The Knitting Doctor

Let’s Catch Up, Shall We?

Oh dear. Not again. I’m apparently hopeless at keeping this thing current. How about I just post a few more photos of our June trip to Montana? Some of them even have to do with knitting.

The car, ready to go. We’re light packers, what can I say? After we got all loaded up it dawned on us that we needed to pick up my sister Diane and her husband at the airport in Kalispell on the last leg of the trip out to our cabin. We hoped they were traveling light.

First stop, Spokane, at the historic Davenport Hotel.

Mr. Davenport interrupted his newspaper reading for a sock knitting lesson.

Our cabin on the river in Montana.

The family!

View across the river to Glacier National Park. It really sucked to have to look at that all week.

Polebridge Mercantile, a hopping place out in the middle of nowhere.

A nice little knitting spot.

Our Red Bus tour of Glacier.

There’s just nothing to say about that. We took about a million photos, and every view was spectacular. It’s just difficult to capture the magnificence of the park in photos.

I did find a few yarn shops along the way.

Some tough competition.

Just a little snow.

More crappy views.

Finished socks, just in time for Father’s Day.

I don’t really need to do a Finished Project post, do I? Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn, color name A River Runs Through It. For John, same old pattern. I did a bit of modification around the ankle, doing the gusset decreases every third row for awhile so he can get them over his instep. I usually do my socks on 72 stitches, I did these on 76 stitches and they fit him perfectly.

Flute playing in a roadside campground! I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I started taking flute lessons back in March. I used to play a million years ago, then it sort of fell by the wayside over the years. I bought a new flute in February, then found the Community Music Program at the University of Puget Sound here in Tacoma. I take a private lesson once a week, and yes, I did practice on the trip. I had to be a bit creative on the road trip back since playing in a hotel room probably would annoy people. We stopped at this campground which was totally deserted, and I practiced until the mosquitoes threatened to cart me off.

Enough for now. I’ll leave you with a photo of Lewey.

He wishes he could have gone along.

In Celebration…

We are close to the end of our lovely vacation. We spent last week in our little cabin on the North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana. The deck of the cabin was about ten steps from the river, and directly across the river was the boundary for Glacier Park. It couldn’t have been a more lovely spot to spend the week with my two sisters and their husbands. I’ll get around to posting more photos later, but here is just one.

After we left the Glacier area yesterday, John and I headed home. We drove here from western Washington, and we’re taking a couple days to drive back home across northern Montana, Idaho, and Washington, just to see some parts of the states that we have never been to before. We stayed at the Lodge at Sandpoint last night, where that photo was taken, and had a great martini on the deck. In case you didn’t know, June 20th was National Martini Day. We did celebrate it properly on the correct date, but figured this was too beautiful a spot not to extend the celebration.

I did find some yarn shops, by the way. There was a nice shop in Kalispell, and another lovely little shop in Whitefish. There was one listed in Libby, but like a lot of storefronts in Libby, it was empty. There must not be many knitters there.

We’re headed back into Washington this morning, and then home tomorrow. I’ll post more photos later.

Montana!

This is going to be a very short post, since our internet access here is slowwwwww. We’re in a cabin outside Glacier Park for a week with my sisters and their spouses. It’s glorious, we’re having a blast, but the photos will mostly have to wait till later. Here’s one:

I did finish John’s socks the day we got here, just in time for Father’s Day. He put them right on and wore them for three days straight, so I think he likes them. I’ll post a photo later. That’s the new sock up there. It’s Lorna’s Laces sock yarn, the color name is Live Long & Prosper. It’s the colors of the Star Trek uniforms. What can I say, it amused the geek in me.

That’s all for now. The thing to do when the internet is slow is to take it as a sign and turn off the devices. I’ll post more photos when we get home.

Summer, Finally!

It took its sweet time getting here, but we finally have something resembling summer. It’s been in the mid to high 70’s the past few days, and not a drop of rain! Hooray!

In honor of the nice weather, I hauled the wheel out to the deck for a bit of spinning.

Yes, that’s plain white fiber. I bought pounds of plain white fiber in a couple of different wool varieties. This is Bluefaced Leicester. I intended to dye this using some of my plant dyes, but decided it’s less tricky to spin it first, then dye it. This is such nice stuff that it’s not boring at all to spin, even if it’s not dyed. I’m easily entertained.

