sock intermission

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I had only a few stitches to knit to finish up these prototypes belonging to the latest sock pattern. They are the Cafe Latte’ variation of the Double Cappuccino Sock pattern (which is part of a larger collection in itself!) If you take a closer look at them (in the cuff area) you’ll notice my experimentation of two ways to work the ribbing, and I still can’t decide which I love best; 2″ of k3, p1 rib before the leg which is k7, p1 –or — the extra grip of 1″ of single rib, then working 1″ of k3, p1 rib, before the leg rib. So I decided to do one of each and give a visual sample so the knitter can better decide. The other option is to work the whole 2″ of cuff in single rib. Anyway, there is something so lovely about this classic country sock variation, with contrasting cuffs, heel, and toe, and I just never tire of making them.

Berroco Ultra Wool Fine is to date my favorite commercial sock yarn, with a very rustic feel, not of merino, which is so beautiful of a wool, for socks can be rather too soft and not as durable.

Pattern : Double Cappuccino

Yarn: Berroco Ultra Wool Fine

Knitting Details: on Ravelry here.

The colors of old rose illustrations.

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I haven’t yet been able to start my colorwork swatch because I haven’t yet been satisfied with the colors from the parcel that came yesterday. The colors from the factory are rarely just right, so again time for a quick over-dye.

I happen to have some natural beige of this yarn, so I overdyed a skein of it with pink, and another skein of it with gold and a pinch of emerald, trying for the color of extra virgin olive oil. Lets see if this will work better, for the palette I’m wanting is rather particular, of the old botanical illustrations. The tarnished brass is the color I’m looking for the lighter leaf tone we’ll see. Right now the skeins are wet, will be much less vivid and a lot lighter when dry.

But, I wasn’t perfectly satisfied with the over-dyed pink, as it was then too similar to the medium pink from the factory yarn, and so I dipped in tea for a bit last night, but rushed it because at the same time I was getting dinner ready. Having dried out on the line by morning, it was back to the kitchen, for it was still was not perfect. So, again early as I was making coffee I was brewing tea for another tea over-dye, to make it still duller & darker than the medium rose factory shade. Over-dying finished, here is the palette I’m going to be working with, four shades of rose, and three shades of leaf..

The main body will be natural white, um, “old paper white” I guess you could call it, as I am striving for a palette something like this late eighteenth century botanical illustration . . .

Now I’m casting on for my colorwork swatch,

and I’ll look forward to posting soon how that is going!

(( See all posts in this series. ))

rose notes . . .

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One of my rose bushes has so many blossoms on it this Spring, heavy cupped peach colored blossoms so fragrant. It is an English climbing rose I planted in the garden for Emma’s fourteenth birthday, when we were living in the tiny house while our house was being rebuilt. I am a real fan of highly fragrant roses, loving particularly the varietals with fruity scent, because when I pick a small jar of them and bring into the house, they just fill the room with a fragrant natural beauty. And this afternoon I made myself a rose “soda” and drank it while calculating notes for a future rose-themed sweater design. After picking a few blossoms it occurred to me to try to steep the petals in sugar syrup, making a rose syrup. And it doesn’t take long at all, really just a few hours, for its now the late afternoon, and I’m enjoying the most unusual refreshing drink, with delicious rose floral notes. Here’s how I made rose syrup, which you can just mix with sparkling water and have a winner drink:

  1. Pluck petals off of a couple of roses, and place fresh petals in a pyrex liquid measure.
  2. Boil up a small amount of simple syrup, equal parts water to sugar, enough to cover the petals.
  3. Pour over petals and let steep for a couple of hours, after which you’ll really begin to taste the rose infusion, which always surprises me.
  4. Pour through fine sieve into a jar or bottle, and store in the fridge (into one of the bottles I put some dried rose petals too)

Bread success!

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I have discovered a new way of baking rustic country loaves, and inspired to study more the method with a long-rise from what I’ve just learned to be called a “biga”. I don’t use starters anymore as I don’t trust my expensive organic flour with, when what I only really want is a fresh, delicate and sweet aroma. Those loaves from my sour-starter were never good, and yet I wanted to persist, and never before recently tried the pre-ferment dough, where one begins the starter the night before using a scant two pinches of yeast, letting slowly rise all during the night, and the next day early one begins in earnest to make the dough, rise, shape and bake! So last night right before cooking dinner, I quickly mixed the few small ingredients with the handle of a spoon, covered with a dish, tucked it away and this morning I did the rest; the proofing and baking. Lacking experience and confidence that comes from baking this bread a hundred times, I can say that this loaf is too pale, definitely not baked dark enough, but next loaves will be!

A crackly crust that is not tough, but delicate, and a lovely fluffy and light interior texture that smells fresh and so sweet.

I’m one of those bread lovers who when presented with a lovely loaf of well-browned rustic loaf with crags and crevasses of crust, I like to just tear off a piece, and experience the texture from how the bread gives way. I based this loaf combining my own bread baking experience with a recipe from a used book I acquired post-wildfire era, called “The Italian Baker” 1985 which I obsessively started reading last weekend, but also I found an excellent no-knead dutch-oven method from youtube which was colossally helpful and very easy to follow.

