Sheep Carousel: St-eek!

Another photo tutorial of me trying new things, this time it's steeking!

The competition for the Highland Wool Festival in Dingwall weekend before last was a knit or crochet tea/coffee cosy and as I've been meaning to knit Kate Davies' Sheep Carousel I went for it. I used some stash leftover from knitting her Sheep Heid back in 2011 (there's now a kit so you don't have to buy a full skein of every colour). Sheep Carousel involves Fair Isle stranded colourwork, which obviously I'd done before, and two techniques new to me: Latvian Braids and steeking.

It knit up really quickly; the braids made perfect sense and are really cute, and steeking turned out to only be a little bit eek-y:

Unsteeked teapot:

Steek panel:

Crochet reinforcement:

Cutting! Eek!

Neatly bound edges:

Repeat on the other side, then I whip stitched the steek panels to the inside. I didn't bother with ribbon edging as I figured it wouldn't get a lot of use. It didn't fit our tea pots - they have a lip like a jug, not a spout like the pattern assumes, and after a cursory search in local charity shops didn't lead to an appropriate tea pot, I decided to donate it to the silent auction. Chris gave me an automatic teapot for Christmas so I really don't need another one just to model my cosy. And no, I didn't win anything in the contest.

I did see a model a great deal cuter than any teapot whilst there, though: Little Djinn in the RipplesCrafts booth sample of Ysolda's Wee Melia. She didn't want to take it off and give it back, so of course I had to buy enough to make one she can keep in a rich orange (sample is Warm Gold).

Christmas & Boxing Day

Christmas got off to a slightly rocky start after a night of not sleeping particularly well. Chris was sad that he'd not gotten me a stocking* or filled it up and then he was frustrated that he'd have to spend half of the day cooking for his father just like he'd done for the last however many years and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We have tentative plans to be elsewhere next Christmas, just the three of us, as soon as we figure out where we want to go (hint, somewhere quiet and easy to get to).

Pressies started with exchanging Christmas cards**, in our case the traditional matching Boofle*** cards with messages of preprinted and hand-written affection. In addition to the socks, I gave Chris a new pair of fuzzy lounge trousers and a cable-knit jumper from the kittens. Chris gave me a book of Fair Isle patterns and a mug with a knit Fair Isle design, the soundtrack from a French musical, a potato ricer, a set of rectangular teaspoons that fit into spice jars(!!!), and from the kittens, a satsuma and tickets to see the panto. Chris was sad about not buying things for my stocking, but it clearly wasn't because he didn't think to get me presents. And, while the cooking utensils were "for me", thus far I've been on the receiving end of riced (mashed) potatoes, which are really good - extra fluffy and light, but have yet to use the ricer. So it all works out about even.

Aged Parent came over around 2, shortly before dinner was ready and we had a turkey breast wrapped in bacon and stuffed with sausage stuffing, roasted potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, Brussels sprouts, and rolls followed later by the Christmas pudding I made earlier this month, served en flambé and with brandy whipped cream. After dinner we gave Aged Parent his presents, a warm woolly cardigan and the mitts I knit for him (he also got a folding cane which we wrapped and delivered when it arrived so he could start using it sooner rather than later).

We spent most of the rest of the evening discussing the possibility of his moving into a local community for retired persons, an idea that Chris and I like a lot as we'd been looking for properties with a ground floor in-law unit but had been unable to find anything that wouldn't require selling both our properties. Unfortunately when we went over on Boxing Day, Aged Parent announced that he has absolutely no interest in moving out of his 5 bedroom house and was sorry he'd ever brought it up.

Chris again spent most of the day cooking, making pastry puffs with cheese in, (riced) mashed potatoes, and a sausage and cranberry roast which he cooked at our house and then reheated at his father's. Thus the need to go away next Christmas and avoid cooking altogether****.

Oh, and we gave Oliver and Libby a water fountain to drink out of. It's hand-thrown and burbles up, and they've both drunk from and played in it but Oliver still thinks water should come out of the tap in the bathtub. We're weaning him off of that.

And lastly, I am now 37 weeks along which means Little Djinn is full term. The midwife thinks 41 weeks is the perfect length for gestating so I've still got 4 weeks before it's a diet of nothing but pineapple and days spent jumping up and down. Meanwhile my feet have swollen beyond recognition, sausage toes are the order of the day, and my blood pressure is starting to climb. And getting showered and dressed seems like sufficient accomplishments before going back to bed.

~ * ~

* We don't have official stockings yet. For the last four Christmases I've given Chris a pair of socks, one stuffed inside the other with the rest full of candy. This year he got two pairs of slipper/socks and a Green & Blacks 75% dark chocolate bar and I gave myself a pair of slipper/socks and a multipack of Nerds (American sugar-based candy). I was even able to hang the socks up using my sock blockers.

** Not a tradition we observed in my family. Fortunately(?) the first Christmas I was here Aged Parent was convinced he'd never see us again and gave us our Christmas cards the first week in December, saving me a fair bit of awkwardness Christmas day when everyone (Chris and his father) had cards for everyone (Chris, his father, and me) and I'd be sat there saying in a small voice, "I didn't know we were supposed to get cards..."
Don't worry, there was plenty of other awkwardness.

