Knitting Through the Year - December

Christmas projects!

I love them. I dive into them with joy and abandon, only to realize, mid-way, that my project to-do list really isn't reasonable or particularly possible, not if the young ones continue to demand to be fed on a thrice-daily basis and the husband continues to hope after a non-destroyed house and an underwear and sock drawer with at least a few clean items in it.

EZ knows the dangers of ambition and vision at Christmas time:

Embarking on a sweater at this late date smacks of madness, but it can be done, and done without using up too much f your precious December-time. The main thing is to make it very thick. The thicker the knitting, the fewer the stitches; the fewer the stitches, the sooner finished, right? Not finished as soon as mathematics would tell you - the fingers are not quite as agile with thick wool as with thin - but still, finished with surprising speed. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac

And so it was. Finished with surprising speed, that is. One week of knitting in the evenings and during the occasional naptime and it was done. Just like that.

I know.

Crazy town.

I had to resist the urge to cast on additional sweaters for my father, husband and brother. (You get a sweater! And you get a sweater! And yes, you there in the back! You get a sweater, too!) As soon as I expressed this urge, fortunately, the madness of it penetrated, and I backed away from the ledge. Close call, though.

The secret of this sweater is the simple, stylish shaping and the large gauge. This sweater is knit at 2 1/2 stitches to the inch, with extra bulky yarn. This was a little hard to find. My brother-in-law, the recipient, lives in North Carolina, where winters are certainly cold, but don't warrant 1/2" thick, 100% wool sweaters. That amount of wool would be very warm indeed. Also, my sister put in her bid for a sweater that couldn't be accidentally shrunk in the wash. My initial goal was a bulky superwash wool, which is a wool-acrylic blend that can be gently machine washed without tragedy. However, this proved very difficult to find. Eventually, I ended up with Lion Brand Hometown USA, which is an all-acrylic yarn, in charcoal. I used just under 10 skeins, to make a men's size medium/large.

Done like dinner.

Knitting Through the Year - November

"Plans for this chapter have been scrapped in favor of describing the project on which I am currently and most actively engaged. I can think of little else. 
"The item, hot from the griddle, which I now unveil is the Moccasin Sock, the Breakthrough Sock, the Not-To-Be-Ground-Down Sock; The Eventually Totally Re-footable Sock. Call it what you will; all the above tentative titles apply." - Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac

This enthusiasm may bewilder. I will endeavor to explain.

This month's project, the Moccasin Sock, has a very unique design. Here it is, modeled by my lovely husband (who will happily comply with all manner of photographic nonsense if it gets him closer to a new pair of hand-knit socks):

Mustard and Light Gray Heather

Do you see the brilliance? No? How about this one:

See that gray sole? (Practically) every sock ever knit before now has been knit in the round, which convenient because human feet are 3 dimensional, requiring a tube-shaped sock to cover them and humans generally dislike trodding on seams. Thus, knitting in the round, whether you did it with 4 or more double-pointed needles or with two circular needles or with magic loop, was deemed to be necessary.

This Moccasin sock, however, is knit another way entirely: the leg and the top of the foot are knit back and forth, and then using gray, the knitter picks up stitches all around the edge of the foot and knits in the round on a circular or their preferred method, knitting towards the center of the foot, decreasing where necessary so that everything will lie flat, and then, when the sole is big enough, the stitches are sewn together with Kitchener stitch, which makes everything flat and smooth. The back of the leg stitches are likewise sewn together.

But why would you do this, when the traditional method of socks (knit in the round until you come to the heel, make a heel, knit in the round until you come to the toe, decrease for toe, sew closed) is so much simpler?

Here is why:

1. If you are intimidated by or simply dislike knitting using double-pointed needles.

2. If you don't have more than one circular knitting needle, or your circular needle is short. (It has to be long to use the magic loop method.)

3. If you prefer knitting back and forth to knitting in the round. Note that you will have to do a bit of in the round, but it's much less than if you were to use the traditional method. (This can be done with a circular needle if desired.)

4. If you want to use a different yarn for the sole and the top. This was, in fact, EZ's inspiration for designing this pattern: she wanted to use reinforced yarn for the sole of the foot but not the top, where it would be wasted.

5. If you only have one skein of special yarn and you still want to make a pair of socks.

Let me elaborate on that last one. If you are using sock yarn*, an adult-sized pair of socks requires at least 400 yards of yarn. Sock yarn is often sold in approx. 200 yard skeins. This yarn, Valley Yarns Huntington, a merino wool blend, was both lovely and economical but these descriptors are not often paired. If your heart is set on a yarn too expensive to buy two skeins, or if you simply have found an odd ball that you'd like to use up without making mismatched socks, this method will let you do that. You don't see the sole of the foot at all when wearing shoes, so it could be a cheaper color that coordinates, a color you want to use up, or even a series of scraps.

These are approximately men's size 10 socks, in a short crew style, and the yellow part used up nearly every bit of the 218 yards in the skein. As a side note, I would like to congratulate myself on finding such a cheery color that my husband will consent to wear. It's a great color, and almost perfectly matches a ginkgo tree in autumn.

Very difficult to get three children to look at the camera at once, particularly when you are on the way to get ice cream.

*Using sock yarn, or "fingering weight" yarn will produce socks that are "normal" thickness, suitable for wearing under dress shoes. Using worsted weight yarn will produce chunkier socks, more suitable for wearing under thick boots or as house slippers. The thicker the yarn, the fewer yards you will need.

 In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that the reason that there is only one sock in the photograph is that there was only one sock finished in November, as I was much consumed with a Nanowrimo project, Thanksgiving, and a sinus infection. However, I did finish the other sock before Christmas which was their actual deadline. I intended to photograph both of them today, using my own feet, but 'Stache wore them to work.  

