The Heathen Housewife

I started this post last week in the midst of an extreme cold spell here in Minneapolis. Temperatures had hovered in the teens and twenties below zero F – actual temperature, not even counting windchill – for several days. The girls didn’t want to go outside, I didn’t want to go outside. We stayed in the house except to get to and from school and one quick trip to the grocery store for eggs.

It was so cold outside that you could see the frozen water particles sparkling in the air – not the ones you get in front of your face, but up in the air the tiny bits of humidity that are normally invisible were actually sparkling in the morning sunlight as I stood with Julie at the bus stop before school. That was something I’d never seen before, and I didn’t realize what it was till my native-Minnesotan neighbor explained it to me.

I love living in Minnesota – there are many great things about the Twin Cities, especially the lush green (way too short) summers. Winter is pretty with the snow, but when it gets that cold, it is fairly unbearable. Even staying inside the house, there are constant little drafts and cold radiating off the windows – things you don’t notice when the outdoor temperature is above zero.

The good news is that the cold spell has broken, and today it was well above zero, warm enough that the snow turned slushy in the parking lots. So I can talk about this as an afterthought rather than a miserable mid-experience whine.

During the cold spell, the girls and I spent a lot of time in the basement. Pretty much every time we go down there, I spend the first fifteen or twenty minutes picking up toys and sorting bits and pieces back into their bins. And pretty much every time we head back upstairs, it is a disaster area again. I don’t mind too much about the mess down there – as long as the girls get to go wild playing and it stays under control enough for it to stay fun.

I took these pictures one morning when Julie was at school and it was just me and Sophie amusing ourselves. It’s great for her to occasionally get free reign at the toys without big sister to boss her around.

Yeah, we have a lot of crap down there, and these pictuers are *after* I did quite a bit of picking up.

Also, while we were down there, I finally hauled the bins of Christmas decorations back down from my office room to the secret storage hallway behind the playroom.

When we bought the house, this hallway amused me to no end, and it kind of still does. It’s such a strange, narrow little storage space, and you’d never know it’s there with a casual look. It’s totally where I’m going to hide when the zombies come.

I’ll leave you with a video of the girls putting on an impromptu puppet show entirely of their own creation.

I’m loving this age with my girls.

For the past week, I’ve been focusing my knitting time on a new pair of socks. When I saw the Bacchus Socks by Alice Bell in the Fall issue of Interweave Knits, I reeeeally liked them, and at the same time something clicked in my brain, and I knew I had the perfect yarn with which to knit them.

At least a year ago, I stumbled across this beautiful handpainted superwash merino/nylon on a blog or somewhere around the internet, and ordered a skein from The Knittery in Australia. This colorway is called Cherries, but it sure looks like it could pass for a glass of red wine to me.

I’m off to a slow-ish start to this project – I guess I’ve been spending too much time on other stuff like spinning and general everyday drudgery. Because this yarn is on the thin side of fingering, I added a few extra stitches to the circumference of the socks. Because my feet are freakishly long, I added an extra repeat of the plain branches of the vine pattern before I dug into the bobbles.

So it was only a couple of days ago that I started the bobbles, and when I did, I had to do a little puzzling about the pattern. In the stitch guide on the pattern, the bobble stitch is described as follows:

Work [k1, p1] 2 times all in same st, then k1 in same st – 1 st inc’d to 5 sts. Turn, p5, turn, pass the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th sts on right needle over the first st – 5 sts dec’d to 1 st again.

Well, that just doesn’t work out right. If you purl back the 5 stitches, then turn your work, the 5 bobble stitches will be on your left needle. My first instinct was to assume that the instructions should have had us knitting across those 5 stitches before binding passing them over, but I went and checked what Barbara Walker had to say about it in her first treasury. Her instructions agreed with my guess, so I ran with it.

