2009

I shan't compile best-of-2009 lists (although I could go on an on about books I read this year, places I visited, interesting folks I met, incredible food I tasted...) but stick to knitting. After all, it's a knitting blog. Here it is, then, my knitting year in review, starting with March, since that's when I picked up the needles:

Not bad for a knitting newbie. With all this knitting happening around the house I have somewhat neglected other interests and responsibilities of mine, and my knitting resolution for 2010 is to balance things more evenly: knit after having been to the gym, for instance, rather than knitting instead of working out. (Are you familiar with this dilemma?)

I wish you and yours a healthy, safe and prosperous, a magical, inspiring, and triumphant New Year. Thank you so much for your readership. Prost Neujahr!

New York, New York

Today I was asked several times what I have planned for New Year's Eve. Nothing, I replied truthfully each time. Our Christmas vacation in New York City was so fantastic we forgot all about New Year's Eve.

Indeed, we had the most splendid time in the city. The Hubs has family just outside and we visit regularly, but to actually spend entire nights in NYC: a rare and awesome opportunity! (Back in the pre-Hubs days I used to go to the city and crash on various Columbia U grad student floors that I'd share with furry creatures and the occasional cockroach, but as marriage has made me a respectable woman my travel arrangements have become somewhat less adventurous but much more luxurious.) We were ecstatic to receive our friend's invitation to take over her apartment while she was traveling abroad, and to make the most of our time we spent several nights walking until the wee hours through the magical wonderland that is New York at Christmas time.

We ditched our high-brow museum plans on the 23rd and 24th and hiked around Central Park instead. The 23rd was bitterly cold, but stomping around the snow-covered park in brilliant sunlight was well worse a half-frozen nose (and half-frozen ears: can you believe I went to NYC without a hat?! Knitter's pride forbade to purchase one, but luckily my down coat has a hood). Christmas Eve we stood in line for an hour to make it to the St. Thomas Episcopal midnight mass; we were just two of the 1800+ people attending. I don't think we made it back to our digs before 3 am (I vaguely remember getting a ten-dollar hotdog at Rockefeller Plaza and a plastic cup of Sake, sold under the table by a crêpe baker: that was our Christmas Eve meal).

Christmas Day we spent with the Hubs' relatives: apart from terrific company we enjoyed a culinary feast that included pâté de campagne and foie gras, homemade in Southern France and shipped to the US by a cousin so many times removed from the Hubs that we don't even know her (?) name; a bûche de Noël made by the hostess, the French-born Mme B.; and more than one bottle of champagne. (And a tray of selected cheeses, Cornish game hens in orange reduction, Vermont ham, roasted vegetables, a very fancy mac & cheese for the youngsters... you get the idea.) Two days of gluttony with the family and then we returned to the city.

Rather than going to any Broadway or Off Broadway or even Off Off Broadway productions we watched three movies, two of which receive my thumbs up: Up in the Air is a deliciously entertaining movie; A Single Man is impossibly gorgeous and heart-breaking. The third film we watched is, in the words of one woman who left the theater 20 minutes into the film, more of a father's day than a holiday movie: The Road is not only depressing (which by itself would be quite alright) but the bloody scariest movie I've ever had to suffer through. There was a point where I, too, thought about leaving. Great movie, don't get me wrong, but absolutely terrifying.

Oh, and I knit a little here and there. Mainly on the bus to and from New York and in between episodes of overeating. I'm working on a plain, seamless round-and-round-and-round-we-go sweater for myself, following EZ's percentage system so that I finally learn something about sweater architecture.

The watch cap I made for the Hubs? My FIL saw it here and sent me the following email on Christmas: "Wow! Beautiful watch cap. Make mine a deep navy blue!" Since then I received orders for two more watch caps and a pair of the Fiddlehead mittens. That's on top of the scarf for the Hubs and a secret Christmas project that didn't get done in time (ouch). I should probably put my EZ sweater aside; then again, it's twelve months till next year Christmas... :)

Now I need to figure out what we're doing tomorrow night.. I don't want a repeat of two years ago, when we went to sleep at 10 pm. (Granted, we had just driven a ten ton moving truck from upstate New York to Boston, through a blizzard, mind you, and were somewhat exhausted.) What are you doing on New Year's Eve??

