Leftovers Mittens – Part One

I have finished up all currently open large projects, and have several to start. Worse, I have several that are finished and written up in a raggedy way and need to be written up in a more coherent fashion. I struggle with this aspect of my knitting. I write up most of my patterns in a fairly traditional way, because that is what has been requested.

I do not knit from patterns like that, however. I use patterns, when I use them, in the same way I use a recipe. Hmmm, that looks like a good idea, what if I replaced the bacon with mushrooms and ham? What if I made something in that stitch pattern but in a smaller/larger gauge and used it for a hat/mittens/felted bag? You get the idea. This is, in fact, the way I learned to think about cooking. My mother always bought Family Circle and Woman’s Day when she went grocery shopping. Then, when there was a quiet minute, she’d sit at the formica table with a ‘cuppa joe’ and scan the recipes. “Listen to this one” she say, and read it to me, but as she read it, she’d replace ingredients based on frugality, (“You don’t need heavy cream, I could use evaporated milk.”) creativity, (“Maybe a little orange zest would be nice.”) or experience (“They’ll be soggy if you do it that way, but what if you….) My father would shake his head and ask her why she bothered reading the recipes, since she was just making up new ones anyway

To me, that was the beauty. What a gift to learn to think about cooking in that way. Discovering Elizabeth Zimmerman while I was rediscovering knitting in my early 20’s was like having my mother reading recipes to me. I even began a correspondence with EZ, but that is another story.

Sometime my mother’s culinary creativity came in the form of problem solving with leftovers. (Not that there were normally large amounts of leftovers in a family with seven children, all of whom were ‘good eaters’.) In that spirit, here’s my recipe for stash-buster mitts, using leftovers.

I started with my container of leftovers, a small bag of Noro Kureyon color #52 remnants.

I made a sweater using this color but decided I didn’t like the bright chartreuse (sorry Theresa) and every time I came across it, I broke it off and put it aside. I also chose to match sleeves and body, so there was a fair bit of breaking off of colors and winding the ball till I came to the color I needed. (Thank heavens for spit-splicing.) There was too much to throw away, but in a pile of tiny balls it was rather uninspiring, and has been sitting around for a while. I should have weighed this before starting, but didn’t. I think it was probably the equivalent of close to two balls.

I decided on mittens in part because this year I had few mittens to donate to the various mitten trees around town. It also seems that, in the way that interests in the world of knitting go, there is a currently a sort of mitten revival show happening. I thought I’d put together a stash-buster mitten tutorial in the hopes that those trying to reduce stash and those who want to knit mittens might make a pair or two for donation purposes.

I made a fraternal twins pair of two color mittens, one using the Kureyon as the contrast color, and one using it for the main color. The difference is subtle, but interesting. I think the mitten on the right looks more like fair isle colorwork, where the background and contrast colors shift. It also turned out to be a bit larger, because the Kureyon is slightly heavier than the Naturespun worsted that I used for the second color. Not enough to worry about, and certainly a ‘blocking will fix that’ problem.

I finished the two color mittens, and still had plenty of yarn left, so I made some mitered mittens (EZ Knitters Almanac) alternating the scooby doo green with the other colors in 3 round stripes.

Here’s what I have left. Still too much to toss?

Over the next week I plan to publish the rest of the details and prepare a chart and an Jack Webb Executive Summary for those whose eyes glaze over at too many words. Stay tuned and dig out those half balls of worsted or DK yarn.

MLE

Success

This is a just happened ripped-from-the headlines story.  My living room is at the front of the house and I look right out to the sidewalk.  There is a neighborhood kid, she must be in 8th grade, who goes for long walks by herself frequently.  Not sure what the story is, but she seems like a nice kid, I chat with her when I’m outside, and she always seems glad to stop for a few minutes.  Anyway, I also see her walking around hatless in the cold.  A few weeks ago, I dragged my box of hats leftover from shop models, trying out patterns, etc.  and left it in the living room.  When I spotted her, I dragged the box out and demanded that she pick one.  You know, bossy old lady style, what the hell is wrong with you wear a damn hat.  The one she chose was not the one I would have given her at all, but there you go.  This morning, it is ten below zero — and I just saw that hat strolling down the street.  It made me happy.  Even with my gross out eyeball.

