spinnity knits

Greek Oregano Feta Salad

2012-06-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters,

It's true, the last past on this blog was dated Feb 28, 2011. Which is pitiful. Think about those 18 months of lost crafty details, wash! But here I am back from the silence.

In knitting / crafting, I took some great classes recently - cotton spinning and grass twined basketry at the Conference of Northern California Handweavers and Carin Engen's Nuno Felted Scarves class at Yarn Dogs. I'll link some photos here so I can record the awesomeness of the felted scarf class, but this post is about food.

Bill and I are enjoying a "Summer of Fruit", harvesting harvesting apricots, blackberries, cherries and blueberries from a friend's yard over the past two weeks. One of the "extras" we've been able to gather from our friend is an amazingly soft, fresh, abundant oregano. We use it to make our favorite Greek Oregano Feta Salad, per the recipe from chef Jonathan from the old Two Small Farms newsletter.

So this post is prompted by my need to record the salad recipe for my own future reference, and also to share with Jasmine. Here goes:

Greek Oregano Feta Salad, from Chef Jonathan

from the Two Small Farms newsletter, 6/10/09

Here's a very simple Greek salad idea - and do take the time to ice your red onions. You'll be shocked how delicious they turn out. Thinly slice half a red onion and put it in a bowl of ice water. Set aside while you make the rest of the salad. A simple vinaigrette goes like this: juice of 1 lemon, a few splashes of white wine vinegar, a tablespoon of minced shallot, a bit of chopped oregano, salt and pepper. Mix those ingredients, then whisk in some Greek olive oil until you achieve the balance you prefer. Check again for salt and pepper. Toss your torn or chopped romaine with a little bit of dressing then top the salad with your drained red onion, some kalamata olives, more oregano (whole leaves at this point), some feta (in whole slices or crumbled), and if you can find cucumbers or tomatoes now, add them too. Yummy!

We're eating this salad tonight for the third time in ten days, thanks to the Summer of Fruit. I am still in love with the way the lemon, oregano, and feta turn an ordinary romaine salad into a fantastic summer treat.

More blogging to come, assuming i can get back on this horse. Happy knitting, everyone.

Emma socks :: done!

2011-02-28T10:01:00.001-08:00

Emma socks :: done!
Originally uploaded by spinnity

W00t! I finally finished my knee socks from last year's Sock Madness over the weekend. April 2010 to Feb 2011 - but now they're done. I adore the cable detail right where the little flag-thingies would be on kilt hose and I like the swoopy feet.

The wrinkling at the back of the heel is a reminder of why you should not make your heel flaps too long. Learn your lesson well from my example. But wrinkly ankles be damned - I have red knee socks!

A gift from Stitches West 2011

2011-02-26T15:12:00.001-08:00

2011 Stitches West: Tools
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi Knitters,

Went to Stitches last week - saw so, so many friends, took two good classes, bought bunches of books, and received a very thoughtful gift. Have a look at the photos on Flickr to see the detailed captions & notes on what I got and learned.

[list of photos coming in a sec]

Best surprise of all was the new ball winder that Bill secretively bought with the help of many advisers on the show floor Sunday. Anyone who already owns the standard blue-and-white plastic ball winder knows its limitations. Mine has been in use 20 years now, and tends to skip a few gears, making rather sketchy looking yarn cakes. The new ball winder is much sturdier, rests better on the dresser where I have it mounted, and makes a lovely cake.

I've employed it already to cake up one of my three hanks of handspun, so I can start swatching for a garter stitch sweater based on the Elkhart pattern and color-coordinated Kauni I got from the Ruhama booth. Thanks to everyone who helped make this purchase, especially to seltsame, for very sound advice on the choice. I guess it takes a village to buy a ball winder!

Emma knee socks, 11 months later

2011-02-12T13:30:00.001-08:00

SM4: Emma cable motif
By spinnity

Yes, knee socks. It's a lot of knitting, but not 11 months' worth. The decision making slowed me down. Here's the story:

These knees socks knocked me out of the Sock Madness 4 contest last year in ... May? I think? Sock Madness is a speed knitting contest, with a rule that the socks must follow the pattern exactly. I love the audacity of knitting these super-tall socks at speed, but my heart was not committed to all the design elements. The back-of-leg decreases in the pattern looked messy when I executed them and other knitters' photos of the feet raised questions about the swooping ribs and the fit of the toe. I was relieved to knocked out of the contest by a speedier knitter just as I arrived at the ankles, to be cut loose from strictly following the pattern.

