Border will be done this week......

Hopefully I'l have this 858 rows done by the middle of this week but today I have a hair appointment so can't work on it although I have just done 25 rows this morning and will knit when I get home time permitting.   Here's a small record of my project since I started this border

510 rows

400 rows

600 rows

My Circular Cardigan

I've been working for over a year on this circular cardigan. I love the design and I love a circular cardigan. I bought one a few years ago when I was visiting my daughter in Tacoma. Loved the sweater, it was so comfy and cozy but it pilled savagely as soon as I washed it. To make it worse, it was a soft acrylic and stretched out of shape, making it narrower and longer. Anyway, I liked it enough to want to make one. Then I found Nigella, a sweater pattern from Berroco. It called for a super yarn spun from rayon and cotton. PROBLEM...the border is over 800 rows but a very easy lace pattern to follow. I got past that and then started the actual circle. As I knitted on this thing on and off I realized the yarn was actually stretching out of shape as I knitted. It was getting longer and longer and when I got down to the end of the circle, I realized, this was NOT going to be a sweater that I would like any better than the one I bought because of the properties of the yarn. This was a sweater that should be carefully folded on a shelf and worn only on special occasions.......not the sweater I had planned on wearing all winter when I needed something to snuggle into.   We all know a soft cotton will stretch out of shape as we wear it. Rayon is known to be iffy when washed so the combo is not my favorite for such a sweater. I finally gave up when I was supposed to be down to 17 stitches and still had 50+ on my needles (yes I was HKing this project and made a mistake or two while knitting).

I decided that as much as I loved the sweater I would have to abandon it.BUT I couldn't do it, I HAD to have that sweater so I went to my LYS and bought some wool yarn that I have knitted with before and like a lot. Shepherd's Wool by Stonehedge Fiber Mills. Its a soft Merino and should hold its shape. I also decided to change my needle from size 8 to size 7 after measuring, I think I was knitting it too loose. Then I decided, I just couldn't redo that border. I can't do it again...800+ stitches......until I realized I could probably do it on the machine. So I got out my LK 150 and spent half a day recreating that border pattern.

FROM THE FRONT

I'm now up to row 100 on the LK 150 and the results are great!  I must say, this pattern looks good from both sides.  Once the million rows are finished, I will turn it on its side and knit on another million stitches and start knitting circular which can't be done on the LK 150 but that's ok.  You are working your way down from lots and lots of stitches to around 17 stitches so every time you decrease evenly around you are working with less stitches, quite a bonus I think.

and BACK

I also think this pattern would be great as a peplum on the bottom of a pullover (with quite a few less rows of course).    See the pretty scallop?
I'm working furiously with the machine part of this sweater because I want to get it onto my HK needles.  I like to have something to HK in the evenings while I'm watching TV or traveling around.    MK is for day time for me these days.

What will I do with the tons of cotton/rayon yarn I bought?  I'm thinking it would be a super yarn to use for something like a bolero.  It can easily be machine knitted and its really a nice yarn for a smaller garment.   

Northwestern Michigan Fair

I spent a few hours each day for 3 days at the fair last week. Why? Well, the first day I went the kids were bringing in the 4H animals and I enjoyed looking at their animals as well as talking to the kids. One girl was rocking a sleeping calf's head in her lap and I asked her if she had just bought the calf or was selling it. She was selling it and said her last year's calf was being shown this year as a steer (ready for someone's freezer) She didn't seem sad or grossed out about it so obviously this girl lives on a farm and knows the difference in pets and farm animals. Still, it was nice to see she loved her calf enough to cradle his head in her lap. The kids had a hard time this year because it was sooooo hot last week, they had to spend a lot of time with their animals keeping them hydrated and hosing them down when they got stressed from the awful heat and humidity. I must comment, the barns were spotless every time I went through them, kudo's to the kids for their hard work.
The second day I went I wanted to watch the draft horse show, I love those gigantic animals.
The 3rd time I went though I went to see the needlecraft exhibits and what won prizes. I took pictures but we obviously weren't allowed to touch anything so there were times I questioned the lack of a ribbon but couldn't inspect to see why someone didn't get one, all I could do was marvel over the workmanship of the knits and the beauty of some of the entries.

I got myself a Rules Book and next year I plan on entering some knits, both hand and machine and I was thrilled to see Machine Knit was one of the categories although there were no machine knits entered. You'd better believe I came home, unraveled what I had done so far on that forever-project, Nigella, the circular sweater from Berroco. I did a gauge test on it and confirmed what I already knew, it was too loose and I am starting over with a smaller needle. I wish I could knit it on the knitting machine but its circular and would have to be grafted together later, I just can't graft stitches well enough to attempt it.

Here's some pictures that I took of knits that I would have been proud to enter, had I made them...enjoy!

