Rip It and some more

I had a wonderful idea for a new sock pattern.  At least in my mind, it was a wonderful idea.  In reality, I've ripped it out at least four times and re-charted it at least a dozen times.  Well, that maybe a wee lie about the charting.  I re-charted it at least six or seven times on paper, trying different stitch counts.  I've also lay awake at night charting it in my head.  At one time, I totally gave up and told myself to try a different design.  At least, I was able to go sleep after that!

The next morning, however, I decided to try the original idea one more try.  I sat down with a blank sheet of graph paper and charted it one more time.  All of a sudden, I saw the mistake I'd made in my first chart.  It was so obvious; yet, I hadn't seen it before.  Corrected the mistake and the chart looks right.  I started knitting and it looks right--like it looked in my head when I first envisioned it.  If it works, I'll post a picture soon.  The yarn is especially yummy--Pigeonroof Studios Siren 2 sock in a one of a kind color called Pomegranate and deserves an equally yummy design.

In an effort to reach more knitters, I've set up an Etsy shop.  Right now, you can purchase copies of Indigo Waves, Slipstream and the Basic Shaped Arch Socks pattern there.  I will be adding more patterns soon.  I also hope to use this shop to sell items such as felt and silk scarves.  Stay tuned!

In other news, I've been training for a cycling event which takes place on March 31.  It's an all women's ride called the Cinderella Classic and Challenge.  Last year, I rode the Classic, which is 65 miles.  I am aiming to ride the Challenge at 95 miles this year.  Most events like this are dominated by men so it is really quite a sight to see over 2,000 women riding together--well, kind of together since the large group breaks into smaller groups riding at different paces.  I'm feeling really great about my chances of having a good ride.  I'm hoping for good, meaning no rain, weather that day!

Sourdough

It's crazy that I want to bake bread.  After all, I live in an area rich with incredibly great bread.  Yet, I want to bake bread.  And, not just any bread.  Sourdough. 

Years ago when my daughter was very young, I baked bread every weekend.  And every weekend I baked sourdough bread.  You see, I have this starter that my mother has had since I was a kid.  It was given to her by this old man in Placerville in the mid-1960s.  As he told my mother, it was already a really old starter.  I was about 8 years old at the time and believed that meant it was starter from a 49er, as in Gold Rush, as in 1849.  My mom made bread with that starter sometimes.  Sometimes she made sourdough chocolate cake.  The best things she made with that starter was biscuits.  I, however, cannot make sourdough biscuits.  Mine are like hockey pucks.  Smell wonderful, total inedible.  The dog seems to like them though.

So earlier this week, I hauled out the starter that lives in my fridge.  It was nasty looking. Gray water with heavy sludge in the bottom of the jar.  Opening the jar emitted a powerful whiff of alcohol.  No wonder it's claimed somewhere that the 49ers drank the watery stuff when better alcoholic beverages were in short supply.  The smell like to knock me over and I wondered if I'd neglected my ancient starter too long.

I was determined to bring it back to life.  I left the jar out on the counter overnight so the poor starter could get warm.  Or at least warmer than it is in the fridge.  Although, I was certain at the time that my kitchen was just as cold as the fridge since we were having a rare cold snap in the Bay Area.  The next day I dumped it in a bowl gave it a wee amount of water and flour to start it's feeding.  Yes, you feed a sourdough starter.  It's kind of like having a baby that needs to eat every few hours.  Then I fed it again and then one more time that day.  It had some life!

The next day I fed it two more times and left it overnight.  The next morning it was lively.  It had small bubbles that are characteristic of sourdough starter.  It had a lovely smell.  It poured from a ladle like silk.  It was beautiful.

The time had come to make bread.  I decided on mixing half white and half whole wheat flours since my boyfriend is partial to wheat bread.  Using all whole wheat flour produces a loaf which is heavy and dense and has a texture that I can't abide.  The actual physical effort involved in making bread is pretty slim.  You spend a whole lot of time waiting for the yeast to do it's thing, which is quite magical when you really think about.  The yeast give the bread its lightness and flavor.  You spend a couple of days waiting for sourdough yeast to do its magic.  It ferments in a bowl after mixing and kneading.  You punch it down and let it ferment again.  This takes four to six hours depending on the temperature.  You then take it out of the bowl and slap it on your board.  (At this point, I kneaded in some olives into half the dough.)  Then it's roughly shaped and allowed to rest.  After its nap, you shape it into its desired shape. 

