Yarn Along: Picking up the Pieces of December

Along with vastly increased coronavirus restrictions, our state essentially closed its borders just before Thanksgiving, seemingly unconcerned with the large number of people who commute in or out of the tri-state area for work or school.  

For the most part, we have inhabited a square mile this year, rather than traversing hundreds of miles toing and froing.  While I desperately miss my family, who live far away, and am still disappointed my mom couldn't visit in October as planned, I find I am more settled and grounded in this smaller life. 

But enough about that.  On to fiber and books, m'kay?

~knitting~

After a quick start on my Stripes! Stashbuster sweater, I stalled out while the kids have been home for the past two and a half weeks, remote schooling and having an extra long Thanksgiving break due to some Covid concerns.  I will say that the knitting itself is fairly speedy so far, as you don't spend more than 7 full rows on a color, so my interest level remains high.  I'm pushing my gauge on that light mint color, as it is heavy fingering weight and I'm a tight knitter, but my yarn weights are all over the place on this thing, so I think I just have to lean into the wonk.  

I've made zero progress on my Footfall shawl I showed last month, after casting on and completing the initial chart plus a full repeat (including ripping it all back numerous times before I got the stitch counts right.  I seem to gravitate to the Stripes! piece before this one, but I'm sure it will call to me again sooner or later. 

~reading~

I finished re-reading Sarah J. Maas' Court of Thorns and Roses series ahead of the next installment due in February, and decided to stick with the author and have a go at her better-known series, The Throne of Glass.  The universes are completely different, and I find the female protagonist slightly unlikeable, but I'm four books in, so I guess I'm on for another three?  These books are all a big departure from my usual genre, but I suppose this is the year of trying new things.

I did set it aside this week to again pick up We Two, which I've been reading in little snatches of delight since it arrived.  The narrative is quite riveting and I'm learning so much about how the European royal houses were connected and how the 18th century slid into the 19th at a dynastic level.  My brain has exploded with all the connections.  There was an explanation of genealogy in the section on Albert's upbringing that helped me understand the familial ties of the current royal family better, although right now I can't call the specifics to mind.  (Remote schooling + extra long Thanksgiving break=brain mush).

~crafting~

 Since I get palpitations every time I consider sewing something (or even attacking the sewing machine-necessary mending pile), I've continued on with my beading and jewelry adventures.  It turned out to be the perfect thing to do while supervising the girls' remote schooling this week.  (Piglet is totally independent with his stuff).  It is creatively satisfying, easy to set down and pick up, pleasingly tactile, and generally diverting from the news of the world.  

I still keep up with sock darning (although my darning pile grows ever larger--I did all the black socks this afternoon and this is still left!)  It's sort of a dogged determination at this point.

~watching~

Not that much, to be honest.  (I know, you are shocked.  I'll give you a minute to recover yourself).  I continue to meander through season 2 of Poldark, but in a rather desultory way.  Aidan Turner still doesn't do it for me and this season has not endeared Ross to me At.All.  (I'm largely in it for Eleanor Tomlinson's Demelza). Lately, I'd rather read or work on beading instead.  (Hence the rather large number of books read in the past month!) 

~life in general~

We started the Nativity Fast last weekend, and today celebrated the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple.  The breaded fish patties for sandwiches are in the oven along with tater tots that don't have sunflower oil (a December miracle!)  I am looking forward to some fried potato goodness for dinner.  With breaded fish sandwiches, natch.  There isn't much I can eat lately, and when I find something I can get down without zofran, it's cause for celebration!

 

Lastly, this one wins the Internet this week:

 

 

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Yarn Along: Give Me All The Charts!

~knitting~

Another finished object!  I finished my Beamer last Friday and blocked it over the weekend.  I swore off lace charts after the Gemini, but after struggling through the lace charts on this pattern (I swear, I knit this entire thing at least twice, given how many rows I tinked back to redo), I really like charts now! 

 

Kate has a wonderfully intuitive way of writing a knitting pattern, and for the first time, I got the chart process.  Like something opened up in my brain to "get it," finally.  

