Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas One and All!

My Christmas Cactus (cacti) bloom merrily in the kitchen window in honor of the season. Unfortunately their biological clocks have been out of sync for years. They bloom every year in November. The photo was taken on Thanksgiving.

How much are these doggies in the window?

Left to right: Icecream and Snowball modeling velveteen ruffs

The ones with the waggly tails . . .

How much are these doggies in the window? My sweet Bichons are not for sale!
Left to right: Icecream and Snowball modeling taffeta ruffs

Left to right: Snowball and Icecream outside looking for Santa on Christmas Eve

Back to knitting content soon.

Bona Fide Knitter

Sockatastrophe!

It's a catastrophe, a sock catastrophe, a sockatastrophe. My Italy Socks are ruined!

I call them my "Italy Socks" because I had planned to knit them while in Italy in 2008. However, I had another sock on the needles at the time and didn't actually begin the Italy Socks until on my way home, literally. I cast on for the first sock while in the van on my way to the airport in Rome for the return trip to the US. Oddly, they were a problem from the beginning. I had to frog and cast on twice more on the flight home before I got that first sock going.

The Socks:




The Sockatastrophe:

One sock turned into spaghetti in the washing machine. What's up with that?

Evidently something started feasting on my socks and only got as far as one.

From the frayed and wispy strands of wool and the places where it is severed completely, something had a very good meal.


The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug Sock Yarn, expensive and ruined! What to do? My first thought yesterday when this happened was to frog and reknit. Then I remembered I have most of another hank of this yarn because another of the problems with this pair of socks was I ran out of yarn, a first! Although it was supposed to be 110 grams, 318 yards I ran out of yarn at the toe of the second sock and had to buy more. making them aa $45 pair of socks!

Using my basic pattern that works perfectly every time for Lorna's Laces, Opal, Regia, Trekking XXL, etc., the completed socks were big (wide). I finally wore them after two years and afterwards decided to wash them in the washer and maybe get some shrinkage. They didn't shrink, but one certainly shredded! There were no holes when I wore them. I didn't notice their condition when I loaded them into the washer with my delicates a week or so later. I can see in what is left of the one sock that there are stitches that are eaten through. Thus the shredding from the agitation in the washer.

I've located the leftover yarn cake made from the second hank I had to buy and will knit the sock again then wash it with another load of delicates and have a matching pair of Italy Socks once again. I will store them more carefully this time. No more Colinette Jitterbug for me!

Of other knitting news there is none. Volt continues the grow at the polar opposite of leaps and bounds. (tiny steps and little bounces?) BTW, Volt appears in the Holiday 2010 issue of Vogue Knitting. Perhaps mine will be completed by January 15, 2011, 10 months late.

Bona Fide Knitter

P.S. I had a charming and witty Sockatastrophe blog entry written and signed. Somehow it disappeared off the face of the earth before I published it. You get this instead.

Happy Thanksgiving?

Okay, so I'm a day late and am asking was your Thanksgiving happy. Mine was happy enough. I cooked dinner for two, well four if you count the Little White Dogs. We had turkey with all the trimmings and I'm looking forward to leftovers today. The day-after turkey sandwich is better than Thanksgiving dinner if done right. The "right" sandwich calls for sliced white meat on white bread with mayonnaise spread on both pieces, a layer of cranberry sauce and a layer of cornbread stuffing. Mmm, mmm good! The next days you can have hot turkey sandwiches with gravy and even turkey sandwiches with lettuce and tomato. By the fourth day all the turkey should be gone or you won't want any for Christmas!

I made sweet potato ice cream in honor of the day to go with the Mrs. Smith's sweet potato pie I bought at the supermarket. And while I had the DeLonghi Gelato Machine on the counter I made raspberry ice cream as well. No, I did not eat some of all of those! Any I missed I will try today.

Here are pictures of the DeLonghi Gelato Machine in action when I made blackberry ice cream last week. This is a great machine that does not require freezing the freezer bowl 24 hours in advance. It makes a quart of ice cream at a time and if that isn't enough you can make quart after quart with only a five minute wait between batches--just long enough to empty the bowl and fill it again. I has its own self-refrigerating compressor. I was lucky enough to find a new one for a great price on eBay. I love eBay!