After a suitable rest, I picked them up last summer, ripped out 8 inches of decrease to the cable motif and changed the decrease style to keep a nice straight rib down the center back. I also shifted to size 0 / 2 mm needles for a snugger rib. I made it down to the ankles, where I stopped to decide how to deal with the feet. And there they languished for 8 months. Poor Emmas.

SM4 : Emma socks, 11 months later
By spinnity

But spring and a new Sock Madness are in the air this week and I'm inspired again. Not to mention i need something cool to wear to Stitches West next week -- why not bright red knee socks?. Dug the Emma socks out of hibernation and took them to knitting guild, where my panel of experts agreed that the feet on other photos did not look easy to execute neatly.

Proposed solution: Use the feet from Cookie A's Millicent socks. I like the way the ribs move across the foot better and the fit of the Millicent toe looks better to me as well.

Now that I have a plan, I'm making good progress - 3 inches of ankle and heel flap in two days (working both socks at once). I have hope of finishing in time for my spinning class at Stitches. Six hours of treadling in bright red knee socks sounds like immense fun to me!

Hat, scarf, and a swirl of Christmas

2010-12-05T17:03:00.001-08:00

Handspun Aspen Leaf hat
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters!

Wanted to share a few recent knitted objects, since I have been so terribly absent from my usual knitting groups over the past six months. Since Thanksgiving, I've invented a hat out of my own handspun yarn, from a very sparkly batt by Susan's Kitchen called "Bananarama Two"

Knitting this hat feels pretty significant to me, since it was done entirely by my design, using yarn I spun myself. Whoa! I tend to balk at spinning with my precious, coveted, scarce handspun -- what if I get it wrong?? -- and I don't often knit out of my own head. Anyway, I did it! I had to try several different styles for the crown of the hat before settling on this turning-ridge and centered decreases approach. And I love the hat, with its sparkly yellow and green yarn. It's like a banana for my head. A banana slug for my head? With leaves! :-)

Oh, and big thanks to Margit Sage for both the original batt and the idea to put "something, maybe a leaf" at the top of the hat for a more unique look. It's so sweet that Margit was present at both ends of this project!

Mohair honeycomb

In another bold and unexpected move, I have finished a scarf from yarn bought at Stitches 2010 - and that has to be some kind of record!

Also this weekend, I added the stuffing and seamed up a new swirl ball which I will present at the December 2010 knitting guild meeting, this coming Thursday at 7 pm at Yarn Dogs Annex - it's all about the short rows!

And last on the weekend update... I also managed to scoot over to Bobbin's Nest Studio to nab a copy of Cookie's new Knit. Sock. Love. book, signed by herself. I'm so glad Janice posted about the book & the event - it's sort of thrilling to think of Our Old S-n-B Gang now as book authors and editors.

I've missed you all and I'm trying to extract myself from work so I can come to more of the Meetups and maybe even a Bobaknit or two. I *think* I will be at Meetup on the third Wednesday in Campbell. Hope to see at least a few of my long-lost knitting pals there or at the December 9th Knitting Guild session.

Tour de Fleece 2010 - my first sock weight yarn!

2010-07-14T00:54:00.001-07:00

Ready to ply
By spinnity

Hi knitters,

Been quiet on this channel - but I had to share my first sock weight yarn, plied this afternoon on Margot's sunny deck with vultures circling overhead.

These are the three bobbins of merino superwash which I spun from roving dyed by Janice Kang for my birthday. It was some of Janice's very first dye work, and now it has been plied into my very first sock-weight yarn. I *think* it's both soft enough and firm enough to count as sock yarn, and I'm tempted to knit socks out of it. Janice - I hope you like the yarn I made out of your fabulous, generous gift of your very first creative work in color!

I spun these bobbins over the last 10 days as part of the Tour de Fleece, which is a spinning challenge that asks spinners to spin something every day that the Tour de France is riding. I've missed two days so far, but spinning 8 out of the last 10 days is way above my normal production - hence the three full bobbins!

My plan for this yarn was to divide the roving lengthwise into three sections, and then strip down two of the sections into about 20 width-wise strips each and spin the third one in just four strips. This should give a 5-to-1 beat of the thinner strips (which make shorter spun lengths of color) against the fatter strips, and in theory might turn out sort of interesting. Right?

In the photo at the top, the outer bobbins are the thin strip bobbins and the middle one shows the long color runs that came from my widest strips.

Plied!
By spinnity

Here's plied yarn (iPhone photo... focus was not great this close up in the sunset light. More photos coming from my hostess!) You can see that there are quite long stretches of one color - orange being the most visible in this view - and the other plies dance around making different color relationships to the long run color.

