best rabbit hole ever...

i am sat up in bed, watching nonsense on You Tube and eating floor-Oreos. hopefully i will do a better job of holding on to the opened pack next time around... hopefully.

it is Monday evening as i start writing this, and i am already waiting for this week to be done. last week was an especially rubbish one around here, and the weekend left me expecting that we were in for more of the same. i called my mother on Sunday, and my greeting to her was a dour, but apt one. "we are still alive. happy Mother's Day."

in that spirit of celebrating the tiny victories in life—including life itself—i present to you a tiny glimpse into the randomness that has brought some measure of joy to my corner of the Universe of late. 

we pulled a couple steaks out of the freezer and made a special meal one random day... just because.

these smashed potatoes have become his favorite dish of the moment. i boil whole potatoes (red potatoes in this case, as that is what we had on hand) in super-salty water, then smashed them lightly, and drizzled on a mixture of olive oil, melted butter, salt, black pepper, and a generous helping of crushed garlic. they go into a 425°F oven on a parchment-lined baking sheet until they are toasty around the edges, after which i turn on the broiler for the last couple-few minutes. i added a sprinkling of freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and shoved them back under the broiler for the last minute. not gonna lie... they are really tasty. he likes the leftovers served up with sour cream, so we make extra for the next day. so ridiculously good!

speaking of ridiculous... i woke up one day last week to find a new box in the entryway to our apartment, which currently serves as the 'quarantine area' for all incoming items.

me: was this here before?
him: uhm... no.
me: is this an 'unauthorized purchase'?
him: uhm... possibly.
me: what did you buy now?
him: it's a Master of the Universe. you like them. 
me: open 'er up.

after the absurdity of life of late, he can buy whatever nonsense he wants. so... welcome, Skeletor.

may you find peace among the countless other homages to a never-ending childhood that are already occupying our home. trust me... that is only a tiny fraction of the insanity in the studio. whatever makes him happy.

he hangs on to the boxes with interesting artwork, so this one was a definite keeper.

as i see it, we are all allowed our own brand of insanity. which reminds me...

i washed those two fleeces i talked about last time. this usually requires a lot of room to spread all that wool out to dry, but that would be asking for trouble in a home with three bored cats. so i divided the fiber into several batches that could be dried out of paw-reach, and washed them over the course of a week or so.

i separated out the 'best bits' from each fleece and took special care to try to wash them while maintaining the lock formations of the fiber, like this bag of cleaned BFL/NCC mule fiber. [i explained what that means in the previous post.]

i love the variation in the fiber from this one fleece. it is hard to believe that all of this came from the same sheep.

i did the same thing with the purebred BFL fleece.

this may look like a tangly mess, but i can easily separate the locks, which will help when it comes time to prep the fiber for spinning.

there is enough 'best bits' from the mule fiber for a generous sweater's worth of yarn, so i am storing all of that in a recycling bag until i decide what it will become. the BFL was a much smaller fleece, so those 'best bits' are living for now in one of the shopping bags that was sent along with my box of wool.

as for the mucky bits of both fleeces, they were washed in a less-organized fashion, using some plastic strainers and mesh baskets that i keep exclusively for use with fiber-related things.

i am going to need to open a few chakras before i can begin to tackle prepping this stuff for spinning. however, in all this madness, i welcome that challenge.

there were some impressively-long sections of the BFL fleece. i am actually considering getting one of their longer fleeces next year... should we last that long.

i am making progress on the summery top featuring my first ever batch of hand-dyed cotton-based yarn (which i spoke about two posts ago). i am taking all sorts of license in re-interpreting the designer's instructions... because i can. the top should be finished by this weekend, unless i get distracted by some other... hey, is that a butterfly???

oh, and i am still carrying those damn socks (from a few post ago) from room-to-room, although i must admit to having added not a single stitch to that project in over a week.

____________________

it is roughly twenty-four hours later and i am pleased to say that i have fallen down a rabbit hole that began with the Betty Boop classic "Minnie the Moocher", and has resulted in the past couple-few hours being spent watching segments of swing music/dancing from a truly impressive list of old movies. between the likes of the Nicholas Brothers, Cab Calloway, and Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, i have hummed, snapped my fingers, and tapped my toes enough to chase away most of the gloom that i feared would cloud the next few days of my life.

best rabbit hole ever!!!

i wrapped up my evening by returning to where it started... with good music and classic animation. this time, it was the Warner Bros classic "Three Little Bops". [the only video i could find that includes the whole piece was this one from Vimeo. and, yes... the video quality sucks.]

then my favorite animator walked in.

him: are you listing to the "Three Little Bops"?
me: yep. been listening to it on repeat for the last twenty minutes or so.
him: i was listening to that just yesterday.

then i smiled. it is nice to be reminded that our insanity intersects every once in a while.