 

The success of the Beamer, and general enjoyment of knitting it, led me to immediately cast on another lacy shawl, this time with some stashed Capra yarn and another Kate Davies lace pattern from the Bold Beginner Knits book called Footfall.  It took me a bit to get the pattern established.  I had to start over once or twice, and then somehow dropped a stitch on either side of the set up chart, so my first repeat ended wrongly on both sides, but I figured out where the problem was after tinking back a couple of times, and now am doing well with it.   The color is Magnolia Heather, but it is more pink-purple than it looks in the photo.  The color in real life is so pretty!

The process of following a chart is very enjoyable to me right now, so I'm all: Give Me All the Charts!  I decided to dip my toes into colorwork, as my primary block about stranded knitting is the charts, but after doing the lace, the colorwork charts made a lot more sense to me (that whole new space in my brain is doing quite well, thank you).  I bought the Mackworth Sweater pattern during sale in the spring, and even bought a mini pack of Stroll Tonal to try out the technique but the whole thing languished over the summer.  Just as well, as I think it would have frustrated me earlier.  

I spent an hour one morning working on different color combinations for the color charts, and then started swatching.  It took me a bit to get the hang of having two or three yarns in my hands, but I think I have it now!  I'm very dominantly right-handed, and knit English, so stranded knitting seemed hard from that aspect too.  I don't crochet very well because of needing to have the yarn in the left hand.  After reading a bit on different stranded techniques (including about yarn dominance), I experimented with different ways of holding the yarn, and it turns out that holding one in the left and one in the right actually works best for me.  Who'd have thought!  

I'm super pleased with my little swatch, and totally enjoyed making it.  I'm not happy with the yarn (too much halo and not enough stitch definition) or color combo for the pattern (not enough contrast in the tonal yarn), although I like the color family.  

After asking around for yarn recommendations, I ordered some Jamieson and Smith 2-ply in a similar color scheme to see if that looks better.  Since J&S is made in Shetland, where Fair Isle comes from, I imagine it will work swimmingly.  

~reading~

 

I'm currently obsessed with the BBC show Victoria (about which more below), and so bought a couple of books to read more about her, since most of my working knowledge is about the latter half of her reign, during her widowhood.  I started We Two last night and had a hard time putting it down to get a good night's sleep!  I plan to read the Victoria biography after that, and possibly another book that contains Victoria and Albert's correspondence.  

The Count of Monte Cristo is the first selection for the reading group I mentioned yesterday, and I'm re-reading the Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas on my kindle because it is untaxing when my brain hurts.

 Kate Davies' new collaborative journal about Shetland craftwork also arrived last week, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

~general crafting~

 As long as I'm trying new things with knitting, I figured I might as well fall down a few other crafting rabbit holes.  Sometime this summer, I thrifted a little knit dress to wear as a base layer in a particularly unbecoming shade of beige, intending to dye it, but then chickened out when I started looking at Rit dyes and considering my washing machine.  My marigolds have been decent (but not plentiful), so I decided to buy additional dried flowers and alum and have a go at dying the dress naturally.  From my reading, it looks like marigolds+alum is the easiest entre into this sort of dyeing, and I'm eager to try it.

And while I know the handmade jewelry market is totally glutted, I wanted to experiment with making some of my own, as my favorite pieces have been purchased from etsy artisans.  I've made simple earrings in the past, but wanted to try something a little more artistic.  I found a few supplies and had some fun with beads!  Picasso jasper, amazonite, and jeweled agate are speaking to me at the moment.

 

 ~watching~

Victoria, obviously.  I wrote a little about it last week, and I'm on my second viewing of the the three seasons, and it is just as enjoyable the second time around.  Tom Hughes and Jenna Coleman knock it out of the park, and the costume designers obviously know their business.  (Says the historic costumer who gets annoyed when they get it wrong).  It is also the first time I've seen Paul Oakes play a genuinely nice guy and likeable character.  I really like the relationship between the two brothers, Ernest and Albert.

