Etherknitter

Solstice 2019

The best poem ever, by Susan Cooper.  You know it well.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us - listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

 

Nu'mer fjo'rta'n (Icelandic with apologies for the l'accent aigu)

I really could not leave it at Blog Entry #13.  Superstitious, yes.  No other questions, please.

Behold, the weaving that was done.  This is remarkable, because I took a weaving book, looked at the draft, figured out which threading I had, which pattern might show up, and did a trial run.  This is the World's Slowest Weaving Technique, because FOUR throws = one line of visual pattern.  I like that about this, as it allows more contemplative, meditative patterning.  There is a place in weaving life for whipping the shuttle back and forth.  But there is also a place for sticking a warp on a loom, and living with pattern design on the fly for weeks.  (Probably months in my case.  Maybe even years.)  It can be a wall hanging, a table runner, a pillow front, a tote bag, a rug.  

You see the garlands at the bottom.  (They were supposed to be undulating lines, but oh well.)  And you can see the trees!  The warp is blue because it is completely covered by the wool.  And the trees are in non-Etherknitter colors because I am deviating in all things.

In July, this warp was used for the Tom Knisely workshop on Boundweave.  We sampled and sampled, and played even more.  On the same warp, my WIP looked like this, and then that.  I think you get the idea:  invisible warp, densely packed wool in particular patterns that are controllable by the weaver.  It is the slowest cloth imaginable, with infinite design possibilities.   

 

 

 

 

 

-. ..- -- -... . .-. .---- ...-- (Morse code)

The weavecation is done.  

1.  I did some good reading.  It reminds me that no matter how basic the chapter, I can still learn from it.  Moving forward, I will cover-to-cover "The Big Book of Weaving".  (I am currently the last person on the planet who is reading "Outlander" for the first time.  It is a slightly more stylish bodice-ripper, which I suppose is the point.  I am not sure how much of it I will get through.)  

2.  Re: boundweave:  I started to understand some of the patterning, and that there are significant differences in what you can get from a rosepath vs a twill vs a whatever threading.  I will quietly and S L O W L Y work on playing with designs on the leftover warp.  I had fun yesterday, and made TREES.  Pictures will follow when I get a cable for my camera.  I need to figure out a use for a project before I move forward with something formally monopolizing a loom for months.  

3.  I did not decide on a project for the medium loom.  People who know much more than I counseled against weaving with 10/2 tencel in the arid months.  They said the warp threads break like a mofo.  Not interested in listening to the song of warp threads twanging as they break.  This will be an ongoing musing until I come up with something that snatches my attention.

4.  The selvedge rug is already a PITA.  I wound the warp yesterday, and took it to the loom.  I deconstructed the last tieup, and prepped the loom for this warp.  I needed to pick a reed to use to separate the warp for beaming, and found that MY interpretation of 6 ends per inch was entirely different from the Woolery's interpretation of 6 ends per inch.  Let's leave it at that.  The knitter's handshake (the stuff the pattern assumes you know, because of course you have been knitting since you were in the cradle) is nothing compared to the weavers' handshake.  The weavers' instructions assume you have been weaving in several past lives, and need no guidance because it is in your bones and your flesh, your heart, and your soul.  The other problem with the weavers' handshake is that it wastes a LOT more yarn, faster, and with more time involved, than the usual knitters' handshake.  I called an early end (by four hours) to the weavecation,  

The snow is coming.  The driveway markers are set.  The containers are stored.  The porch is closed.  I am calling tonight the last day of late fall.  Tomorrow is the first day of early winter.  I will type my usual questionable promise of possibly blogging in December, and cross my fingers behind my back.  At the least, I owe you a boundweave picture.

 

Nombor dua belas (Malay)

The turkey soup is about to become the finest of Thanksgiving evolutions.  There is no recipe other than the stock recipe that I posted last year.  Bought too many parsnips?  (Yes!)  Into the soup.  Brussels sprouts wouldn't fit in the saute pan? Into the soup!  Extra carrots?  (Of course.)  Into the soup!  Leftover turkey, and perhaps even some leftover pork shoulder?  Now you know what dinner will look like this evening.  2015 Vajra Dolcetto d'Alba but not in the soup: guests brought wine so that I didn't open many bottles.  This one will not make it back to storage.

The surprise hit (for me) was the spice bread with cranberry compote.  You need a Pinterest account to get to this link.  It is from a restaurant named Destroyer, an apt description for what this recipe did to my caloric self-control.  (The recipe on the website looks to make about 4x what we made. Beware.)

Like all Thanksgiving cooking marathons, the spice bread has a story.  I rummaged around in the cabinets for the bread pan called for (8.5 x 4.5").  I found one of those aluminum things.  Mr. E buttered the heck out of it, mixed up the weird recipe, and put it in the oven.

