Etherknitter

NaBloPoMo #4 2018

I am trying to look at this 30 day blog marathon as zen.

I took some pictures of the Finnish yarn, made in Finland, bought in Finland.  (I bypassed the Novita in the store because it wasn't novel enough to just buy......more sock yarn.  Maybe that was a mistake.)

I bought two skeins of honest wool for a hat for Mr. E.  The strands will be held together to make a hat of substance.  Then I bought myself a skein of turquoise merino/silk for GKW (g-d knows what).

So the oatmeal colored yarn says "moth protected" on the label.  That was a plus.  The turquoise lace yarn said "permanent malbenhandlat".  I suspected I knew the translation, but I had to ask.  The mostly Finnish speaking proprietress made a face associated with deep thought.  She tried for the English words, and failed.  She held up her hands, and put her fingers a wee distance apart, hunching her shoulders, and showing me that she was speaking of something very little.  Then she said, ".......little animules?"  And then I knew that that yarn, too, was mothproof.  We all laughed, and I had more than just souvenir yarn in that small but warm human transaction.

We liked Finland a lot.  The picture above is a piece from the Ateneum in Helsinki.  The museum is an interesting confusion of Finnish and international art.  I had to bring that photograph with me, because it will become the colors of something that I will weave.

 

NaBloPoMo #3 2018

The weather was frightful.  The roads were dark in the early morning as I drove west.  Storm drains were clogged with leaves.  Roads were awash.  Wind howled, and tossed the car.  Dawn brought temporary respite, and we made it to Springfield.

Of course you recognize these pictures.  Typepad is as f'd up as usual, and won't let me add text after I upload the pictures.  (Put in pix, try to add text, give up, delete pix, put in text, re-add the pix.)  Like many, I may flee this antiquated software. 

Ball and Skein's seductive booth of color and texture, and Alice Field's Foxhill booth of sumptuous farm yarn.  I am holding a beautiful skein of Romney that is soft beyond Romney.  I have yet to acquire (and I will) a SQ of this for Mr. Etherknitter.  It screams ManSweater. 
So I can't claim camnesia, but there were very few pictures taken.  I can link you to a cowl that stole my heart.  You will look at the pattern picture, and wonder what the passion is about.  The yarn blooms (merino/cashmere), and the FO is knitter's seduction.  (The Muse told me I need to will it to her when I die, so I was not the only one to covet.)  

Now the wind howls.  Something happened to wires near us.  Booming sounds, arcing blue globes of light that traveled in a line along the wires.  It was my first 911 call ever.  

 

 

 

NaBloPoMo #2 2018

Helsinki, 2018

The travel guy told us to do this.  Fly into Helsinki, take the overnight ferry to Stockholm, and then walk around Stockholm.

Yes.  He was right.

Walking around, jet-lagged, happy, completely out of our element but everyone speaks English.

Architecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stores.  Knitted objects.

Of course there was souvenir yarn.  Yarn made in Finland, because how else will it be souvenir yarn?

The picture carries a story, so that will be for later.

Tomorrow is Fiber Festival of New England, and I will be among my people.  Stay tuned.

NaBloPoMo #1 2018

The Muse prodded me this week.  

"Are you doing NaKniSweMo?", she asked.  "Whaaaaa?" I squawked in return.  "Do both," she said.

Nuts, I tell you.  Nuts.  A long day at work and I have already flunked NaKniSweMo.  

This was a small part of the deck plantings this summer.  They grew more than was possible.  We watched, every evening, as leaves and flowers and stems unfolded.  The most perplexing discovery was finding a vine pushing out from the bottom of all the growth, and heading down the deck stairs.  The leaves gave no hint as to what plant was making a break for it.  After three weeks, never being able to trace it back to its roots, it declared itself as a moonflower that was growing TWELVE feet away.  The hummers loved it all.  

An early frost (10/19/18) brought it to an untimely end.  We are still in mourning.

We did get a nice harvest:  rosemary, parsley, basil, Thai dragon peppers, chives, shishitos.  Crisped in a cast iron pan, eaten off the stem, harvested minutes before, they were perfect.  Three plants gave us more than we could eat.  

And how was your summer?

