Now Norma Knits

Indigo Palindrome

So soft.

So pretty.

 

So warm.

Pattern:  Palindrome, with extra cable panel added to width,

and with cables crossed every 8th row instead of every 5th

Yarn:  Swans Island Organic Merino Worsted

Dyed in Natural Indigo

2 full skeins - I literally used every inch. It made a scarf just barely 60 inches long before blocking. After blocking, I know it grew quite a lot to make the perfect-length scarf, in my opinion, but I failed to measure it before I sent it out.

Ravelry details here.

This was pure pleasure to knit, from beginning to end, and it was made for someone very special. 

When I first saw this yarn on my yarn crawl (abbreviated though it was) in New York City a few weeks ago, I just knew it was the perfect yarn for Ally. It's a blue that is gorgeous under anyone's interpretation, but it goes with her eyes. It's from Maine, and so is she. And it's super-soft and warm -- all the best qualities for a scarf for a very special person. I initially had some fears that it might pill a lot -- fingers crossed!

I didn't want to blog about its completion until I knew it was in her hands, and late Friday I got a very happy text message indicating that it had reached its destination. 

Enjoy it, Ally! I certainly enjoyed every aspect of its making -- from the choosing of the yarn to the very fun knitting (again) of the Palindrome (I just love that pattern), and the way it washed up, the way it dried, and the final product. Oy vey, did it ever bleed a lot of blue dye, but I think I got it stabilized finally. It washed out to a very beautiful shade of blue.

Wear it in good health and happiness, my dear!

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The Blue Vintage Cardigan, It Is Begun

If your name is My Mother, please do not read this (or if you know My Mother, please do not tell her about this).  

So this is the Fair Isle sweater kit my mom bought for herself, oh, I don't know, at least 20 -- maybe 25 -- years ago, on a vacation to Nova Scotia. She just happened to mention it to me (I did not know of its existence) last spring. She pulled it out to show me, only to discover she had lost the pattern. 

 

With the help of a couple of readers of this blog, I was able to get hold of not one, but two, copies of the pattern. It has sat while the garden and a few other things have taken up my time and attention, until the other night when I took it out, and without much fanfare at all, just went ahead and cast on the back. 

It's fingering weight Shetland wool, I love the color and LOVE the fabric in all its sturdy, authentic, wonderful slight (slight? ha!) scritchiness. It will be one of my all-time favorite knits, I am sure, if I ever finish it.  

I've got a fondness for Shetland wool garments. I own a dark olive green fine-gauge Shetland wool sweater that I bought on a trip to St. Albans, England, back in '93, that has started to fray a bit around the edges, but they'll be prying that thing from my cold, dying hands, I love it so. It's just a plain ribbed pullover, slightly oversized, but not too bad, and slightly mannish. It was purchased on a day of sightseeing for me that turned cold and sleety, I needed to get warm, and I bought a small man's jumper (pullover sweater) in the shop called Jumpers. It's the perfect tweedy green, and I just adore that thing. 

It's too much to hope that I could get this blue sweater for my mom done by Christmas, but if I could, wouldn't that just be the most marvelous thing ever?  So I shall try.   

Whatever doesn't kill me will make me stronger, right? And I am sorry to you if you were hoping for a holiday or birthday knit from me, as much as I would love to knit for you, because this is going to take up all my knitting time, I am quite sure.  

At least it's only stockinette, and once I get past the ribbing and go all the way up to those huge honkin' size US 4 needles, it should fly.  For the non-knitting readers, that is SARCASM -- these needles are TINY, and the gauge is 7 stitches to the inch.

Some would say that the "most fun" part is done -- the Fair Isle colorwork -- but me, I'm quite happy just to knit stockinette till I turn blue in the face and leave the colorwork to those more adventurous than I.  (EDITED TO ADD:  CindyCindy asked if the Fair Isle portion was already done as a part of the kit, or if my mom knit it. Yes, it was done as part of the kit -- can't tell if it's hand- or machine-knit. And another interesting note, the price tag is still on the kit -- way back a quarter of a century ago, the price was $45 Canadian, marked down to $39 when my mom bought it.)

I'm guessing there will be some chiropractic visits, and perhaps some massages, necessary before this is over.  But here we go.  We're off!

A Long-Overdue Modeling Session For Cookie and Kristen

(Click on the pictures to make them bigger.)

Longtime readers will remember the story, but for the casual reader or the new visitor to this blog, when my friend Kristen spent a year in Moscow doing research for her dissertation, she needed warm hands and I sent her some thrummed mittens that I knit.  She sent me, among other things, this lovely orange Russian yarn.  It is cobweb-weight wool, the kind that is used to knit the famous Orenburg shawls.  Kristen has long since been back to the U.S. now, back in Pittsburgh where first she procrastinated on (but not really), and then she recently obtained, her Ph.D.  