Ice cream base:

The macerated and strained blackberries added:

Soft serve ice cream is ready:

Soft ice cream put in carton to firm up in the freezer:

Lidded, labeled and ready for the freezer:

Although the box it comes in and product descriptions everywhere list the amount as 1.5 quarts, the actual capacity of the DeLonghi freezer bowl is 1.2 liters or 40 ounces. There was something lost in the translation from Italian metric liters to American imperial quarts. However, you will not want to put more than a quart (32 ounces) in the bowl unless you want a disaster. The ice cream mix expands as it freezes. Less is better. Trust me.

Thanksgiving evening I decided to cast on for the Pangea Cardigan. That was a change of plans from the hat I had intended to start. Bottom line is I haven't cast on and started anything new in so long I hardly remember how. I love working with long circulars to knit small circumferences in the round. Knitting socks made me an expert at it. However, a few days ago I COULD NOT DO IT! The hat called for casting on eight stitches. I could not get the first round going. I finally gave up and decided to start with dpns. Forget it! I was totally all thumbs. What has happened to me?!!!

So last night I decided to start the sweater, which begins at the left sleeve with a cast on of 76 stitches and calls for dpns and a 40" long circular needle. Magic Loop here I come! Easy for a sock knitter who usually starts with 60 stitches on a 32" long circular . . . I thought. So far I've cast on three times and have yet to get the first round done to my satisfaction. Me, The Sock Lady! So my goal for today is to get that left sleeve started at the wrist!

In my own defense I think I would have made it on the third try if I hadn't had to answer the phone, got a cramp in my hand holding the needles, dropped the cone of yarn . . . and the dog ate my homework.

Here is my fourth attempt waiting for me to pull the cable through between the 38th and 39th stitches.

Maybe I'll add a few pieces to the jigsaw puzzle first . . .

Bona Fide Knitter

What I Now Know to Be True

I have realized some truths this week that I will share with you.

I now know that I knit best when I have more than one project going at a time. I need always to have a pair of socks on the needles, something mindless and portable, so that when a major project gets too complicated or grows too big to cart around I can knit socks. After all I am the self-proclaimed Sock Lady. Knitting plain vanilla socks feeds my knitting soul and restores my knitting equilibrium.

I thought devoting 100% of my knitting time to the Volt shawl I fell in love with would get it done in no time. Instead that idea has made it take longer. Knitting in public became tinking in private, too many distractions. So I stopped taking it with me. Not having anything else to knit I found myself getting used to not knitting and didn't always pick it up again when back at home. Not good. So today I will cast on a portable project--a hat, one of the two projects I couldn't live without from WEBS latest catalog. The other is a sweater that will not be started until after Volt.

I now know that when the going gets tough, meaning out of my control, I take control of my diet and exercise regimen. I eat right, exercise, energize and get a lot accomplished. OR I cook, bake, eat too much, laze around and hold pity parties with a guest list of one. Presently I am in cook/bake/laze mode. Thus the ice cream obsession.

I now know (which is very hard to admit) I AM OLD! When did this happen?!!! How shocking it is to hear or read an account of an event where they describe a person as "elderly," state her age and that age is THE SAME AS MINE!!! When did I become elderly? It makes me want to fall on the floor kicking, crying and screaming NO, NO, NO!!! Now does that sound elderly? Having a temper tantrum is not an elderly thing. It's quite the opposite. Therefore, I AM NOT ELDERLY! Old maybe, but not elderly. Okay? You got it? If so, you might want to remind me every now and then.

Bona Fide Knitter

November?!!!

It's November! When did that happen? Where did summer go? When did summer go? Probably while I was indulging in my newest obsession--HOMEMADE ICE CREAM!!!

Let me back up a bit. It's been a long time since I've been here. Saying the summer was not one of my favorites would be a major understatement. I will omit the gory details but suffice it to say the summer was so bad my knitting suffered. Now that is really B.A.D! My knitting obsession, Volt from The Fine Line, became a nemesis rather than a catharsis. I lost my finally finished vanilla, vanilla socks. And I refused to start anything else until Volt is finished, especially socks.

And then I found ice cream. It all came about because I decided to make my own gelato to appease myself when I couldn't go to Italy in September. I have an old ice cream maker, a Krups I was never very satisfied with, but for this (thanks to rave reviews from BFF Judith) I bought a new Cuisinart. I bought the gelato cookbook, Artisan Gelato and a bottle of Prosecco (it having nothing to do with the ice cream making). Then I went crazy buying all kinds of ice cream recipe books: Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book, The Perfect Scoop and The Ultimate Ice Cream Book.

