To NYC and Back AGain

Beware the long post.  

I've been thinking about the highlights of my trip.  NYC is quite a town!  I stayed in Times Square which is full of taxis and travelers from all over the word, as well as the touristy sellers of trinkets and things.  The Met was amazing as was the performances of the Wagner Ring Cycle.  After 4 different operas, each 4-5 hours long (during which I was not allowed to knit, lol) I'm opera-ed out for a while.

More pictures of my trip are on flickr.  

I really enjoyed meeting a couple I met on the Internet over 10 years ago.  It is a rare pleasure to meet with Internet acquaintances, and it was such a nice visit.

I didn't get to see the whole park, but Central Park is a lovely lovely place.  This is the Literary Walk lined with statues of authors and gently curving trees. 

I loved Grand Central Terminal.  The cool ceiling of stars is hard to see through the lens of a small point and shoot camera.    I could spend days looking at all the great details of this wonderful building.  

A co-worker kept egging me on to go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop and I'm glad I did!  My strudel got a bit smashed, but it was delicious! I lust for the baklava I didn't get still.  Aah, the pastry not eaten.   Across the street was St. John Divine.  It had a garden to sit and eat lunch in with funky statues. 

There were so many cool things, I'll just have to go back one of these days. 

Prior to my visit to NYC I hooked up with my college roommate in New Jersey  I had not seen her in person for more years then I care to mention.  Though so many years have passed, it was amazing how we liked similar TV shows and music, and how talking was so easy.  She had me stay in her renovated guest room, which at first glance was very patriotic, but then on second glance the theme was the University of Kansas!  Rock Chalk Jayhawk!! She was hostess with most-est! I can tell she still misses the wide open spaces and pace of the prairie.  We share some great memories of when we were young and foolish, and good times with her family in Salina, Ks.  Her dog Razzi, a well-mannered rescued giant lab requested some kerchiefs.  I got to practice rolled hemming on my serger.  There is a learning curve, yes there is.  Baby Sister requested some yoga headband, too.  Yay!  I get to use up some fabric stash!

The clasp breaks away Razzi should step on it or get it caught on something.

I hope it fits Razzi.


I visited one yarn store in NYC, the Lion Brand Yarn Studio. The fiber creation in the window was a Picassoesque woman knitting.  Very cool.  It has all the Lion brand yarns so I got some Amazing to try out.  I was going to crochet the scarf they had on display  but went with a hat instead.

Pattern:  Urban Chullo, from Lion Brand Just Hats. Colorway Olympia, one skein
Hook:  Size J
Mods: none
Comments.  My ear flaps came out too long.  The yarn has some wool in it and is quite fuzzy, which makes it a bit sticky to frog.  It feels nice and soft. 

I also knit a pair of fingerless mitts. 

Pattern:  Wine and Roses Mitts by JoLene M. Treace from Interweave Knits, Winter 2006
Yarn:  Little Knits Indie 2
Needles: size 2
Mods:  none
Comments:  This little bit of lace gave me some fits.  The pattern is definitely correct, I just can't count.    The yarn held up to much abuse and feels very soft.  

I spun up my first braid of alpaca from Upstream Alpaca, colorway Emerald.  I was a bit hesitant after reading up on spinning alpaca, but this stuff was a real pleasure to work with.  I was going for a 3 ply worsted and I think it's close. What will it be?

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The big project is the sewing room organization.  When I got my new sewing table I had to rearrange the space.  My homemade ironing table did not fit.  My bobbins were driving me crazy and the fabric was out of control. 
I found some great ideas surfing the Internet (hmm perhaps less surfing and more actual work would be more productive?)

1.  Bobbin taming with plastic tubing.  I will cut it a bit wider and it should fit fine.
2.  Bobbin taming with plastic binding combs.  I found some of this at Fisher Hawaii for only 9 cents each.  The 5/8 inch one seems to fit my bobbins. 

