Sweet sweet lemonade

Hello again! I hope you've had a lovely couple of weeks? I caught up on quite a bit, if not everything, and finally had time to create a new cooking setup:

I know, the innovation! A spice rack. But it's an exciting change all the same. And not only because I love this shelf a ton and haven't had it in circulation for years, being wrongly convinced that it wouldn't fit under our cabinets.

*

Today's story begins unhappily, about two months ago when I noticed bugs lying dead on the counter I reserve for baking, or else staggering around on it. This was perplexing because there were a lot of them. When more appeared the next day, I realized they'd fallen from the cupboard above. 

Turns out I'd had the dumb luck of buying a bag of wheat berries infested with said bugs via a tiny hole I'd unknowingly positioned within about an inch of a can of cherry pie filling I hadn't gotten around to using, which in turn had a leak positioned in the direction of the tiny hole. 

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that if a can of anything leaks, it's very possibly because of a pressure buildup from botulism. In this case I would slide that scale to 'almost certainly'. Despite having a multi-year lifespan, these bugs were dying young after gorging themselves on the runoff.

So much for the yucky backstory: the result was, I had to decontaminate *every*thing in the cupboard and on the counter, leaving me heartbroken and procrastinating (for the aforementioned two months, during which I basically had caution tape around the whole area) until I realized that addressing the problem would give me a blank canvas for rebuilding the way I store things in the kitchen. 

Lemonade from lemons, is there anything better?

Plus, just in time for fall! Not to mention Canadian Thanksgiving, a foodfest that's happening next weekend already.

Over the summer, when I was mostly making salads, I'd started keeping a few staples like shallots and tiny tomatoes in a glass loaf pan on the cooking side of the counter, but I was still walking to the baking side to get any herbs and spices I wanted to throw in there, because I had no other place to stow them. 

Not any more! Having been forced to rebuild my supplies, I found my old red shelf could accommodate everything while going vertical. That's freed up the now-empty cupboards over the baking counter to accommodate some of the baking stuff I was crowding into the drawer below it. 

And if all this news isn't exciting enough for you: brace yourself.

Our coffee making is dying, and our kettle has decided it will only work if I hold my thumb on the power switch till it's finished boiling. 

So I'm gonna be totally overhauling the coffee and tea station as well.

Today.

But probably after a nap because all this change is a lot to take in.

In other news, I still have not finished the socks I started in spring and have to gift *next month.* but I did finish polishing the manuscript I started around the same time, so I might actually get them wrapped more than ten minutes before delivery. More on that next week, I hope.

Hope you have a lovely Saturday and thank you as always for dropping by, especially after a two-week break in the ol' routine!

Office Party

As promised, pictures of my completed IKEA build from last Saturday! Here's the view from my office door, looking at the work area as opposed to the Zoom Background area I showed a few weeks ago.

Side note before we talk IKEA: the lighting! There is a ridiculous amount in this room. Three bulbs in the ceiling, two serious wall sconces, the matching table lamp, and now a second table lamp. The room is only 5.5' x 8.5' - you can see the corner of my IKEA standing desk on the right, to give you an idea of how small it really is - but I had hoped to sew in here and do other crafty things, so when we were renovating we had it majorly wired. And you know what? I really do use all these lights at different times. It was totally worth it.

The new addition is a Hemnes shelf unit - intended really for a bathroom but perfect for my office needs.

 

To the left of it I have a Hemnes bookcase (not pictured because you can only contort so much in a doorway.) I really wanted a second one for symmetry but it was too tall for the wall sconce I have no intention of taking down. I was sad about that, because the solid sides make it easier to hide clutter from my work area. 

As it turns out though, the open structure has its own perks. Specifically, access from the sides. I hadn't planned this but once the unit was in place I realized I could have a designated planner area and get my gel pens and markers off the desk entirely.

Bonus: I finally have a place to display the Group of Seven and David Milne prints I was gifted last year and love to look at. Probably I should get around to taking them out of their plastic wrap but in the meantime, they do a great job of inspiring me while hiding messy things I need to get at every so often. Because let's be honest. The two white bins I bought for this purpose were not enough for that job!

Another innovation I had with this makeover was my 'whiteboard'. A lot of writers will use a wall as planning space, sticking up Post-It notes to work out scenes and make sure their narrative arcs work well. I didn't have wall space for that when I was working in our front window, but in the office I have these two sconces... and in the basement, a long piece of leftover baseboard trim already primed white. 

 

It only took about half an hour to put them together with some bristolboard, washi tape, and blue and white scrapbooking string. No holes in the wall either. I just set the baseboard trim over the sconce plates and I was done. I'll probably start using it next week, when I dig into the second draft of my most recent project.