Let's Talk About Cake

My go-to conversation starter when I need to occupy a young child is, "Let's talk about cake." Whatever differences there may be between me and 3 year old (and there are many), we can at least agree on this much: Cake Is Awesome. It is amazing in so many different ways and flavors and there is always so much to discuss. Favorite color of cake? Favorite flavor of cake? Favorite size of cake? (ALWAYS big) Should there be layers of cake? Should the frosting and the cake be the same, or different? What are the best flavor combinations?

Today, let's talk about cake. Let's talk about Victoria sponge cake. Let's talk about Vic sponge with ganache (guh-NOSH) frosting. Let's talk about Vic sponge with ganache frosting in the shape of a HEDGEHOG, which may now be my very favorite shape of cake ever.

I made this cake and it was adorable and tasted wonderful and none of that was my doing because I was just following recipes, so let me give you the recipes so that you can do it too.

This video showed me how to make the 3-D shape, which is super simple. I couldn't find any appropriate candies for the spikes, so I just did the textured effect with a fork, which worked fine. I did the eyes and nose with a bit of melted white chocolate in a Ziploc bag with the tip cut off.

The cake is Mary Berry's Victoria sponge cake, but that recipe has the measurements by weight, which can be troublesome, so here it is in "American."

1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 round cake pans with foil or parchment paper. Spray with cooking spray/oil. Mix all the ingredients together and divide between the two cake pans, smoothing the tops so that they are flat. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool before lifting out of the pan and peeling off the foil or paper.

The ganache recipe was actually a combo of this one and that one, so let me tell you what I did.

2 cups heavy cream
24 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
24 oz milk chocolate chips

Heat cream until hot but not boiling. Stir in chocolate chips until chocolatey and smooth and wonderful. (Right up until it looks amazing, mixture will look manky and weird and worriesome. If it's looking chocolatey but still has lumps, your cream may have gotten a little too cool to melt the chocolate enough. Heat it a little more and keep stirring.) Put in the fridge until cool. Using a mixer, whip for 3 minutes.

This was exactly enough ganache frosting to frost this cake, however due to an error it has LOADS of frosting. When I was shaping the hedgehog I didn't carve the back of it to be rounded, so I just added ganache to make it the shape I wanted when I got to that point. Which is a completely valid solution, but this cake already had a very thick layer of frosting in order to get the textured effect, so the pieces in the back had a truly breathtaking amount of ganache. Maybe 2 and a half inches of frosting, on a 3 layers tall piece of cake. It was something like eating a triple portion of chocolate fudge with a side of cake.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ahem.

Knitting Through the Year - October

It is ironic that this month, I finished the month's knitting project very early, yet am posting it very late. It was finished on the 7th, because the young gentleman it was knit for was turning two, but having finished and even having taken pictures of the project, I delayed and procrastinated and put off. Due to the magic of scheduled posting, the internet will record this post in October, but the faithful reader will know that it did not appear until almost a week later. Ah well. There are worse things than procrastination, and I would much rather procrastinate on the reporting of knitting than the knitting itself.

So, then, to the report. The October project is an "open collared pullover," more commonly known as a polo shirt. It is a classic design and deceptively simple in its appearance, for EZ warns on a few occasions that one must keep one's wits about one when knitting this sweater. And that even if one does not understand immediately, if one blindly follows the directions, all will become clear.

In describing the edging of the front, which combines a garter stitch edge with an i-cord edge, she writes:

"This is a mind-boggling operation, hard to describe, but, I hope, easy to follow blindly until you get the hang of it. You will be performing it right up to the the neckline, so get the hang of it you must, and fast, because the shoulder shaping is now going to start." - Elizabeth Zimmerman, Knitter's Almanac 

(One of my favorite things about Elizabeth Zimmerman is that she writes of knitting as if she is narrating a baseball game. The knitting experience is rife with urgency, curve balls, and opportunities for valor, and EZ makes you feel every moment of drama.)

Although this is one of the more complicated patterns in the almanac, the pattern is clear and easy to follow. The garter stitch/i-cord edging is an elegant solution. Garter stitch naturally lies flat and is typically viewed as rather informal. Stockinette, which is what i-cord is essentially made of, is smooth and looks polished, but the edge are terribly inclined to curl. This combination unites the best features of both. EZ gives instructions for both vertical border, which is knit along side the body stitches, knitting back and forth, and a horizontal border, which is knit perpendicularly to the sleeve stitches.

The young gentleman's birthday was lovely. It was a brunch (All birthday parties should be brunches, I think. Breakfast food is nearly universally popular, and particularly when it is a party of young children, everyone is fresher and in a better mood in the morning than the afternoon) with cake afterwards. The boy's mother's family has a tradition of decorating the cake with a present, and I think the result is charming.

Knitting Through the Year - September (Free Pattern!)

September is the logical beginning of the year. Summer heat is nearly past, the weather begins to brisken up, schools open their doors to siphon our beloved young out of the house for longer or shorter periods, adult activity begins to stir, and Mother forms good resolutions and makes lists. 
Top your list with a resolution to initiate all children, M and F, into the mysteries and fascinations of knitting - Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitter's Almanac 

EZ gives very good suggestions for your child's first knitting project (a garter-stitch potholder) and then suggests that while your young knitter is working away that you knit him or her a pair of "longies" as a reward. These can be fitted to be as tight as leggings, or they can be looser, like lounge pants. Either way, they will be deliciously warm. They are knit in the round, which EZ considers a crucial point for both comfort and durability. Seams "pop inconveniently, especially in a garment which has to have feet constantly thrust into it."

That face!

