More uses for flip top mittens

The Christmas mittens keep showing up in new places.  Don’t think Mr. Suzuki would approve.

Pom Pom Tools

There is a great podcast available that is a collaboration between the BBC and the British Museum. (Found via Jean.)  It presents the History of the World in 100 Objects. Neil McGregor, the director of the museum, has talked about what is human about making objects, anticipating a need for certain tools, and making things beautiful as well as functional.  He was talking about a stone chopping tool in the first one I listened to, the oldest known man-made object.  (Knitting could be said to feature, obliquely, in that Mr. McGregor said that it is a human characteristic to make things more complicated than they strictly need to be.) You can go to the website and look at the objects, as well.

The theme of the whole series is going to be that we define ourselves as human by making things, and coming to depend on the things we make.  I’ve been making some hats with pom poms this week.  What does this tool say about me?

This pom pom maker is my equivalent of the hand axe, I guess.  I  made this one because I recently threw away the twenty-year old cardboard circles I have been hoarding.  Seriously.  I even hesitated before tossing them — two tiny cardboard circles. Of course, only a few weeks later, I decided the baby/toddler hat I was making needed a pom pom.  Off to the recycling and voila -  low tech solution.

What a human who works in a yarn store and therefore gets a discount probably should have as a representative object when it comes to pom poms:

The hats have turned out to be cute representative objects, however.  I have to get over and take some pictures of the hats with some adorable baby and toddler heads in them, but here’s how they look without babies.  (Can you see the wabbit tracks in the snow?)

Some of my students asked for hats that had patterning that wasn’t two-color.  I thought hugs and kisses would be nice for little valentines.

Each hat took about 120 yards/110 of bulky weight yarn.  I used Cascade 128 Superwash.  It’s a nice yarn, and doesn’t have that slippery feel some superwash yarns do. Any one interested in test knitting?

MLE

Harvest Neck Gaiter

Faux Peterman strikes again.  This is a little twisted one-generation-away-from-the-farm humor.  For the twisted stitch pattern, I guess.

Threshing grain then was a dangerous business, and the harvest extended into the cold months.  Small families needed all their ingenuity and resourcefulness to survive the constant struggle with nature in the days before faster, safer mechanization made growing the nation’s grain a corporate enterprise.  Long, flapping drive belts powered by the hub of a tractor, exposed gear boxes, and whirling spokes loomed everywhere on farm machinery, half-hidden in the windblown chaff.  No wonder Granddad wouldn’t wear a scarf to keep his neck warm -  not when the slightest breath of wind might tail the loose ends into the teeth of winding, crushing gears that could pull a man to destruction, with no time to open a trust clasp knife (see page 14 of this catalog) to cut himself free.

Grandma’s solution?  The quick and easy gaiter.  Pulled down over Granddad’s head, the gaiter made a snug barrier around his roughened neck to keep relentless late season prairie winds from penetrating.   Granddad and those who spend time out of doors will know in a Minnesota second what this quick and useful accessory is for.

OK, I have never heard the expression in a Minnesota second.  He swears they use it in Wisconsin.  Here’s not-grandpa, demonstrating safe neckwear around woodpiles. Available at the Yarnery, on Ravelry and Patternfish.

And although her song My Grandpa isn’t on the album, go listen to Martha’s band the  Jinnies. They are wonderful musicians and great fun.

MLE

Since You Asked

The original from 1962.

Followed by a readable version.  If you want the brand names, click on the pictures.  You might need to know it’s Red Star Yeast.

Swedish Tea Log  1962 Pillsbury Bake off junior winner

Ardythe Dey of Fort Calhoun Nebraska.

What does this 16-year old plan to buy with her prize money?  Black Angus cattle!

Buttery-rich, no-knead dough wraps around a butter-pecan filling.

Makes 3 coffee cakes  (I triple this for Christmas breakfast.  Leftovers are perfect for Boxing Day breakfast.)

Soften  1 packet of yeast in 1/4 cup warm water.

Sift Together into mixing bowl:

• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

Cut in until particles are fine:

• 1/2 cup butter

(Ardythe Dey didn’t have a food processor, but it sure makes it quick!)

Add:

• 1/4 cup Evaporated Milk
• 1 unbeaten egg
• ¼ cup currants or chopped raisins and
• yeast mixture

Mix well. Cover; chill 2 hours  or overnight.

Cream:

• 1/4 cup butter.
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar.

Stir in

• 1/2 cup pecans, chopped.

Divide dough into thirds. Roll out one part on a floured surface to a 12×6-inch rectangle.

Spread with one-third of the filling.

Roll up starting with the 12-inch side; seal. Place, crescent shape, on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil. Make cuts along outside edge 1 inch apart to within 1/2 inch of center. Turn cut pieces on sides. Repeat with remaining dough.  (We never did the ‘turn cut pieces part’, so who knows?)