The desks are unstained rubberwood, sourced from Wayfair, and they are so great. The primary one is four feet wide, which feels generous in such a small space, and 18" deep. The one running under the window is just 16" deep, but it's five feet wide which allows me to have the table lamp plus loads of space for spreading out pages and notes when I'm reviewing a printed manuscript. I sure didn't have that luxury in the dining room, unless I took everything off my desk and shoved it onto the dining table.

I'm still not quite there with this office. I'd like to get rid of more cluttery bits from the boxes, for one thing, and streamline my art supplies, for another. But I'm enjoying the space and grateful for it.

Overseeing it all, and guarding the boxes with my notes and pages for other projects, is my wooden monkey:

He was a gift from my older brother, who died when I was a teenager - he was great at gifts and I still treasure the things he chose for me. I was probably eight or ten when he picked up this little guy. His curved hands and feet mean he can hang off things and it's fun to pose him!

Okay the sun is shining and it's time for us to get on with our days, so I will leave you with this picture of how cosy and cute my planner area looks at night.

Thanks again for spending this time with me and I'll see you next Saturday!

Procrastination by Organization

Hello again! I have dropped in to share my adventures with paint storage, and since that sounds dull even to me, I think it's best if we start with a photo of successful knitting. Plus a box of sort-of matchy pins.

These are socks I've knit and toe-grafted and run in the ends on, but somehow forgot to wash so I could get to wearing them. Mostly they sit in this attractive bowl which was a present from the last friend I got to see in person for lunch before the pandemic. Sandy found it in a dollar store and used it as a vehicle for (amazing) chocolate brownies, but I've appreciated this dish so much and admire it every day, not just for the socks that are in it now. It's like half of a cracked egg: it suggests possibilities. And not just the possibility of a mess on the counter, either.

I've been organizing my art and office supplies for the past few days. Which is much more interesting than, say, paperwork, if only because it's colourful. Just be grateful I'm not here to tell you about all masks I stitched up before treating myself to the organization project because that really was dull and also, hard on my back.

Let's start with a mostly respectable picture of my paint problem, shall we?

Even though I still can't paint a proper, recognizable watercolour flower, I did upgrade to better brushes, and treated myself to a good set of Daniel Smith paints in a tin. That set came with a second, empty tin and it seemed like a wonderful storage solution for my many extra paints, some of which were still in their original tiny sets with no mixing wells or other conveniences. It was such a choppy setup I wasn't using them, and that made me feel even more guilty about having bought so much more than was sensible.

*

Wait a minnit. Isn't this basically everyone's experience with knitting? Whereby one must buy Every. Pretty. Yarn, even before one can knit with even tension? And then it gets worse from there because you decide to learn to spin, too, and have to buy a spindle and some roving and then a wheel? Plus, naturally, a swift. And maybe a bag of undyed roving straight from the sheep, and dyes, and...

*

In any case: one thing I finally decided to do was squeeze out a bit of all the paint I bought in tubes, after spotting discounted sets from Schminke and QoR, and never use because it turns out I'm more comfortable with dried up paint in a pan. I had an inexpensive plastic palette, discovered long ago on an Urban Hike with my friend Jan, and it turns out it has just right number of wells on one side for the Schminke paint, and on the other, for the QoR. Yay! 

(except for the cut I got on one hand trying to unscrew a particularly stubborn cap. that was Ow.)

Then it was time to test-swatch all the colours and decide what I want in primary rotation. This job required meticulously cutting up little 1x3" cards and drawing a line on them, precision work I will definitely do again next time I'm stressed and need to calm down:

Incidentally, the whole time I was working on this speckly board I was missing shopping in HomeSense. I bought this and a smaller matching cutting board there and I use the two of them together when painting, to protect my desk. Now I think, Why didn't I buy a second big one?? Seriously, when I think of the first thing I'd like to do once the pandemic is over, it's taking a walk to the nearest HomeSense so look at different dishes than I already own. Three great pleasures in one outing. 

I really need to aim higher.

Completing all of the cards was a satisfying project even though it forced me to acknowledge just how much I have overbought and duplicated my watercolour stash.

Thankfully, this stuff is not going to go bad. I might have reached the point of having more than I can use up in my lifetime (see: yarn references above) but it will definitely last my lifetime.

A sidebar about my idea to use the empty Daniel Smith box to store all my additional paint: 

Even though it has the same dimensions as my brilliant Winsor & Newton metal box, the clips are too close together to allow anything more than a brush to sit between the two primary rows of paint. This is where online shopping is a sad substitute, because I would have noticed that issue in person. And honestly, why waste space like that in the design process? To say nothing of the fact that the second flap full of mixing wells doesn't open sufficiently far enough to be useful. 

