Knit Sisters

It’s been a good week for the Ordnance and Weaponry Geek here Chez Mad Dog. First and foremost, the aircraft carrier USS JFK, which is about to be decommissioned, did us the honor of docking in Boston Harbor for the weekend and allowing civilians on board.

From a distance, she looked like this. If you will be so kind, please ignore the pole.

Unfortunately, we were not the only folks in Boston who thought it might be cool to go on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. When the above photo was taken, we were about, oh, two hours away from the boat. Not as the crow flies, of course, but in a line packed with our fellow citizens.

As we sailed through the security checkpoint, however, I noted with some satisfaction that the U.S. Navy—unlike our friends at the TSA—does not concern itself with blunt craft scissors. In fact, turns out that you can carry your knitting and all your accoutrements onto an aircraft carrier because there are soldiers with machine guns ceaselessly patrolling the dock and the ship’s decks.

If you attack these people with your blunt craft scissors and your Addi Turbos, you frankly deserve whatever you get. You are officially 2 stupid 4 words.

Ever been on the deck of one of these babies?

Skyline of Boston as backdrop.

Here’s where the planes land and are “trapped” in a miraculous maneuver that looks like threading a needle.

But with a fighter jet. And from the sky.

When they land, they go from 150 mph to 0 mph in less than 800 feet. The mind reels.

But that ain’t all. A catapult takeoff involves going from 0 to 200 mph in two seconds.

Beware of jet blast, propellers, and rotors. You betcha!

I knew a man in Berkeley who had flown fighter jets for the Navy. (That is, before he saw sense and gave it all up to become an historian of science.) He told me it involved a lot of vomiting. G-forces and so forth. For my part, I felt moderately nauseated just watching the planes take off and land on film.

There were certain restrictions about who could go on the aircraft carrier (no one under six) and what footwear was acceptable (no open-toed shoes or high heels). We were a little puzzled by all this until we got on the boat. But then…oh, ho, ho, no more mystery! In combination with all the ridges and indentations on the deck where you could easily catch said high heels and trip, here’s what you see when you step to the edge of the deck:

And you can step right to the edge of the deck, folks. Note the absence of a guard rail. And yeah, there are those absurd little nets, but if you fall over the edge…well…bon voyage, sailor!

See why three-year-olds and aircraft carriers don’t mix?

The older children seemed to enjoy the boat, however, and the many opportunities to gear up in various naval costumes:

Most fires aboard are fought by these tiny Martians.

Alex made an important phone call to his broker from the deck:

Sell!

I was windblown, but quite enjoying my brief stint in the Navy:

Time Out of Mind begged to go on the aircraft carrier and I simply didn’t have the heart to turn him down.

In other exciting news from the weaponry front, I was also accepted to give a paper at a conference in Las Vegas in a few months (yes, I know…back to Vegas!…I bet you can’t wait either! Whoo hoo!) and the pre-conference hoo-doo involves…are you ready?…a day-long tour of the Nevada Test Site.

Nuke geek heaven! Alex is incredibly jealous.

Minnie is looking good:

You can kind of see why the pattern calls this part a skirt, can’t you?

A little closer:

I’m getting fairly close to the part where I’ll start beading. Can. Not. Wait.

In other news, we’re making the slow adjustment to being a one-pet family. The shock of Zeno’s death is wearing off and we are better able to access joy than we were last week. Apropos of something else entirely, my mother reminded me of the old Roger Miller song in which he sings, You can’t drive around with a tiger in your car, but you can be happy if you put your mind to it…

We lost our tiger, but we’re trying to put our minds to being happy.

Back on Thursday. With any luck, it will involve beads…

To go to the Fiber Festival this weekend.

I plied the Suffolk and Romney,

 

thereby freeing up two bobbins.

Since I’m taking three spinning classes this weekend, I thought it would be prudent to have some free bobbins to use.

Shelda asked what classes I’m taking.  Here’s the lineup:

Friday afternoon:  Lumpy Bumpy Designer yarn with Saundra Lungsford

Saturday morning:  Spin a Bunny with Nancy Barnett

Saturday afternoon:  Spinning Mohair with Chris Hunsburger

Sunday morning:  Fully Fashioned and Fabulous with Melissa Leapman

I have some homework to do for the Melissa Leapman class–five little swatches.  Have I started on these yet?  Nope. 

I’m trying to get mentally organized for the trip.  I’ll have to leave between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. on Friday morning in order to get to Jefferson City in time for my 1:00 p.m. class.  I’ll need my wheel, bobbins, combs, carders, angora fiber, knitting project(s), lazy kate, niddy noddy….

Wish me luck.

