often a challenge for me. The “undertoad” starts to grab at my toes and try to pull me under if I get too much on my plate and start stressing out.

I pulled out my Longest Night shawl this morning and gave it a bit of love. I’ve been knitting Euroflax linen “somethings” for Christmas gifts all month, and my hands forgot how nice it is to knit with soft silk and merino lace. Next time I decide to do something like that for the holidays, somebody remind me that I should start earlier so it doesn’t turn into a marathon. I still have one left to finish, but it’s close enough that I can take a break from it.

I’ll leave you with a photo of one of the Christmas trees at work. It makes me laugh every time I walk by it.

I hope your weekend is peaceful, and that you don’t have too much busy stuff to finish before Christmas.

It is risen

I haven’t made bread from a sourdough starter in quite a while. When we went to Poland in September, I forgot to take care of the starter before I left, and by the time we got home and remembered it, it was well past resurrecting.

I decided to buy a small starter from Breadtopia last week. It took a few days to build it up to a usable quantity. Here’s what it looked like this morning.

That looks like a fine healthy starter to me. I have bread dough in the works for a nice sourdough Pain de Campagne.

Arlo

We had a little excitement with Arlo on Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people, some that stayed overnight, and with one big friendly extra dog. Arlo disappeared, which isn’t unusual, but I couldn’t find him the next day still. I was beginning to think he had escaped and gotten outside, but he eventually came sauntering out of some hiding place.

He is starting to be a little more cuddly than when we got him earlier this year. He is now sleeping on our bed, and today for the first time he jumped up on my lap while I was knitting.

Speaking of knitting, that missing yarn finally showed up a couple days later, delivered to one of our neighbors. Fortunately Larry doesn’t knit, so he was happy to turn it over to me.

That’s all the colors that I now have of this*. Aren’t those pretty? It brings just a bit of springtime, which is quite welcome in these dark, rainy days of December. I only have one skein of each color, but I’m thinking a summer top out of that pale aqua would be lovely. Or the purple. Or maybe one of each.

*Euroflax sport weight linen.

Stealth knitting

This is all you’re going to get for the next couple of weeks. I’ve never been one of those organized knitters that start knitting Christmas gifts in January every year. I usually think about it around December 20th, therefore, no Christmas knitting ever gets done around here.

Last week I had the bright idea to knit a few things for a few people. Mind you, I picked some VERY SIMPLE things that I can practically knit in my sleep, more of a “stocking stuffer” type of gift.

Then I started thinking, well, I could do these for a few more people too! Pretty soon I was up to knitting about a dozen of these little Mystery Projects.

Right. I am insane.

Of course, though I had the yarn for a few of these Mystery Projects, I don’t have enough to knit all of them. This is despite the boxes and boxes and nearly half a million yards of yarn around here.

So I ordered more. It was supposed to be delivered Friday. I got a tracking notification from USPS that it was indeed delivered “at or near the mailbox”, whatever that means. I think it means it is “at or near” someone else’s mailbox, since I did not receive it. This makes the likelihood of me completing my Christmas knitting even more improbable than it already was.

This my friends, is why I don’t do Christmas knitting.

Please send whisky. I will surely need it.

Holiday cactus

I’m pretty sure my Christmas cacti are actually the Thanksgiving variety. They are in full bloom. Here’s one of them.

The other one used to be all light pink.

I think there has been a little hanky-panky going on after hours around here.

By the way, I’m still only getting about 1 out of 5 comments emailed to me. I try to check back to see if anyone has commented, but if I miss one and don’t reply, that’s why.

Three on Thursdays

  1. That blogging every day in November sort of fell apart in a big hurry, didn’t it? Mostly it’s because my work day leaves me brain dead for much of my outside of work hours. I’m “just” working three days a week, but they are long days, and require every brain cell I have to keep on top of everything.
  2. Which leads to work meetings. Who the hell plans a work department meeting that is scheduled to run over 5-6 hours? Any meeting that goes over an hour is just going to degenerate into a big bitch session, as far as I can tell. And since it’s my day off, if I went, it would be on my dime. Thankfully, I had something else already planned for this afternoon. Otherwise, there might be a good chance of me stabbing someone with a knitting needle.
  3. I don’t think I’ve even touched my knitting for the past three work days. See above. I plan to remedy that today.