However! by filling the middle channel of my Winsor & Newton box, then removing the insert and setting it over the mixing well of the first Daniel Smith box (see photo above), I was able to get a lot more paint out into one compact area. I figure if I can see it, I'll use it. 

Because let me tell you, this mess is not enticing me to paint.

 

Another project I took on just yesterday was putting together my very first Dot Journal. Holly, who went with me to a pen show a few months before the pandemic started, tipped me off about these things. Almost apologetically, because she assumed I must already be keeping several given my ridiculous stash of coloured pens and markers and notebooks. But she was so wrong! I was using journals with dots in them all the time and hadn't even considered linking up the dots to make personalized charts and planners. It's the perfect hobby for me, in that it gave me an excuse to watch for sales on even more coloured pens and markers and notebooks.

Again... I seem to have overdone it even by my standards.

 

 

It's not like I'm tops at decision-making to begin with, and there I was, faced with all these colour options for keeping the journal. I finally decided to do a small palette, like I would for a painting if I ever learn to do a real one, and doubled up a colour or two with a different brush tip.

 

I was very proud of this achievement and got all the way around the house to show it off before I realized that I wanted to use the yellow book to plan out a novel I'm researching.  I'd picked a green book for the meal planner I wanted to work on first, so I would be prepared, rather than paralysed, at 3pm on days when I'm supposed to make dinner. And I'd already bonded with the healthy-looking green for this purpose. GAH.

I considered using the same pen palette and just getting on with it already, but I know myself too well, and coordinated a new palette with the new cover. It's not like I was running short on pens or anything.

 All of this pen selection nonsense boiled down to me being afraid to put a mark in the book. I'm always wary of 'ruining' a notebook like this, which is why I generally use books with tear-out pages. But I was determined to use all this gear I've been accumulating, and - whoa.

The paper in an Oasis Light notebook is smooth like glass. I already knew I loved writing with LePen markers because I've been using a pair of them over the last few years, but LePen on Oasis paper is amazing.

I even recognized the advantages of having set up a 6-pen palette. It's really nice to have those decisions already made and neatly grouped with the notebook.

Because there are so many pages, I've been able to note down a lot of nutritional information to make grocery planning easier as well. I will regret the hours I've already spent on this after my three-month planner period is done and I have to start a second book for the next three months. But maybe after the first book is through, I can do this job with my eyes closed?

A girl can dream. But first: she's gotta paint the map for the new paint boxes!

Hope you're having a lovely March so far. Stay safe and I'll see you again soon... maybe even with a plausible watercolour flower at the top of the Hug.

How to tell if you have too much yarn

We joke that there is no such thing as too much yarn. I mean, how can you have too much of something as pretty as this?

Well... when the rest of the picture is a giant lump of yarns, the mostly finished knit three sizes too big with no hope of ever being salvaged...

... and there are many more errors in knit-based judgement filling bins and boxes, it's hard to think you need even more yarn, ya know?

Unpacking all the knitting bins on Friday, I found unfinished projects like this sock yarn hat (on the left) and another, smaller attempt at the soft stripey garter stitch hat (on the right):

The sock yarn hat looks promising but the needles I was using... ugh.  They are lace tips.  SO painful in this application, so I had just set aside the hat.  I will have to find different needles and get back on that horse.

Fearful of moths, I've packed most of my yarn into plastic bags.  Those bags made the sorting pile on the kitchen table even more daunting.

And I guess it's good that I somehow missed renewing my Vesper Sock Club membership for this season? 

I still have a lot of sock yarn I haven't even caked yet, plus 10 pairs ready to cast on.

The 10 sets of socks-to-be tucked themselves neatly into the drawer of our new coffee table, ready to put onto needles as soon as I have some free and need a new emergency knit.  They look so cute in there!  Every drawer should open to reveal bright colours begging to be worked with.  But sadly, on the shelf below them, I have a bag with four pairs already knit, waiting for toes to be grafted and ends to run in.  Ugh.

The soft alpacas unsuitable for socks and the wrong colour for hats have gathered together with some handspun yarns to pair with hardier yarns that can handle the abrasion from a heddle moving over them.  Luxurious scarves are not only a practical use for these soft, vulnerable yarns, but weaving is superfast, so there's hope I might actually make it through the pile some day.

The yarns that I know I will kick myself for handing off - things that will one day be a joy to rediscover when I want to make a special knit for a friend - are gathered together too, in a box of noncommittal options I can put away as my 'yarn store' next time I want to go shopping.