Merry Bookmas!

Howdy folks! How was your Christmas? We spontaneously went to NYC for the holidays, camping out at our friend-the-artist's house in Hell's Kitchen, just off of Times Square. I had the most fabulous time and will tell you about it tomorrow (?). For now just a brag picture of what Santa brought to our house:

(Yes, we believe in giving books. Half of those books belong to the Hubs. The other half is Mine. Mine. Mine. My share is mainly art and art criticism books, with a few clever detective novels here and there and the occasional bestseller. The Hubs' half concerns math, economy, and an effective way of saving the planet and making the world a better place.) (We started with the latter by buying local. We loves independent book stores.)

The Classic Husband Watch Cap

Since there wasn't all that much to do on Sunday other than watch the snow accumulate (40 cm), iron (three hours), and write New Year's greetings to possibly everyone we know (100+ cards!), I finished the Hubs' Classic World War II watch cap while watching Harry Potter in the evening (Ravelry link here):

Monsieur's verdict: Like! He's worn the hat all day and reported back that it didn't itch one bit (this apparently had been a fear of his that was entirely unbeknownst to me), that it fit comfortably underneath his bike helmet, and he very much liked the color, since it went so well with his coat. (Humph.)

(Specs: pattern link see above; 0.8 hanks of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in manly gray-black; US #7 needles; nil mods.)

Knitting the hat was about as exciting as watching the snow outside our bedroom window...

...and seeing the sun set behind Boston College:



(Pretty exciting.)

And today, you ask? Today the sunshine tricked me into mounting my bike to go to the gym and to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. While the gym and the shopping both went just dandy, the whole biking enterprise is getting not just uncomfortable but also dangerous. Snow plus strong winds plus just a tad of ice plus reckless college kid drivers plus complete darkness by 5 pm: CRAZY bike riding conditions. I hereby announce the end of this year's bike season. Tomorrow I'll stay home and... knit work some! :)

She Liked...

So, by the time I handed my friend the cowl, I had made up my mind to give her the Sideways Grande Cloche as well. 'Cause, when someone ecstatically screams at the sight of you, and it's neither your lovely smile nor general happiness to see you but the hat you're wearing that causes this crazy-happy behavior, and when, in addition, it only took you a couple of evenings to make said hat and you have plenty more yarn for a second one, well, then you gladly hand over the hat and make plans to knit another. Which is why my friend left the restaurant wearing cowl and hat:

I had a really great time last night. We (=the friend, Hubs & moi, and another couple [who don't appreciate hand-made stuff as much as music stuff, which is why they got music stuff]) went to my favorite Boston restaurant (which is actually in Brookline), the Washington Square Tavern, where the food and the service are so grand, it's worth waiting for one hour. Especially if waiting means hanging out at the bar and sampling the Tavern's fantastic beer selection (=the boys) or, in our case, tasting different wines and, as aperitif, sipping Kir Royale (so early 90s!). Should you ever make your way to Boston, do try the Tavern: the mussels are out of this world, so are the scallops, so are the risottos. My friend had the meatloaf, and while home-made meatloaf can be quite tasty [try Cook's Illustrated recipe for meatloaf: fantastic], restaurant meatloaf is usually pretty lame or outright awful. This one, however, was insanely good. Paired with the Zinfandel... Lawdy!!)

After last night's social and culinary extravaganza, today has been very homey: we cleaned, did the laundry, and went grocery shopping. I started the Hubs' watch cap, and here the only exciting news is that his preference changed from the "original Navy watch cap" (1x1 ribbing) to the "original WWII watch cap" (2x2 ribbing):

A Noble Idea...

it was to knit a X-mas gift for a friend of ours whom we're meeting for dinner and drinks tonight. Since the idea came only on Monday, I decided on something small, and after stash-diving and Ravelry-browsing I matched two skeins of Di.vé Autunno with Emily Kausalik's A Noble Cowl. Entirely wrong weight/needle size/gauge, but what does it matter for a cowl...? I simply cut out two pattern repeats, casting on 90 instead of 120 stitches. This made the cowl more snug, but it also guaranteed that I didn't run out of yarn and--most importantly--it cut down knitting time.

