new on the needles

It’s that time of the year again. Time to look back. Time to gaze forward in anticipation. Let’s look ahead, first, and welcome 2008.

I did not remain sock monogamous to Lenore. I cast on the toes of the Salish Sea Socks, the December Rockin’ Sock Club pattern. The colorway is called Bella Coola / Nuxalk. It’s a Cat Bordhi pattern. The colors are my blog colors, and Cat gave me a nice little shout-out in the pattern notes. So what was I to do but cast them on?

But, I hear you ask gentle reader, what is that other unfinished strip of stripy cabled goodness sharing the picture with the Salish toes?

That was something I was hoping would be the last finished object of 2007. Didn’t make it. It will be the first finished object of 2008, though. I will tell you more later. For now, I will only say that the pattern comes from this book, and as soon as I saw it I knew that I had to knit it. When Tangle had the right yarn, the deal was sealed.

More later.

Also looking ahead: #1 Son left yesterday for a 5-week trip to Brazil. Yeah. South America. I was not allowed to go to the airport, because Moms are so lame at airports and stuff, you know. But he called me from the airport to let me know he was there. And he called me again to let me know they were ready to board. And he called me again to let me know that their flight to Chicago had been delayed. And he called again to let me know that they had landed, finally, in Chicago but missed the connection to Sao Paulo, and now had to stand in a really long line. And then he sent a text message to say that they had tickets on a flight leaving today. And then he sent a text message to say Happy New Year and that he was at a party with Chicago friends. I have not heard yet today. He has promised to call occasionally and maybe send an email now and again. Five weeks is a long time. Brazil is very far away.

In other non-knitting news, my old lady cat, Phoebe, has been diagnosed as hyperthyroid, thus explaining her weight loss and erratically needy behavior that was so odd in a crotchety cat that mostly just wants to be left alone — except at night, when a great deal of lovin’ is appreciated at bedtime. The good news is that it’s a condition that is, actually, curable in a fairly easy way. The bad news is that the condition may be masking chronic renal failure, which is not curable. So Phoebe is on medication to bring her thyroid levels down to normal so her kidneys can be evaluated. In all of her 15 years, Phoebe has never been sick or required medication of any kind. Since she tends to hold a grudge, I was not looking forward to shoving a pill down her throat offering her medication twice a day. But my vet carries this wonderful invention called Pill Pockets. Slip the pill inside the formed treat and smoosh the end closed, and the designated pet chomps it down. Phoebe loves them. So the only issue is keeping Kidd distracted while Phoebe eats her treat. Moo doesn’t count here, because she doesn’t like treats of any kind. She only eats cat food and yarn.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Now, looking back in farewell to 2007:

In January, I decided to buy yarn. And I kept that promise all through the year. So much so that I think in 2008 I will be a bit more restrained. Blue Moon suffered through their well-publicized bank problems. And my sock class was canceled because of snow.

February saw the Snake River Socks released into the wild, unfortunately, it turned out, with several errors. #1 Son borrowed my vacuum. My brain turned up missing in action as I tried to figure out the right number of stitches to go around a sock leg.

The first Rockin’ Sock Club shipment came in March. I resolved to knit socks only with my classes (resolution soon broken). My socks were lost and then found and, it turned out (via contest), may have been running a little underground resistance movement against sock abuse.

April opened with the Magical Moebius Festival in Newport. Knitting and food and yarn and food and Cat Bordhi and food and whales, and I knit a giant moebius (unintentionally) that 11 people fit into. And it was too far to drive 10 miles to my house, but not too far to drive to Eugene or Seattle.

In May I had the plane trip from hell. While I was in Miami, #1 Son called from Toronto to ask if I could move his car in Portland (it was towed). We lost Grandpa Barney. And I learned that I still remember how to execute a perfect slightly imperfect pratfall.