I found the green cowl I've been working on since we visited Newfoundland, but not very hard because I don't enjoy the knitting needles I was using and couldn't find my knitting needle stash to sub in a better option.

I also found the knitting needle stash, which bodes well for both the cowl and the matching yarn I bought so I could make a hat.

And I noticed that a two-colour stripe is maybe even more appealing to me than three or more.  It's so clean!

(I ripped out the giant  hat anyway.  That yarn - a blue-faced Leicester blend from Debbie Bliss - is stupendously soft and I don't want to waste it.)

In good news, it turns out that this edition of our house - in spite of all that top-grade spray foam insulation we put in - does get cold when the temperatures drop outside, as they finally did a couple of days ago.  We are not quite ready to turn on the in-floor heating, and when we do I may well find I'm more comfortable in bare feet, but right now I am making good use of both my heavy mohair socks and my mid-season, lightweight Vespers.  Whew!  I love knitting the mohair socks especially, but it would be awful not to be able to enjoy wearing them any more.

The unwavering bad news though is that even after I filtered out all the yarns even I can admit I am never, ever going to get around to working with, and assigned all the yarns I am certain I have a use for to their various bins...

I have too much yarn.

Maybe not too much for a person who loves textiles as much as I do, but certainly too much for the space I have.  And there is only one thing a knitter can do when s/he has that much too much yarn.  Right?

BUY BOOKSHELVES.

(mine are arriving on Friday.  cannot wait.)

Hope you've had a good weekend, see you tomorrow!

Tiny travel things

I guess if I traveled more, or was less particular about taking as little as humanly possible while still having access to every sort of thing I am likely to need while away, I would not find packing to be such a production.  Things being what they are, though, I've spent the past few days spending irresponsible amounts of money on things to make our fast-approaching trip to Germany a breeze.  And here are the finds that thrill me the most! the things that cost the least.  TYPICAL.

Yep, a tiny purse-sized pack of dental picks is up there with the gorgeous black lab coat I found on the clearance rack at Eileen Fisher.  I am telling you, the older I get, the more I appreciate a good dental pick!  I have sort of registered that these purse-sized cases are available, and the single-use toothbrushes you see sometimes too, but the lightbulb only lit for this trip. I prefer biodegradable wood ones, but I like the little bristles on these for long days far from my toothbrush. 

And there will be long days, because we aren't just flitting off to Cologne, Regensburg, and Munich for no particular reason, but to be groupies for a choir we especially like with singers we know and love.  It's more of a social thing than a vacation - our particular group will be traveling together with a tour guide and going to museums and concerts and, I hope, some restaurants.  But I've done this before and I know - they will get us out the door early and drop us back at our hotel very late before doing it all over again the next day.  This little dental pick case will be a good friend I'm sure.


I'm also completely besotted with the Venus travel razor I found in the travel-size section of a local drugstore (it's at Shoppers', fellow Torontonians - I found mine in the TD Centre.) 

The little pink case has drainage holes and fits in the palm of my hand; the actual razor can be refitted with blades readily available the next aisle over.  I have been using a standard man's razor handle since I started shaving my legs lo these many years ago and I am not used to the Pink Overload (or do I mean, Pink Overlord?) but omigosh it's so TEENY!  I can't wait to use it.  And believe me that is not something I normally say about shaving devices.


You know what I really love though is this phone charger from Kate Spade. 

I found that at a Winners store about five minutes before a physio appointment this week and had to line up right away to buy it even at the risk of less hand-fixing time.  I can't stop looking at the stripes!  I really, really love stripes.  And it's so much lighter weight than my current tubular one.  It's not even as big as my phone, which is the outdated and miniature-compared-to-the-6 iPhone 5.

And... it should be able to charge my phone fully a couple of times, which will prove extremely helpful I am sure.  I say this because I am testing it out on my phone as I type, and the charging is happening superfast.  Thankfully I also tested the cable and discovered the one supplied is for an android phone.  So, I will leave that at home.


To extend the battery life of my phone and avoid the expense of the noise canceling headphones I had wanted for this trip, to block out the sound of plane engines, I decided to make use of these little iPod Nanos.

I'm not sure why I have two.  Probably one is Pete's, but another possibility is that when we traveled last time I couldn't find my original Nano and decided to spring for another because they are really not that expensive.  Now that I have two, and located their chargers no less, I have charged them up and loaded them.

The grey one implies sleep to me, so it's housing eight hours of the sound of rain falling on a river, with the odd roll of thunder in the background.  This is ideal for sleeping in a room near an elevator or over a busy street; I just clip the Nano to my pyjamas and lock in my earbuds with the headband I knitted myself for our trip to Italy, and I am good till morning.