Baking yeast breads with a pre-ferment biga is going to change my way of baking forever, especially as in recent months I’ve been longing for ritual, and ritual in bread baking is something I feel I’ve been on the path towards for decades, but only now have arrived at my straight and narrow, and this will be hopefully only the first of many more bready posts I predict, for in this loaf I have found real success. And now about twenty hours after making the biga, I’m enjoying my absolute all-time favorite snack — toast with gobs of salted butter, and for a rare treat I just happened to have some strawberry jam I made the other day!

An Irish Woolen Mill

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Sometime ago I posted this excellent Hands Series of a Dublin Wool Mill, but it seemed to have been taken off of youtube so couldn’t be viewed. Now almost three years later, I have found it again, a superbly artful wool spinning mill & weavers from the late 1970’s. Watch and find out what happens when colors layered in to wool sandwiches are fed to the “fear-not machine”, the “scribbler machine”, and old style mill spinning with a “mule”,  then various weaving of the cloth and processing into the Irish Tweed that is world renowned. This episode is absolutely loaded with all sorts of tweedy goodness ~~~ enjoy!

April on the mountain

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April, and it is springtime on the mountain again . . . the flora & fauna waking up and everything in its place. In our garden are loads of apple blossoms this year, and the first buds of the old fashioned climbing roses, and fuzzy pink new leaves of black oaks, everywhere color and wonder.

Oh, and some finished socks I am sending off to Vancouver for a belated birthday gift.  My Un-Spun sock yarn is fabulously rustic; it feels like woolly wool, smells like wool, looks very much like wool, it is soft and springy and completely machine washable.

♥    ♥    ♥

Pattern: is Double Cappuccino in the variation “Americano” , recently added to sock pattern.

Yarn: Un-Spun Peruvian Superwash DK sock yarn , which I made and posted here.

Un-Spun Sock Yarn

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I have been experimenting with creating a unique sock yarn which is swiftly and steadfastly becoming my new favorite. It is made from Peruvian Highland breed of sheep, and what I believe to be Corriedale-Merino cross wool, so the fiber has softness of Merino, but equally has crisp and sturdy properties of Corriedale fleece which was bred from a long-wool breed. Not that I have anything against Merino, it is absolutely fabulous, but it is just so delicate, and for socks I have become disenchanted by its downy structure. I want a sock yarn that is energized and holds shape with wear, sturdy with beautiful rustic appeal, and lastly that is machine washable so that I can make hiking socks for myself by the dozens and even give them as gifts and they will hold up being worn over hill & dale as well as the cycles of wash & dry.  After years of sampling popular sock yarns, I am certain my Un-Spun superwash sock yarn is going to be my go-to yarn, and lately I have been practicing and streamlining my process.

 

Over much experimentation, I’ve pretty much got two weights; a fingering and dk weight.  First, the dk weight, most rustic appeal of all I think, and knits up super fast and even fluffy. . .

As you can see, I’ve got a boot sock on the needles, knit with the dk and I believe it really is the best I could have hoped for.  I seriously am enjoying the robust feel of this crispy, fluffy, soft, and complex yarn.  Why do I go through all this effort?  I suppose the answer is simply because I can make what I can not find.  So presently I am making quite a lot of 100g skeins of the fingering weight, in many colors for when the gift giving comes around, I will have a good stash in my sock yarn drawer. Coming soon — piles of yarns and some finished socks.

Read on for the technical information about UnSpun Sock yarn . . .

Continue reading →

Juno is One!

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Just in from Juno’s favorite thing to do . . .

. . . and that is chasing sticks!

In the ten months we’ve had her, Juno has become a real super-charged herder, a manic tail-chaser, and just an all around positive loving goofy dog with a great attitude (yet very stubborn and misbehaving a lot of the time.)

A few months ago, when Juno was still quite juvenile, Jeff got her DNA tested, as we were sure she had some other breed mixed in, as she is significantly smaller than Emma was, and we were very curious. But when the results came in we were actually very surprised to read “100% German Shepherd, with medium wolfiness.” And since then she has really blossomed into quite a breed specimen! Seriously though, “medium wolfiness” just cracks me up.

Well, happy first birthday Juno!

You can see all Juno posts over the last ten months here.

In another life . . .

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Source of photo: The Painstaking Process of Weaving

In another life I am a weaver. Perhaps I’ll grow up as a child of the earth, tending the plants and bringing water, then later as a young woman I would bear the tension of the backstrap, squaring weft against warp, sweating through long tedious hours of work so honorable, and insulated from the worries and the wars of the world. Or really, just any kind of weaver, anywhere! (( You can see the very same mosi weaving master filmed a little earlier in her life back in this post which is quite a bit more extensive in the technique of making the warp)). But then, it really would take a lifetime to do this, why would I want to be a rank beginner now? Instead, from time to time I’ll just post great weaving films that I find.