I use willow baskets that are made for proofing bread, so I put the loaves in there.  They proof at room temperature for about an hour and then go into the fridge overnight to retard.  Retarding slows down the yeast and allows for more flavor to develop. 

This morning I pulled the dough out of the fridge and let it come to about room temperature while still in their baskets.  After that, the loaves were removed from their baskets, docked, and placed in a very hot oven on a baking stone.  I didn't get the docking quite right and ended up with a heavy lip of crust on the slash.

Anyway, I made bread.

In honor of winter finally arriving

Winter has finally arrived in Northern California and in honor of it's late arrival, all patterns in my shop are 20% off through March. 

Pyroclastic, Revisited

I've been meaning to publish the pattern for Pyroclastic with the charts for the arch shaping since the copyright reverted back to me last year.  Well, I finally got around to it. The pattern is available in my Ravelry shop. 

I've clarified the reason for the marker placement.  If you have thought about knitting Pryoclastic but were confused by the written directions, this version should eliminate all doubts about what exactly is going on with the arch shaping.  I also added some other yarn suggestions. 

The sock in the photo is knit in Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock Solid Pond Blue, which is now available in 100 gram skeins.

Sweater from stash yarn

At the end of last year, I was sitting in my coffee place freezing.  Just like a cartoon thought bubble, a thought popped into my head:  I need a sweater.  Now, it's not as if I don't have any sweaters.  Of course, I do--I'm a knitter after all! But I needed a new sweater.  Luckily, I also have stash.  Some really old stash.  And since I'd just been informed that I would be out of work at the end of January, I decided that some stash diving was in order.

Well, I pulled out a lovely dark blue DK weight yarn called Merino Style from Knitpicks that I'd purchased eons ago.  Since I didn't have a pattern in mind and didn't want to search through all the pattern books and magazines I own, I decided to wing it with a top-down, raglan sleeve that I would design on the needles.  I knew that I wanted something simple style-wise; yet not plain Jane and it would have to look good with jeans as well as dress pants or a skirt.  I also decided that I would knit the sleeves before finishing the body.  I think as this as akin to knitting socks toe-up.  The body will be as long or short as the amount of yarn I have left after the sleeves. 

The first sleeve took me forever.  At first I was thinking I wanted a wide sleeve so I knit without decreases.  Well, it looked just awful, really frumpy.  I ripped back and decreased to taper the sleeve.  I still didn't like it.  Then I sat down with a few stitch dictionaries and found a pattern I liked.  So I ripped back again and this time figured out how often I needed to decrease in order to get down to a stitch count that would work with the pattern and wasn't too loose or tight.  The photo on the left shows the detail of the pattern on the sleeve.  I've got about 2-inches to go on the body before I start the lace pattern on the body.

It has been fun to mix up sock knitting and designing with knitting a sweater.  Especially since winter temperatures have arrived in the Bay Area.  I figure in less than a week I'll have the sweater I needed back in December.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

 I've been rediscovering the joy of baking bread.  A few weeks ago I started making focaccia, which was eaten very quickly.  Then the other day I was flipping through the recent issue of Cook's Illustrated and read an article on perfecting cinnamon bread.  I think that Cook's Illustrated has some very interesting ideas but find their processes fussy.  Their premise was that one can make a cinnamon bread at home that doesn't have the big gaping holes that occur where the cinnamon filling meets the bread dough.  I wondered if one could achieve a similar effect using a pullman loaf pan.  So I tried it.  I made a challah dough using the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, which I tweaked just a bit by using regular yeast instead of the instant yeast called for and allowed for longer rising times.

Here is the dough before it's first rise. Challah is a very forgiving dough.  Plus it is super simple to make in a stand mixer.  It has a lovely pale yellow color due to the eggs and egg yolks in the dough, which according to Peter Reinhart was probably a way to use up excess eggs before the Sabbath made it impossible to harvest new eggs. It also has a very small amount of oil in it; I used a lovely pale green grapeseed oil.  I let it rise twice in the bowl.

Then I patted it into something that resembles a rectangle and let it rest under a towel for about 10 minutes.  Then I rolled it out into an even larger rectangle, really it was more like a parallelogram, which really didn't matter much to me since I was going to roll it up jelly roll style.  Then I brushed it with a small amount of melted butter, spread cinnamon sugar over the surface, rolled it up, tucked under the ends and put it in a lightly oiled pullman loaf pan.