These leggings were designed to fit my daughter, who is 43" tall and wears a size 5. Her waist measurement is 21.5" and it is 25" from the floor to her belly button. She is long-waisted and slender. If those descriptors don't match the child you wish to knit leggings for, get out your calculator and and measuring tape and figure out the size difference between my child's measurements and yours, and then add or subtract stitches or rows from my pattern to get a custom fit. Or, of course, you could buy Knitter's Almanac, where EZ gives a full explanation of how to knit "longies" for any size, infant to adult. My pattern is informed by hers but not exactly the same.

(This has not been test-knit and may contain errors.)

Cozy Cozy

US 8 DPN (for the waist you will either need a 5th DPN, or a US 8 circular needle)

Worsted weight yarn, less than 660 yards. I bought 3 skeins of yarn because I wanted to do stripes and I have a good bit left from each color. I probably used around 500 yards. 

CO 44 st

Knit 14 rounds in 2x2 ribbing.

Knit 48 rounds in stockinette.

*K2 inc1, knit to end of the round, inc1.

Knit 5 rounds in stockinette. Repeat from * 10 times, increasing by 22 st.

Knit 4 rounds in stockinette.

Repeat for the other leg.

Sew together 18 stitches from each leg using Kitchener stitch.

Knit 1 round, picking up and knitting 4 stitches over each end of the crotch. (104 st)

*K26 past the middle of the back, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, P51, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, K49, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, P47, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, knit 1 round, knitting the wrapped stitches like this. (See note)

Knit 2 rounds.

K23 past the middle of the back, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, purl 45 st, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, knit 43 st, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, purl 41 st, wrap and turn.

Slip first st, knit 1 round, knitting wrapped st as before.

Knit 2 rounds. *

Repeat from * to *.

Knit 43 rounds in stockinette. 

Knit 16 rounds in 2x2 ribbing.

Cast off loosely in pattern. Weave in all ends.

If desired, use a sewing machine to sew elastic to the inside of the waistband. 

Note: This is not a vital element, but the final result is smoother than if you simply knit the wrapped stitches. 

Name: Cozy Cozy 

Design: mine-ish, with the helpful advice of Elizabeth Zimmermann

Materials: Berroco Vintage Storm, Berroco Vintage Cast Iron and what is probably Cascade 220 Christmas Red

Finished: Sept 12, 2017

Fancy that! Finished with September before the month is even half over! These were a fairly quick knit; less knitting than a sweater. I think I may collect my worsted scraps for a while and make a pair of crazy striped pants for Munchkin or Twinkle.

Ring-around-the-rosie. I obviously spent a great deal of time coordinating their outfits.
P.S. Twinkle is wearing two pairs of pajama pants, per his favorite things.

Their Favorite Things

When you are 4 or 5 years old, your likes and dislikes are still capricious. Today's favorite may be tomorrow's ma'le*. So I thought that I would record what my children like. As of September 11th, 2017, 7:24 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, all of these statements are correct and truthful. An hour from now, who can say.

*This is the word that Mei-Mei says for "trash," but when I went to look up the tones, Google had no idea what I was talking about. I don't know if this is pidgin word that she made up, or if it is part of a Hebei province dialect.

All of the children love being Mama's Helper at the grocery store. Mei-Mei talks about who is going to help Mama a full week ahead of time.

Munchkin and Twinkle ask for oatmeal every morning. Cinnamon is usually desired. Brown sugar is, of course, best of all, but rarely offered. Sometimes they ask for ketchup instead of cinnamon. This makes their mother gag a little, but she gives it to them anyway.

Mei-Mei loves dippy eggs and chips. These are soft boiled eggs with baked chips made from corn tortillas and oil and salt. You can stab a piece of egg with the point of your chip and eat it that way, which means that forks are unnecessary. Dippy eggs and chips are her mama's favorite breakfast too.

Munchkin loves cuddling with "his" cats.

Twinkle loves the color green. He will always choose the green option. Except for vegetables, of course.

Mei-Mei loves using glue sticks.

Munchkin loves mashed potatoes and peas. Heavily influenced by How My Parents Learned to Eat, by Ina R. Friedman, he views these side dishes as a package deal and makes nests of mashed potatoes to put the peas in.

Twinkle loves spaghetti and meatballs.

 Mei-Mei would live in her My Little Pony nightgown 24/7 if given the choice. For a while, we even had a good-night song about her pony nightgown. As part of the song I was supposed to stroke the pony and Mei-Mei would become upset if I accidentally poked the pony in the eye.

All of the children love potstickers and homemade ramen and Uncle Pop.

Munchkin also loves sushi. The other kids will eat it, but he gobbles it!

Twinkle loves wearing crowns and hats.

Mei-Mei loves going to sleep while holding onto one of her parents. She doesn't always get to, but it is far and away her preferred method.

Munchkin loves having younger children around to take care of and explain things to. Unfortunately, his younger siblings don't count, as they are the same size as he is and thus considered equals.

Twinkle loves wearing multiple pairs of shirts and pants, even in warm weather. This completely befuddles 'Stache, who has on occasion discovered Twinkle wearing up to seven shirts. Twinkle is also an equal opportunity shirt wearer, layering t-shirts, night-shirts, and 'Stache's undershirts.

Mei-Mei loves to help cook and do little jobs. She is an excellent helper.

All of the children love watching me play Minecraft. There was once great concern and worry when I went exploring and got lost and could not find where my house was. Twinkle even prayed about it at bedtime, that God would help me find my house. When I finally found it, the children discussed the matter on and off for a week.

Munchkin loves reading the original Winnie-the-Pooh. I had never read the whole book before, only snippets and individual stories and Disney versions, which lack the charm of the original. It is Excellent and I wholeheartedly recommend it. (Knowing as I do so that this is hardly an original recommendation. However, if I, as a well-read adult and a well-read-to child, am discovering this now for the first time, perhaps my recommendation can help others who were similarly ignorant of A. A. Milne's brilliance.)

