The Colour of Mist, a fairly simple lace pattern

As promised in my last post, a free pattern for this luscious lace scarf.  If you find any discrepancies or inaccuracies in the pattern, please do let me know.

It is written, not charted, and lends itself to different weights of yarn and needle sizes.  The trickiest part of the pattern is the “knit three together” — don’t knit too tightly, or you’ll never manage that part.

Download the PDF here.

The colour of mist, and soft as a cloud

Hot off the needles is this lace scarf that is just the most amazingly indulgent angora luxury.  I’ll write up the pattern in a day or two and post it here as a freebie (I’ll link to it in Ravelry, too).  Meanwhile, the scarf itself is for sale on Etsy.

The lace pattern is a fairly easy knit, but makes a lovely design, twining down the length of the scarf in two winding vines.  The ends are softly scalloped, adding another mark of uniqueness to this scarf.

Now, I must get my knitting act together (i.e., take some pictures, write up some patterns), and de-languish here!

Frank’s been after me to get painting (I haven’t really done anything since we sold the house back in November).  It’s surprisingly hard to just sit down and paint when I’ve been away from it for so long.  However, I did manage to find the right headspace and break the dam with this picture of a bit of the Louisiana prairie.  On my painting table right now I’ve got a half-finished knife painting of a spot in Norway which I may or may not get done in time to send in to The Virtual Paintout — short deadline at this point!  In any case, it feels good to get messing about with paint again….

"Louisiana Prairie", 9 x 12" acrylic on board

Under the pier at Myrtle Beach

Now that my life is getting more settled again, it’s time to get back to blogging.  Since I last wrote, we moved out of the house and have finally hit the road in our new home.  Frank and I have a travelblog set up at artfulvagabonds where we’ll put most of the travel stuff.  I’ll be back here with painting and knitting and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Just a quick note about where in the world I am:  near Dillon, South Carolina.  We were hoping to be out of the snowbelt by now, but it actually snowed here this morning (although it didn’t stay on the ground at all).  After the warm sunshine we had at Myrtle Beach on Sunday, the cold winds and snow have been less appreciated.  Maybe these hospitable South Carolinians are just trying to make us feel at home….

You know how sometimes you can be so wrong about stuff?  We arrived at 3:20, somehow managed to find a parking spot, and headed for the end of the line, which was by that time a good long way out on the sidewalk of the rec centre where the clinic was being held.  About an hour later, we made it to the building’s door and took our numbers (mine is in the photo above, and I do believe that they really *did* start with 001).

Around 5:00 we decided to go to a nearby sushi place for supper and resume our lining-up after that (by this time the organizers were encouraging people to do that — well, not specifically to eat sushi, but to leave and return a few hours later).  As you can see from the sign above, the clinic was to run from 2:30 to 8:30.  The buzz in the line was that at around 3:30 they started turning people away because they realized they’d never get through them all in time.  We got our shots at around 8:45, and there were still plenty of people behind us. Clinics were set up in a few different places around the city, and the story was much the same at all of them.

I’m so glad that we now have our shots, and don’t have to worry about that as we travel around.  I’m so glad that we live in a place that has enough vaccine for anyone who wants the inoculation (so they say, at any rate), and gives it away for free.  I’m so glad that, in spite of the long waits, almost everyone in the line-up (including all the little kids, who certainly had reasons to get cranky) stayed in good spirits for the whole five or six hour wait.  I’m so glad that the people working the clinic were willing to stay several hours later than they’d planned so that everyone could get their shots.  All that *and* sushi.  Not the way I’d envisioned spending my Monday afternoon and evening, and I have to say that I was quite happy to finally get home at about 9:30, but, all in all, a much better experience than it might have been.

We hardly got used to the "For Sale" sign....

We’ve long been planning to sell our house, buy a fifth-wheel and travel around the States and Canada, painting and photographing to our hearts’ content.  We finally took matters in hand and listed the house on Oct. 16th, and on Oct. 17th we had the house sold.  Whew.  Still makes my head spin!

Our last day here is Nov. 20th, so we are frantically packing (house, barn and workshop), rounding up storage, looking at potential trucks and trailers, sorting out how we’re going to have internet access while we’re on the road, figuring out where we want to actually *go* and in what order, and just generally getting ready for a year or so of travelling.

I’m *so* looking forward to having this in-between bit behind us, and the open road in front of us….

A view from the road

Last weekend my friend Elisabeth had to deliver two llamas to a farm in Quebec’s Eastern Townships (about a four and a half hour drive from her place), so, hoping to get some photos of spectacular fall colours, I went with her.  The colours weren’t at their peak yet, but the rolling hills and fields are scenic at any time of year.  It was a very windy day, so by the time the colour is at its finest, there may not be any leaves left on the trees, anyway!