Tom Hughes is pretty interesting to me as an actor, so I'm trying to find other work he has done.  Some stuff I've seen before, like The Game, which is an excellent BBC series set during the 1970s Cold War of Britain, inside MI:5.  He was also in Red Joan, which I wrote about sometime this summer; that is also a great film, and he was very good in it.

In September, I forgot to mention that I rewatched all of the Shetland series (how I love Douglas Henshall!) and the moody landscape and wonderful soundtrack to that show just sucked me back in.  It had been long enough since I watched the first few seasons that I couldn't remember the details, so it was like watching for the first time!

I am trying to get into the second season of The Spanish Princess on Starz, which is the latest in the long line of Phillipa Gregory adaptations.  I enjoyed the White Queen and White Princess, but have found The Spanish Princess a bit slower to get into.  I find the story very compelling, and the production values are quite high, so I don't know why I'm not super into it.  It covers a period of time that most people don't know about Catharine of Aragon: the first 25 years of her marriage to Henry VIII, long before Anne Boleyn was even a shine in her father's eye.  There have been some surprises for me as well!  Did you know that she rode into battle against the Scots while heavily pregnant?  Henry was away fighting in France, and there was an uprising on the border, so she rode out with the army to put it down (and succeeded).  

There is a new adaptation of Rebecca on Netflix that I thought was good.  Not fantastic, but an enjoyable diversion.  I like both Lily James and Armie Hammer (and Kristin Scott Thomas tears up the scenery as the housekeeper), so it was a fun afternoon.

I suppose what I'm looking for in my watching is things that are comfortable--some old watches, some new watches, but nothing terribly taxing or upsetting.  

~garden~

My garden is still limping along. The kale is hanging on, and the tomatoes are still ripening, so we'll take it! 

I have a naughty squirrel who keeps digging in the pots, so I've put plastic forks and netting up to discourage him, since he was undeterred by cayenne pepper.

 

 

I brought in a few pots to winter inside the house, and will just play the rest by ear as to when I cover the bins for the season. 

This lemon balm plant has done exceedingly well.  I love cooking with it.

 

That's all for me!  Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Yarn Along: Life in Squares

 ~knitting~

Another finished object!  I've been working steadily away on my Beamer (more on that below) but took a brief break to knit up this quick little project.  

 

I had bought two skeins of cotton yarn in the spring, after I discovered how much I like having a lighter knitted layer around my neck in the "shoulder" seasons, and knitted it up quick-like one week. 

It is slightly smaller than I had originally envisioned, but it works well enough with a pin and some creative draping.  I used the Casapinka pattern as a stitch guide again, and I like the look of it on a larger gauge very much.

The Beamer is going okay.  I've probably knit every lace line twice by now, since I keep making mistakes and having to tink back to figure out where I went wrong, but I'm enjoying the process more than I thought I would.  

It's not exactly the sort of knitting I can do while watching something I have to pay attention to, but I'm still eager to work on it most days.  It will be a lighter wool layer that I'm excited to work into my wardrobe.

 

~reading~

 

Well, I wrote about Shoshana Zuboff yesterday, and it is still a slog--rather like eating raw vegetables before getting to dessert, as opposed to nice lovely roasted vegetables.  In my case, I ate the dessert first in the form of my re-reading of the All Souls Triology and am midway through a second read of Time's Convert (still think it could have used some editing, but enjoy visiting that world despite it).  I also finished Slezkine, and wrote about that earlier in the month.

But I'm more than half-way through the Zuboff and am looking forward to cracking Anthony Esolen next. Rod Dreher's latest, Live Not By Lies, also showed up this week, but my husband is having first crack at that one.  We're trading the Zuboff back and forth, both frustrated by the lack of serious editing and overly flowery writing.  Vegetables, vegetables.  

~sewing~

 Kinder Chinners!  I made a big batch of these in February at the request of our school's violin teacher.  They are used on the end of a violin to cushion the chin, and are helpful especially for younger violin students.  The teacher approached me again in September to ask for 20 more for the current kindergarten class, and I was happy to make them for him.  I set up an assembly line, and while I wasn't able to knock all 20 out in one session, I did get them done over several days time, working in small increments.  

