It is December and I haven’t updated this blog in two months! I think it’s the longest it’s ever been between updates.
I just have been so busy, and happy, Molson is a great dog but it takes lots of our time, I barely have time for cooking anymore, so I haven’t been making anything special.
But I have taken up crochet, so I expanded my repertoire from knitting to crochet. Basically I was making a scarf and it was too skinny, I decided to do a round of single crochet and I liked the look of it a lot, I remembered that I had a book called Crochet Scarves!: 16 Hip Projects for Dressing Up Your Look by Candy Jensen, so I went and fetched it and made a whole scarf with Noro Silk Garden. I enjoyed doing it a lot and it was so fast, compared to knitting. So I made a trip to Romni Wools and got the materials for making the Orchard Mitts and the Leaf Pepper Hat (”teen” model”) from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Crochet. I made the mitts in about 1.5 weeks and the hat has been taking me a bit more. I’m done with the red but I am still to start with the contrast colour. I’m very excited about that, though.
I guess that’s all the updates I got for now. I’ll keep you posted and will probably have a recipe soon (I took the pictures, I just haven’t sat and written it down).

I have a knitted finished object that I will be wearing for the first time tonight, New Year’s Eve. I started working on it back in October 2007, if you can believe it. It involved a lot of chart reading and I left it for a while. I finished it before my birthday (November 14 2008) but did not sew it together until just now. I’m quite excited about it.
Pictures to come soon!

OK, after 1 year of on and off knitting, I finally finished the front and back of the “Hooded Cabled Tank” pattern #35 on Vogue Knitting Fall 2007. I believe the pattern is incomplete. It explains how to make the hood and that’s where it ends. It says nothing about the ribbing around the slits on the side and around the armholes. But the picture shows it. I googled and looked at the corrections on Vogue Knitting’s website and I couldn’t find anything. I guess I’m going to have to figure it out myself, maybe pick up and knit for that ribbing. Too bad there’s not a more detailed picture of the top so I can see how to do the sides.

I know that lately I have focused more on food stuff than knitting stuff. I am still doing some knitting, though not much because I don’t have that much time for it.
Basically I am spending a lot of my free time cooking, especially getting recipe ideas with ingredients that won’t cause an allergic reaction.
For my two readers’ information, I am allergic to the milk protein… no, it’s not lactose intolerance, I cannot take a pill for it. It is an allergy. Health Canada cites milk as one of the most common food allergens, but it is usually misrepresented. If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked “why don’t you just take a pill for that?”.
It is very difficult to buy prepared food because there is cheese or butter or cream or all of the above on most prepared items. So I normally get home from work and spend a whole chunk of my evening preparing my dinner, which usually has leftovers, so I take them for lunch the next day. It has also been a problem since when people invite me to their house I have to warn them about my allergies and it incoveniences everyone… you know how everyone wants to have veggie lasagna or something, but I can’t have it with the cheese. Same when people order pizza, more than once people have made a “yuck” face or sound about me eating cheeseless pizza (there’s nothing yucky about it, it just has no cheese).
I miss a lot of the stuff, especially the cheesy stuff, but it has made such a difference, I used to be sick all the time. The difference is like night and day. I rarely get sick anymore. I have also reduced my meat intake to a minimum. I totally cut off chicken since I saw a movie about how they raise chicken for mass consumption, it is horrible… let’s say I never ever eaten it again, and it also bothers me that it’s chicken here, chicken this, chicken everywhere, chicken chicken chicken. You get me, right? I know I used to love chicken wings, and I still crave the flavour (it’s the sauce that makes them so good), but I just can’t bear the idea of eating chicken anymore. Sorry about that, you guys.

