Olympic Knitting Post Secundum

Olympic Knitting is over half over! I'm starting to get pretty nervous that I won't medal. A few nights ago it looked like this


Today it looks like this



I should be focused and project monogamous, but I'm finding loyalty to seemingly miles of stockinette (knit across 400 stitches, purl back across 400 stitches) hard to stay excited about. If a brilliant pair of colorwork mittens is like the pairs figure skating, then this sweater is probably the men's 30k cross country skiing pursuit: long and repetitive with little chance for dazzle (except this year's thrilling race. Go Sweden!).

The yarn is lovely to knit with and is producing a soft elegantly draping fabric that I really like. It's now too heavy to hold and knit standing, so I've had to stop knit while getting in my bike work out. fortunately, the mindless knitting is good to take with to work. Winter is slow at the bakery and I have about an hour to an hour and a half's worth of spare minutes during any given day. The last couple days I've brought the Olympic Sweater and worked on that between customers and clean up. By the end of tonight, I hope to have finished the body and be casting on for the arms. They are knit over far fewer stitches, completely in the round and only need to be 3/4 length, so they should be just a two day section. Then I'll pick up and knit the shawl collar which I already know is going to be the hardest part.

I have let myself be distracted with other projects. I'm working on a little something for the wedding guests and have done some trials for that experiment. Looking good so far. I've also cleaned up some empty jars I had laying around and hot glued some of the Christmas doilies to them.


And Brett asked if I would draw a tattoo on his arm, so one evening instead of knitting, I designed an arm piece featuring our pets as comic book heroes.





It's all washed off now, of course, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

Knitting Olympics Post Unum

I've been saving this post for something special.

::cue happy parade music::

It's my 100th blog post!

Hooray! When I saw that is was coming up, I knew I wanted it to coincide with my Olympic Knitting post.

For those of you who don't know about the Knitting Olympics, kindly find your way to The Yarn Harlot.

Over the next 17 days, beginning with the torch lighting ceremony tomorrow night, I will be casting on, knitting, binding off, and finishing.......

A WHOLE SWEATER!

That's right. A whole sweater, start to finish. Specifically the Featherweight cardigan at the top of this page.

This will be a challenge because I've never knit a sweater start to finish in 17 days, especially at the gauge this piece is knit at. I'm really excited to see if I can do it. There are no silver medals in the Knitting Olympics, only gold baby!

I've checked my equipment.
I've done my training.



My gauge is on and I'm feeling confident. Let's DO THIS THING!

Update

A few things:

1) Today I had my first paid day as a Hall of Fame Museum Teacher. It was nice to walk around in high heels and a suit jacket with a binder in my arm feeling professional again. Been a little while. I think I'm really going to love the work too, which will largely be teaching thematic units to student groups via videoconference. Unfortunately, it's just a few hours a week for now and I'm still going to need to keep pretty much all my hours at the bakery.

It's hard because I really want to be dedicated to the museum and be flexible and generous with my availability there. I know the more time I invest with them, the more quickly I'll be qualified for all the programs and the more hours I'll get, but I can't afford to ask another day off at the bakery and sacrifice 9 hours for 2 or 4 museum hours. Hopefully, I'll be able to work with my manager at the bakery to get an optimal schedule for both jobs.

2) Brett and I drove all the way to Albany this weekend to eat at the nearest Fuddruckers. (Very good. Probably not worth a four hour drive...) Since we were out there, we checked out a few of the comic stores in the town and one of the yarn shops. (Very good and certainly worth a four hour drive) The yarn shop was the best I've been too since I went to Three Kittens in Minneapolis. They were at the end of a class when we walked in, so it was pretty crowded and a little hard to look closely at everything without being in someone's way.

My qualifications for yarn shops include a few things:
The overall store layout should be organized by weight or fiber content, maybe by brand, and not by color.
There should be an excellent selection of pure wool, preferably Cascade in a variety of colors.
There should be a dedicated sock yarn section, especially if yarn is grouped by brand.
There should be a good rotating display of yarns unique to the store or area. Local fiber, or small dyeworks.

If a store meets two or more of these qualification, chances are good I will come back again and again, because they meld with the things I think are useful and valuable when choosing yarn.

