Mostly knitting, most of the time, Ivete’s knit blog

The apartment’s coming right along — our couch was delivered today and the cable and internet were hooked up yesterday. The TV/internet is especially good news, because a few days without either led to a lot of voyeuristic behavior I didn’t know I had in me . . . although it started innocently enough when we discovered we could clearly see our neighbor’s giant flat panel TV across the way, it quickly deteriorated into trying to figure out if he was wearing any pants as he did the dishes . . . see for yourself:

Hum, I just noticed you can see a second TV at the bottom of this shot, too! But those people have blinds, the shirtless guy doesn’t have anything up in his windows! If you’re curious it did turn out he was wearing pants, by the way.

Anyway. With hopes of getting everything unpacked, I spent a few hours last night setting up my desk and trying to put the yarn away. Trying being the operative word. This is what I have so far as my office/yarn area in a corner of our bedroom:

What you can’t see in this shot is the 2 giant bins full of yarn that are on the floor with nowhere to go, and the pile of extra yarn that didn’t fit into these cubes or the bins. I guess I need to knit faster.

Since I had to decide where to put each thing, I decided to think it through and put things in logical places; the summer yarn, which I know I won’t be touching until next year, went into the extra bins. The almost-done projects went into the tops of the cubes, with not-as-done ones lower down and not-yet-started-ones at the bottom. I figure if I can see this stuff more easily, I might just work on it! Which would definitely be a step in the right direction . . .

While watching Project Runway last night I finished a super-boring scarf in 1×1 rib for Adam, to replace an identical one that has angora in it that he wears even though it sheds all over him. He seemed really happy with it when I handed it to him, we’ll see whether that translates into submitting to an FO shot wearing it (I really doubt it)! I am also almost finished with the 2nd cowl, and would have been done already had I not bought a book that I then couldn’t put down . . . I’m aiming to finish it tonight.

Which reminds me that I owe you guys a picture and pattern for the feather and fan cowl. I will try to get that up this weekend, sorry for the delay! Who knows, maybe I’ll even do the same for the second cowl . . .

Looks like there is going to be tons of knitwear in the stores this fall! I just saw this awesome dress from Marc Jacobs:

Doesn’t this look like the perfect fall dress? I have some very thin cashmere in the stash that might just be perfect . . .

The move’s done!

We’re in our new place, the old place has been cleared out, swept clean, and the keys were handed over to the new tenants on Sunday (poor, stupid students who accepted an apartment that hadn’t been painted or updated in any way, I felt like shaking some sense into them but just wanted to get the hell out of there!). Our furniture is all here and mostly all set up, the new bed was delivered today (yay for a mattress  without a giant person-sized dent in it!), the new couch is coming Thursday, Ikea storage stuff next Tuesday . . . we’re almost all set up. We even installed blinds in the bedroom already (had to, it is damn bright on the 10th floor! yay!), but the living room curtains haven’t gone up yet, hopefully we’ll do that this weekend.

There are still boxes and boxes of things lying around, mostly books (who knew I had so many books? Adam’s the aspiring writer, yet I easily have 5x as many books as he does (and only half of those are knitting books)), we have no cable or internet access yet (I’m stealing a neighbor’s wireless right now), but the kitchen is almost completely set up. So much so that we went to Fairway and stocked up (they deliver for only $8, I wish I had known that 2 years ago!!) and I made the new place’s first food:

Roasted Tomatoes!

I’ve been wanting to make these ever since I saw the post about them on Smitten Kitchen, and I knew that my new apartment’s full-size oven (as opposed to the toy-sized one in the old place) was just begging to be broken in! They came out so good I couldn’t help but eat a bunch right out of the baking sheet, and will definitely be using them in some pasta dishes this week!

Here’s a closeup:

Sigh. I love my new camera.

The new apartment’s not half bad, either.

According to our moving plan, last night was the time to pack up all my yarn into garbage bags and take it to the new place. I rationalized that the yarn is so bulky yet so light-weight that it would be silly to have the movers take it, so decided to move it myself beforehand. I estimated I would have about 6 garbage bags full of yarn once I condensed it all . . . yeah, try 9 bags. Heavy, overly-full, large size garbage bags.

There was an entire garbage bag full of just sock yarn.

And one of odds and ends.

The moment of truth last night went something like this: Hi, I’m Ivete, and I buy too much yarn.

So I’m declaring a moratorium on yarn buying until the new year. Four months seems like a completely-doable and yet slightly scary length of time to commit to, yet completely appropriate given just how much yarn I have. Deep down I know I probably won’t make it the whole way, but I will count my Diet a success if I do a good job of finishing some outstanding projects and, more importantly, publish some new patterns. Hopefully those two goals will lead to a shrinking stash, too!

