Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2012: TuckerWoods Twinkletoes

I discovered that it's helpful to approach a BIG shopping trip, whether Costco, Ikea or a craft fair, with at least a few actual goals in mind. It helps keep one from being completely overwhelmed by giant packages of croissants, tea lights or whimsical ceramic jars. Or yarn. Well, yarn is different, sort of like chocolate or earrings...

When I considered my Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool 2012 wish list, I felt I didn't have enough sparkly yarn in my life, though honestly I"m not the sparkly sort, and hadn't much felt the absence. I did have some sparkly yarn -- some rather nice Blue Heron rayon, for example -- but hadn't done much with it other than one rather uninspired "wear this on holidays" top I made from Patons' Brilliant. My dream list includes several shawls made of elegant but shiny stuff that I could fling around my shoulders for special occasions -- light ones for summer, dark ones for winter or dark outfits -- but after so many years of thinking about it, nothing had happened. I kept making sweaters. And scarves. And hats.

So I picked up a skein of pretty sparkly TuckerWoods Artisan Yarns & Fibers "Bailey's Twinkle Toes," in colorway "Black Orchid," which I found completely irresistible in both color and name. I like when fiber people give their products and patterns interesting names. It's a nice squooshy merino/nylon sock yarn with a bit of metallic sparkle spun in. The farm doesn't seem to have a website, but they have quite a large sales booth at Rhinebeck, filled with very nice yarns that include a few luxurious items.

So I found a fabulous amazing shawl pattern called Iron Maiden, that suggests using a yarn with a metallic "feel." Seemed a natural for the yarn! Alas. Oh alas. I knitted it just slightly too tight a gauge, AND the yarn fell short! So I ended up with a smaller shawl...more like a scarf. I do wear it like scarf, but I don't get to see the awesome design. So since I actually paid for the pattern, I'll have to make another one!

Dendrobium faciferum

As an orchid grower with limited space, I end up torn between wanting to stick to a (rather nebulous) wish list for orchid purchasing, and taking joy in serendipity. Attending at least 3 or 4 orchid shows/sales per year ensures a bit of both: I'll always find at least one thing I actually know I want, and several things I had no idea I wanted until I saw them.

Dendrobiums are so varied, so wondrously diverse, it's impossible to make blanket statements about them. I know several people who are sworn dendrobium fanatics for that very reason. You can experience such a variety of types of orchid all within one genus swarm! Monstrous things that resemble garden shrubs, tough little mats of nubby succulent leaves clinging to rocks, masses of slender leaves like bunches of upside-down onions, flowers that last for nearly a year, flowers that last for a mere hours, hardy beasts needing frost to provoke flowering, dainties that suffer the merest hint of cold...

Dend. faciferum was a happy happenstance purchase at a show just over a year ago, and kinda had me worried for a while that it didn't like me. This sweetie supposedly likes warm to hot temperatures and plenty of water (allowed to dry a bit between waterings though), which is no problem for me; I worried the light wasn't bright enough at the ends of the T-12 tubes. But once I switched to T-8 fluorescent tubes above it, the plant was clearly happier. Flowers commenced! Two growths made these lovely bunches of glowing orange flowers, which make quite pleasing contrast with the deep green ovary stems. They last about 10 days, so far.

Hoping for new growth soon -- repotting seems in order as the plant is a bit too deep in its current tiny pot and a couple of older growths recently yellowed and popped right off the clump.

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2012: Spirit Trail Fiberworks "Birte"

As part of my program of impulse buying in a more "sensible" manner, at Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival 2012 I allowed for the possibility of non-variegated yarns. After all, some patterns just look better in a solid color -- especially cables. And I do like cables. And I do like hats, so I bought some heavier weight yarns that could be used for hats, and even mitts.

Spirit Trail Fiberworks makes some wonderful yarns using luxury fibers in wonderful ways. "Birte" is 75% Merino, 15% Cashmere and 10% Silk, squooshy and irresistibly soft with a subtle sheen. The lovely "Roman Bronze" color I got really looks almost metallic. Having it next to your skin is heavenly. So I made a hat. Logically, I made a pattern that shows off well in a bright solid color, and even makes sense in that particular color. I knitted owls, to wear whilst birding.

Knitting up VK LIve 2013: Lights and Lichens Shawl

I don't know how this yarn is created, but I had to have it. I'd seen similar yarns on Etsy and Ravelry, like Kauni, and was determined to someday get some. Before I could hit the PayPal button, though, I ended up at Vogue Knitting Live 2013 in NYC, and THERE IT WAS.

Knitwhits Freia. OMG. A whole booth of amazing color.