June found me proving my extreme dorkiness whilst meeting The Yarn Harlot. PDX Knit Bloggers were born (can’t believe it’s only been since June). The Clapotis That Never Ends… finally ended.

In July I visited Boston yarn shops (and my cousins). The PDX Knit Bloggers had their first meet-up at Knit Purl. #1 Son reached v1.9. I was both sorted into Ravenclaw and Simpsonized.

August started with a heelish experience. Sockapalooza 4 finished and I was spoiled nicely. Maia arrived for a PDX Yarn Crawl — on my birthday! I still owe the Bo Diddley sock pattern to several people. A gorgeous new Cat Bordhi book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One, was published. My name is on page 22. And I was kept suitably humble by my first autograph requestor who said, I have no idea who you are but apparently you’re famous, so please sign my book.

I had more fun with Judy’s Magic Cast-On in September. I also learned that it’s a good thing to pay attention when one is turning cables. At OFFF I met a Rasta sheep and fell off my yarn diet. Hard.

October started with a very interesting computer rebuild. (lovin’ the new computer now, though) I attended the first ever Floating Knitting Retreat with Cat Bordhi and Lucy Neatby and had a wonderful time. I obtained my first ever MP3 player (knitting videos on my iPod!). We planted a tree for Barney and the Ravens landed.

In November, Tina destashed and knitters everywhere helped out. The rose arch finally gave up the ghost. I made a swift from Tinker Toys. I was thankful for finally finishing The Great Green Glob. Not so thankful when it turned out there was a dropped stitch requiring major post-blocking surgery.

I was sick for a lot of December. But I knit a scarf for #1 Son and started The Wings Of A Dream in Blue Moon Silk Thread. I pondered the future of knitting. I made carrot soup instead of carrot pudding. And I was given the gift of snow on Christmas.

Objects Finished In 2007:

9 pairs of adult-sized socks
2 pairs of baby-sized socks
2 iPod Nano socks
2 moebii of the right size
1 moebius bowl
2 baby sweaters
1 Clapotis
1 lace shawl
1 scarf
1 hat

22 finished objects total

In the queue for 2008 or currently on the needles:

4 lace shawls / wraps
2 sweaters
1 blanket
1 bag
1 hat
1 scarf
2 pairs of socks on the needles
a gazillion pairs of socks rattling around in my brain

Chances of finishing this list by 12/31/2008? We shall see.

Mama’s recipe box

Kay and Ann at Maxon-Dixon Knitting are hosting the Grandma Mable Memorial Recipe Box Show & Tell Contest over on their blog. (Head over there for the whole story.)

The cool result of this contest will be a virtual recipe box, full of wonderful things to cook (and eat) from everyone who enters.

Now… one is supposed to post a picture of one’s recipe box. But my recipe box is just a black metal box made to hold index cards that I picked up at some long-ago-forgotten office supply place back in the mid-1970’s. Boring. So I dug a little further into my cupboard.

This is Mama’s recipe box.

Mama was an adequate, if rather uninspired, cook. Meat and potatoes, a green veggie and a yellow veggie. On Fridays the meat was fish, on Sundays roast beef. Mama had a cupboard full of herbs and spices. Each had been purchased for a single recipe that called for it, and then never used again. The family joke was that Bro and I learned to cook because… somebody had to.

So it’s no surprise that this box is not completely full of recipes. At least 1/3 of the cards are resolutely blank.

I have no idea how old Mama’s recipe box is. Inked into the inside of the lid is her maiden name. That dates it to pre-1941. The sticker on the front says Gold Medal Kitchen Tested Recipes. It’s safe to say that most were not tested in Mama’s kitchen. The card on the inside is signed by Betty Crocker.

kitchen tested recipes

This recipe comes from my Godmother, a wonderful woman who was an extremely good cook and passed several recipes along to both Mama and I. It’s a great way to use up all that extra zucchini in the summer, as even the extra-large ones will be OK.

