Life's a Stitch

It's a La Nina year weatherwise. It means more rain but spectacular quickly changing skies. We call them Steven Spielberg skies after the beginning of the movie, ET, where the clouds moved quickly overhead. His was a special effect. Ours are real.

From our street on Wednesday, I took these pictures, all within about two minutes, turning and snapping in three directions. No cropping, no editing at all:

And when La Nina blows the clouds away, this is what we see five blocks from here. Remember Vancouver's Lions? They were covered in fog in a previous post.

Here they are, up close and personal:

After living here for 26 years I think I'm still in love. It's got to be love to say that in a La Nina year.

First things first. A couple of you asked for a picture of a banana slug and as they are colourful creatures they will be included in this post:

Yukk, eh?

And considering the comments from my Noro review, many of us are in it for the colour. We're willing to sacrifice a bit of softness, putting up with straw and fluff, all for the sake of a colourfest. Here's my colourfest du jour:

This pattern is designed for use with Wollmeise, but have never been lucky enough to find yarn in stock on their website. I covet Wollmeise, but not enough to succomb to the sin of excessive spending or stoop to nasty e-bay sniping. A survey of the stash produced just enough Mountain Colours Barefoot in two different dyelots:

Reminds me of our sunset from the other night:

Gracee likes colour, too:

Only she likes to chew it.

Do you remember that line? How about the Ministry of Silly Walks? I used to have to have TV to watch Monty Python, but now, TV-less me, can catch glimpses of those classic scenes on Youtube without commercials. But this post is different because I have been heavily into the knitting and yarn content, and for the present post, will take a break. 

When I grew up in NY, near the Big Apple, we would say we were going "into the city." Here in North Vancouver we say we are going "over town." When we visit our apartment in Washington, we refer to it as going "to the States." But my favourite directional euphemism refers to our weekend hiking activity, going "up the mountain." 

Going up the mountain, into our rain forest, I wrote about that recently. I like to go because for me it means Geocaching. C comes along, not totally enamoured with the caching, he calls it hiking. Our forays into the forest mean encounters with interesting creatures like the one eyed rock giant:

And fearsome drooling wood beasts:

I'll spare you the photos of actual foot long banana slugs. It's not too much of an exaggeration. 

I especially love my rain forest in oxymoronic dry weather:

And tonight, driving by our old neighbourhood, also close to the rainforest, I was wishing I had a camera. Sitting on a fence right in front of us was a huge Barred Owl.  Although I've heard their "Who cooks the food" call, it was the first time I'd ever seen one in the wild. 

Couldn't sleep last night. So I got up at 4:00a.m. and did some math. It's about Noro Silk Garden.

Problem: If one knitter, myself, knit eleven projects out of said yarn, 42 skeins of conventional Silk Garden and eight of Silk Garden Sock yarn, how many silken gardeny miles were knit? 

Answer: 4.1 miles or 6.6 kilometers = 7217 yards or 6600 meters. 

And I have 26 skeins left in my stash. We're not going to do a cost analysis because most were bought on sale or on ebay, but still, it's frightening to even think about it.

Now, with all this Noro experience, I thought I'd write a review of sorts. The pros and cons of Noro Silk Garden:

Pros: 

• A multitude of colours – it's like knitting with a rainbow. Particularly beautiful for entrelac, diagonal designs and modular techniques. Just look at that photo above. Remember my first oversized Lady Eleanor AKA my office blankie? Those colours make my knitting glands salivate. Here's another one.  And another, in the same colours.
• Can often be found on sale.
• It scores high on the drape factor.

Cons:

• Knots – up to four per skein. I hear that that's the acceptable limit according to their quality control standards. However, along with the knots come abrupt colour changes sometimes necessitating adjustments to the order of colours being used, requiring the joining of a different skein and leaving more ends to weave that anticipated.
• Detritus – straw, twigs, bits of fluff.
• Disintegrating yarn – occasional sections of unspun fluff that pulls apart with the tiniest of tugs.
• Thick and thin qualities – most people really hate this, but I don't mind the varied texture it produces.
• The finer the yarn, the rougher the feel. Regular Silk Garden is softer than the sock yarn. It does soften with age and washing.

I look at these lists and wonder why anyone would bother to knit with it.  What can I say? Its beauty trumps its shortcomings. And writing this was an alternative to counting sheep. Good night.

That last post seemed to leave you relatively speechless. Is it the crocheting? Or did I offend you with my boy comment from the previous post? Is it those time suckers, AKA Ravelry or Facebook? Maybe I haven't been a good commenter myself.  Really though, it looks pretty slow in blogland, even the Harlot only had 54 comments so far today. I hope you are spending your time in fruitful knitting.

Back to the crocheting. I'm finding the knitting hard on my still braced (from its Hana, Hawaii hiking accident) wrist, so I'll warn you in advance. There's another Crescent Moon Scarf in the works. A blue moon.

And regarding the boy comment, Chuck and I have come up with our own version. We've known each other now for over 30 years. Recently we were asked about an event of our long ago and far away past. He started the story and I filled in the blanks. We agreed the details were pretty accurate. Relating it to the boy thing, our version is: one spouse – half a memory, two spouses – one memory. Works for us.