And at first, I was happy with what I got…

It’s kind of hard to tell from the picture, but although my bobbles were making nice circular shapes, they’re kind of flat on the outside (above). They insist on popping out on the inside, even when I push them back out mercilessly – below is a picture of how lovely they look on the inside of the sock.

So I started thinking maybe I needed to rip back and try something else. I posted a question about it over on Ravelry and got a response back from someone who had interpreted the instructions to mean that they should pass the extra stitches off the left needle, then slip the remaining one back to the right needle. That seemed plausible to me, although obviously it would make a smaller bobble with one less row of stitches involved.

I liked the size of bobbles I was getting, and I think they match pretty closely with the size of the bobbles pictured in the pattern…so I thought maybe I would try working the bobble stitches so the purls were on the outside of the work instead of the inside. A small swatch was in order…

Again, it’s hard to get a super-clear idea from the picture, but there are three columns of vines with bobbles here.

On the left, I tried the purl-on-the-outside version -
Work [k1, p1] 2 times all in same st, then k1 in same st – 1 st inc’d to 5 sts. Turn, k5, turn, p5, pass the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th sts on right needle over the first st – 5 sts dec’d to 1 st again.

In the middle, I tried the smaller bobble suggested by the nice lady on Ravelry -
Work [k1, p1] 2 times all in same st, then k1 in same st – 1 st inc’d to 5 sts. Turn, p5, turn, pass the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th sts on left needle over the first st – 5 sts dec’d to 1 st again, slip remaining st to right ndl.

On the right, my original bobble as I first interpreted the instructions -
Work [k1, p1] 2 times all in same st, then k1 in same st – 1 st inc’d to 5 sts. Turn, p5, turn, k5, pass the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th sts on right needle over the first st – 5 sts dec’d to 1 st again.

I think I’m leaning toward ripping back and using the bobble on the left. I like the size, and it’s doing a better job of popping out on the right side. I think the bobble in the middle is a nice, cute shape, but I really think it needs to be bigger to show off well.

D’oh! I really wish I knew what the designer had actually done to get the nice-looking bobbles shown in the pictures.

Well, hi there! I started this post about a week ago, and since then have finished a second spinning project, so I’ve got to add a bunch more pictures. It seems that there has been more free time around here than spare brain power for writing blog posts. But here we are, and I’d like to start with a cute-kid pic before I jump in on the spinning.

I don’t really have to explain that one, do I?

Okay, so on to the spinning. I worked on this project for most of December, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I started with about four ounces of tussah silk top from Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mills that I picked up from Anne Bosch when I saw her at the knitting retreat I went to back in October. It was actually two two-ounce chunks in similar colorways, but I didn’t think two ounces would be enough for a good-sized project at the time, so I thought I’d combine them in a two-ply.

Unfortunately, its seems to be practically impossible to get a good picture of the true color of this stuff. Maybe it’s the time of year with the bluish winter light. You’ll just have to imagine a combination of all the pictures with a little less blue.

As I was spinning this stuff, I could not believe how thin the singles were coming out. Almost automatically, I was turning out what looked only slightly thicker than sewing thread. Once I plied it up, it came out to about 18 wpi.

Yeah, and then I finished it, and I realized that I really had no idea how to treat silk to finish the yarn. I read a bit about it on Ravelry, and decided that I should maybe either steam it lightly or wash it in cool water.

And then it occurred to me – hey – I have three skeins sitting here – perfect for a little experiment. I washed one in cold water, steamed one over a whistling tea kettle, and left the big one untouched so I could compare.

I’m such a nerd. Really. Well, the cold water bath didn’t do much at all for the yarn. The steaming was extremely gentle, and did seem to relax and straighten it a bit. And it was kind of weirdly fun to stand there over a whistling kettle watching the yarn do its thing. I guess you’d have to be there.

And now I have about 1200 yards of awesome laceweight yarn waiting for me to do something fabulous with it. I’m thinking maybe I’ll knit something out of that Estonian lace book with it.

