pepperknit

Happy New Year, all! The past month has been an absolute whirlwind of travel, fun, visits, and parties, and I’m just now finally starting to settle down. I’m back in Singapore for the month of January (the switch to Food Blog will commence!), but first we need to weave in some loose ends.

Christmas really really snuck up on me this year, as I know it did a lot of you. Stupid late Thanksgiving! Also, this was the first year I have done Xmas with anyone other than my nuclear family. Which meant I needed gifts for a whole branch of my family. Somehow, I whipped them all out in the two weeks before the holiday—three of them in the three DAYS before Christmas.

After finishing that 2×2 hat in Manos, I just ignored knitting for a while. But in a spurt of productivity, I knit a Koolhaas in two nights. The more complex pattern was always intended for my Uncle Mark, of course, host of our holiday gathering:

Note the deep-fryer in the background! Christmas dinner was a deep-fried turkey. I may have found the sole reason to move to the suburbs.

And then I hit this downward spiral of bad planning and even worse time management. Ultimately I did manage two more FOs, both completed on December 24 (one started that morning!).

This 2×2 hat was for my cousin Patrick, whose head is huge. The fact that it goes on his head is accomplishment enough for me!

My cousin Meaghan got a bulky moebius cowl in seed stitch. Back after Thanksgiving I’d seen Carrie knit one off a pattern, and I liked it enough that I “unvented” it for myself. I estimated about 22″ around, put in a twist, and knit until it looked tall enough. I never even measured it. It’s not as wide as Carrie’s, but it fits nicely.

Also knit but ultimately a total FAIL was a pair of fingerless gloves for my aunt, whose hands didn’t fit in them. Luckily (?) I only finished one of them. So I’m back to square one there. I have them with me and have already made progress on reknitting them.

Still, all in all, I couldn’t believe I finished ANYTHING in time! Go me! This brings my total FO count for 2008 up to new highs. I’m pretty thrilled. Recap for the year to be posted soon!

It’s double the pleasure—and double the fun! Just in time for fall:

A pattern for a fully reversible, double-knit cowl.

“But I don’t know how to double knit!” I hear you cry. Never fear! I have created five incredibly clear and helpful videos (plus one bonus video!) to show you how to cast on and knit two sides of a fabric at once. It’s easier than you think, and will be a no-brainer for advanced knitters. You’ll be designing your own double-knit scarves, baby blankets, and even garments in no time after you watch my clever tutorials.

Plus, you get the elaborate, continuous brocade chart (with no repeats), designed exclusively by me, so that you, too, can wrap your neck in a cozy cowl of luxury.

All this for the low, low price of $5! You can buy it directly via PayPal, and soon you’ll be able to buy it through Ravelry. Please visit the project page for pattern details as well as to buy it!

Here it is! The finished pattern for The Bainbridge Scarf. It even includes step-by-step directions for wearing it. I want to get the pattern up right away, so a proper pattern page is still forthcoming (plus, it’s been a long time since I uploaded a new page to the site, and I’m going to need some time for my memory to kick in). Click on the name below in the meantime. Enjoy!

The Bainbridge Scarf

As always, if you make one I’d love to know about it–send me photos, and that elusive “reader’s gallery” that I’ve been talking about forever will eventually see the light of day. Don’t hesitate to email me if the pattern is confusing or you’re having problems (mintyfreshflavor at gmail dot com).

The cardigan is still “blocking.” On Saturday my solution was to put the pieces into a heap and sort of hope for the best. (Rachel firmly advised against this, but I ignored her good sense.) Today I set them out again, but there’s been no stringent “blocking to measurements” action, per all of your good advice–see, the work naturally hit the right widths, it was the length that was out of whack, so I just sort of set it up so that it wasn’t stretched in the slightest. Glancing at it, it doesn’t look so enormous any longer. It’s not completely dry, and until I feel sure it’s completely dessicated, I’m going to take the firm denial stance of “so long as I ignore it, it can’t be doing something bad.” More news when I have some. Thank you so much for all the sympathy and suggestions–I have certainly learned my lesson (swatch even if you think you don’t need to), and I have some decent ideas for how to proceed if it doesn’t magically fix itself.

In the meantime, in order to give myself some satisfaction, I whipped up this new “scarf.” It’s kind of like Ashley’s neck hug, only not. And it’s a complete ripoff of a scarf that my friend was wearing last weekend; she got it from a delightful boutique in Philly that’s on Bainbridge Street. (I was going to name the scarf after the store, but then the blatant ripoff would have been just that much more blatant.)

I took the measurements of my friend’s neck wrap and matched them nearly–mine is a titch bigger, and I realize now that a titch smaller would have been better. I love the simplicity of it. You knit a small cylinder, and when you put it on you fold it over to form a point and then tie the little straps. It covers your neck, your chest (often exposed with coats), and it is infinitely versatile.

I did a simple k4,p4 pattern that offsets by one stitch on each round, so it spirals. The straps are a k3,p3 repeat. I used Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton, straight from the stash, about 1.25 balls. This will be a gift for my friend Trixie, if she likes it. I was going to consult with her on the yarn, etc., but then I just needed to knit something easy, so I jumped right in.

