KnittyOtters Getting to Know You Contest
I’ve a bit of a weakness for otters, so I couldn’t resist KnittyOtter’s Getting to Know You Contest in honor of her 200th post! Congrats!
(For pictures of recent knitting, skip below the questionnaire..)
1.)How long have you been knitting?
Hrm.. really, pr’bly around 8 or 9 years. I learned pr’bly 10-11 years ago but didn’t really start knitting regularly until I went to grad school.
2.) How long have you been knitting socks?
About as long as I’ve been knitting.. pr’bly a year or so less. I was a bit ambitious and decided that I wanted to do my first socks from cotton.. I know better now - both how better to do cotton socks and that wool is generally more forgiving for socks! I also learned *after* making a few pairs where the toes were twisted out of alignment from the heel that I was twisting each and every stitch, which caused the tube of the sock to spiral on itself. Yeah.. not so useful.
3.) What do you do with a problem like Maria?
Let her loose in those hills and lock the doors. She was terribly romantic, and didn’t really strike me as the survivalist type. At most she’d have made it to the first real Alpine snow fall.
4.) What is your all time favorite sock yarn?
I don’t think I have one, which might be sacrilegious. At the moment, I rather like the Trekking that I started working with.. hrm.. several months ago. Should pr’bly get back around to working on those..
5.) Toe Up or Cuff Down?
Either, both? I like the economy of toe up socks, but there are so many patterns that are cuff down that I can’t be bothered to convert, so I’ll just knit them as written.
6.) What’s your favorite color (this week or for all time)? Do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can’t stand?
Blue. (Which brings me back to that lovely Trekking.. really need to pick those up again..) For family or palette or whatnot.. jewel tones, fall colors.. deep, saturated colors. I’m not fond of visually striking combinations in most yarns - the pansy colorway I used for my Jaywalkers still sets my teeth on edge a bit - but I love it in nature. And I really love Ruth’s hand-dyed nature-inspired yarns.. they’re all just so gorgeous!
7.) Do you have a pet(s)?
Yes. One (old) little black dog, Jalapeño, or just Jali for short.
8.) Babies: Oven Roasted or Barbecued?
Grilled, actually, with a little garlic and butter. 
9.) Besides socks what is your favorite type of thing to knit?
Heh. Um, depends on my mood. At the moment, I’ve been stricken with the urge to start sweaters (see below for proof!), but I could just as easily pick up a lace project. *shrug*
10.) What’s your favorite scent?
Mm.. that’s a hard one. There are way too many. Rain. Ocean breezes. Coffee. Campfire smoke. Fajitas. Good wine. Warm skin. Clean sheets dried in the sun. Bacon. Fresh cut grass.
11.) What music are you really loving right now? Like a song or a band?
Went on an Ani kick this weekend while with several friends, but lately I’ve been rather taken with Matt Nathanson, Gaia Consort, and the Paperboys.
12.) How many pairs of socks have you hand knit?
Uh.. Well, I have 8 or 9 in my own sock drawer, and I’ve knit at least that many as gifts, so call it 20ish?
13.) What’s your favorite treat? Salty or Sweet?
Both. There’s a jar of trail mix on my desk that is my ideal snack - peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins, and M&Ms. As a child, I was inordinately fond of ants on a log and one of my favorite oddities is melted caramel between saltine crackers (think s’mores, but.. different).
14.) What was the most interesting thing you smelled yesterday. Not good or bad necessarily, just the thing that stuck out most so that you actually took notice of it.
Hrm. Shampoo. I’m out of my usual brand so used whatever was handy and I noticed it all day because it wasn’t what I’m used to.
15.) Needles - DPN’s: Wooden, metal or plastic?
Wood or bamboo. Metal is too hard on my hands and plastic just feels wrong. I almost exclusively use Harmony needles these days.
16.) What is your favorite sock pattern that you’ve knit? What do you recommend?
I really liked the 9-to-5 socks, but was also taken enough with Baudelaire to knit it twice.
17.) The last Question: If you were stuck on a deserted island who would you want with you, what knitting would you want with you and would you ever want to leave?
Kim & Tori. And maybe a chef or two. And if the island had good grape stock and clean water, we wouldn’t even need to leave to get more wine.