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs
1 cup oil
2-1/2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini

Mix all ingredients together.
Grease and flour 2 loaf pans.
Bake at 350-F for one hour.

Grandma’s recipes

While we’re showing old things from family history, this binder belonged to Grandma (Mama’s mom).

It’s a leather three-ring binder, but very few pages are actually on the binder rings. For the most part, the individual pages and recipes and clippings are just stuck willy-nilly in with no regard for type of recipe. I have no idea how she found anything in it. The gold elastic Christmas present cord is used to hold the whole thing together.

I pulled a couple of items out randomly. The ubiquitous Betty Crocker makes another appearance with a Chocolate Chiffon Cake Recipe and my Great Aunt Bess’ (Grandma’s sister) recipe for pickle relish has been hand written on a brittle and yellowing piece of note paper from Garrett Truck Lines (no idea why).

One of my favorite items from Grandma’s binder is a little booklet entitled Make It Right With Lard, published by the National Livestock and Meat Board. The picture on the front has the word Lard spelled via holes cut in a pie crust. It contains some nifty tips for cooking with the perfect fat, and recipes for everything from biscuits to ginger snaps. Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot imagine ginger snaps made with lard.

I have no idea how old the binder is. The leather is dry and cracking in places. Many of the pages are starting to crumble. Grandma passed in 1980 at the age of 97. She was a wonderful cook and collected recipes her whole life. The binder could have been acquired at any time.

Isn’t it funny how things just skip generations? Grandma and all of my Great Aunts cooked and baked and sewed and knitted and crocheted and quilted and tatted and embroidered. But neither Mama nor her sister, my aunt G., were cooks. Neither could sew beyond the basics. Neither was into any sort of handcrafting. They had many other wonderful qualities and talents. But not those.

carrot pudding

The carrot pudding turned out… OK. Here’s a picture of the finished product. I apologize for the partially-eaten pic. You can see that the hard sauce has done its melty thing and all. I had taken a couple of bites when I suddenly realized… oh, $@%#, I forgot to take a picture. So I grabbed the camera and snapped a few and then went back to eating.

It really tastes pretty good.

There are no shots of it lovingly unmolded and resting on some lovely serving dish because it was never actually unmolded.

True confessions time: When it had steamed for the requisite 4 hours, I lifted the mold from the pan and popped the lid off, only to find…

carrot soup.

My old family recipe includes a cup of apple. I used an extra-large Jonagold that was just the right size to produce the right amount of apple when grated. I grated the carrot, so I grated the apple. I missed the tiny print in Mama’s handwriting that said apple, ground. But reading that after the fact sort of brought back memories of Mama sending the apple through her meat grinder — she had an old hand grinder. I have one, too. And the grinding sort of, well… smooshed all the apple juice out of the pulp.

That may have been a good thing to do. Because grating does not have the same effect.

So I stood their in my kitchen and looked at the carrot pudding soup, and wondered what the heck to do. #1 Son was due any minute. Dinner was ready. Eeek! Finally, in desperation, I drained the excess liquid from the pudding mold, added 1 cup of flour or so to soak up what was left, and popped the pudding back in the pan to steam for another couple of hours. It tasted pretty good, but unmolding would have produced a mound of… something… not a lovely pudding.

Note to self: Next year smoosh the juice out. And the carrots could have been grated much, much smaller. Much. Just saying.

#1 Son & his scarf

#1 Son loved the veggie stew and the couscous. I think he had 3 helpings. It may have been four. He liked the touch of having a little goat cheese to sprinkle over the stew. I have no goat cheese left now.

I had picked up a loaf of bring-home-and-finish-the-baking bread — an olive Pugliese. #1 Son said, This is awesome bread!. I had two slices. There was none left at the end of the meal, so I guess he did like it quite a bit.

In other words, he, being still a teenager for a few more months at least, still eats like a teenager.

So desert, even though we waited a bit after the meal, was met with some feeling of detachment. But he liked the carrot pudding.