Let Rise in a warm place until light, about 45 minutes.

Bake at  350º for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Frost while warm.  (I haven’t frosted since the time I made  this at a friend’s house one Christmas and used cornstarch instead of powdered sugar.  Fine without it.)

Vanilla Glaze

Brown 2 tablespoons butter. Add 1 cup sifted powdered sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in 1 to 2 tablespoons evaporated milk until of spreading consistency.

And in case you long to enter the Bake-Off yourself:

James Beard AND Art Linkletter will be there.

MLE

Holiday Wrap Up

Happy 2010 to all!  Christmas is come and gone.  We saw in the  New Year in Wisconsin seeing old friends and spent the minutes before midnight out on Lake Mendota under the Blue Moon at minus five F.

As always, the run up to Christmas included cranking out gifts with a gang of my favorite kids who are not so kid like anymore.

One of the gifts was  a batch of hang-on-the-oven door hand towels.  Here’s an action photo of the  production line:

And an inaction photo -  it’s tough to be 15 and have completed ‘the most awesome of the Christmas presents we have ever made’ — not to mention the four hot dogs that pushed him over the edge.

Sadly, I somehow did not get a picture of that most awesome of gifts.  It was very, very, silly.

We arrived for Christmas breakfast to a table set with the placemats we made two years ago and never photographed.

They were great fun to make with scraps of the projects of Christmas past, and well suited to an assembly line where there are a variety of skills and ages.  If anyone wants more detail, I’d be glad to send it.

My traditional contribution to Christmas breakfast is Swedish Tea Log.  We don’t have a drop of Swedish blood, but my mother found the recipe one year, made it for Christmas breakfast, and a tradition was born.  Recipe freely given on request.  You must enjoy mountains of butter in your yeast bread, be forewarned.  The strains of “Oh bring us our Swedish Tea Log” were heard as we walked up the porch steps, and the plate never made it quite to the table without samples.

The gift I made were convertible and/or ‘texting’ mittens.

I promised myself to use stash this year, and made most of them with leftover sock yarns held double or triple.  This makes them fairly hard wearing and machine washable. It also was simpler than stripes, as there were far fewer ends to weave in.

For the boys, I made ones without fingers, so they could be slipped up the wrist when not in use, in the hope that there might still be two matching mittens by the end of winter.

I’ve been reading blogs full of wonderful goals, plans, patterns, hopes, and wishes.  I am inspired by all, but not going out on a limb with anything more specific than wishing you all, gentle readers, a year without worries and fears and  full of hope and joy.

MLE

You could still make this in time for Christmas

The other night Mr. Guy and I were reminiscing about the J. Peterman catalogue — the ‘Owners Manual’. Maybe you only know it from Seinfeld, but I loved reading those catalogues.  Instead of photographs, there were watercolor sketches.  The copy violated all current insistence on brevity.  It was long copy of the advertising style you find in magazines from the 30’s and 40’s.  It romanced the reader, with outrageous descriptions to conjure up the atmosphere  where a garment or object might be found.

“What if you used that kind of copy for your patterns?”  I snorted, and he wrote.  I present the faux Peterman description of my latest pattern, along with a picture of the hat, which you could, in fact, make in a few hours.  Mr. Peterman only hinted at that, however.  (I tried to make the photo into a watercolor in Photoshop with limited success.)

This is an age-old pattern from a time when men did much of the knitting.  An old herdsmen, listening for the rustle of marauding wolves, sits in a yurt in the long, sub-arctic, winter night quickly turning the rough-spun wool into a last-minute tuque for a young one who will soon ride away for the first time in a winter party to bring back meat.  As he knits, he remembers when the young one met her first snow and played in the cold until her ears blazed red.

We still send our loved ones off to war, to college, or to construction sites without knowing what the outcome will be.  What gives meaning to the uncertainty is that, when time was running short, someone remembered that young Temujjin, whether or not he would grow up to be the fabled Khan, will need to keep his ears warm.

Big Flap Hat (No.53) super bulky in whatever romantic color you choose. Available on Ravelry , Patternfish, or at the Yarnery.

What do you think, should I hire him?

If you want to see the actual J. Peterman, it is back and online, but  the copy doesn’t quite the same.  Perhaps it needs the long, off white heavy paper, and a computer screen isn’t quite the same.

MLE

And the winner is…

Blog-free (as far as I can tell) ikkinlala is winner of the Tiger Hat prize package. Chosen by the random number generator.

Not only are there two skeins of Malabrigo in sunset and black, the original tiger colors, but they are in a bag handcrafted by the lovely and talented Incaknits.

