more domestic

There is nothing like small projects to restore your confidence, your inspiration, and your general interest in life around you. This last month - October - was so difficult as I struggled to re-enter my usual cycle of days and occupations after a month on the west coast with my far-flung family and new family members. Work responsibilities, phone calls from friends, my bf's lovely dogs... nothing was sinking its hooks into my heart and I felt restless, sleepless, and dissatisfied.

Some months ago when I was at a loose end, my friend Briley had suggested "small projects". His advice came back to me, so for the past four weeks I've concentrated on finishing those little WIPs and starting up fast-moving fiber snacks - hats, the long-neglected second sock, the final rows of a project never completed. This project is one of those results:

More Domestic
Fine Cotton Dish Towel


Each towel: 2 balls Filatura de Crosi Millifili Fine or Filatura de Crosi Dolce Amore, 100% mercerized cotton

Needles: Size 5 (3.75 mm) straights

Directions

Cast on 56 sts, leaving a tail twice the width of the towel (you will use this to sew down the picot edge later).
Knit 5 rows in stockinette stitch. You will end with a wrong side (WS) row.
Next row: Knit 2 together, Yarn Over. Repeat across row.
Knit 5 rows in stockinette stitch. You will end with a wrong side (WS) row.

Begin Pattern:
Row 1: Knit 5 stitches, (Knit 1, yarn foward, slip 1 purlwise, yarn back as if to knit) repeat to last 5 stiches, knit 5.
Row 2: Knit 5, purl across to last 5 stitches, Knit 5.
Row 3: Knit 5, (yarn foward, slip 1 purlwise, yarn back as if to knit, knit 1) repeat across to last 5 stitches, knit 5.
Row 4: Knit 5, purl across to last 5 stitches, Knit 5.

Repeat these four rows for 5 inches, then change to stockinette stitch, keeping the five edging stitches at beginning and end of each row.

When the towel is the almost the length you like, repeat the Pattern for 5 inches, then repeat the 11 rows of the beginning picot edge. Bind off fairly loosely, leaving a tail twice the width of the towel.

Finishing: Fold the beginning and ending edges at the Yarn Over row and neatly sew the edge down on the wrong size of the towel, using the tails of yarn attached. Weave in ends.

Fini

These cotton towels are soft immediately, but will get more soft and more absorbent with use. That's the nature of this beautiful, fine gauge, vibrant cotton yarn. I love the colours it comes in. Sadly, my LYS has discontinued stocking it so I'll have to find an alternate source but it's well worth it.

Finishing this project marked my re-entry into my east coast life. I immediately felt that gratification that only a quick project that results in an item that is lovely way beyond its effort of creation can give. I smiled. I looked forward to other, more complicated projects. I made plans for the future.

Holiday knitting. Ahhh... that's the ticket!

On another note, if you're on Ravelry, we are all gearing up for the 2010 Ravelympics - that wonderful time when we join a team and challenge ourselves to complete an entire project within the confines of the broadcast winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics in 2010 span February 12 to the 28th, so... not many days, but oh so fun!!

I am a co-captain of Team Blue Moon, and all of our projects, both knit and crochet, will be made out Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarns. We already have 50 team members. Blue Moon has given us permission to use the BMFA logo in our Team Ravatar and, in that email, Tina - the dyer extrodinaire of Blue Moon - asked an innocent little question that sent my heart soaring: "Do we need a colourway for this?" Oh, my! Imagine - a Ravelympics colourway! Stay tuned, because you know if this does happen, that colourway will show up here on my blog!



If you want to join the Ravelympics - and I sincerely hope you do - the official group is Ravelympics 2010. In the Team lists of that group, you will find many Team threads, including Team Blue Moon, our official team thread. Do you want to be team member 51?

Home Comforts

Tonight's post is about home comforts in all their forms: warmth, sustenance, and art (if I can call my needlework an art)...



When I was young, I lived with an elderly great aunt, the younger sister of my grandmother, and her (much) younger husband. My great aunt came from a quieter age - she was 80 to 90 when I lived with her, passing away when I was in my teens. She lived on a beautiful estate with rolling lawns that touched the water on one side, and encompassed an old forest on the other. She had a big barn and kept chickens and loved each one, even the sickly picked-on ones. My job was to feed them and to gather the eggs each day. She had a small garden and a large stand of raspberry bushes. She made the best raspberry jelly in the entire world - storing it like captured rubies in clear glasses topped with parafin wax.

