Life's a Stitch

Alaska for a vacation in the sun? We live in Vancouver, home port for summer Alaskan cruises and have hosted many visitors in advance of their ship boarding. Everyone gives themselves the same pep talk – it's not a sun vacation, hopefully there will be enough lifting of the fog to view the glaciers and mountain tops.

We've been twice, another advantage of living in a home port, those last minute and resident-only deals. Six years ago to within a day, cancellations as the result of the SARS scare gave us our first opportunity. Six cool, sunny and one cloudy day produced the perfect trip. So this time, with an even better deal, we gave ourselves the familiar talk. Even if it rains every day, it won't matter as we've already seen the sights, and the price was well worth the opportunity to sit back and relax.

Who'd have thought? The weather was better than in Hawaii. Six days with 18 hours of sunshine. The onboard naturalist said it was the best weather week he had experienced in ten years of cruise ship lecturing. 

Sitka:

Hubbard Glacier:

Ketchikan:

My new happy place:

Seduced by the outcome (refer to last post) of knitting thread with toothpicks I thought I'd push the envelope with thinner yarn and narrower needles yet (see two posts ago). This is Hanami in progress:

Seven 31 row repeats from hell, followed by calm waters, perfect cruise knitting. Reminds me of the Mediterranean/Trans-Atlantic voyage of my not so distant past. Six days of 100 kilometers per hour of sustained oceanic winds (the captain gently referring to them as "breezes"), followed by five days of absolute calm, even at 1200 miles in the middle of the Atlantic. At its worst, it sounded like we were on a freight train, hitting an occasional wall. As the ship would shake in an unpredictable shudder, one travelling companion would reassure me with these words: "speed bump."

I view my travel opportunities as I do my yarn purchases – better get in what I can now, because there's no way I'll be able to afford them in retirement. It's off to Alaska we go, with my knitting buddy, Blogless Marsha, a reunion of our Alaska cruise six years ago to within a day.  See you in a week.

That's how long it took me to finish my Print O'the Wave shawl:

The details:

Pattern: Print O'the Wave by Eunny Jang, a free pattern. I added an extra repeat to the width, but it  blocked so well I wouldn't have needed to go through the extra effort. I omitted the center graft by completing one center panel. It looks just fine.

Yarn: Handmaiden Sea Silk  (mostly silk, some tencel and a teensy weensy bit of seaweed). Beautiful drape, sheen and stitch definition, thankfully it smells neither of silk nor seaweed. My only complaint surrounds the colour. I ordered three skeins from Ram Wools on final sale. They sent me two skeins of one dyelot (wheaten in tone) and one in the ivory that I was expecting. I alternated one of each dyelot for the main body, and used the remaining wheaty one for the edge.

Needles: I found it worked best with one Bryspun and one Boye aluminum needle, both US size 4. It was too sticky with two Bryspuns, and too slippy with two Boyes. And forget the Addi's or Knit Pick's Options – the stitches jumped off those shiny beasts.

This was knit to wear for our 25th anniversary in 2007. It wasn't finished in time and I thought it would look strange to wear it with the needles hanging off. It does give me faith that I can rescue a couple of other projects from knitting limbo. Or would that be purgatory?

Now, about the couple of non-knitters who commented on my lovely table cloth…

When I was a little kid I used to wonder how the medicine knew where to go to cure various afflictions. Now I know it's more a matter of marketing than science. Headache formula pain reliever is the same compound as arthritis formula, either one would do for either pain. It all works the same.

But how about shaving cream for women? The kind that used to be for your armpits and legs, it now recognizes another part of your body. The can states that it has "bikini protection." It contains "calming chamomile and soothing cucumber with silk to provide protection and moisturization especially in your bikini area." What a crock. I have an image of the focus group that concocted that one. Questions like, "When thinking of your bikini area, what calming and soothing words come to mind?" Silk. Chamomile. Cucumber? OK.

