Serenity 20 Yarn – Yarn, Books & Roses

Cold weather ready: socks and indoor plants

The October 2015 Socks are done!

October Socks — These are the Om Shanti Bed Socks by Alice Yu. That cool yarn is Serenity 20 by Zen Yarn Garden. They are extremely comfy and the snug little ankles keep them on my feet overnight. Perfect for the sleeper with cold feet. (Yep, that’s me. Thanks Raynaud’s!) Here are the project notes on Ravelry.

If you are interested in the history of these socks, here are the related posts:

The socks were started around Halloween
and the first sock was finished a few days later.

I am almost caught up with the resolution socks; last night I shopped the stash to pick the yarn for the November Socks and am torn between two different patterns. Next week I’ll make the decision, wind the yarn and cast on. Here’s the problem: I found a wonderful blue yarn, but there is also this gold/purple/brown yarn that looks like the perfect color for November… The blue yarn works for the pattern I planned to knit, but the autumn colored yarn is so perfect that perhaps I should give it and a cute lace patterned sock a try… Maybe I should make two pairs of socks this month. 🙂

I worked like a maniac this week on the bed socks because it has suddenly become cold outside. We had a nice snowfall Thursday, and the last two nights have gone well below freezing. That was it; I had to bring some of the outdoor plants into the house for the winter. I went to the local Home Depot store and bought some plant grow lights for them, and with some care and rotation under the lights I hope to keep them going until next spring. Here’s the winners in the survive the winter plant lottery:

Pink daisy — The pink daisy-like plant moved into the bedroom by a window. Looks happy, doesn’t it.

Geranium — The geranium is also getting parked in front of the bedroom window where it will hopefully get enough light. I plan to let both plants visit the plant lights in my craft room a few days a week for a light boost.

Orchids and blooming plant — I pruned this plant back to about half its height and put it in front of the window in the craft room. The orchids have been doing pretty well in this location: both orchid plants bloomed for me last year. The (very cheap) wood shelf unit actually has three shelves; I bought clip-on grow lights that I can move around to give the plants light from different directions this winter to supplement the natural light.

I have more plants shoved onto the two shelves below this one but they are just too messy to show off right now. I need at least one more plant grow light to make things work, and the lower shelf plants still need to be pruned back. I’m pretty sure that the plants will drop a lot of leaves as they adjust to the lower light levels, but they should all make it and hopefully will manage to produce some winter blooms. One of the plants on the lower shelf is a rose bush that has survived indoors for three years in a row. I know he’ll make it! The pink flowering plants are also producing a lot of scent which makes me just happy. It’s like having a little piece of summer all year long.

All right winter, bring it on. I am ready!!

The Yarn Warrior

Last night I knitted like crazy and got my Reyna shawl (by Noora Laivola) finished. I wet blocked it overnight (hoping that sleeping kitties won’t notice it…) and this morning I took it outside to the garden swing to finish it up while I was watering the lawn. Of course my cat MacKenzie couldn’t resist helping out.

Cat chomping shawl — Oops! I didn’t realize he was hanging out under the swing… At least he’s predictable in that he never missed an opportunity to chomp!

Shawl in tree — Here it is rescued from the cat. Isn’t it a fun mix of garter stitch and mesh? Here are my project notes on Ravelry.

This shawl was a fast and easy project, but I learned a lot of new things while working on it and it led to some new insights. After all, while I love to knit, I really am more driven to play with new yarns, patterns and ideas more than I need a new shawl (or pair of socks for that matter). Every new project is an opportunity to learn something new!

I first selected this pattern because I had a skein of wickedly soft and colorful yarn in my stash. I knew that the colors would go with everything in my wardrobe, but there were so many of them in the skein that I needed a way to show them off without nasty pooling or something that looked muddy.

Closeup of Shawl — I knew that garter stitch plays well with multicolored yarn, and I was hoping that the mesh would break the colors up a little more and help each one shine. Mission accomplished! The yarn looks really different in the two sections of the shawl and the colors each stand out.

There are YO stitches to each side of the center stitch in the garter section. Hard to see aren’t they? That’s because they are hidden by knitting in the back loop of the YO on the wrong side row. Who knew? By hiding the YO stitches the garter stripe stands out better between the mesh segments.

I also noticed a difference in the mesh. Normally K2tog stitches slant to the right. In the mesh section of the shawl the K2tog creates a slant that goes to the left. Check it out!

