It is often said, “When it rains, it pours.” I go a week without updating the blog, and now, suddenly, I have too much to talk about.

First – some thoughts on blocking yarn. I generally don’t do it, and I generally don’t recommend it for knitting yarns. It stretches the yarn out and temporarily sets it in a tense state. When you wash your knitted swatch for the first time, it is practically guaranteed that the gauge will change as the yarn springs back to its relaxed form. That said, I ferociously block my lace yarn. Here’s why:

Hopefully, you can see that the yarn on the right is as curly as ramen noodles. That’s just not good knitting yarn! However, once blocked, it smoothes out and behaves nicely. When the lace is done, it too will be washed and blocked as far as I can stretch it out. That way, it won’t matter if the yarn tries to spring back to some curlier shape.

Second – my order from Fire Mountain Gems arrived today. I only ordered a little bit of stuff to test out some bridal hair pin prototypes, figuring that if they were successful, I’d go back and get more supplies. I would say success is mine! I was trying to emulate a hairpin sold at this salon in CA.

Their version

My version

Not bad, eh? (I still have to go buy the actual hairpin portions.) Anyway, I feel like I just saved $70 – the retail price of said pins. Although mine are also made with Swarovski crystals, freshwater pearls, and sterling silver wire, it’s a lot less money and just a little bit of time invested. I’m looking forward to making other sparkly hair things. This is fun!

Thanks to Virginia for her suggestions re the baby blanket yesterday. I will suggest the basketweave stitch to another knitter who is also pondering various reversible stitches.

When I lived in New Jersey, I was a very solitary knitter. I met Claudia shortly after I moved to Boston, and she brought me to a few Knitsmiths meetings. Unfortunately, I don’t see the ‘Smiths as often as I’d like to, since my schedule is even mad on Sunday afternoons when they meet. Now I attend a weekly knitting group at Harvard, and you can’t beat that for convenience! This group was organized by Carrie, a Harvard employee who I first met at Knitsmiths. We gather every Tuesday at noon at the Bauer Center for Genomics Research (rm. 203, if you’d like to join us!).

We have decided to put together a patchwork blanket for one of the ladies in the group who is expecting a child in May. (It’s a “secret/surprise project,” but I’m fairly sure she doesn’t read my blog…) Nine of us are making squares, and Carrie is assembling the blanket and putting a border on it. We’re all using the same yarn (Ole-Ole, 60/40 cotton/acrylic), and the basic rules are that it’s a 9″ square with a reversible pattern.

Here’s my yarn!

The reversibility issue is driving me bonkers. I don’t want to do a plain garter or seed stitch square, and someone else has already made one with a reversible cable design. I considered a two color garter slip-stitch sort of thing, but I’ve never been fond of the patterns that ss produces. In her book Styles, Sally Melville wrote a lot about using knitting as warp, and this seems like a good sized project to try the technique. However, I’m afraid this method would probably make my square a bit thicker than the other squares. So now I’m thinking a mitered garter square might be appropriate. Does anyone else have ideas?

My sister and I got a lot of wedding planning work accomplished during her visit last week. We spent most of Tuesday in Woodstock (CT), where the wedding will be taking place this October. The Inn we are using for the event is decorated in a sort of “English Garden” theme.

Amy is sitting in one of the front rooms at the Inn

We were also able to meet with several florists and drive around the area a little bit. If you like really quiet towns, it is a nice destination. There’s a tourist website devoted to the small communities in that area, Quiet Corner, where you can read about places to stay, where to eat, antiquing, and that sort of thing.

I’m spending a bit more time thinking about bridal hair these days. If you read Kate’s blog, you might have noticed she and I have been talking a little bit about hair jewelry and how to make your own beaded flower hairpins. She was kind enough to invite me over to her home yesterday and spent a few hours showing me the basics of beads and wires. (Inspired, I went home and promptly placed a large order with an online bead shop.) I’ll post pictures of my hairpin designs if I ever create anything that looks decent. I also found out that Kate and I share the same undergraduate alma mater. Isn’t that funny coincidence?

