I've been meaning to tell you that Stranded Color Knitting (see how to order and more info on the right) has now made over $300 for rabbit rescue. How wonderful! Also, a couple of people have written and asked if they can purchase the book with a check. Yes, you can send a check to me for $13.99 and I'll have Cafepress send you your copy. Email at nanetteblanchard AT earthlink DOT net to set this up. If you're interested in knitting with more than one color or looking at photos that show many different ways to hold the yarns or getting two colorwork hat patterns, please check out the book.

  

 

CHASING RAINBOWS CAP













I've been wanting to do some rainbow projects. This hat is done with Nature Spun sport and size 4 circs and dpns. It uses 21 colors and I got the idea for the method from the rainbow socks in Socks, Socks, Socks. Then I read the PGR article in IK on intarsia in the round and she discusses it as well. Cut lengths of yarn for each color and when you get to that color, knit it, then drop the color. On the next row just grab the yarn when you get to where you knit it. As you can see from the reverse side, it looks like intarsia on the inside. No floats.



This method is also slow, has lots of tangled yarns all over the place, and the hat itself had over 60 ends to work in. It was also more difficult than I expected to arrange the colors in a rainbow progression and I'm not at all happy with the greens. Still, I like the finished hat very much. The cap has already gone to its new home to Melissa (mother of apple-cheeked Taylor who modeled the green toddler Aran) to pay her back for doing me a big favor this week. 

Lately I've had the strongest desire to start canning again. I love to make pickles and jellies and all that good stuff. In our house in Colorado I had this huge heavy wood shelf in the kitchen and I filled it with beautiful jars. When I was interviewed once for the local paper the reporter went on and on and on about all the jewel-colored glass jars on the shelf. I gave her some of my cranberry-orange jam just to shut her up.



When we moved here to NM I decided to not lug along all that glass. We probably have another move in our future so I can't buy more canning jars but I do get all moony-eyed when I stroll through the canning section at the store lately.



I do look forward to green chile season in about 3 weeks. They start shipping them up here from Hatch in mid to late August. This year we're going to get two bags (I think they are 25 lbs) as soon as they start selling them. I've heard the early crop is always better. They are sold and roasted here pretty much everywhere you go. The smell of roasting chiles is one of the best aromas on the planet. I just stick them whole in the freezer and then peel them before cooking. DH likes to stuff them with cream cheese and then top them with his red chile enchilada sauce. I may still break down and get some jars and make green chile jelly. Yum.



The photo below shows what I'm currently spinning. 1 more ounce for the rainbow project and some skeins of Easter-egg dyed merino. I plan to use the merino as energized singles somehow.



I started the Churro socks for DH. Tomorrow I will show you the Chasing Rainbows hat, project two in my "knitting without patterns" phase. It may be my favorite knitted project this year.

Here is the Red Bird Knits Sock of the Month for July. It is called Waterfalls and I'm going to cast on as soon as I translate the pattern into a chart.



I'm also working on a rainbow hat in 21 colors of Nature Spun sport - that should be ready to show here by Thursday.

DOS CALCETINES DE LANA 

  

   





  Here are the Pearls of Wisdom socks from Socks, Socks, Socks with the last stanza of the Pablo Neruda poem in Spanish. (Scroll down a few blog entries to see the full text of the poem in English.) These were knit in Nature Spun sport weight on size 2 dpns.











I made a lot of changes to the pattern mostly out of sheer laziness on my part. The punta edging looked too complicated, I tried the two-color purling and that was extremely slow so I scrapped it. The original pattern also has you charting out your own text on the feet of the socks and I was too lazy to do that so I used less text on the cuffs and put it on the feet instead. I also changed the heels to add more colors although I think the heels on the original socks look better. The socks use small beads in the circles but I duplicate stitched with lime green there instead.



The text on the socks: "Dos veces es belleza, la belleza, y lo que es bueno, es doblemente bueno, cuando se trata de  dos calcetines de lana, en el invierno, Pablo Neruda."