Twinkle loves saying Chinese words. We are learning Chinese as part of Munchkin's school program, and Twinkle is the keenest. Interestingly, Mei-Mei is not particularly better at Chinese than Munchkin or Twinkle. I think that, outside of the handful of words we still commonly use at home, she has forgotten her Chinese.

Mei-Mei loves baths, showers, hoses and water in most forms. She has never gotten out of a bath or shower without having to be told to do so.

All of the children love paper airplanes. This causes some degree of conflict at home, because once a piece of paper has been made into an airplane it becomes a PRICELESS TREASURE and if stolen, torn or carelessly trod upon, instigates immediate commencement of hostilities and the drawing up of battle lines.

In addition to the above, there are of course the perennial favorites such as ice cream, crayons, bicycles and hot dogs. I feel that these favorites have staying power and thus do not need to be documented as thoroughly as favorites that may come and go.

It is such a gift to be able to watch their personalities and interests develop!

Knitting Through the Year - August

The August chapter of Knitter's Almanac was written while the author and her husband were water-camping in the Canadian north woods. She describes her troubles thus:

As soon as the poor but determined creature sits itself down on a boat-cushion against a convenient rock, grabs note-book and pen ostentatiously, assumes an absorbed scowl, and writes just one sentence, gentle questions come wafting over the cool sunny air: Wouldn't you feel more comfortable with your boots off? Do you remember if we brought the soap? Where did we put the soap? Do you remember if I brought my fish-mouth-holder-opener? Shall we move on somewhere else? And of course that hardy perennial: Isn't it time for a little something to eat? - Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitter's Almanac 

Being full, as it is, of adventures such as canoe trips, the knitting projects for August are appropriately compact and whimsical. EZ suggests that hand knit Christmas ornaments are an excellent use of the little scraps time one has on one's hands in August. She has patterns for an angel, a Christmas tree, a star and a net bag for placing a fresh orange or apple in to hang on the tree.

Although the idea of decorating a tree with fresh fruit has a charming rustic simplicity to it, I know that the moment one of my beloved bottomless pits is alone in the living room at Christmas time, hunger would strike and they would be balancing on the armrests of chairs trying to reach one of the Christmas tree apples. I decided to focus on stars.

This pattern is very simple: cast on a multiple of 5 (she suggests 55) and knit in garter stitch, decreasing 2 stitches (knit 3 together) at 5 points on each row. When you have 15 stitches cut the yarn, leaving a generous tail, pull the tail through the 15 stitches, pull tight, fasten off, and sew up the small seam necessary to make it a star. Sounds simple, yes? It is.

I think this would be a great way to use scraps of yarn that are really too small to make a small hat or mitten with but are too pretty or sentimental to get rid of or perhaps (like me) you are just too stingy to ever throw away "perfectly good yarn." Also, I am generally eager to find unbreakable Christmas ornaments, as sword fights are likely to break out in our living room at any moment. These are about as unbreakable as you get! You could also knit several and make a lovely mobile or garland for a baby's room.

Warm as Toast

I believe that cowls are naturally superior to scarves when attempting to keep a young child warm in cold weather.

Being a tube of soft knitting that fits over the head and sits around the neck, there are no long ends that can get caught or trampled on or yanked by a sibling. A mother is guaranteed, having put a cowl on a child, that their neck will stay covered as long as the cowl remains, which cannot be guaranteed with a scarf, which easily becomes untied or twisted or tightened, exposing skin to the elements. And lastly, a cowl requires less than a third of the knitting necessary to produce a scarf, making it a thrifty choice in both time and materials.

(There are very large cowls, of course, designed to be doubled or tripled around the neck, or very wide ones that produce a fashionable bunched effect that would be actually larger than a traditional scarf, but this cowl is a simple one, designed to be only one layer, imminently suitable for keeping a young child who lives in the not too arctic state of Tennessee, warm in winter.)

Mei-Mei may have a future as a knitwear model.

I designed this cowl to be very simple, suitable for beginners. It uses a type of waffle stitch, which is one of my favorite knit/purl stitches. I knit it using the back-and-forth method because I knit faster using straight needles, but the pattern is actually simpler if knit in the round, as the pattern uses an odd number of rows. I have put both here so that you can use your favorite method. This pattern uses approximately 100 yards of DK weight yarn. I recommend that you use a yarn that does not contain more than 50% acrylic or plant-based fibers. The more acrylic or plant-based fibers in a yarn, the less stretchy and less warm it will be

Warm as Toast

approx 100 yards DK weight yarn

US 5 knitting needles, either straight or circular as you prefer

a darning needle 

Back-and-forth directions

Using straights, cast on 102 st, loosely.

Rows 1-4: K

Row 5: P

Pattern:

Row 1: (Right Side) K2, (P2 K2) to the end of the row.

Row 2: P

Row 3: K2, (P2 K2) to the end of the row.

Row 4: P

Row 5: K

Row 6: P2, (K2 P2) to the end of the row.

Row 7: K

Row 8: P2, (K2 P2) to the end of the row.

Row 9: K

Row 10: P

Repeat this pattern 3 times. (40 rows)

Repeat the first 5 rows.

Knit 3 rows.

Cast off loosely, knitwise. Break the yarn, leaving a tail, and pull through.

Sew the selvage edges together using mattress stitch. 

Weave in ends. Block gently.

It can do double duty as a hat/earwarmer in a pinch.

In the round directions

Using circular knitting needles, cast on 100 st in the round.

Round 1: P

Round 2: K

Round 3: P

Rounds 4-5: K

Pattern

Round 1: K2, (P2, K2) to the end of the round.

Round 2: K

Round 3: K2 (P2, K2) to the end of the round.

Rounds 4-5: K

Repeat this pattern 8 times. (45 rounds)

Round 1: P

Round 2: K

Round 3: P

Round 4: Cast off loosely knitwise. Break the yarn, leaving a tail, and pull through.