My only issue with the store was that the owner lady gave Brett a little flak. I know she was trying to be funny and warm, but she said to Brett as she passed, "See? You didn't melt!" I mean, come on, the guy took me to Rhinebeck and spent all day walking around in the cold with me, getting into things just because I did. He bought me Cinderella glass knitting needles and beautiful bone needles. He has a good eye and I know he was looking at the yarn just as intently as I was. He's a pro, and I do think it was a little presumptuous to assume not only that he isn't a knitter himself but that he was scared to come in. Honestly. Give the boys a little credit!

flicker

Remember those boxes of doilies and lace trims I got for Christmas? I think this is what's going to happen to them. Do we love it?

Norwegian Blue

Let me introduce you to my newest knit project.



When Brett and I went to Rhinebeck, I budgeted for a small scale colorwork project and this is what I've come up with. The yarn is a simple, very richly dyed, wool yarn in Blueberry and White. I pieced together the pattern from a chart in Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork, a very nice book with beautiful, inspiring photographs (also a Rhinebeck buy), and the traditional stranded black and white mittens in Selbuvotter.



I made up my own chart and it's needed a little tweaking but it's working very well so far.

Wheee!

Brett was looking for some workout clothes in the dryer this evening.



Instead, he found one of these:



Bwahahahahaha. Silly Chester.

Been using my time off from work to be productive (ish). We haven't signed contracts yet but we've started filling them out for a photographer and a caterer. We have printed up our Save the Date postcards and will be mailing them out really soon. Wedding plans progress! (I can't wait to show you the photographer's website; I love his work and can't wait to see what he does for us.)

I finished a pair of mittens for Brett. Double thick. At about a 8st/in gauge. Oofda. A nice knit for picking up whenever there was time but it was pretty simple. Reports are that they are very warm. Now I've started a pair of blue and white colorwork mittens. The yarn is from Rhinebeck and the pattern is mishmoshed from the Selbuvotter mitten book with a motif lifted from Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork as the center. I'll show you pictures soon.

"These streets will make you feel brand new"

Yesterday, Brett and I finally made it down to the big city! He took me down for my birthday and we had a great time. We drove about 4 hours, parked the car and hopped on a train.


Love trains! I wish I could commute on one every day instead of driving.




We did have some trouble finding the station so we could buy our tickets. We ran around in the 0 degree wind chill to all the buildings near the train tracks and we found a lawyer, a post office, a bus depot, and then finally decided we could buy our tickets from the conductor on the train. Little did we know that on the over pass over the tracks, there was an automated ticket machine. Awesome!



We sped our way along the Hudson river


and saw a bald eagle.

It's the little black speck up there. So on the way to Rhinebeck, Brett saw a bear and on the way to New York City we saw a bald eagle. Neat, right?

We pulled into Grand Central and met up with my college friend Kate at the clock. What a beautiful train station. The ceiling is a ethereal cerulean color painted with the constellations. There's intricate metal and stone work everywhere. Lots of oak leaves.

"Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who funded the building of Grand Central, created his own family crest featuring acorns and oak leaves to symbolize his rise from rags to riches.

We walked down towards Times Square and saw Bryant Park and the Conde Nast building on the way. Stopped for lunch at a cute little pub that Kate frequents. Times Square is pretty overwhelming even on a slow Sunday, with video billboards dozens of stories tall, vendors and all kinds of people.

The best part of the trip was Rockefeller Center where we saw amazing Deco art and stopped in the NBC store. (Who wants a Top Chef apron? I do!) Brett and I bought tickets to go up to the observation deck while Kate waited for us down below. I wasn't super keen to go because it's a little pricey, but it was completely worth it. The first level of observation is mostly inside with a few corner balconies you can go out for another (colder) view. Then there's another floor that's all outside, protected a little by big plexi barriers. But the best view was waaaaaaay at the top on a small patio.

There's literally nothing higher than you on the whole building. We could see Central Park, the Empire State building, the Chrysler Building, and far out the Statue of Liberty. New York City is a BIG sprawling city.