The green one - green means go! - is for daytime use.  I loaded that up with my unabridged audiobook of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, narrated by Juliet Stephenson.  I mean if that woman and her wonderful voice can't get me through turbulence, nothing can. And because I've watched the miniseries so many times I will be able to follow the plot easily no matter how many extra bits were cut for the screen, in practically any stressful circumstances.


Pete and I are hoping to share one checked suitcase, plus daypack-sized carry on bags.  So, the small stuff is the biggest thrill for me!


Per suggestion - I looked up our airline's guidelines for knitting needles and the answer was 'Pack it in your checked luggage or say goodbye to it forever,' so I am going to pack sock knitting in my checked luggage.  I mean we will be in a bus a LOT for 10 days, so I am pretty sure I will be reaching for it a fair bit. 

Instead of flight knitting I am hoping to make do with the two Nanos, a stack of good reading, and a cute miniature sheep I bought myself for Easter and promptly misplaced, but will find again in time I hope.  And I am thinking about bringing a little sketch book and a felt tip pen for drawing or possibly even writing with.  Pretty sure a watercolour pan set is impractical in Economy.  Even without one though, I can create shapes to colour in later.  Carol says I should pack delicious little food treats too, so I don't feel so hard done by when the plane starts bumping a lot.

And also: sleep.  Our flight over is at night, and with luck, that will be possible.


What's your favourite way to stay amused on a long plane trip?

The travel knitting plan

Springtime is travel season at our house, and this year it's the southern part of Germany.  Yay!  But more on that another day.  Today is all about packing.

I don't usually take knitting on these trips but when we were in Newfoundland two years ago I got antsy and had to buy yarn and needles and so on under pressure - which reminds me, I still haven't finished the cowl I started there - and I don't want that to happen to me again.  For one thing, I checked at Ravelry and apparently knitting is not such a big thing in Germany!  What you can get is mostly acrylics.  So I will have to bring my own. 

There is a chance I will want to knit on the plane this time.  The last few flights we've taken have been not so fabulous, and I need to do some more cognitive behaviour therapy work to be okay actually stepping into the plane, but so far what little refresher work I've managed has been enough to make me think I could, and I want to be ready and 'normal' if possible.  Though it's probably not possible.  In my experience, my hands are usually too sticky with nervous sweat at the moment I decide knitting is what I need to be doing, so even if I bring something to work on I have to put it away again... but our flight is super long and then there is a second flight and after that a bus ride to get to our first port of call (Cologne) and even though I will be exhausted by the end of all that, there is a lot of potential knitting time in there.  Some of it isn't even in the air!

Here's my thing about the stuff you take on a plane.  There are SO many restrictions now, and knitting needles are pointy, and I feel like even though they have been okay'd by most staff at most airlines up to now... there is still a risk that the day we board our flight, somebody will take offense to my needles and want them not to board with me.

And I've heard that sometimes, if the needles are attached to yarn, they want the yarn too.

So here is my plan.

Part One:

Wind a skein of sock yarn into two smaller cakes. 

Assign each cake with its own set of wooden needles (I feel like wood seems less threatening than metal, given how quickly and easily a thin wooden needle can break.) 

Put one cake/needle combo into the carry on luggage with a sock pattern, separating the needles from the yarn within the bag.  Put the other cake/needle combo into the checked luggage with a fingerless mitt pattern.  And also, a third set of needles.


At this point, several things could happen.  I might be allowed onto my flight with my sock knitting gear. I might be allowed to move them to my checked luggage.  I might have to hand over just the needles, since they are packed on their own, or I might have to hand over everything because yarn is string and who knows?

In the worst case scenario, I have no knitting for the flight, but I still have books (and more on that later).  In the maybe-kinda-crummy case, I have yarn I can knit during the holiday with the third set of needles wisely packed in my checked luggage.  In the best case scenario, I have knitting to cast on into a sock during the flight, or maybe just a cake of yarn to squeeze during really heavy turbulence.


Part Two:

Packing for the return flight. 

In the best case scenario, a lot of knitting happened during the first flight and the trip and I have a finished sock.  But even if it's only partly finished, it goes into checked luggage for its safety. 

Instead, the carry on bag gets the second cake and needle set, packed separately as before, with the sock pattern, to be cast on during the flight.  In the worst case scenario, instead of the sock pattern, I will pack the fingerless mitt pattern - because I can knit a pair of those out of a sock's worth of yarn, and that half of the skein will still be useful.