Weave in all ends. Block gently. 

K= knit

P= purl 

This perfectly fits my daughter, who is four. However, it is a naturally stretchy stitch and the cowl fits over an adult's head also. If knitting for an adult, I would add an additional 10-20 rows of the waffle pattern, as adults' necks are longer.

Title: Warm as Toast

Design: Mine!

Materials: A lovely lavender yarn that I know includes alpaca but for which I have long lost the labels. It might be 100% alpaca or it might be a blend.

Finished: August  28, 2017

We can't wait for winter, how about you? 

Super Simple Blonde Brownies

Last week, I needed a dessert to take to a party. Unfortunately, although I had a kitchen full of ingredients, none of them added up to an existing recipe in my repertoire. So I invented one. It was very simple and pretty yummy, so I thought I'd share. I think this would be an ideal recipe to teach a young child who wants to learn how to bake things. It can be made entirely by hand, or by using a mixer.

Super Simple Blonde Brownies

10 tablespoons butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups self-rising flour
a handful of chocolate chips*

*I used half dark chocolate chips and half white chocolate chips because that is what I had on hand. You can use anything that is handy, even M&M's. You can also add chopped nuts if you wish.

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 13x9 pan.
Melt butter in a large bowl.
Pour in brown sugar, vanilla and eggs. Stir together.
Add flour slowly and stir until completely mixed in.
Pour mixture into the pan and spread it out flat. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before cutting.

Sweet chewy goodness!

Knitting Through the Year - July

When you set out on the annual family trip naturally you have to take your knitting; something has to keep you sane in face of the possibly quite ferocious situations you will be up against in the next two weeks. Try a shawl. Do not scoff; it is perfect travel knitting. A round shawl, in fine wool, on a circular needle, is my invariable companion when space is limited, waiting-around probable, and events uncertain. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitter's Almanac 

It just so happened that our epic camping trip (epic for its distance, rather than its length) was scheduled for July. Naturally I went yarn hunting so that I could take this project with me as EZ recommends. However, my quest for "fine wool" was a little more fraught than hers. I wanted to buy some from a local store because I had left things a bit late and I couldn't be sure that an online company's shipping would be fast enough. I went to Joann Fabric where I am so well known that if I get a haircut, the employees compliment me on it and vice versa. Joann's has a respectable yarn department, though not exemplary. By which I mean that they have yarn that contains actual wool, with a small but solid selection in wool, wool-blends, and cotton. They also have more acrylic than all the other types of yarn combined, but I am mostly willing to overlook that. However, on this occasion, I came up empty. I was looking for a fingering weight yarn, which is the weight used most commonly for socks and all their selections were striped, which looks charming on socks and would very strange indeed on a shawl. Shawls get progressively bigger from their starting points; socks do not.

The next day Mei-Mei was in need of an adventure, so I carted her off to Genuine Purl, a shop in Chattanooga that has delightful yarns. However, no solid fingering weight anywhere at all. I had no idea this would be such a difficult thing to find. The only lace weight (smaller than fingering weight) yarn they had was extremely fine, and my goal for this shawl was that it would be actually useful for keeping me warm in winter, not just a thing of delicate beauty. Besides which, you cannot knit as quickly with very fine yarn, which makes me impatient. It seemed, then that the only choice was to go up, which I did reluctantly, because it felt like I was straying rather far from EZ's instructions. But I found some Berroco Vintage DK yarn, which is a good basic yarn, very economically priced, particularly for Genuine Purl, which tends towards the gorgeous and expensive.

I can't believe I have talked so long about picking out a yarn. I hope you're still reading.

EZ's circular shawl is fascinatingly simple. Starting with 9 stitches in a circular cast-on, you follow the theory of pi, "the geometry of the circle hinging on the mysterious relationship of the circumference of a circle to its radius. A circle will double its circumference in infinitely themselves-doubling distances, or in knitters' terms, the distance between the increase rounds, in which you double the number of stitches, goes 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and so on ..." 

Get it? The first round has 9 stitches, then you double the number of stitches by increasing between each stitch and you have 18 stitches. Then you knit 3 rounds and then an increase round, and you now have 36 stitches, and so on.

There are amazing things that you can do with lace patterns with a circular shawl, and many have done so. Go look at this one, or this one, or this one. They are works of art created from sticks and string. Which is lovely, but ... not what I was looking for. A circle is perfect for creating a beautiful design, but for wearing? I am not sold. I am convinced that I would look like a granny in her rocking chair before the fire, wearing a circular shawl. I could be wrong, but on a project this large, I was disinclined to take chances. I decided, instead, to do a half-circle shawl, still using the pi principles laid out by EZ. In addition to being more wearable, a half-circle, it seemed to me, would take half the time of a whole circle.

I trudged through miles and miles of plain stockinette, wondering on occasion if I was knitting a maxi dress, or perhaps a table cloth. When I finally got to the end, I took EZ's advice to knit a sideways lace border. The edge of a circular shawl must be very very stretchable. In knitting a lace border you cast on more stitches for your border, which you knit back and forth on the border and every other row you knit one stitch from the shawl and one stitch from the border together. It takes an AGE. But it makes a nicely stretchy edge and it's a pretty way to finish off a plain shawl.

You are a very loyal and patient reader, to listen to me for so long, so I shall reward you with pictures. It starts out looking rather insignificant ...

How is this ever going to be a half-circle?

... and then you block it, by wetting it with warm water and pinning it flat, and magically, it turns into something very worthwhile.

Do you see the pi?

Peculiarly, I found it extremely difficult to block this into a perfect half circle. It seems as though the edges are much more willing to stretch than the body. After blocking, I decided to put a garter stitch border on the straight edge because it was wanting to curl. This meant that afterwards I needed to block just the top edge when I was finished, and it being late in the day in July, I naturally decided that it made the most sense to block it outside, on couch cushions. Otherwise, I would have had a large, damp shawl taking up the half the bed for the next several hours.