Minnie is becoming a little more maximal:

It won’t be long before I’ll have beads. And then! Look out!

Moving on, a number of people have asked if I will write up the pattern for “Time Out of Mind.”

I have decided, in the interests of time and out of respect for Fiona Ellis—who originally combined these cables in one of her designs, doncha know?—to go about half-way on that request and give you something that is less like a pattern and more like a recipe. Be forewarned that this will require some rejiggering on your part; I’ll suggest ways to alter the pattern to make it a different size.

The existing “Time Out of Mind” was knitted to fit a 36″ bust, so the instructions will start from that foundation. To alter it, you can add or subtract stitches in between the cables or along the sides. Or you could simply add more cables. Keep in mind that it will look best if you have an odd number of cables, such that the middle cable is one of the larger, double-circle cables.

My sweater had seven cables on the back and seven on the front. It is a simple drop-shoulder shape, so the construction is very basic. I knit the body and the sleeves in the round and did a three-needle bind-off at the shoulder, so “Time” is my amazing seamless sweater. And I really, really liked it that way.

The charts come from Fiona Ellis’s Inspired Cable Knits and are part of a pattern she calls “Ripples in Time.” Out of respect for her design work and for copyright law, I will not reproduce those here. The book is lovely. You won’t regret owning it.

I started out by falling in love with the cable combination she used, then I bought a boatload of worsted weight Malabrigo in color Scarlet, one skein in color Velvet Grapes, and Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, another book you won’t regret owning.

If you want to do this from scratch, just get a yarn you like, swatch it over the pattern, get the gauge, find the sweater style you like from Ann Budd’s book, and then follow her instructions for how many stitches to cast on, etc. That’s really what I did, although it took a little extra math because my gauge on a 32″ U.S. size 7 Addi Natura circular needle was 5.7 stitches to the inch, not a neat 5 or 6.

Here’s what I did, more or less:

Cast on 228 stitches in CC (Velvet Grapes) on a U.S. size 7 32″ circular needle. Join, being careful not to twist. Place markers at the beginning of the row and after the 114th stitch to mark the front and back of the sweater.

Change to MC (Scarlet) and knit 2 rows in seed stitch.

P 1 at the beginning and end of every pattern row on both the back and the front (leaving 112 stitches over which to distribute the cables; each of the 7 cable panels is 16 stitches).

Following the charts, knit cable panels until work measures 13.5 inches. Divide the front and back for the armholes. Knit the back straight until armhole measures 9 inches. On right side, knit 19 stitches in cable pattern and place these stitches on waste yarn. Bind off 14 stitches. Knit the middle 48 stitches in cable pattern and place these on waste yarn. Bind off 14 stitches. Knit the final 19 stitches in pattern and place them on waste yarn.

Now knit the front straight in pattern until it measures 7 inches. Now I must admit that what I did for the neck shaping is somewhat sketchy, but it was more or less this: knit 33 stitches in patttern on right side of work; place the remaining stiches on waste yarn.

At neck edge, bind off 2 stitches on even rows 4 through 12, bind off 1 stitch on even rows 14 through 20. Knit even with back. Place remaining stitches (19) on waste yarn.

Knit and then place middle 48 stitches on waste yarn for front neck. Work left neck shaping to mirror right.

Using a three-needle bind off, “seam” the shoulders.

Starting at the center of the underarm, pick up 96 stitches evenly around the armhole for each sleeve on a 16″ U.S. size 7 circular needle. Place markers for center 16 stitches; these are for the one large center cable that runs down each sleeve. The other stitches are purled (reverse stockinette). Place another marker to mark the beginning of your row; this marker should be in the center of the underarm.

Working cable according to chart and the rest of the sleeve in reverse stockinette, decrease 2 stitches on either side of the marker every 6 rows, 6 times (to row 36), then decrease 2 stitches every 4 rows starting with row 40 and ending with row 112. (Change to two circulars or to double pointed needles when you have decresed to a point that this becomes necessary.) Continue in cable pattern and reverse stockinette through row 118. Knit two rows in seed stitch and bind off in CC.

Now back to the neck. Pick up 22 stitches along the bound off edge on the right side, pick up and knit the 48 front neck stitches from the waste yarn keeping the cable patttern continuous, pick up 22 stitches on the bound off edge on the left side, pick up and knit the 48 stitches at the back neck keeping the cable pattern continuous.