The result:

I hope she likes it...?! (If so, you'll hear about it here. If not, I shall not mention it.)

PS: I quite enjoyed this article in the NYT (on the return of well-dressed men), and of the fashion blogs it mentions, this one is entertaining. I sent the article to the Hubs but have not yet received a response...

My Week in Bullet Points

--I knit an iPhone cozy. That was all I could handle last week, with giving (and then grading) final exams and what not:



(While proctoring a three-hour exam it occurred to me that this could have been prime knitting time. Alas, I fear my students sometimes think I am cuckoo as is; no need to scare them further with knitting needles. BTW: my students this semester were, for the most part, terrific kids. I'll miss them.)

--Hubs ordered a hat. I immediately searched for all manly hat patterns available to me (including the beautiful Koolhaas), and once he had considered them, he picked... sound the drums please... the Navy Watch Cap. I died of boredom at the mere thought. The Hubs then said, well, maybe the Danish Earflap Cap...? Love it!, I replied. Stranded color work, fabulous! No, he said, of course without the snowflakes. Just the earflaps. Couldn't I add earflaps to the Navy Watch Cap...? I saw my last chance in color choice and asked him for his preference. Black, he said. I gasped. Fine, he compromised, how about a really dark grey? Ugh.

--And while on the hat, why not throw in a scarf for the Hubs? He's officially abandoned the Sculptured Lace Scarf I made for him last spring (my first knitting project: a labor of love. That's how I learned of yarn-overs. I-cords. Charts. Knitting code. Knitting into the back of a stitch. Really, I learned so much by knitting that scarf. And I had picked the pattern because it was designed by a man for men. Nevermind the word "lace" in the name.) So, the Hubs doesn't like the scarf. Instead, he started wearing my Clapotis. My Clapotis! For comparison:

I thought of a wicked plan to save Clapotis. I will finally block it and then convince the Hubs that it's a lace scarf...

Alternatively, I'll make him a black 2x2 ribbing Death-By-Boredom scarf to go with the hat...

--I saw the current Knitty and fell hard for Spoke.

--I went to as many holiday parties this past week as I've been to in all previous years combined. There's something about life past grad school and getting holiday party invitations: the two are connected. At one holiday party (celebrating both Christmas and Hannukah), the hostess had stayed up the entire night--not gone to bed at all!--to make eight different kinds of traditional German holiday baked goodies (Stollen, Mutzenmandeln [aka Oliebolelen], Quarkkäulchen, Zimtsterne, and Vanillekipferl among them), and I ate myself silly on Krapfen (it went well with Glühwein). She had also urged everyone who played an instrument to bring it along for a potential jam session. I counted four saxophones and several violins, and indeed, live music was on the entire night. One guest brought the rest of his jazz band; another his a cappella group. The house almost burst with the 100 guests or so present. It was way awesome.

--We ordered and received our custom holiday cards but have written none so far. Experience has taught us that we're likely to be behind with Christmas cards, so this time we opted for a Happy 2010 theme. Clever, the two of us. One can still wish a Happy New Year in February, right? (Goodness, we have 100 cards to write sign.)

--Here's Räuchermännchen next to our modest Christmas pyramid, our concession to Christmas décor:

Have I mentioned we're not having Christmas this year? In recent years we spent Christmas either with my or the Hubs' parents, but this year it'll be just the two of us. We couldn't commit to any plans because we were hoping (and are still clinging to that hope) to get invited to job interviews in December. Since we're not even sure where we'll be over Christmas we don't plan on having a tree. The few ornaments we have (a considerable number, actually, given we haven't had any need for them thus far) are keeping each other company on a baguette serving dish. It works for us!

Grande!

Why did I start another hat without first finishing the Fiddlehead Hat? Ahem... that's a sore topic; let's skip this question. (Let's just say: I wasn't quite ready to come up with my own hat pattern and, more significantly, size it correctly. My hat dilemma is probably something for another blog post; for now, I'd like to let the issue rest...). Laura Irwin's Sideways Grande Cloche is so darn cute, why not make it? Thanks to my MIL's generous fiber gifts, I had a couple of Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Grande skeins peeking out of the stash corner, politely but firmly requesting to become said Cloche.