Now back to the apology, I have been knitting but not in huge quantities. During the winter I knitted a hat and a pair of mittens that I designed myself and one half each of two different sleeveless tops (of course!). But it has been nothing worthy of posting. When I do have a real good finished object ready I will post about it. Right now all I can think of is how tired I am every single day and how little time I have for everything I need to do. I think eating takes presedence over knitting, right? after all you don’t die if you don’t knit, but you die if you don’t eat (ok, some of my fellow knitters may disagree with this, and I understand their point of view, but I’m talking about the real thing, you may feel like you’re dying if you don’t knit, but it doesn’t mean you’re ACTUALLY dying, right? right?)

I’ll keep you guys posted and I’m here to answer any questions about my recipes, the foods I can eat and the nutrition I’m getting… ask away!!

Fleece Artist Sea Vines kit

Originally uploaded by Maria in Toronto

OK, so I bought this kit at Lettuce Knit 2 months ago, and I’ve been knitting it ever since. It is taking me a long time, and the pattern is not quite looking like the pattern in the picture. I just started the arm decreases on the first part, and I’ve had a couple of pattern emergencies. You probably can’t see it but it is full of mistakes. But it’s turning out nice and I hope to finish it in about 1 more month, I’m excited about this project!

I apologize for the lack of blog updating, I’ve been busy with work and life and stuff. But I do have some knitting content.

A few weeks ago I bought three skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light in a beautiful chocolate brown to make a hat for James just like the one I made for my brother last year.

I didn’t want to use the same Lamb’s Pride Bulky as I did with my brother because I thought it may be a bit itchy and I remember it being a bit stiff. So I double stranded the Ultra Alpaca Light. The hat turned out beautiful, but there were a couple of adjustments I had to do to the pattern (the pattern was taken from Knit Simple Magazine 2006 Fall Edition, but I was surprised that some corrections hadn’t been done to the pattern after all this time, the final decreases do not add up to the final number of stitches required and the rim doesn’t match either, you have to reverse the pattern either while kntting the rim or while knitting the body). I gave the hat to James yesterday and he liked it a lot.

Later I went to the Lettuce Knit christmas party, with lots of good friends and good food. The most amazing part is that I won a $250 gift certificate for Lettuce Knit, it was the grand prize in the raffle and I won it! I am so excited.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just not liking any of my knitting and not being inspired by anything new. It’s the first time that I really don’t want to buy anything, and what I have in progress. As loyal readers may remember, I have 3 projects going:

The green silk top, which was supposed to by my first summer knitting ended up being the only one and I didn’t even finish it.

The Montego Bay scarf is going all right but it’s quite boring.

And the Cezanne cardigan is also progressing but with no excitement.

So I don’t know what to do on what will inspire me.
Maybe it is the lack of good TV to accompany my knitting activities?
Maybe when the new season starts in a few weeks I will feel better about my projects?

Any ideas, my dear readers?
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A few months ago I got Knitting Lingerie Style and started making a really nice camisole (sleeveless, of course!) I started it before the Victoria Day weekend using Alchemy Silken Straw. Everything that I have done with this project has turned out wrong from the beginning. First I had to repeat the cast-on, then I had to do it again because I decided that I needed to double the yarn for more coverage. Then I made a mistake and knit 7 inches from the cast-on instead of 7 inches from the armhole. Now that I finally started to do the lace I have been doing a 7 stitch repeat, when I should have been doing a 6 stitch repeat with only one stitch at the beginning of the row.
I am definitely not going to rip it again, but I am just tired of it. I have been making it for more than 2 months and the progress has been really really slow. Also, the Alchemy Silken Straw is really annoying, it is not plied, so there is a big chance that you may not catch all the threads when you’re knitting. It’s tricky and annoying.

So I decided that for my trip to Mexico I would take an easier project. I looked into my stash for my skein of Seasilk and started making the Montego Bay Scarf from summer’s Interweave Knits, designed by Amy. It is a relatively easy, and repetitive stitch that fit all right for the plane ride. I also brought a skein of Silk Maiden for my mom and she started making the same scarf with that yarn.