 

For whatever reason, I've found I have to break up my working time into smaller pieces right now, or I can't finish my day with any steam at all. My entire daily rhythm is a bit different these days, as I try to front load as much as I can, since I always feel rotten by late afternoon and cannot muster much to get through the last shift of the day with the kids.  So I try to make whatever dinner bits I can do ahead in the morning, and leave an hour or two in the afternoon for sitting and staring.  

~watching~

Well.  I've hit a kind of lull with that.  I couldn't get into this season of Endeavour and gave up less than one episode in.  (I'm so sick of the labyrinthine plots that make no sense whatsoever, even at the end of the program).  I had a migraine this past weekend that laid me out flat, but it was of a piece with the way I've been dragging myself through my days since late summer.  When I'm tired and stressed, I tend to go back to old favorites.

Bloomsbury Group

 I rewatched some stuff about the Bloomsbury group, which I find weirdly fascinating.  (Fascinating in the way that you can't stop looking at a car wreck).  The first is a more recent BBC series called Life in Squares, which is mostly about painter Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolfe's lives. I also revisited Carrington, a slightly older film about painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey, both of whom feature in the cast of characters in Life in Squares but on the periphery.  

Lytton Strachey by Dora Carrington

I'm pretty sure I read Strachey's Eminent Victorians as part of my senior college thesis on T.E. Lawrence (otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia), but wouldn't have understood the Bloomsbury context as well as I do now.  Fair warning, the series/movie are not for everyone.  The Bloomsbury group was rather radical in breaking social conventions, and some will find that off-putting.  Personally, I found both quite thought-provoking.

Charleston Farmhouse by Vanessa Bell

 I did finally watch the entire first season of Poldark, after trying it several years ago and not really getting into it.  (I know!  I was surprised too!  But I just couldn't get into Aidan Turner, and the story line seemed tired to me at the time).  Aidan Turner still doesn't do it for me, but I really enjoy watching Eleanor Tomlinson (who plays Ross Poldark's kitchen maid-turned wife), and the 18th century context of Cornwall and the mining industry there are interesting to me.  I had to take a break after the intense season 1 finale, and don't really know when I'll get to season 2.  

Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza on Poldark

Watching Eleanor Thompson in Poldark reminded me that she played Darcy's sister Georgiana in Death Comes to Pemberly, which I watched when it came out and really enjoyed, so I rewatched that and enjoyed it just as much the second time.  Probably more so, since I enjoy watching Matthew Goode and James Norton even more now.  Matthew Rhys' performance as Darcy is subtle and lovely.  I had forgotten a lot of the details, so it was fun to not know what was going to happen.  I rewatched Sense and Sensibility at some point this month (is there anything better than the late great, brilliant Alan Rickman as Col. Brandon?  I think not), and am planning to revisit other Austen films as I have time.

~garden~

My Mr. Stacky planter kind of went nuts with the kale and lemon balm, although the dill and thyme died pretty quickly.  The lemon balm started out as a dodgy leggy looking thing, but quickly exploded into lush greenery.  I couldn't separate the root ball, however, and so it was poking out of one small area of the Stacky planter.  Yesterday, I pulled out the lemon balm and transplanted it to a bigger area so it could spread out.  (You like my super classy plant stand?)

I am enjoying cooking with lemon balm and chives, and hope to bring the plant indoors when it gets cold.  I know there are lots of medicinal uses for it as well, and hope to experiment some with that this winter.

  I'm experimenting with seeing whether the lemon balm stems will root, so I clipped four healthy looking stems and stuck them in the empty spots left in the planter on the second tier.  I harvested some of the bigger kale leaves and made a nice sausage soup with them yesterday.

 I also took one of my bigger Boxwood basil plants (in front of the big planter box) and put it into a pot, in the hopes of bringing it indoors for the winter as well.  I prefer cooking with the Boxwood basil better than Sweet Basil (even though those did prolifically well this summer also), and hope to keep it going.