Blog Splainin'

Poor, quiet blog.  It is not that I don't love you.  Concentration and focus have been pushed elsewhere.  I silently speak to you often.  Now I am here.  

The winter was a record low snow year in the West.  Never have we seen that much dirt and grass on slopes.  The snow happened in March, walloping us on home ground.  Hundreds of pounds, and hundreds of cubic yards of trees and shrubs fell to the earth in my tiny place.  Twice, in two separate storms, which also included a prolonged electrical outage.  Nature's decluttering of the plantscape pushed mine.  Things are being chopped.  Things are being planted.  Plans are leafing out.  (There is no forgotten 't' in that word.) 

The growing season has been amazing.  The 90/90s (more than last year) have kept me hiding in the house.  The weeds have taken over, but the deck plantings are rampant.  The useful edibles (basil, parsley, rosemary, scallions, chives, shishito peppers, thai dragon peppers) had to be repurchased and replanted after the tick-sprayers sprayed them too.  Between voles, deer, rabbits AND human despoilers, the garden is always active.

I was looking to take pictures of a nice plant combo I created, mostly by accident.  One cannot aim a camera at the deck without getting strafed by the warrior ingrates.  (You know them as hummingbirds.  We know them as bullies and gluttons.  We love them regardless.)

The first one is Mom, working hard to get ready for the migration.  The second is a teenage girl, scruffy, fluffing herself incessantly, and giving us the stinkeye for capturing all the grooming.

 

  

 

Deep Winter

The snow came down and down on Christmas morning.  Then there was sun.  The herd of juncos had a junco party at the birdfeeder.  I think their usual food sources look different now.    

The cardinal showed up intermittently to let them know who is the real boss.  The chickadees are fierce.  Everything is white and icy and tinkly.  Now I have to go look for the hat.

 

I knit shawl after shawl.  A rare sweater appears.  (Brando is done and I owe you pictures.  I have worn it twice, and will discuss the outcome.)  I stopped knitting scarves because I had some.  That was dumb.  A knitter gets bored with the old, sifts through the drawers, rejects the finds, and thinks about knitting a new scarf for herself.  But what I really need?  More hats.

 

I blogged a year ago about the Irish Braid hat.  Indeed, it was finished soon after the post.  Indeed, the post flogged me into finishing it.  I do love it, and have forgiven the graft.  This is my second Swans Island yarn project.  LOVE the yarn, and love the FOs.

 

New Year's always seems to be focused on a new year.  It was also my thirteenth blogiversary.  The years seem to blow past with a whisper.  I would like that to not happen quite so much.

 

In 2015, my word was PRESENCE.  In 2016, I used RESILIENCE.  Both changed how I see and experience.  I did not have a 2017 word.  My blog buddies persuaded me that a word for 2018 would be a good thing.

 

Nothing came immediately to mind.  It needs to be something actionable, that one can DO rather than just think.  And I found it.  PATIENCE.  This can change how I see and experience.  The action is a deep, slow, quiet breath when I am impatient and irritated.  I find I am doing that often.  :(  

 

So rather than be a sad emoji that I am doing this often, I will look at it with patience.  A FB meme about people doing stuff for 100 days with deliberate practice also forces the realization that nothing happens overnight.  

 

And so the year begins.

 

 

Three on Thursday

In like a lion, out like a lamb.  

1.  I am at the end of a weaving staycation.  Rather than go back to Vavstuga (known as the Weaving Sweatshop in this household), I created my own.  Plans!  Hopes!  Dreams!  I knew I was overoptimistic.  However, that was an important part of planning my own weaving sweatshop.  

The big thing was to do a back-to-front warp with no Vavstuga handholding.  So many questions and uncertainties arose.  The beaming of the warp onto the warp beam is the one part that I have done only once five years ago at Vav.  "It's only yarn", insisted my weaving Muse.  

It worked.  I had one thread out of 440 out of place, and that was an easy fix.  

I cleaned up the weaving room.  Papers and drafts and cones of yarn were put in order.  

Then I warped something else.  It is blue (of course it is) and not threaded yet.

2.  Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday got me.  Quince, and Sunday Knits, and a new interchangeable needle set from Webs.  Yarn!  Patterns!  And, of course, enough to knit for at least a year when, indeed, I needed to buy nothing at all.  So it goes.