Progress on the wedding lace continues. I’ve plying more yarn now and hope to get back to knitting very soon.

I’ve made a great deal of progress on the Kid Silk Haze sweater. In fact, I am almost ready to separate the front and back with the armscye shaping. The sweater body has a very subtly shaped waist – so subtle in fact that I can’t tell at all that it’s there. Perhaps once it’s not bunched on a small needle, it will become clearer. It is quite sheer, and I’ve had a few people ask me if I planned to wear something underneath. Heh.

Love the ruffle

The wedding lace inches along, I am about 1/5th done with the piece. However, I’ve nearly run out of yarn, too. I’m devoting the next couple of weeks to spinning the latest batch of prepared fiber.

There was a very bizarre icicle mass outside our house. I snapped this picture the morning before it melted. See how much the wire bends under the weight of the ice?

I’m really bad with plants. Between my lack of skill and James-the-plant-eating-cat, we haven’t had any plants in our home for at least six years. However, I was charmed by a small potted basil at the supermarket last Saturday and splurged. I swear I was diligently watering it, but on Thursday:

Oh no!

The Black Thumb strikes again!

My sister is visiting next week to help me do wedding planning errands. I’m working the whole weekend in order to take off a couple of days mid-week to hang out with her. (The last time she was here, I had to work the whole time, leaving her to entertain herself for the better part of each day!) She’s somewhat allergic to my cats, so I try to keep the house especially well vacuumed before she arrives. I decided to get a little head start on the housecleaning this morning.

As I was folding the afghans and blankets on the sofa, I looked at a thin blanket I had machine knit in 1999. It is a patchwork-style coverlet, using four colors of Lion Brand Wool Ease. I machine wash and dry it several times a year. The cats love to “make biscuits” on it, and Matt and I both curl up under it when we’re on the sofa. This is how it looks today:

Pill city!

(Warning! Opinionated and possibly uninformed rant follows.)

Isn’t this just awful? Who would ever want to make a sweater from this stuff? This is a perfect example of why cheap yarns are just not worth the money spent (or saved!) on them. I’m not suggesting we should all run out and buy the most expensive yarns, heaven knows there are pricey yarns that also wear poorly, but I also don’t advocate making decisions based solely on the pricetag.

When Nancy Thomas moved from Knitters Magazine over to Lion Brand Yarns a few years ago, I was somehow hopeful that she might be able to influence the yarn manufacturing side in a more positive way. I don’t know why I thought she could change things, but it seemed like it could be a nice idea to produce a higher quality “accessible” yarn. While the variety of yarns produced by Lion seems to have expanded (striping sock yarns, the various fur/hair yarns), I haven’t gotten the impression that the quality of their basic yarns have changed. Their color design person (or team) is admittedly awesome – I am very drawn to many of their palettes and colorways. Nevertheless, I now stay far away from the entire brand.

I understand that yarn companies make scads more money selling yarn vs. selling patterns. However, yarn typically doesn’t sell well unless there are fashionable/well-written/easy-to-follow patterns for it, since many knitters are hesitant about substituting different yarns for existing designs. It seems to me that a company selling great (or even good) patterns and poor-to-mediocre yarns is destined to stay small potatoes. There needs to be a good balance of yarn quality and design skill in order to become a successful brand. Look at the entire Rowan designing/manufacturing/marketing machine. Is it truly impossible to do this on a more economical scale? I applaud the fact that Lion is more active in designing (or more aggressive in advertising new patterns?), but they will not sell more yarn when customers realize how their carefully made sweatpants or whatever turn hairy and thin out, pill like mad, or otherwise look worn out well before it should.

Lion does produce seemingly higher-quality yarns (handpainted, etc.), but I will not buy them, primarily because I feel so burned by the cheapies. I have bought and used Wool Ease, Microspun, Homespun, and Kitchen Cotton. Wool Ease pills like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Microspun split like the devil and stretched out of shape within one wearing. Homespun turned very hairy. Kitchen Cotton is the only one that has performed well. Sometimes, I think about purchasing a few skeins of their Fisherman’s Wool, but I always decide against it. Now, it’s mostly a moot point. I spin most of my yarns for knitting, and I shop the higher end brands for novelty yarns.