Next up on the Tour de Fleece, I invited Margot to come over tomorrow and see my fleece sorting & washing in progress. So I guess there had better be some fleece sorting by the time she gets here! And the next lot of fiber I want to tackle is a gift from the Fiber Fiend of a wild & crazy batt she bought from an indie dyer / carder in yellow with sparkly things in. Tune in next week for more news of the Tour de Fleece chez spinnity.

Edited to add: Margot took some photos of me plyiing, including much better photos of the yarn in progress - have a look at my Flickr Tour de Fleece set.

The Madness that is March

2010-03-30T13:11:00.001-07:00

Spring Beans with a friend

Hi knitters!

It's March (what? It's still March, until Thursday) and there's so much going on.!

Somehow after a lull in January and February, the stirrings of spring seem to kick everything into sudden high gear. This month I've managing to fold at least four kinds of madness into my schedule - Sock Madness, the NCAA tournament's March Madness, preparations for Easter and "scouting" for our 2010 Birdathon. Along the way, I have been knitting some *amazing* socks that I just have to share.

Sock Madness was the first form of madness to spring up. This is the third year I've competed in the Sock Madness. I never do very well, but I enjoy the challenge. The idea is that 4 "brackets" of sock knitters receive a brand new pattern at the same time and try to speed-knit the socks according to the pattern faster than the other members of their bracket. There are multiple rounds of sock patterns released, and smaller numbers of sock knitters are allowed through on each round - sort of like the basketball tournament, though you are not competing one-on-one. It's more more like the Olympic qualifying runs, where winning in your group lets you through to the next round.

Crazy like a Fox socks

In the past, I've sometimes managed to make it to the third round of Sock Mandess and I've knit some of my very favorite socks doing it.

This year, for Sock Madness 4, we "played in" by knitting the first pattern to prove we were serious - and I got to knit these beautiful side-to-side socks knit in Crazy Zauberball, color 1702 "Little Fox", using borrowed US size 0 needles from Dee Dee (thank you, dahlinks!)Pattern is "Simple Side-to-Side Socks" by MtMom and it took me 13 days to knit both socks. Slow, slow, slow!

Spring Beans and moss

Round two is a delightful pattern called Cool Beans by the Yarn Yenta, Heatherly Walker. I am using one of my very, very favorite yarns - Hazel Knits Artisan Sock - using springy green Euphorbia for the background and rich, flavorful Chocolatier for the beans. I'm calling mine "Spring Beans"

We started Round 2 on Friday, March 26 at 2 am. Well, I didn't. I started at 9:30 am and have been knitting away. Over the weekend, the sock-in-progress got a tour of all my other kinds of madness.
First, there was late-night basketball (thank you, Tivo!) on Friday.

On Saturday, we loaded the birding gear into the car and went off to explore the wilds of south Santa Clara County to look for sandpipers, pilieated woodpeckers and rufous-crowned sparrows. I even took the sock to choir practice on Sunday morning - no photos there, though.

Madness @ Uvas

The best photos came from hauling the sock from one county park to another on Saturday. I love the one at the top of this post where we managed to pose the sock with a denizen of the local hills - the Banana Slug! Go back & look at how slimy he is. Eeewww! But my favorite is this command-performance "Sunset & sock knitting at Uvas Canyon Reservoir" photo by Bill Walker

For this shot, I asked for a lot. I wanted a photo that showed me, knitting my sock, at the lakeshore, leaning on the trusty Subaru, with my birding regalia visible AND the lake, the hillside and the moon in the sky. Hah! Bill came through, as always. I even like the way I look in this photo. It's the perfect momento of the Sock Madness blending into the Birdathon Madness.

Spring Beans - one sock done

I'm still working away on the Spring Bean socks - number one is fnished and I have to knit like the wind to stay in the competition, while birding, Easter, and basketball all swirl around me. Let the Madness continue!

Knitting Olympics :: A Debt of Honor

2010-02-16T21:11:00.001-08:00

Cobblestone sleeve #1
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters, How's your winter going? I've been pretty scattered, dividing my energy into too many things to do any of them really well. (As anyone who looked at my UFO Smackdown photo could have told you. Final score: 3 of 8. Not a passing grade. And the Fiber Fiend's Corsica [Rav link] is moving into the final stages slowly, slowly.)

I see two issues holding me back from actually finishing stuff: "judging" my work to be less than what I want and plain old follow-through. I get these ideas, but then they don't turn into action. I think that's why I got such a thrill when I saw that the Yarn Harlot is running her Olympic challenge again this year.

