Sweater in a month!

After having been fixated with knitting sweaters in one piece, (who wants to spend time seaming up?!) and making several with raglan sleeves, I have realized that the weight of a man’s sweater works against it having very much support. I told my son on Thanksgiving that the next sweater I make for him will have seams across the shoulders and will hang better. “Do you know what kind you’d like (in the next year or two)? He was quite quick in responding he’d like a pullover with a quarter-zip. Well then… “What color?” Again, no hesitation: Black.

That night I began looking at possible patterns on Ravelry. I thought I’d have to modify something to get the right style with a quarter or half-zip and the right kind of collar. After all, there is not the proliferation of men’s sweater patterns as there are for women. Then I came across the Colton pullover pattern by Kyle Kunnecke. It had everything I was looking for!

Well I should get going on it right away since the birthday in late April pretty much guarantees no wear until next winter. I know, I’ll just wrap the pieces and the rest of the yarn along with a copy of the pattern so he can open it on Christmas Day and know what he’ll be getting! So, a trip to The Bead Merchant for some black worsted weight yarn. The alpaca wool blend is so squishy and lovely! How much to get? The ladies in our knitting circle suggest a sweater takes about 1200 yds. Okay then, 6 hanks at 220 yds should be enough. And there are a couple more hanks in the shop in case I’m wrong. (I couldn’t go by the pattern because I was making mine in a solid color.j

Worsted yarn with no patterning does work up fairly quickly. It took me a 2 weeks to use up 3 hanks, knitting up most of the back and one sleeve. Uh-oh, I’m going to need one more. The following Wednesday was knitting day at the yarn shop where Rene was very sorry but she’d already sold the rest of that yarn, but she could order more. More bad news: that yarn has been discontinued and she can’t order more. Well dang! Already well into the front piece by now.

Going through my head: What if I can’t find more of this yarn? What if I can only find a black wool with no alpaca? That’s surely going to be apparent where it changes! Maybe I can snip away the ribbing, reuse that yarn in the other sections and reknit the ribbing with “other” yarn. Maybe I can find a contrasting yarn and use that at the top of the front piece so it’ll look like just the yoke is different. Oy vey.

A search online that afternoon showed a yarn shop in Seattle called Little Knits with this yarn still in stock, discounted even since it’s no longer available. Ordered up a hank and kept knitting with what I had.

Week four, washed and blocked the front, back and the one finished sleeve and started seaming up while waiting for the last hank to arrive. The book, Finishing School, by Deborah Newton proved to be very helpful as my prior sewing up has felt a bit like I was doing it by the seat of the pants method and I have not been very confident in my results. With good reason as it turns out. :)

The last hank arrived last week, knit up the second sleeve, got it washed and blocked while knitting on the collar on the weekend. Seamed the sleeves in on Monday (Christmas eve) and sewed the zipper in on Christmas morning. Whew!

Rest Day

This year my nieces, Isabel and Zoe, and I have embarked on an embroidery project. We each have a set of seven tea towels, that each have a design representing activites that are associated with each day of the week. Our plan is for each of us to complete one towel each month until we're done.

I told them these can be for their "hope chests". Oh my, is that politically correct??  Good thing I don't care about that sort of thing too much...

Here are pics of the Sunday towels in process:

Zoe's

Isabel's

Aunt Suz's

We got our baby chicks on Wednesday this week. They came in the mail and I picked them up at the post office. Boy their chirping got loud in the car!

We ordered 25 Red Rangers (a dual purpose bird) and they added a rare breed chick. It was easy to spot the rare breed as there was only one black one in with all the other yellow chicks.

Here they are in their mailing box. As soon as I opened the lid, their little heads popped up and they wanted to get out.  Not bad for having hatched 48 hours earlier.

After dipping each one's beak in the water until they drank, they were raring to go in the hen house!

Boot Socks

Here is a pair of heavy wool socks I made for the Man this winter. They are wool with 15% mohair which I think means they will wear longer before developing holes or thin spots. 

It also means they need to be hand washed and laid flat to dry so that they don't felt.  That's okay though, my outlook changed on hand washing when I realized washing and rinsing a pair of socks takes about 30 seconds.  A little longer if I have to wait for the water to heat up.  

Since the yarn is heavy weight,  I was able to get them done in about three days. Quick! 

And perfect for wearing inside his unlined rubber boots when it's cold outside. 

Mending

So Aidan asked me the other day if I'd be able to mend some of his jeans. I said sure so he brought two pairs over.

I noted that I'd already done some mending on each one.  This pair was pretty straight forward although I couldn't get the leg in under the sewing machine needle. 

Oh well, I thought, I'll just do it by hand.  I found a bright scrap of fabric to use in behind the hole, whip-stitched around the outside edges, then did a blanket stitch around the edge of the hole using a cotton pearl thread that's heavier than the usual sewing thread. Almost more like an embroidery thread.

