The Golden Iris

As always, I've got a pair of socks going. I decided to sort my sock-yarn stash in Ravelry by "date added" and chose the oldest yarn ... which happened to be a beautiful deep green skein of Dragonfly Fibers Dragon Sock - the color is Rocky Top. More than halfway there! Mostly I wanted to show off the gorgeous color, so I chose a simple pattern. These are called Hermione's Everyday Socks and are a free pattern from Erica Lueder. The knitting is relaxing, just a simple knit-purl pattern, and they're going fast! [No, I'm not particularly a Harry Potter fan.] I'm hoping to knit up a bunch of sock yarn this year, as it's a little silly how much I have. (Not outrageously ridiculous, but still, more yarn than I need). These are getting me off to a good start.

So after I posted about my sourdough bread last week, Tim asked about how my loaves of bread look so tall in the oven. I took lots of photos and even some notes, and I'm going to try to explain how my bread comes out the way it does. Incidentally, I've been reading more about artisan bread baking, and pretty much everything I am doing is considered "wrong" . However! I am shaping bread this way with a goal in mind, so I am OK with it. Let's start with the goal. I want a bread that I can make a grilled-cheese sandwich with. This means no giant gaping holes in the crumb, even though that is normally desirable . This means that after the last rise, I deflate the dough ("wrong") when I shape the loaves. I do this by kneading the pieces a little bit ("wrong"), and shape them very tightly ("wrong"). You can see how much I've deflated the dough by comparing the shaped to the unshaped half. 1. Last rise. 2. Cutting dough. 3. Hal...

Right now I am blessed with time, and I have been able to whip up some truly delicious treats in the kitchen. My current obsession is sourdough bread - and other long-fermented breads. Look into the oven - it's the bread show, starring bread! Wheat has been getting a bad rap these days. More and more people are developing severe dietary intolerances to wheat and gluten. However, some other people are beginning to suggest that traditional bread making methods, which can include periods of fermentation over 8 hours, can make bread more digestible [for some people]. I don't feel comfortable adding to the argument one way or another - there are some nice stories and lots of scary commentary floating around online, but actual facts seem a bit hard to come by. Seeing as we don't have trouble eating wheat, gluten, or yeast, though... bread we'll make. I love good bread and I am delighted to be able to make it at home. I am going to keep making sourdough and other lon...

Here in the Bay Area, we're starting to get excited for Stitches West , which is coming up at the end of February. Just like last year, I'll be working in Miss Babs' booth. Part of what I'm doing to prepare is knitting up a sample of Jaina , a sleek flowing cardigan from the winter issue of Twist Collective. I'm knitting it in Miss Babs Tierno , an alpaca-silk blend that... is just like knitting with kittens. There's no other way to put it. Silky, soft, warm... and gorgeous! I hadn't knit with it before Babs asked me to make this sample, and I'm hoping to design something feminine and lacy with it. Nearly to the armholes It's mostly stockinette with a few cabled details here and there, so it's easy knitting. I've been knitting at night during movies and TV. We had a marathon this week of the Man With No Name  trilogy - how I love old Clint Eastwood movies, even if the dubbing is terrible! Pocket detail I look forward to finish...

I'm at the age where it seems like everyone around me is having a baby. I won't go into how terrifying that is. We'll just stick to the knitting part - baby booties, the best quick and easy baby gift there is. Whenever I have to make baby booties, I use one pattern. I don't try new things. I even violate my rule of 'never knit the same thing twice' [okay except maybe for plain socks] because this pattern just works. Booties knit with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Bittersweet and something I can't remember It's Christine's Stay-On Baby Booties (Ravelry link here ). I know very little about babies, except that at a certain point they become very wiggly and it's a chore to keep socks on them - and it's important to keep those little toes warm. These booties thwart even the wiggliest baby (or so moms tell me). Better yet for the knitter, they use up leftover sock yarn! The pattern calls for 50g of sock yarn, but measuring suggests...

...because moms always know what you want for Christmas. In my case, that includes knitting stuff! My mom sewed me a one-of-a-kind dpn case [possibly because she had to wrestle with the ridiculous number of excess needles in my circular case when she came to visit]. Here it is partially filled - there's lots of needles in projects right now. Lots of space for dpn sets - and I love the fabric prints And my mum-in-law in the UK sent these nifty KnitPro square rosewood needles - can't find those in the US! Now to find a good project Thanks, moms! You're the best!

Ok, just a couple more things to wrap up last year and then I can keep moving forward. For the Christmas knitting I did get done... it was all socks. I have a little too much sock yarn (it's not that out of hand, really, but more than I can reasonably knit up in a year or two) and I have a few people on my list who are definitely knitworthy, so socks it was. [Feeling left out? I'm not gonna post progress photos or give too much away, but there just might be a few people due to get belated gifts.] Plain socks for Simon in self-striping Berroco Sox... Almost-plain socks for Mom in a one-of-a-kind hand dye from Miss Babs... and some skull embellishment on a gorgeous Neighborhood Fiber Company burgundy for Kel. These are all variations on a basic 64-stitch sock pattern that I've memorized... so no real "pattern" to share here. Was there anybody knitworthy on your list this year?

I'm not usually a big "let's make major New Year's resolutions" kind of person, but I do have some goals for the coming year. The knitting-related: Create more designs. Knit more sweaters. And the non-knitting: Find a new day job (alas, the last one evaporated, sadly). Eat more veggies. Say "yes" to more things (this is not the opposite of "saying no" - this is so that I get out of the house more). Because when I say "yes" more often, I get to do cool stuff like hike in the hills above Half Moon Bay and see my first ever banana slugs! (This was on Christmas day... California continues to amaze me). Banana slug! Those things sound pretty doable, don't you think? Here's to a happy, healthy, prosperous, creative 2012.