After the Rock, we stopped for tea and a birthday cupcake at Dean and Deluca's then strolled down 5th Ave taking in the beautiful art and architecture. We checked out the stunning Plaza Hotel which smelled of lilies and made me think of An Ideal Husband. Kate and I overheard a young mother with very poofy lips ask a hotel staff member where Eloise was and he replied without missing a beat that "Oh, Eloise is in Paris." I wish I'd had the nerve to take a picture of the box of Kleenex in the back window of the Rolls Royce parked in front of the hotel. Didn't really feel like getting in trouble with the guards though, so we finished with a quick jog over to the Central Park subway station and took it back to Grand Central to take the train back to our car. It was a long ride home, but what a great day!

And today, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, there. is. SUN!

Changes the whole look of the wintery world, and I can't even say how grateful I am for that.

christmas catch-up

My brother's glittens went out in the mail yesterday and hopefully they will arrive soon to warm his poor frigid 1850 workin hands. They were a pretty simple pattern that I whipped up to use up left over yarn bits in green and blue and red. It's perfect "recession knitting" and they're all ideal yarns for hardwearing handwear. Hope he likes 'em.

I'm working on a pair of mittens for Brett with some of that Rhinebeck yarn. It's the same basic structure as most of my other mittens, but since the yarn is a little on the thin side, I'm going to line them like I did with Aunt Karen's alpaca mittens.

Christmas was excellent for collecting antique textile things. The awesomness started in the stocking where there was a lovely little apron with purple gingam and an embrodiered cluster of grapes. Also a pocket. Love it! There was a darning egg (I needed one, remember!) that opens to store your darning needle and thread. It's wonderful! AND! There was a whole collection of these weird little crocheted hot pads? decorations? rodeo clown flags? in shapes of things like bloomers that I have no idea what to do with. Suggestions?

There was also a whole bunch of beautiful handkerchiefs that I would love to work into the wedding somehow. There's one in particular that I think I'll probably be carrying down the isle. Want to see?

Flora

I promised my Aunt I'd throw a post up about wedding flowers.

I've been collecting pictures online for a while now, mostly from The Knot and Offbeat Bride as inspiration and to try to decide the styles, shapes, colors and kinds of flowers I like the best. The plan at the moment is to do most of the centerpieces and ceremony arrangements ourselves and to have a florist do the bouquets and boutonnieres. I'd like to be able to talk to a florist with general conceptual ideas and then let him or her get creative and fun with it.

Generally, the flowers should have a simple, old fashioned feel to them, like they just came out of someone's wonderful garden. (If I get really lucky, maybe they even will be...) The fabric details will all be royal blue and the floral details will be bright orange, yellow, and red.








I like this style for the pews at the ceremony, with the pretty galvanized pail and the billowy hydrangea. The white is good, but big orange carnations or marigolds would be nice too. I think the silver detail would be nice with all the warm natural wood in the church. And we can pick the pails up and take them with us to the reception site pretty easily.

At the reception, we're going to go with simple groupings of tall skinny vases with single blooms in each. Like this!


I think these are carnations and dahlias and I love the way they just float above the table with all that pretty glass below. Imagine these in those flame colors with just 4-6 blooms on a table.

The use of herbs at weddings is a pretty old and usually overlooked tradition, but I really love the idea of fresh smelling rosemary, mint, and lemon balm in among the flowers. This arrangement has mint in with zinnias. How summery and pretty is that?

Maybe a pretty pitcher full of mint with a few golden nasturtiums nestled in to put on the desert table would work for us?

I don't know logistically how sprigs of rosemary would work tied to menus or napkins (we're short on set up time between the ceremony and the reception...) but isn't this a lovely little set up?


In India, marigolds are traditional wedding flowers. They string them in gorgeous long garlands. How beautiful would a few of these look curtaining the door to the reception?



For the bouquets?
The girls should definitely have fun bright blooms. I love the one on the top of the post with the little blue buttons! And how's this for elegant?


For myself? I like the one above. And I lurve this relaxed white and slightly blue bouquet.


So I'll probably either go with some serious color, or a pretty white and blue thing, depending on the advice of my floral artist!

Of course, I haven't ruled out flower alternatives, like these gorgeous fabric (or maybe paper) blooms. How fun are they?