I bought lots. Well, I bought 7 skeins, at any rate. That counts as lots, when most of it is lace-weight.

First project was a lovely lacy shawl, that I still haven't photographed properly.

Second project was this very simple scarf-sized shawl, another free Ravelry pattern. I've come to admire simple arrangements of solid/eyelet knitting, and quite liked how the banded colors of this skein fell very naturally into the pattern's bands. Alas this skein of fingering weight only has 322 yards, and so the shawl came out quite small compared to other versions. But it's quite nice to wear as a scarf. And the weird gray and yellow combo works quite nicely with my spring wardrobe.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie..

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie has been in my extensive personal recipe database for a long, long time. And I have no idea at all where it came from. Fifteen years ago -- when I got married -- I started collecting recipes from cooking magazines, newspaper columns and backs-of-boxes, because obviously several dozen world-class cookbooks were insufficient to draw upon to feed our giddy new household. Collecting recipes, in those dim and distant pre-Internet days, consisted of ripping pages and then scanning them into WordPerfect documents, which I then proceeded to organize and format exactly as I wished, eliminating directions I would not need and paring down steps and ingredient lists to my liking. I always included the source...but the Cookie Pie is an orphan. 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. 
Have ready a 9-inch pie pastry shell. 
(I use frozen shells from my local gourmet store, and let them thaw while I prepare the filling. Do what you need to.)

Beat together, in this order: 
2 eggs
1 cup sugar (regular cane sugar, I've not tried brown but it might be too moist)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick, cooled a bit)

Stir in: 1/2 cup all-purpose flour until NEARLY mixed in.

Stir in: 
1 cup really good chocolate chips (Ghiradelli or whatever causes you intensest pleasure)
1 cup walnuts or pecans 
(I suppose slivered almonds or some peanuts would be OK but I've never tried that. I should try peanuts sometime. We like peanuts.)

Stir some more until flour vanishes. Pour into the pie shell.
Bake 60 minutes, until a lovely golden brown. 
Let cool a bit before cutting. 
Ideally, the top is firm and crisp and the middle is puffy and tender.

In the past, we've served this with ice cream and whipped cream. A few raspberries might be a nice touch.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2008: The Original Stash

 

Despite the fact I've finally been digging deep into the immense yarn stash I've accumulated over the past 10 years, I seem to have forgotten to remind myself just how fast the stuff can accumulate...as it did in 2008.

I did not approach my first Rhinebeck, NY Sheep & Wool Festival thinking I would find bargains. I wanted the amazing artisianal stuff that would inspire me as I fingered and smooshed it and sighed over it. I happily paid the dyers and spinners what they asked and deserved, and I loved what I got.

Oh boy. I went nuts. I always went nuts at yarn sales before, buying 10-skein bags at crazy prices and thinking always in sweater quantities. But this was different. Intoxicating in different ways. So I filled up a couple of bags with yarn yarn yarn yarn YARN and then I went home and took the picture above.

Then life got busy, and though I wound a lot of the yarn into ready-to-knit balls I was a bit slow to work on them. I didn't have a lot of hat, scarf or shawl patterns lying around. I had to find one-skein projects for my wonderful new stash. (Not too hard really, as some of those skeins were BIG.) Fortunately I had just joined Ravelry a couple of months earlier, and so the world's greatest database of knitting patterns was at my fingertips. Bwa-ha-ha!

Recently, I was quite pleased to realize that most of the 2008 Rhinebeck yarn is actually used up! I still have a few skeins of navy blue lace-weight (a couple of shawls are queued for this), 8 hanks of orange and green-grey rayon blend (really still no idea), some very neon-bright purple/green/turquoise worsted that really better become a sweater someday, and a couple of random, very colorful sock yarns.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2008: Sliver Moon Rose Garden Shawl

Knitting lace shawls is endlessly entertaining. I credit my visit to Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool in 2008 for starting me on my shawl odyssey. I picked up a lot of sock-weight and lace-weight yarns mostly because ooh pretty but I really did intend to stretch my knitting horizons, one skein at a time.

This very pretty orchid-purple fingering yarn from Sliver Moon Farm was completely irresistible, and so much of it for so few $$! I first envisioned a sweater. As time passed and I became addicted to shawl-knitting, I decided to use it for that instead. So 1/2 the skein became a pretty Rose Garden Shawl (free pattern, yay!) for my friend who recently completed grad school. (She hadn't completed it when I started this, but I had faith!) Even the name fit...her younger daughter's name is Rosie!

The rest of the yarn is destined for a shawl, too. Haven't quite decided which one.