Knitting Injury – A Cautionary Tale

I love that A Cautionary Tale – it always brings to mind Pierre, the Boy Who Didn’t Care in Five Chapters and a Prologue. (Maurice Sendak)

This morning, I was working on some two color stash-buster mittens, and using two circular, one short 16″ and one long, probably about 32″.

I decided I needed to pull out the longer needle for some correcting and somehow the long cable flopped around in such a way that it flew at my eye. Ouch, no big deal. Then when I went to put my contacts in I saw this:

Really, what kind of klutz gives herself what I now know is called a subconjunctival hemorrhage? Do I need to wear safety glasses when knitting? This evening when my husband saw it, he convinced me to at least call the Care Line. Uh, yeah. Nurse Michelle? How did I do this? It’s a little hard to explain. I kinda sorta poked myself in the eye with a knitting needle. Perhaps this is payback for those times when I wish I could poke someone else in the eye with a knitting needle. (Knitting in meetings can bring this on.) Or perhaps it’s related to that phrase a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Anyway, unless the red spreads, it’s no big deal and yes, I can put my contacts in. So remember, be careful out there.

Twelfth Night

Today may or may not be Twelfth Night, depending on who you ask. But in my childhood, today, January 6, was Little Christmas and the day that all decorations had to be removed or it was bad luck. Since I didn’t put up any decorations, I’m safe. Whew.

The one Christmas tradition I have observed over the past 15 years or so is making presents with my godchildren. They plot and plan come over individually (from the time that going bye bye in the car alone with us was a thrill) to make presents for their parents and one another in great secrecy and with much excitement. We progressed from glue and glitter to knitting and woodworking. Each year the gifts were different from each kid according to ability.  (To each according to need?)   Each year, no one could make the same thing someone else had made the previous year.  I now have quite the repertoire of homemade present ideas.  The best part was that the main thrill of Christmas morning  was not the getting of gifts, but the watching while others opened and oohed and ahhed over the thing you MADE. By yourself.

This year, in the interests of grownupnitude and time, names were chosen, so each child made one gift and then all pitched on the gift for the parents. This is really what I want a picture of, especially the making.   However, since I am a regular sufferer of camnesia I just never got around to taking pictures.  We made quilted patchwork placemats, using primarily leftovers from many years of gift making. Sorting through the scraps and ironing them out was the most fun. “Remember when I used this for Sarah’s present? I don’t think she ever used it.” “Remember when I used this for T? She just does not appreciate hand-crafted presents.”

Thank goodness L remembered just in time that the fabric with the gold stars on it could not be pressed in the usual way and remember when we tried and set off the smoke alarm? That’s what true patchwork is all about to me. Not bags of purchased fat quarters, but little bits of memory. After several hours of cutting strips and laying them out amid much laughter, one pinned, one sewed and one ironed the seams flat. He claimed never to have used an iron before, which made him the object of much derision. He was called Ironing Boy for the remainder of the day. The placemats turned out beautifully. And when their mother opened them up there was more strolling down memory lane. Oh, here’s the tea cozy, and look, remember the cushions for keeping the butt warm while watching hockey games? (OK, not all of my ideas were great.) If anyone is interested in the placemat details, I’d be glad to share. I’m sure there are plenty of sites out there with information on how to do such a thing in a beautiful and correct manner. If you are need of quick and dirty, however, see me.

Other gifts were being made while the patchwork went on, since they were for two cousins not there to peek. Quote of the afternoon: L, knitting away on a roll brim hat in Rowan Big Wool on size 15 needles “Wow, I had no idea I could knit this fast!” B made a lanyard to hang over the his sister’s neck and hold her keys. It turned out very cute, thanks to a little assistance from the good folks at Beadmonkey. It reminded me of a favorite Billy Collins poem, a sort of wry ode to the handmade gift.

The Lanyard

Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

MLE

Recipe Box Show and Tell

OK, I’m playing the game they have cooked up over at MasonDixon Knitting regarding recipe boxes. My mother’s recipe box/system was the subject of family jokes. Her box was not the tidy little Grant’s or Kresge’s index card box. She had an old Harry and David fruit of the month club box.