I'm sad that Geane has decided to blog no longer. I will miss her humor and I've admired her beautiful knitting for years. I hope she finds another way to post photos of her projects so we can all admire her work. Geane, you're welcome to send photos of FOs to me to post here if you like.

 

 

THE "I LOVE A PARADE" HAT

 

Sometimes it is a good thing to cast on and just start knitting without a specific goal in mind. In my new "no-more-stupid-rules" outlook on knitting, I'm hoping to knit more often without patterns at all. Here is my latest effort in Cascade 220.



 

 

This hat shows the "lazy knitter" method of doing corrugated ribbing - change colors on the knit stitches instead of on the purl stitches. It is easy and quite fast if you're a two-handed color knitter - just do the purls with your right hand and the knits with your left. Here you can see the reverse side - I almost like the way the top design looks better in reverse. (INKnitters once had an article on using the reverse side of color stranding for the front of the work - I think I'll try that some day.)

 

 

 

To make the curlicues on top, cast on a random number of stitches, knit into the front, the back, and the front of each stitch and bind off in purl. Do this as loosely as possible with your pointiest needles or you'll go insane. You can also use this technique for simple flowers.

I should finish the Pearls of Wisdom socks tomorrow - as you can see there are many ends to deal with. They also need blocking so you won't see them on the blog until Sunday afternoon. The letter knitting part goes really fast because it interests me; if I was knitting the same amount of plain stockinette it would take forever.



Here's the English translation of the Pablo Neruda poem in its entirety. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone we knit for was as thrilled with a pair of handknit socks?



ODE TO MY SOCKS  by Pablo Neruda



Maru Mori brought me

a pair

of socks 

which she knitted with her own

sheepherder hands,

two socks as soft

as rabbits.

I slipped my feet

into them

as if they were

two

cases

knitted

with threads of

twilight

and the pelt of sheep.



Outrageous socks,

my feet became

two fish

made of wool,

two long sharks

of ultramarine blue

crossed by one golden hair,

two gigantic blackbirds,

two cannons:

my feet

were honored

in this way

by

these

heavenly

socks.

They were

so beautiful

that for the first time

my feet seemed to me

unacceptable

like two decrepit

firemen, firemen

unworthy of that embroidered

fire,

of those luminous socks.



Nevertheless,

I resisted

the sharp temptation

to save them

as schoolboys

keep fireflies,

as scholars

collect

sacred documents,

I resisted

the wild impulse

to put them

in a golden

cage

and each day give them

birdseed

and chunks of pink melon.

Like explorers

in the jungle

who hand over the rare

green deer

to the roasting spit

and eat it

with remorse,

I stretched out

my feet

and pulled on

the

magnificent

socks

and

then my shoes.



And the moral of my ode

is this:

beauty is twice

beauty

and what is good is doubly

good

when it's a matter of two

woolen socks

in winter.

I'm not fond of Blogger's new software - it takes too long to edit a post and I've yet to figure out how to cut and paste while editing but at least now I can do this.

 

I received my lovely trade yarn from Dena. Here we have some terrific Regia which I plan to use for the PGR intarsia-in-the-round socks.





And this. When I first saw this in a little baggie I thought that sending me the innards of padded manila envelopes was a bit unusual. It turns out this is cut silk. How cool is that? Dena says it takes dye well. I can't wait to play with it.

Here are the Cloverleaf Rib Socks from the Six_Sox_Knitalong . I knit them on size 1 dpns for my friend's 7 month old son Eli. I used Pingouin Laine/Nylon sock yarn and wrapped the two smaller yarnovers twice to compensate for the first larger one.

 

 



 

Here are the colors I'm using for the Pablo Neruda socks. I still doubt I'll finish them in time for my Productive Spinners goal. 

  

 



 

Saturday we made it to the Santa Fe farmer's market (called one of the ten best farmer's markets in the U.S. by USA Today). We checked to see if Jake West had any melons (his unique cultivar that has been mentioned in Deborah Madison's Local Flavors and Gourmet magazine) but they won't be ready for another month so we bought some of his corn instead. I also bought some wonderful rocambole garlic, some lovely organic red Russian kale for Peaches and some mint.