This is Camilla, who didn't know yet that we were bringing her two new friends

I took quite a few photos and will put them into my “painting ideas” folder for future reference.  I knit an entire scarf on the drive.  Elisabeth bought me a yummy lunch at St. Hubert (a chicken restaurant chain) and fed me pastry and pumpkin pie back at her place.  We passed by “Le Ranch de Spaghetti” in Magog — haven’t you ever wondered where spaghetti is grown?  (And if they harvest it early, is it spaghettini?  If they leave it in the fields longer, does it grow into lasagna noodles?)  We marvelled at the price of gas in Quebec (about twenty cents a litre more than here in Ontario).

Tiffany and Hot Chocolate in their new home

I brought home some more of Elisabeth’s custom-spun yarn (can’t remember whether it’s llama or alpaca), and will be making another hat like Amelia’s.  I’ll write down what I do this time, so that I can share the pattern.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend away from it all.  Thank you, Elisabeth!

???

Some time ago, a friend who knows I knit gave me her late mother’s knitting needles.  The needles were in a box along with a few other, presumably craft-related items.  There is an old wooden-handled pattern tracing wheel, a French Ivory-handled button hook, some bodkins and sail-maker’s and glover’s needles — those things I could identify.  The “Pic-Pic Needles” luckily came with instructions (they are for needlepunch embroidery), so no mystery there.

The items in the photo, however, have me baffled.  Well, I think the wooden thing in the bottom right of the picture must be a sort of darning egg.  It’s made in Belgium according to the stamp, and a size 3.

What is the long latchet-hook for?  The hook itself is quite fine, like that of a knitting machine needle.  The two-eyed item in the top centre of the photo is three inches long, and the eyes don’t lie quite flat; one is slightly angled in relation to the other.  The two cone-shaped things show two sides of the same thing (and I have 11 of them!).  Are they for making some sort of fabric eding?  Why would one need 11 of them?

I’d be grateful for any ideas about what these things are….

The challenge ingredients

Every now and then, Frank (my husband) likes to set me a cooking challenge.  Since I love to cook, I enjoy this a lot.  Sort of Iron Chef Ottawa, without any competition.  Frank buys what he figures are weird and wonderful ingredients, and I make a meal out of them. The rules are that I can add whatever I like, but can’t omit any of what he picked out.  Yesterday he chose the following: wonton wrappers, a celery root, a papaya, some jalapeno peppers, a can of water chestnuts, a can of lily buds, and some stewing beef.

I really wasn’t sure about the lily buds (I’ve never tried them before), but I was familiar with everything else.  I let the list of ingredients marinate in my head overnight, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Today I hauled out the food processor and began.  First I made a papaya relish (papaya, green onion, jalapenos, a squeeze of lime and a clove of garlic all pulsed together into a slightly chunky sauce).  Then I cleaned out the processor bowl and shredded the celery root and a small white turnip.  Mixed them together with a dressing made of mayonnaise, lemon juice, a little salt and pepper, and a bit of milk to thin it out to the proper consistency — voila, celery root slaw.

Everything ready to serve: wontons on the left, beef in the background, slaw in the blue bowl and papaya relish at the front

I shredded up a little green cabbage and fried it together with the lily buds (which were very salty and otherwise pretty tasteless), some Tian Jin preserved vegetable (salty, garlicky dried cruciferous veggie of some sort) and some chopped pickled ginger (the sushi kind) and a bit of hoisin sauce.  Once everything was soft and wilted, I stuffed the wonton wrappers with it, and fried the wontons in a lightly oiled pan.  I figured that the freshness and sweetness of the papaya relish would be a nice foil to the salty, fried wontons.  I braised the beef in a little water and Worcestershire sauce, and added the water chestnuts near the end of the cooking time.  Served with some brown rice, it was all pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Plated and ready for the table

What I’d do differently: I don’t think I’d bother with the lily buds again; they added salt and a little texture, but I would go with fresh bean sprouts — cheaper and probably healthier.  I’d undercook the beef a bit; I left it too long while waiting for the rice to cook, and it was a tad chewy.  I’m not a big beef fan and don’t cook it very often, so my inexperience was against me here.  I’d add more pepper to the papaya relish — these particular jalapenos were much milder than some others I’ve had from the same grocer.  A little more heat would have brightened up the flavour.  On the whole, though, I was pleased with how everything turned out.  Frank seemed to be, as well, and is looking forward to having leftover wontons with relish for supper tonight.