This was a busy but fun Weekend

The weekend started for me on Friday evening when my son and Daughter-in-law and I went to the park, downtown Traverse City. We had tickets to Paella In The Park. Paella is a Spanish recipe which apparently is open to interpretation (just Google Paella and you'll find lots of recipes, all using different ingredients, combining rice with meat, beans, vegetables, and/or seafood, with saffron and olive oil. The festivities included 7 chefs from 7 area restaurants all well known for their cooking fare. Each chef was paired with wines from the Wineries of Old Mission Peninsula ( http://www.wineriesofoldmission.com/ ) The chefs each made 3 versions of Paella, fish, meat and vegetarian. We had our choice of 3 of any of the 21 varieties made. We also had our choice of 5 different 2 ounce samplings of wine from any of the wineries. The lines were long but these guys knew what they were doing, the lines moved fast and we were served fairly quickly. The wine was DELICIOUS as was the Paella I chose (I had one with a combo of chicken, duck and artichoke. Next I chose one with sausage and mussels (told them to hold the mussel)which was my favorite because it was hot off the cooker and spicy hot to eat. The wine I chose was a white fruity winecalled Late Harvest Riesling from Chateau Grand Traverse, I'm not really a wine drinker the other 2 I tried were Chardonnay's and I only got 3 drinks from the 5 tickets in my pocket.

Also on the agenda was a concert. Opening the concert was Rootstand, a local group who plays Reggae/Celtic/Bluegrass followed by Blues Traveler, a blues-based rock group. Actually Bluegrass can get boring after the first couple songs (my opinion, naturally)and I felt like Rootstand was more of a country-type band. Anyway, I liked them.

The opening picture shows a balloon in the background, the stage with Blues Traveler and some of the crowd that was seated in front of us. It was definitely dusk when I took the picture. Somehow my son wrangled a seat on the balloon but it remained tethered, it just raised and lowered a few times, never going much over 3 feet off the ground. (I have no idea why)...

Personally I enjoyed Rootstand's music more than Blues Traveler's but then its my age I guess :-) Anyway we went home tired, full and happy. There was a heck of a crowd but plenty of room and food so it was an enjoyable evening.

Saturday was the opening day for the Northwest Michigan Fair. I'm ashamed of myself for not having something to enter but anyway..we went Saturday and watched as the 4H'rs brought their livestock and other goodies to enter. We walked through the horse barns and the livestock barns. I stopped and talked to a young girl who was sitting in a pile of fresh hay with her calf's head in her lap, the calf was taking a nap. She told me she was going to sell the calf and that the calf she raised last year was sold to a 4-H'er who was showing the steer this year. She was also showing a steer that will be sold during the 4H Livestock Market Auction. That brought back lots of memories of my kids doing the same when we lived in the U.P. of Michigan years ago. Sunday we went back and watched a Draft Horse Driving show. We also walked around checking out rabbits, llama and alpaca barns. Fun. I peeked in the 4H and adult exhibition buildings to see what knits had been entered. I swear next year I'm going to enter a knit but need to find a book with the rules, etc. Will ask when I go back to see the results of the judging later this week. Here's some photos of the animals we looked at yesterday.....
And the 4H winner of the draft horse pulling event was a young boy who definitely was at ease with his horse and never had a bit of trouble following the judges wishes, (back up, turn, etc).

New to me Web Site and iPhone Apps

Here's a comment I got from my latest bed runner note.

"Hi,
I saw on another site where your first Knitting program was 'Mom' by a someone on the west coast.
Well, that was me, and I have a new 'Mom' for the iPhone. I'm not trying to sell you something...just reminiscing when I used to sell in Alles Around the world knitting, and sold 'Mom's Knitting Computer Program' for the Apple II and Radio Shack and IBM.

I'm retired now, and have written a hand knitting program modeled after my original 'Mom' You might see it on www.iTunes.com and search for 'Touch and Go Knitting" or my web site at http://www.TouchAndGoKnitting.com Nice to run into someone from those times. You are one of the only old customers I could find ,Richard Foy 801 547 9328 Layton, ut"

I wanted to past this note on here because I really was a Mom user but quite by accident. I bought my first knitting machine in 1987 as a present to myself for working all those long years...and immediately decided that a computer should work for me charting those patterns. Almost immediately after I bought the machine I moved to South Carolina where I met a woman who was an expert knitter and had money to burn. She bought the Mom program because her husband was one of those old guys who worked with computers back in the early days. She thought he knew all there was to know about computers but actually he was futzing around with the home PC and didn't know beans about it (I suspect he was working with them pre-DOS days and maybe was doing data entry or something. Anyway--he didn't know beans about the software and neither did she. She gave me a copy of Mom and asked me to figure out how to use it and show her. Well, I took to Mom like a duck to water. I loved the program. It made sense to me and surprisingly enough, when DesignaKnit came out I was thrilled to see that the Original Draw part of DAK was very similar to Mom's design entry. You went from point to point. How easy was that. My friend never could figure it out even when I tried to show her so I inherited the program from her and was very happy with it.