Mesh stitch — See the left slant? This was knit by [yo, K2tog] stitches that repeated every other row (all stitches purled on the wrong side).

Mesh closeup — The right slanting mesh was created by the opposite type of decrease stitch: [yo, ssk] repeated across the row. Once again the stitches on the wrong side were purled. The designer balanced the direction of the mesh slant around the center stitch of the shawl. Cool!

As I was knitting along I realized that my ball of yarn was starting the shrink a little faster than I wanted it to. Yikes! How can I be sure to use as much as possible while leaving enough for the last three garter rows and then the BO? Well, this is when a yarn warrior really digs in and takes control.

Row Tracker — Look at what Noora gave us in the pattern! Wow, isn’t this a nice idea. In fact, it made me think that all patterns should be organized as a table with the rows, stitch count, the pattern, weight of the yarn and a place to make tally marks. I mean, why does the entire thing have to be written out? See how I started tracking how much my ball of yarn weighed every 4 rows? I decided to switch to the last 4 rows as soon as I had only 8 grams left. (8 rows of the mesh section were skipped)

Yarn on balance. — This is how many grams of yarn I had left over after binding off.

See, it isn’t about the final object (OK, it is a little). It’s about being a YARN WARRIOR!! Capture the learning and master the craft. Be at one with the cashmere and bond with your fellow knitters.

Isn’t this why we all do it?

The Art of Serendipitous Phenomenology

When I used to work in a medical research lab one of my co-workers described what we did as mastering the art of serendipitous phenomenology. I think that he meant that we (hoped to be) alert, observant, curious and reflective about events around us. Big discoveries can occur from chance observations if one pays attention; one of the famous ones is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. Another of my coworkers discovered an important immune system inhibitor (which led to a patent and eventually a drug. How cool is that?) Of course, there aren’t any big scientific discoveries in my life right now, but I have had a run of fun occurrences lately. It’s been making me think about serendipity, and that perhaps one of the secrets of finding joy in every day living is in mastering the art of serendipitous phenomenology.

So, here is my run of fun;

Starbuck's Card — I went into a strange Starbucks Sunday on an impulse while picking up Chinese takeout. I needed a new Starbuck’s card as I had just lost mine. Look at what I found!! The hard-to-read text on the left says, “Year of the Sheep”.

Book. — I was in a slump this weekend because I had just finished a good book. I forced myself to start reading the next book on my list, and it’s a science fiction with the title of WOOL!! It’s a really good book, too. How much fun is that?

I was already contemplating serendipity when I arrived at my favorite local yarn store yesterday. I had a hazy notion that I wanted to get a cashmere blend yarn that would look nice with grey to make another Hitchhiker (by Martina Behm). Going through the sock yarns with a friend a skein suddenly fell out of its cubby and landed on the floor at my feet. “Well, there’s your yarn”, said my friend. There it was indeed! This yarn is 20% cashmere. The color is perfect for me and my new grey sweater. After going through all the yarn we could not find one that was a better fit.

Hey, who am I to argue with the universe? This yarn is clearly destined to become a Hitchhiker. The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Obviously I needed to buy this yarn.

See what I did there? Even though this yarn was expensive I was able to absolutely justify buying it with my smoking post-Christmas credit card.

And that is the Art of Serendipitous Phenomenology, my friends.

FO: One Yummy Shawl

It’s done, it’s done, it is done! I knitted on this all yesterday afternoon while binge watching this season’s Parenthood episodes, and finally finished it around dinner time. It was wet blocked this morning and dried outside in the breeze.

I tried getting my cat MacKenzie to model it for me with less than satisfactory results. At least you can see how nicely the grey and black in his coat goes with the shawl’s colors. 🙂 My fallback model is the maple tree, which does let you see the rows of eyelets pretty well.

This is what it looks like on me. The color is really rich looking, and the 20% cashmere makes it nice around my neck.

Author wearing shawl. — Soft, warm and looking forward to the next cold snap. The reds, browns and grey in this yarn will make it a real work horse for me.

I know that I shouldn’t have done it, but I also cast on TWO new Hitchhiker shawls this afternoon. Really, I just wanted to see what the yarns would look like in the bias knitted fabric…

Shawl Information: 3S Shawl by Amy Meade. Yarn is Serenity 20 from Zen Yarn Garden.