For other gorgeous paper and fabric flower pictures, head over to Martha Stewart Weddings (right here, actually) and don't blame me if you waste the next hour looking at all her pretty ideas.

Argyle!

I didn't do much Christmas Knitting this year, which is either a blessing or a disappointment, depending on who you are. I pick my Christmas projects very carefully and both the ones I worked on this year were specific requests. My grandpa asked for a pair of socks and my brother asked for a pair of convertible fingerless glove/mittens. I love making things that I know will be appreciated.

My Grandma used to make handknit argyle socks for Grandpa back when they were first married, so I figured I'd give them a shot. I ordered the yarn in September and cast on when I got the package a few days later. I put the last stitches in on December 21st.


Pattern:
Based on Minerva's Argyles, sized for a 10.5 men's foot.
Yarn:
Knit Picks Gloss, 1.5 skein burgundy, 1 skein mushroom
Needles:
US 2 circular on the flat, US 2 dpns for the toe
Notes:



Oh goodness, argyle is a seriously major project. I like color work, but argyle is done intarsia style, so it has to be knit flat with a seperate strand of yarn for each color section. Most clever intarsia knitters wrap a section of yarn onto a bobbin to keep the extra from getting in the way. Since this was my first project, I wasn't sure how much yarn to bobbin up, so I wound the yarn into smallish balls and worked like that, but this resulted in a ton of fidgety twisting, balls rolling away from me, and slow slow progress as I had to stop and reset everything every few rounds. It was about the least portable project I've had yet. It involved a huge seam up the back

(have I mentioned how I loath seams?) and a whole lotta duplicate stitch to put on the cross marking. Not hard but was a little tedious.



Of course, I didn't take a picture of them completely finished, but I was pretty pleased with the end result and Grandpa loved them. He said that store bought socks just don't have the same fit as a handknit and, of course, he's right. If he likes them and wears them it's completely worth every minute of work.

I'm pretty sure I'll do more argyle someday. I know better than to swear off any technique for the rest of my knitting career. But I don't think I'll be doing them any time soon and I'll absolutely be using better technique!

Next season on Penelope Knits

Welcome 2010. Thank goodness you are here.

Last night Brett and I watched the ball drop in Times Square, rang in the New Year in the customary fashion of a glass of bubbly liquid and a hopeful kiss, and then immediately went to bed. Brett's been under the weather since about Cleveland on the way home from Christmas vacation and so we figured we'd better take it easy.

It was great to be home with both sets of folks for our holiday celebrations. It just wouldn't be Christmas without family, after all. But the drive is always long, and we did bump into a bit of blizzard on the leg from Illinois to Iowa that made things a little more exciting. Other than that, we pretty much dodged the winter weather.

Now we're back in NY, feeling like that drive is just too long.

So what do you, my loyal readers, have to look forward to the upcoming year?

There will be more knitting. After all, this is a knitting blog, and as often as other things pop up in my life, that's the touchstone for my corner of the Intertubes. This year is an Olympic year, and I'm hoping that The Yarn Harlot will again be championing the Knitting Olympics that she founded back in 2006. I missed the 2006 event because I was just finding the online knitting community, but I'm ready for competition now. I'm still deciding what project to tackle. It should be a personal challenge to complete during the running of the Olympics from torch lighting to closing ceremonies and no longer. So there's that to look forward to.

I have yarn for lots of socks, (including Rhinebeck yarn and some gorgeous new Christmas yarn)
a few sweaters worth, at least one colorwork project planned, and plenty of loose balls for one off projects, not to mention rather a lot of fiber to spin. So there's that to look forward to.

But it can't all be fiber goodness all the time. Sometimes we're going to be talking about other things, including my very exciting wedding planning. (We started registering and we probably found our caterer. Only about a thousand more decisions to make till the big day!)

There will be various crafty posts. Projects for the house and for my friends and for my wedding and all sorts of things. I'm definitely going to need to show off some of that neat stuff (or bemoan my miserable failures with a little company).

I hope I'll also be showing off my amazing super healthy lifestyle. You know the one where I eat 3 cups of veggies a day, go to the gym all the time, and drop about 20 lbs? I'm sure you'll be seeing lots of posts about that!