I did not confess the carrot pudding story to #1 Son. We’ll let that be our little secret, eh?

I sent him home with 1/2 of the leftover stew and couscous and an extra loaf of bread. He wandered the house for awhile looking for anything not-nailed-down that could accompany him home.

#1 Son, wandering around kitchen and poking into cupboards:Can I have this French press?
Mom, sitting in her chair and knitting:NO
#1 Son: You never let me take anything and you’re such a packrat.
Mom: NO
#1 Son: How about this Melitta drip coffee pot?
Mom: [sigh] OK
#1 Son: What do you use this for?
Mom: Put it back where you found it.

This picture was snapped just before he escaped with the goods left for the evening. You can see he is in a rather pensive, I suppose you have to take my picture… but I’m not going to smile mood. He would not pull the scarf out of his coat so I could get a decent shot of it, because this is the way they’re worn.

So… OK!

P.S. The snow is all gone. It was sure fun while it lasted, though!

yum

[ed. 12/25/2007 8:21 am] Thanks to everyone who left a suggestion for how to cook the carrot pudding. Yesterday I tried just one more gourmet kitchen shop, and they had pudding molds! Stay tuned. Film, as they say, at 11 (or so).

Since I became single again, Christmas traditions at Chez PI have been rather spotty. For the first several years, #1 Son spent Christmas with the sperm donor. #1 Son and I would have our Christmas on the day before. We did the tree and decorations and presents and such, but I didn’t usually cook what would be considered a traditional Christmas dinner, although I did cook a prime rib for New Year’s (I have an awesome butcher whose specially seasoned prime rib is simply amazing).

On Christmas - the actual day - my personal tradition was to clean my oven and go to a movie. Lest you feel sorry for me, I actually enjoyed every minute and looked forward to it as a break from the normal holiday madness.

Then came a year when #1 Son would be with me for Christmas from now on. Anything you’d like to do? I asked him. He suggested travel. I asked where. He suggested Las Vegas. And thus a new holiday tradition was born. We spent several Christmases in Vegas, had a wonderful time every year, and it was great.

This year there is no travel. #1 Son just came back from a 1-week tour of California and is leaving for 5 weeks on New Years Eve. He needs to work to earn a bit of spending money before he goes. I have time off, but don’t feel like going anyplace, what with his impending departure and all.

So I am cooking dinner, and that is a bit of a quandary.

I know what to cook for a traditional Christmas dinner. We were a Turkey at Christmas family. Or, I could pick up one of those awesome prime ribs.

But #1 Son is vegetarian.

I scratched my head and pondered for awhile over that one. I didn’t really want to fix all the trimmings and not the main dish. Eventually I settled on what I like to call a kitchen sink veggie stew, which contains all the veggies that looked good in the store the day I go shopping: Carrots, beans, corn, cabbage, russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, summer squash, winter squash, tomatoes, celery, etc. It always tastes good. And, being a stew, has the added advantage of being serving-time neutral. I can start it in the morning, and no matter what time we eat it will be OK. I could serve it with a raisin/nut couscous (5 minutes) and a good crusty bread.

But I did want something traditional. In my family, carrot pudding was the traditional Christmas dessert. It’s a steamed pudding, like plum pudding or spotted dick. I have the recipe that was passed down through the women in my family for well over 100 years. There have been few changes over the years. I do use margarine rather than suet (thus making it vegetarian safe), but that’s about it. It is, as I said, cooked by putting the batter in a mold, placing the mold in a large pan with water, and steaming in the oven for 4 hours or so. Grandma and Mama both used a coffee can for the mold, which worked quite well.

The coffee I drink does not come in cans. In fact, I’m not sure if any coffee comes in cans any more.

No problem, I thought. I’ll just pop over to the gourmet kitchen shop and pick up a real pudding mold, and won’t that be traditional and oh-so-cool!

