A Bluestocking Knits

  • Only For You, Blackbird…

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    Am feeling fairly miserable with a cold, but Blackbird calls upon us to show and tell our coats, and so I’ve dragged myself off of the couch and actually changed my clothes into something photographable. 

    For someone who lives in a place where it rarely gets really cold, I discover that I have quite a lot of coats.  These pictures are a bit gloomy, which may fit either my mood or the late afternoon lack of sunlight, but here are my favorites —

    Coat

    A lovely forest-green wool coat, reversible to a dark sand khaki from J. Peterman.  Love this coat, the way the lapels turn into a hood and wrap around my shoulders, set off by the asymmetrical opening.  Oddly enough, I’ve never worn it with the khaki side out.  I rarely could afford to buy much from J. Peterman (and have assiduously avoided the web catalog) but the things I did get have been wonderful, beautifully made and a joy to wear.  I wore this coat only last week when we bought our Christmas tree, and in the pocket I found a packet of tissues and a tiny candy cane, and a Hong Kong ten-dollar coin.

    Coat_2

    The classic tan Burberry.  A souvenir of my first trip to London, in my salad days.  I felt the satin lining slide over my arms and I was hooked.  I’ve stuffed this under many a theatre seat since, in London and Stratford, so it holds some wonderful memories.  In the pocket, a Ricola and a green peppermint.

    Coat_3

    A Fifties-era tweedy-black wool swing coat, knee length, two huge black plastic buttons.  Beautifully gored with topstitched seams, and a purply-black satin lining.  I got this from a thrift store for about ten dollars, an utter bargain.  In the pocket, another Ricola.

    Coat_4

    A black cashmere coat, also probably from the fifties, this one with a rather un-PC but oh-so-luxurious mink collar, which can be worn either flat, as in the photo, or hooked together to make one of those lovely fifties round picture collars.  Another thrift store treasure.  In the pocket, a ticket stub for a Cecilia Bartoli recital some years ago.

    Oh, Blackbird, I actually feel better now!  Amazing, how cashmere and, ahem, a touch of mink can lift the spirits!

  • Birthday Party

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    We had Laura’s birthday party last week.  Laura picked out a star-shaped piñata, and I went a little crazy at Cost Plus World Market, and got a ton of wrapped sweets like Toblerone, Lindt truffles, and pretty little Japanese things called "Flower’s Kiss" — as well as little wooden tops, funky bumpy rubber balls, mini-Slinkies (the good kind, metal not plastic!) — and we also put in half-sized gel pens, some Hot Wheels cars I got for a dollar for five, and jumbo packs of stamps from Michael’s.

    Pinata_small

    The kids had a good time.  I set up a craft table so that the kids could decorate their treat bags with stickers and markers, then we went outside for the piñata, which was a great success.

    Pinataswag_1 

    I made a butter cake with one of my favorite recipes from Susan Purdy’s The Perfect Cake, with chocolate buttercream — I had wanted a dark chocolate frosting, to contrast a bit better with the M&M decorations, but things didn’t quite work the way I’d planned!  It tasted good anyway.

    And Laura’s grandma knitted her a shrug for ballet class —

    Shrug 

    This is Pam Allen’s Ribbed Shrug from Interweave Knits, modified a bit to fit a six-year-old.  The sleeves usually ruffle a bit more than would appear from this photograph, for some reason.  It’s a pretty pale lilac, and just the thing to keep her shoulders warm during lessons.

  • Christmas Cactus

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    Christmas_cactus

    The Christmas cactus is blooming — mine, I think, is especially pretty with the pink-throated white flowers agains the dark green leaves.  It’s a fairly low-maintenance plant, too, which is nice!

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    Swinging Along

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    Pbswingjacketkal_small

    If anyone is interested in doing a Pearl Buck Swing Jacket knitalong, let me know!  I won’t be able to start until after New Year’s, most likely, but I’m looking forward to it.

    Mary asked about the front of the jacket — it’s very simple and elegant, as one might expect from the back.  It has no buttons, but a zigzag line runs up the bands at the edges, to match the graduated diamonds on the pleat in the back, and a simple rounded neck.

  • So SoCal Winter

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    Palmtrees

  • Show and Tell Friday

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    Show and Tell this week requests a picture of our favorite ornament.

    Ornament

    Every year, we make little ornaments for the four teachers at the girls’ preschool — this is Julia’s first year.  I’ve been so impressed with the richness of her watercolors that I wanted to do something to show that off.  I had her paint on a sheet of watercolor paper, both sides over the course of a few days, and I cut the paper into squares, then cut a slit into each square and slid two together to make these.  (One sheet of watercolor paper made six 2 1/2-inch ornaments.)  I had to add a dab of white glue to keep the shape — I’d hoped that I would be able to flatten them for storage, but the paper was so thick that I had to widen the slit a little, and then they wouldn’t quite stay together.

    I think all of our ornaments are my favorites — but possibly this one is this year’s favorite!  Laura usually leaves a lot of white space on her watercolors, but Julia uses every inch, so for me these are instantly recognizable as being her work.

    We found out quite by accident that Laura’s kindergarten teacher is a new knitter, so we made a "custom" pair of needles for her, by painting the little knob at the end with her favorite color.  It was a bit fiddly, but Laura did the painting all by herself.  (Sorry that the photo is a little blurry — we were running out the door to get to early-day on time!)