I bought the pattern for the Faux Russian Stole (in the book A Gathering of Lace) years ago at a sheep & wool festival in Upstate New York, but I am just not much of a lace knitter, and it sat undone for years.  So finally this spring I called upon our ever-energetic, ever-talented and giving curmudgeon Cookie in California, who knitted this gorgeous shawl for me in practically no time flat -- and she held the super-skinny yarn TRIPLED in order to do it. 

This blog has brought me no end of wondrously warm friendship stories. I met both of these friends through the blog. Wait, did I say "met"?  Though Cookie has done many, many lovely things for me and we have a very close relationship, we still have not yet met in person.  But now I have this sunshiny orange token of warmth from around the globe.  

I am a rich, rich woman indeed.

Thank you, Cookie and Kristen! 

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A Tangled Russian Yarn About Four Friends

See if you can follow this. I'm kind of fuzzy-brained tonight, so I apologize if it's a bit incoherent.

Back in 2005, my friend Kristen went to Russia for a year to continue her studies in Russian art.  She read in the blog that I had purchased the book A Gathering of Lace and some yarn in order to knit the Faux Russian Stole.  She thought it was a shame that I might be using non-Russian yarn to knit a Russian stole.  She sent me several skeins of authentic Russian yarn with which to knit it. 

Here's a photo of the yarn and the chocolate she sent me way back when:

 

That's gossamer-weight Russian yarn, the kind they use for their lovely Orenburg shawls. 

My inability to knit lace is well established.  I was going to say "legendary," but that would probably be symptomatic of delusions of grandeur, as if anybody really cares or something, so I'll stick with "well established."

So of course the yarn sat languishing in my stash all these years. 

But, as has been well documented in my blog as well as her own and several others, Cookie's ability to knit lace IS legendary.  After she completed the last gorgeous lace thing for me, she said something to the effect of "What do you want next."  The woman is a crazy machine, honestly!  I feel quite certain that if any of us were to meet her in person, we would actually find a robot and not a sentient being, but that is neither here nor there.  She knits lace.  A lot.  And faster than a speeding bullet!  Who am I to argue?  Ya know?  I mean, yeah, I'll take it off her hands -- or her needles, if you will.  I have no qualms.  I feel I'm doing her a service, really:  It gives her something to kvetch about, ya know?  (Stop repeating "delusions of grandeur."  Or was that another voice in my head?)

Anyhoo, Cookie has this intractable and unmitigated love of pink, which I try not to hold against her too much, and I'm not so sure how she feels about orange in general.  I don't think her opinion of orange is so high.  So I pussyfoot around her for a bit and I say, "Would it make you retch too much if you had to knit -- orange?  And lots of it?"  I tried to soften the idea by suggesting that perhaps I will overdye it to become a richer shade of orange or red afterward, not that this would help her gag reflex much during the knitting, but I thought it might palliate the pain.    

Imagine my surprise when she immediately accepted!  She asked what pattern.  I said I already had the pattern -- the Faux Russian Stole -- and I explained to her the provenance of the yarn.  She was all over it. 

Look what arrived in the mail yesterday:

 

Highly orange.  (The color in this photo is quite spot-on accurate) 

The photos below don't show the color well, but show some of the stinkingly gorgeous Russian-style garter lace that that girl (or robot or whatever she is) just whipped right out in no time flat.

Cookie held the yarn TRIPLED -- yes, I said tripled -- to knit this stole.  Can you believe that? I can't.

As for the orange, I am pretty steadfast in my love of orange, but I still felt certain that when I received it I would want to overdye it to tone it down somehow. However, at least in the evening light in which I see it right now, I LOVE it.  I'm wearing it as I type this, and it seems to look very nice against my skin tones. The color makes me happy, as orange often does.  

The fourth friend in this story is Joan.  She did a knitalong with Cookie of the same stole, but hers is in blue.  I really doubt that Cookie needed any help, but I thank you anyway, Joan, for being her knit buddy in this project. 

Saturday Mail Call (sorry for the late post)

This arrived in the mail today:

This is only a sneak preview.  When I have the chance to get out of my gardening clothes, get my legs waxed*, and put on something worthy of this gorgeous wrap, you'll get some photos.  Could you just DIE?!  That Cookie is just mahvelous.  MAHvelous! 