I worked the neck on a 24″ U.S. size 7 circ. needle. The picked up stitches were worked in a K1, P1 ribbing. Work 11 rows, continuing the cable panels and continuing the ribbing on the sides. On rows 7, 9, and 11, decrease 4 stitches total by purling 2 tog in the reverse stockinette between the cables (2 decreases in front; 2 decreases in back). At the end of row 11, you will have decreased 12 stitches total from the neck. I found that it worked best to decrease right at the edge of the cable, where it was less obvious. I also varied where I did the decreases, again so it was less obvious.

Knit 1 row in seed stitch. Bind off in CC.

Pop sweater on over your head and live your life! No seams, no blocking, no nothing! You are ready to go!

As I said, this is more a recipe than it is an exact set of instructions, but I think it can be easily varied to create a range of sizes, especially since the sweater is relatively loose-fitting and the cables tend to make it hug your body.

Good luck! May Time look good on you.

While thinking about today’s post, I ate the last of the lemon curd, slathered on a toasted bagel. 

 

Now I remember why I don’t make lemon curd all that often–not because it’s at all hard to make, but because I just hog it all down.  I have a similar weakness for homemade caramel sauce, which I have been known to eat straight out of the frig with a spoon.  Someday I’ll share that recipe (really more of a technique) with you all.

My spinning wheel has been packed up in its handy-dandy carrying case for a few weeks, patiently awaiting my attention.  My problem?  I have so many cool spinning projects going on, I’m finding it hard to choose which one to work on.

There’s the white Suffolk lambswool.

And the undercoat of the double-coated fleece, which I’m spinning about as fine as I can.

And the naturally-colored Romney, which has been in the works for some time.

                            Seen here reposing against the Handsome Triangle shawl.

And, last but not least, mohair and a wool-mohair blend, which are destined to be plied together in the same fashion as this skein, which was gifted to Ellen at Christmas.

                                      Also reposing against the Handsome Triangle.

I think what I’d like to work on is the Suffolk–finishing up that partial bobbin and plying the two bobbins together.  Hindering my progress at this point?  Every bobbin I own has something on it, therefore making it hard to ply anything off onto another bobbin.  And I have a lazy streak about a mile wide which prevents me from actually taking anything off a bobbin and making a ball out of it.

Oy.

I’m not a good liar. In fact, I’m one of the unconvincing liars you’ll ever meet, so I always just default to the truth. Not because I’m morally superior to prevaricators, Lord knows, but rather because I’m excruciatingly less competent.

So here’s the truth: the atmosphere Chez Mad Dog is about as grim as it can be. We feel like Death eatin’ a cracker.

Excuse me for looking like I just lost my best friend.

Alex is, naturally, the hardest hit by Zeno’s untimely and violent demise, but none of us are exactly getting high on life this week. I certainly miss the little devil myself, but I have to say that the worst part of the last few days for me has been watching Alex suffer and being essentially powerless to ease his pain.

I haven’t experienced this particular kind of anguish since I was a kid, on occasions when I had to witness my sister suffer the disappointments and wounds of youth, situations that, as her elder sister and her self-appointed protector, I found almost unbearable. When it comes to these two people, I’d genuinely rather take the hit myself than have to sit by and see them hurt.

It is not surprising, therefore, that I have had to remind myself repeatedly to be still and allow there to be space in this house for grief. My instinct—which I know is all wrong—is to do a tap dance, buy tickets to a magic show, serve up ice cream and cake, ride around the house on a unicycle, stand on my head and spit wooden nickels…anything to distract Alex and make him feel better.

At a fundamental level, that kind of performance would only be a way to ease my own discomfort, when what Alex needs is just to be allowed to feel how he feels. Without having a clown show in his living room.

And how he feels is totally shitty, angry, shaken, and grief-stricken. Why? Because a mere 96 hours ago, he found the broken body of his cat in the street. If he didn’t feel completely awful, he’d be a monster. There’s just no way to experience this kind of loss that isn’t messy.

He’ll feel bad until he feels better. Meanwhile, I’ve buried my tap shoes in the back of the closet.

As my sister has said previously, the best thing for being sad is to learn something. What she didn’t say is that the second best thing for being sad is to buy another ball of Trekking:

I shall design a sock using this yarn and call it “Zeno.”

The third best thing for being sad is to start a summer sweater. I’m making Minnie from Rowan 39:

I foresee that this will be a good sweater for various auxiliary wedding events this summer.

I’m using Classic Silk in color 6916, Natural, which is knitting up like so:

Lovely, wouldn’t you say?

Working with Classic Silk is a wonderful experience. As a process knitter, I give it my most enthusiastic endorsement.

Back with more, and I hope greater cheer, on Friday…

Shelda asked about the sock pattern I have in mind for the beaded socks.  Actually, this is a Heartstrings sock kit which I purchased from our mutual friend Carol H. a while back.  The pattern was included, and the colorway is “purple iris.”

