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Buon Anno (Happy New Year) to all of you and thank you for visiting my blog in the past few months and sometimes leaving comments or suggestions. It's been a very rewarding experience for me and I love that some of you have actually become friends; you know who you are. :)
So, you all have a great 2007 and, as we say in Italian:
Buona fine e buon principio!
The blue socks are done. These are probably the fastest socks I've ever made; nothing like spending 6-7 hours in a car twice in a week to get stuff done.
In the past few evenings, I started my first attempts at lace. I have to call them attempts because of how badly things worked out. I tried so many times to make a swatch and got only a mess and a lot of frustration out of it. Then it hit me: I had been trying to learn something new using very thin yarn. My first attempt was with Misty Alpaca in lace weight. After starting several swatches I thought I'd try a different yarn so I moved to the lace yarn I bought in Berkeley. Only, that yarn is even thinner than the Misty Alpaca (2400 yards/100 gr) and my tests were even more frustrating. I could hardly see what I was doing. Finally, some common sense prevailed and I started a new swatch with the left overs from the socks. Here is my first lace swatch: a simple pattern from the book Victorian Lace. At least now I know that I can make swatches with fingering weight yarn, but I hate to think what a complex pattern would require of me in terms of concetration. I find cables and color work relaxing. This lace stuff, however, makes me sweat.
But it's a new year, almost, and I want to learn something new. I need a new challenge every now and then and I think lace will be my challenge in 2007.
When we got home the night of the 25th, half of our cats' hair was on the floor. Talk about holidays spirit. Our friend Ed took care of them the first two days we were gone and someone else came by on the 23rd and 24th to feed them, but they must have been upset at being left alone for those last 36 hours and took it out on each other. I feel pretty bad, actually, but there just wasn't enough time to make a better plan and I hate boarding them even more. At least this way they were in their environment. We'll do better next time. I am glad that they don't hold a grudge; as soon as we flopped on the sofa, we each had a cat in our lap. Fire, kitties, knitting… it was a good end to the day after all those hours in the car.
Here I was casting on my second sock the day before heading back home, and I am already close to decreasing for the toes. A doctor's appointment this morning meant a few more rows. Hopefully I won't have to go back, but I had two biopsies and chances are I will be back in a couple of weeks to have two moles removed. Yuk.
It was good to spend Christmas with family, but it's also good to be back home.
This morning I got up early to go power walking. No one in sight apart form a few cars and it was bloody cold. If I hadn't bought thermal underwear before leaving LA, I would have frozen myself silly running at 7 am. After such an energetic start, the day turned all cosy indoors and we ended up at the breakfast table one at a time, but eventually doing the same thing. How geeky is that?
This is the lace yarn I bought yesterday at Article Pract. I love the color variations and the soft hand. It's 100% wool, but it feels like a cashmere blend. At 2400 yards per 100 gr, this ball will be enough even for a large shawl.
The evening before the trip, I started a sock with this blue heathery Knitpicks yarn and I am already decreasing for the toes. The only way I can bear 6-7 hours in the car is by knitting.
Ben is enjoying his first time off in months and catching up with some geek reading. Here I caught him off guard…
but doesn't he look good in his Na Craga sweater?
I hadn't been up in the Bay Area in over two years and I am enjoying the change of scene.
Ben's parents have a sweet cat named Max who appointed me designated lap as soon as we arrived. Max is at least 17 (no real data as he simply showed up one day and adopted the family) and getting rather frail, but a real pleasure to be around. He chats more than I remembered. Every time you look at him and say something, he says something back. It's sad to think that this may be the last time I see him.
This morning we went for a walk in the neighborhood and saw a lot of Canadian geese.
Then we went sightseeing, and I got to see the bay from the Berkeley hills.
Before heading back to Walnut Creek, we went to Article Pract, a yarn store in Oakland. Thank you Mary Heather, Rachele and Co. for the yarn store suggestions. I am not sure I'll be able to go to Art Fibers and ImagiKnit, but at least I saw this one.