Right then.. since I’m on the topic, thought I’d post a picture to prove that I actually was knitting this weekend past:
(As usual, all photos are clickable thumbnails.)
That is, in fact, the start of a cabled sweater! Yes, it’s mid-July, but I have hopes of completing it in time to be worn this fall. Given my knitting track record of late, that’s being fairly optimistic, but here’s hoping this is just the little shove I need to get back into the swing of things.
And just because I was out in the garden again last evening, I’ll leave you with a few pictures from there:
These are, again, the Hollyhock from the roses back by the garage, but I don’t remember having all four colors in bloom at the same time in the past, so wanted to be sure to capture it.
This is a blue sea.. something. I never remember the right name.. I just call it the Blue Alien Plant because that’s what it looks like. It’s in the front yard, between a couple balloonflowers which should start blooming any day now.
Beautiful (and Busy) Saturday
(All photos are clickable thumbnails.)
The sky has been this amazing blue all day. Seemed like a good evening to take some pictures of the gardens..
A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house and couldn’t come up with the name of this plant. Of course, now that my own are blooming, I remember that they’re Hollyhock. These bloom in the rose bushes by the garage…
..almost done for the year, but still lovely and fragrant. There’s been a slight breeze running all day so the whole yard smells of the roses.
We’ve wanted for awhile to clear out the old raspberry patch and Jack got motivated by our plans to have friends over Friday to get it taken care of. It’s created a really gorgeous spot in the backyard that has shade most of the day.. it’s where we spent a large part of yesterday afternoon with our guests.
And this, the tree behind the apple tree, is apparently a Mulberry Tree. Who knew?! *smile* Jack cleaned up some lower branches on both this and the apple tree and we’ll eventually seed grass in the dirt from the raspberry patch to finish things up.
The phlox are starting to bloom in the side garden, and the lilies - nearly as tall as I am - are out in force.
I love the combination of colors in the side garden, and how they stack up when you look up the walk toward the street.
Unfortunately, that was about all the time I got outside today because we were busy inside painting the dining room. Below is a set of before pictures - not terribly exciting, but nice for comparison:
The second corner was hard to get a shot of with decent light - the dining room, while it gets the most natural light of any room except the bedroom, is on the north side of the house, so the light is all indirect. It seems I only took a couple shots after we’d done the first coat..
.. but got the full set again while the second (and final) coat was drying..
The colors are true (enough) on my monitor, but on the camera’s little screen, some of the pictures looked frighteningly bright orange. In reality, it’s a deepish butterscotch color and neither really too orange nor too brown, nor does it really glow. I was afraid it might look more like mustard once we got it on the walls, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. Once it’s really fully dry (tomorrow) we’ll pull the painter’s tape and put the furniture and such back in, which will be the real test for how we like it. I also have plans to stain the doorway into the laundry room (finally) and if I’m going to have the stain out, I’ll also pr’bly do the two closet doors and the top trim from the closet in the bedroom.
How does your garden grow..?
This will be a photo-intensive post, just as a warning for those who may be on dial-up and/or using an RSS feed reader that doesn’t pull the photos through.
I took advantage of some sunshine and nice weather over the weekend and on Monday to get some photos of the early blossomings in the garden. In no particular order (and, as usual, all photos are clickable thumbnails)..
The apple tree in the side yard:
We removed a large and dying tree from the front boulevard last year and replanted a new baby (maple) tree; around the time we were replanting the new tree, our mail carrier left us some daffodil bulbs, so I decided to plant them around the base of the tree. I’m very happy with that decision!
When we removed the large and unsightly bushes from the front porch, we were worried about losing the shade from the afternoon sun on the front porch. The solution we tried last year was to put some garden boxes on the front edge of the porch and plant morning glories but as we weren’t sure it would work, we didn’t want to invest in new garden boxes. It worked well, though, so dad built us some nice new cedar boxes that we installed just below the front edge of the porch:
They’ve been filled with potting soil and I planted morning glory seeds Tuesday morning; I’ll put up some mesh for the vines to climb on in a few weeks once the plants start coming up.
The front garden is still coming in, so I decided last year it needed a little color while things grew. I really liked the Gerber daisies, so got some more for this year:
I hated our mailbox - it was a metal mailbox that had been painted with the same paint they’d used on the house and jerry-rigged to the porch and just altogether ugly. But I also balked at spending upwards of $50 on a new mailbox. Dad came to my rescue and made this one for me for Christmas:
It’s not secured to the porch yet - still need to screw it down - but I’m trying to decide if we want to wait until we re-paint the porch first.