At the first gourmet kitchen shop, I wandered around for awhile and didn’t find the pudding molds, so I stepped up to the counter.

Nice, teenage Christmas kitchen shop worker: May I help you find something?

Me: I hope so. I’m looking for a pudding mold.

NtCksw: Like a jello mold?

Me: No. A mold for steamed puddings. Do you know what that is?

NtCksw: I’m sure I’ve had one at some time. Could you just remind me?

Me: It’s a cake-type pudding that’s cooked by steaming in the oven in a mold. My mother used coffee cans.

NtCksw: We have asparagus steamers. Would that work?

Me: Thanks anyway.

At the second gourmet kitchen shop, I wandered around for awhile until a nice older woman who worked there asked if she could help me.

Me: I hope so. I’m looking for a pudding mold.

NOksw: I haven’t seen one of those for ages.

Me: Do you have anything that might work? My mother used coffee cans.

NOksw: We have asparagus steamers. Would that work?

At the third gourmet kitchen shop, I wandered around for awhile until a nice man who worked there asked if he could help me.

Me (having already cased the store pretty thoroughly): I doubt it, but thanks anyway.

After that, I did what I probably should have done in the first place. I came home and let my fingers do the virtual walking through the internet. I found a local gourmet kitchen shop whose online site showed a pudding mold. They weren’t sure if they had pudding molds actually in stock or not, but promised to look and call me back. They have not called.

So what do I do now? If I can’t find a pudding mold on Christmas Eve, how am I going to cook the darn thing? Do you think, gentle reader, that if I pour it into loaf pans for the steaming, it will cook correctly?

our off-shore meeting “room”

The gallery with the pictures should be working now. I’m guessing that those of you who couldn’t open it are using IE? For some reason Firefox wasn’t affected by my spelling error. Oops.

Anyway, here’s the tale of what I did last week, jaunting around the San Juan Islands with a bunch of crazy knitters.

I picked up my roommate, Tricia, along the way to Friday Harbor. Miracle of miracles — I was only about 10 minutes later than we had arranged, although I couldn’t seem to actually get on the road when I had planned. Traffic was light on Sunday. We planned to catch the 2:40 ferry from Anacortes to Friday Harbor, and we made it in plenty of time. At the ferry terminal, we ate sandwiches and chatted with a few other knitters while we waited. On board the ferry, we met other knitters. Hmmmm… there seemed to be quite a few of us all heading in the same general direction!

At the hotel, we were met by Cat and Lucy. Cat had little goody bags for us with Treking XXL, Frog Tree Alpaca sportweight (mine is blue), two colors of Claudia Handpainted, a sample of Crystal Palace Maizy, notecards, and a cool little folding ruler that folds in 1-inch increments; and an envelope with our itinerary; and a sign-up sheet for the ferry shuttles in the morning. I signed up for the early shuttle every morning because that would be easy to remember. But Cat insisted that as soon as I got to my room I should also write it on my itinerary to make sure that I didn’t forget, because time, tide and the inter-island ferry waits for no knitter. She was really insistent. So insistent, that I actually did write it on the itinerary when I got to our room — which was a pleasant suite with two bedrooms, two baths, a small living room with a faux wood stove (gas) and a kitchen.

Tricia and I ate at the hotel. The restaurant was pricey, but the food was very good. We both had salmon with a hazelnut pesto and mixed veggies that were excellent. The waiter was nice eye candy, but inattentive.

The hotel also offered free breakfast. By the time we left I had finally sort of figured out the waffle maker. Sort of. We shared the breakfast room with a bevy of construction workers who were working on one or the other of various projects that are springing up all over the area. And knitters, of course. There were knitters everywhere.

You will be pleased to know that I made the ferry shuttle every single day except the last. The last day nobody made the ferry shuttle because the shuttle broke down. A person had to be flown in from the mainland with the parts. But if the shuttle had been running, I would have been there on time. Everybody made it on the ferry on time all three days — I’m sure due to the sheer power of Cat’s willing us on board.

