pepperknit

There was a Yoga Journal a few years ago with this phrase as the big grabber headline on the cover. I used to laugh at it–there’s something so melodramatic about it. The article was about the upwelling of emotions that can happen while doing yoga–the idea being that sometimes you release a muscle or an area of your body and you tap into bottled up emotions, which come out during class, sometimes without a clear reason.

Well, this weekend I knew the reasons. I was both happy and sad, and I had my share of both laughter and tears on the mat.

I got to Philly for lunch with my coworkers on Friday. Being back with them was the best–being with family that you really and truly like. I had anticipated eating lunch and hanging out a little, but I was there for nearly FIVE hours. Another old coworker, Goldie (who occasionally comments here), joined us for lunch, so it was great to see her, too! After lunch, I flitted from office to office, talking to everyone. I had to literally drag myself away, because I wanted to see the woman I was staying with, her kids, and have time to get ready for the workshop, but I would have spent more time at the old office if I could have.

Here’s what the studio wrote about the workshop:

Jim Bernaert has been practicing yoga since 1984. In 1996 he began intensive study with John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga. Based on the Big Island of Hawaii where Jim teaches on-going classes, he also travels the US and internationally offering trainings, retreats and workshops. His teaching reflects his love for the students and for the practice of yoga. Students experience the clarity of his understanding, his precise instructions and his warm and generous heart.

John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga, said about Jim, “He embodies integrity, devotion to the Highest, and a full-hearted dedication to serving his students. He is one of the most highly trained Anusara Yoga teachers in the country and has studied with me directly for hundreds of hours over the past 10 years.”

It could not have been more apt. Jimmy was a generous, warm soul whose direction and insight really got through to me. But oh, it was intense and difficult, especially since I hadn’t done yoga regularly since I moved to New York. First night was hip openers, and included some strange poses I’d never seen before–foot into the back of your armpit? I was overcome with the emotions of the day and actually cried during Savasana, but in a good way. I was bursting with happiness that night, though. So happy, I took a picture to capture it.

We were all complaining of soreness Saturday morning, but we had no idea what we were in for: The session was standing poses and arm balances, which left us all with our arms hanging limply at our sides and our hips aching further! We sat in a fog at a coffee shop between sessions, finishing up Saturday’s five hours total of yoga with forward bends–less intense but still a challenge.

The whole group went out to dinner Saturday night, where I tried to not complain too much about my soreness (Jimmy was at my table), but after dinner I downed some ibuprofen when a few of us hung out. The sitting around chatting was as important to me as any of the physical exercise; I am so thankful to have such awesome friends at the studio.

This morning’s class was inversions and backbends. I knew I was in for a difficult class, but I don’t know that I had any idea that I would be so tired. It was a lot of fun though–padmasana variations in shoulderstand, getting to watch Jimmy do some advanced headstand variations (which I sat and watched after I fell transitioning from one hand position to another). Here’s a shot of a good friend before this morning’s session. Those of us doing the entire workshop were leaving our stuff out, and I kind of love how lived-in and messy the studio got. (And also? It smelled like a locker room, aka “ass”; we kept steaming up the place.)

I’m back in New York now, more tired than I have been in ages. I’m going to order some dinner and crawl into bed.

I did knit this weekend some. Here’s shots of me working on the way up and on the way down, side by side.

I know they’re small, but notice anything? Like how the toes are the practically the exact same size? No, I didn’t finish the first sock and start on the second. As is my standard, I got about three inches in and decided I needed to start over. I also decided that I much prefer the cute roundness of a short-row toe to using magic cast-on. I managed a short-row toe with no scrap yarn and no tools other than the needles I brought with me (I just unraveled the cast-on). I’m liking the yarn (red koigu, purchased for me by my mom at Stitches), but not entirely sure I’ve done the right thing with my plan for the lace pattern. I’m going to keep at it and see what happens.

Tapas is one of the niyamas of yoga–the things you’re supposed to do (in contrast with the yamas, which are things you aren’t supposed to do). Tapas is the act of self-discipline. I have been struggling to cultivate this in myself in a lot of ways: go to bed at a decent hour, eat three squares a day, etc. But so long as I attempt tapas, I’m halfway to a more balanced life, right?

This sock is my exercise in tapas for the next few weeks. I’m determined to work on it only while commuting (or while knitting at lunch). I think of it as my go-to, kill-time knit that I make last. The only other pair of “commuting socks” I started got finished within four days, because I knit them at home. What can I say, I’m a one-project girl, and it’s hard to set something aside when I could be knitting it.

I started this pair of stockinette socks over the weekend, getting the toe done and my stitch count set (I debated how many stitches, eventually going with my first instinct of 60 stitches, but I thought it would be too tight at first). I haven’t worked a stitch at home since! I checked the length when I got to the office or home, so I knew when to start the heel, and I managed to work the whole short-row heel this morning on the way in. Now I’m on the leg, and I plan to knit until I’m out of yarn. It’s really fun doing an all-stockinette sock; I’ve never done that before.

And because I’m using the yarn that Laura sent me, I joined the Green Sock Flickr Group! Thanks, Lolly, for setting that up.

I’ve got some other green knitting underway (what I knit at home!), but I’ll wait to reveal that when it’s complete.

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).

Have I mentioned how much I love doing the eye candy? This week, the eye candy qualifies as actual candy (well, sort of). The recipe has “candied” in the name, after all. White Chocolate Cupcakes with Candied Kumquats, featuring a white chocolate & cream cheese frosting.

I am taking these to the office for a birthday celebration for two coworkers. I tasted one of the ones that “fell” (they have egg whites in them), and it was delish but had “fallen souffle” consistency. I’m only taking the ones that didn’t fall, so keep your fingers crossed that they taste as good as they look! I at least can vouch for the frosting and kumquats. Because really, you must make your own candied kumquats soon (recipe is linked from the recipe above). They are easier than you would think and taste oh so yummy.