In all honesty, the amount of yarn I have isn’t the real issue. If I were being productive and releasing patterns at a faster rate, this quantity of yarn would seem reasonable, even appropriate. But considering how far short I’ve fallen off my self-publishing goals, it’s easy to see that I make myself feel better by buying more yarn, which then distracts me from the almost-finished designs and then makes me feel bad again. It’s a vicious cycle and I don’t like it! I blamed my lack of production during the last 6 months on wedding planning, but the truth is that I could have been more productive than I was, I just didn’t know how to motivate myself to do it. I’m not sure I know the answer now, but I do know that shiny new yarn is a gigantic motivator!

So here’s to more output and less buying. Hopefully the blog, and all you faithful readers, will benefit from my Diet as well.

In the interest of making this move as stress-free as possible, I went through my entire stash and pulled out a few things I don’t need to bring with me to the new place. Lucky you, you guys get first crack at these way-below-retail deals! I’m listing everything here at no more than 50% of the retail price. Here are the rules:

1. Paypal only.
2. Domestic shipping: Flat $5.00 no matter how much stuff you want. Packages will go out the next business day and will be mailed Priority or First Class, depending on weight.
3. International shipping will be the actual cost for Global Priority. I will email you the shipping cost and you can approve it before paying for the item. Please do not ask me to lie on the customs form, I won’t do it.
4. Leave a comment on this post letting me know what you’re interested in and whether you’re domestic or international. Everything is offered on a first-come basis. Once you comment I will send you a PayPal invoice. Payment is expected within 24 hours or your item goes back up for grabs.

Everything from a smoke-free, pet-free home.

Now onto the goods! If you have questions feel free to email me or comment, I’ll see a comment just as quickly as an email.

9 balls Tahki Bunny in color 7 a gorgeous dark navy (darker than it appears here). 50% Merino/25% acrylic/25% Alpaca. 81 yds/50 gr each. Some skeins missing labels. One skein has been partially knit but the knitting’s still attached. All same dye lot. Retailed for $9 each. $40

4 balls Karabella Margrite Bulky in color 7, tomato red. 20% cashmere/80% extrafine Merino, 77 yds/50 gr each. Enough for a scarf. Retails for $15. $30

That’s all that’s left as of 6:05 pm on Saturday night! Thanks to those who bought so quickly!

Comment or email away for what’s left, thank you!!

This is a shot of the project that’s consuming most of my knitting time lately . . . it’s a gift for someone who sometimes reads this blog, though, so this is all I’m showing or telling about it for now. It’s quite the project, and it’s a pattern I’ve admired and planned to knit for a long time now, so I’m taking notes as I go and will be publishing the blog posts later so I can share it with all of you. I’m really happy with how it’s turning out so far and I can’t wait to see it finished!

All will be revealed very soon, I promise! Stay tuned for the cowl pattern, which I’ll hopefully have up for you on Sunday . . .

Over the last few weeks I’ve had small projects on the brain, namely small projects that take up a sock’s worth of yarn . . . because I happen to have LOTS OF socks-worth-of-yarn amounts, and a bursting sock drawer. Over the summer lots of bloggers were making cowls using sock yarn so I thought that was an appropriate way to go, but I started with a lone skein of Colinette Cadenza that was sitting in the stash without a mate instead of jumping into the prized sock yarn stash.

For my little experiment I decided to “stretch” the feather and fan pattern to see what it might look like if it were less wavy, and quite liked what I saw:

One day’s worth of knitting and I’d reached the end of the ball . . . unfortunately the cowl wasn’t actually DONE, even thought the yarn was:

(yes, I’m much too short)

So, now we know that one skein of Colinette Cadenza does not a cowl make. Please take my experience and use it to avoid such a non-project in your future. Thanks.

Not to be deterred, I started over again with some random Kersti that also lived in my stash, but this time I knew I had 3 balls hidden somewhere (of course I can only find 2 of them at the moment). I did the exact same thing on the exact same needles, and 2 skeins gave me a perfect cowl. When I get it photographed well and write up the super-simple instructions I will post it, promise! Hopefully that will happen this weekend. It’s about time for a new pattern out of me, and even a simple one will do! Everyone likes a free pattern anyway, right?

So we found an apartment!!! It’s at the absolute upper end of our price range but we’re getting SUCH a dramatic upgrade compared to our current apartment that I am really looking forward to buying less yarn so I can afford the rent. No, really!

Our current place is a 3rd floor walkup in a building that’s barely maintained, with a surly super who never smiles, laundry facilities that require you to go down three flights of stairs AND outside in order to reach them, and our apartment gets absolutely no light (we have to turn on the lights no matter what time of day it is). Not to mention that we have no kitchen, just appliances in one corner of the living room . . . and yes, this is representative of how many, if not MOST, New Yorkers live!

The new place? Full-service doorman building, elevator (actually there are 2, the real one and a service one, how fancy!), huge laundry room that’s reachable by elevator, tenant garden behind the building, and our unit has a real kitchen, gets tons of light and a good breeze, and it is literally 2 times as much space as we now have. I’m ecstatic!

We’re working out the details of the move but it’ll be happening sometime during Labor Day weekend . . . which has turned out to be a bad day to ask friends to help us move, because everyone’s got plans for the holiday! Looks like we’ll be hiring movers for the first time ever . . .