Her bags fly off the shelf at the Yarnery, and we may talk her into an Etsy shop sometime.  Also from the Yarnery, Maura, one of the managers, personally donated one these cute little lights that look like a ipod shuffle.

So thanks to everyone.  Thanks for playing.  It was great fun to hear what you all do to give back to the world, and it left me feeling like a giant slacker!   I’ve truly enjoyed my email chats with folks I’ve never heard from before.  So much fun, in fact, that maybe I’ll have another contest soon. Meanwhile, I’m off to rip out Christmas knitting.

MLE

Red Scarf Moment

I was at the post office this afternoon with my two Red Scarf Project scarves.

While asking the clerk to help me figure out the best way to send them, they were sitting out on the counter.  She admired them extravagantly, so I told her about the Red Scarf Project.  She then told me about how she ended up in foster care as a teenager, and that indeed she had been out in the cold when she turned 18.  I was almost a little teary at this reminder of the very real folks we are supporting.

Winter is here in Minnesota. If you want to know what it looked like right in front of my house this morning, check out Fifth Lamp Down’s pictures.  I saw the photo shoot out my window while getting ready to brave the cold.  I was not as enthusiastic as those two.

MLE

Tiger Hat Anniversary

It has been three years since I designed this hat.  We raised nearly TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.  (As of today, $1,985 USD.)  All proceeds go to benefit Heifer International in their work to end hunger and help families build better lives.  I know that is decimal dust compared to the billions and trillions we hear bandied about these days.  Consider this, though: $20 buys a flock of chickens, and $120 buys a sheep.  And while few of us alone could write out a check for $2,000, together we did.

Another thing to celebrate –  the talented and generous Wendy Rogers, tech editor extraordinaire, agreed to take a look at the ears on this pattern, as some folks find them confusing.  She clarified that section, and I’ll be sending the change to all who bought via the web.  If you bought a pattern and want the rewrite but haven’t heard from me, send me a  note.

I can’t believe it has been three years since Theresa (ahem) and I started blogging, too, so I thought I’d have a Tiger Hat yarn pack giveaway in celebration of the generosity of knitters.  The winner will receive two skeins of Malabrigo worsted in sunset and black, the colors I used in the original hat, as well as a few other goodies.

To win, leave a comment telling me where you like to donate your time or money.  If you bought this pattern, you must care about Heifer International at least. (Or just think it’s a darn cute hat!)I couldn’t  figure out how to do a mosaic, so just scroll on down if you want to see some adorable tigers.

If you have a finished Tiger Hat, I’d love to see it.

Thank you thank you to all who sent me pictures, or agreed to let me take them from Ravelry.  Siri, Idontknitenough,Lightingchick, JilloKnitWit, Blujay, Jill Shelley, justonelastrow among others.  I have received pictures from a grandmother in Australia of her grand-tiger in the Netherlands, Norwegian and Finnish tigers, canine tigers and ‘mature’ tigers.  It is great fun, and a pleasure to know the money is going to such a good cause.

MLE

Purples of Autumn

I have been working on a neck warmer/gaiter/cowl in a stitch that looks like ears of wheat.  It was suggested that gold would be more suitable than the purple I had chosen, but I think of purples as being autumnal as well.  Here’s some images of autumn purples from my garden.

So I made one neckwarmer  in purple, one in gold. Here we see the mysteries of row gauge illustrated.

The purple gaiter is in Kumara, from Classic Elite, an amazingly luscious blend of merino and baby camel. The reddish gold is  Lima, from Rowan,  a cabled alapaca blend that is luminous and soft.

I haven’t seen this cabled construction since Swa-Laine. (Anyone remember that one?) In fact, my first neck gaiter was in blue Swa-Laine, about 15 years ago.  It felted if you looked at it warmly, I imagine Lima will felt easily as well.

Kumara recommended gauge: 18 sts and 24 rows over 4 inches.
Lima recommended gauge: 20 sts and 26 rows over 4 inches.

I figured that if I knit the Lima at the same stockinette gauge as the Kumara, they would end up fairly close in size.  Width-wise yes, but not in the length. Working Lima in a gauge to match the Kumara didn’t affect the row gauge much at all.   Normally, this isn’t a problem, but in a pattern with a fixed number of repeats for the length, it will be one. Now, a neck gaiter that is an inch shorter than you want it isn’t a crisis, you can always work another repeat. In a sweater, it could be a big problem, especially if you are working set-in or raglan sleeves. And when subsituting yarn, you have to remember you will need more if you have to work more rows.

I just don’t know why the row gauge doesn’t always change as the stitch gauge changes.  There must be is a connection between how one person knits as well, just as in stitch gauge.   The highly productive Gale has offered to test knit.  It will be interesting to see how her row gauge turns out.

MLE