*** I just discovered that there's a Boofle app. I think Chris is going to die of squee. I see lots of Boofle-addended baby photos in Little Djinn's future.

**** Yes, I could do some of the cooking (and did for Christmas dinner!). I could even do all of the cooking or most of the cooking, or some of the cooking. You know this and I know this and the reasonable part of Chris knows this but somehow when it comes to the day and everything needing to get done, he always puts on his Project Manager torque without remembering his Delegator Apron and locks himself in the kitchen.

Sheep Heid

Back in November I posted a quick note that I'd finished Kate Davies' Sheep Heid tam. Well, it's finally sunny (though cold!) and I have the lighting to take a few pictures:

That last picture is the glass mixing bowl I balanced on my yarn swift to simulate a head. The one from the inside was before I wove in the ends (72 of them!). It's a tiny bit loose on my head, which is perfect as I like to wear a cotton headband under wool hats so they don't feel itchy on my face. If I were to knit it again I'd probably use a 2x2 rib on the brim for a slightly snugger fit. You can see some of the stitches aren't quite even but I figure that will block out the next time I wash it.

All in all I cannot say enough good things about this pattern. I love it. Browns and creams aren't particularly my colours but it's my default hat and four months later, I still grin like a loon whenever I think about it. It's my first stranded colour-work where I feel like I understand the tension issues - my earlier efforts all pull tight.

November is not a good month for socks

Remember the Brainless Socks that I knit for my husband? He wore them and gave them back to me for laundering a few times and then he forgot and threw them in the regular wash and, well, felted them. They're much thicker and several sizes smaller than they were, too small for either of our feet. We need a 10yo child to wear them, on a cold day. He's absolutely heart broken about it but fortunately I picked up the yarn at the LYS in town so we went back and bought another skein (plus one for me!) and I'll knit up another pair.

In other news, my Purple Peace socks prooved too small to pull up past my ankle so, after redoing the heel 3 or 4 times, I frogged them and am now using the yarn for a pair of Brainless socks for me (72 stitches, 1.5mm needles). They're knitting up as quickly as one could expect at such a fine gauge. I'll use the (also purple - they only had the green/orange "fern" colourway and purple) yarn I picked up at the LYS for another run at Purple Peace in something resembling gauge. I'd already played with the pattern as much as I was comfortable with my limited (3 pairs finished) sock experience.

I finished my Sheep Heid and it was a joy to knit. I whipped it up in one weekend and could hardly stop myself from knitting one more row so I could watch the pattern progress. At the end I had 75 ends to weave in. Chris counted the cut off ends and gave me a smooch for each one. I was good and didn't cut the ends in half for extra smooches, though we disagreed about the smooch-count so, depending on who you ask, I may have got extras anyway. I apologize for the less-than-stellar photo. I wanted to take better pictures, outdoors and in sunshine, but haven't gotten around to it and I was holding up this post for waiting.

I also finished a Fair Isle hat with ear flaps for Chris. His ears get rather cold and hang out in the gap between his hats and scarves so I adapted a children's pattern for a large adult head. It's a wool/alpaca blend and quite itchy on his delicate skin so we bought a cotton head band for him to wear under the hat. I have one as well and they're perfect for wool-sensitive skin. I still need to knit a pair of convertible mittens for him, and then I will have secured my claim for the title of Best Wife Ever.

I started a scarf I'd been eyeing for years, as part of a scarf and tam set, and it has given me nothing but trouble. I re-knit each section twice to get them right and then realized it was supposed to be knit in garter stitch, not the stockingette I had defaulted to, so I had to frog the whole thing and start over. Now, past the point where I frogged it, I find I'm back to knitting a few rows and ripping back so I'll probably ditch the whole project. The phrase I'm looking for is "Meh.". I'm just not feeling the love, so I'm not really paying attention, and I keep making mistakes. Thus the progress on the Brainless Socks that I can knit while reading.

~ * ~

In other news, our dishwasher is still broken. The repair man came back this morning with the parts he'd ordered last week and fixed the machine and announced that something else was broken and he'd have to order that. Chris, who has been washing dishes twice a day (I dry and put away) declared that if this doesn't do it, he's going to buy whatever washing machine is in stock and can be installed that day and be done with it.

We had Aged Parent*, Chris' father, over for Sunday Dinner last weekend. Oliver and Libby eventually warmed up to his being here and, while they stayed out of his reach, they forgot themselves enough to run around like mad things, much to Aged Parent's amusement. When we saw him yesterday he greeted us with, "how are the maniacs?" We get that a lot, from the very few people who see them with their guard down. We made an Asian-fusion beef and mushroom pie, served with mashed potatoes and buttered Brussel sprouts for dinner. We split the pie filling, freezing half and using the rest for the pie. Of the half we baked we dished out a third and served a third of that to each of us. Chris and I, in our very first forkful, each bit into one of the two star anise seed pods. It's not a very good telling of the story, but I continue to be bemused that, with 1/18th of the pie on our plates we got both seed pods in the first tasting.