This also came in the mail:

 ..or rather, it came by UPS, but the silly UPS boy put it on the front porch. We usually use the side door, so can often miss things out there.   Therefore, it wasn't until I went out to photograph the pretty new wrap that I stumbled over it and two other packages.  I have no idea, really, how long it's been out there.  So I spent the entire afternoon gardening, and I could have been planting the new asparagus!  But that's OK.  I got a lot of other good stuff done -- emptying a compost bin and relayering another one, hauling bags of composted manure up to the garden spot, topping off a few of the grow beds, and even planted two of them up -- with onion sets, radish seeds, bok choy, and mesclun.   

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*Cookie had a very, very naughty idea of what I should or should not wear to model this wrap.  Yes, it does require waxing.

126. A Series of Non Sequiturs and More Rilona Time Lapse

Starting when I was doing some heavy-weight garden work for several days in a row which took the place of a workout, and followed by the inability to get in because of my schedule, I had not been to the gym for about three weeks until Sunday.  I went in and did a tough workout that day.  I felt strong and well, and I even felt I looked OK in my red top and lycra shorts in the mirror after the layoff, though I could not seem to jump a rope for the life of me.  (WTF?) Anyway, I took it as a sign from above that I shouldn't be jumping rope that day, and I went and did loads of men's pushups (four sets of 12) and lifted heavy weights and did loads of squats and lunges instead. And I was wicked strong and I felt great.

And as I'm writing this, Monday morning, I.am.so.sore.I.can.hardly.move.

So much for the scintillating gym update. That's all there is to say about it.

ALERT!  A SORT-OF RECIPE FOR GINGER-TAMARI-HONEY-GLAZED CHICKEN LEGS IS HIDDEN IN THE TEXT BELOW:

After da gym, I made a marinade of the following:  finely-chopped fresh ginger (about a one-inch piece), finely-chopped garlic (three cloves), tamari sauce, honey, and apple cider vinegar.  Don't ask me the amounts, because I didn't measure.  Just do what feels right.  You can't go wrong with ingredients like that, in my ever-so-humble opinion. 

I marinated cheap (sadly not local, not organic -- the shame) chicken legs in it for about an hour and a half.  Then I plopped the whole thing into a roasting pan and added a little splosh of water.  I also coated some carrots with olive oil at the same time, put them in another dish, and I put all of it in the oven at 375F. 

Then I lost track of time because I was on the phone with my software people making a full clone of my entire captioning setup and related software and files onto a second laptop.  With all the big events coming up, I do NOT NEED a computer crash to bring me down.  This way, if one crashes, assuming I have remembered to put the second one in the trunk of the car, I'll have a (hopefully?) seamless transition. 

Anyway, losing track of the time is an important component of this recipe, apparently, because that was the most delicious and cheap dinner I've had in a while.  The skin practically melted off the chicken, and the marinade became a wonderful glaze, and the roasted carrots were perfect with it. 

So ends the kitchen-and-software update.  Isn't it amazing how I can weave all sorts of non sequiturs into something to fill the blog?  Don't burst my bubble by telling me I'm whacked.

Just to keep the non sequiturs rolling, I'll mention that I need a chiropractic visit.  I'm going to call and make an appointment just after I write this.  (I've got an appointment at 8 p.m.  Busy time of year, what with people raking their lawns and stuff, I guess.)

Here's more Rilona as she shyly reveals her beauty to the world.  I just love the color! If I were a decent photographer, this would be more exciting, I am sure. But you gets what you get.

May 4, 2008, ~2:30 p.m.

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May 5, 2008, 8 a.m.

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Finally!  The Full Monty.  May 5, 2008, 4:40 p.m.

Rilona has been the gift that just hasn't stopped giving.  And this bloom, especially coming when it did, was a lovely reward for my patience*.  Thank you, Sandy!  She's beautiful and much loved.

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*For those just joining us, and/or to enhance the memories of others, Sandy sent me an Amaryllis bulb well over a year ago, but it never bloomed -- only sent up a couple of leaves.  I let the leaves die back and then withheld water and light from it.  (Really, I just shoved it in the corner and forgot about it, and like my usual lackadaisical housekeeping, never threw it away, but don't tell Sandy that.)  Then this spring I looked, and lo and behold, green was peeking out.  The bulb had done what all good bulbs do -- used the green foliage as food, and stored the energy for the next season, when she was then mature enough to bloom.  All things in their time.  And Good Things Come To Those Who are lazy Wait.  Et cetera.

123. Rilona The Tortoise - Time Lapse Photography

The tortoise otherwise known as Rilona the Amaryllis sure is taking her sweet time. 

May 1, 2008, ~4:00 p.m.

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May 2, 2008, ~4:30 p.m.