The next thing on my needles will be another one, slightly tweaked. There’s not much of a pattern to write up, but perhaps I’ll just let you know the ideal dimensions, when I figure them out, and suggest some stitch patterns that might look nice. I’ll also include step-by-step photos on how to wear it, don’t worry! I had to have my friend show me what to do before I could conceive of it.

It’s my first FO of 2007!

Click to see bigger!

This spiderweb, hanging off a house in West Philly, was enormous. It had to have been three or four feet tall and a foot and a half or more wide. It was impossible to capture in its entirety, and the sunlight hid behind a cloud once I got the camera out, so it wasn’t catching the light enough, but I did my best!

In other news, I wore my kid slique scarf to work today! It was a nippy 52 degrees F, and as we all know a covered neck means a warm body.

And here’s a mini-restaurant review for Liz: Pod, like most Steven Starr restaurants, is all about spectacle, and if you like that kind of thing, you’ll love the atmosphere. The food, like most of his restaurants, is decently well thought out and is best consumed from the appetizer/small plate menu. The entrees tend to leave me a little disappointed, so since this was my second time at Pod, I recommended my friend and I split things. The tempura vegetables appetizer was a little lackluster, but the tuna roll with lump crabmeat was divine (it’s actually lump crab rolled in a thin sheet of raw tuna). Lettuce wraps were messy but yummy, and shrimp dumplings rounded out the meal. We were stuffed afterward! Oh, definitely sample the drinks, which you order by color: We can recommend Pink and Orange. Be sure to use the restroom while there; the design is pretty awesome.

In a marathon session yesterday, I managed to finish up Goldie’s scarf! We’ve got one happy customer here:

Scarf for Goldie
Pattern: A simple garter stitch scarf, with two tapered ends. Start off with 2 stitches, and on every other row increase into the first and last stitch until you reach your desired width. Garter stitch it. When you’re nearing the end, start decreasing at the beginning and end of each row, every other row, until you have 2 stitches. Bind off!
Finished Measurements: about 11.5 inches across and, oh, 5 feet long (I didn’t really measure it, I’m sorry)
Yarn: Jo-Ann Sensations Simple Elegance Collection in “Spirits Green”
Effect: A bright green boucle held with a strand of thin nylon with spurts of metallic.
# of Skeins: 5, alternating skeins because there seemed to be a difference in density of metallic spurts.
Size Needles: US 7
Date started: Initially, Thursday, March 16; restarted on Monday, March 27
Date completed: Tuesday, March 28
Notes: This is the thickest, warmest scarf EVER. No air will permeate its plush weave. Glad we got it done just in time for all this 60-degree weather! Eh, there’s always the possibility that the weather will turn, and there’s certainly next year.

I haven’t stopped knitting, but this post isn’t really going to be about much knitting. I just thought I ought to follow up on yesterday’s post a bit and show you some fun pictures I’ve taken in the last two days.

Sunday we’d planned to continue our day-trip adventures, but we were both, uh, suffering hangovers from too much imbibing and dancing Saturday night, so we instead chose to take a nap directly after going out to brunch. (I even skipped yoga, that’s how rotten I felt. I’d had so much fun the night before, though! Isn’t that always the way.)

Today’s weather was too beautiful to pass up, so we walked over to Rittenhouse Square to get lunch. Along the way I took some photos. The difference between the sky of yesterday and the sky of today is striking.

In the top row, we have the Ben Franklin Bridge and the Society Hill Towers, in photos taken yesterday. The bottom row features shots taken today of the Drake and the Kimmel Center and some red buds on a tree.
(Click to see each photo up-close.)

The sky was an intense, brilliant shade of blue today, and I simply had to share it with others by posting these photos.

Here’s another cool shot I took. I just randomly snapped it—it’s me and the sky. I didn’t quite realize the sun was so high, and I certainly couldn’t have aligned it with those wires if I’d tried.

Click to see it HUGE!

In actual knitting news, I’ve been working on Goldie’s scarf today. It wasn’t coming out the width I’d hoped, and I was unsatisfied with the bottom edge’s shape (a deliberate taper that was looking more like a mistake), so I took it all out and started over. Yesterday I started Kiri for real (on 6s), and I’m itching to get back to it. I’ve done two pattern repeats (after the first chart–does that count as a pattern repeat? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it creates one leaf, and so I would think it does, but that section of the pattern is written a little differently, so I’m not entirely sure how people describe it. I have 3 leaves from the center down, if that makes any sense), and it’s so delightfully simple to memorize and work on; I’m loving it. I just have to finish this scarf, and I can get back to it!

My coworker and friend Goldie, a reader of the blog, asked if I would knit her a scarf, if she bought some yarn. Of course, I said! She brought in two skeins of a novelty-with-a-captial-N yarn. Boucle! Sparkles! Sticky-outy-bits! It’s fun, crazy, and really speaks for itself. No need to make a fancy pattern scarf, because the real appeal is the sproinginess. She’s buying t more skeins because as it is it’s waay too short, but here’s a sneak peek:

Click to see it bigger—there’s a whole lotta dimension in that there photo.