Every year, there’s a lonely little tulip that pops up in the side garden to provide some early color before the rest of the flowers come in. I keep meaning to get it some company…
Again, we needed some color in the front garden, and I wanted to put one of the bird feeders out there for the songbirds that like to nest in the bush by our front door. Last year, I put a basket of Johnny-Jump-Ups out there, but this year I couldn’t resist these deep purple violas:
We have clover all over in our yard, and I love when it blooms before we cut the grass for the first time, so I snapped a couple pictures before Jack mowed Tuesday:
I’m sure as the spring and summer progresses, there will be more pictures from the gardens, but that’s the first batch!
Campus is also a-bloom and I really loved these two, which are right outside the door to the building my office is in, so snapped a couple quick pictures so I could remember them (and if anyone knows by what name I might find either of these, please chime in (yes, I know the flowers are tulips, but I like the multi-colored petals)!):
Up next (like either later today or tomorrow), I’ll prove that I am still (sometimes) knitting! Watch this space for a sneak preview of Cookie A’s new pattern, Ornette!
Last push..
I harvested pr’bly somewhere around 45 pounds of tomatoes out of the garden again today (5 pounds of tomatoes really isn’t that many.. I discovered this when weighing out tomatoes for a recipe today) and since I wasn’t feeling terribly ambitious, decided that I would make some tomato soup with about a third of them and then just plain sauce/paste with the rest. The soup turned out really nummy, but a touch over-salted; and since it’s creamy tomato soup and I was nervous about canning something with dairy in it, it’s just been frozen for enjoyment in later in the fall and winter. The sauce/paste is pretty.. well, boring. I didn’t spice it at all and I expect we’ll use it to thicken the pasta sauce we made a few weeks ago because it’s a tad on the too-chunky-not-enough-sauce side for our usual tastes. We’ll also use it as a base for pizza sauce and possibly more soup later in the winter, too. And yes, there are still plenty of tomatoes out on the vines so we can still do some just stewed tomatoes in another couple of weeks (though those will most likely all go to the Garden Gurus(tm) since we really don’t tend to have a use for them).
While I was out there, I also checked in on the peppers. We’ve been getting some unseasonably warm weather here this last week, which looks to last at least another week, so I’m hoping we can stave off the first frost until sometime in October to give the peppers enough time to get bigger. The jalapeños are doing just fine, but the rainbow peppers are still a bit teeny and there’s still no noticeable sign of any habaneros.
But despite the weather of late, it’s almost the end of September, which means I should have already started the holiday knitting. Since I haven’t (and since at the moment I can’t because I’m waiting for yarn orders to arrive for at least two planned garments and haven’t decided exactly what another will be) I’ve decided I need to try to push to finish up some loose ends before the end of the month. That means that I plan to finish:
- The Easy Lace Duster (I have both sleeves about 2/3rd finished, so need to finish those and then do the collar and seam it all up); and
- The 9-to-5 socks (these will be easy; I have the heel turned on the second sock *and* a conference this week, so they’ll likely be finished sometime Tuesday at the latest)
Yeah, I know.. not much. But since my knitting mojo has been in a bit of a slump lately, I’m finding that I need to set some goals or I’m afraid the (admittedly modest and completely attainable) holiday knitting goals won’t be met. And there are a couple of project sprinkled in with the holiday knitting (the DNA scarf, another pair of socks) and will likely be a few holida-related projects added, so .. yeah.
But that means there will likely be pictures later this week.
Bit of a chill in the air..
We’ve had some distinctly autumnal weather this week, so it seemed homey and natural to spend today enjoying the bright sunshine through the windows while the rich scents of chopped onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes and spices wafted throughout the house.
(Pictures are clickable thumbnails; click to load bigger versions.)
The end result is 26 pints and a dozen quarts of pasta sauce - most of it with summer squash & mushrooms, though there are some jars that are missing both, and 3 quarts and 6 pints with shitake mushrooms! There’d have been a couple more pints, but we couldn’t resist frying up some Italian sausage and trying it out for lunch with some garlic crescent rolls. MMMMMmmmm! Perfect fortification for more foraging in the garden, where, arriving just a few weeks late..