    Colored_needles_1

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    Booking Through Thursday: Seasonal Reading

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    "What with Christmas coming and all…" Booking Through Thursday asks about our holiday reading —

    1. Do you read Christmas-themed (or Hanukkah, or?) stories this time of year? If so, what kind? I don’t purposely read holiday stories, except for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which we often listen to in Patrick Stewart’s audio version at this time of year.
    2. Do you have any stories you traditionally read this time every year? If so, what? How did your tradition start? To be honest, we have more "traditions" in movies than in books — "It’s a Wonderful Life", one of the many "Christmas Carol" versions, or "A Christmas Story"!
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    Anticipation

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    Blackbird requests decorations for Show and Tell this week —

    Wreath

    Since Laura’s birthday is in the middle of December, we wait until after her party to decorate for Christmas, but this wreath arrived in the mail from a cousin who won’t be here for the holidays, so this is all we have for now, bar the anticpation!

    In Cinxia news, I finished it off and blocked it, even wore it to the theatre on Sunday when we took the girls to a Christmas matinee.  But I am coming to the reluctant conclusion that I should have made it with a bit more ease, as it tends to slip back off my shoulders a bit, and possibly a bit longer.  I like it anyways, and for my first determined resizing attempt, it is wildly successful — everything is in proportion, and it looks pretty much exactly like the picture!  But I like it too much to not want to wear it, and I don’t want it to sit in the bottom of a drawer because I tug at it constantly (I was aiming at a size M, 42 inches for my 39 bust, so would recommend a little more ease than one might think for a bit of embonpoint).  So, back on the needles she goes!  C’est la vie.

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    Booking Through Thursday: Wish List

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    Booking Through Thursday wants to know what’s on our holiday lists!

    1. What’s on your book/reading wish list? A surprise was finding on Amazon a biography of Amelia B. Edwards, Victorian lady traveller/novelist/Egyptologist, that I didn’t know existed!  Ever since I read her Nothing to Do But Stay, Carrie Young’s Prairie Cooks: Glorified Rice, Three-Day Buns, and Other Reminiscences has been on my list — her lovely, simple, rich prose of late-pioneer life on the prairies is wonderful.  Donna Druchunas’ The Knitted Rug is very intriguing — I haven’t seen the book yet, but the rug on the cover is stunning!  And I must confess to a rather wistful longing for English Gardens in the Twentieth Century and Walking Shakespeare’s London: 20 Original Walks In and Around London, too.
    2. What books are you giving this year?  I haven’t gotten all of my shopping done yet, but ready to wrap is Uncle Blue’s New Boat by Elsa Beskow for my daughters, another title in Beskow’s "Peter and Lotte" series that we like so much — old-fashioned (even when they were written a hundred years ago) but not sappy, with charming illustrations.  One of these days I’m going to have to break down and start using the out-of-print dealers in the UK and build our collection of Susanna Gretz’s Teddy Bears books, which we love and are getting hard to find even at the library!  I’m not going to say more, because a goodish number of family members actually read this blog…!

  • Knitalonging

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    I’ve joined the Kaffe Fassett knitalong over at Blithe Dance — will be using that famously reclusive Yorkshire Tweed and Rowanspun, for a Toothed Stripe Waistcoat, one of the patterns in Glorious Knits.  Haven’t swatched yet, but I think I will need more wool.  (Still no satisfying answer from TypePad as to why the photos don’t show up.)

    I was also very happy to see the Winter 2005 Interweave Knits in my mailbox yesterday afternoon, as I’d asked David (who was in Hong Kong when the preview came out) to pick me up a stash of Jaeger Extrafine Merino DK for this —

    Pbswingjacket_ik

    the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket.  It’s an elegant design, deceptively simple-looking, I think, and I look forward to the challenge.  The wool David bought is the same shade as in the magazine photo, elderberry — my photo is a bit bluer, but the close-up shows something of the beautifully subtle mottling of colors.

    Extrafinedk_944

    And the other day, I ordered some Sheepswool 2-Ply from Schoolhouse Press for the Aran cardigan in Elizabeth Zimmermann’s "Knitter’s Almanac" — I have been tossing around the thought of working my way through the whole book, and have decided to start it next month.

    Knittersalmanac_schoolhouse

    This is not a particularly original idea — I find now that other knitters have done it, although I’ve decided not to explore on other people’s blogs just yet — and my inspiration was a similar project done with Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julie Powell, who started with a blog and now even has a book about it.  But I’ve been enjoying so much the fact that I’m learning new things simply by blogging — the discipline of writing about my knitting is leading me to explore new things, techniques and patterns and yarns, things that I wouldn’t have bothered pondering a year ago — and I would like the challenge of exploring something, in this case, Zimmermann’s mentoring through her book, more fully than simply by doing any one piece or two from it.  I like the structure of the almanac, and it is obviously set up perfectly for this kind of thing!

    New skill for next month: steeks (cue terrifying music)….

    And just to show how easily distracted I can get sometimes, instead of knitting or even planning my knitting, I was playing around with PhotoPlus and came up with this! —

    Knitting_knittersalmanac_1_1

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