summertime

Steamy, sticky days here in Chicago after a cool and rainy start to the summer. Playground trips, fort-building, running through the sprinkler, swimming, picnicking, flying kites. Summer is much more fun with a busy toddler, though exhausting.

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pattern: yoked cardigan, by hannah fettig

yarn: mountain colors 4/8's wool, winter sky, 1 skein

needles: US 7 bamboo circs for the body, US 8 for the sleeves

size: 2 years

my ravelry project page

notes:
I'm not sure that this cardi is really a size 2T! Seems a little small. Easy pattern, fun to knit, and I love the yarn. Smooth and springy, lovely dark shades of blue and purple, plus it had been marinating in the stash forever. Next time I'd try smaller needles when picking up stitches for the button band.

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my favorite easy-peasy summer sandwich

French bread or ciabatta rolls topped with roasted red peppers, fresh mozzarella, a drizzle of olive oil, and a healthy sprinkle of garlic salt, broiled or baked in a 400-degree oven for 8 min. or so, then topped with fresh basil from the garden

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reclaimed prairie at Winnemac Park

yarn along: elsie

Joining Ginny with this week's Yarn Along:

Knitting another Elsie cardigan and reading Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall -- an absolutely charming cookbook + collection of musings on Swedish coffee break culture.

I've also been tinkering around with a recipe for a raspberry rhubarb tart. Strawberry rhubarb has been done many a time! I think this version's a winner:

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Raspberry Rhubarb Tart

Fruit Filling:

2-2 1/4 C. rhubarb, chopped (1/2-inch pieces)

1 1/4 C. raspberries

3/4 C. sugar

3 T. flour

3/4 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 T. butter, cut into small pieces

Tart Dough:

1 1/2 C. flour
4 oz. (1 stick) butter, cold, cut into cubes
1/2 tsp. salt
1 large egg
2-3 T. cold water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Make the dough by mixing the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the butter and use your hands, or a pastry blender, to break in the butter until the mixture has a crumbly, cornmeal-like texture. You can also make this in the food processor, using the “pulse” feature, being careful not to over-process.

Mix the egg with 2 tablespoons of the water. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, stirring until the dough holds together. If it’s not coming together easily, add an extra tablespoon of ice water.

Gather the dough into a ball and roll the dough on a lightly floured surface, adding extra flour only as necessary to keep the dough from sticking.

Once the dough is large enough so that it will cover the bottom of the pan and go up the sides, roll the dough around the rolling pin then unroll it over the tart pan. “Dock” the bottom of the pastry firmly with your fingertips a few times, pressing in to make indentations.

Chill the tart dough in the refrigerator while you prepare the fruit filling.

Combine rhubarb and raspberries in a large bowl. Sprinkle with sugar, flour, and lemon juice. Toss gently. Spoon into prepared tart dish, and dot with butter.

Bake until the pastry is golden brown and the fruit filling is bubbling in the center (35-45 min.). Cool on a wire rack before serving.

yarn along: hamamelis

Joining Ginny et al. for this week's Yarn Along:

The lace pattern for Hamamelis finally clicked, and now it's coming along just swimmingly. I just started All the Light We Cannot See -- compelling and hard to put down!

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Erik visited his grandparents over the weekend, and Paul and I spent a glorious staycation weekend here in Chicago. Chocolate croissants on the front porch, burgers at the Bad Apple, the new Avengers movie (going out together after dark! such a luxury!).

I even fit in some uninterrupted crafting time both mornings -- a little bit of hand quilting (not my forte, but I'd like to finish this wee baby quilt that I started eons ago) and a handknits finishing frenzy. So many buttons to sew on! Here's the first: 

pattern: lottie cardigan, by carrie bostick hoge

yarn: frog tree ewetopia, #1245, 3 skeins

needles: US 7 (4.5 mm) bamboo circs and US 8 bamboo dpns

size: 6 months

my ravelry project page

notes:

A lovely little pattern. I like that there is plenty of overlap for the front button bands. So many baby sweater patterns don't bother, with the result that the fronts tends to pull when buttoned.

The yarn was an absolute delight. My first time knitting with Frog Tree yarn. Ewetopia is a 2-ply merino, with a special twist -- one ply is superwash, the other is not, so the two plies take the dye very differently. It's a marled yarn, and it's so springy and squooshy. I found the yarn at Knit One Purl Two in Rockford, a very nice shop (much nicer than I expected given its location in a strip mall). I found the wooden buttons at Yarn Con -- I wish I could find this woman's contact info, as she sells a wonderful selection of wooden buttons in a variety of shapes and sizes at affordable prices. A real treasure!

dispatch from the front porch

Today I squeezed in a little front porch knitting, which is pretty much the best type of knitting.

