Tricotomania and more

Sorry all. I’ve not been posting much lately. Not sure if it is lack of anything to say or what. I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I am, however, going on a bit of a trip. British Columbia. A week in Victoria followed by 10 days in Vancouver. I might try to blog en route about stuff we are doing, but no guarantees. I did buy batteries for the camera, though that probably doesn’t guarantee anything either.

Tigger thinks of this as a learning journey. More Emily Carr is on the list. Also whales. And I’m not sure what else. Should be fun. And of course it is already spring out there.

Here there are snowdrops. All the snow is gone except where it is either very shaded or very piled up.

The instructions for these buttons (yep, you make a little shank on the back so you can sew them on) are in the May 2007 issue of Threads magazine. They are crocheted. Out of wire. Of course the samples there are done in gold or something and look way fancy for me but I was tempted and went to the bead shop the other day and found that cool purple wire and those beads and…

I bought 6 beads. My first button was not so great and Tigger tried one but there should be 4 good ones. One is missing. I think Blitzen thought it was a cat toy. (He tried to take the spool of wire while I was working one, too.)

I’m thinking that these will look great on some knitted garment. Now I just need to figure out what to knit to best show them off.

Thanks to all those who recommended that I subscribe to Threads. I’m glad I did. For more than just the crochet buttons.

Last night I had to explain to my partner that when Tigger asks to do math, he should just go with it. But when it happens at 7 p.m., he sometimes misses it. You see, we always play a game after dinner. I have recently reorganized the games cupboard (which was a bit of a disaster, to be honest) and some things had appeared that I didn’t even know we owned. Like Fraction Action Snap. Tigger decided that was what she wanted to play last night. So we did. We even played this morning. And then we played Times Tables Snap.

These were gifts from her English Nana but, although pricing on those liked pages is in pounds, the company says it has warehouses in the US so I suspect you can get them there. The fraction on is particularly good requiring matching of different shapes divided in sections, names of fractions, fractions, decimals, and percentages. It includes 1.5 (in various forms) and 12.5% (as one of the equivalents of 1/8). Very good for visual learners.

I have finally taken some photos of the shawl that I knit for Tigger. I will be making the pattern for a version of this available for sale but need to knit up a sample and sort out the details. It will not be exactly the same because the centre panel uses a scarf pattern that I do not have permission to use in a version for distribution. The good news is that it was fairly easy to design an alternative centre panel based on the basic block of the side panels. Also, the for sale version will have no beads (not that you can see them very well in this one anyway but they are important to Tigger).

A reminder that this is a faroese style shawl of my own design. The yarn is 90% alpaca and 10% shetland from Wild Geese Fibres (and no , dear google, I don’t mean fibers). It took less than 600 yards (which means I have enough left to knit the sample of the revised pattern) and was wonderfully soft and springy. It blocks beautifully. Added bonus — 100% Canadian. (as always, click for bigger)

I just realized that I never posted finished pictures of the ragdoll in her dress. The one in the pink material (bottom of the post) didn’t quite work. But it was a useful lesson in the importance of ease. We had to switch to another fabric and that one turned out really well. Here is Charlotte all dressed in her blue pioneer dress.

Or, things her dad just doesn’t understand.

We used a pattern from Godey’s Lady’s Book found here (scroll down). It is remarkably simple. We did it Tigger size first to work out how the pattern works and then she is going to make on for an 18″ Canadian Girl doll as a birthday present for her friend. The doll dress to go with it is almost finished and there is fabric for an apron, too. (The birthday isn’t until the end of April.)

Tigger also has some blue gingham and a pattern for a pioneer dress in her size that she plans to trim with the gold flowery material her bonnet is made of so she can wear them together. The part her father doesn’t get is why she wants to wear a pioneer dress and bonnet out in public on just a regular day. He could understand wanting to wear the bonnet to Upper Canada Village or something. To be honest, I don’t really get it either but I’m going with it. She does so many things that I think kids would tease her about and they don’t seem to so I figure it is harmless.