True to form, when I find a pattern I like, I repeat it. 

This was the first one, no so long ago. The current one is done in the same yarn, just a different colour.

Pattern: Cresent Moon Shawl from Easy Crochet, Complete in Three Days (In your dreams Three Days).

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock Yarn, colourway 252, 185 grams (just under two skeins). 

Hooks: Scarf – 4.0mm Edging: 3.0mm

Modifications: Due to Noro's thick and thin qualities, I adjusted the puff stitches according to yarn thickness, anywhere from three to five pull-throughs of the yarn. 

Thoughts: It is impossible to knit with Noro yarns and not have to adjust the colour sequence. I tell myself I won't give in, but sometimes it's necessary whether due to knots causing sudden colour changes or the way the colours pool in a particular project. This time I cut out two sequences of the bright green, leaving me short for the picot edge. An old Noro Silk Garden scrap came to my rescue.

(Note to Katy and anyone else who has requested my Herringbone Rib Scarf pattern, but hasn't received one: Thanks for your your pattern request, but your comment, submitted through your Typepad profile, doesn't contain an e-mail address. If you leave another comment outside your profile, it will ask for an e-mail address that won't be published and I'll get it to you right away.)

I heard something on a news report that cracked me up. Even the males in my family understood. It's in the spirit of "boys will be boys." I know it's stereotyping, and it's politically incorrect to do so, but please indulge me this once. I am the mother of a boy. I am sure there are other mothers of males reading this, who may think their little angels are incapable of certain boy antics. I might have been there once. Believe me, no matter how perfect your child's behaviour now, put this one in your pocket, someday you'll be able to use it. In high school, college perhaps, sometime when collective male hormones take over for the brain. 

So here's the story. Recently, in a nearby town, two young men were arrested for shooting at the window of passing cars with an air gun. A car window broke, thankfully nobody was hurt, the two were arrested, the cop was interviewed. It was radio, but I swear I could hear him shaking his head when he uttered the quote. He didn't say "Stupid kids, what were they thinking," he said "One boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain." 

There was silence in the newsroom. A pregnant pause, followed by the soft chuckles of two staff people in the background. One woman broke the silence "I get it," she said, "I have boys."

The finished products – one skein of Katia Ondas produced two scarves from different patterns, each about 64" in length:

Scarf #1 with four stitches cast on:

Scarf #2, done lengthwise:

Worked lengthwise for a slightly less flouncy look. Cast on 86 stitches, worked three rows, bound off on the fourth row using the larger needle. The bound off seam does show a bit, but not enough to be bothersome. IMPORTANT: rewind this yarn prior to using. There was an ugly midskein join to work around. 

Notice the difference in the looks of the two? Each one took 16.5 yards (1/2 skein) of Ondas, which is a tape yarn that you knit along the edge, unfurling the pre-made ruffling fabric as you go. Knitting magic for $12.95 (Cdn) for two.

Believe it or not, there is still time to knit a gift. You could be reading this on Christmas Eve and if you had the yarn, there would still be time. Let me introduce you to a little knitting miracle:

Technically one stitch per inch, four stitches per row, but knits up into a wider warmer scarf of ruffly goodness and looks like it's made out of laceweight yarn. You still have time.

There are a few versions of this yarn, including one from Lion Brand, called Ruffles, of course. My skein of Ondas should produce two scarves… by Christmas!

This year I'm not going to post a picture of our Christmas tree as it is the same as the one in last year's post about gift giving – our beloved little ceramic tree. We've decided, yet again, to maintain our new tradition of a simplified holiday with the teensy tree and our nativity. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe that's why I have time. Works for me.

To all of you, if you celebrate the event or not, wishing you a Very Merry Christmastime.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we say, we don't tan, we rust. My retort: At least we don't have to shovel it. And that's why we moved here. I've probably mentioned before, that when we moved to Canada from Omaha some 26 years ago, we were asked why we were moving to such a cold place. The answer included a meteorological explanation of the Japanese currents and the mild weather.

It took me years to get used to the rain, but now I can't complain. If it snows, we park close to the end of the driveway, wait a day or two, and poof! The melting snow creeps backward and runs down the street. There has only been one exception that I can remember to this rule.

This past weekend we went to Harrison Hot Springs for C's company Christmas party. It's a celebration par excellence, located an hour and a half from home.  In old school style, but in the modern day interest of keeping employees safe, they provide a seafood and prime rib buffet, all you can drink for what feels like the length of an average work day, a brekkie buffet, and to keep us off the streets, the hotel room in between. 

Heavy rainfall warnings were in effect for the entire weekend. We arrived at nightfall on Friday. The next morning's sunrise produced an eerie blue cast to the lake:

The rain held off long enough for us to explore the nearby Agassiz pioneer cemetery:

The clouds lifted revealing the snowline:

It brought back memories of when C & I first saw such a defined snow line one October. We went up the mountain to explore, only to discover that dusting was actually two feet of snow.

The next day the lake was socked in and soggy:

Driving home, past one of BC's wintering grounds for Bald Eagles, even the birds were soaked:

But like I said, it might be grey, it may be wet, but we don't have to shovel it. And it's a perfect climate for knitting.