Speaking of mint, here's my variation of a recipe from an old Giuliano Bugialli newsletter that originally used a lot of salt and 4 times as much (gulp) olive oil.



FIREWORKS PASTA



2-3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

6 cloves garlic, whole

6 Tbsp. tomato paste

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 - 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 lb spaghetti

15 sprigs Italian flat-leaf parsley (don't use curly parsley)

3 more cloves garlic

1/4 cup fresh mint leaves (I prefer spearmint but any mint will do)



While you're cooking your pasta, place a large skillet with the oil over medium heat. When the oil is warm, add the six whole cloves of garlic and saute for 2-3 minutes; garlic should be lightly golden - not burnt and not uncooked. Cooking the garlic right is the most important part of this recipe. I use tongs to keep turning the garlic and watch it like a hawk. You can discard the whole cloves of garlic after cooking but I don't.



Add tomato paste carefully (it will splatter) and season with pepper and hot red pepper flakes. Saute, stirring, for 2 minutes, than add 1 cup of water boiling for the pasta and mix well.Coarsely chop the parsley and finely chop the 3 additional cloves of garlic. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and transfer to the skillet with the sauce. Raise the heat to high, keep stirring, and cook for another minute. Sprinkle the chopped parsley and garlic over the pasta, mix well and transfer to a large serving platter. Sprinkle the mint leaves on top and serve hot. Serves 4.

CHURRO YARN

 

Friday I cancelled our zillion channel satellite tv service. I'm hoping I'll get more done with less tv - we still get a couple of local channels. 

 



 



 

I finished spinning the Churro yarn. I only had 2 oz of roving so I plied it with some mystery two-ply yarn I found in the stash. I know plying a balanced yarn with an unbalanced yarn is against the rules but I tried a sample and I liked it.

 

 



 

I'll respond to the comments and post the cloverleaf rib socks tomorrow. Right now a storm is headed our way.

Margene made me do it. I was going along minding my own business not joining any knitalongs of any kind when she had to post her photo of the pretty Cloverleaf Rib Socks from the Six Sox Knitalong. So of course I had to join and immediately cast on some Cloverleaf Rib baby socks because they have already started the next sock and I can't bear to be behind.







Here are the socks in progress for a young gentleman named Eli in a less-than-wonderful photo. To counteract the tendency of one of the yarn over holes to be greatly larger than the other two in the pattern, I wrapped the yarn around the needle twice for the other two yarn overs.



And Lisa!  Here I'm sincerely trying to finish up my two measly project goals due next week for the Productive Spinners group and she sends me not one, not two, but three new fun spindles to try in a trade. So now I have yet another project, to spin up some Churro sock yarn on my new Bosworth purpleheart Maxi.



Lisa also sent these lovely odds and ends of Shetland yarn for one of her beautiful Fair Isle sweaters and now I can't wait to use them to make a pair of Fair Isle mittens.







And this beautiful sock yarn - I have never tried Lorna's Laces Shepherd but it is so soft.







And there's more from Lisa. Check out the gorgeous color of heathered lace weight yarn she sent which I will have to use for a lace scarf.







Kim D. apparently knows Froelich Blauband is one of my favorite sock yarns as she sent me this. I can barely help myself from casting on some more socks with these beautiful colors.







I still have to finish (ha ha - more like start) the Pablo Neruda poem socks in one week. I don't really think that is going to happen, do you?



Everyone go to Jessica's blog right now and read about her fun adventures at Meg Swansen's Knitting Camp.



Also, check out the brand new first online issue of Handspinners. What a great issue! The article on the value of risk taking is especially wonderful and ties in with what I've been thinking about lately.

I've started to think about holiday projects. This year we may be in Colorado for the holidays which means I have to come up with even more presents. While there are certain people on my gift list I would NEVER knit something for, there are plenty who do want more knitted stuff.