Not much time later, my nose was assaulted by burning smells.  We opened the oven.  A cloud of black smoke blew past us.  The batter had risen, now sitting well above the top of the pan.  The middle of the cake was spewing batter out like a volcano, drooling it over the top of the bread, landing on the oven rack, and dripping onto the floor of the oven, where it was burning to a black crisp.  Our smoke alarms are exquisitely sensitive, and very hard to disarm.  Fast action was needed.  I slammed the oven door shut, turned to Mr Etherknitter, and started to plan.  Opening a door did nothing for increased airflow.  He found an fan, which did little to channel enough air out of the kitchen to make any kind of difference.  

"Let's set up the vacuum cleaner so that when the oven door is opened, I can put the nozzle in the oven and suck out all the smoke!"

He looked at me as if I had just lost 100 IQ points.  "And it will then go.....where?"

My reply:  "Out.  Somewhere.  I don't know.  Let's try it, because what we are doing now is not working."

Vacuum cleaner set up.  Hose extended.  He opens the oven door.  We can barely see in the oven, the cloud of black smoke is so dense.  I suck it up in the vacuum cleaner - it takes about three seconds, and nothing escapes from the oven.  He looked expectantly at the vacuum cleaner, waiting for billowing clouds of displaced black smoke.  The vacuum sat quietly and cleanly humming on the floor.  His gaze shifted to me.  How can I not whoop triumphantly?  (I am a very small person, and I did.)  It worked, and we do not know why.  Did the hepa filter eat all the particles?  Were there actually big enough particles in the smoke for it to do that?  Dunno.  Problem solved, and next time, we buy a bigger bread pan, because this pup is going to be made again. 

The weavecation is proceeding slowly.  I am learning and solving more than I am actually weaving, which is fine.  More on that tomorrow.

Numar unsprezece (Romanian)

Back for more.  Thanksgiving took over.  (I hope yours was delicious, warm, and happy.)  Three days of shopping, one day of work, two point five days of cooking.  Intense cooking.  I learned that when guests have too much choice, some of the dishes are passed over.

I have been adding cleaner dishes to the butter/fat/cream/meat menu.  The herby barley recipe has been well received.  Even if it were not, it goes into the turkey soup that results from the leftover stock, and it therefore earns its keep.  The salad with two kinds of greens, cheese, and grapes does not go into the soup, and does not keep overnight once it has been dressed.  There were significant left overs on that one.

Next year, no salad.  The brussels sprouts, a labor of love by the Muse (without whom I could not do it all) will morph into roasted sprouts rather than brussels sprouts hash.  That means only one last minute dish will need attention (other than the ovens full of yummies roasting and warming and toasting).  I did not spend enough time with my guests this year, and that means simplification needs to happen.  It feels like the decluttering of a holiday, similar to the decluttering that I am doing with other aspects of life.  

Most of today (which is now yesterday) was spent as a weavecation.  I blocked out today, and the weekend, to concentrate on all the weaving stuff I haven't been able to approach.  

I had planned out three goals.  

1.  retie an existing warp and get re-started on a boundweave project.  I had warped the loom for a class this past summer, and ended with significant warp remaining.  That was a piece of low-hanging fruit.  

2.  Warp the medium loom for a tencel scarf.  

3.  Warp the big loom for a selvedge rug.  Back to front warping is still not second nature.

Details of the ride on the strugglebus to follow.

Nombro dek (Esperanto)

Many decisions have been made for the MDK Kaffe Fassett colorscarf.  Typepad thinks colorscarf is a typo, but that just shows you how little Typepad knows.  (Typepad also flags "typepad" as a typo.  Really??)

Decision #1 - flat knitting or tube?  And the answer is - - - tube.
Decision #2 - How to cast on and cast off so that sewing the tube together isn't an awful-left-to-the-end-kludge-style decision.  I asked the MDK forum community, and got a very useful answer:  Judy's magic cast on for the beginning, and grafting for the end of the tube.
Decision #3 - how to graduate the stripes?  They will be increased, then started in the next color with increases, decreasing down to the  initial row numbers, then.....well, maybe you will need to see a picture of this.  I described it to Mr. E, and I proudly declaimed, "This is what we are supposed to do with colorwork:  make it our own!"  (In reality, I am deviating in tiny directions. But I am DEVIATING.)
Decision #4 - follow the pattern for the suggested color combos.  Until I get either bored, adventurous, or insane. 

It should be an interesting ride.  

    

 

Nomoro tse robong

The Man Sweater has begun.  I may boast that I don't engage in much social media, but that obscures the fact that I live in Yarn Fantasyland during a significant portion of my online time.

The Man Sweater is a good example.  I love the Churchmouse website.  They have beautiful, basic, stylish patterns.  The yarns they carry cut across multiple genres.  Once I saw the Saddle Shoulder Man's Pullover pattern, I knew it would be a great match for my man's shoulders.