What? Don't YOU have knitwear drying on your lawn? On couch cushions? In the middle of summer?

Here I am wearing it in the traditional manner ...

... and here I am wearing it in the blanket-as-scarf style.

I think I will get a lot of use out of it, come wintertime.

Someday, when I am very rich and have large walls to fill with art, I want to knit a lace circular shawl and frame it. At the moment, a 72" piece of art would take up rather too much room.

A Tale of Eggs and Flowers

Once upon a time, I pinned this pin of flowers made out of painted egg cartons. I thought it was a charming idea, but would require a lot of egg cartons to pull off. Shortly thereafter, eggs went on sale and our weekly egg consumption tripled, making an easy job of collecting enough egg cartons for a whole slew of flowers. 

I collected clean cartons for about 2 weeks, befuddling 'Stache, and cut them into flowers. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of the different shapes before we painted, but essentially I cut flowers with long pointed petals, rounded petals, zigzag cups, round cups, and fringe cups (to be the centers of my lilies and daffodills). I also cut leaves from the flat parts of the cartons. Pro tip: it's a lot easier to cut 4 petaled flowers than 5 petaled flowers, especially from an egg carton!

The kids and I painted them ...

And then I glued them to a cardboard circle, which I had also painted green ...

Making a pretty great wreath, if I do say so!

We used this paint, which was very cost effective since we wanted a lot of colors and these came in a set. A few of the colors needed multiple coats (I'm looking at you, yellow!) but most were adequate with one. (Later I tried these paints on wood peg dolls and they had very poor coverage on that surface, so I would avoid glossy surfaces with this paint.) It also cleaned up quite easily.

I have about 20 photos identical to this, courtesy of Mei-Mei.

Things I did right with this project:

1. Draconian color control! I asked the kids which color they wanted to paint, and then I gave them a specific flower shape for that color. Thus, all the flowers are (more or less) recognizable. One shape might have different colors, but each color (except white) only has one shape.

2. Painting in shifts. I would put two kids in their room to play and then invite the other to come paint. They got to pick their color and I would give them 3 flowers to paint. When they were done, I would ask if they wanted to keep painting, and if they did, they got 3 more of the same shape. Mei-Mei had an incredible attention span for this project! She painted all of the leaves (both sides!) at one sitting.

3. Clean up as we went. At the end of each child's turn, they had to go wash off their own brush and I would wipe down the table so there wasn't any wet paint of the wrong color to mess up the next child's flowers.

4. Arranged the colors to be balanced but still random. After all the flowers were dry (we painted them over about 3 days) I divided them by color and placed them more or less evenly spaced around the circle before glueing them down using Elmer's. Because I had different amounts of each color, it still looks organic and random because some are spaced a fifth apart, some a quarter, some a sixth, etc.

Things I did wrong with this project.

1. I started out thinking that the kids could cut the egg cups apart and then I would cut them into flowers, but this proved to be beyond their hand strength at ages 5 and 4.

2. Also, apparently all our non-sewing scissors are crap. Might should fix that.

3. I started out with all the kids painting and me supervising, but this proved too much wet paint to juggle at the same time. Painting in shifts (see above) worked much better and the kids got some one-on-one Mama time.

4. The back of the wreath is made of flat strips of egg carton, cut and glued into a circle. I wish that I had held off until I could find a large piece of cardboard to use for my circle. It's holding up so far, but I'm seriously worried that it may not last.




We hung it in our kitchen. I love that my kids painted nearly the whole thing, and that it makes our daily lives more beautiful.

Egg cartons! Who'd'a thunk?

Knitting Through the Year - June

I will come out flat-footed and personally disapprove of crocheted borders on knitted cardigans, but without in any way trying to convert those who crochet expertly and with pleasure. May their paths run smooth. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac, June 

I adore Elizabeth Zimmermann. She is more or less the patron saint of American knitting and in my head? We are best friends. Among other delightful books about knitting, she wrote Knitter's Almanac. The book is full of wonderful quips and knitting ideas and patterns that suit the natural pace of each month. I am going to follow along for the whole year. Yes, normally these sort of one-year resolutions happen at New Year's, but December-January is a mad, mad time and I'm usually doing well just to stay afloat, much less coming up with grand plans.

June's project is "a bevy of hats," very suitable for warm weather knitting.

From left to right: a tri-corner tam, a ganomy hat, and a Maltese fisherman's hat.

I grabbed whatever yarn was either convenient or cheap, dug up needles that would accommodate the yarn, and dove in. I paid no attention at all to the gauges recommended, and thus I have an adult large, a 6 month size, and a toddler's hat. Whoops.

The tri-corner tam, regrettably, was made from a cheap acrylic from Walmart that reinforced every prejudice I have against acrylic. Practically before it was finished it was looking fuzzy and worn. The hat isn't warm and doesn't feel great to wear. It feels like a project rather than a piece of clothing. However, my kids love the color and it is fun and dramatic to wear. I left out one round of increases, so the pattern calls for even more size and drama.

The ganomy hat is knit from good old Cascade 220, which made it turn out quite small. The pattern calls for bulkier yarn. Looking at it, it seems like an odd shape, but I tried it on my cousin's son and it's a very ergonomic shape. Elizabeth Zimmermann also has the charming idea that one could put a ping-pong ball or a handful of wool scraps into the end of the hat and wrap a piece of yarn tightly just below it, creating a fun bobble top.