Needless to say, her sewing skills are improving considerably. I did help, particularly with the hand sewing, but she did a lot of this herself. And I suspect she’ll do the doll one on her own (not least because I have been pretty firm in asserting that I don’t make doll clothes because they are too fiddly).

If anyone decides to try it, we used leftover Peaches and Cream knitting cotton instead of cotton wicking on the grounds that, unlike women in the 1840s, we don’t have wicking lying around the place but we do have cotton yarn left over from dishcloth knitting. The purpose of this is to stiffen the front part of the hat and it works really well. We left ends dangling until we had sewn on the cape and then trimmed them with the seam allowances. We forgot to gather the back of the crown piece before we measured and cut the cape so we added tucks at the back and sewed on a bow. I finished all the seams as French seams (or maybe mock French seams — cut one seam allowance to about 1/4″, fold the other over it then turn the whole thing in and hem down the folded edge). We sewed an extra piece of fabric inside to make casings for the ribbons, securing the ribbon at the point where the front meets the crown on each side.

I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t pass muster with die hard reconstructionists but it looks great and Tigger is very pleased. Even if her dad is a bit confused.

I’m a bit late to the party but all the fuss about “The Higher Power of Lucky”, this year’s Newbery Award winner, seems to have been exaggerated. My cyber-friend Ruth, one of the many knitting librarians I converse with said it very well.

Oh, for goodness sake, please don’t use the NYTimes story as your
source for information on this. It was sensationalistic and one-sided. Yes,
there are school librarians who were concerned, but even the one most
quoted in the story said she’ll probably be buying it for the
collection. The so-called controversy was mostly librarians saying how
ridiculous it was to be concerned about the word.

She also provided a link to a piece on the controversy by the author herself.

I started thinking about this in about January, but it is definitely not a New Year’s resolution. The timing is more of a coincidence. And ideas are still percolating so we’ll see what might actually happen. As you know from my posts on career advice, I am well prepared to take interesting turns on the path of life, possibly abandoning a goal in preference for some new one, or at least the possibility of interesting scenery along the way.

This particular little turning in the road seems to have been inspired quite haphazardly by someone mentioning reading John Seymour’s Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It. I can’t even recall whose blog I saw this on but I immediately checked the library catalogue and ordered a copy. Having looked through it, I decided it was the sort of thing we should probably own. And discussions of various aspects of the book ensued.

We already grow enough vegetables that we don’t need to buy any all summer, and we are able to freeze some (though not enough to last through the winter). My partner loves to garden and has been experimenting with various ideas for producing a lot of veg on not a lot of ground for a while now. I even recall that there was once a book on permaculture hanging around our house (though not this house). Most of our friends are amazed at what we can produce in our little city garden. (It has to be said that we don’t give much space to grass.)

And we have both been involved in the Green Party (not here, and him more than me) and in discussions of all kinds of things with friends in those circles, particularly when we were still students. We guaranteed a loan for a housing co-op some of those friends started many years ago. And I even recall being interested in Education Otherwise though this was long before we had kids.

My partner’s family also kept chickens (in town, no roosters allowed) when he was younger and he frequently talks about how he would like to do that again, though I don’t think it is allowed in this part of the city (since amalgamation some parts of the city are rural so I’d probably need to read the zoning by-laws pretty carefully to find out) and we have no space.

We are now seriously discussing the possibility of moving out of the city, growing more veg and fruit, and keeping some animals. My partner would just launch right into that but I am being more cautious. To begin with, I’m a city kid. I am not confident that I really understand how much work is involved and I am well aware that it is often hard, physical work. I need to get a better sense of that. I also want to live somewhere where at least some of the neighbours have some values in common — organic, environmentally sustainable, and quite frankly a bit hippy-ish. We don’t plan on having a big farm nor on producing much more than we need so it would be great to have neighbours who were interested in sharing equipment (and work) and perhaps trading some produce. This is all pretty vague and sometimes sounds quite utopian. I would like to be more confident that it is realistic before we do anything crazy like sell the house.