See all weaving videos. . .

days of winter

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Lemon loaves, coffee, and longing for something new and exciting, but I stay in the tried and true. I sit and knit and ponder too much, however I do try to break with walks, genuine attempts to better myself. I’m moody a lot these days, but I suspect its the state of the world, not necessarily within myself. Not a drop of rain here since early January (maybe? I can’t remember) and for the whole month of February, its been mostly sunny clear skies, you could say even relatively warm, languishing as the winter days flirt with a sort of springtime mirage, new baby leaves about to burst out of the branches, and the fruit trees are all covered in blossoms, in spite of it being just a bit too early. Where did our winter go, it seemed to have gotten hidden away after the new year. Well, I’m still hopeful, today the temperature dropped considerably, and although the sky is clear blue, there is a chance of rain forecast. I am just bearing down and knitting my way through it all.

Last night just about when I was getting ready to cook dinner, I discovered Jeff nearly forty feet up a fir tree, in his climbing gear, a swashbuckling forest musketeer with a saw in his scabbard, cutting dead limbs away. He’s so hopeful for the trees that are still hanging on, wanting to groom them up and cut away the lifelessness left in the wake of the wildfire. But such a crazy dare-devil I live with, he gets me so freaked out!

But then just to remind me how everything really is quite okay, this afternoon I find Juno napping near a sun beam that was illuminating my spinning wheel . . .

Such a manic tail-chasing puppy, she is just a few weeks from her 1st birthday. I can’t believe it, the time just slips away as if I’ve been in a coma . . . Juno Pup is soon to be One!

♥    ♥    ♥

In closing, I want to share this totally inspiring musician who has a technique I’ve never seen nor heard, what the artist calls “bells harmonic”, isn’t it just enchanting?

Mmm… double cappuccino!

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As I sip an absolutely fantastic yummy afternoon cappuccino latte, I write out this little post, telling you all about how I have for a long time, several years perhaps, wanted to go back into my early pattern archives and overhaul them, one at a time. Well I have just brought up to date Double Cappuccino, a collection of four patterns . . .

So far the ensemble is socks with variations, thumbhole mitts, cowl, and the original legwarmers pattern from over eight years ago, one of my first patterns ever, which came to be when my oldest niece turned fourteen and wanted some legwarmers for her birthday, and so I decided to learn how to knit simple lace. Those original legwarmers were my first, and over the new year I have thought of the many ways I can incorporate this simple ribbed lace patterning, and write into an easy pattern collection. Abelene was hinting all about these “new parts to an old thing” just a few days ago, and although I may add some more parts later, I think for now I’ve finished! However, for me the knitting has only begun, for now I have a heap of samples I would love to make in the territory ahead, for its the variations that I’m wild about, so please come join me here for many more delicious afternoon double cappuccinos, accompanied by some knitting!

New parts to an old thing.

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Hi, its me Abelene.  Jen is making A Frothy Thing, the alpaca thing which I am wearing here (wait, um, but does it look like there’s an ice-cream cone on my head?) Jen says that she is happy to have me fill in for Day 1 of February, because she is ever so lost in a sea of frothy knitting, and needs to be continually throwing stitches instead of writing in her blog. What could ever be so important that she is not blogging? Oh, but she says what she is working on is not a new thing, but new parts to an old thing. Right, I know that makes perfect sense, and it will all come clear very soon, whenever Jen makes it back and I’m in the closet again, talking to the inanimate objects which long for a script to follow as I do.  As for elsewhere and other things . . . it is already mid-winter . . . windy, sunny, and even I (a dress form) am longing for the pitter patter of rain on the roof (and maybe a new dress too).

Ta ta, Abelene

My January Obsession 4

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I was wrong. The Simply Wool in worsted weight which showed up yesterday actually has 4 plies. This only means that, to my relief, I could just divide the plies in half and get a fingering weight, instead of starting with 3 plies and making sport/dk like my experiment from this post. My reflections on this whole re-plying process is that it leaves more than I originally figured to skill and sheer tenacity. That is, after breaking the yarn down to its factory spun single ply, there is some choice in how I ply over again.

The original 4ply constructed worsted weight is definitely “worsted spun” feel; relaxed, unenergized, and even the single plies are worsted spun feel, balanced, but not overly fluffy or sticky and come apart easily when pulled apart in the untwisting process. This time I really tried to put more twist back in the divided balls of 2ply than I felt comfortable with, worrying the whole time that it would be too much twist. Yet, when I scour-washed the final skein, and thwacked it and let it hang dry, it was as if magic made it into a beautifully soft bouncy elastic, almost woolen feel fingering weight yarn.

I am very happy with the result of this Un-Spun experiment, the yarn being what appears to be suitable for colorwork or socks too. And thinking to myself now, after having had a chat with a dear friend this morning, about what if anything, would be our self-proposed superpowers, I think mine is quite possibly resourcefulness, because I feel terrifically resourceful after this latest “un-spun”. If one has a worsted weight skein hanging around, left over from a sweater project or whatever, instead of a left-over skein of no use, it could become a pair of socks, or gloves, or part of a Fair Isle garment.

Above is the before skein – worsted weight – 100g and 218 yards.

Below is the after skein – fingering weight – 100g and theoretic 436 yards.