So, after the last disappointment with the Silken Straw camisole I couldn’t take it anymore, so I decided to cast-on for an easy project that may take long (or not), but that will not drive me nuts like this has been doing. I dug in to find the Filati Fantasia Cezanne that I got more than 2 years ago. I casted on for the cardigan that I got from Knitwerx and I have already done about an inch.
Let’s hope and don’t go crazy with this project too.

Finally, I took another look at Runway Knits by Berta Karapetyan, and was concerned that it only features Karabella yarns, which I thought you couldn’t find in Canada. I made a couple of phone calls and found out that the only place in Canada where you can find them is in BC, at a store named Wool and Wicker. I called the store and they were super super nice. They said that even if they don’t have the yarn you need, they can order it for you and they ship all across Canada. It may just be worth the effort, because some of the designs are really nice. My favourite is the Little Black Dress, which uses Karabella Vintage Cotton. Sadly, it uses 3.25 mm needles, I can just imagine how long it would take me to knit it! I also like the Ruffled Cardigan, which uses Karabella Aurora 4 (they do have this yarn at Wook and Wicker, they told me when I called), it also uses super tiny needles, though.
Oh, and at the end of the book there is a substitution chart, explaining the type of yarn you can substitute for the Karabella yarn used in each project. That is quite useful, actually.
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This week I got my pre-release copy of Romantic Hand Knits by Annie Modesitt. Some of the patterns are too “romantic” for my taste, but otheres are quite nice. By too romantic I mean they have too many flares and lacey add-ons.
Nevertheless, the book is very informative and quite fun. It contains 26 designs classified in 3 different chapters:
Above the waist, includes sleeveless tops (yaaaay!), sweaters, cardigans, and blouses. The designs are cute, and there are at least two that I would be inclined to make.
Below the waist, this section includes skirts and dresses. There is a beautiful dress, the Cleopatra, It is beautiful, but if I tried to make it I would be on that project for like a year, it doesn’t help that it is knit with 3.5 mm needles and covers from ankles to neck. It uses at least 7 balls of Tilli Tomas Pure & Simple, 100% silk (that’s for the smallest size, it wouldn’t fit me, I would have to go to the third size), it retails for $28 USD each, so the project is at least $196 USD. It is beautiful, though.
There is a skirt, called All About Eve that I just loooooved, it is made of ribbon and is one big wraparound skirt. I’m definitely going to try to make it.
Accessories, the accessories section has hats, gloves, scarves, wraps and a pattern for stockings. The stockings are cute, but being a non-sock knitter, I don’t think I’ll bring myself to make them. I will probably make one of the scarves.

One of my favourite things about this book is that it has a lot of help and instructions, and not your typical “knitting basics” help, but more advanced techniques, specific to the patterns, like: basic embroidery stitches, basic crochet techniques, basic lace knitting techniques, etc. This Resources section is scattered all around the book, just after the patterns where the resources are needed.

I also liked that, apart from specifying the yarn that was used for the model in the picture, it has a generic yarn type specification, in case you can’t find, or can’t afford the specific yarn that is called for.

The book is $35 CDN and will be released on August 7, according to amazon.ca (I have to say that at today’s exchange rate, if you see that the book is $27.50 USD it should be $29.10 CDN. I don’t know why, but I feel like those publishing companies are still taking advantage of us Canadians, the price is 20% more than it is in the US, why oh why??).

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I got my copy of Runway Knits today and I am so excited. I really want to check out all the designs and see what this book includes.
As for what I’ve seen so far, it features Karabella Yarns (does anyone know if we can find Karabella in Canada? the website has a “find a retailer” button but it works only for the US).
Some designs are so beautiful I may want to make one or two. For what I saw, they look suited for the intermediate knitter.
I’ll take a closer look and maybe choose a project and will keep reporting.

Runway Knits: 30 Fashion-Forward Designs. By Berta Karapetyan.

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