Day 47, 53 to go: Striped dish cloth

See? She's not old. But our friendship is.

Oooops! No blog post yesterday! Sorry about that! I met up with my oldest friend in the world who was in town for a short time.  She is not all that old, but our friendship is—we go back to 1968—I was 6, she was 7.  We walked to school together every day.  She was my first real friend.  I feel so lucky that we are still friends after all these years.  She is an extraordinary woman. 

After visiting with her, I ran over to Jo-Mar which was having a big sale on fabric.  I came back with some big fat yellow rick-rack for 39 cents a yard and 6 yards of silk at 3 bucks a yard.  I got there just a few minutes before they closed or I might have scored some more odds and ends.

Once I got home, I settled in with my Downton Abbey dvd and started to knit.  The second series  starts next Sunday on PBS and I wanted to refresh my memory of the first season.  My local PBS station was running it on 3 consecutive Sundays, but I missed the middle section when I was at my mom’s where they were a week behind.

Click on the image to see the twist in detail.

So I am all caught up now and have a dish cloth to show for it.  I used both the ombre and twist lava lamp yarn for this one since I didn’t have enough of either one to make a whole dish cloth.  I like this striped effect—using the exact same color schemes together, but contrasting the two styles of yarn.  If I had enough left, I would make another with twist on the edges and a stripe of ombre down the center…

Since I missed a post yesterday, clearly I need to do two projects tomorrow to make up for it.  Happy 2012—we are all well overdue for a good year.

Day 46, 54 to go: Lavender Pizzelles

Click this picture to enlarge the sparkle

That pizzelle iron sat there taunting me.  I know I should have put it away last night.  But I didn’t.  So today, there were lavender lemon pizzelles.  I don’t think I have made these before, but I can assure you I will make them again.   I swirled in some purple food dye to identify this flavor… and sprinkled on some white “sanding sugar” for sparkle and crunch. 

Uh oh.  This could turn into another thing like the pajama bottoms—once I start I can’t stop! Somehow, I don’t feel hopeful about an Etsy shop selling pajamas and pizzelles…

Day 45, 55 to go: Creamsicle Pizzelles

I have been making pizzelles of all kinds since someone gave me her pizzelle iron when I lived in Kansas City.  She had bought it thinking it was a waffle iron.  They make terrible waffles.  Her mistake was my triumph.  Tragically, that pizzelle iron jumped off the top of my refrigerator and did a kind of twist dive to its death earlier this year.

I hadn’t replaced it despite the fact that I had a few visions about new flavors I would have made if I still had an iron.  A dear friend sent me one for Christmas, so I am back in the business of pizzelle creativity. Heaven forbid I make the traditional anise flavored cookies.  Because I'll be making German springerle which are anise cookies, I like to make pizzelles with different flavorings. 

One of my favorites over the years was a pumpkin butter pizzelle.  They are so autumnal.  I made a big batch for my sister’s wedding cookie table. (It’s a Southwestern PA tradition. In addition to wedding cake, a table full of a variety of cookies are required.  It’s kind of a serious full-contact cutthroat sport to see who can have the most and best cookies for the table. Sisters, aunts, grandmothers—all the womenfolk—spend weeks making every cookie they can think of trying to out-do the last wedding they attended. It's a point of pride.)

The pizzelles I tend to make most often are flavored with rose water.  They are so perfect with tea.  I like to tint them pink to delineate them from the other flavors.  Pink pizzelles are just so pretty with their lacey imprints.

Orange-swirled Creamsicle Pizzelles

Today, I christened my new pizzelle iron.  This batch is “creamsicle” flavored because they have orange peel and vanilla flavoring.  I swirled in some orange food coloring to distinguish them from the additional flavors I have planned.  I really like the orange cream flavoring in these.  What could make them better?  In the morning, I just may drizzle some of them with chocolate too.

Stay tuned for further pizzelle experiments.  I realize they are not “authentic” Italian when I flavor them creatively, but as a person of German-Swiss extraction, I don’t feel bound by the official practices of Italy.  (Making springerle, a German cookie, in any other flavor but anise does feel wrong to me.)  Gingerbread pizzelles maybe?

(Supervision of the pizzelle iron christening today was provided by Felicity.)

Day 43, 57 to go: Vegan Chili

Black and Navy beans with tomatoes, onions and spices.