DH wants a plain stockinette cardigan vest in dark gray Cascade 220.



Joelle likes everything I make, especially in exotic handspun fibers for when she rides her horses. For her DH, some hiking socks or a balaclava for his backpacking trips.



My mother is a scarf person and couldn't stop raving about the Koigu scarf I made her last year so she needs something lacy or frilly.



Cindy - my best friend from childhood - she and her pre-teen daughter keep requesting more socks.



Gracie - my best friend from college - she likes everything I knit and has three kids from 7-13.



Mariellen and Joe - our best friends from CO - she really likes socks and Joe likes anything goofy.



Brad & Lisa in CO - Brad is my best knitting customer - he wears anything I make to death. He's a blonde skier and looks great in Nordic stuff. Their two sons, one just born, can always use goofy baby stuff. Lisa likes mittens & gloves.



Sam in CO - she needs something luxurious since she just lost her job



Debby in CO - anything with rabbits on it or made from rabbit fur. I think I'll do a scarf with some of the shelter rabbit handspun fur.



Peaches is deep in thought thinking about her bunny Christmas list.

I found this interesting quote in an article in an old Yoga Journal, "Meditating as Play", by Clark Strand, July/August 1998. I don't meditate but I did find the article interesting.



"You don't expect to get anything out of a hobby but the thing itself. You engage in a hobby because you enjoy it or because it relaxes you. You don't become frustrated because you should have done it better, or because you missed a day. In fact, the whole idea of a hobby is to let go and experience something for itself, for the satisfaction and pleasure you take simply from doing it. You don't do it for your self-esteem, for the world, or for inner peace. Your relationship to it is simple, natural, and not self-conscious at all. If it were self-conscious, it wouldn't give you so much pleasure. It wouldn't be a hobby anymore.



Like a hobby, meditation ought to be a time when you can occupy your mind with something for its own sake, without getting caught up in any of your usual preoccupations: Am I doing this right? Are the others doing it better? I'll probably fail at this, just like everything else."



Every single point in this quote hits home for me. Lately my knitting has become something too driven. I often find myself resenting my knitting. I screwed up big time with the direction I've gone and I need to find my sense of play in knitting. I've got to get rid of my inner judge because she is no fun to be around at all.



The same thing happened with cooking. I used to absolutely love it and then I became a freelance food writer/cookbook author and all of a sudden it became something else entirely. My life revolved around cooking things others wanted me to cook and making money. I was so caught up in whether I was doing things "right" that I lost the joy. I stopped being curious about food. I still occasionally cook but I'd like to return to the sheer happiness I felt puttering away in the kitchen all afternoon.



At least I have spinning. I KNOW I'm not good at spinning. I'm sure I'm doing things wrong. I honestly don't care. I just love how it relaxes me and engrosses me. I need to work to get that back with knitting and cooking.



If I ever say anything on this blog about having someone judge my spinning or entering any type of contest involving spinning, you have my permission to slap me silly with a skein of handspun.



Here are my next 3 ounces of Ashford Corriedale for the rainbow project. So far I've finished 8 of 19 ounces.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!



The Cervinia Calzetteria (sale multi-colored sock yarn from Smileys) is bleeding dye. A lot. I've rinsed the socks so far five times and they are still bleeding blue dye quite heavily. They will probably be a different color when I'm done. I had this weird feeling I shouldn't put them in the washing machine, even though they are supposedly machine washable, and I'm very glad I didn't. I'll try a vinegar rinse next.



Saturday I took a trip to Village Wools. I hadn't been there in quite a long time and I don't recall the store previously having Jamieson's Shetland yarns and even fabrics for sale. They also did have a new section of very small quantities of expensive scarf yarns that looked like they'd be quite unpleasant to knit. And their usual wonderful button selection. I played with a few Lollipop spindles and ogled the looms.







I bought this (my subscription just ran out & I didn't want to miss an issue)







and this Churro roving. I plan to Navajo ply it and make some durable socks. They had huge bags of four or five different natural colors of Churro roving and this one felt unusually soft. The saleswoman thought that some of their Churro rovings had been blended with softer wools but none of them were marked as blends.