The pattern is Kirsten Kapur's Hamamelis, which has been on my to-knit list forever. Again, I'm using yarn from deep in the stash (hooray!) -- Dream in Color's Smooshy sock yarn in Nightwatch. The pattern's looking great, but the shawl seems small-ish considering that the second of four repeats of the main chart is almost done. I had a little trouble getting into the lace pattern, something that hasn't happened to me in a long time. There's something about garter stitch-based lace that just doesn't click naturally with my brain, esp. when there's patterning on both the right and wrong side rows. The yarn is springy and has kind of a tight twist -- it would probably make excellent socks.

Summer's finally here, and the university where I work is looking absolutely beautiful. Peonies on the main quads, plus look how quickly this spring's crop of ducklings is growing up!

Speaking of getting big so quickly, here's Erik reading a book. He inherited my love of Richard Scarry.

yarn along + ashton shawlette

yarn along with Ginny today, from my front porch:

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry and Granny's Favourite cardigan are underway, and both receive two thumbs up. As the NPR review mentions, A. J. Fikry is a love letter to reading and the power of books, and I'm enjoying it immensely. Tugs at your heartstrings. A widower runs a bookshop on a remote island, and he's struggling with the death of his wife and his own curmudgeonly ways. When something special is left in his store, his life changes completely. A little cliched, but I recommend it.

The little cardigan is fun to knit, and the pattern is written for a huge range of sizes, which is spectacular. I rummaged around in the yarn bins and found some deep stash to use -- Brooklyn Handspun Instant Gratification. Lovely stuff!

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A dreadful cold struck our household just in time for the long holiday weekend (ugh). While it wasn't the relaxing weekend I envisioned, we managed to do a lot despite feeling cruddy. We started Saturday off right with a trip to the Evanston farmers market (rhubarb! Bennison Bakery's rhubarb cream cheese danish!). I tried two new recipes, both from Smitten Kitchen: ramp pizza turned out awesome, and rhubarb snacking cake is delicious (snacking cake? how's that for a concept? I love it!).

I didn't sew any buttons onto the baby sweaters I'd already knit, but I did block a shawlette that had been languishing.

pattern: ashton shawlette, by dee o'keefe (free!)

yarn: orange flower twist | sock, santa fe, less than 1 (600-yd) skein

needles: u.s. 5 (3.75 mm) bamboo circs

my ravelry project page

notes:
I enjoyed knitting this, but I'm not sold on the tight twist of the yarn. It doesn't help that while the colors are beautiful, they're not very "me." It didn't use very much of this mega-skein of yarn (600 yds), which is a shame!

Nice free pattern. I'd recommend blocking the edging a little more severely than I did to get pretty points.

yarn along

Finally participating in Ginny's Yarn Along:

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes can be rather gruesome and overly descriptive at times, but it's interesting and thought-provoking nonetheless. I find myself skimming over certain parts when my stomach starts to give out. Good choice not to enter the mortuary sciences on my part, I suppose. I'm copying Ginny by knitting an Antarktis. Nice pattern -- repetitive, but the texture is lovely, and the end result is a shawlette that is lacy, but not frilly. Quite wearable. I adore the yarn, Malabrigo Finito. Deliciously squishable, and the colors (Jupiter) are gorgeous.

What I should be doing is sewing buttons on four wee baby cardigans, but I never seem to find the gumption. Perhaps over the long weekend? The patterns are Lottie, Yoked Cardigan, one of my own design, and Seamless Yoked Baby Sweater. More on these to come, I promise.

five hours?!?

Those "five hour" baby sweater patterns are really something -- five hours for Elizabeth Zimmermann maybe, but not for me. Knitting the sweater took less than a week, but getting up the gumption to do the finishing work took a couple of months! This cardigan is destined for Paul's cousin's sweet new baby boy.

 

pattern: baby boy 5 hour sweater, by gail bable

yarn: rowan ryc cashsoft aran, ~ 2 balls

needles: us 9 (5.0) mm

my ravelry project page

notes:

The pattern doesn’t include buttonholes in the instructions! I added a buttonhole at the beginning of row 4 (K2, YO, k2tog, then follow pattern as written), and repeated every 10 rows.

RYC Cashsoft just doesn’t do it for me. It’s similar to Cashmerino, but not nearly as nice. It has kind of a mushy feel or something? Oh well, the new mom's not a knitter, so I wanted something machine washable.