At first when I bought this kit from Carol, I didn’t think I’d make the pattern as written.  I just wasn’t too sure about the whole idea of beaded socks.  But the idea has sort of grown on me, so now I think I’ll go ahead and make them according to the pattern.

But first, I need to make myself another knitted dishcloth.  I bought this hemp yarn from Elann recently with just that purpose in mind, having heard that hemp is naturally bacteria-resistant.

Now, I know that some people have lots of fun making different dishcloth patterns, but I myself just use the garden-variety, start-with-two-stitches-and-increase dishcloth pattern.  This may be because I only start knitting a dishcloth when I absolutely, positively need one, so I need to get it done as quickly as possible.

I have a week and a half before I go to the fiber retreat in Jefferson City, and it occurred to me recently that I had written on my registration that I would be putting Blue Bamboo in the gallery of student work.  Uh oh.  Guess I better pull it back out and work on it.  In typical fashion, I petered out while working on the sleeves.  I’m about two-thirds through the first one.

Then, after completing the sleeves, I’ll put the leaf edging along the fronts.

Will I be able to finish it in time?  Only time will tell…. 

And, truly, I guess if I don’t, no doubt nothing tragic will occur. 

Zeno, openly adored cat of his primary caretaker Alex and surreptitiously loved step-cat of Ellen, died suddenly and tragically on Saturday evening, a victim of vehicular cat-slaughter. He is also survived by his canine sister, Shelley, of the home.

Zeno, resting near Shelley’s tail. Photo taken in his last days.

Although Zeno was a fairly consistently surly cat, and was known to bite at the least provocation, he nonetheless found a place in our hearts and was, along with Shelley, at the center of our household.

We already miss him terribly: we miss his habit of sitting outside my office window yowling; we miss the way he would blow us off by turning tail, hitching up his little butt, and stalking out of the room in a huff; we miss his grudging affection; we miss the sounds of murderous frustration he would make upon seeing a bird or squirrel he couldn’t hunt down and kill.

We miss his clear-eyed assessment of the Lee Harvey Oswald conundrum.

We miss his lithe and compact physicality.

But most of all, we miss his conversation. As Yvor Winters said of Hart Crane, “I would gladly emulate Odysseus and go down to the shadows for another hour’s conversation with him…” Granted, Zeno’s responses were mainly limited to “mrak” and “hell-whoa,” but the astonishing range of meaning and expression that he wrung out of those two vocalizations will long live in our hearts.

Our hearts which today are as wintry as this tree:

Our plan for the week is to cry a lot.

Our greatest hope is that he has been reunited with his derelict truck in the Great Beyond.

It ain’t heaven if it ain’t got no derelict truck.

Zeno will go to his final resting place tonight. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you feed your favorite cat a full can of Fancy Feast this evening. Zeno would have wanted it that way.

Rest in peace, Mr. Kitty.

Yesterday I made a 9″ square lemon cake for a client.  It’s a good cake, but a bit labor-intensive.

First I made the cake.

Then, while that baked, I made the lemon curd for the filling.  (If you’ve never tasted homemade lemon curd, I encourage you to scroll down to the bottom of this post and go make yourself some forthwith.  It’s a little bit of heaven on a spoon.  Why, yes, I do just eat it straight, with a spoon.  Is there something wrong with that?)

 

When the cakes were baked, and after they cooled,

 

I sliced off the domed tops and cut them in half horizontally.  (This process leaves the cook with some yummy cake scraps to spread lemon curd on later.)

After I cut the cakes, I soaked the bottom layer with soaking syrup.  (Simple syrup=equal parts sugar and water, brought to a boil and then cooled.  Add flavoring according to the kind of cake you’re making.  For this cake I added straight lemon juice; more often I add some kind of alcohol or liqueur.)

 

I made the filling by folding meringue into the lemon curd along with a little bit of gelatin for stability, and filled the cakes.  The top layer got the soaking treatment, as well.

The cakes took a little break in the frig while I made the Italian buttercream for the frosting.  First you make an Italian meringue:  whip 8 oz. of egg whites with a little sugar, bring more sugar and water to 248 F, and pour the boiling sugar syrup into the foamed whites.  Whip until cool.

Then add 2# (yes, that’s 2 pounds–don’t faint, that’s what makes it good) of softened butter and you have the most delicious, satiny, easiest-to-work-with frosting on the planet.

 

I put a crumb coat on the cakes and chilled them briefly.

 

Then I frosted and decorated them with the buttercream.

Et voila!  Finished cakes!

 

As easy as pie!  Er, cake.