They had a really good selection of yarns including Qiviut (I really really wanted to try some but $66.50 a ball is definitely above my budget). I did get a ball of very fine wool that I hope to knit into a shawl. Although I don't like pinks and purples, I bought a variegated yarn that has a lot of those colors. The combination is really pretty. I'll take a picture tomorrow in daylight.
Lots of social stuff coming together in the next few days: a Christmas party tonight at a client's company here in LA and then tomorrow morning we'll be heading north to spend a few days with Ben's parents. I'll take some knitting with me; maybe I'll finally finish my St. Brigid and maybe even start one of the sleeves of the Fair Isle sweater that's been waiting for months now. I joined the Stranded Colorwork KAL and still haven't done anything. Bad!
By the way, can anyone recommend a good yarn store in the Bay area? I'll be staying in Martinez/Walnut Creek, but hope to get to San Francisco or Berkeley at some point.
I'll have my laptop with me so I'm not going to be incommunicado. In any case, Buon Natale everybody! I hope you'll all be warm and in good company.
Yesterday we spent the day in Palm Desert for a special family celebration: Ben's parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Before getting in the 16-seat hummer limo (my first drive in a limo ever) with all of Ben's brothers and their families to go to the restaurant where Steve and Carol re-exchanged vows and new custom-made rings, we all went to The Living Desert, a local nature museum, or rather a zoo, that displays flora and fauna typical of various desert regions around the globe.
Greeting us at the entrance was a museum attendant holding a South African Scops owl. The little fellow has a genetic defect to his right eye and cannot be released in the wild, where he couldn't survive on his own. I like owls a lot. We have some around our house, but we only get to hear them.
The coati, native to the US and parts of Central America, is part of the raccoons family.
This little birdie was hard to spot among the dry plants, but was very obliging and kept still while we were taking pictures.
Cacti of all shapes and sizes, from Teddy Bear Chollas (because they look fluffy from a distance)…
to giant cacti …
to purple cacti…
to round cacti.
The bright flowers of the desert.
I enjoyed watching a family of meerkats for a while. One was standing guard, or so it seemed, while three or four others were digging in the sand.
In the African section, a small herd of antelopes was grazing in what looked like a desert patch with no grazable food. A few pumpkins scattered around provided entertainment for them. This antelope kept charging a pumpkin as if it were an adversary.
This serval looked rather forlorn in his small enclosure. The sign outside the cage explained that he used to be domesticated and grew accostumed to small spaces and uncomfortable in spacious environments. He also has some physical problems that affect his capability to deal with what would be considered his natural habitat. I am glad for the explanation, because my first reaction was one of disbelief and anger at the size of the enclosure for such a large size animal.
An explanation of age determination based on horn rings.
Two bat-eared foxes taking a nap.
Two Abyssinian Ground Hornbills
and some African wild dogs taking a nap.
On our way out, the Scops owl was gone and a new attendant was showing an Australian bearded dragon.
Reptiles are cool, especially those with legs.
The weekend started off in the worst possible way with me getting a virulent case of food poisoning Friday evening, being up sick all Friday night and being a useless vegetable all day Saturday. In spite of everything I decided not to call off our holiday open house today and I am glad I did because today I was fine. The only problem is that I only had this morning to prepare everything before friends started to show up around 2 pm.
By the time I was done shopping, it was already noon and I had less than two hours to cook something. I made industrial quantities of my chunky rustic tomato soup while setting up the cold dishes in the dining room and kitchen. As I was wrestling the tomatoes, trying to pass them through a veggy mill directly into one of my big pots, a piece of the mill snapped out of place and tomatos went flying everywhere. Some big chunks landed on my head and I had to take a second, unscheduled shower. Fortunately, people were fashionably late and by the time the first guests arrived everything looked under control. There's still some tomato splatter I couldn't get to on one wall, close to the ceiling, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.
The open house worked out really well with people showing up and leaving at diferent times but with enough overlap for most of them to meet everybody else.
Kelvin got to hang out with the guys — he loves that — and then managed to steal an entire filet of smoked trout.
Our friend Chris with Kelvin
Thank you to all who came. We missed those who couldn't; we hope to see you soon.