Could it be we'll see a blossom or two this weekend?  Maybe even today?  The suspense is KILLING ME!

P.S.  The blue cabbage roses' days are numbered. I have said that for about 12 years.  But when it comes to the laborious task of wallpaper removal, I'm the tortoise otherwise known as Norma.

P.P.S.  I really should knit more.  I wore Chamomile on Friday -- the weather was just perfect for it.  I stopped to get coffee in the morning and the two women behind the counter said they loved my sweater. One said, "I love the color of your sweater" at the same time the other one said, "I love your sweater."  That's one specific and one general "I love" with regard to the sweater, people.  I told them I knitted it, to appropriately appreciative oohs and ahhs, including from another woman in line behind me.  It does a soul good. I explained to them that it's linen and silk, and one of them, it turns out, is a knitter.  She said, "I've never knit with linen!"  I told her it was murder on the hands, but it was worth it, and they all agreed. 

Sort of made up for Sicky-Sweet Dimwit from earlier in the week. And it might even get me to knit again.  Whaddaya think?

109. Spoiled

In the mail Thursday was a package from Australia.
Alison has spoiled me again. A couple summers ago she sent me some delectable lemon curd and lavender shortbread (which then got me to make my own, and I can't wait for the lavender to be ready again so I can make some more).

This time it's homemade fresh-fig-and-dark-Belgian-chocolate biscotti.

Delicious! Pardon me while I go put the kettle on.
Thank you, Alison!

62. Could Last Week Have Been Any Better?

Last week will be hard to top.  You all kept me totally high on the comment love, and I had some lovely reunions and encounters with folks, both in real life and virtually. All this for a confirmed people-hater; it's a bit hard to take.

I met up with Ann for coffee on Thursday. If any of you know Ann, you know she's just bubbling over with fun. She had been writing and text messaging me that she "had something to show me."  She seemed just a leetle too enthusiastic, if you know what I mean. I was suspicious she was going to play a practical joke on me (like dropping a package of Horny Goat Weed in my purse like another Ann once did) or show me a new tattoo on an unorthodox place on her body. These were just thoughts that popped into my mind, and they are probably more reflective of me and my thought processes than Ann.  Heh.

So imagine my surprise when she then bowled me over by giving me these gorgeous earrings she made to match my yellow jasper pendant, because she felt bad that both of my last two mini-vacations had fallen through because of the weather.  How fuckin' awesome are people?  And still, I hate them.

So Ann, does this answer your question as to whether they match?  Gorgeous!  Stunning!  Unexpected, thoughtful, and so appreciated. I do often ask myself, "Is this really my life?"

Now here's something else I'm excited about:  (No, it's not the Horny Goat Weed.  Nor is it the banana-buttermilk cake I made yesterday, though they were both quite satisfying.)

Ann has recently completed her Central Park Hoodie, but it's hoodless, with a great collar.  She's got it posted to the blog now; if you clicked on the link in her name above, you might have noticed. And isn't this a wonderful coincidence, because I just happen to have an unfinished CPH on the needles.  Hoodies are cute, but they're not all that practical for us Vermonters, who of necessity wear coats most of the year. The hoods bunch up in the back of the coat and are uncomfortable, not to mention making us look like hunchbacks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you're into that sort of thing, but it's not a look I would choose if given the option.

Anyway, it renders a hoodie, especially a heavy hoodie, all but unwearable except perhaps in the late spring and early fall, in place of a jacket. Now I'm thinking that there was a reason I haven't finished mine -- well, besides my laziness, that is.  I was waiting to make a Central Park NONhoodie!  Yes, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

There.  This post had both knitting and racy content.  Everybody happy?

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ALERT:  This Thursday is my blogiversary and I'm hosting a sweet little giveaway.  This is the time for lurkers to come out of the woodwork.  All you need to do to be entered in the giveaway is to leave a comment that day.  That's the only requirement:  it has to be between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. March 6th.  So be sure to come back Thursday.

61. The Makings of a Damn Fine Sunday

1. Coffee in the pot.

2. A chicken in the oven.

3. Gourmet chocolates that arrived Special Delivery yesterday from a wonderful friend. Thanks, Mel. I've already eaten the Rosemary/Juniper one. I'm still savoring the flavor. Mmmmm-mmmmm good. You know my tastes, man. Spot ON.

4.  An open gym; Queen in the headphones.

5.  A sock waiting to be finished.

6.  A nice new batch of Noro.

Note: In the Blog 365 project, they are giving us some ideas to keep up the momentum, and one is monthly themes.  I kind of like the idea. They've suggested "lists" for the month of March. Lists can be fun.  I won't do a list every day, but you might see quite a few of them here in March.