Again: several things could happen.  It may be that the second cake of yarn is confiscated, rendering the first sock forever mate-less.  Or I might keep the yarn and lose the needles.  Or I might get on the flight and knit a second sock. 


Part Three:

Home again.

What am I unpacking?  Two mostly finished socks?  A pair of fingerless mitts?  A single sock, forever alone?  A sock and enough yarn to finish the mate?  The memory of beautiful sock yarn and a single set of wooden sock needles?  Only time will tell.


The key to making this work is to choose yarn and needles that are easily replaced, but special enough to work with and enjoy.  So I picked this Viola yarn in Sea Storm - it's one of Emily's most popular colours and I have a second skein at home already that I'd set aside for socks for Wayson, but I can certainly get more. 

Needles, too - I really prefer square needles and the ones I like best are out of production so there is NO WAY I would risk taking them on a plane.  But thankfully, I was able to get square wooden ones in my usual size from Knitter's Pride.

And that's me, flight-ready except for the actual winding and pattern setup.  And, you know, calming scripts to read to myself if I start to freak out about being on a plane again.  They work very well but you have to take the time for them and remember to bring them with you.


Books: I was smart this time and have already looked into what I want to read in bad turbulence. 

When we were flying to Boston on a tiny propeller plane, I turned to my funny book for comfort only to find it was full of Zombies amusingly dining on entrails, so I have learned my lesson about making sure a book is going to be helpful before I pack it.  I have rejected The Economist for similar reasons - too dry, and then abruptly horrific, and only engaging for short installments because each issue is after all summarizing what's going on all over the world.

This time, I decided on the Mapp and Lucia books by E. F. Benson.  The series was written in the 1920s and about two hilariously socially competitive women - there should be no entrail surprises at all, unless possibly in the kitchen being cooked into a pie?  I listened to the first one many years ago as an audiobook and it is VERY funny, but for some reason never hunted up the rest... and they aren't consistently in print, except in trade paperback size, which is a bit big for a flight.  So I decided to order second hand Penguin copies from Biblio, and they've already arrived and are nice and compact, and I'm just not looking at them so as not to spoil them. 

While I was hunting for those I found an Anita Loos book I hadn't read - No Mother To Guide Her - and decided to get that too, for insurance. 

I feel the 1920s is a safe period to read about on a plane because people were looking for distractions then and all the social commentary is so far in the past as to not be painful to read now (except in that we are going through all the same social scenarios we did then, because humans will never learn apparently, and this is something I plan to ignore while stuck in a narrow seat far above my preferred level of Ground.)

Oh, and you know what?  When all this is over, even if I come home with just one sock, it will be exactly the right colour to match our living room sofa.  So I can hang it on our mantel at Christmas.  That's what I call a good travel knitting plan.

Have a great weekend guys and I'll see you again in a few days!


ps I just had a terrible thought.  Sea Storm.  Maybe not a good colour name to choose for an overseas flight at night?

Laundry day for busy socks

After I got over the ludicrousness of handknitting socks that could otherwise be purchased cheaply and ready-to-wear in a store, the one thing that always worried me about the idea was how to wear a handknit item on my feet.  You know, without putting holes right through them.  Answer: choose hardy yarn, knit at a tight gauge, and don't wear them on a bare floor.

And after that, I worried about how I would WASH them.  Would I need a sock blocker?  If I washed them by hand, how could I be sure I'd rinsed out all the soap, and what sort of soap should I use? 

It's actually pretty easy to wash handknit socks.  You don't need a sock blocker - I just heave mine over the flat run of a plastic hanger.  I don't use soap at all, I use Soak, which doesn't need to be rinsed out (though I do usually run a rinse cycle anyway, because they are socks after all and it strikes me as a good idea to have a little more help removing any odors or bacteria from the fiber.)  And I don't do it by hand in a bowl any more, like I did when I had only a few pairs.  I use the machine, after I've put the socks into protective bags to save them from any altercations with the agitator in the middle of my machine.

You may not have an agitator in the middle of your washing machine in which case you may not feel you need a protective bag, but I like them regardless.  It's SO much easier to fish a bag or three out of the machine than a dozen socks, and the socks get less wear in a confined space than if they were rubbing up against each other in a bigger one.

I've developed a fondness for Laura Ashley laundry bags.  I bought my first two years ago at a Winners store (a sort of discount department store, if you don't have them where you are) and always watch for more, because they almost never appear and certainly not when you want them.  I got lucky last month though and was able to get two more big bags and three bags especially for socks  (okay, I see now the packaging says 'hosiery', but I am so far out now from consenting to wear nylon legs except under duress, I automatically interpret 'hosiery' as 'handknit wool socks'.)