 

And in other news, the tomato plants are ridiculous.  They are taller than me now and full of ripening fruit; I'm having to get quite creative to keep them staked and vertical, hence my weird strings and wires contraptions hanging from hooks high up on the walls.

There are finally two tiny cucumbers on the vines, but they are ripening VERY slowly.  Not sure we'll beat the frost on them, but it is fun to see them there after months of nothing but male flowers.  I've harvested about a dozen pole beans, but turns out my kids don't like them, and I'm allergic to them, so my husband has been eating them raw.  I probably won't plant them next year.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Yarn Along: Life in progress

This post is a bit long, so I recommend some junky chocolate and a fizzy beverage--ha!

~knitting~

 I finished my movie theater scarf!  It turned out much better than I expected, and the second half of the knitting was very enjoyable to me.  The garter tab start was also new (I started this scarf before the linen one on the same pattern), and I like the finish it gives the top edge.  

  I decided to integrate several bands of different stitch patterns from a couple of other patterns, to make the bottom half more interesting.  I'm glad I did!  The scarf blocked out differently from what I expected, and I'm quite chuffed with the result.  

 It is lightweight and a nice size for my style preference.  (I did panic a few weeks ago, and started to pull it back because I thought it was coming out too big, but after I got it off the needles, I realized it was just fine, so then had to thread something like 400 stitches back on the needles and get myself back into the pattern I was on.  It...took a while). 

After that, I decided to start my Kate Davies scarf kit that I bought when it came out in the late spring.  I'm normally not one for lace work, or charts, but Kate has never let me down, and so far so good.  (Who am I??)  I swatched quite a few needles for gauge, and ended up picking one that produced denser fabric, but I think it will be more to my liking in the end.  I'm quite a tight knitter, and generally, I get gauge on the needle Kate suggests, but in this case, I had to go up to size 9 (from the suggested 6) in order to get gauge and I did not like the fabric. 

 The garter tab at the beginning looked terrible, so I dropped back down to 7 and that seems to be fine. (Although it did take me about five tries to get the thing set up correctly.  Word to the wise: there are way too many stitch markers recommended).  I realize my piece will be denser than the sample, but I'm okay with that.  I'd rather have a better yarn+ needle match, particularly when I'm working with a pattern that is challenging.  The yarn is so pretty!  The tweedy flecks are so nice, and the color (a bright strawberry red) is lovely.  I don't love how the yarn is spun a bit unevenly, and tends to break with high tension, but I'm trying to be gentle while knitting to avoid that.  

 ~reading~

I finished Why We Drive by Matthew B. Crawford and it was well worth the reading.  I wrote a bit about it here, but have more to say as soon as I organize my thoughts a bit better.  In the meantime, I loved this review of the book.   The main takeaways (at the moment) are that we are meant to live a fully embodied life, in the real world, encountering and solving problems that are not easily solvable, requiring us to dig in when the going gets tough, and to know what is under the hood of our lives.  Simply put, we should understand how to fix things, how to parse problems to find solutions instead of clicking a predetermined menu of options.  (And also, stop letting the tech people produce solutions to problems that they created, for which humans already have the skills to solve).

The State's efforts to produce legibility in the population generally do not benefit humanity, only the bureacucracy, and we should be very wary indeed of handing over our privacy and autonomy to a faceless, technocratic entity that doesn't care about us. (Crawford draws brilliantly on James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State, a fantastic book I read in grad school.  It has survived numerous book purges, it is just that good).  Rather, it is the human byways of life, usually roundabout, somewhat messy, and not in neat straight categorized lines, that we find humans working through the messiness of social interaction and getting along.  That said, I do think one of the main priorities of modern civil governance should be to maintain order and prevent anarchy, and that requires adherence to a legible set of rules and laws, and requires a certain level of corresponding virtue in the population to agree to live by those rules.

~sewing~

 Mostly, I'm altering things I made earlier this year to fit better or suit better, and fixing stuff from the rest of the family or making things for the house.  I'll do a dedicated post on my alterations soon, as I think I've cracked a mystery.  I've also been making underwear and am close to a long laundry cycle's worth.  I'll do a separate post on that as well.  