Marilyn asked about my fried chicken recipe in the comments earlier this week. After I sent it to her, she suggested you all might like it, so here it is.

Lorette’s Fried Chicken

Chicken parts-make more than you think you’ll eat, people eat this like they haven’t had a meal in weeks.

Self rising flour, enough to dip your chicken. You really need the self rising kind to get a nice finish.

Add salt and pepper to taste to the flour.

Grate a bit of fresh nutmeg into the flour as well.

Mix the flour and seasonings all together and put in one dish.

In another dish pour buttermilk, enough to dip chicken pieces into.
Dip the chicken pieces in the flour mix, then the buttermilk, then back into the flour, coating well. Coat just enough to cook one batch at a time, if it sits too long it tends to get a bit soggy.

Set the coated chicken pieces on another plate or a big sheet pan and let sit for 15 minutes. The waiting period is essential as well to get that nice bubbly crispy coating.

This is pretty easy, though a bit messy. I use a huge cast iron deep skillet, and crisco to fry. Fill up the skillet about half full or a little less with the melted crisco, remember it can run over when you add the chicken. It can make a nasty kitchen fire if it runs over onto burners, so be careful. I have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen and know how to use it, but it would be the last resort, any food on the stove would be ruined, and it probably wouldn’t do the cooktop any good either. A box of baking soda can put out a grease fire in a pinch also. It’s best to not fill your pan too much, the melted fat should come up about half way or a little more on the chicken pieces. And don’t overheat your fat; if it starts to smoke turn off the heat, or you’ll risk a flare up and a fire.

I also cut up brown paper bags and cover the floor around the stovetop. Seriously, do this. It makes clean up easier.

Now fry your chicken. Heat the crisco, then add the chicken pieces, then cover and fry for 10 minutes covered. Adjust your heat so the oil is bubbling a bit but not so much that it’s bubbling out of the pan.

Uncover and cook another 25 minutes, turning once or maybe twice if needed to brown nicely. This is where you need your kitchen fan and a mesh fryer screen to keep the oil mostly contained.

When there is about 15 minutes left in the cooking time, coat your next batch of chicken so it’s ready to go when the first one is all cooked and crispy.

Drain the done chicken on brown paper bags. I usually cook several batches, it’s fine served at room temperature and terrific cold. It’s also really terrific leftover, skinned and cut up to make chicken salad.

Get somebody else to clean the cooktop if possible.

Go forth and make chicken!

Sick Day

I woke up this morning with a stomach bug and just decided to stay home instead of going to work and giving it to everybody else. I’m already feeling better, so it may have been food poisoning instead of a virus (can you say “food truck”?).

I didn’t get much of anything done today except laze around, but I did finish the body of that Big Green Sweater.

Yup. It’s a big green square. There is actually a stitch pattern in there, and I keep saying the yarn is prettier than my photography skills can demonstrate, but basically, a big green square.

Now all I have to do is knit sleeves.

I just realized that I haven’t posted in a bit. My oldest niece and her family came for a long Memorial Day weekend and we had a total blast. She and her husband have two delightful daughters, aged 11 and 9, and we hadn’t seen them in quite a while. We ate a lot and played tourist. We had a Seattle day, where we visited Pike’s Place market, and rode the Duck. And had Serious pizza at Serious Pie. We took a day trip up to Mount St. Helens, and found 8 inches of new snow. We had my famous fried chicken, and John’s famous baby back ribs. And we tried to see if there is anything Brianna (11) will not eat. Apparently not.

Raw oysters! And let’s see, she ate clams, calamari, those ribs, artichokes, beets, and Dungeness crab. And liked it all, as best I could tell. That’s Brian, being a bit incredulous in the background.

Here are a few other random photos from the weekend.

Elise and Brianna, just hanging out.

Tired duck after the Duck Tour.

Captain Clem Chowder. I sincerely do hope that’s not his real name.

Look more closely at that bear’s hand.

Who knew bears knit?

Donna and I in the middle of a very competitive game of Mexican Train.

It was a great weekend! That’s all for now.