..our first jalapeños! There are now quite a few out there, as well as some still very small rainbow peppers. The habañeros are flowering, but this late I’m not sure the days are long enough to give them enough sun to mature.
Random Tuesday.
This time of year, I’m lucky I remember my name, much less what day it is. Or will be. Or is supposed to be random.
No pictures, but I yanked about 4 gallon buckets of Big Mama tomatoes out of the garden tonight, and I didn’t even get all the ripe ones. I got all the *really* ripe ones; the rest can wait until this weekend when I’ll have time to make pasta sauce. I didn’t quite have the energy to pull any more of the Sungolds or Yellow Pears, though there are lots of those ripe at the moment, too. Maybe tomorrow.
Speaking of which.. anyone have a *really* good recipe for pasta sauce? We have lots of fresh tomatoes, some fresh Walla Walla sweet onions (though pr’bly not really enough for a large batch of sauce since we used so many in the salsa), and some fresh jalapeños. And maybe some other peppers, but the jalapeños are the only ones that are likely big enough at the moment. Except that they’re not really.. well.. I’m not sure I want *spicy* pasta sauce. *shrug*
I’m knitting in the car most days of our commute. The first 9-to-5 sock is about to start toe-decreases and I’ve got a few inches done on the sleeves of the Easy Lace Jacket. I’ll post pictures when there’s something more exciting to see.
Days’ Labor
In honor of Labor Day, I give you the fruits of the last several days’ labor:
(All pictures are clickable thumbnails; click to load a larger version)
First up, a new porch light complete with motion sensor, and, even more exciting, new exterior outlets on each end of the porch, all compliments of dad!
Next, a fully scraped and sanded porch floor, compliments of me, Jack and dad!
From there, we move on to the self-same porch floor with two new coats of primer (and a dusting of morning glory leaves), compliments of me, mom and Jack! (The porch floor is now all a rather disconcertingly bright white, though it doesn’t appear that way in the photos; I *think* the funky mottled look in the first picture might actually be a reflection of the porch wall off the bright white primer..)
And finally, a little arithmetic..
+ 
= 
*smile*
Yes, those are all tomatoes from my garden - both the counter full of Big Mamas and the bucket full of yellow pears. The peppers were all bought at a farmer’s market - though it does look like my pepper plants are actually going to produce at least some decent jalapeños in the next couple weeks! Our Garden Gurus came out today to help us make and “can” salsa; we ended up with 24 pint jars, 8 each in mild, medium and hot!
Look! A distraction!
Ooh! Looky at what the folks over at Catena Expressions have been up to! I’m so jealous! This is precisely what we want to do over our back patio. Isn’t it divine?
About all that I’ve been up to this week is this:
(Clickable thumbnail; click to make it bigger)
What with the stickiness that’s invaded the midwest this week, that’s about all I could manage to do, and even at that it was only because I could hold it all at arms length and not.have.it.touching.me. But I’m really, really loving spinning this up. I love watching the colors change and how they look on the spindle next to each other.
Saturday in the garden
It’s a beautiful day here in southern MN and after having been away for a week, I decided to take a stroll around the gardens to see how things are doing. Admittedly, it was the appearance of this lovely little blossom that started it all:
(All pictures are clickable thumbnails; click them to load a larger version.)
That’s one of the balloon flowers we planted last month and our Garden Guru(tm) told me when we planted them that they may not actually bloom again this year, but not to worry if they didn’t as long as the plant stayed green. I was quite surprised to see them bloom, therefore, and happily reminded of why I wanted them in the front garden as I truly love the shape and color of these delicate blossoms.
Also in bloom in the front garden are the cosmos:
Such a lovely brightness always brings a smile to my face! I have to admit that I didn’t think they’d be so tall, but I’m glad of them all the same.
And speaking of tall, our biennial hollyhocks are the magenta and the white this year and they seem to be doing just fine back by the garage:
The vegetable garden, of course, is going strong and we’ve already started harvesting some of the onions:
We should be able to start using some of the basil (right middle section above) soon, too, but the peppers (right top section) might have been started too late to actually produce anything this year.