A pullman loaf pan has a lid and makes a loaf with a flat, rather than rounded, top.  It also doesn't allow much of a crust to develop so that it is easy to make crustless finger  sandwiches with bread baked in one.  But, my quest was for a cinnamon swirl bread that didn't have a bunch of giant holes in it.

I put the cover on most of the way--I left it open about 1/2-inch and let it rise until it was about 3/4 of the way up the sides of the pan.  I closed the lid the rest of the way and put it in a 350F oven to bake for about 50 minutes.

 Here is the loaf as it came out of the pan.  The filling leaked just a bit but not so much that the pan had gooey filling all over it.  So I considered that a success.  Of course, the real telling was when I cut into the loaf.  There were some holes where the filling and dough did not stick together.  But wasn't not so bad that the slices didn't hold together.  I put two slices in the toaster this morning, which maintained their shape.  Again, I think this is a success.

Oh, and the toast was very lovely.  This is an experiment worth repeating.

President's Day Weekend Sale!

Starting Friday, February 17 through Monday, February 20 the following patterns in my Ravelry shop are 20% off:  Newland, Dervish, Adrienne, Kristine, Slipstream, Ella's Tea Socks, Caitlin's Lace Anklet, and Oliver.

Enjoy!

New sock pattern

It has been a long time since I published a knitting pattern so this feels really great.

The new pattern is called Indigo Waves and is available for purchase on Ravelry. I used Siren 2 sock yarn from Pigeonroof Studios.  The color way is Indigo Ink.  It is a beautiful semi-solid showing dark blues at their best.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve for 2012 including an improved written pattern with charts for Pyroclastic.  Look for it soon in my Ravelry shop.

Pattern Sale!

All patterns in my Ravelry shop are 30% off through December 31, 2011.

Amazing Trieste

Where my trip started. 

Remains of a Roman arch

A street of very old paving stones

Remains of the Roman am

Cattedrale di San Giusto rose window

Theater

Piazza Nuova

Display in the window of an optometrist's office

Boat on the Grand Canal

The Grand Canal

A working fountain

A typical form of transportation

In case you need a bar

It's been too long

I didn't realize that almost a year has gone by since my last post. I'm still knitting and designing sock patterns. I just need to write up my notes about these patterns so that they will make sense to everyone else. I also need to get pictures and then marry the photo to the written pattern. And then post them in my Ravelry shop. In other words, I have a lot to do and I'm better at the knitting part than at the writing up the pattern part.

I've spent the spring and summer riding my bike a lot. My bike has taken me places I won't have gone had I not taken up cycling again last year. I have taken my bike all over northern and central California. I rode my first half century in Solvang in March. A few weeks later, I rode the Cinderella Classic, which is a metric century (65 miles) around the base of Mt. Diablo. In May, I rode the Wine Country metric century. In August, the Tour of the Napa Valley metric century called my name. However, the highlight of the summer was the trip I took in July.

I went on a cycling trip through northeast Italy and Slovenia. It was an amazing eight day tour that started in Trieste, Italy and ended in Bled, Slovenia. I did all of this with a wonderful tour company called Ciclismo Classico. After the tour ended, I returned to Trieste for a few days and then joined my boyfriend in Verona for a few days of cycling there. Then we spent a few days in Venice being tourists since it's impossible to ride a bike in Venice. We have both been to Venice before so we spent time in museums and neighborhoods we hadn't explored on previous trips.

We traveled with our bikes. There is nothing like riding your own bike in a foreign country. We attracted a lot of attention in Trieste when we were putting our bikes together. Northern Italy is bike crazy. I ride a Bianchi named after the velodrome in Milan. I was asked a few times if I knew that my bike was named after a famous velodrome. Fortunately, I'd done my homework and could honestly say that I knew where the name came from. I attracted even more attention taking my bike apart in the same alley nine days later so I could pack it. I gathered it was a bit unusual for a woman to be taking a bike apart on her own.

After my bike was packed, I took a walk around Trieste. Trieste is James Joyce crazy in addition to being cycling crazy. There is a bronze statute of JJ on a bridge crossing the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal isn't at all like the Grand Canal of Venice, which is what I picture when I think of the Grand Canal. There are bars and hotels named after JJ. I even stayed at the James Joyce Hotel. You can walk around the city following a James Joyce itinerary. Of course, there are the well known spots he frequented while he lived, taught English and wrote in Trieste. I've never seen greater JJ love outside of a university English Department!