The precious embroidered, cloth-covered sheep buttons had been hoarded in my stash for years -- I'm happy to use them at last. I'm trying to get over the idea of saving the "good" things for later.

strikes and gutters

The morning after I last posted we woke up to a light dusting of snow. The winter that never ends! The sun is shining again, my spring flowers survived the frost, and 70-degree temperatures are in the forecast, so things are looking up. Catching up with my knitting...

pattern: northern loop, by tante ehm

yarn: bernat roving, gardenia, 3 skeins

needles: clover US 10.5 (6.5 mm) bamboo straights

my Ravelry project page

notes:
A few bad choices from the get-go on this one. The yarn is deep stash -- it's super bulky, almost too warm to be worn doubled, plus I didn't really have enough yarn to make it long enough to double comfortably. I should have used larger needles, as the resulting fabric is pretty stiff and doesn't have much drape. I did my 3-needle bind-off on the wrong side, to boot. Ugh! Well, you win some, you lose some. At least it didn't take long to knit, and the colors are pretty -- reminiscent of jelly beans.

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handknits in action:

 Here's Erik keeping busy at the park in his little coffee bean cardigan.

When I knit this (way back before he was born), I thought that the proportions seemed a little off, though I hadn't swatched for it, so it may be entirely my fault!

I knit the 3 month size, and here he is still wearing it at 18 months. It's pretty wide on him, and it’s sort of a crop-top look, with sleeves on the short side, too. On the plus side, the yarn (Lion Brand Cotton Ease) is holding up very nicely, and I love the color combination (lake + almond).

springtime in the Upper Midwest

Spring's arrival has been hard-fought in the Upper Midwest this year. Brrr... Today's another hustery, blustery, chilly day, but at least the tulips and hyacinths' much-anticipated blooms make it look like spring around here.

I knit something spring-y during the doldrums of March and April, and the cheery color makes me think of baby chicks and daffodils and other lovely things:

pattern: in threes, by kelly herdrich

yarn: three irish girls springvale dk, creamsicle

needles: clover us 5 (3.75 mm) bamboo circs

size: 0-6 months

my Ravelry project page

notes:
Quick, easy pattern! I'll definitely revisit it. I cast on for the smallest size, but made it even smaller by using DK yarn and size 5 needles. Jennie the Potter made the whimsical bicycle buttons, which I found at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival last fall. Happy to find a good use for them!

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I've seen that some parts of the country are reveling in rhubarb already, and I'm envious! Yesterday I tried Leslie Land's easy fruit and jam crostata recipe. Pretty much amazing. Even better than my usual jam tart recipe. Leslie gives all kinds of suggestions for fruit and jam pairings -- the perfect way to clean out your freezer (I used rhubarb, blackberries, and strawberries, with raspberry jam). 

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Other signs of spring in our backyard:

gnomes

I'm months late in posting this, but Erik's gnome Christmas stocking is one of my favorite knitting projects to date. I started it on a whim one night so that I'd have something to knit while watching Guardians of the Galaxy (so funny and cute), and ended up totally addicted to the colorwork and wee gnomes.

pattern: Drops no. U-614 + Jolly Stockings

yarn: Patons Classic Wool Worsted

needles: US 7 (4.5 mm) 16" circs and PNS

my Ravelry project page

notes:

I tweaked the Drops sock pattern to make a Christmas stocking. Love the little gnomes! I used worsted weight yarn and loosely followed the directions for the largest size. CO 60, 2x2 ribbing, didn’t decrease after the ribbing.

The heel and toe are from Bernat's Jolly Stockings pattern. I think they look more Christmas stocking-y than the regular ol' heel and toe from the Drops pattern.

This was a joy to knit, and I was so happy to hang this by the chimney with care! Now to knit two more with different colorwork designs for Paul and me by the time Christmas 2015 rolls around. Paul has requested candy canes and I'm inclined toward a sheep stocking.

a snowy day

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 lots of snow (19" in one day!), not much knitting

 

Guess who's enjoying the snow the most?