This week has been cramped with work and stuff, but I did manage to make some food experiments. First, a carrot and coriander soup and last night, my first tortillas. The other day I bought a tortillera (tortilla press), a tortilla warmer, some masa and maseca.
I tried to take pictures sans kitties, but I didn't have all evening.
Masa is a corn dough I got from Vallarta, a Mexican supermarket. I figured since this was my first time making tortillas I'd make things easy for myself. Good thing, 'cuz I had trouble making the little buggers even with the prepared dough. Maseca is corn flour and I got it to prevent the dough from sticking to the parchment paper, but let's start from the beginning.
First, you make little balls of dough (eventually I want to make my own dough), sprinkle some corn flour on them, place a sheet of parchment paper on the bottom of the tortilla press, put the dough on top and another sheet of parchment paper over that. Close the tortilla press, squeeze the handle and voila, half your dough goes out one side of the tortilla press. Try again. I think the size and placement of the dough on the press makes the difference.
I made several tortillas, all rather thick and I had some difficulty peeling them off the parchment paper even using the maseca. Oh well. I'll get better… I hope.
The masa had a really strong smell and it permeated the fridge and the house. I cooked the tortillas on a flat griddle witout any oil or other fat as instructed by the Mexican guy at the cooking supplies store. I cooked them a couple of minutes on one side, then the other, then turned them over one last time to finish them off. I didn't like them too much, but Ben is always a sport and put on a good show of enjoying them. I think I need to see someone make tortillas to really learn. Maybe I should check YouTube for video tutorials.
In any case, the red onions, bell peppers and beans came out all right and the leftover chicken from the night before worked just fine. Not the same thing as a chicken fajita, but with a little practice I hope to add some Mexican dishes to our repertoire soon.
Wish I'd recorded the actual tortilla making, but try taking pictures with your fingers covered in sticky dough!
Since the tubular cast-on tutorial is the most viewed page on my blog, I thought I'd let you knitters know that I'm planning another tutorial soon: the Italian tubular cast-off. I just need to find someone to take pictures and possibly make a video while I demo the technique.
If only Andrea hadn't moved to Maryland. What did you do that for, huh? Mezza amica!
Yesterday I got to see my favorite bunny: Dorian. He is partially plucked and looks kind of funny with some almost bold patches in his body. Fortunately, Elena promised not to touch his face. This time he wasn't confined to the pen and spent the afternoon roaming in the backyard and chewing all sorts of greens. Oh wait, not just green; he was chewing concrete, too. Yes, really.
After a few hours of rolling in dirt, he had to be brushed, gently, but thoroughly. I was so taken up by the little fuzzball (I even made a movie of him chewing grass), that I completely forgot to take pictures of fiber stuff.
I only took one of a beautiful sock Janel is making with Trekking yarn. I love how the two colorways combine.
On a different note, the damage to my St. Brigid was not as bad as I had feared at first. When I saw the mess on Friday morning, I couldn't bear to even look at the sweater pieces and simply picked up the balls of yarn, untangled them, rewound them and put them back in the basket without looking at the sweater. The two largest pieces — front and back — were safe, as I had already cut off the yarn from the ball. Phew.
The sleeves end up in saddles and those parts got messed up by the tension of the balls being dragged and dropped. Same thing for the collar that is knitted as a separate piece. Altogether, I only have to undo a few rows here and there. The damage was mostly psychological. I am very relieved. And yes, il rigatino (Mr. Stripey) is still alive and snuggling up with me under the covers in the middle of the night. Winter is a Very Good Thing (TM).
Bloody massacre.
This morning I woke up to a tangled house. If you've been watching the TV show Heroes, think of the wall board with the locations and pictures of the various heroes and the labirynth of connecting threads. Four balls of yarn strewn around the house, down the stairs, around corners and objects. Three of the balls were still attached to my St. Brigid in progress — please send yarn or books in lieu of condolences, thank you. More spoils of war in the basket with sweater pieces and yarn on my office floor. If we had antidepressants in the house, I would have reached for a triple dose.
Guess who's in the dog house?
No, I didn't take a picture of the devastation. That was pre-shower, pre-caffeine, brain not fully engaged.
I know at least one person in Ireland who knows what my wake-up was like.