I managed to put the dried beans and water into a crock pot last night so that this morning, the beans were tender and ready to become chili.  It will cook down a bit in the crock pot and then be ready for an assortment of culinary adventures.  I like it over rice with some shredded cheddar or jack sprinkled on.  I like it in a taco salad and I like it over tortilla chips with cheese and assorted nacho toppings. Usually I make a crock of the stuff and freeze portions in zip-locs so that I can just quickly nuke it when I don’t feel like cooking (or when I do feel like chili) Oh, and it can also go on a chili dog, can’t it? (Except that I rarely eat hot dogs—and then only the turkey or chicken kind)

It just happens to be vegan. I don’t eat cows & pigs.  Turkey chili just doesn’t make sense to me.  So my version is just beans, no meat, no animal products whatsoever. (Until I top it with cheese… ) The crock pot really helps it to cook for a long time. 

Fergus Cassidy, Supervisor

Today’s supervision was provided by Fergus.   Felicity is supervising the typing—apparently she wants me to go to sleep now since she has climbed atop my wrist and is holding me down.  I can take the hint, Fifi.  Just let me post this and I promise to turn off the computer and snuggle with you, sweetheart. 

Day 42, 58 to go: Lava Lamp Dish Cloth

Swarming catlings. No need to panic.

I spent the day swarmed by two catlings who were not about to let me out of their sight.  Felicity wouldn’t even let me out of her touch.  I guess they missed me when I was gone. I certainly missed them.  So I decided to indulge them and not do too much running around.  (Going down to get the mail caused a slight panic along with a stern lecture from Fergus.) 

When swarmed by catlings, knit a dish cloth.

I picked up my knitting needles and made this dish cloth.  My mother learned this pattern somewhere.  (Probably church.)  They are made from cotton yarn and I have come to prefer them to any other kind.  The nubby knit is great for scrubbing dishes or wiping countertops.  The yarn is fairly colorfast—it takes quite a few bleachings before it starts to fade, and still retains a good amount of color. She was knitting them for us, especially around Christmas time in red, white and green ombre yarns.   I love them so much,  I made her teach me how to make them.

This yarn colorway is called “Lava Lamp.” I think it is awfully subtle for its name.  I would go with “baby nursery.” I like to try new colorways of this yarn to see how they knit up.  Lava Lamp includes some of my favorite colors and I was dying to see how it came out.   There is another variation on these colors that is knitted together in a “twist.” The yarn is made of a strand of pink, a strand of lime and a strand of robin’s egg blue.  The twists make cute dish cloths.  (I also used a twist in the red striped hat I made for Zoe at Thanksgiving) 

A few years ago when I was unemployed, I knitted a zillion dish cloths for all of my sisters, friends and my mother.  I experimented with making them with several different colors of yarn.  I really liked the ones where I knitted a third of the way in one color, added a stripe of another and returned to the original for the last third.  The pattern is simple and only increases or decreases at the beginning of each row.  I have to pay attention to the first four stitches and then just knit the rest of the row kind of mindlessly.  That’s my kind of knitting.  It allows me the mindspace to either meditate or half-way watch tv.  After the travel and visiting of the last week, the respite of knitting a dish cloth was just what I needed.

I always think of these as dish cloths, but I also think they would make nice wash cloths.  The nubbiness would probably be just rough enough to exfoliate without rubbing skin raw.  I have thought about maybe packaging them with a bar of homemade soap for the Etsy shop.  Wouldn’t that be a nice gift? I guess I could make sets of these dish cloths to go with embroidered dish towels... Hmmmm....

Day 41, 59 to go: Grandma models Rachel’s hat

I am typing this at 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia while waiting for the train that will take me home.  I have an old Dell hand-me-up laptop from my brother for which I am very grateful.  However, for some reason it will not run on its battery.  This made for a very long ride on the Megabus.  The electric outlets on my side of the bus were not working.  When we got to the rest stop, I switched seats to the side that was working.  But the wi-fi kind of went in and out, so I couldn’t write this on the bus as I had planned. (Well, I could have, but it would really have annoyed my seatmate, I think.)

When I got to 30^th Street, I discovered that what I thought would be a half hour wait for my train was actually an hour.  (Darned bi-focals!!! Can’t tell the difference between 19 and 49)  However, when I went up to the track to wait for the train, I discovered an electrical outlet conveniently situated next to a trash can, so I balanced my computer on the trash can, plugged in and here we go. 

The genes are strong with this one.

I made another hat like the “earthtones” one I gave Zoe yesterday.  This is for Mini-Me, Rachel, who loved Zoe’s.  This one appears to be “seatones” --greens & teals.  So here are Zoe and her grandmother modeling the hat in two colorways.  (My mother was the only available model as I was getting ready to leave. Thanks, Mom!) 