After a fortnight of "warm" weather, it's started to be seasonably chilly (happily, given the woollen accessories I want to show off!). Aged Parent called on Sunday to tell us that it was too cold for us to walk over. It was cooler than it had been but still well above freezing. There was a time when I visited Aged Parent on alternate weeks so Chris could have some time with his father and, while Aged Parent would call for the least reason and tell Chris not to risk coming, on the weeks I was to visit, be it floods, fires, or blizzards, nothing would be said of staying home. Guess we know I'm family, now.

* Great Expectations reference

This is turning into a weekly update

First things first, Princess is doing much better. She's being anointed twice a day - a process she really doesn't like though it validates my daily corporate cuddling (I hold her like a baby and give her skritches until she purrs (and only then will I let her go if she wiggles)). In some ways, Princess is a lot easier with things like this than Ginger Kitty - he's a big scaredy cat and struggles desperately to escape from anything he perceives as threatening, which is pretty much everything*. Princess, otoh, will lie there passively until she thinks you've been lolled into complacency or are distracted and then she'll try and slink off. The ointment we were given (which is to say purchased at no small expense) is marketed for dogs and suggests application before feeding or going for a walk so the pup in question will be distracted from trying to scrape or lick it off. Eating holds very little appeal for our Princess but she's a huge fan of the Magic Red Dot so her evening applications happen immediately proceeding Red Dot Time. Her morning anointing is supposed to come before Treat Time but she's wise to us and has stopped showing up. Ginger Kitty thinks with his tummy and would fall for it every time and twice on Sundays.

~ * ~

My Jamesion & Smith Superior Jumper Weight Yarn finally arrived (though I still haven't received a reply to yesterday's, "You haven't fogotten my order, have you?" email), so I'm finally good to start on my Sheep Heid hat. In the meantime I'd cast on a Peruvian style Fair Isle cap for my Dear Husband but, even though I'm trying to keep the carrying strand loose, it's pulling too tight. Bugger. Mind you, if it's too loose than the stitches will sag and stretch and that's possibly worse. There's a golden tension - I just have to find it.

My Purple Peace socks are growing. I spent most of yesterday redoing the first heel only to rip it back to the gusset before bed. Each time I frog something and redo it I gain a greater understanding of what success - in this case defined as "things being the way I want them to be" - looks like, right?

My yarn swift arrived last week and I had to take it out and play with it right away, winding a skein of Malabrigo Sock Yarn. It works like a dream, though perhaps not a happy one for Ginger Kitty. He paced the perimeter of the room, unable to decide if he should flee or pounce. When I finished, he jumped up on my roll-top to investigate:

~ * ~

Our dishwasher broke on Sunday and the earliest the repair man can make it out is Monday. We've been having a left-overs and take-away week and we're still doing at least two rounds of dishes-washing a day. Chris washes, I dry and put away. There was a small disaster yesterday as Chris, in his over-zealousness, dumped his half-drunk Gin & Tonic down the sink and washed the glass. The ice had melted and he thought it was an abandoned glass of water (forgetting that he'd set it there, on the other counter/worktop moments before). This overly-zealous approach to cleaning up while I'm cooking has often resulted in me exclaiming, "But I was still using that!" Now he knows how it feels.

In other news, Chris got both the new Steve Jobs' biography and his (Chris') new MacBook on Monday. I have a very happy husband - though he keeps the biography face down as the front cover picture is "Scary Steve" and the back cover picture is "Nice Steve". I can't make these things up. Chris has even read a (singular) chapter.

I stalled out on my aSoFaI reread (because I was watching telly while knitting, not because I wasn't interested) but I was able to get into a partial Hollows (by Kim Harrison) reread. I saw that book 9, Pale Demon, had come out in paperback and the kindle price dropped accordingly, so I reread books 5 through 8 and then read book 9 in its entirety on Tuesday. I started Pratchett's latest, Snuff (an ebook I'd pay HC prices for) that evening but decided I'm not yet ready to let go of Rachel Morgan so I've switched back to telly for the time being.

I'm catching up on (A Town Called) Eureka and am halfway through season 4. I didn't recognize Balthazar, from Battlestar Galactica, until he made the crack about hallucinating a "tall blonde in a slinky red dress" and then I could've believe I'd missed it. All I can really say in my defence is that it's been some time since I've seen BSG. I still haven't seen the second half of the fourth (and final) season of that series! I also acquired Castle with Nathan Fillian. I had seen an episode or two before I moved to the UK and have heard nothing but good things about it since. I tried showing an episode to Chris but he didn't seem interested, so I guess that's a "watch while he's at work" series, too.**

~ * ~

* he's actually getting better. Now, instead of bolting for a hiding place in a cupboard, he'll often bolt a few feet and then circle around to see if it was actually threatening or just startling. His orange coat is a Red Herring - this is the real reason he's known as Ginger Kitty.

** Our watch-together series are, currently, Hawaii 5-0, Star Trek TNG (we ran out of ripped Voyager and DS9 so those are paused, as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, House and Numbers), Stargate:SG1, and The Big Bang Theory. We just watched the NYE and my husband is very sad that the Aquaman costume with sea horse steed doesn't actually exist. Someone get on that!