So we are starting to walk down that road slowly. I encouraged my partner to join the Canadian Organic Growers since he does garden organically. I figured that getting involved in that would both increase our knowledge and provide opportunities to meet folks with some common values. As I understand it members range from city folks like us (the local chapter even runs a course on Apartment Gardening Organically) to quite large organic farm operations. I am also hoping it might lead to opportunities to learn more about farming through helping others locally. Maybe we’ll also learn more about where we might buy land locally when we are ready to do that.

The bread baking is part of this overall shift in perspective and lifestyle. I now bake bread regularly (about every 2nd day) and we don’t buy any. It fits into our daily routine (such as it is) and I actually enjoy kneading. I’ve stopped experimenting, though I might go back to that.

I have also been thinking about making my own yoghurt. I have done this in the past and my recollection, though fuzzy, is that it wasn’t that complicated. I found some instructions (Google is my friend) that seem way more complicated than that. But when I tried it how I remembered it, it didn’t work. So I might have to get more scientific about it.

And my partner has made some cheese! That was motivated by an article on the food pages in The Guardian (he reads that on-line, they do not form part of the print version of the Guardian Weekly). Finding rennet was not that easy but another quick google search turned up a relatively local cheese-making supply place that even offers workshops. His first attempt at Ricotta was rather tasty. We are using commercial organic milk (which is what we normally drink) and it seems to be working fine.

I have to admit that for him the best part of the Seymour book is the bit on making cider. It seems to be the easiest sort of alcoholic drink to make yourself and it is rather hard to get good dry cider in these parts (we have found a couple in Prince Edward County and in the SAQ in the Ville de Québec).

As I said, all of this is mulling. There isn’t anything that really resembles a plan or goals or a timeline. But it is a direction that we are moving in and it is starting to influence other decisions that we are making. I still think that I am a crazy city girl who has no idea what she is getting herself into. And I’m aware that my farming cyber-friends have family connections to farming and the place they live (sometimes through their partners) which must make a difference, no matter how frustrating they can be at times. (Though not all of them do.)

When I started this post, I noticed that it is my 200th post on this blog. This is kind of amazing to me.

Updated to add photos. The kittens have been hilariously cute lately, and I thought I’d tell you about it.

Donner likes to chase balls. We have some of those small bouncy balls that tend to come in the goody bags from kids’ parties. She loves them. We occasionally bounce them down the hall for her. And she can bounce them herself by going up the stairs a bit and dropping them down (or getting up on the kitchen counter as she did earlier this evening).

However, she enjoys chasing them so much that she has decided to bring them back so we can throw them repeatedly. Sometimes we sit at the kitchen table and throw them towards the kitchen cabinets so they bounce just before and then off the door. She jumps up and catches them. Then brings them back to go again.

This morning, I was only barely awake when I could hear the ball bouncing down the stairs. I figured it was her but then I noticed that it would bounce, then she’d be on the bed, then it would bounce again. My partner was throwing it (from the bed) out the bedroom door and down the stairs. She was running after it and bringing it back!

Her brother Blitzen, is more into cardboard boxes and wine corks. Sometimes in combination.

I called my dad on his birthday recently. He was full of praises for his Christmas gift — knitted socks in Regia Silk. You may recall that he had hinted strongly for those when he admired a pair I had knit for myself. Well, he has given up hinting. Effusive would not be too strong a word. And I think I chose the right stitch pattern (garter rib; easy pattern but I found it in Sensational Knitted Socks) because he claims that this is the first pair of socks he has ever owned that didn’t even seem to want to fall down. The man is 77. He has owned a lot of socks. Some of them handknit.

So I went out and got some more Regia Silk the other day. Now I need to try to remember how many I cast on and find another stitch pattern that will stay up as well.