The Maltese fisherman's hat came as a surprise. It is so cleverly designed, and in the picture shown in the book, you can't see how neatly the back of it fits to the back of the head. The ear flaps are wonderfully thick and warm. As I made it, it is just a touch small for my kids, which is a shame because they love it and I think it makes Mei-Mei look like a Mongolian warrior. (I know the pictures make it look like a typical toboggan hat, but it's very helmet-y.) I changed the pattern so that there were 4 ridges of garter-stitch above the forehead instead of the 2 the pattern calls for, because I like 1" borders better than 1/2" borders. I will definitely be making more before winter.

Aaaaand the modeling session ends with a wrestling match.

I did a thing.

So, recently I did a thing. I (like 1 of every 3 women of my acquaintance) did Whole 30. The rules for Whole30 are here, but essentially they boil down to:

 - no sugar
 - no dairy
 - no grains
 - no alcohol
 - no beans
 - no chemical additives

Lots of vegetables.

You are supposed to follow these rules 100%. There is no internal discussion, no weighing of how "good" you've been all day vs. how "bad" that piece of cake is. You do not eat the cake. End of discussion. In fact, I was so fortunate as to make two birthday cakes for Mei-Mei (her birthday party was on the Saturday after her birthday but I couldn't not make a cake on the very first birthday she's ever had with us), and I ate exactly zero of either one. I did not even lick my fingers, which requires more strength of mind than I would have thought.

Here are my conclusions, with no attempt at order.

1. Eggs and avocados and tomatoes with chiles are life. Anything that is bland or uninspiring can be cheered up with the addition of one or more of those things. Fortunately while I was doing Whole30 (and now at the time of writing!) eggs at Aldi were a jaw-dropping 28 cents a dozen. I bought 6 dozen a week.

2. I know I just said it but: avocados. They are seriously the heavy lifters. Pretty much anytime you are trying to sub for dairy, avocados are what you turn to. Baked potatoes with avocados are seriously my new favorite thing, particularly with bacon and a poached egg.

3. At the very end of the 30 days, I made mayonnaise because I wanted to make chicken salad. I had always viewed people who make their own mayonnaise with a sideways squint, but it was shockingly easy to do and seriously delicious.
In a large mouthed jar or a 2 cup measure, layer:
1 cup oil (if you have no diet restrictions I would just use regular corn oil; otherwise use avocado oil or a very light-tasting olive oil)
1 room temperature egg
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon water
1/2 teaspoon salt
Place your emersion blender in the cup or jar down to the bottom, piercing the yolk of the egg. Turn your blender on and very slowly, raise and lower the blender until all the ingredients have been emulsified. It is almost instantaneous, certainly less than 1 minute from oily concoction to hey presto! mayonnaise.* It makes about a cup and a third and kept for several days in our fridge and certainly would have kept longer if I had put it into a jar with a lid instead of an open container.

*Note that since this recipe contains raw egg, you do NOT want to put it on a sandwich that is going to sit in a hot car while you're at Six Flags. Quick exit from the fridge into your mouth is best.

4. Whole30 is seriously expensive. During this month, 'Stache was making his usual cheap breakfasts and sandwiches, I would make separate breakfasts and lunches for me and the kids (Kids: Oatmeal? AGAIN?") and then a Whole30 or Whole30-friendly dinner. (For instance, I would make fajitas for 'Stache and the kids and I would just have the spiced chicken and onions and peppers.) And our grocery bill still rose by 60%. And that's with eggs at 28 cents a dozen.

5. There is nothing, but nothing, like cream for your coffee. Over the course of the month, I tried various concoctions and really, there's nothing like milk. On day 31, when I had my first sip of espresso and milk, it was very nearly a religious experience.

6. I was shocked by how much I apparently had been eating without realizing it. Melting chocolate for the kids to dip strawberries in: well of COURSE you lick the spoon while you're waiting on the microwave! Um no, you can't. 'Cause of Whole30. It took a ridiculous, embarrassing amount of willpower and focus to not break Whole30 in moments like these. It wasn't that I was particularly craving chocolate at that moment, but the habit was so deeply ingrained that breaking it was really, really hard.

7. Apparently wasting food is anathema. I discovered that a lot of my eating-without-realizing-it moments were finishing off the kids' plates. Hey, there's half a cheese sandwich left! Can't waste it! Um, you have to. Because of Whole30. Even worse was when it was something that I really liked. My very hardest moment in the whole 30 days was when at Mei-Mei's birthday party, I was cleaning up and some kids hadn't touched their cake. Three layers of Victoria sponge cake! With homemade pink vanilla icing! The WASTE of it! It was gut-wrenching, but I didn't eat a bite. I think if this fearsome trial had occurred on day 2 instead of day 17, I totally would have caved. Knowing I'd forfeit two weeks of hard work was a powerful motivator.

8. Once you start having to read labels, EVERYTHING has sugar! Or dairy, or flour, but especially sugar. Salsa has sugar. Beef broth has sugar. Dried fruits that are not labeled as "sweetened" have sugar. Sausage has sugar. Someone explain this to me.

9. One of the things that is rough about Whole30 is that you have to actually think about your food. (Of course, this is also why it works.) There are no mindless, stop-by-Chik-fil-A, pop-that-pizza-in-the-oven meals. Which mostly was fine, but occasionally ... it really bites. Particularly on grocery day when you're driving home at dinner time exhausted and there is nothing at all that is quick in your car and the internet serves up suggestions of paying actual money for salad-hold-the-raisins-salad-dressing-croutons-cheese-and-chicken-sauted-in-questionable-oil. My go-to lunch at home was potato and avocado and bacon. Which is awesome and I ate it about 100 times because I had no idea what to cook for lunch. People who are better prepared than me make large batches of things so that they can have something ready-made, but somehow this did not actually happen while I was doing Whole30. I blame the lack of caffeine.

10. It is incredibly easy to eat a low-calorie diet while on Whole30. (Well, sure, once you toss out bread, pasta, milk, butter, and sugar, no wonder!) While on Whole30 I was also using an app (Sparkpeople) to track my calories. In order to lose weight on the schedule I wanted, I was supposed to eat 1200-1500 calories a day unless I exercised. That seemed like a scary small number in the beginning, but most days I struggled to even break 1000 calories. And I was eating potatoes! And bacon!