Auntie had a wonderful old stove that I think had been her mother-in-law's - and since it worked so well, she saw no reason to replace it. While homes around her graduated to gas stoves and then electric, she continued to cook marvelously on a combination wood and oil stove, with pressure water heater. This is what I learned to cook on. For small baking or in summer, when she didn't want to heat the house with a strong wood fire in the oven, a tin box with shelves was placed on top of the stove. The temperature of the actual oven was calculated by sticking your flat hand inside (not touching the sides of course) and testing how warm the heat felt on your hand - if it was a "slow" oven (250 - 300 degrees) or a "moderate" oven (325 - 375), or a "fast" oven (400 - 475). I'm still quite good at this and can tell the temperature of my Glenwood Gas Range by the feel. There is no comfort like the warmth of a wood stove in the kitchen (especially when potatoes are cooking in a pan on top)...

From the Home Comfort Cookbook, 1864:



"To keep a cake fresh for several weeks, take it from the oven and, while still hot, pack it completely in brown sugar."

"Broken bits of licorice sprinkled about pantry shelves, will banish red ants."

"The lid of a teapot should always be left so that the air may get in. This prevents mustiness."

"Have in your kitchen a cheap office stool to sit on when ironing or washing dishes; this will prevent backache and tired feet."

New England Tart

Prepare and bake a crust of plain or flake paste as for pie. Use 2 cups cold dry apple-sauce, or fresh apple-sauce cooked with as little water as possible; press through a sieve before measuring; add 2 cups cream, 3 beaten egg yolks, and mix, adding 1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and salt; add 1 cup sugar, more or less, to properly sweeten; spread in paste shell, and bake filling in moderate oven; when partially cooled, cover with meringue made of the 3 egg whites and granulated sugar, and brown top in oven.

Maple Butter Tea Sandwiches

Prepare a filling by creaming one cup light brown sugar with one or two tablespoons butter and further reducing to an easily-spreading mixture with maple syrup. Spread on thinly sliced brown bread and cut into shapes with a tin biscuit cutter or a sugared glass rim.

Pear Omelet

For each omelet, beat 3 eggs with 3 tablespoons milk until combined, and season with salt and pepper; have a teaspoon melted butter or fat in hot frying pan; pour in eggs and gently shake pan to spread mixture to size and distribute thin portion while cooking; just as top is becoming well set, lay a half pear that has been previously canned in sugar syrup on one half of omelet, folding other half over it. When browned on bottom, serve on hot plate. Other fruits may be substituted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found more comfort this week curling up on the couch with my hot water bottle to soothe my aching belly. I finished a cover for the bottle yesterday, and it will be traveling in the post to my sister soon. Making it gave me many pleasant hours.

Reverse the Curse
by UnravelingSophia
http://www.UnravelingSophia.blogspot.com
C 2008 All Rights Reserved



This pattern can now be found on ravelry:

Washy

This is what happens when somebody asks me to make them washcloths! Meet...
Washy a happy bright little softy, abrasive only in the best way....



Washy is made from Tahki Stacy Charles' new yarn called "Party" - a loopy baby yarn in cotton blend. I used size 9 needles, as recommended on the ball band, and a simple garter stitch. The embroidery is done with cotton yarns.

Party comes in 91 yard balls and I used about two-thirds of the one ball I bought. I got mine at Patternworks. They have a website: www.patternworks.com if you want to invite some Washys into your own house.

Other face cloths completed over the post-Christmas break:



1. a gold sunburst

2. a lavender garter stitch ribbing

3. a vareigated magenta feather and fan stitch

4. a bright orange garter stich with eyelet edge



All of these cloths were made from Filata diCrosi Millefili Fine mercerized cotton - my favorite cotton yarn (I've even knit socks from this!). Patterns 1 and 3 can be found by searching Ravelry patterns. Patterns 2 and 4 were my own spur-of-the-moment invention.

I'm now happily busy making dish towels for this same person (my little sister), at her request:


I hope these match her kitchen!