Island Wools

The first day started a little later, to give us all time to recover from our journey the day before. The inter-island ferry is an absolutely charming mode of transport. It’s a smallish ferry, and obviously well loved. Many of the tables hold half-worked jigsaw puzzles brought on board by commuters who work them during their regular journey. We took over one end of the ferry, which included a large area with seats on the sides that was perfect for a class, with tables available for overflow. You can see one of the puzzles in the first picture on the table to the far left. The table on the right was usually laden with goodies, lest we become faint from hunger and no longer able to wield needles and yarn. The first day, lunch was catered and included one of the best chicken salads I’ve ever had. And Cat brought home-made cookies that were just awesome and I think helped more than one knitter make it through the throes of unfamiliar knitting techniques.

Lucy taught on day 1. Lucy is nutty and fun and I learned a ton from her about double knitting and other techniques. As I said before, I’m planning on a pair of socks with little pockets. I love the pocket for a Nano idea. Of course I still need to get a Nano. But I see one in my future.

Pocket for a camera card is another good idea, though. In all of the vacations I’ve taken my camera on, I don’t think I’ve ever either recharged it or had to swap batteries, although I always carry one. And I can snap a lot of pictures before I need to swap cards. I don’t think I’ve every had to do that, either. I really do like my camera.

We floated around and double-knit until the ferry made its rounds a couple of times and arrived back at Friday Harbor in time for dinner. We ate in town at a fish-n-chips place that I would not recommend. It was the only food in the whole trip that I could truly say was fairly horrible.

After dinner, we all shopped at Island Wools, a charming little shop with tons of yarn - several of which I haven’t seen down here much. I showed admirable restraint by limiting myself to just a couple of skeins of Maizy (sock yarn from corn — whodda thunk it?) in Miami Nice (great name). Tricia and I went back on the afternoon of the third day, and I realized that there were a few other little things I needed, like one of the Lantern Moon black sheep measuring tapes.

Orcas Island and the Orcas Hotel

Day two was the long day. We caught the early ferry for a day of sock knitting with Cat. I started a pair of baby booties, and worked a little bit on the Coriolis socks. You can see the booties in the last picture. Cat is a fun teacher. She tells stories that really help one remember the techniques. I think I finally get why dividing the rpi into the number of stitches around the instep gives the length of the foot after the instep. I think. Just don’t ask me to explain it.

At Orcas Island we gathered up our belongings and disembarked for a wonderful lunch at the Orcas Hotel. We took over one whole dining room, and the Hotel served a wonderful sandwich and soup buffet.

I realize that this is starting to degenerated into a foodie description. But, really, this was what it was like: knit and eat and knit some more and have a little snack and knit and time for a meal and knit. Really.

I continued to work on the baby booties as we floated around Puget Sound on our little ferry. The ferry only made four stops: Friday Harbor, Orcas Island, Shaw Island and Lopez Island. We saw each multiple times, but never walked off at Shaw or Lopez. They look like nice islands, though. Perhaps another time I can visit them as well.

The baby booties are double-layered, but not double-knit. (hmmm… it occurs to me now that it might have been fun to try that!) I used Seasilk left over from LT’s moebius for the inner sock, and some Jaeger Trinity picked up at Island Wools for the outer sock. The Trinity has very little give in it and is very grabby. Knitting it on wooden needles was not as easy as I had hoped. My gauge was also a little wonky. But here’s hoping for a baby with rather large feet.

After some discussion about where to head for dinner, Tricia, myself and several others just ended up at the hotel. I had soup (very good) and salad (mostly cheese). We turned in early. Knitting is hard work.

blooming tea

The final day was a short knitting day. Cat explored moebius knitting with those who were interested. The rest of us kept knitting socks. Lunch was catered on board — chicken salad wraps. It was yummy. And there were Cat’s cookies to snack on, lest we become faint, etc.

