My Adventures in Knitting, truly my Yarn-escape!

Monday, June 6, 2016

Monday Moments


Back to my old life in Colorado, trying to adjust, part of my heart is still in The Adirondacks, I can't wait to get back.


 The flowers were planted.  My Elisabeth doing a lot of the work and finishing it this week.  It'll look great when we get back.


TGV Shawl in progress (pattern- Friday Fantasy Knits- Dreaming of Shawlettes)

 I had a few moments to chill and relax in the cabin before my Dad arrived.  No one would know he's 84, he is constantly in motion and has "plans" for us all day long.  All week.  So I was a good sport and followed: shopping, going to the cemetery to see where my Mom and myself (someday) will be planted.  It was strangely comforting- high up on a sloping meadow beside my grandparents with the best view of the valley.  The ground is carpeted with thyme and smells lovely as you walk.  Also we visited the town dump which is just beyond and has also the best view of the valley!  No truly it does- so you're all good if you die or you need to dump your trash!.


I could of used some days (besides one) relaxing. Sigh.


My daughter graduated and I spent the night before in her room adjusting her dress to go underneath while she celebrated with her friends (shades of the past).  She's a very good seamstress having gotten a job in the Costume Department in the Theater as a Freshman and then creating a Minor out of it.  She combined that with restoration and did a senior project around antique clothing.  She's gone way beyond Mom, but she ran out of time to do her dress, making it fit better, and I shooed her off and stayed and worked on it instead of returning back to the family cabin.  It did fit perfectly.


Elisabeth- The long haired red head in the middle.

So I'm home where I'm my own master and sorting through my stuff to go back in the closet and what I need for next month to go to my Mom's memorial.  The family was kind to buy tickets for my youngest daughter Maggie and I to go.  And also we'll be there for the family camping trip up the Ausable Lakes to a Turn-of -the-Century lodge where there is no electricity (propane gas powered kitchen) and there is running water and a bath house.  We will use my Great Grandfather's canoe and my grandfather's guide boat to paddle up the lakes to get there.  All the cousins, young and old will be there, including my son down from Maine.  I've only been able to go a couple of times since I live in Colorado.


I'm working on two TGV shawls now, too curious to see how it would work up in a thin fingering yarn a friend gave to me.  More to follow tomorrow. 


And I'm trying to re-group blog-wise.  I find I'm always wordy and I wish I could streamline and simplify.  So this week I'll try to work against my natural inclination to be verbose and simplify. Yes a very good word- Simple. 


Also I need to get up and doing my blog earlier in the morning.  I have the advantage of the time change from coming back from the East.  Getting up earlier was easy since I got back, but and this is a big BUT,  I have a young teenage daughter that I knew would get out of hand staying up late with just a Dad (who goes to bed early).  He said he tried, but it seems to take me staying up and making sure she goes to bed.  So I was up to Midnight trying to corral a teenager, which seems sometimes like herding cats!  I eventually unplugged the internet.  Sigh.  Simply going to bed is easier said than done.  Last night it was 1 AM something and I wake up and she's still awake reading.  Yes, I am nice...."Please read for a few more moments and then go to bed"  I say.  I went to sleep, hoping she'd go to bed.  

Maggie's Cat

If you want to read more about the books I'm reading and my summer book recommendations check out my Musing Mondays blog today on great adventures to read.


Musing Mondays


Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:
            
- I'm currently reading…
- Up next I think I’ll read…
- I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
- I'm super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
- I'm really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
- I can’t wait to get a copy of…
- I wish I could read ___, but…
- I blogged about ____ this past week…
This week's random question: What is your most favorite book from your childhood?
PLEASE add your book comments at Books and a Beat, Thanks!


I'm currently reading… Back from a few weeks in The Adirondack Mountains (sigh, I want to go back and I will in three weeks).  While there I picked up a book from the shelves of the cabin that I had given over a decade ago to either my brother or father.  Looking forlorn it has found its way home for awhile and I'll bring it back when I go back for my mother's memorial and two more weeks of vacation. 