Time Flies

Earlier this spring I bought a new road bike. I've been riding an average of five days a week. This has meant less time for knitting and spinning. At first, I was concerned about this. As I got more time on my bike, I realized that I had been needing a serious break from writing sock patterns, knitting and spinning. I had become seriously burnt out and that was a bigger threat to my continued interest in these things than giving myself a much needed break to recharge.

I rode my bike a lot as a teen. I'm one of those rare Californians who didn't get a driver's license the minute I turned 16. My bike was my transportation. I loved the freedom it gave me. I gave up my bike when I moved to San Francisco in the 70s because I'd had too many close calls with cars. San Francisco wasn't remotely bike friendly then. I love the way I feel on my bike; I'm using my own power to explore my surroundings. Cycling requires a set of skills in the same way that knitting and spinning require. The more I practice the better I become at it. I've also come up with some ideas for new sock patterns while I've been out on the road. I wouldn't have come up with these if I wasn't out on my bike.

Now when I knit or spin, I enjoy it more. I'm no longer feeling that I have to produce constantly in order to be a "real" knitter or spinner. I know that I am those things and I feel good about that.

Sunday photo

Not socks

I love the images I've seen of Sufi whirling. The cable in these mitts remind me of this movement. These started life as an idea for a sock that just didn't work. I couldn't let go of wanting to use this specific cable. I just couldn't figure out where else I could use it. So the unwearable socks languished hidden in a drawer for about six months. (And, I do mean socks; I had to knit a pair to prove to myself the design really didn't work.) I moved on and worked on other designs. One night while doing mental inventory of my designs, the idea of using the cable in fingerless mitts hit me.

I knit these out of A Verb For Keeping Warm Creating in Supernova on US #1/2.25 mm needles. They use less than a 100 gram skein of yarn and are fast to knit.

The only tricky bit is the cable. It is a ribbed cable over 11 stitches. An 11 stitch cable is a bit tight to work on the cross simply because of the number of stitches crossing one another. Because it is worked over an odd number of stitches some of the knit stitches become purls and some purls become knits. If you follow the directions, it works--you just need to forget what your brain tells is logical and trust that it works as written.

Dervish was test knit by members of the Free Pattern Testers Ravelry group. Michael Del Vicchio provided the technical editing. The pattern is available in my Ravelry shop.

Knitting from the stash

I went stash diving a month or so ago and re-discovered this Socks That Rock medium weight yarn in Mesa that I bought at Stitches West 2006. Socks That Rock was the buzz of the knitting blogosphere that year. This small company out of Oregon seemed to have come out of nowhere, was represented by The Fold at Rhinebeck 2005, and was suddenly the most sought after yarn in the world. And I had to have some.

I got to Stitches early Saturday morning and immediately headed for the Blue Moon booth. It was nearly empty--in that, there was very little yarn to be had. All of the light weight STR was sold out. There were a few skeins of medium and heavy weight STR left. There were plenty, relatvely speaking, of skeins of Seduction, a merino/tencel blend that wasn't named after types of rocks. I walked away with the Mesa STR and two skeins of Seduction--Prove It All Night, which became a Swallowtail shoulder shawl and Lucy in the Sky. Lucy in the Sky is still in my stash waiting to become something fabulous.


This yarn tried to be many things. In the end, it worked best as a variation on my Basic Shaped Arch Sock pattern. I used US #2 needles and cast on 56 stitches. The ribbing is a 1x1 twisted stitch rib. I mixed up the heel a bit by using eye of the partridge instead of a standard heel stitch. I love the way eye of the partridge looks with hand painted yarns that have a lot going on color-wise.


I also love the way the triangle that is formed by the gusset and the arch shaping really highlights the angles the yarn is going in. This was a fast sock to knit compared to the socks I usually knit on US #1 or #0. I really like the way they turned out. I think this will be my fall back pattern for all of the really colorful hand painted yarn in my stash.

A new addition to the collection

Please welcome Adrienne into my small, but growing, collection of sock patterns. I named these in honor of my friend Adrienne, who is fun, warm, giving, and a very important person at A Verb for Keeping Warm.

I used A Verb for Keeping Warm Annapurna for this in the color Vermilion. Adrienne features left and right twisted cables in the cuff that continue down the side of the leg and travel across the instep, mirroring the arch shaping. The yarn is a yummy blend of merino, cashmere and nylon. I knit these on US #2/2.75 mm needles.

I was inspired by the many variations I've seen of socks with clocks. Plus, I wanted a design that really allowed the yarn to be the star. I wanted to incorporate arch shaping since I like the way that shaped arch socks fit. It took me several attempts to get the cables integrated with overall design. Needless to say, these were ripped back to the heel flap numerous times (the yarn held up beautifully!) before the cables looked right to me.