The idea is to separate pairs into their own individual pouches, which I think is a bit frivolous and completely fun, because that's how I'm built apparently. 

Four pockets in each bag means I can now wash 12 pairs of socks at a time if I don't use big bags to supplement the supply, or double up pairs in each pouch, though there is definitely room for that.  Honestly, what kind of person has the need to wash 12 pairs of handknit socks in one load - with, one would assume - enough clean socks in the pipeline to cover all foot-warming needs while the 12 pairs dry?  But as it turned out I was washing 14 pairs when I photographed this, and opted to tuck the extras on top of already-full pouches.  I was too enchanted by the pouch idea to remember that I had more big bags, sigh.   

I like to fill the washer to the lowest level - enough to cover the wash bags, eventually - and add a squeeze or two of Soak as the water is running, so it all mixes together without agitation.  Then I throw in the wash bags, spacing them around the agitator so they're evenly distributed. 

Then I leave the lid up - no agitation - for anything from the requisite 15 minutes to the accidental 8 hours when I forget I started the process and have no reason to idly pass the washer again until bedtime.  Soak is so gentle, my lack of focus doesn't do any harm.

When I do get around to the next step, I close the lid for maybe 10 or 20 seconds, just enough for a bit of agitation to push the water through the fibers.  Then I advance the cycle to drain the tub and spin dry.  You can stop here, but as I say - I usually fill the tub a second time, skip the sitting stage, and advance again to empty-and-spin-dry.  Then, when they're done, I simply lift out the bags, unzip them, and hang up the socks for a day or so, depending on how dry and warm the air is at home.

What could be simpler?  Really, the most challenging thing about handknit socks is KNITTING them.  And since that's also the fun part, there's no reason not to.  Unless you are Trish, who is firmly anti-sock knitting.  She's got way more appetite than I do for giant shawls and scarves though, so I am happy to agree to disagree on this point, heh.

Thought I'd close off today's post with a nostalgia shot from the old house.  Ahhh, radiators.  I haven't lived with one for nearly two years now! and when we move back home, all the radiant heat will be invisible, under the hardwood.  I will miss the graceful shapes but not the dry air or floorspace-grabbing.

Have a wonderful weekend, even if it involves laundry, and I'll see you next week!

Where would you store your yarn?

I am still immersed in dull as ditchwater last-minute decorating decisions and furniture sourcing here, instead of knitting like I want to be - ARG - but yesterday something happened that was worth sharing.  We spent our Sunday in our favourite furniture store pinning down some dresser purchases and I saw something so beautiful, it made me rethink my entire office, all 44 square feet of it.

picture your yarn here

Okay, not this exact shelf, which is the Delano Etagere from Currey and Company, and is both larger and less expensive than the life-changing one.  The one I saw was polished brass with glass shelves and stood the exact width of the customized (aka narrowized) daybed that's going into my office.  I looked at this shelf and immediately saw it from my imagined place on the daybed with a notepad on my knee, standing against the creamy-white wall of my office and looking clean and crisp and empty.

Even emptier than it did in the store.

And at the same time I could imagine it with fabric folded neatly on it, waiting to be sewn, and with baskets of yarn for knitting... but only on the lower shelves, invisible beyond the tall side-arm of the daybed.

But that is so weird, because normally I imagine quaintly crammed shelves in white-painted hutchlike furniture at the end of the daybed.  Crowded, cluttered, colourful shelves full of vintage finds, not lean shiny bars supporting empty glass shelves.

In a way I blame the daybed for this vision, and others like it.  I have always wanted a chaise (plus, of course, a lifestyle that would allow me to relax on one) ever since I was a little girl and saw the pale blue velvet one in my aunt and uncle's bedroom.  I mean, who has a sofa in the bedroom?? Only very lucky people, that's who.  But a chaise seemed like such an extravagance for me personally - wicked, really, right up until Pete agreed that a daybed was a perfectly practical solution for my tiny office and, furthermore, that we should buy the one that's sitting in our living room today and waiting to move back to the house with us.  It's been here for weeks now and the thrill hasn't worn off - everybody calls dibs on the daybed first in spite of the amazing red recliners we bought last year.

I fear I'm ruined for anything but luxury.

(but not completely, because that etagere I saw is really, really expensive, and apparently I still have limits.)

Still: it was eye-opening.  For a start, I realize now I want a fairly airy office, rather than one jam-packed with all my fabric and yarn.  All this time I've dreamed of having it all in one place, and it turns out what I really want is for it to be out of sight unless I'm working with it.  The luxury of no visible to-do list.

So the question is, where should I put it?