I'm going to see which one works best for me. 

3.  How to fold fabric.  This is a great idea, but knowing me, I'll still be stuck with crumpled up little pieces of fabric too good to throw away. 

4.  Which leads to, what to do with all those small pieces of fabric.  I liked this idea of ironing and cutting those small pieces into charm squares.

5.  And to make my new mini-ironing board I followed this video.  

Mine came out pretty good.  Home Depot cut a piece of scrap wood for me for free! Woohoo!  I found a piece of wool fabric in stash and a bag I rescued from the Goodwill bag fit over the whole thing as cover perfectly!

I have uncovered several UFO's in my fabric stash.  Hopefully they will be done or frogged this year! 

My next trip will be to Washington State for the BIL's retirement.  I hope to get to Little Knits and have some Top Pot doughnuts!




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Impressions of NYC

Another Very Old WIP Bites the dust!!

Taro pattern. I lost the name of the designer :(
This will be mom's Mother's Day gift. Shhhhhhh!

Happy Easter!

A bit of Thick and Thin, and Card Making Day

I found some BFL fiber purchased at Madrona and practiced some thick and thick on my Serenity. It went a little better this time with some actual thick and thin areas. I tried plying it with some sparkly mystery stuff. I'll have to read up on that part again. Anyway, here it is washed and dried. Now what do I do with it? There isn't much of it, but it was fun to make.

Blogless Melody, my card-making buddy had me over for a day of eating and creating. It is always so much fun to share ideas and supplies!

Baby Nora's Quilt

Baby Nora's Quilt , a photo by acornbud on Flickr.

Finally done! Paper-pieced dolls, in cheater attic windows. Machine pieced and quilted.

Alpaca and Noro Aya Shoulder Cozy

Pattern: Shoulder Cozy by Churchmouse Yarns and Teas
Yarn: 2 skeins Noro Aya, colorway 12, Cascade Alpaca Lace, pink.
Needles: Size 3
Mods: I fear mohair for a couple of reasons...I find it itchy and knitting it can drive me nuts, or I should say frogging it. I really do like how mohair looks and remember being very jealous of a girl's sweater in HS, as it was all fluffy and wonderful in it's over sized splendor...but then I digress. I still had 5 skeins of the Noro Aya left in this pink colorway. I don't know what I was I thinking when I bought that bag. Mixed with the more saturated pink I really ended up loving the colors so I made another one for my sister who is modeling hers. I C0 120 stitches for mine and 100 stitches for hers and followed the instructions for the smaller size as we are not tall. The yarn combo is very soft and snuggly.

This is a very fast and easy knit! I love the results. The pattern has really caught on at Aloha Yarns, and I love the different combinations of yarns and colors people come up with for this practical pattern. It is perfect for those chilly mornings.

Things to Do on a Dreary Day

My island was hit by a couple of tropical storms over the the last week with thunder, lighting, rain and more rain, and even a bit of hail. The clouds hid the full moon yesterday morning but I could see it glowing up in the sky. This morning was dark so I cancelled by trip to the mall and hung out at home. So what's a girl to do?

I managed to cook a meal. Yay. The Landcaster is always thrilled to have real food around and spaghetti is his favorite. When we were younger I would make it from scratch. It turns out the boy and his father preferred the bottled stuff. The YellowCheeseDuck (no.1 son) did not eat anything red. As I had no bottled stuff and had nixed going out to brave the world today, I had to make if sort of from scratch. I ran the diced tomatoes through the blender as the Landcaster abhors chunky spaghetti sauce and will pick out visible onions. If he can't see them, he eats them. I'm that way with eggs...can't stand the wiggle yellow stuff, but will scarf a fritatta down just like that.