While not a complicated sock to knit, you do have to keep track of quite a few stitch markers while shaping the arch and cables. I'm not a big fan of a ton of stitch markers but just didn't see how else to keep track of arch stitches that move as well as cables that travel. A bit of disclosure here: I typically knit my socks using 5 double-point needles and arrange my stitches so I don't have use so many stitch markers. If you choose to follow my lead, be sure to keep the markers for the arch shaping and the traveling cables on the instep.

This pattern has been test knit. Technical editing was provided by Michael Del Vicchio.

It's been awhile

The design bug has bitten me again.

Coffee is definitely a necessary part of my design kit.

A few stitch dictionaries for inspiration plus my graph paper notebook.

A scrawl of notes.

Weird, in a good way

I'm terrible, vain actually. Ever since the Winter 2009 issue of Knitty came out, I've been stalking the internet for comments about Pyroclastic. I can't help it--being published is really new to me. The best thing I've found: there is a geologist named C.C. Knitter who studied and wrote about pyroclastic flows!

Knitty

I can hardly believe it. Pyroclastic is in the Winter 2009 issue of Knitty. I never thought I would be published in Knitty a year ago. I don't think I can ever express my gratitude to everyone who encouraged me though the past year. Thank you!!!!

Pyroclastic was born at Sock Summit 2009. I started by charting the repeat and began knitting it in a class with Cookie A. The yarn I was working with was pretty but completely obscured the design. Cookie walked around the class to see what everyone was doing and to answer questions. When she got to me, she asked "Are you sure about that yarn?" My initial reaction was these are only for me and I need to use this yarn from my stash, which I only said in my mind. So I rooted around in the bag of sock yarn I had with me and found something much more suitable--A Verb for Keeping Warm Creating in a color called Bolinas (Pictures were not taken of it because it didn't seem as if it would photograph well; it's really pretty in person.)

I was really busy for the rest of Sock Summit and didn't really get back to my sock until the ride home. I was lucky enough to be ride sharing with Kathleen (KatDee on Ravelry) and Michael aka Wonder Mike. Michael and Kathleen drove the first 2/3's of the way home while I sat in the backseat working out the pattern placement for the heel and instep fueled by Voodoo Donuts. This was a bit tricky because I knew I wanted to have a shaped arch, which has less give that a straight forward foot and instep. You see, the shaped arch biases the fabric so you need a few more stitches than usual to get it on your foot. I was doing all of this on the needles because I couldn't find my notebook and only had the sheet of paperI'd charted the pattern repeat on, which was pretty scribbled on at this point.

Once home I finished the prototype, wrote out the directions, and knit it again in Lorna's Laces Shepard. Meanwhile, Kristine was busy knitting it out of the Burnt Embers colorway of AVFKW Creating. When we finished knitting our respective socks, I set about formatting the pattern in Knitty's style.

Kristine and Adrienne went to our local cemetery to take photos. Kristine did a bang up job of photography. Adrienne was our foot model. We had so many photos to choose from, it was difficult to decide which to submit to Knitty.

A few days later, I submitted the whole package to Knitty. Then the wait began. I tried really hard not to think about it. Every once in awhile, Kristine would ask if I'd heard anything. I started new designs. In October, I received an email from Amy Singer saying my pattern had been excepted. I was in a state of disbelief for about two days.

After that, it was a push to write the pattern for a second size since I was asked for at least one other size. Yes, this meant more math! I had to think about how the sock could be knitting using something other than my beloved dpns. I had to rewrite the pattern without reference to specfic needles. In my mind, I knit these socks on two circs and using magic loop. I had imaginary stitch markers that had to be tracked. I got stuck more than a few times with visioning what happens on magic loop. But in the end, I worked it out with great advise from my technical editor.

Then I waited some more and now it's really here. It's been a great experience and I want to do it again!



Photos in this post are copyright Kristine Vejar.

Back to the notebook

My last idea failed miserably once I got to the instep. I still like the basic idea; just needed to figure out a different way of execute it. I think this time I've got it right. I am finding that the more time I spend designing, the more I learn. In the beginning, I wanted every idea to work out perfectly the first time. Of course, the design process doesn't work that way. I have a few failures tucked away in my sock drawer as a result.

Now I am much more comfortable with ripping out and starting over again. I just don't quit because it didn't work out perfectly the first time. I've learned to fail and be alright with it.