He participates minimally in choices.  He is not a shopper.  I searched the interwebs (USA, United Kingdom) for excellent yarn.  To keep the flavor of the garment, I wanted something tweedy.  That meant that it would have to be both tweedy, and a similar gauge.  I set 2 or 3 choices in front of him, and he pointed at the Fibre Company Cumbria.  (Of course, I stuck that in front of him because I had been curious to try the yarn, and it seemed like a reasonable gauge match.  And, of course, yes on the tweedy.)

Webs wanted me to order a full bag, since they didn't normally carry that color.  I found it at Wool and Co.  When it arrived, I swatched.  This time, I actually wrote down the PREWASH measurements.  5 st/inch prewash, 4.75st/inch postwash.

The pattern called for a cable cast-on.  It is very twiddly and fiddly.  Since I was tempted to bag that, and use a long tail cast on, I looked up the advantages and disadvantages of each. 

The long tail cast on had a smooth, single yarn edge, with an advantage of stretchiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cable cast on, alas, made more sense.  (credit: http://www.jessicabiscoe.co.uk/archives/casting-on-comparison-methods)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can see the advantage of that corded edge.  It gives a finished look to the edge of the sweater bottom.  The lack of stretchiness probably won't bother Mr. SnakeHips.  I briefly (time counted in microseconds) contemplated a tubular cast on.  That does not treat my hands well, and was quickly discarded as an option.

And now that all this is here in black and white, I see that I have to rip back to the fiddly part, hope to get it back on the needles without a complete redo, and add more stitches.  (Let us just say delicately that 19/5 is 4.75 and not 4.5.  It was most likely a transcription error, but fatal, nonetheless.)

And for those of you keeping track (or not):

Day 1 - Spanish
Day 2 - French
Day 3 - Danish
Day 4 - Hebrew
Day 5 - Turkish
Day 6 - Latvian
Day 7 - Azerbaijani
Day 8 - Latin
Day 9 - Sesotho

Numerus octo

I missed one.  I owe you one.

I was thinking about FOMO during the weekend that was Rhinebeck.  FearOfMissingOut is not correct.  Fear of missing out is what one feels when one suspects that others are off doing something without them, and having a stupendous time at it.  Rhinebeck?  That is KNOWING that others are off doing something wonderful without them.  FOWYAM is more accurate:  Fear Of What You Are Missing.  But I don't think that will catch on any time soon.

So when I saw Kristy Glass' epic movie-length video of Rhinebeck sweaters, I knew it would have my attention.  It is fabulous.  The women, the creativity, the sweaters, the ambience, the humor, and the humanness are all captured exquisitely.  Go watch, even if you did go to Rhinebeck this year, and missed nothing whatsoever.

One last late fall garden picture, a very confused digitalis plant that wasn't supposed to flower until next spring.  She gave her all, and froze to death in the end.

Nomre yeddi

Color and colorwork are related and separate.  Colorwork design intersects with color concepts, and changes the perception of color itself.  Color by itself, without fair isle motifs, is not what my stash is about.  Most of us buy variegated hand-dyed colorways, which ends up as a shortcut for playing with color.  But there is a certain amount of cheat involved in that.

Mason-Dixon Kay and Ann teamed up with Kay's long-time idol, Kaffe Fassett, to produce Volume #13 of their Field Guides.  This one is perfectly named:  Master Class. 

I could never see the pull, the attraction to moshing colors together.  I did not get the Fassett-adulation.  Weaving may have moved me closer to the concepts, but not with plan or intent.  Mostly.  But then Master Class seized my imagination, wrenched me to the ground, and made me buy stuff. 

The yarn packs sold out in a micro-instant.  My Dusty color batch of Rowan Felted Tweed is on backorder.  Once it arrives, I will play with stripey weirdness, and coiny goodness.  Go look here if you haven't already seen it.

I still can't explain the coup de coeur.  Should an intervention be planned?

Numuro sesi

Today was spent solving the knitting problems of the 'verse.  There may have been weaving and spinning problems also addressed in the mix.  I am actually more organized than I realized.  There are WIPs that need attention.  There are UFOs that are surfacing.  There are, as previously referenced, startitis projects looking over my shoulder and whining.  But then, there is a FOURTH category.  WIPs that are threatening to become UFOs.  These need stat attention before they go critical.  The deck still has to be cleared, but I suppose that will happen Tuesday.  It just didn't seem to be much of a draw today. 

Today's picture is the yummy of the season:  honey nut squash.  I searched my own blog (!) via google to figure out if I had blogged about it last year.  I found only a pre-Thanksgiving picture, with no description of these beauties.  I googled it by itself to see what the hivemind had to say.  Clearly, I am far behinder the curve than I imagined.  I found a reference from 2015.  I was three years late last year.

It is a butternut squash varietal, easy to cook, excellent portion size, delicious, and I am probably telling you absolutely nothing you don't already know.  I will distract you with a picture, and then slink away to my wine glass.