On what planet do these words even make sense coming out of my mouth?

11. My best take-away from Whole30 was portion control. I have had a difficult time with portion control as long as I can remember. If one piece of pie is good, two pieces of pie are better. It didn't even have to be sweet: I can eat mashed potatoes and peas for DAYS. But with Whole30, the foods were good but not indulgent and I think that helped. I was able to retrain my brain: one bowl or plate of food = dinner. No seconds. The two times I overate (Can I even TELL you how remarkable it is that only overate twice in a whole month??) I could actually tell. It felt uncomfortable now, even though it was an amount that the month before, I wouldn't have blinked an eye at.

12. I lost 17 pounds. That was nice.






I posted all of my meals on Instagram, which was very helpful to keep me honest. 
To follow me on Instagram go here. 

When Mama is taking pictures of her food every day, pretty soon everybody needs pictures of their food every day.

Chinglish

A common question from friends, family and random strangers is, “Does she know English yet?” And the answer is, “Yes! Um, no. Well, sorta.” Also complicating the matter is the fact that Mei-Mei is almost entirely silent in public, a striking difference from the wild and screeching hellion that we know and love at home. It can be hard to explain the amount of English, Chinglish and Chinese that we have going on at home without a lengthy dissertation. So, here’s that (semi) lengthy dissertation.

Here are the words that Mei-Mei says by herself in English:

Mama*

Danny

Maisie

Pippin

Sophie

Mine

Hello

Bye-bye**

Please

Thank you

Sorry

No

Potty

All done

Water

Hungry

Gentle

Stop it 

Go

Shoes

Car***

Choo-choo***

Thomas [the Tank Engine]

Train [anyone picking up on a theme here?]

Carrier

Pew-pew

*Mama is the same in Chinese and English.

**Bye-bye is essentially the same in Chinese and English.

***Car means vehicle. Choo-choo means a toy car or a toy train.

A lot of adoptive families use Baby Sign in their first months at home, so that they can communicate effectively from the beginning. Since we learned some Chinese, we didn’t do Baby Sign, but there have been a couple of gestures that we’ve made up and are part of our family pidgin.

Moving the hand, palm side down, over a plate of food – all done

Pointing at an empty spot on the plate – I want more of what I just ate

A buckling motion at the waist – the Tula carrier

Using both hands to push inwards along Mama’s shoulders – I want to stay in the carrier

Maintaining eye contact and opening the mouth wide (optional sticking out of the tongue) - Snapchat

Before going to China, I did lessons 1-15 with the Pimsleur Mandarin course. I highly recommend Pimsleur for people who don’t have a lot of study time per se because it is all CDs. I borrowed them from the library and kept them in the car and learned Chinese while driving around town. We have also made COPIOUS use of Google Translate, which has been a lifesaver. (If you’re heading to China, though, remember that Google doesn’t work in China unless you have a VPN.) These are the words that ‘Stache and I  know in  Chinese and use regularly:

Baba – Daddy

Gege – Brother

Mei-mei – Sister

Wo (men) – I (we)

Ni (men) – You (y’all)

Ni hao – Hello

Bu – No/not

Shi – Is/am

Haishi – Or

Keshi - But 

Ma – word that ends a yes or no question

Yao – Want

Chu – Go

Guolai – Come here

Zheli* – Here  

Nali* – There

Zai nali* – Where is

Fenxiang – Share

Xiang – Would like

Shanghai – Hurt

Peng – Touch

Hui huilai – Will come back  

Mingbai – Understand

Chi – Eat

Hue – Drink

Shuijiao – Sleep

Chin chin – Kiss

Baozhe – Hold

Ai – Love

Xianzai – Now

Guo yihuier - After a while

Niao niao – Pee

Shema – What  

Yi dian* – Little

Hao – Good

Hen – Very  

 Piaoliang – Pretty

Yi, er, san, sz, wo – One, two, three, four, five   

Shui – Water

Cha – Tea

Kafei – Coffee

Tian – Sweet

Jige – This/that
Maozi – Hat 

Wawa – Doll 

*The Pimsleur course uses speakers with Beijing  accents so I learned to pronounce these  “djar,” “nar,” “tzai nar” and “eediar.” Also, any words that end in "shi" I pronounce more like "shir."

The ideal would probably be to say a sentence in Chinese and then repeat it in English: “Ni yao shuijiao ma? Do you want to go to sleep?” (Three guesses what the answer is and the first two don’t count.) In practice, we rarely do this. It’s oddly difficult to switch gears between languages. What isn’t hard at all (for reasons I don’t know) is to mix the two languages. “Ni yao yogurt haishi ni yao orange juice?” “Xianzai ni brush your teeth, then shuijiao.” (Any linguists out there who have insights into this phenomenon, feel free to chime in!)

It’s very clear that Mei-Mei is understanding more English than she speaks (or is just brilliant at deducing from tone and context, which is also possible). We’ll say things like “We only eat in the kitchen; come back in here” or “Do you want to be in the pack ‘n’ play or go play with your geges” and she’ll respond appropriately.

The plan (the hope) is for Mei-Mei to learn English, probably taking about a year to become fluent, and for me to hang on to my Chinese, learn more, and teach the boys once they start kindergarten. Whether Mei-Mei will lose her Chinese and then relearn it again in kindergarten or whether she’ll retain it, we don’t know. Generally three-year-olds don’t hang onto their Chinese by themselves, so either way it will take a bit of effort, but we think it’s worth it.   

I'm exhausted just thinkin' about it.

Edited to add: At the time of this post, Mei-Mei was 3 and a half years old and had been home exactly two months.