   
  Wild Stories: The Best of Men's Journal- 2003.  The stories are riveting about travel, close calls, facing grizzlies, fishing exploits and men's diverse adventures.  I'm loving it (except for the one about filming porn which I gladly skipped).  I find it totally unfair that "Men's Journal" has all the smart well written literature and how-to peices and women's magazines seem so light headed (unless you're a makeup queen).  And why do women's magazines have pictures of sexy women (hunh ?) and men's magazine sexy guys, not that I need to stare at sexy guys (my husband might object).  But I really don't get it.  I'm tempted to buy the Men's Journal, of course I could get my husband a subscription.  Once I did get him a copy and I loved the magazine- it was filled with how to make a compost heap and they had awesome adventure stories.  



One summer I read all the books I could grab of adventurous climbing in the Himalayas.  I would recommend that for an instant cold fix in a hot summer.  My favorite was "No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks" by Ed Viesturs about climbing 8,000 meter mountains.  Ed Viesturs is a climber who was supposed to be a part of the ill-fated climb up Everest that lost so many and he at the time was asked to film the "Everest" IMAX Documentary so he was at base camp instead.  


Looking through binoculars at the expedition high above filled with many of his friends and experts he remarked that he could see they were going beyond a point where all expert climbers agree if it's past a particular time you turn around.  Viesturs is a very cautious climber and you have got to wonder if the disaster would not of played out if he was still apart of it.  The classic recounting of that Everest disaster is in "Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster" – October 19, 1999 by Jon Krakauer




 A summer reading chilly books was loads of fun, it actually mentally made you shiver as you are with the climbers even if the temps were high!




Also check out "Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival" by Joe Simpson it is a true, riveting account of a man's survival from a climbing fall (his climbing partner leaving him for dead on the mountain after cutting him loose) and he literally crawled off a mountain in South America. Heroic.







     
     To answer the random question, What is your most favorite book from your childhood?, I'd say Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 1877.



The Tail end of the story-




Friday, June 3, 2016

Friday Fantasy Knits

Back from the woods and I'm dreaming more that I wish I was back still in the woods.


      I do go back in less than a month for my Mom's Memorial in the Adirondacks.


    I'm singing at the memorial and I need to practice this month the song I started playing on my mountain dulcimer when I found out my Mom had Alzheimer's and was dying several years ago.   It's "Into the West" from "Lord of the Rings" and probably a seemingly odd choice for me.  I'm a Believer, but most there at the Memorial are not.



    So next month I sing a song that sings of falling asleep and one day my Mom being in my arms again.  For some even the concept that there is another day after we die and we're reunited is unbelievable.  So hopefully this will lift people's hearts as much as possible.  It does mine.  Listen to the song- "Into the West".

  
 
My daughter got the flower boxes planted this week, I did the tubs in the back, all like my Mom use to do.




  Forgive me if I skimp on the knitting news today.  Travel yesterday consisted of a two hour windy, fast run by my daughter down country roads to Vermont.  I'm really not fond of the fast pace on little roads, so I looked down at my knitting and looked at the beautiful mountains and forest and kept my mouth shut.  Daughter's grown, period.  She doesn't like Mom to mother.  Sigh.




     Once in Vermont I had an English Tea and sat in one of those lovely wooden rockers the Vermont airport provides and knit on my TGV Shawl- Friday Fantasy Knits- Dreaming of Shawlettes.  So comfortable I think I could of easily missed the flight.




      Then in NY I had a four hour layover which was exasperated by almost a two hour delay and we took off so late and I arrived- thankfully in one piece- in Colorado almost at Midnight.  So I'm wiped.  My body woke up at Eastern Time.


     So today I'll un-pack, pick-up the house a bit (my daughter and husband made some lovely changes to our little apartment, rearranging things better and putting up those curtains, finally).  Today I'll read and knit on my TGV shawl, and next week I think I'll be dreaming of Turquoise and Carribean Blue knitables on Friday Fantasy Knits.  It'll make me think of swimming this summer.  I left my swimsuit here when I packed thinking it's always cold in the mountains in May.  Always, and last week on Memorial weekend it was in the 80's and everyone swam but Moi.  Next month.






Today, I'll just Dream.......

On the side-
 My girl Elisabeth- the girl with the long red hair in center.