After just two days of knitting a row here and there, I've been wearing my new hat all evening (it is, after all, rather cold in our apartment).

The hat looks even cuter now that I have properly attached the strands to it: I may have to convince the Hubs tomorrow morning to volunteer to take a daylight picture of moi plus completely finished cloche.

'Cause I Was Asking for it

Snow! Finally it's snowing! And the snow appears to be sticking, too. You know, after I complained about yesterday's unseasonally warm weather I really freaked this morning when the Hubs' parents called to report that it was snowing in Mississippi. But now that we have gotten a few flakes up here as well the world seems to be back in order.

I hadn't even noticed that Boston put out snowflake lights over Thanksgiving. It took looking through a viewfinder to see them.

What we did today? Lounge around for the most part. I made it to the post office just five minutes before closing to mail my Dad's socks. (Yes, can't help but post another picture. I'll keep it small, though:)

Now I just finished polishing those shoes Nikolaus hopefully fills tonight:

When preparing to explain the meaning of Nikolaus to my students the other day I came across the information that typically one puts only one boot outside the door to avoid appearing greedy. Well, where I grew up we put out the set of boots, sometimes even adding a third shoe, just to make sure Nikolaus knew at which door to stop. At any rate, I modestly put the boots away but left the pair of clogs right by our entrance. :)

Man Socks

All that was left for me to do today was to take pictures of Dad's socks in daylight. Alas, by the time I returned home from work at around 4 p.m. it was almost dark. (I do dark-at-four-o'clock much better in cold weather, but with the temperature in the 60s, dark afternoons are plain wrong. Warm weather means summer, and in the summertime it only gets dark at night. Therefore: warm temperature + dark outside = bedtime). I disgress. Here they are, manly socks for my father, in unfortunate incandescent light:

Pattern: basic toe-up socks, with a few cables to keep things interesting. Knit with 66 stitches around the foot (68 around the leg) and #2 needles to make 'em plenty big.
Yarn: Classic Elite Alpaca Sox, colorway Pebbles
Verdict: Love the yarn! But I forgot to make sure that it's machine washable, and since Alpaca Sox isn't, I'm a bit worried my father won't wear the socks much to avoid having to hand-wash them. Hm... I sure hope he likes the cables as much as I do... And those stripes--I love them. And the fuzz? Love that, too.

I wish y'all a good weekend and a peaceful second Sunday of Advent. Is Nikolaus coming to your house? (I sure hope he's coming to mine. I'll polish my boots and hope the Hubs gets the hint. Tee hee.)

Yankee Swap & Hobbit Feet

This morning I left home with this:

And in the afternoon I came home with that:

I went to my first Yankee Swap party! And because gift choices were limited to a five-dollar budget and because Whole Foods wasn't all that far, tasty edibles in tiny jars were the gift du jour. My fancy dipping sauce changed hands for a posh herb mix. I was asked why I hadn't knit something for my swap contribution. Well... I realized just last night that the Yankee Swap would go down today, and although that would have been plenty of time to knit an iPhone sock, I simply felt overwhelmed by the task and thus stuck with the safe choice, the dip. I have an invitation for another Yankee Swap that comes with a one-dollar challenge; perhaps I'll knit a gadget sock for that (plenty of free patterns on Ravelry...).

Speaking of gadgets. For the umpteenth time I voiced my discontent over the lighting situation in our apartment. While I didn't aim my complaints at anyone in particular but yelled at the walls more generally, the Hubs, bless his heart, suggested I use a headlamp when knitting in the evening (dark outside + black yarn + tiny needles = unhappy eyes). A headlamp? Sure thing, a camping headlamp! He then proudly produced an elastic band with a light on one end (a gadget that supposedly I myself gave him a year or so ago: I have no memory of this), plopped the thing onto my head, turned on the light, and voilà, finishing my Dad's socks was a breeze...

(The state of my desk is alarming [oink oink]. Pay no attention!).

In any event, the socks are done! They are drying right now... Since these are large men socks (for my hobbit father: not very tall but with large hairy feet) and I have but medium sock blockers, they look kinda funny... I'll have better pictures tomorrow.