At least Erik's sheep hat is getting a workout!

welcome to the flock

I first saw this wee sheepie cardigan on the Yarn Harlot's blog and just knew I had to make one for our little guy. Stranded colorwork and a fairly fine gauge meant that there was no way I was making a teensy size, since if it's that labor-intensive, it ought to fit for quite a while.

pattern: welcome to the flock, by Julia Farwell-Clay

yarn: knit picks capra, pesto, cream, and black

needles: US 2 (2.75mm), US 4 (3.5 mm)

size: 24 months

my Ravelry project page

toddler-approved! the perfect attire for rearranging Grandma's snowman family

notes:
Love the pattern and the cozy little cardigan! The Capra DK-weight cashmere/merino-blend yarn was super soft to knit and looked absolutely gorgeous at first. As I had feared, it does pill. In fact, it pills a LOT. Very disappointing, as it's already beginning to look ratty. I'll need to dig out the sweater shaver and see what I can do.

Also, I knit this yarn at a tighter gauge than I'd like -- next time I'd use a thinner yarn. The buttons aren't ideal (a little thin and flimsy), but I realized that I had better sew on some buttons asap so that Erik could wear it as long as possible. So, in a nutshell: great pattern, super cute result, but I wish I had used better materials.

keeping cozy

 Old Man Winter is making his presence known here in Chicago. Brrrr! Temps below zero, windchills in the -20s. At least we have sunshine and a nice coating of snow! It's hot cocoa and mitten season at last.

I knit these cozy mittens for my soon-to-be sister-in-law for Christmas (yay!). They're from Martha Stewart's website, and you get the feeling that the designer or editor wasn't familiar with standard knitting patterns -- very odd instructions, abbreviations, and formatting, but the mittens themselves were fun to knit. Clever construction. You knit them flat, and you start with the thumb and work the mitten sideways, if that makes sense. There's a bit of origami at the end, and you finish up with a crochet seam. You're supposed to crochet around the cuffs, too, but I was down to the wire for holiday gifts, so that didn't happen.

pattern: cozy mittens, Martha Stewart Living

yarn: Cascade 220 Heathers

needles: Brittany US 6 (4.0) birchwood straights

my Ravelry project page

I recommend the pattern if you want to try something different, don't like fiddling around with DPNs for mittens, and don't mind some unusual directions!

P.S. Here's a photo from the Martha Stewart website that shows the construction:

faerie ring

Wishing you peace and joy in 2015! The holidays were a whirlwind of activity -- we did our usual Upper Midwest tour, made more intense by a busy toddler, plus an extra weekend trip to Milwaukee for a family baby shower (well worth packing up the car again). December was quite a productive month knitting-wise, so there's plenty to catch up on.

This super soft and cozy faerie ring shawlette finally received a blocking and was given to a dear friend for her birthday.

Emily wears it well and looks quite glamorous! I usually scrunch up my shawlettes and wear them as scarves -- she really knows how to bring it.

pattern: faerie ring shawl, by Mariam Riddle

yarn: fleece artist cashlana  (discontinued), topaz

needles: US 8 (5.0 mm)

my Ravelry project page

notes:
Lovely lace edging, and an easy pattern! I don’t like the instructions for the beginning, though -- I ended up with an odd-looking large hole that I jury-rigged when weaving in ends. I think the designer has updated the pattern and improved the directions now.

happy holidays

Wishing you holidays filled with peace, joy, love, and warmth.

matchy matchy

Saturday night I dug out some cardigans that I had knit for Erik that needed just a few finishing touches, and we settled in for our annual viewing of Elf. Many belly laughs later, Erik had a new cardigan to wear! It will fit him for approximately five minutes, so I wish that I had sewn on the buttons sooner, but that's how it goes.

pattern: antler, by alexa ludeman, tin can knits

yarn: cascade 220 heathers, 9451, Lake Chelan Heather, 2 skeins

needles: US 5 and 7 Clover bamboo circs

size: 2-4 years

my Ravelry project page

notes:
The pattern is easy to knit and went very quickly. The sleeves are way too long as written -- I shortened them a tad, but should have shortened them by at least another 2 inches. Erik is tall, but his height is all in his torso (not in his arms) -- if I were to knit this again, I'd lengthen the body of the cardigan, too.

The yarn is leftover from my Drops cardigan, which I just love and wear all the time. So cozy and comfy!

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Plenty is left on my to-knit list before the holidays, some quick and easy -- a Minnesota Vikings hat (turn a square in purple and gold), a Chunkeanie, maybe a pair of these crazy-looking Cozy Mittens (the construction looks neat) -- and one that will be a real stretch, a Big Lebowski-inspired cardigan for Paul. There are still gifts to buy and wrap, cookies to bake, and decorating to finish, but we're enjoying the season and doing things like the St. Lucia festival at the Swedish American Museum, the holiday El train, and relaxing by the lights of the Christmas tree.