Lemon Curd

1 cup lemon juice

Zest of 1-2 lemons

12 oz. (1 1/2 cups) sugar, divided

4 eggs

5 egg yolks

4 oz. (1 stick) butter

Bring lemon juice, lemon zest, and about 8 oz. (1 cup) sugar to a boil in a non-reactive saucepan, stirring to be sure sugar dissolves.  As mixture reaches a boil, whisk remaining sugar into eggs and yolks in a bowl.  (Don’t put the sugar on top of the eggs and let it sit without whisking–the sugar will “burn” the eggs.)

Pour about half the boiling lemon juice mixture into egg/sugar mixture, whisking constantly.  (This is called tempering the eggs, and it ensures that the eggs will not curdle when you pour them back into the boiling juice.)

Put the saucepan back on the heat and pour the egg mixture into the remaining juice mixture, whisking constantly.  Turn the heat down to medium-low, and cook the curd, whisking constantly, until it thickens and almost reaches the boiling point. (190-195 F.)

Remove from heat and whisk in butter until it is melted.  Immediately strain curd through a fine-meshed strainer to remove lemon zest and any small cooked egg bits.  Refrigerate, stirring occasionally, until chilled.  Get your spoon ready.

Recently posted to the East Bay Craigslist housing offerings:

We are offering a free room for a woman who is willing to provide breast milk for consumption to the household. We are an otherwise vegan house but have recently read A.O. Wilson’s study of the benefits of human breast milk to all human beings of any age. This is not sexual. Neither appearance nor sexual preference are of any concern to us.

The room is 10’x 15′ in a sunny house in Berkeley. There are 7 other people in the house and we live largely communally – shared food and house supplies. You must still pay for food, only rent is free. Reply to this posting and we will set up a time. Contact Dana.

Berkeley is a soul-crushing place for a satirist, I’ll tell you, because reality is constantly climbing up on the shoulders of satire and pounding it into the ground. You might be thinking that this item is somehow special or unprecedented, but there you’d be wrong. When I arrived in Berkeley four and a half years ago, I was given to understand—on good authority—that there was a group of women in town who made a daily practice of drinking their own urine. But only the first urine that they passed each day, you see, because the later emissions did not have the same life, youth, and health preserving properties.

I mean, it’s like…dude! Everybody knows that, dude. It’s, like, a proven scientific fact.

Then there was the housemate, greatly loathed (at least by me), who tried to convince everyone else in our house that what we really needed to live a long, healthy life were thrice-daily coffee enemas. When my friend Joe countered hopefully, “But couldn’t we just drink the coffee and get the same effects?”, she said, without a hint of irony, “Oh no, the enemas achieve entirely different results!”

No one, frankly, doubted that.

Now when I lived in Berkeley, I actually tried to make sense of these various aberrant behaviors. I tried to keep an open mind. I even listened momentarily when various nut-jobs free spirits suggested that I was rigid, closed-off, anti-communitarian, fascist, pro-war, and “part of the problem” because I refused to drink my own pee, shoot coffee up my *ss, or consider human breast milk a legitimate “dietary supplement” for an adult.

But today, I have only one thought, one plea: please, God, if you have any love for Your Faithful Servant, please, please, don’t ever make me live in Berkeley again.

I recently had occasion to go through my stash of sock yarn, looking for that perfect yarn to make a new pair of socks.  (Although, naturally, I am not quite done with the present pair.  But no matter…)  This made me realize just how much sock yarn I actually own.

As a sort of confessional exercise, then, I offer the following pictorial directory entitled:

Sarah’s Sock Yarn Stash

1.  Regia 4-ply Patch Antik.  5 balls=4 pairs of socks.

2.  Elann Sock it to Me! Puzzle.  10 balls=5 pairs of socks.

 

3.  Elann Sock it to Me! Essential 4-ply.  16 balls=8 pairs of socks.  I bought all these colors with the idea of making striped socks and socks with heels and toes of different colors.

 

4.  Regia Cotton.  8 balls=8 pairs of socks.  This was what I used recently for the sherbet socks.

 

5.  Lorna’s Laces (rainbow) and Fleece Artist (blue).  4 balls=2 pairs of socks.

6.  More Lorna’s Laces, with beads.  2 hanks + beads=1 pair of socks.

7.  Assorted and miscellaneous.  3 balls=2 pairs of socks.

The question now:  Which one shall I choose?  What do you all think?  Should I pick self-striping yarn (the easy route,), or venture out into stripes with the solid colors?  A solid pair with different-colored heels and toes?  Perhaps combine a solid with one of the handpaints in a Fair Isle or stranded pattern?

So many possibilities…