Well that wasn't so bad!

Then I get to this pair:

What in the world!?  I'm thinking Aidan needs new pants!

I'm still chuckling over this...   

Sun Chokes

We planted sun chokes (also known as Jerusalem artichokes) last year and what a lovely surprise to see these beautiful yellow blossoms this fall! 

They seem to glow in the sunshine.  :)

Pear Harvest

Green beans

We've been picking green beans this past week and a half and got enough niw for a canner load.  All jars sealed but one.  Oops.

First Peas

Picked the first peas of the season.... enough for supper! 

Happy Birthday Aidan

Aidan's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I got him this clown upside down ice cream cone!

Modern Quilt in Greens and Blues

Here is the quilt I made for my nephew Jeremy and his beautiful bride Stephanie.

I did free-motion machine quilting with a blue variegated thread.

Reverse Side

New socks

Finished this pair of hand-knit socks and am wearing them today.

The yarn is "self-striping" so the pattern developed all by itself.... no changing yarn to change colors.  Clever!

My feet feel like they're getting a good hug!

Pork and Beans

Cooked up a large pot of beans and bacon yesterday and canned it up. Made 12 jars for the larder plus 2 jars that didn't seal so we'll be eating those right away.

Yummy!

Eggs!

We found the first egg from our new batch of chickens!

We had gotten 20 chicks in late September, butchered 15 of them in late December and kept 5.  We did good since only one of them turned out to be a rooster.

Deer Tallow

A couple of weeks ago we got out the deer suet we'd put in the freezer when the Man was cutting up the deer he'd hunted this winter.

 Chopped it up rather finely and put it into this big pot with a little bit of water to keep it from burning until some of the fat could render out.  The water just cooks off during the process. 

The final tallow after straining out the cracklings which got fed to the chickens. The tallow turns nice and white when cooled.

I saw a recipe for tallow body balm on Pinterest that looks like a good one to try!

Aidan's Christmas

The button-down shirt and boxers I made for Aidan... I think he likes them!

Gingerbread houses

My nieces are of an age where making "gingerbread" houses is engaging them so when they're at my parents' house, my mom provides them with pretzels, crackers, marshmallows and candies and I suppose icing of some sort.

Here is one of their creations from this past week....

Toasters

So we went toaster shopping earlier this year looking for something not made in China. The Kitchen Company had a dandy for upwards of $200. Hmm... probably not going to do that. We finally ended up spending around $30 on a cheap one at Bi-Mart. Yep, they were all made in China.

So in several months of use, it started heating unevenly so halfway through,  one must turn the bread around. Also turns out there is no little door underneath so when the bread gets stuck under the narrow little strip it's supposed to rest on, there is no easy way to get it out.

Cheap piece of crap toaster that worked less than a year

After visiting family in Iowa this summer, the Man was way impressed with my sister's vintage toaster she had found at a thrift shop. She promised to keep her eye out for another. Well... she was in town for a visit this week and brought this along... It toasts bread beautifully, has a little door underneath,  and was made in the good old USA!

American made really cool "thrifted" toaster

We're so happy over simple things... :)

Sleeping Bag Repair

In preparation for the Man's winter hunting trip (white tailed deer, muzzle-loader season), he requested his sleeping bag be repaired since the zipper would no longer zip. 

Busted zipper

A trip to Plaza Sewing netted a 100-inch long zipper.  Yay!  Seemed a bit pricey at $16 and change, but really... it wasn't made in China, so we don't have to worry about lead in case anyone ever chews on the new zipper, ha!  And the fact that this otherwise good sleeping bag was redeemable was worth it.

Nice, new, workable zipper

All it took was ripping off the old one and sewing the new one in place - about an hour's worth of work.  And the Man stayed toasty warm in snowy weather inside their tent with a wood stove.  It's a really large tent.

Making Tallow

We got a hold of some fresh suet from a fellow butchering beef a while back. It's been sitting in the freezer until we could get to it. Now that it's cool enough to use the wood stove and gardening/canning is done for the season,  it seemed like a good time.

First we chopped it up fairly finely. 

Then it went into a large pot with a bit of water to keep it from burning until the fat starts rendering out. The water cooks off as long as the pot is uncovered.

Then.... keep heating at a fairly low temp, stirring periodically. With the amount in our pot, it'll take most of the day.

This is what it looked like after a couple of hours.  

 

After a while, we strained the tallow through a light cloth then threw the cracklings back into the pot and let the fat render some more. Eventually we ended up with a coffee can full plus enough to do a batch of soap. It's a pale yellow color when it's liquid and then turns white when it has cooled off and hardened.

To the right of the liquid tallow, you can see the crackling start to cool and the extra tallow turn white. We fed the cracklings to the chickens over the course of a week and they were happy birds indeed!