I happened to have some very over-ripe bananas on hand and decided to try using my old Krups machine while I waited for my new machine to come. Free shipping sometimes takes forever! Those bananas turned into delicious ice cream. I was hooked! The recipe books (cookbooks) gave me much more insight into the making of ice cream than the little books that come with the machines. Had I bought books before ordering the new machine I might have been satisfied with the results from my old Krups. It does a decent job--now that I know that the ice cream should only be expected to freeze to "soft serve." For a firmer product it should be put in the freezer for 30 to 60 minutes to reach the desired firmer consistency.

Krups and Prosecco

Oh, and what good is homemade ice cream without homemade cones? So I bought a cone maker as well. Here are my first cones cooling on the rack. Yeah, I had to have a cone rack too. Peeking from behind the cones is the new Cuisinart ice cream maker.


I put away the old Krups when the new Cuisinart arrived and proceeded to make the best ice cream I've ever eaten! Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, peach, chocolate with almonds, butter pecan, lemon, corn (yes corn!), mango, pumpkin, tiramisu, cheesecake, honeydew sherbet, cantaloupe sherbet, and probably some others I've forgotten. Oh! I made bacon ice cream!!! Yes, and it was scrumptious!


Somewhere in the midst of it all I got a gelato maker, a self-refrigerating DeLonghi, but more about that another day. This is supposed to be a knitting blog. I'd better get knittin'!

Bona Fide Knitter

Been So Long

I am reminded of that old song by the Pastels. Okay, so the Pastels were a singing group long before your time and the song, Been So Long, is really a love (or lack there of) song. My point is it has been so long since I put an entry in my blog. Four months! Why? Because life threw me more lemons than I could handle. I couldn't make lemonade fast enough. I was drowning. When the going got really tough, tough-person-that-I-thought-I-was went shopping. But an iPhone, two Kindles and a designer handbag later I was still drowning. So I withdrew. I withdrew from my blogs, from my e-lists, from Ravelry, from society. I knitted. I read novels. I listened to audio books. The lemons continue to arrive, but I'm over it. I'm trying to make a comeback. Bear with me.

I continue to knit Volt, the shawl from The Fine Line I fell in love with way back when. I still love it. It should be finished in time for the first cooler weather. The black cropped pants, crisp white shirt and green Birkenstocks await.

Bona Fide Knitter

Remember the Green Shoes?

Remember those green Birkenstocks I was moved to buy because of the green (actually yellow-green) stripe in the Volt shawl that has consumed my life?

They are from a previous year, discontinued and almost impossible to find unless you have short feet. Mine are long. When I couldn't find them at the usual online sites, I Googled them. I usually find what I want on Google on the first, maybe second page. For the green Isis sandals I went all the way to page five before I found them listed in my long, narrow size. I ordered immediately, thanked my lucky stars that they were discounted to less than half price, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Much to my dismay and after the confirmation email, I received an email of regret. The shoes were no longer in stock after all. Boo-hoo! How disappointing. Was nothing related to this shawl going to come out right without a big hassle? Was it a sign? I already knew that the green of the shawl was more yellow than the green of the shoes, but that was okay. No need to be too matchy-matchy, right?

The shawl is finally on the right track and on its way to the fast track. I needed the shoes to keep up my good luck. I turned to my never-failing source for everything--eBay! The few available were not my long, narrow size. I put in a request to be notified if a pair were listed and within a day I was notified of a new listing. The size in the listing was my length but "medium" width. The description led me to believe the shoes were actually narrow width. Every Birkenstock connoisseur/collector knows the filled in footprint in the footbed means "schmal" or "narrow." (An outlined footprint means "normal" or "regular.") A little emailing with the seller, a bid high enough to win and I am now the proud owner of the green shoes at one third (including shipping!) the retail price.

Volt is moving along. I have the rhythm of it now. Following my knitting guru's lead, I switched to Addi lace needles. They are wonderful! Fast, pointy, slick tips with a little drag on the shaft and non-glare when under lights. Perfect!

I bought green nail polish when I knew the shoes were on the way. In the late summer if you see a stylish, older woman on Cape Cod or in Philadelphia wearing black cropped trousers, a white shirt with the Volt shawl thrown over her shoulders, green ankle strap Birkenstocks showing a green pedicure, it will be me.

Bona Fide Knitter