My cable needle went missing over the weekend. I found it this morning.

I apparently stuck it there for safe keeping.

Things I need…

I was shopping for a 2020 monthly calendar for my bullet journal today. I use sort of a free form blank page insert for my daily lists of things to do and notes, but like having a monthly master calendar to keep track of the major events of the year. I could make my own, but buy a two page per month pre-made dated calendar from Traveler’s, since I’m lazy. I’ve bought them on Amazon in the past, but their price markup has skyrocketed for these for some reason.

So I found Paper Seahorse. I’ll warn you now, don’t go there if you have a weak resistance and a ready credit card.

I did find the monthly inserts, at about half Amazon’s price. And a few other planner goodies.

And these:

They are little “business cards“ that you can fill out and give to those special people. Fortunately (I think), they are not in stock, or I’d be very tempted.

Marathon knitting

It is just time to finish this one. I understand if you’ve forgotten the details, since it’s been on the needles since March of 2018. I’m down to one repeat of the second to last chart, and one repeat of the last chart, then I’m done. Of course that amounts to 72 rows, with increasing number of stitches each row, and at the end there are 693 stitches to bind off.

These last charts include a few rows with cables. Though I do know how to knit cables without a cable needle, I’m not a cocky enough knitter to attempt that trick in lace weight silk/merino. So those rows are a bit fidgety.

It does make some very pretty little cables, though.

The pattern name is Longest Night, I’ve been calling it Winter Solstice, and I want it done before the solstice gets here. I think that is doable if I exercise a bit of project monogamy.*

*Remind me of that if you see me casting on any new lace projects before you see this one done.

Tuesday

That’s all I can come up with today. I was back at work, feeling considerably more like a human, and actually got home at a reasonable hour given that I took yesterday off.

I took this photo at my desk this morning. I have a couple of orchids in my window. This one has been blooming for months. The other one dropped its flowers a month or so back, and is waiting for its next cycle.

Don’t ask me for any tips for how to grow them. With me it’s just dumb luck. I kill most plants, but for some reason can grow orchids. I mostly admire them, tell them how lovely they are, water them once a week, and give them some plant food when they’ve quit blooming. I think it helps that these are “grocery store” orchids, not the fancy hothouse kind, so they are bred so people can’t kill them.

Sick day

The creeping crud from yesterday was enough to keep me home today. I haven’t done anything all day except sleep and drink tea. I’m starting to feel a bit more human, so I should be able to go to work tomorrow. It isn’t anything serious, I’m just whiny and really hate being sick. It seems like such a waste of time. I have found that I don’t bounce back from being sick as well as I used to. I suppose it’s that aging thing. I realized a couple of weeks ago, to my dismay, that I am the oldest person working in my clinic. I’m twice as old as some of them, and three times as old as a few. Sigh.

I did start that new Hitchhiker yesterday during the Seahawks game.

Wollmeise Pure, 100% merino, color is Flower Power. I’ve quit trying to use straight merino to make socks, it doesn’t wear as well under foot.

And as you can see, I’m making a valiant effort to stay awake and do a little medical review. It makes me feel a little less like a slacker for staying home from work. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Hitchhiker, take two

That right there is a Finished Project. I finished this one on the plane ride home from Poland, I just haven’t gotten around to posting about it officially.

Project Notes:

Yarn: Wollmeise Pure, 100% fingering weight merino. Delightful to work with and to wear.

Needles: 3.25mm. I started on straights, but transferred it to a circular for travel.

Pattern: Hitchhiker, by Martina Behm. As of today, there are 31.7K projects on Ravelry using this pattern. It is the most commonly knit pattern! This is the second one of these I’ve made.

Modifications: None

What I learned/love about this: This is such a versatile “little neck thing”. It’s an easy pattern, perfect for meetings or TV watching. I have no doubt that I’ll make more of these.

Pattern/yarn rating: ***** on both. The pattern is clear, and the yarn has the most vibrant colors. I have a bunch more of this in the stash, I just might start another one for those times that I need to pay attention to something but still want to knit.

I was a bit tempted by that Wollmeise link up there. I checked my stash, though. I have another eight hanks of this in some mighty lovely colors. I think I’ll go dig one of those out the boxes and cast on!