Village Wools also had a bunch of what I suspected were (they were unmarked) the Ashford Corriedale rovings I'm working with. I'm going to get more for the Rainbow Project soon. I also found ANOTHER source of many colors of wool you can buy in small quantities so this project will be larger than originally planned.



Geane asked me what I'm planning to use the dreamsicle Himalayan cat/merino wool blend yarn for. I believe I'll make myself some cabled socks, perhaps the sock pattern pictured above. I like the cable running down next to the heel.

Here are the Slouch Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks done in Cervinia Calzetteria. The colors are off in the scan - this color is more turquoise and purple than blue green. I went down to a size 1 dpn for the foot as I was too lazy to do the stitch pattern on the top of the foot.

Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes.



I don't have the socks to show you today. I have this superstition that if I show a small project on the blog before I finish it, I'll never finish it. So you'll have to wait until Sunday afternoon. Do you have any knitting superstitions? HERE are some fun ones.



I've been busy trying to learn how to blend fibers. I know I'll have to do this when I get the bunny fur from the Denver shelter so I thought I'd start experimenting.



I started with some of my cat Bosco's fur - he's a Himalayan and his fur is 3-4 inches long and extremely straight and slippery. I've never had any success making good yarn spinning it by itself. I carded it with some orange Kool-Aid dyed superwash merino top (1 part cat fur and 3-4 parts orange merino) and here is the result along with the smooshed rolag.







I consider this a successful experiment. The finished yarn, while definitely an uneven novelty yarn, is fun to knit and there is just enough softness and fuzziness from the cat fur. And here is the yarn knit up. I'm calling it my Dreamsicle yarn.

BIRTHDAY LOOT



Tomorrow is my birthday (I'll finally be 21 - ahem) and happily all my presents have arrived early.



I got this from Scotland







and I used a birthday check to buy these from HERE









and my friends know to give me plenty of this









But my favorite gift of all is THIS. It is absolutely, completely, utterly fabulous.





I should have some finished socks to show tomorrow if I can get my increasingly old hands to work.

I just wrote my first update for the Productive Spinners group. Unfortunately I have only accomplished one of my three goals. I've decided to postpone Malin until it cools down and you saw what happened to the gloves.



My goals for the next two weeks are to spin and ply 3 more ounces of the Corriedale for the Rainbow Project and to knit the Pearls of Wisdom socks from Socks, Socks, Socks. Those are the fun socks with the Pablo Neruda poem in Spanish. I'm going to use Nature Spun sport weight and I plan to omit the punta edging. It looks quite fussy and I'm raring to get to the lettering. For some odd reason I really enjoy knitting letters.



Go check out Stasia's new spindles. They are so gorgeous!



Do you know where you are really supposed to live? Find Your Spot is a comprehensive quiz that tells you where you should live. Once you finish the quiz you get 25 four page reports with photos on each place on your list. You can also add places to your list. I'm supposed to live in either Vermont or Oregon. Sounds good to me.



Peaches, aka Tubby, is now on a bunny weight loss regimen. She's doing her part by sleeping on her food rather than eating it.

I've added three reviews of Stranded Color Knitting to the official book web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~nanetteblanchard/id6.html.If any of you know of any additional reviews of the book online, please let me know.



Wendy is giving away a copy of the booklet for her July contest so go over and enter her contest. So far the booklet has raised $227 for rabbit rescue through the House Rabbit Society. Thank you so much!

5 colors spun, 14 colors to go. I initially considered doing a rainbow afghan with this yarn but I really don't want a hand washable afghan. So I will use it all to do a series of small projects with rainbow colors.







I'll be back on Monday afternoon with a list of items I'm looking to trade - knitting books, patterns, and a sock kit.



HERE's a free Teaching Company lecture on "What the Declaration of Independence Says" just in time for Fourth of July. I'm looking forward to it as this professor was highly recommended in a few online sites reviewing the Teaching Company classes.