 I made a linen Rose skirt hack back in June that I was saving for September, and I made a point to wear it for the first time last week.  I had made it with my Mint Emerald in mind, but I think it will be a great transitional skirt for me.  My Spice Cake skirt just didn't fit my palette very well; I think this Nutmeg skirt will be a great strange neutral.  Besides, we all know how I feel about rust.  I took the Spice Cake skirt apart and will probably cut it down for Birdie sometime in the next year.

~watching~

Last month, I forgot to mention a great movie about the Cold War that I watched around the same time as Mr. Jones.  (If you haven't seen Mr. Jones, please do.  It's an important film).  

The other film I forgot to say is called Red Joan, and is the true story of a British spy who gave the Soviets the nuclear research to build their own bomb, and thus usher in the age of mutually assured destruction.  She wasn't caught until she was in her 80s.  In defense of Joan, she did it to prevent another Hiroshima-style disaster, as she felt that no one nation should have proprietary access to such a destructive weapon, and that sharing it with the USSR would level the playing field.  After all, they were Allies of the UK and US in WW2.  Judy Dench plays her as an old woman, but most of the story is set during the 1940s during the race for the bomb and is full of British character actors I enjoyed watching.

The latter half of August was hit-the-wall time for me emotionally, so I am rewatching Person of Interest, because I enjoyed it so much the first time, and it is easy to have on while sewing or knitting.  Michael Emerson is just brilliant in that show, and Jim Caviezel's character is such a treat--so complex.  I also find the issues of privacy and security raised by the show to be more pertinent than ever, and I'm struggling to know what to do with them.  Perhaps there is nothing to do but submit to the Borg of Silicon Valley, but vis-a-vie Crawford, I think there has to be a better way to exist with screens and technology.

~domestic~

I'm on a mission to lighten up the house, and to feel less oppressive to me.  Row houses can be dark since the windows are only on the front and back of the house, and we have a lot of dark woodwork.  I put some sheer valances on the living room windows, which helped that room feel much brighter, and then I decided to swap out hardware throughout the house.  The mission-style stuff I had picked 13 years ago annoyed me because it was noisy.  I went with cast iron (or "soft iron") handles and knobs where I could.  

It turns out that mission style hardware is pretty hard to swap, having non-standard size holes, and me not keen to drill new ones everywhere.  But I'm in the home stretch, finally.  I also did some things to brighten up the 2nd floor bathroom, and swapped out some fixtures that were starting to show their age.  My next project was to paint Piglet's bedroom, since it was one of two rooms that we skipped in 2016 when the rest of the house was repainted.  I went with the pale gray (Behr Silver Polish) that we used in most of the rest of the house and the room feels so bright and airy and fresh now.  I can't wait to put the pictures back on the wall, but it needs to cure for a month first.

 

The painting project was a bit more than I bargained for physically, however, as it was three days of physically intensive work in high heat and humidity, and then a fourth day of putting everything back together and cleaning up.  But it felt really good to move like that, and to get that project done.

I be hot.

Somehow I strained a tendon on the top of my foot, probably crouching for the cut-in at the bottom of the walls, so I spent the rest of the past weekend hobbling around, strapping my foot with k-tape, taking ibuprofen, and putting my foot up when I could.  It does feel better today, but I'm going to try and take a few days of quiet before tackling another big project (painting the bathroom cabinets...send help).  

Finally, we celebrated Dormition on August 28, and I actually remembered to take a photo or two--the bier is so pretty at the church, and I always forget.  (In fairness, I try to leave my phone at home, so I don't always have a camera handy).

 The church also has a plaschinitsa for the Theotokos (which is unusual).

 I made kuleyabaka again, this time making it a bit more "saucy" and it turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.  It was also a brilliant way to use up some fasting odds and ends.

 I picked a few herbs from the garden to bring on Dormition to be blessed.

Whew!  That was a lot for one post--congratulations for making it all the way to the end!

 Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!