29: used to (almost) be...

my mom is always complaining about being cold. the inside of their office is kept feeling like a walk-in fridge in mid-Summer. then there is the arctic chill along the Hudson River in mid-Winter, which makes going to and from her workplace feel like you are in a wind tunnel in Antarctica. as a result, she is always cold.

i welcome any excuse to make use of my ever-expanding stash of yarn, so i took up the challenge of making a cardi (or two) for my mom. specifically, i wanted to make a wool sweater that could be used as an extra layer of insulation under her Winter coat, but that she could wear unbuttoned around the office to keep her shoulders and arms warm during the air-conditioned Summer months.

after much contemplation of both yarn and pattern options, i finally set out on the seemingly simple task of making a cardi for my mom. then everything went terribly wrong.

this used to (almost) be a cardi for my mom.

[random aside: i am drinking a very non-Summery cup of hot chocolate and taking my patented mix of 'one of each type' of headache tablets, because it is one of those days. moving on...]

all that remains is this narrow strip from the bottom of the back section. well... that plus all the yarn that has been wound into a ball about the size of my very-non-small head. i went searching for said ball of yarn today, but it was nowhere to be found. hopefully i did not toss is away in a fit of absolute frustration.

there are those moments in life, when you have to accept that something is not meant to be... then you stop wasting your own time. unfortunately, i tend to suck at taking my own advice. i kept encountering one minor problem after the next, and each time i would rip back to some earlier point, then try to figure out what i was doing wrong. i probably threatened on multiple occasions to send the whole thing flying through an un-opened window, out into the middle of the street below. that is my go-to threat when faced with so much frustration, and he always says the same thing.

him: go ahead... but you're the one who's gonna fix the broken window. 

turns out, i really did not like the choice of that particular yarn for that project. it was producing  fabric that felt very uncomfortable in my hands, and i knew that the finished garment would lack the cozy factor that i was counting on for my mom.

so, one day, as i was in the midst of unraveling the previous inch or two with the intention of knitting that bit over again, frustration got the best of me... so i kept on unraveling. that strip remains only because i wanted to hang on to part of it so that i could try to figure out what went so terribly wrong.

i was so annoyed at this point, that i went on a mini-marathon of knitting other stuff, just to get that project out of my mind. there was the cardi for his mom (which i talked about earlier in the month)...

i also kitted a couple warm weather tops for me (which i will try to remember to take photos of one of these days), and i made a Flax sweater pour moi. i made one for him a few years ago, and it is his go-to sweater in the Winter, which warms this knitter's heart. now i have one of my very own. hopefully it will get just as much use.

my Flax includes a side-split on the hem, and the back is a couple inches longer than the front, which i tend to prefer these days.

i also made the column of grater stitches (the horizontal ridges) a bit wider than the pattern suggested... because i can do what i want with my own top.

with that done, i (finally) tracked down the leather elbow patches for his Watsyn Cardigan, so now he is allowed to wear it... you know... once it goes back to being cold again.

i love this design so much. it is sized from child to adult, so you can get plenty of use out of the one pattern. the collar is my favorite part.

i added pockets to his Watsyn (which was not part of the original design), and i finished it off with some coconut shell buttons with a design that reminds me of the Daymare Town games.

still, in the midst of all of this activity, all i kept thinking was, i really should be knitting that cardi for mom. however, it was so warm out by this point, that the thought of sitting around with a lap full of a heavy wool garment seemed like a punishment, so i opted instead to start working on a less-bulky sweater using the same pattern as in the cardi for his mom.

it was my sincerest intent to have this done by the end of this month, but it has been so hot and muggy, that working with wool was not a realistic option. i managed to get the odd few rows done, especially on the really unpleasant days when we had the AC blasting, but it is very hard to be motivated by a wool sweater in the middle of a heatwave.

this is about as far as it has gotten. it does not look it right now, but i assure you that the Sibella is a really beautiful cardigan.

the bottom edge is rolled up, so it is a bit longer than it appears at present. this rolling is typical for this kind of knitted fabric, and it will sort itself out once the ribbed hem is added along the bottom.

i used the same approach as with the gold cardi: begging in the middle, knitting up through the patterned yoke section, up to the neckline, then resuming knitting from the bottom of the yoke, and i will continue on in that direction down to the bottom edge.

i know that mom likes her sweaters on the longer side, so i plan to keep on knitting until i run out of yarn. for that reason, i put the body stitches on hold, while i work on the sleeves (i am almost done with the first one), then i will go back to working on the body, making sure i reserve enough yarn to add the button bands at the end.

i love this pattern so much, and i will very likely make the pullover sweater version for myself at some point.

so, while i have been (mostly) neglecting the cardi, i did cast on—and i have almost completed—a light, almost-meshy cotton layering piece that i will most likely also give to my mom... although i may wear it once or twice before doing so. it is the Alfama cardi by Amy Christoffers. i absolutely loved this pattern at first sight. it would be a fantastic cover-up for those cooler days at the end of the Summer. and i am making a longer version than the sample, because 'tush coverage' is a high-priority in my life.

the yarn i am using for this is a (mostly) cotton blend with some little blips of color that only makes me think of clown barf. i have not spent much time around barfing clowns, but it seems safe to think it might look something like this.

the clown barf cardi will definitely be done some time this week, and i will hopefully get back to working on the other one... unless some other thing catches my attention before then.