We lived in a rambling 1912 house with a front and back stair. The recipe box lived on the landing of the back stair. In the winter, the box with mittens and hats lived on top of the recipe box. This was a Big Box. Full of recipes she had torn from Family Circle or Woman’s Day, scribbled down somewhere, or received from friend. The scribbled ones were generally sketchy – just a list of ingredients.

The summer I was getting ready to go off to university and get my own apartment, she thought of the perfect birthday present. My sister, who was a freshman in HS and learning to type, would type out a selection of recipes from the box for me to take away to school.

All these years later I still have and use that binder, as you can see, full of my sister’s creative spelling and typing.

The binder is divided into two sections. Green for sweets, yellow for everything else.

I’ve selected a sampling of recipes, one sweet, one everything else.

This liver recipe is everything else. If you like liver, and maybe if you don’t, it’s pretty good. As I recall.

The sweet recipe is Aunt Ruth’s Apple Cake, also known as Aunt Ruth’s Jewish Apple Cake. Since Aunt Ruth was about as Irish Catholic as they come, I’m not sure where the Jewish part came in. A neighbor? It’s good, and I’ve even made in the past ten years. If anyone wants this I’d be happy email a more legible copy.

A bonus item? An attempt at drafting the Walsh family tree in my mother’s handwriting:

MLE 

What I Wish I Had Done and Written on New Year’s Eve

This article appeared in the NewYork Times on New Year’s Eve, and I hope it’s ok to post it in its entirety, because I think it is lovely. “I always wonder what it would be like to belong to a species — just for a while — that isn’t so busy indexing its life, that lives wholly within the single long strand of its being.”

New Year’s Eve

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

At midnight tonight, the horses on this farm will age a year. That is the custom — every horse has the same birthday, Jan. 1. Like all things calendrical, this is a human convention. When it comes to equine conventions, I know enough to notice some of the simpler forms of precedence: who goes first through a gate, who gets to the grain feeder ahead of the others. But I can report that the horses make no fuss about their common birthday or the coming of the new year. Tonight, like any other, they will be standing, dozing on their feet, ears tipping back and forth at the slightest of sounds. There is something deeply gratifying about joining the horses in their pasture a few minutes before the clock strikes 12 on New Year’s Eve. What makes the night exceptional, in their eyes and mine, is my presence among them, not the lapsing of an old year.It’s worth standing out in the snow just to savor the anticlimax of midnight, just to acknowledge that out of the tens of millions of species on this planet, only one bothers to celebrate not the passing of time, but the way it has chosen to mark the passing of time. I remember the resolutions I made when I was younger. I find myself thinking that one way to describe nature is a realm where resolutions have no meaning.

It’s not that time isn’t passing or that the night doesn’t show it. The stars are wheeling around Polaris, and the sugar maples that frame the pasture are laying down another cellular increment in their annual rings. The geese stir in the poultry yard. A hemlock sheds its snow. No two nights are ever the same.

I always wonder what it would be like to belong to a species — just for a while — that isn’t so busy indexing its life, that lives wholly within the single long strand of its being. I will never have even an idea of what that’s like.

I know because when I stand among the horses tonight, I will feel a change once midnight has come. Some need will have vanished, and I will walk back to the house — lights burning, smoke coming from the wood stove — as if something had been accomplished, some episode closed.

What I did on New Year’s Eve was not spending a freezing cold midnight in the mare’s pasture, but hanging out with friends, talking, laughing, being human.

On New Year’s Day, I made these mitts from a ball of handspun I got from Anne at WoolyWonka.

They were a quick knit and the yarn is so beautiful. I just sort of made them up as I went along, and will put a recipe together if anyone is interested. I wanted close fitting stockinette, long enough to cover the gap between mitten cuff and sleeve, with the intention of wearing them under some leather mittens. I’ll let you know how they work out. I was also concerned about having enough yarn, and I have lots left. Another pair of mitts? A nice neck gaiter or headband? Nice to ponder.

Meanwhile, here’s hoping that 2008 is a good year for all, especially this planet earth. And Happy Birthday to all my equine friends.

MLE