Black Hole

Well this has been one of those days. I had a few hanks of yarn that have somehow appeared around here in the past few months, and they needed to be put into storage.

I have told you about my fabulous overly obsessive-compulsive yarn database, haven’t I? I’m sure I have. Here’s what it looks like on my iPad.

Glorious, eh? I have a billions skeins of yarn categorized in a sortable database so I can search by yarn name, fiber type, number of yards, and most importantly, know exactly which numbered box it is in.

So anyway, after I got my little new skeins all happily stored away, I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the whole thing, adding a few new database fields, deleting some yarns that have been used or given away, etc.

Every time I put new yarn into the storage warehouse, I’m reminded of the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. You know the one.

That’s all for today. After all that sorting, I need a martini.

One Sock

So I did finish the first sock of the pair. After all that measuring of the foot, I got to the last row of the toe decreases and had John try it on before I grafted it closed. I knit on the edge, but I’m not a complete idiot. Of course it was too short. I was tempted to just knit some more rows onto it but realized how totally dumb that would look, and ripped it back to the beginning of the toe increases and added a few more rows. Now it’s Really Done.

Click to embiggen!

The second one is started:

In other news, even though I’m only a Mother to four-legged creatures, I got a swell Mother’s Day gift from them. I didn’t even know that Lewey HAD a credit card! Anyway, they picked out a very nice Tamron macro lens for my Canon 60D. I’ve been taking photos of everything around here, as has John.

Really, do click on those to get a better look. Even if you don’t care a hoot about one pitiful sock, you should care about pretty flowers and martinis!

John’s Sock

This is a moment that all of you that are sock knitters know well. You get close to the part where you start the toe decreases, and you are SO CLOSE!

About a billion hours ago, I measured that against a sock* that is the right length for him, and there was about an inch more to knit before the toe decreases.

A billion hours later, and about 8 rows, which should be a little less than an inch, I measured it again. There is about an inch left to knit.

How does this happen? Oh well, it’s a good thing I have more NCIS lined up to watch.

*Don’t judge me on that yellow and green striped sock. It’s some ridiculous non-sock yarn in John Deere green and yellow, and he loves them to pieces.

Right.

I sort of disappeared again. It’s been a bit of a busy week or so, and I just forgot about the blog. I didn’t forget about the contest though! Karen from Nova Scotia won, with this:

There once was a Doctor who knit.
For acrylic she cared not a whit.
It was Cashmere she wanted.
So the yarn shops she haunted.
And she bought up every last little bit.

That was chosen by the random generator, but if I’d have picked the joke that made me laugh the loudest, she still would have one. She chose the Mama Llama sock yarn, which is on its way to her house. Here’s a photo of it…

The really funny thing is that John and I have been planning our big fall trip, which involves trains, planes, and automobiles, and includes a trip to Halifax, NS where Karen is from. So I’m hoping it works out that we can meet up, and she can give me the lowdown on all the local fiber opportunities.

I’m still knitting the same old stuff. I’m working on the Big Green sweater, and am nearly done with the back half. It’s knit in the round, which I’ve decided I really don’t enjoy. It’s gotten too huge to stuff in a knitting bag, so I can only work on it at home. I rather enjoy doing seams, and I think they give a sweater some structure, but the real advantage is that it makes for a more portable project right up to the end.

I now have three lace things on the needles, that Pretty Thing cowl, which is in a time out, and two shawls, which aren’t really in a time out but I only have so many hours in a day. I’d like to petition Congress to do something useful like add another 8 hours to each day, but I doubt they could ever agree on the details, so I suppose I’m stuck with the usual 24. And then there is John’s one lonely sock, which I’m nearly done with, then I ~~have to~~ get to make its mate.

I’m off to knit. My husband is at a Tacoma Rainier’s baseball game with a buddy*, so I have the afternoon all to myself at home, which is a rarity. Maybe next time I’ll have some progress photos to post!

*I was offered first shot at sitting next to John at the game, but it might hit a high of 50 today if we’re lucky, and it’s been spitting rain off and on all day. No thanks. I’m a fair weather baseball fan.

Blogiversary! Free Yarn!

Here we go again! Another year of blogging. Let’s see, this whole thing started in 2004 with this entry.