One of those words comes to mind, not for my bikini area, but for soothing my fried brain. Silk, on sale:

 

Aaaahhhhhhh.

Get it? Another Clap pun. You won't have to put up with many more because this time the Clap is done:

 

The particulars:

Pattern: Clapotis, abbreviated to make a scarf:

• the setup section
• two full repeats of section two, plus the required partial amount of the final increase row.
• 17 repeats of section three – this sounds longer than the original shawl, but it's not, as you are losing length by not doing the full eight repeats of the increase and decrease sections.
• two repeats plus the final ten rows of the decrease section #4
• section five

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, colourway #279, 140 gms (almost three skeins). There was at least one knot per skein, but in the 13 skeins I used for my Lady Eleanor and this project, only a few occasions where the yarn disintegrated to fluffy nothingness.

I have a knitting wish – to go to the Noro factory to watch their manufacturing process so I may better understand the product's limitations. Someone told be their quality control allows for up to four knots per skein. I don't so much have a problem with the knots, it's the abrupt colour changes at the joining points. Sometimes the skein even reverses colour order. Now that drives me crazy.

It doesn't stop me from using the stuff, I'm a glutton for Silk Garden punishment having knit 42 skeins of it in one form or another. That's just over three miles of Silk Garden. I would have expected it to be more. It sounds better in Canadian – just over five kilometers. And there are another 19 skeins stashed in my future 🙂

A cheesy introduction to – you guessed it – another version of Clapoitis, the mini version. This will be #4 made from my leftover Lady Eleanor silk Garden, colourway 279. I think this is a step in the right direction for Noro, having concentrated too heavily on the darks:

It could have been worse. Remember the song Getting to Know You, from the King and I? " Getting to know you, getting to know all about you… putting it my way but nicely, you are precisely, my clap-o-tis."

Or how about Oliver's  Consider Yourself,  "Nobody tries to be la-di-da and uppity, there's a clap-o-tis for all." This is what you get when you cross a musical theater lover with knitting.

Good thing I'm not a pre-school teacher, cause then it might be, "If you're happy and you know it clap your tee!"

Thank you for the positive thoughts and the comments on the comfort food. Some of you guessed correctly – they are Golabki, the cabbage rolls of my half Polish heritage. I might have thrown you off because when I have more stuffing than cabbage, I make the rest into meatballs and cook them all together. The recipe is at the end of the post.

Really, they aren't as finicky as they sound:

• You don't have to stick to the recipe – the sauce is fine substituting tomato sauce for the soup, broth and tomato juice. Just make sure you add the catsup.
• Alternatively, you can cook them in a roasting pan covered with foil.
• Skip the rolling altogether – assemble it lasagna style, using cabbage leaves like you would the noodles.

Mother's Day was quiet here. Bryant, now 19, legal in BC has given into the tattoo urge. I've written about his possible design choices in the past. He chose an illustration by Clement Hurd, from Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny, the book we read together when he was little. We used to turn it into a game. I accept that this tattoo is the closest thing to "Mom" he could have chosen, not that I would have encouraged any of them. At least it's hidden below his armpit.Oh the things our kids do, eh?

Here's that recipe:

Li’s Cabbage Rolls

 Cabbage:

1 large
green cabbage – Cut with sharp knife around the core. You don’t need to remove
the core, just score it deep into the cabbage. Fill a deep pan a quarter full
with water. Place cabbage in water, cover, and heat until boiling. Reduce heat
to simmer and remove leaves as they become tender enough to remove. I usually
take off 2 or 3 at a time and simmer, covered, some more. Cut tough spine from
each leaf.

 Rice: Cook 1
cup dry brown rice. Cool.

 Stuffing:

Cooked
rice (above)

1½ lbs
ground meat (I use a mixture of two of the following: turkey, chicken, pork and
beef. Believe it or not, a child in my son’s class did a science fair project
on the leanness of ground meat and found pork the most lean).