Matt rented a movie last weekend, Laurel Canyon, about self-discovery, personal growth, blah blah blah. It has pot smoking, rock-and-roll, and lesbianism, to boot. Actually, it was a pretty bad movie. In any case, one character, played by the lovely Kate Beckinsale, was purported to be a Harvard MD/PhD student finishing her dissertation. Her thesis topic regarded the genetic basis of reproductive behavior of the fruit fly (not a particularly unusual subject). What was incredibly annoying was that she consistently mispronounced both “Drosophila” and “genomics” throughout the entire film. An MD/PhD who refers to her research as “dro-soh-FEEL-a* gen-AW-mix” is clearly not taking work too seriously!

On a different note, I have finally seen the “cult movie” on protein synthesis. I’d heard about it before, but it’s even weirder than I’d imagined. You will need the Real Player media player to see it (I think). Click here to check it out.

* Out of nagging curiosity, I spoke with a fruit fly researcher about the variations. (We have all heard researchers from the UK say words like “a-MY-no acids” or “EE-vol-u-tion.”) She tells me that dro-soh-FEEL-a may be legitimate in some small circles, but she also has the impression that researchers used this alternative pronunciation merely to direct more attention to themselves.

Most bloggers who regularly update eventually find out that they have nothing more to say. From what I’ve seen, they deal with creative desert by no longer adding blog entries or by changing the focus of the blog and expanding the topics covered. I have occasionally meandered in non-knitterly directions in the past and hope not too many of my readers (yeah, all three of you) have wandered off in disgust. I feel certain that watching the ever-so-slow progress of the wedding lace or ruffly red sweater is dull for even the most profoundly spiritual-minded knitter, and as such, I have decided to widen the focus of the blog somewhat.

Like other knit bloggers, I do enjoy cooking. To me, cooking is very similar to knitting – within strict confines, there can be great artistry. I am an enthusiastic cook, and my only goal is that it tastes good. There is a great deal of satisfaction to be derived from a creating a meal – especially the yield after a relatively short time investment, as well as the simple pleasure that comes from eating good food.

I am a recent subscriber to Cooking Light, and tonight’s dinner comes from the March 2004 issue. It is the cover recipe, Roasted Butternut Squash and Bacon Pasta. With respect to copyright, I will not repost the original recipe. Instead, here is my variation on the original:

It ain’t art, but it was really tasty!

1 small butternut squash
2 oz prosciutto
6 cipollini onions
8 oz uncooked mini penne pasta
1/4 c flour
2 c fat free milk
4 oz shredded gruyere
1 T dijon mustard
shredded Romano cheese

Peel and cube the squash, spread on a foil-lined, PAM-sprayed cookie sheet, and bake at 425 F until soft and browned on the foil side. Remove from oven and turn the temp to 450 F. While the squash bakes, chop prosciutto and onions, pan fry until onions are tender and slightly browned. Cook pasta according to directions and drain well. “Pan fry” the flour (add some salt here, if you wish) until gently browned. Gradually add milk to the flour and whisk like mad to make a smooth sauce. Bring the sauce to boil for just a minute, remove from heat, and slowly add the gruyere. Stir the pasta into the sauce, then put the pasta into a PAM-sprayed casserole dish. Mix squash with prosciutto and onions, scatter on top of the pasta. Top with a few shavings of Romano. Bake for another 10 minutes.

Oh, it’s time for bed! Before I dash off to the Land of Nod, I wanted to post progress pictures of the wedding lace. So far, so good!

Almost one full repeat of the center panel

I’ve been preparing more fiber for spinning. The fiber seems slightly tacky – I think the water wasn’t hot enough during the wash. (The water heater is set at the hottest temperature, but in our not-insulated basement, I suspect the Boston winter has been cooling the water stored in the tank.) I’ll rewash it in stove-boiled water when the yarn is spun.