Since then, there have been 623 posts, including this one. There have been 8557 comments! You guys can be a talkative bunch.

This past year I was sort of a slowpoke in the knitting category. I actually finished very few projects. I’m hoping to get a few more done this year. Stick with me and you’ll see what I’m up to! There should be knitting, spinning, perhaps some dyeing! And as always, cooking, travel, and just general silliness. And whiskey and frogging, you can almost always count on that now and then.

In my last post, I showed the frogged lace cowl thing. It did get restarted on a 16 inch circular, which is working out better. Here’s a photo.

I’m about a third done with it, I think. This yarn is really, really fragile. It also has a major halo, which is OK in a cowl, but I don’t think it would hold up to any kind of wear and tear. Click on that photo to see the fuzziness. The KAL on the KnitCompanion website includes a wrister pattern to match, but I’m not sure I’ll do that. I doubt I’d wear them, and I’m sort of sick of knitting this. I have so much other stuff on the needles that I would rather work on. So there. It’s my knitting, I can do what I want.

Last but not least, let’s do a giveaway in honor of the blog anniversary, shall we? That always draws out the crowds.

Here’s how you enter. All you need to do is leave me a joke in the comments. It can be a knock knock joke, a shaggy dog joke, a limerick, or anything else funny. I’ve done this one before, and it always provides me with days of laughs.

What are you playing for? It will be for one pair of sock’s worth of yarn from my precious stash. I’ll draw one random winner from the bunch, and since I know tastes vary, I’ll let you choose from four different possibilities. Here they are:

Click to embiggen and really see what’s up for grabs.

From left to right we have:

Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes, color Ann Mare (AKA very pink), 367 yards
Mama Llama Sock, color Day, 400 yards
Jitterbug, color Lagoon, 267 meters
Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, color Flames, 430 yards total
(2 skeins)

Let’s see. Let’s give you all until this Sunday at midnight, my time (Pacific daylights savings time). After that I’ll pick a winner, and you can choose some lovely yarn.

Let the laughs begin…

The Lace Will Rise Again

Or:

Frogged:

State Of The UFO’s

Here we go. I’ve been a slackard when it comes to blogging and knitting. I’m hereby posting photos of some of the things from the top of the heap in hopes of inspiring me to get knitting. There are a few more UFO’s in the pile, but I’m not dragging them out. These are the “in progress” projects.

That’s the Platinum Seraphim shawl. I just finished the first chart, which is mostly stockinette stitch. On to the fun part!

Oh, by the way. I had purchased an ancient version of this pattern, way back when the designer, Miriam Felton, had a different blog and website. There is a rewritten version of this that you can download automatically if you had bought it from her new website or from Ravelry. I had run into trouble with the stitch counts on one of the rows, and sent her a message on Ravelry. Literally within minutes she responded with a “fix”, which was all I really needed, but she sent me a link to the pattern and had the new version in my Ravelry library waiting. I love good service!

A River Runs Through It Socks, for John. That’s the first sock. John’s feet are about the same size as mine, but his foot is wider around the instep, so I’m doing a little widening around the gusset area so he can get them on his feet.

Evenstar! Beads! I have to tell you, the beads are making me pull out every swear word I know. They are very pretty though, so I’ll suffer through them.

Right. Another crappy Green Jeans Corduroy photo. That yarn is just impossible to photograph attractively. It’s Araucania Nature Wool, and the color is not quite solid, but not really variegated. In real life it doesn’t look so horrifically splotchy. And it’s hard to tell, but I’ve finished the bottom part and am knitting the back.

If you have too many UFOs, the only sensible thing to do is start another, right? Right. That’s a Pretty Thing. I skipped right over all of February between our trip to Hawaii and when Riley got sick, but there was some Great Big Fun in there. Dorothy came to stay overnight to visit the fiber and yarn market at Madrona in February. We met Sally, the owner and inventor of the Knit Companion software. The three of us wandered by a booth with this incredibly soft yarn, then discovered that it was real MINK. We each swooned and picked out a skein, and a Pretty Thing KAL was planned. Here we are:

We should look happy. All three of us got a lot of loot at that market. Sally is a genius by the way. I can’t imagine knitting without Knit Companion at this point. You should go check it out.