You'll get to see the pride of my good days, and probably some of the frustration of the bad while I start teaching at the HoF and keep working on Penelope Fiberworks. There will be the boredom and the beauty of our small little village in the hills of New York. You'll see my impatient garden plans in late winter and the first green of the land in the spring. The summer mists and storms and the brilliant fall colors. And all sorts of things that I can't even imagine yet.

Stay tuned. You don't want to miss 2010.

First, my reasons for marrying...

In the midst of the fluffy white princess haze of wedding planning on The Knot and Martha Stewarts weddings and the like, I've seen how quickly my urge to control every little detail to blissful wedding perfection can rear its ugly tiara-ed head. For shame Kate!

Today I Googled "feminist wedding" to get another perspective, and I'm super glad I did. I came across this blog and while the entry was interesting, the comments were great. I disagreed with most of them, but they made me think again about why I want to be married, why it's important to me that Brett and I have a ceremony and a reception when yes, they are enormously expensive, largely centered on consumerism, not equally available or joyful for all American citizens, and often a woefully tense start to so many short marraiges.

Even while I'm stressing out about finding the perfect caterer, I found an even better article on the Boston Review website. It's more picking apart the role of class in wedding planning, but identifies exactly the sentiment that is so terrifying, "'A wedding is a couple's day of days,' proclaims the latest edition of Emily Post, raising the bar of expectation up to the stratosphere."

On the other hand we have Miss Manners who declares, "Few of those who prattle about the 'happiest day' seem to consider the dour expectations this suggests about the marriage from its second day on. . . . At any rate, someone whose idea of ultimate happiness is a day spent at a big party, even spent being the center of attention at a marvelous big party, is too young to get married." Here, here.

And then I found offbeatbride.com and a great article on being tacky at your wedding. Basically, the theme is, "Tacky: the dark monster that creeps in at night … tacky is the manifestation of your fears that people won't approve of your wedding."

So in the middle of deciding if my guests will be happy with just one meat option instead of two, or if I need to rent chair covers to polish off "the look"I need to remember why we're doing any of this instead of just going to a courthouse and having a Justice marry us.

I'm getting married in front of my family and friends in a place that is meaningful to Brett and me as a couple because, no matter what anyone else says, traditions are important. I want to have a ceremony where Brett and I can define the duties and joys of our marriage in front of the people we most care about; to involve them as our community in our promises to each other. I want their blessings because I know we will rely on them for support in our future together.

Weddings are times to gather to celebrate new beginnings and be merry. Not every one of our guests will be perfectly satisfied with every detail of the big day but I'm confident that as long as Brett and I stay true to the things that make us who we are that OUR happiness will reflect on the whole event and make it a memorable day for everyone involved.

The weather outside is frightful

Snow day!

We got probably close to half a foot over the night, and my poor little car couldn't make it over the hill to get into town. I'm waiting for a plow to help me out a little, but until the snow and icy rain stops, I don't think we're going to see much improvement in the roads. Looks like I really do need new tires.

Sunday View

It's a pretty view today.

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow!!!!

We have snow tonight! It started lightly snowing a little after noon and has not yet completely stopped. I got to sweep the snow off the sidewalk at the bakery, and feel quintessentially small town doing it. It was awfully pretty to watch from the nice cozy bakery. Tomorrow I'm going to put on some boots and head into town to do some photography.

It's Balsam Fir us!

We had our first real snowfall December 1st, the morning after we put up our Christmas tree. It was fluffy and white and stuck around a little while and was just right.

The night we pulled in from the Midwest, we stopped off to get a tree stand and some lights. The next morning we cleared a spot in the house,


got giant pickles at the Great American, and headed to peruse the tree lot.

The Lions Club guys were very pleasant (tree lot guys always seem to be, have you noticed?) and soon we had a very lovely balsam fir twined to the roof of the car.




We pressed an obliging branch into service as a tripod and commemorated our First Real GrownUp Christmas Tree


We dragged it inside, lit it, ornamented it and now we sit and enjoy its cheery glow. 22 days to Christmas!


Honus can't wait!