½ finely
chopped onion

2 cloves
crushed garlic

¼ C
Worcestershire sauce

1 t
celery salt or mixture of salt and celery seed

½ t
pepper

¼ C
catsup

 Sauce:

1 C beef
broth 

1 can
undiluted tomato soup

1 C
tomato juice or sauce

½ C
catsup

1½ t
dried dill

 Procedure:

Mix all
sauce ingredients together. Cover bottom of Dutch oven with a coating of sauce.

Mix all
stuffing ingredients. For each cabbage roll I use one large leaf, a medium leaf
and a half or two small leafs. Lay out the leaf and put enough filling to fill
the centre, while leaving enough on the sides to overlap the mixture. Cover the
mixture with the top and bottom of the leaf and then the sides and place seam
side down in the pot. When the first layer of rolls covers the bottom of the
pot, pour on more of the sauce. Continue with the rest of the rolls and finish
with the remaining sauce. If I have leftover stuffing I make them into
meatballs and cook along with the cabbage rolls. Cover and bake at 375 degrees
for 75 minutes. 

Poor Ms.Grace had her eyelid surgery, I've never heard this tough little Scottswoman cry until she was reduced to wearing a cone. She whimpered for a solid hour until she found an acceptable sleeping position.

This has been a hell of a week with 13 hour days at work (major proposal writing deadlines), Gracee's operation and no time for knitting.

 

I drowned my sorrows in cooking:

 

and a yarn order from Webs.

Permit me some whine.

Last week was Earth Day and Starbucks was right in there celebrating. They advertised free brewed coffee as long as you brought in your reusable cup. So I did, ordering a decaf. "No," the barrista said,"we don't brew decaf after noon." I don't get that. If there is one place in the world where you'd expect a good cup of decaf at any time of day, wouldn't it be Starbuck's?

Unreasonable, but not as unreasonable as they were to another woman in the store. She asked for her free coffee in a disposable cup, which she uses over and over again. Nope, no coffee for you. That cup could be thrown away and is not technically reusable. It sounds like a ploy to sell $30 mugs.

Then I went on the US Social Security website to determine the US portion of my someday retirement benefits. They wanted to know how many times I was married and asked me to enter the birthdate of each spouse. Up to ten are permitted. What happens after ten?

The next step is the grid where you enter your years of earnings. The instructions read:
"if you were born after 1951, any earnings you enter before your year of birth will be ignored."  No fair,  people born before 1951 can claim earnings prior to their birth!?

And in the annals of strange customer service is the e-mail I received at work from one broker we approached when seeking bids for employee health and dental insurance. When we chose to stay with our current company he was incensed, and let me know how much of his time I wasted. Maybe sales is the wrong job for him.

Quick updates:

The parents won – the dog's name is Dexter

The transition to
Mac is continuing. I keep a list of questions and barrage the boy every
time he enters the house. There was no setup, just took it out of the
box and used it. That teensy booklet is the entire Macmanual.

As the result of his retinal detachment issues, C is on the urgent list for further surgery. His vision went from -3.25 to -9.5 in six weeks. He should have some improvement afterwards,as the original procedure has worsened a cataract. He's having an eye ultrasound today. Ick.

M is still in Australia and has made the decision to move back to Calgary upon her return.

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As a kid I loved the Heigh Ho song. I couldn't wait to go off to work. Thirty some years into this career, I still like work, but some of these knitting projects seem to go on forever. I'm all Heigh Ho in the beginning but it seems to take forever to get home from work. Not this FO – 26 days start to finish:

Details:

Pattern: Lady Eleanor (the 2nd)

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, 10 skeins on US size 10.5 needles 

Pattern adjustments: A repeat or two longer with shorter fringe.

Thoughts: The most addicting pattern I know. I stopped though, after 10 skeins so I could have enough yarn left over to make a scarf. Any suggestions for three skeins of Silk Garden all in the same colourway? I'm looking for something open and drapey.