We arrived back at Friday Harbor early in the afternoon. Tricia and I did a little shopping at Island Wools, where we were given directions to the best beach on the island.

Then we walked down the block to a gourmet kitchen shop — sorry but I don’t remember the name of it — where I did a bit of damage to my wallet. Oh, there was a lot of wonderful things there! I found a fig-hazelnut butter. And chalk licorice - a treat we had enjoyed on board - think Good & Plenty for adults. And they had some blooming tea, so I was able to procure some after having seen it on Bobbie’s blog and thinking I just had to have some. It’s so pretty. One of the knitters told a wonderful story about the beauty of blooming tea and some hard-bitten ranch hands that I will not attempt to repeat because I’m sure I would not be able to do it justice. I am enjoying mine a great deal. I’m so glad that I had a clear tea pot for it to bloom in. I’m not sure what the mermaid on my trivet thinks of having a very hot teapot balance on some tender portions of her anatomy. She looks a little surprised. But hopefully she is enjoying the beauty.

After buying out the gourmet shop, we drove all the way around San Juan island. Our first stop was at American Camp. As well as relating some of the history of the area and the best place to see, the ranger told us the scenic route to Roche Harbor — dirt roads, but good dirt roads. And it was a beautiful drive from there up to Lime Kiln Point. We visited the lighthouse there and stretched our legs.

Wescott Bay Sculture Park

From Lime Kiln Point, we drove up to Roche Harbor. We passed the alpaca farm, but since it was after 5:00 we didn’t stop, figuring that they were probably closed. I think we figured wrong, unfortunately, But we did enjoy looking at what’s left of the lime factory in Roche Harbor and at the old buildings. And the new condos and retail buildings that are springing up everywhere.

On the way back we stopped at the Wescott Bay Sculpture Park. It’s several acres of sculptures — over 100, I think. They are just scattered around in the field, in amongst waist-high grass and weeds. There are paths mowed through the field, though, so it’s possible to walk around and look at the art. I was particularly struck by the object in the picture above. I believe it’s called Feathered Phoenix, but I could be mistaken. All of those gears and arms and such move in the wind so that it’s constantly in motion and revolving and changing. I took a little movie of it also, because the thing was just fascinating. There were many other lovely sculptures, too. We didn’t get around the whole field because it started to rain, so we packed it in.

On the way back to town, we saw Mona the camel.

Dinner was at a very nice restaurant right next to the ferry terminal, where we all met as a group. We were joined by Cat’s daughter, Jenny, and grandson, Charlie. Cat was very much the proud mother and doting grandma — as she should be because Jenny is a lovely young woman and Charlie is a cute as a button.

The next morning Tricia and I were up extra early and got in line for the ferry back to Anacortes just in time to make it on. We stopped at Wild Fibers in Mt. Vernon on the way home, and I scored some very nice sock yarn that I will tell you about at another time.

And now you are up to date. Since arriving home, as well as fighting technology I have finished the baby booties I started on the ferry. I’m fairly pleased with the results. Hopefully the intended recipient will be as well.

Rowan Margaret’s Silken Slippers

The Particulars:

• Yarn:
  • Inner slippers: Sea Silk (70% silk, 30% Sea Cell / 100g, 400m per skein) in colorway Rose Garden a tiny bit of a skein left over from another project.
  • Outer slippers: Jaeger Trinity (40% silk, 35% cotton, 25% polyamide / 50g, 200m per skein) in colorway 431 (Sage)
• Needles: one pair 24″ Addi Lace, US#2 (inner); one pair 16″ Clover Bamboo, US#3 (outer)
• Pattern: Rowan Margaret’s Silken Slippers from New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One by Cat Bordhi
• Modification to pattern: None. I actually followed the pattern as written. My gauge is a little different than Cat’s, though, and my slippers turned out bigger.