This is an example of the difference between the self-striping on Zoe’s hat and the “ombre” on Rachel’s.  The colors fall in an arbitrary way with the ombre.  The band of the hat just happened to be a length that made the same colors fall together in columns as I went around, so it does give a kind of vertical stripe effect as opposed to the self-striping horizontal earthtones. 

Of course the most interesting thing about these pictures is how obvious it is that Zoe got an awful lot of her grandmother’s genes.  Could they have more similar cheekbones, face shapes, eyebrows etc? 

I still have some Christmas presents to work on when I get home, so I don’t know what tomorrow’s crafting will be.  As far as I’m concerned, I have until January 6, Three Kings Day to get the Christmas presents out.  Starting with Borg #7 of 8's birthday last week, we are now in “birthday season” in my family and there will be birthdays just about every other week from now until the first week of July.  Party on dude.

Day 40, 60 to go: Finishing the Hat

The last tendrils of yarn with the finished hat.

I love Sondheim.  I am so excited I got to use the name of a song from Sunday in the Park With George in the title of this post.   Today was actually “Sunday teaching crocheting with Maggie and Lily.”

First, the finished hat. Zoe asked for a hat in earth tones.  I ordered some, but when it came, the yarn designer’s idea of “earth” was coral, shrimp, white and brown.  It was a fairly small skein of yarn and I didn’t have any additional solids to augment it with, so I needed to create a hat that would make the yarn go as far as possible.  This is the finished hat surrounded by the 2 yards of yarn that were left. I can’t imagine coming much closer to designing a hat that would use just the amount of yarn available.

Not a gnome hat

Here is the fabulous gnome-and-hat-loving Zoe modeling said finished hat.  Sadly this shot is a bit washed out, so you can’t really get a sense of the color.  The yarn is called “self-striping.”  This means that they dye several yards of it one color, then the next color for several yards and then the next.  The hat looks like I made it from 4 different yarns, when it was, in fact, just one skein with all of those colors in it. I really like the effect.   Most multi-color yarns are called “ombres” and they have maybe 18 inches or a yard of one color before they switch.  They create a more random color effect.  (You’ll see what I mean in tomorrow’s riding-the-bus hat.)

I worked with Lily (age 5 ½) and Maggie (age 4) on crochet and knit lessons for quite a while.  Lily got the fattest knitting needles I have ever seen for Xmas.  They must be close to an inch in diameter.  I showed her how they worked, but they are really difficult to get the tension right for an experienced knitter.  She gave it a shot, but the two ginormous needles were beyond her (and me.) 

I showed Maggie how to finger-crochet chains.  She was starting to get the hang of it.  I remember doing a lot of that at Grandma’s feet. Sometimes Grandma would even take the really long chains I made and stitch them into a coiled mat I could use as a doll rug.  I was so proud.  Since Lily is intent on learning to crochet, finger-crocheting is Maggie, ever the little sister’s “me too.”

Lily is quite good at chain stitching with the crochet hook.  Using the hook rather than fingers is actually pretty sophisticated.  We worked on some single crochet stitches, but she will need to sit and practice and practice if she wants to learn.  Getting the tension right in the stitches and the feeder hand takes a lot of dexterity.  At 5, she might not quite have the fine motor skills she needs. 

Luckily, I was able to recruit someone to give them follow-up lessons.  Rachel, my Mini-Me niece lives near Lily and Maggie, is a great crocheter (I taught her when she was about 10 and she picked it right up) and most importantly, is a rightie.  She is excited about continuing to coach them.  I think it’s important to let Lily set her own pace so she falls in love with it rather than gets too frustrated by it. 

All the cool kids know how to crochet.

Here is a picture of Maggie, her Mom (Borg #6 of 8) and Lily after the crochet lesson.  On the left, providing an excellent photo bomb is Mini-Me (in case that isn’t immediately obvious) ready to carry on the tradition of crocheting to the rest of her generation.

Rachel loves Zoe’s hat, by the way, so I am making her one in greens and blues.  I also showed her generally how I made it.  She is plotting to have a little crochet circle with her friends to all make hats now.  I think she just needed the concept of how they go together (as opposed to afghans).  I love it. I can’t wait to see what she’ll do.  I gave her a quick Intro-to-Pom-pom-Making tutorial too  Seriously.  I can’t wait to see her hats.