Fall Swing

My knitting mojo has really kicked in recently, at least for making hats.  I am averaging a hat every two days, and almost all of those will be going to charity.  Little pockets of space are opening up in my stash bins, and I can rummage through them now without creating overflow.  Ideally?  I would empty out one complete bin (the one that is cracked and missing a corner) and not get a bin to replace it.

Charity Spiral Snuggler

Pattern: Spiral Snuggler by Kalamazoo Knits
Yarn: no name chinese lopi-esque wool
Needles: US 8
Mods: none

I am loving the fall weather that has arrived in Michigan.  I am preparing the household for winter - knitting, roasting, freezing, stockpiling vegetables and fruits.  I sure do wish I could smell the lovely scent of roasting chili from my days in Albuquerque.  But a cobbled together tortilla soup recipe may help with that nostalgia.


I am hoping that I might be able to go apple picking next weekend.  Homemade applesauce, cobblers, and pies are in my near future.  And gosh, I want to bake Dilly bread. There is not enough time in the day!  And perhaps more importantly, not enough room in my freezer.

Snail Hat

I loved all the offers of baked goods - so much so that I baked a lemon blueberry bundt cake to celebrate my move from blog-city to blogger.  The bundt cake is mostly gone now, but will be replaced shortly with a carrot cake.  This spring I joined the local CSA at Michigan State University, and I can honestly say that I have received carrots every single week.  That is a lot of carrots!  Hence an alarming frequency of carrot cakes.  Not that P is complaining.  Anybody have any good recipes for carrots?  Because I am getting desperate!

Knitting from my stash continues, and I have another finished hat.

Snail Hat by Elizabeth Zimmermann

Pattern: Snail Hat from Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Yarn: Schulana Capo-Nord, a new bulky weight yarn, 100g, 98 yards in grey.
Needles: US 10.5
Mods: None!  Multiple versions of this hat have been published by EZ, this version is a five spiral hat.

The truly amazing thing about this hat and yarn combination?

The Remainder

I had less than 12 inches left of the yarn by the time I bound off - and that includes the remainder of the long tail cast-on. Whew!  That was close.

This is a new bulky yarn by Schulana, and it has a wonderful twist and bounce.  The stitch definition is fantastic - if I had more than one ball of this I would have made a cabled hat.  The yarn came into my stash a few weeks ago as a gift, and now it goes out again as a charity knit.... although a part of me wants to keep this hat.

Dang.  Nope. It is getting donated, and I won't look back.

And, seriously? Send carrot-related recipes!

Welcome to the Yarn Lab

Relocations are never easy, and after six years of blogging at Blog-City under the name Nepenthe's Misadventures I have had to move due to the closing of Blog-City.  I have no idea how long my archives will last there.  Ideally, I will have my entire history transfered here.  Ideally, I would also have the time to do this.

In an effort (ongoing I should say) to clean out my yarn stash I am participating in Single Skein September 2010.  Loosely organized by Stash n' Burn podcast listeners on the groups' Ravelry board, the challenge is to knit up your single skeins during the month of September.  There is no way I will get through all my single skeins, so I am concentrating on skeins that are more than four years old.  Coincidentally, my LYS has a charity knitting challenge for six weeks from September through October, so most of my single skein projects will be hats headed for donation.

My first hat is done!

Raining Down Hat

Pattern: Rain Down Hat by Robyn Devine
Needles: US 6 & 7 done magic loop.
Size: medium - youth
Yarn: Sunny Mountain chinese lopi-esque yarn in red/pink from deep in my stash, and leftover bits of Stonehedge Fiber Mill's Shepherd's Wool in granite.
Mods: none.  Although, there is no suggested gauge for this pattern, so I may have been way off.  Next time I will do a large, as the medium really is a youth size in this yarn.

Gosh, that red/pink really doesn't photograph well, does it? Yikes!  It looks more eye-searing in the photograph than it does in person.

If you have come over from my old blog please leave a comment to say hi. And if you are new, please say hi too!  I am hoping that with this new blog I may actually be able to respond to comments, something that was nearly impossible for me to do at Blog-city.