TurtleShell Stitches

D and I made dinner Saturday night (tortellini al’aioli and chicken cutlets) and after feasting, set to work on our practice socks. We bought a box of apple crisp mix and peaches to make peach crisp/cobbler, but were too full and too tired to make it.

Well D has been craving peach crisp/cobbler since we went to the Beehive for Restaurant Week last Thursday night and she ordered the Peach Brown Betty. It looked delicious and was tasty…except they didn’t peel the peach skins. So the warm, melt in your mouth sweetness of baked peaches was rudely displaced by tough skin. It was very disappointing.

But anyways, D got her wisdom teeth out yesterday, so I am baking her some peach cobbler/crisp and hopefully her severely swollen mouth will permit her to eat it. I’ll post some pics when I make it!

Update 8/21/08: It was a huge success! I called D my little even-chubbier-cheeked friend and I don’t think she thought that was funny. She would not permit pictures, sorry.

But- I DO have pictures of the peach cobbler/crisp! Check it out:

Ok, so 8 million things have been going on and my blog has been SEVERLY neglected. I apologize to the Gods of Blog.

So I moved into my new apartment and the former tenant left it FILTHY. I took pictures so my family would see that I wasn’t exaggerating, but they are too disgusting to post. I spent about 4 hours cleaning the bedroom…picking up all the trash on the floor, sweeping the big stuff up, vaccuuming, mopping floors and WALLS (yes, they were that dirty), and cleaning the furniture i bought from the last tenant. Then I hit the bathroom…the bedroom was immaculate in comparision. The tiles in the tub area were actually white, not the light yellow they appeared to be. Several rounds of Comet and Tilex plus a lot of elbow grease returned the tub and tiles to their original white. I know you are all asking how this happened and why i took such a filthy apartment. Well, a friend (E) and I are moving in with a girl who is staying on for a semester past her senior year and her roommates graduated, so we are taking over the lease rather than starting a new one. E and I are living with her until she graduates in December and then we have the place to ourselves. So anyways, when E and I went to see the apartment, my possible bedroom was locked, so I didn’t get to see it in person. But the rest of the apartment was neat and clean and looked fine, so I thought nothing of it…boy, was I wrong. The girl that lived there before me was just a total pig, end of story. Well, it took me into the wee hours of the night to clean my room and bathroom in the ninety degree heat on the 6th floor. The only bit left to give a good cleaning to is the rust stains on the tub under the faucet. I have read about some things to try online but I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions? Especially natural/green methods.

So plenty of knitting has been going on and even some sewing [no crocheting lately ]. I finished up a cream blanket I was making out of Dreambaby DK. I actually started it sometime 2 winters ago when knitting ADD struck and I put it into storage and totally forgot about it until I came across it when cleaning out my crafting closet in MA (note to self: must make smaller satellite crafting closet in MD). It has a seed stitch border and looks like a bunch of squares. I based the design on a yarn sample in Fabric Place for DreamBaby DK. Its so deliciously soft-perfect for a baby!

So I picked it back up and finished it. All that remains to be do is to press it so it’s nice and flat and straight.

I have plenty of yarn left over, so I decided to make a set with a blanket, a sweater, footie pants, and possibly a hat. I made the sweater based on Erika Knight’s Classic Cashmere Sweater. I started a sweater with this pattern about 5 or 6 years ago and never finished. I photocopied the pattern out of a library book and lost it, so I kind of improvised the pattern by using pictures from Ravelry. It turned out quite nicely and just need to be stitched up and blocked.

Now I am looking for the perfect pattern to make the footie pants. Erika Knight has the Cashmere Leggings to match the sweater, but I don’t have the pattern and I wasn’t wild about the waistband. It’s easy enough to make the waist banb in an elastic one, but, again, I don’t have the pattern and there are tons out there. I am definately looking for any suggestions that anyone has, especially for free patterns that won’t break my student’s budget.

I totally fell in love with Jennifer Little’s (Looking Glass Knits) Sheep Yoke Baby Cardigan when I was browsing through patterns on Ravelry (click here for the pattern on Ravelry). The pattern is available free on her website or as a Ravelry download. Take a look at it…I dare you NOT to fall in love with it!

The pattern calls for the checkerboard design and the stripes to be made in blue or pink, for a boy or girl, but I went with a light green so it’s unisex. It’s knitted top top and there is minimal seaming to do (yay!).
Here’s the first part of the yoke on my circs:

The design is in a chart that, once you look it over, is really easy to figure out and follow. The white sheep are done in garter stitch for texture, but Jennifer says that they can be made in stockinette if you want. At the end, the sheep’s little legs and ears have to be added.

Here’s a close up of the sheep (sans ears and legs so they look like clouds):

I made it in the smallest size with Sirdar Snuggly DK (using just over a skein of the oatmeal MC and a teensy bit of the other colors…makes it easier to make more!) on size 6 circs. My gauge is always smaller than what is called for, so my sweater is for a baby 3-6 months.