3.  Winter is rolling in slowly.  That means we will get hammered later.  (You saw it here first.)  I made a lamb stew today with no recipe.  Sear the lamb in olive oil, add a bunch of chopped vegetables - whatever is left in the refrigerator from Thanksgiving.  This meant carrots, a parsnip, celery, a pepper, a half jalapeno.  Deglaze the pot when the vegetables are soft with whatever wine is in your glass (a nice 2016 Morgon Beaujolais).  Then add beef stock - enough to partially submerge most of what was in the pot.  Simmer for whatever length of time it takes for lamb stew and kabobs to transform from hockey pucks to dinner.  Serve the rest of the Morgon with it.  Salt/pepper to taste.  I briefly thought about making a roux and thickening the sauce, but it would have delayed dinner for another 30 minutes.  It was fine.

 

 

 

Old friends

Look who!  Back for another year.  In the Etherknitter world, it is Thanksgiving.  Menus are drafted,  ingredients make their circuitous way into the house, and things are cleaned.  But...

 

I was at the Mall today.  It really doesn't matter which one.  The same thing is happening in all of them.  It is Christmas.  And it is Christmas, because people want it to be so.  (That was an epiphany for me.)  This is nothing that the retailers are foisting on a gullible public.  People WANT the holiday, and they WANT it now.

I was there for a cooking class.  And then I was sorry I had to leave at the same time that the entire mall emptied out.  

But I did get some good recipes.  Vegetarian!  Delicious!  Easy.  So it was a good day.

 

Saturday

Finally, the latest first frost in recent memory: 11/9/17.  I left the bellwether plants out to track this, ones that turn black and ragged with the least kiss of 32F.  Dahlia.  Hot pepper, Moonflower.  The moonflower bloomed stupid late this year, but gamely kept on until the last.  This pretty girl showed her brief face on 9/3, after the rain:

I slouched into the office this morning (another hard freeze last night, about 19F) to sort and pay bills.  Found several.  The website for one would not let me in.  How can I pay if I don't know how much?  Maddening.  Technology has turned the corner, and has become more of a time waster than a time saver.  

Derailed and detoured:  should I shop for spices?  Let me look at the website and see if I can remember what I need.  WAIT.  I want a different iPhone case.  Does the company who makes the one I have make one for the new iPhone?  Where is my old iPhone so I can look?  Yay, it is in my pocket.  I check, and surf.  Then I write a nasty note to The Company Store for charging a kings ransom for shipping, then two days later, offering free shipping, then taking a week to get the package to me despite the kings ransom I just paid.  (Never again.  Ijits.  Stronger words were indeed used privately.)

Better go write at least one check.

 

 

 

Guardsmans Pass

November blogging is fun.  Timelines are meaningless.  That brings us back to Utah.

Last year, Mr. Etherknitter and I were led on the Grand Tour of Utah by the King and Queen of the Realm.  Margene and Marshall took us to The Best View Ever up on Guardsmans Pass.  Then over the Pass (closed in winter), around the bend (hairpin turn) and on to Silver Fork Lodge.  I don't think any place does a better breakfast, especially their crispy homefries.  Then to Silver Lake, and after that, wandering around Sundance, American Fork byways, and ending up in Salt Lake City at Red Iguana.  

This year, there was snow.  Frosting on the Park City golf courses looked to be about three inches of fluff at the higher altitude of the Pass. At the top, a muddy parking lot and a Port-a-Potty beckoned.  As we left our car, two other travelers were crossing the road to access the mountain.  They were carrying scratched and dented snowboards (known as rockboards, the ones you use for early season forays).  We exchanged snow-lover conversation, and watched them ascend to get first tracks on unskiable terrain.  I suppose one attempt at a turn (or two), successful or not, would be Snapchatted or Instagrammed, and would get them bragging rights for 2017.  First turns in a season are satisfying.

So, yeah, this year, we used the Pass as a stunning way to get to shopping on the other side of the Range.  Breakfast was, indeed, had at Silver Fork, where there was also a wedding going on.  These Utahns must have ice water in their veins, because the bride didn't even look cold at temps that could not have been more than 37F.

Guardsmans Pass, which has been purchased now by Park City to preserve it, on a moody broody early-winter day -