The tomatoes are *huge*! Much larger than I anticipated. And all of them are currently bearing fruit, albeit all still green:
Sungolds (sweet cherry-sized)
Yellow Pear (yellow (obviously) cherry-sized)
Big Mama (large, red, paste tomatoes)
I’ve let the side garden go a bit this summer and haven’t been as good about clearing out the bits that we don’t want to encourage, especially the walnut trees that we can’t quite seem to completely kill, but it’s still in full bloom and doing just fine:
Even the apple trees are happily producing fruit, though I’m still unsure if it’s harvestable given that we don’t do anything to keep worms and bugs and such away from the trees
Small tree in back yard; this is, we think, only the second year this one has produced fruit
Large tree in side yard
I have a goal of actually harvesting apples one of these years and doing at least one pressing of cider to use to make apple wine and/or hard cider. I made a couple gallons last fall with bought cider and would like to do so every year so we always have some in the cellar for those crisp fall evenings.
Across the pond..
Last week I was blessed with the bounty of many friends. I received two gifts from two friends recently returned from England, and another from a dear, dear friend as a half-birthday gift. Apparently, though, I remain so excited over the receipt of these wonderful gifts that my hands shake resulting in blurry photos.. *smile*
From the Wholly Spirits company, Carol brought me a bottle of 12-year old Speyside single malt, called Love Shovel (no I haven’t tried it yet.. I’m saving it for some as-yet-to-be-determined special occasion):
From Time Traveling Traders, Tori got me a pair of sterling silver and amber earrings - the first pair I’ve worn other than stainless steel piercing rings in over seven years:
And from her travels in Wales, Betsy brought me a enameled brooch of the Welsh Red Dragon, in honor of my many “baby dragon”* days this past spring:
I am well and truly blessed, not only by these gifts but also by the presence of these three truly wonderful women in my life. Each of them, in their own way enriches my life beyond words and I am grateful they each choose to call me a friend.
Moving on to less sentimental thoughts, I cast on a toe-up sock on Artisan’s Row with the Yarn Pirate sock I got from my Gnome Swap pal:
At the time I started it, I didn’t have a plan for the leg, but have since decided on the Sprung Socks pattern from the Keyboard Biologist. I’ve started it since this picture, but think I’ll have to rip it back out since I seem to have skipped half a pattern repeat at the very beginning. These will be my plane knitting for my upcoming trip to Long Beach, so expect a finished picture sometime in the next week or so.
Yesterday was our office’s midsummer potluck, which, at the request of one of our student workers, was centered on cheese cakes. I’ve been wanting to try a recipe posted by TwoSheep since it was posted, so this was a perfect opportunity.
It turned out well, if I do say so myself. This is the first cheesecake I’ve ever made that didn’t crack, and it was creamy and smooth without being underdone. I took a picture of it after I unmolded it from the springform, but am too lazy at the moment to go get the camera to upload it, so you’ll have to trust me that it turned out beautifully. I also made a butterscotch sauce to drizzle over it (recipe from The Joy of Cooking) and let folks add that as they wanted. And it went over very well.. even with no fewer than 8(!) cheesecakes, there wasn’t a single piece left at the end of the day!
I was hoping to get some updated pictures of the garden in here, too, but after spending the day at the Hokah Fun Run, it’s about all I have in me to put out the sprinkler to make sure the tomatoes don’t shrivel up and die. Suffice it to say for now that the garden is doing very well, there are tomatoes on the plants (still small-ish and green, but there), the onions are almost ready to harvest, and I finally got around to thinning the carrots, radishes and peppers. I might try to take some pictures tomorrow morning, but given that I have a noon flight, that might not happen. Especially if I don’t actually manage to pack tonight.
* There are times in my job where it is assumed that I have either more authority or greater sway with those who make the Big Decisions(tm) than I do, largely because I report directly to our Provost, who in turn reports directly to our Chancellor. I have repeatedly assured people that even with such a direct reporting line, my influence is small and rather limited, however this doesn’t seem to stop them from assuming otherwise. This results in me often being frustrated because I *can’t* actually effect change on the level that others assume I should, nor can I mete out retribution on any grand scale. One such day, I expressed this feeling by stating that I felt like a baby dragon, because I’m not big enough to breathe fire, so all I can do is stomp around and “rawr”. Betsy decided that was a very apt definition, and hence, “baby dragon” days were born. So it seems I now have two animal “totems”, as it were - monkeys and dragons.