It was cold here in Paradise where 68 deg is frigid. I broke out my hand knit socks and wore my flannel shirt. When I whined about not having any heat a friend suggested the oven, so I decided to bake. Bread? A delicious dessert? Then the practical me decided to destash some of the things laying around the cupboard...a box of unsweetened chocolate from way before Christmas, a cake mix, and a ton of powdered sugar I had acquired. In a fit of laziness I baked a 13x9 cake when I really wanted cupcakes. The frosting came out a bit weird as I set the microwave for 3.5 min instead of 35 seconds. Lucky me I caught it while it was liquid but still in the bowl. Anyway, the frosting tastes good, how can so much sugar NOT taste good, but the consistency is strange. I cut out the cake with my biscuit cutter and made it into a cupcake.

Cute, but still just a boxed cake.

My best project of the day was this FO.

Pattern: Paris Mill by Corrina Ferguson from PicnicKnits
Yarn: Madelinetosh Pashmina, color Mare. I used one skein plus a few yards of another.
Needle: size 8
Mods: The pattern calls for fingering yarn and size 6 needles. Pashmina is sportweight so I went up on the needle size. I did 6 pattern repeats instead of 5. I weighed the yarn at the halfway point and had 60% left, but still ran out. Strange. Guess my math skills are deteriorating.
Comments: The yarn is beyond scrumptious. I loved knitting this side to side shawl and hardly put it down. It has charts that I didn't use. I did not memorize the pattern, but looked at the text while knitting the pattern. It has a nice purl row to coast in . I so love this in a shawl pattern.

I feel very fortunate to have this day off and not have to go out in the bad weather. I managed a few of those pesky little things that had to be done...a bit of laundry, some credentials faxed, etc, but no spinning and no exercise today.
But of course, tomorrow is another day.

Adventures in Paradise

I had a nice trip to the island of Kauai last week. I attended a conference on Infectious Disease put on by UCSF that was quite good. I have many wonderful childhood memories of that island...summer camp at Camp Slogett, visiting uncle and playing in the irrigation ditches, plum picking and camping out with the kids when they were little. Since I was last there, there has been a huge surge in development and and great influx of people from all over the world and lots of changes.

For one thing, there is a lot less glass on Glass Beach. Most of it was just bits of brown and white glass which glistens like sand. The much sought after greens, blues, reds and acquas are getting rare. One of the victims of the world going to plastic.

A must do trip to Hanalei Strings and Things resulted in some yarn acquisition. Apparently I've fallen off my yarn diet. Oh well. The yarn person was not there the two days I was, only the music person but I loved this candy-colored merino silk combo so 3 skeins came home with me. She had some lovely hibiscus-dyed yarn as well, but I have too much sock yarn in stash as it is.

Worth a stop for sure. And very close to Tropical Taco which had nice Ono (like in the fish and the Hawaiian word for tasty) fish sticks and taro fries.

I took my Socks that Rocks Watermelon Tourmaline Medium weight yarn with me but it was very fussy about what it wanted to be. This yarn is becoming a problem!!! I did manage to finish up a truncated version of Wooly Wormhead's Trekking in some handspun. The pattern calls for 18 inches of slouch and I only had 8 inches. It still slouches a bit, and is a beanie with the brim rolled up. Just by chance the only dark blue strip was in the CO edge...and random good thing:)

I finished these socks before the Kauai trip.
Pattern: 3x3 Cable with Moss Stitch by Charlene Schurch from Sensational Knitted Socks
Needles: size 1
Yarn: cabled yarn of handspun with Baruffa Cashwool. Overdyed with Wilton's cake dye in red, purple and blue.
Comments: I ran out on the second sock toe just as I started the decreases. DARN! I frogged back both toes and added another cable repeat, then overdyed some more yarn from my first attempt at spinning cabled yarn. Of course it was impossible to match the colors so the toes are more blue.

Another project finished before the trip
Pattern: Slip-Stitch Cowl by Valerie Zumwalt from Knit Noro: Accessories: 30 Colorful Little Knits
Yarn: Noro Aya and Silk Garden
Mods: This cowl was rather wide for my short neck and is definitely one-sided so I folded it in half and single crocheted the long edge together.

