A little progress

I've made a bit of progress on Ada, not much really. There are a lot of stitches on the needle--you start with 260 and decrease 2 stitches every three rows plus it's garter stitch, which eats up yarn but doesn't add a lot of inches. I've probably got about 5" more to go before switching to stockinette and shaping the bodice. This really doesn't make for good blog fodder, but it is what it is.

On Sunday, I started spinning up some carbonized bamboo that I bought from Tactile Fiber Arts. It wasn't smooth spinning at all. I predrafted thin strips of fiber and was getting lumpy yarn. I fluffed it even more and tried spinning over the fold--still getting lumpy yarn. On top of all of that I wasn't enjoying the hand of this fiber at all. The last time I spun bamboo I had the same reaction about the hand. On Monday, I inspected my results and hated, hated, hated them. So the spun fiber came off the bobbin. I gathered up the unspun fiber as well and trotted off to the garbage shoot and gleefully dumped it. I just needed it out of my life. This is no reflection on the quality of Tactile's fiber. I've spun other fibers from them and they were quite nice. In fact, I'm spinning up a lovely merino silk blend that was dyed with logwood gray I bought from them at Lambtown last summer. I just think that bamboo and I don't get along!

Hello, Ada

I started knitting the new Article Pract pattern "Ada" while on vacation. My gut told me that there was a mistake in the stitch marker placement--of course, I ignored myself. I knit almost 10" of the body before I accepted that my gut was right. I ripped it out and started over after I contacted Christina at Article Pract to see if, indeed, the pattern had a mistake. She is posting the errata on the pattern page over at the Article Pract website.

Oh, and I'm knitting it out of the wine colored merino handspun I spun last fall.

Muffins and knitting

I made Espresso Banana Muffins last night. The recipe is from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson. The recipe calls for toasted walnuts. So I dutifully got a bag of walnut halves out of the freezer and spread the amount called for on a rimmed cookie sheet and put them in the oven to toast. Only I promptly forgot about them until they smelled way too toasty. The walnuts went in the trash and I proceeded to make the muffins without them. These are really good--not heavy the way some natural foods muffins can be. I'll make these again. Definitely, yummy.


I started a Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I know that a lot of people have knit this and that I'm rather late to the game. I'm using some Twisted Sisters Daktari that I bought at the Knit Cafe two summers ago--the colors are less bright than in the close up photo. I didn't know what I was going to use it for at the time. It has kept a happy place in the stash waiting for the right project to come along. It didn't occur to me to use it for the Chevron Scarf until I saw some Daktari knitted up in a chevron pattern at Article Pract. I only have two skeins of this yarn so my scarf will not be mega long as the original but that is okay with me.