There's almost no random storage space in our house-to-be for my supplies.  There's likely to be a little extra room in the gap under the stairs where I was going to put our suitcases and Christmas decorations, and there will probably be some floorspace in the laundry room for a little cabinet.  It's a given that I'll be putting some yarn into the living room cabinetry, but there's not much of that.  I could stash some in the attic, or on the top shelves of our kitchen cabinets now that we're going straight up to the ceiling with them.  I might even be able to sneak some into the front hall closet, or the tops of the dining room cabinets.  I guess it doesn't matter as long as I get to keep what I have and buy a little more yarn now and then.

But...

Where is it reasonable to store fabric and yarn if not in the room you are fortunate enough to get for your very own self? 

If you were keeping your crafty habits in check, and you could choose your ideal location, would you keep it where you sleep?

Where you sit?

Where you eat?

Where you keep your out of season footwear?

(okay, that might be a little unappealing.)

Or would you keep it where you work, even if it makes that space so cramped you have to go work somewhere else?

hmmmm.

I might have to think about this some more, behind the scenes while I try to figure out the best way to create a 16" deep, 70" long desk I will love working at.  Yep, nothing but fun here at no-knitting Hugs! 

Sock kits and a sock fail

It's years ago now that my friend Sandra suggested I kit up some yarn I wasn't using, and I don't remember much about that conversation except the phrase 'kit up some yarn'.  Doesn't that sound so - organized?  Aspirational, even?  Something about the cheery, efficient tone in her voice made me feel that if that yarn got kitted up, it would get knit.

Even though we all know there is some yarn that will never get knit, unless it moves to somebody else's house.  Only so many hours in the day, right?

My 100% superwash merino Vesper yarn is totally going to get knit though, because as you doubtless know by now, I absolutely love it.  It's SO soft.  It's so colourful.  It's so stripey, and I love stripies.

The entire process of kitting sock yarn is time consuming - for me at least, because I like to knit both socks at the same time and have a light bag to tuck into my purse.  It would be a lot more yarn-efficient if I knit straight through from one big cake and just referred to the to the top of Sock #1 to ensure that Sock #2 starts at the same point in the stripe - less cutting away of unused cake, shorter tails in general.  Apparently I prefer wastefulness, and up-front effort, to ensure I have a lightweight, compact bag to cart around every day.

That said, I do have some sympathy for you guys.  Stuck day after day watching the progression of stripey socks while I continue to put all my creative energy into home renovation planning.

The other day I saw somebody I'd told about the house project 18 months ago, when we took possession of our 'temporary' condo home.  He asked if we were back in the house yet, and I said Nope, probably this fall.  He just looked at me and said That is the longest renovation project I have ever heard of.  And I get it - it's hard to explain that we have one guy and one helper doing almost everything except for some specialized tasks that get farmed out to teams, like the basement drainage and the HVAC work.  And that part of the reason it is taking a long time is because if Ray sees an opportunity to improve the function of the design, he will always stop work to call me and see whether I would like to make that improvement.

(this is why, for example, we now have a shower that's 42" x 48" with an 18" wide shelf for linens, instead of a 42" x 60" shower. seriously, one of our showers was going to be almost as big as my ENTIRE OFFICE. so, so glad he called me about that.)

Anyway....

Even though I know it is a drag for you to keep on looking at sock yarn in all its various stages, I am glad I did this kitting.  These are three or four more kits in the cupboard, which means that even if I knit nothing else, I have enough yarn to get me well through the rest of the renovation and back to some cosy future time when I can take on more complex projects, and write up the stripey and lacey fingerless mitt patterns I have promised you.

Also: it's so PRETTY.

And it takes so many hours to cake this much yarn, I feel a real sense of accomplishment, even though I haven't actually made anything.

In spite of my best efforts, in fact.  Are you sitting down?

22 rounds, people.  22 rounds of a lot of K1tbl, P1 ribbing (which takes forever even without there being about 140 stitches per round or super sharp pointy needles) before I could test my gauge planning and try it on and discover that it was too tight on, and then test it against the original sample and discover that the tightness was the result of having cast on WAY too few stitches.

aiiieeee

Well, at least I have Vesper.  These are the four most alluring-to-me colour combinations.  That one on the right is called Beach Glass and it is just dreamy, with the turquoise and orange and lime green balanced by a warm off-white.  So restful.

When I'm finished grafting some sock toes and freeing some needles, I am totally casting on one of them to cheer me up about the too-small ribbing project.

But fear not!  I have since ripped out the ribbing and cast it on again and am now working my way back up to 22 rounds.  I'll show you how it looks when I get there, okay?


Meanwhile: take care and I will see you tomorrow!