The Pretty Thing pattern calls for doing this on a 16 inch circular, which I’m not very fond of, so I found a video to teach me to knit on two circulars and took off. This will have to be frogged and restarted, unfortunately, since it looks like crap. My joins at each end are loose and wobbly, way too ugly for even me to tolerate. Part of it is my inexperience, but part of it is that this yarn has absolutely no memory, so it’s not very forgiving of knitting inconsistencies. I’ve dug out a 16 inch circ and will bite the bullet and use that on the do-over.

By the way, those needles are Chiaogoos, which are hands down my new favorite lace needles. The tips are perfect, the needles themselves have just a touch of texture so stuff doesn’t just slide off, and the cables are flexible but not too flexible. They also don’t have any memory, so don’t coil up on you while you are trying to knit. And the join is absolutely smooth. I dithered over whether to buy the interchangeable set or just a bunch of the fixed sizes, and decided on the latter since I mostly use the smaller sizes of needles anyway.

Things were in quite a whirl around here after Wintergrass. I realized that I had never picked my favorite artist of the festival. It just has to be Seldom Scene. We saw two of their shows, and they were just terrific as usual.

My favorite song was their rendition of Darlin’ Corey. Here’s a relatively recent video of them performing this. Lou Reid’s voice alone is worth the ticket price to a show. If you ever get a chance to see them live, don’t think about it, just go.

Last but not least, Riley came home for good today. We decided to have her cremated, and the vet that did the home euthanasia brought her ashes back today. It was a bittersweet moment, but we’re glad we paid extra to do this.

The Church of Bluegrass, Day Whatever This Is

Let’s sum up, shall we?

I fracked up both of the knitting projects I brought with me because I’m totally distracted. One is a mostly stockinette shawl, the other is a completely stocking stitch sock that I’ve knit a million times.
Laurie Lewis sang a “my dog died and I’m sad” song tonight, and totally destroyed both of us. John and I were weeping in our seats, then laughing hysterically at the fact that she was singing a dead dog song and we were sobbing.
I’m sure we’ll find this all amusing some day.

Tomorrow is the last day of Wintergrass. We haven’t enjoyed it as much this year, and that’s not surprising. I’m glad we came though, it provided a much needed bridge between this past week and next week, when real life obligations hit us like a semi truck. I might get around to posting about some of my favorite artists later on.

I’m off to fix the knitting screwups.

The Church of Bluegrass

Yes, it’s that time of year again. We’ve had tickets (and hotel reservations) for this years Wintergrass festival since about two days after last years event was over. We debated for a bit about whether to go or not, since neither of us is in much of a mood, and decided that this would be better than sitting home staring at an empty dog bowl and the empty spot on the end of the couch where Riley always hung out. So here we are.

The festival started last night, and I made it through about two acts before somebody played a sappy sad song and I was just done. Hopefully tonight will be better. My favorite last night was Sarah Jarosz, who is a superb musician.

So far today we’ve been to a workshop with David Grisman and Kenny Smith playing an impromptu “concert” set on vintage mandolins and guitars, most from the early 1900’s. It was just fabulous, they played a bunch of old sweet tunes, many from Grisman’s Tone Poems days.

I’ll report back with more as the weekend goes on. Of course there will be knitting and spinning, I brought one of my drop spindles, which is a good portable activity for those down times between musical acts.

Speaking of knitting, one of the projects I brought is that Seraphim shawl. I spliced in the second ball of yarn yesterday using a Russian join. This morning I noticed this, which really irritates me to no end.

So I guess I’ll get more practice doing Russian joins. I hope this is the only knot I find, or there may be some inventive swear words flying around. What really annoys me is that this is on the very outside of the ball, so I should have seen it when I bought it. Oh well.

Thank you all for the sweet condolences on my last post. I’m working my way through answering all of your comments, but each and every one of them makes me cry, so I have to take it in small doses or I might run out of hankies.

On to more bluegrass!

Our Girlie

Riley

October 2000-February 27, 2013

Our sweet puppy left us yesterday, with her best friends around her. We’re both heartbroken and spent much of yesterday looking at the hundreds of photos that we’ve taken of her since she adopted us. Here are just a few that show the people and things she loved best.

Rest in peace, sweet girlie. We’ll always miss you.