I attempted a Totoro Nook cover with some hand spun. It failed because of the mismatch in the yarn gauges which really accentuated the puckering of my poor two-color knitting technique. I knit it flat as intarsia in the round is still challenging for me, and the seams inside were very thick.

I finally finished my Quilt WIP. I ventured into Kaiumuki Dry Goods and red binding was suggested. I think is really jazzed things up. In the end I quilted in the ditch and left the dark squares empty.

Kauai, The Garden Isle.

Shipwreck Beach

Waimea Canyon

Happy Leap Year!

this moment

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual started by SouleMama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Aya Brioche Scarf

Pattern: Brioche Scarf by Kenny Chua from Knit Noro: Accessories: 30 Colorful Little Knits
Yarn: Noro Aya, Colorway 12
Needles: size 10. The pattern called for a size 9 which may have made the scarf a little less scrunchy.
Comments: This colorway has an odd assortment of colors, including pink (yikes). The second skein had a color that was not even in the first one…so Noro:)
In the end end I was quite happy with the colors

The yarn is very soft against the skin. I encountered only one knot in 3 skeins.

Brioche is a bit boring to knit and combined with the short rows, it was a challenge to fix. I found I could only fix it by tinking back. I'm not sure this needs blocking.

Day 21. My narcissus bloomed! I took a class where I learned to carve off some layers of the bulb and place it in water. The container was set in the sun and the water changed twice a day. After the roots formed I put it in a vase mom has had for a long time for this purpose. The leaves and flower that progressed the fasted where actually on a small side bulb I never carved. I'm not sure I'm ready for craft carving where the growth is coaxed into shapes such as crabs and dragons. I'm just happy to have at least one bloom. Our class was to late to have the flowers on Chinese New Year. Maybe next year!

I seem to be in a quiet time of crafting and hanging out at home. I'm spinning some. I've watched the complete Homeland series, reruns of NCIS, some old movies like Shipping News, and spent way to much time on Ravelry trying to get inspired for my next project. I feel accomplished just because I not only folded my laundry but put it all away. Ah those mundane pleasures. I'm working two days a week which suits me. My office mate has quirky sense of humour and that's what one needs to get through the day, lol.

Life is good:)

Camo Fishy Hat, FO

Pattern: Fish Hat(Dead or Alive) Free from Knitty.com
Needles: Size 7 circs, Size G crochet hook.
Yarn: Stash!! Malabrigo worsted colorway Amazonas, Cascade 220 in jade and, Noro Silk Garden colorway 269
Comments: I've had this pattern in my queue for awhile even though I have no medium people to knit it for. This is such a clever pattern, especially the tail. I did make the dorsal fin a little longer, and enhanced the tail by closing it with two rows of single crochet. I tried both the dead eyes and the alive eyes, and ended up liking the the alive google-y-eyes, the best.













My second attempt at cabling my handspun yarn with Baruffa Cashwool came out much better. I think I will over dye it. The first time around I just added a hint of blue and the purplish pink Cashwool did not appear to take up any dye.

More January Projects

Pattern: Alveare by Wooly Wormhead
Yarn: Madelinetosh worsted, colorway Baltic
Needles: 6 and 7
Comments: This pattern is similar to the Noro hat and is easy and fast to knit. I used worsted weight with the same needles, making the medium and it fits well.

Handspun 2ply, wool and silk. It is quite soft and has a nice sheen. I only had enough to make a short cowl.

Pattern: Fields of Ranunculus.I used a size 10 needle and repeated the lacy rows 6 times.

Handspun, 2 ply, Dyed Cotswold-Romney mix purchased at SAFF. I was going for a bulky-worsted. The fiber was very curly and long and I realize now I could have prepped it some more instead of spinning in the short cuts and neps. No doubt this will be knit into a critter, or maybe a felted bowl. I do love the color and it was a fun experience to spin.
Stash Quilt Table Topper 2
Pattern Idea: Patchwork Heart and Disappearing Nine Patch I got brave enough to try out some free motion quilting in the borders and blocks. I definitely will need more practice.