In preparation I’ve already started to weed out and organize the knitting stashes. I am probably going to put a few things on her to destash, at the very least I want to get rid of some old magazines I never use and maybe some books. Looking through the majority of my yarn yesterday I realized that there’s very little in there that I don’t LOVE . . . looks like I finally learned how to be descriminating in my yarn purchases! If you remember 2 years ago when I moved here I got rid of TONS of yarn. It’s nice to know I’m doing better, even if I spent just as much (if not more) money over the last 2 years than I did before that. At least now my stash is full of yarn I want to keep!

I also have 2 projects to show you but haven’t gotten my act together to photograph them. To tide you over until I have knitting content to show, here’s a food meme I found through Not an Artist:

————————–

The Omnivore’s Hundred is a list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strikethrough those you wouldn’t eat on a bet.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho (I hate anise)
13. PB&J sandwich (I hate peanut butter!)
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (Ditto! I’ve had cognac and I’ve had a fat cigar, just never at the same time)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly (most of us call this a Jelly Shot!)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (I saw that episode of No Reservations!)
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (hah, I’ve eaten all of these! some of my favorite things!!)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (wouldn’t eat it raw . . .)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Wow, I did even better than I expected!! It’s funny that I crossed out so few things and one of them is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches . . . ;o)

So I promise to give you way more pictures once I get them, I swear! Right now I only have access to some pictures that friends took and sent to us because we received a new AWESOME digital camera as a wedding gift (thanks again guys, if you’re reading this!), so we took that one to Hawaii . . . and I still haven’t gotten my old one back from my parents, or seen the pictures they or the rest of the family took (yes it’s killing me!). So here are two of the best ones that we have so far, please excuse the low quality! Professional pictures will take at least another month to come back . . .

Here’s my chuppah being carried in:

People kept asking us if we planned for the sunset to add to the beauty of the ceremony . . . and I keep joking that it’s built-in when you’re having a Jewish wedding on a Saturday! (You are not allowed to be married on the sabbath, so we waited until sundown when the day ends)

The chuppah came out very well although it didn’t lay quite straight when set up, but it looked like I intended it to hang that way so no one but me knew it was’t quite right! Of course now all of you know, too, but it’s OK because I ended up liking the way it looked. I asked the photographer, Laurie Rhodes (her website is down right now or I would link to it), to take some extra shots of it, so hopefully there will be some awesome professional shots of it that I can be really proud of. I of course took it down and have it saved, so will probably take some pictures (with the new camera!) myself as well . . . at some point.

The ceremony was wonderful, although I almost lost it and started bawling several times (big surprise, I’m sure). And the party was a huge success! Here’s us dancing the first dance:

Everyone loved the band and we danced ALL NIGHT LONG — my feet were seriously aching already by the end of the ceremony, so I had to get bandaids to put on my blisters even before the dancing started! Once the party was on the way I barely felt my feet at all though . . . and yes, I ended up wearing flats (I even broke them in before the big day), but I still had terrible blisters after only a few hours! The next few days I couldn’t wear anything but flip flops actually, it was kind of unbelievable. I guess I walked a lot that day!

I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to “enjoy the moment” what with all the crazyness, but I can honestly say that I did! I was totally present and enjoyed myself immensely . . . but I keep telling everyone that I really wish I could have been a guest, I was too exhausted and wired up to eat much or even look around a lot! What I really wish is that I could have tasted all the food — we put so much thought into what we picked and I barely ate any of it!

It’s really hard to believe it’s over, actually. I still catch myself thinking, “Oh, I should call the bakery about XYZ” or “I should look online for such-and-such” and then I have to stop myself and go, “NO! It’s done!” I was in super planning mode for so long it’s weird to have it all behind me . . . although my next “project” has already presented itself:

Finding a new apartment! We’ve already looked at about 10 apartments and there’s one we really like but that’s a bit more than we wanted to spend. I have more appointments scheduled for this week, hopefully we’ll find something by the weekend! Wish me luck!

And I leave you with this, and a link to the Hawaii album (shot on the new camera, of course!):

Me on Waiki beach!!

So I come back from my wedding and honeymoon (I promise pictures and stories later!!) to find that Twist Collective has launched, and therefore I can now show you the socks I knit for Cookie A! Here’s the FO shot I took when I sent them off to her:

The sock pattern is called Maelstrom and the pattern is available for $6.00 through Twist Collective.

These socks were really fun to knit and flew off the needles (I knit them in about a week since I knew I was on deadline!), and they really weren’t hard at all. The stitch pattern is a simple, short repeat that really looks complicated after it’s done but is actually really easy to memorize and “read” as you go. I especially love the diagonal line across the foot, such a distinctive Cookie A design feature!

As always her pattern is impeccably written and fun to follow, I always recommend her designs to anyone who wants to knit a “special” sock . . . I may have to make myself a pair of these to keep!

Project specs:
Pattern: Maelstrom by Cookie A
Yarn: The Knittery Merino Chubby
Needles: US size 1
Started: March 31, 2008
Finished: April 9, 2008