On to project number two – this one started with four ounces of merino/nylon superwash pencil roving from Fiber Optic Yarns on Etsy. My plan was to try to make a chain-ply fingering weight sock yarn. I split the roving lengthwise and put it on two bobbins in an attempt to make kind of equal skeins.

I started spinning this stuff, and I couldn’t keep myself from making it tiny-skinny. Too skinny at some points I was afraid. I think I have a problem. I’m going to have to make something nice and thick on my next project just to prove I can. Here’s the singles.

And then I chain-plied it and realized that I am not. very. good. at chain plying. And, um, I couldn’t keep myself from putting a little too much twist in the stuff. I finished the first bobbin, shoved it in the office and went to bed. When I got up in the morning and looked at it, I wondered what I’d been smoking the night before.

Yeah, pretty scary. The second bobbin looked a little better. But still, after I’d wound it off on the niddy-noddy, the relaxed skeins still looked like something I’d be afraid to bother knitting with.

But I had my handy teakettle out still. I don’t drink a lot of tea, and I normally don’t use my teakettle very often. But steaming new yarn is fun, so I steamed the mess and it turned into this…

which looks a whole lot closer to useable.

Up close, that first bobbin’s worth has some problem spots…

But overall, it’s not entirely bad.

At something like 20 wpi, it’s a thin fingering weight. The superwash wool/nylon, it really is perfect for socks. And even though it’s a bit overspun, I might actually make some socks out of it. They’ll wear well.

This Winter Break business has been going on long enough. So long, in fact, that I’ve almost lost track of what day it is. Not really. I mean, I know it’s Saturday night, but when Joe went back to work on Friday, it felt like Monday, and then BAM! here he is at home again for two days. Freaky.

Seriously, though, it’s been great having him around here. A few days back, it was warm enough outside for him and the girls to go out and play. They built a little snow fort…

And a snow man, complete with carrot nose and eyes and mouth made out of…

Wool! When Julie stuck her head into the kitchen looking for some facial features, the carrot part was easy, but I couldn’t think of anything better than some dark brown wool roving from my stash. It actually worked out quite well.

We’ve been having lots of pajama days lately too. I figure if we don’t have to go out and the girls don’t want to get dressed, why put up a fight? On one of those days, Sophie wanted to try out the new fingerpaints she got for Christmas. But then she didn’t want to get her fingers messy, so she ended up using a Q-Tip.

One of these evenings, I made soup out of the bones from the Christmas prime rib. The girls love alphabet noodles, but I was the one that ended up playing with my food.

Okay, and enough of the random-random. I’ve got a bunch of pictures from New Year’s Eve that I’ve been itching to share with the world but too busy having fun with my family to get off the camera.

Our awesome neighbors across the street invited us and the other corner family over for a little party. It was so much fun! I offered to bring my favorite dip and chips, plus some dessert. At first I was going to make cookies, but then I decided to go fancy. The girls and I were at the Wedge and we picked out a bunch of awesome pastries from their deli counter.

They were every bit as good as they looked.

But there was fun all over the place – Guitar Hero all around…

Sean was actually the best at the game, and I loved his poses!

Board games, including the chance to play my favorite, Rummicube…

Party hats and a chance for the kids to watch Wall-E again…

More board games – and even the grown-ups put on their party hats.

At 9 o’clock we counted down to the new year, popped confetti poppers and did a sparkly-beverage toast.

I could not believe how well-behaved all the kids were, and how much fun we all had together. I’ve said it before, but it bears saying again, we have the bestest neighbors in the world!

I also can’t believe how much energy my kids still had two hours after their bedtime. Sophie was burning on fumes at this point.

And at this point, when Sean gave her some “horsie” rides.

So, Happy New Year, a couple of days late. I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the year, and in the next few posts I’ll be sharing some of them, as well as some of the other things I’ve been up to recently. I’m off to go write those posts now.