   On news about my daughter's graduation: my daughter did graduate Magna Cum Laude, to my surprise and relief!  She had told me weeks ago because of a neglected math course her grade point average was ruined for Honors.  I was so disappointed for her because she had worked so hard all these years at a History- English Literature Major and was on the Dean's List and had done so much work at Oxford last year, sometimes staying up for days.  At Middlebury she'd get overloaded with too many plays she had agreed to do the costumes for (her minor) and with her final thesis on a medieval saint's dress and symbolism, to her Senior project cataloging, properly storing and photographing old antique clothes.  It was a hard year.  I didn't even ask her about honors at graduation, just assuming and tried to field questions from my Dad who wanted to see her on the honor roll.  Delicately explaining she told me she probably wasn't.  I actually was waiting up by the side of the stage to see her when I looked through the program, this is hours into the ceremony and there she was on the Magnum Cum Laude list!  Later I asked her, and she was like- "Oh they told me a few weeks ago", like it was no big deal.  OK, so Mom worried about her feelings.  No big deal.  Earth shattering a few weeks ago when she didn't think she would.  Playing the cool Mom is hard.






Thursday, June 2, 2016

Technique Thursday- Knitting a Cardigan Top Down -June 2nd



     Over 20 years ago I knit several top down cardigans made from a Candide pattern (here's a lighter version of that top down knit in Ravelry- Ravelry- Candide Lightweight Classic Raglan Cardigan) and I loved it.  As a newbie sweater knitter it worked for me and the pattern made for some favorite sweaters.  One I wore all the time and I believe is stashed in an old Saratoga trunk that was my great Grandmother's.


     The other I gave to an elderly woman I was helping.  I think she really liked it.  That pattern I believe I found when we were moving, and stuffed in one of my knitting storage boxes.  It's weird to see something of mine aged, frayed and ripped and worn, as if it was a relic from a long ago past.


      But such is age.  I don't feel old (that is in my heart and mind), but the trees where I grew up tell another story and so do the items I had when young- they look so old.  But I believe I'll be an old lady with a young heart- my kids always agreed with me.


So I just started my "Big Hug" Cropped Cardigan and I'm loving it.  Yes, I made adjustments so it'll be a bit bigger for me.  So will I be ripping out in the future?  Hopefully not, but I'm having fun and learning!  


I'm doing the cardigan up in a cheap yarn by Lion's called Hometown USA in a beautiful blue (Walmart) and it's soft.  Acrylic won't wear as well as wool, but I find wool scratchy unless you spend a fortune on good quality yarn.  But it makes a good yarn to play with and I like the results.  


     The yarn has a nice sheen and the stitches are well defined with it.   It is going up fast.   


     So I have found some interesting sites on knitting a cardigan or sweater top-down and I thought they would be worth exploring.  It's definitely a technique worth mastering and once you do you can create your own design of sweater.


Links to tutorials or articles about top down knitting-










More Reading on Top-Down Knitting- Craftsy- Take It From The Top: Top Down Knitting



  

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Wednesday's Yarn Along

My stay in The Adirondacks is almost over.



Tomorrow I'll be flying out of Vermont and hanging in a New York City airport for a few hours. Wishing I can find a real NY bagel.  Usually I traveled into the city and left for my family's place through Penn Station.  I know there I can find a great little bakery that makes real bagels with the true NY chew to them.  When I was 18, I worked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a summer in the Costume Department learning how to do garment restoration.  I'd come in from NJ from on the train and get a bagel at the Jewish Bakery in the train station. A good memory. Bagels in Colorado are definitely not the same.  I have an article from the Washington Post echoing the same sentiments and containing a recipe from King Arthur Flour on how to bake authentic New York Style Bagels. I'll have to try it when I get home.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2016/05/10/homemade-bagel-recipe-how-to-make-the-best-bagels-at-home/

Head on over to "Small Things" and share what you are knitting.

http://www.gsheller.com/category/yarn-along

Im currently reading an awesome collection of adventure stories from the Men's Journal. From humorous to knuckle gripping adventure.  Continent to continent. Amazing reads.

"Wild Stories, the Best of Men's Journal".