It’s almost done. I blocked the sleeves so I could stitch it together better and I am blocking the front edges to make it easier to pick up and knit for the button bands.

After the button bands I can seam up the sleeves and finish the little sheep. I bought some nice fake wood buttons to sew on that will add to the cardi’s coziness. This was a really fast knit. I did the majority of the body and sleeves in a weekend and a few bus rides to work. I will definately be making it again. I need to find a baby to put it on…. Maybe this will have to be packed away with my other baby favs.

Ok, so now some teasers for my next post (this one is getting too long).

Can you guess what I’m making??

I promise my next post won’t be in 2 months again….

Btw: Please blame my sister for not sending me the pictures of Meghan’s Sweater all done and Ryan’s Pasha all stuffed and the pictures from Fenway. They are on her camera because mine was temporarily MIA, having a sick day, or misplaced. Thank you.

So I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about. When I learned how to knit, socks were not on my list of things I was excited to make…The whole thing just sounded so old fashioned and outdated. I mean, who actually wears handknitted socks?

And then Ravelry happened.

(ok, so maybe not quite so dramatic, because I read a few knitting blogs where people were making socks, and I thought they might be kind of cute, but I didn’t really realize the scope of the sock mania until Ravelry)

It seemed like every other thread was about socks and making socks! There are groups dedicated to socks, threads with thousands of responses, over 6,000 patterns to knit/crochet socks (on Ravelry, there are more sock patterns than baby patterns and cardigans), books, specially made yarns, thousands of sock projects, and even a support group for sock-making addicts complete with a 12 step program.

But all of this still did not have me knitting socks. See, I was wary. Countless times I heard, read, and seen that knitting socks was ADDICTIVE. I tend to get hooked on things and wasn’t sure if I was responsible and mature enough to decide that I was ready to try socks.

Then, D, my best friend and ever enabling corruptor (althought she staunchly denies that she had anything to do with any destruction of innocence and purity in any area of my life- read her blog and THEN decide), tells me that she wants to knit socks. D dabbled a bit in knitting several years ago and is still a little terrified of purling, but she is nothing if not ambitious. So I set on quest to find sock knitting tutorials and tips and tricks from connoisseurs (or addicts).

What I found was a terrific, easy to follow sock tutorial from cometosilver.com. I read it over, decided it was simple enough and we would use some cheap acrylic sportweight to practice first. D and I made plans to meet after work to pick out some yarn for our “final draft”. I found Newbury Yarns in Boston on Newbury St between Dartmouth and Exeter (very easy access from Copley Green Line or Back Bay Station, btw). It’s a cute little LYS, tucked in the back of the building- although the sign is small and not that eye-catching. There was a large selection of high-end yarn, many of which were imported. The owner was very helpful (she answered my questions when I asked and let me touch, sniff, and poke at all her yarn…none of that hovering) and the two of us chatted while I waited for D to show. My only disappointment was the lack of a selection for sock yarn. The owner said she was selling out quick but that she had ordered more. Since this was my first visit there, I am not sure if it’s a case of slow restocking on the owner’s part or simply that she ran out and was caught offguard quickly (it happens).

So D finally showed and we poked around at the yarn some more and I decided on going with a 100% merino wool in a baby fingering weight with purples, greens, and blues in it. D spent 20 minutes debating over what color to get while stealing lustful glances at the yarn I had chosen. Finally I convinced her to just get the same color as me since we are both heading back to school for the fall.

I was heading to the RedSox game and went straight from the LYS, so I had my two balls of yarn in my purse. It was thoroughly disrtacting! Well, it started POURING as I was riding the T and i had to walk 20 mins in the rain, trying to sheild my favorite purse with my iPod, cell phones, and new yarn (in other words-some of my most prized possessions) in it. I finally get there and meet my dad, sis, and cousin and we proceed to our seats: FREEAKING MONSTER SEATS!!!!! I was soooo excited! WE had burgers for dinner at the Monster Grill and checked out the amazing view of Fenway. It was still raining, so we were crowded under an overhang. Eventually it was raining so hard we had to go inside and wait it out. The game got delayed, so we hung around inside: the guys drinking beers and my sis and I working on a crossword in the Metro I snagged off the T (i was kicking myself the whole time for not having any knitting on me…I could have gotten half a baby sweater done). It finaly stopped raining around 8 and we headed out to our seats and begin the awesome task of drying off the seats. Napkins and papertowels were futile. But thank god for my innovative mind and the Metro! the newspaper worked like a charm soaking up the water. So we finally get out seats all dried and they start uncovering the feild when there is the boom of thunder and a Fenway employee comes over and asks everyone on the Monster Seats to head inside because of lightening. After much standing around and speculation, the game is postponned until September 13…After classes begin for me and when I am in Baltimore!!! NOOOOOOO!!

If that wasn’t bad enough, we had to trek to the car which was parked 15 or 20 mins away. So not fair!

The only good thing that came out of the cancellation was me starting my practice socks.

Practice Socks- they match my duvet!