I am quite inspired by Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project. She makes it look so easy.

More January Projects.

It's been grand having so many Mondays off. There is more time to craft and even cook some. Today chicken was on sale and since the sun forgot to come out, it seemed like some chicken soup was in order.

My attempt at spinning a cabled yarn was not too successful, but I'm trying again with the same 2plies and have knit a sock.

Pattern: Sock It To Me Plain Toe-up Sock, from Elan.com
Needles: Size 1
Mods: I was afraid I would run out of yarn, so I knit anklets. I don't like doing two at once, although I contemplated it. As it turns out I had plenty.
Comments: The heel fit me pretty well compared to some other toe-ups of done, but I wasn't successful in closing up the holes to my liking.










My card-making buddy and I got together for lunch and Valentine Day Cards. I tried a new recipe called Chipolte Tamale Pie. I used hamburger instead of ground turkey and cut the cumin back to 1 tsp. I also used black beans instead of pinto beans. Those little chipotle's are really hot! I will have to use only one if I do it again. Luckily blogless Melody is from the South West and the hotness did not phase her.

I finished my first practice quilt, a table topper. I used straight stitch in the ditch and a decorative quilting stitch. I used the multicolored Isacord thread which doesn't show up as well as embroidery thread because I have a lot of it. I also used a programmed serpentine stitch around the edge. The bright four-patch squares have been in my stash for at least 20 years! To think dresses in that fabric were popular during my high school years. Yikes!

The last project does not have instant results. I carved a narcissus bulb and it will take 20-28 days to bloom, that is if I follow all the directions and it does rot. It was interesting to find out these bulbs come from Fukien, China and take 5 years to mature. The trick is to get them to bloom on Chinese New Year, which will be on the 23rd of January this year, so I'm starting too late:(

Starting Off Random

I got my Serenity out for some spinning. My son was thinking it had become just another decoration. The yarn I spun for Tour de Fleece came out lace weight but was a bit scratchy. I also had quite a bit of two ply lace weight left over from Hanami, so I attempted a cable yarn. It wasn't too successful. I don't think I put enough twist in for the two two-plies to cable together. I have over-dyed it a little blue since taking the picture. It's still quite a thin yarn.

Apparently even bananas are not safe from the advertising world. This was stuck to brother-in-laws banana. The scan code will get you ringtones.

Blogless Melody wore this T-shirt walking yesterday. It's a good reminder to put the would've, could've, should'ves behind and we all pledged to move forward and leave the past behind. It's a little easier as I don't think my memory is a good as it was before.

My mom at 87 has declared she is no longer making Ozoni for New Years. I just happen to love Ozoni and have a mochi machine so have taken up the task. Last year she said the same thing, but in the end did the broth. This year I made everything and it came our pretty good. There is always more mochi then we can eat, so I attempted a Kagami Mochi, Hawaiian style, with a ti leaf, Cutie Clementine and gardenia leaf.

The Nook was an impluse purchase as I passed Barnes and Noble on the way to exchange a shirt. A shopping center can be a dangerous place to visit around the holidays. While searching how to customize the screen saver, I discovered a community of folks who like to hack their Nook. No doubt they also hack their Kindles, phones, game consoles and anything hackable. I tried to think of a good reason for me to hack my Nook, other then just owning one, but the Nook touch has no audio and is black and white, and I bought it to store my knitting patterns and books for travel on it, which requires no hacking.

With my Christmas gift card, I got the book about Woody Crumbo off my wish list and 3 CDs (Sarah Jarocz Song up in Her Head and Follow me down, and Gillian Welch The Harrow and the Harvest).
I love Mr. Crumbo's spirt horse on the book cover.

Have a wonderful New Year!