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!

My understanding of blocking is that you do it to “relax” the yarn into place–to set all those thousands of little stitches. I don’t really understand what happens with the whole fact that the fiber will bloom and get bigger. When it’s dry, it goes back to its “natural” state? Or it only goes back partway, perhaps? Or only to where you pin it to?

See, I thought (foolishly, apparently) that if yarn had been washed several times before, it would have sort of worked out its blooming/shrinking issues. You see where I’m going with this, right?

The yarn I reclaimed from the Ex’s sweater had been washed before. In sweater form, in unraveled form–what other form could I have washed it in? I even did that thing where you sort of stretch the reskeined yarn out with a hanger to smooth it after you’ve washed it. So I knit up my Cambridge Jacket, taking the recommended measurements and assuming that any “growth” would be minimal.

Oh how wrong I was. The fronts, to the armhole, are longer by an INCH AND A HALF. The sleeves? FIVE INCHES longer than they’re supposed to be. I am an idiot, apparently. So now what? Will it shrink as it dries? Or do I have to take it out and start over? I don’t really think that just shortening the sleeves is going to help. This requires an overhaul.

I’m sorry, but my feelings on this can be summed up in one glorious word: FUCK.

And we’re back. In truth, lately I’ve been focusing a lot more on photography than on knitting, however I don’t have a ton of eye candy to show for it. But this sunrise, while on my way to the bus, was my own personal eye candy earlier this week.

My knitting mojo has been on the fritz, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I’m knitting in bits and pieces here and there, but I’m lacking the longish stretches that I was accustomed to when I lived in Philly. Plus I’m on the sleeves of the Cambridge Jacket, and we all know what fun sleeves can be.

In order to get myself more inspired, and to meet some new knitters, I joined Sit ‘n’ Knit New York, a meetup group that I’ve known about for a while because of Annie Knits and other bloggers who have mentioned it either to me directly or on their own blogs. Little did I know that the group organizer, Anne-Marie, is actually THE Annie of Annie Knits! She welcomed me by name (Minty)–it took a bit but then I put it all together. (Or maybe she just told me who she was, and it required no “putting together” but I finally understood.)
So anyway, Anne-Marie is briliant, because she organized a knitting meetup for getting your Knitting Mojo back. I RSVPd as quickly as possible.

And guess what: I finished the first sleeve and cast on for the second all while there! I also discovered that Anne-Marie lives around the corner from me, and she gave me an excellent list of restaurants to try. And I met about 20 other knitters, of all kinds, working on all different projects. It was exciting to see.
Still no photos of my Cambridge Jacket. I swear, the light in my apartment is just sad for photographs. And anyway, if I keep up my pace I might–just might–have an assembled cardigan to show before the end of the long weekend. I’ll need to buy a zipper, but I’ve never let buttons or whatever get in the way of me declaring a piece finished, have I? (Yeah, still no buttons, more than a year later, on Pam. I wear it anyway.) I’m going to stop writing and get some knitting on before bed tonight.

Thanks for getting my mojo back!

First, let me say that I wish I had knitting to show or really talk about. I’ve finished the back and both fronts of my Cambridge Jacket, and I’m more than halfway done with one sleeve, but it’s just a mess of long skinny bits of knits, not much to photograph. I decided to not do any binding off, anticipating 3-needle bindoffs, so all the pieces are sitting next to each other, threaded onto the same piece of waste yarn, and most pieces are still connected to the original ball of yarn they were being knitted from. In short, it’s kind of a mess. Can’t reveal publicly. Soon enough!

So the rest of this post is going to be the most ridiculous thing: A small homage to my old TV.

Everything about this picture is bad, but I didn’t think to take a better one before I hauled this 50-pound monster out of the apartment and disassembled the crappy shelving it was sitting on.

About this TV. It was big. I have no idea how many inches it was, but it being a tube TV, it was hefty. I got it as a sophomore or junior in high school, as a gift from my grandparents. I remember when I first got it, and having real trouble adjusting to the remote’s layout, and kind of hating the remote and thus the TV. It wasn’t long before the configuration (volume and channel up/down arranged in a circle like a Simon Says, with volume as East/West and Channels as North/South) came naturally, and we were BFF.

I had this TV for 12+ years. Over the last 3+ years the picture has started going a bit. It was blowing out whites, and it made some scenes (that snow fight scene in House of Flying Daggers?) pretty impossible to see at all. It was infuriating. So for three years I was thinking “oh, god, my TV is dying!” In the past few months, the remote has required some really hard pushing to get it to respond. And in addition to all this, I moved to the tiniest of apartments, and I decided a slim flat-screen TV would solve my space issues.

I’ve had the new TV for two weeks but hadn’t brought myself to get rid of the old TV. After all, it still worked pretty much fine, and it seemed so wasteful. But it didn’t work perfectly, so I couldn’t really sell it or give it to a friend. Finally, last night I put a note on it that read “Still works ok! Looking for a good home,” taped the remote to the top, and managed to pick it up and walk down the three flights of stairs. I cannot even describe how heavy this was. Each step was agony; my legs were quivering. I got to the ground floor and couldn’t figure out how to open the door. I put it on the floor, went outside, and looked for a stranger to help me. I didn’t think I could pick the TV up again, but when an elderly neighbor offered to hold the door, I found some last burst of energy and managed it.

I set it gently on the front stoop and went to the laundromat. I wondered how quickly someone would take it–everyone says free stuff in New York gets snatched up. When I passed by again 25 minutes later, the TV was gone. I can only hope it found an excellent new home.