I just now went to the App store with my iPhone and sure enough, there it is, "Touch and Go Knitting" Of course I'll get it and play with it, I love iPhone Apps and keeping in touch with what's going on. Good Luck Richard, I'm glad you found me.

Bed Runner

Here's a photo of a bed runner at a hotel I stayed at last week. The cool thing about bed runners is that you can quickly quilt or knit or weave one and change it with the seasons because they don't take a lot of fabric and really make the bed look great.


Now here's the one I just knitted on my Brother 970 standard gauge machine.

I wove it using the 1x1 pattern just because I wanted to weave but I think tuck stitch or a fairisle would look just as great. In fact I almost wished after I started that I had done it in squares like a quilt so I could embroider in the white squares. Oh well, as I said....you can make them to match your mood if you want, they're small so the next one may be knit squares with a fabric backing on it.

I used Tamm 3 ply for the knitting yarn and Red Heart's TLC Baby, 2 skeins of color New Mint Sparkle, for the weaving yarn. I planned on 70 inches so that it would lay across the bottom of the bed and overlap just a little but had just a little yarn left over after my 700 rows and decided to go ahead and keep on going so ended up with 730 rows using all 200 needles for the width. I bought a ball of Patons Astra for the worm trim and knitted 5 stitches 8 rows all the way around to give some body to the edges. I thought I would put a fringe on it if I needed more length but it turned out just fine.

Some bed runners I've seen are narrower, this could easily be folded in half and placed farther up toward the middle of the bed as shown here: http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/bed-scarf.html

This could be made on the Bond or the mid guage machine just as easily as on the standard gauge machine.

Summer Salad for 2

picture from free clip art web site, http://clipart.m-y-d-s.com

We've been eating out too much lately and decided to cut down so I've been making a meal out of fresh summer veggies and a protein. The bonus is, the salads only take about 30 minutes to put together, including cooking the chicken. Today's salad was one of the best so I thought I'd share it with you (I should have taken a picture it was so pretty but we gobbled it down so fast I barely had time to write the ingredients before I forgot them. This salad picture is from free clip art web site, http://clipart.m-y-d-s.com.
NOTE: everything I put in the salad is part of my vegetable crisper or "salad shelf". We eat just about the same salad often but I vary the protein and the seasonings. Here's tonight's salad, it was exceptional, especially the chicken:


INGREDIENTS

8 ounce skinless chicken breast
McCormick Perfect Pinch Rotisserie Chicken Seasoning (found in the spice section of your grocery store)
Salt and pepper
Olive Oil
Chardonnay Wine yeah I know I used it in the chili too, I have this bottle, might as well use it :-)
No Stick Cooking Spray
Iceberg lettuce--I sometimes add baby spinach as well
Wash the lettuce and set in refrigerator wrapped in a paper towel or return to plastic bag you bought it in at the store, leave it there for at least 30 minutes to help crisp it.
6 Vine ripened cherry tomatoes
1 each sweet yellow and red peppers
1 bell pepper
2 stalks Green Onions
10 Seedless Green Grapes
2 Tbls Green salad olives
1/4 cup Craisins
1/2 cup Parmesan flavored croutons

NOTE Everything is cut into bite size pieces.

Directions:
Cut chicken into small bite size pieces and sprinkle with Rotisserie Chicken Seasoning and salt and pepper (not too much salt, the seasoning has salt as well)
Pour a little bit of Olive Oil in your non stick fry pan, put on high heat
Add spiced chicken pieces and stir. Continue stirring until chicken is pretty much cooked through, then turn down the heat. Be careful you don’t want it to be overdone or the chicken will become tough. If necessary as you stir the chicken add cooking spray to the pan to keep the chicken from sticking. Sprinkle more seasoning on the chicken as you stir and it cooks. Add about 1/4 cup wine to the pan and turn heat off. The chicken will continue to simmer and cool down in the wine and seasoning while the stove cools down.

While the chicken is simmering and cooling in the wine, prepare your veggies.
Wash the veggies in cold water and set aside.
Tear lettuce into small pieces and put in salad bowl (Not too much, you can add more later if you need to.)
Chop your veggies into small pieces and add to salad bowl
Cut grapes in half if they are large
Add a couple tablespoons of green olives to the bowl
Sprinkle in the Craisins
Add your chicken pieces
Toss the salad then cut the croutons in half and sprinkle around on top

I don't put salad dressing on the salad until we are ready to eat. I like one kind, my friend likes another so we each add our dressing individually. Nothing else is needed for this dinner, you have your protein, your fruit, your vegetables and the croutons are your bread (unless you aren't watching your starchy carbs of course).