For you non-knitters, the idea is to take on a personal challenge that will be tough for you to complete in the 17 days of the 2010 Winter Olympics and then work intensely on that one thing until it is done. Great chance to really sink into one thing and make it happen. And the timeline means you have to get past the judging and just *do* it .

I had planned to knit a sweater for myself - and I had a couple of patterns picked out as possible candidates. But two weeks ago, I realized that I could use this challenge to honor the man who encourages me in everything I do. I am knitting a Brooklyn Tweed [Rav link] for my dearest husband. Because there is no one in the universe who appreciates a hand-knitted gift more than Bill.

I have a total of 17 days to finish the challenge - 12 left after today. Cobblestone will take 13 balls of yarn to finish and I've knit three so far, using the long holiday weekend to make a good start on the project. The Cobblestone starts with manageable sleeves, which are small tubes knit on DPNs, and I'm nearly done with that bit. [And Bill has enthusiastically tried those sleeves on over and over again. So far, they fit!]

Tomorrow I'll be moving into the long rows in the middle of the project, where I expect slower progress for about 4 or 5 days until I get into the yoke part, where the shorter and shorter rows will send me rushing towards the finish line. I still think I can hit the mark and finish in time for Olympic gold, but even if this sweater stretches on past the closing ceremonies, the finished object will be loved by the recipient and I will have discharged at least part of my debt of honor to my beloved.

Scarves & BSJ's

2009-09-10T04:58:00.001-07:00

Squeee! It's a BSJ!
Photo by spinnity

Hi Knitters,

Hey, is August over already? It's getting sort of chilly around the house and I'm starting to change into yoga pants instead of shorts when I get home from work. (Yes, like Mr. Rogers, I have indoor and outdoor clothing.)

The end of August was my deadline for a pair of Baby Surprise Jacekts I am knitting. What was it Douglas Adams said? "I love deadlines, I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

So it's true - and predictably the deadline whooshed by last week and my two sweaters are not totally done. Boy BSJ is nearly there - as the photo demonstrates. There's just a bit of cuffery, I-cord and buttons left. Girl BSJ is only a little bit behind, with about 2/3 of the I-cord bind off and the shoulder seams left plus the same cuffery and buttons.

Both are knit in Socks That Rock Mediumweight - Star Sapphire for the Boy and Quilla for the Girl. The I-cord edging on both is Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeach and the buttons are as yet fictional.

The twins they are supposed to clothe are now scheduled to arrive next Monday - about 2 weeks earlier than I planned for them to arrive. Guess what I'm knitting the rest of this week??

[missing a photo of the Girl BSJ - watch this space]

I'm thinking of nominating the the BSJ as The Perfect Knitting Project for an All-Day Meeting, as soon as someone invents an award for that. I think it will win because it's all garter stitch with like 4 rows where you have to pay attention to anything other than the two marked increase / decrease spots. You can drink in a lot of projected Power Point slides while knitting these puppies.

Herringbone lace scarf
Photo by Bill Walker

Truly, I got started on these two little sweaters because of the all-day meetings. I decided that knitting at work could be excused if I was knitting *for* work, so I latched onto knitting twin baby gifts in solidarity with two newer knitters in the office who are knitting up Big Bad Baby Blankets for our collegue's impending twins. I think the ruse / tie-in worked perfectly, since several people asked how the knitting was going in follow up phone calls after our meet-a-thon.

And helping the newer knitters is turning out to be a big boost to my "non-work" knitting progress as well. Last night, one of the two blanket knitters came over to learn about retrieving dropped stitches, weaving in ends, and "blocking" your knitting. So mysterious, that blocking.

Nothing like an audience to help get things done, I always say. Showing my work buddy how to block knits got me to wash up the Texture Argyle Vest in progress to check the fit, the "bag" part of the Buddy Bag, my Chai Herringbone Rib scarf, and a lace alpaca scarf in progress. The scarves are both lacy and served to demonstrate pinning out lace to open the pattern. The other two items just got patted into shape & left to dry. A good lesson, no?

Alpaca lace scarf with owls
Photo by Bill Walker

Bill took photos of the two scarves this morning - the finished one clocking in at 74" long and the work-in-progress a puny 8". I'm thrilled with the results of the blocking - both scarves look fabulous. But a run rate of 8" of scarf produced from 8 grams of alpaca predicts a very short scarf.

This one isn't "due" until Christmas, I ordered a second skein of Golden Crown Suri Alpaca from Windy Valley Musk Ox this evening. I sure hope the new skein will match - I have pretty good hope that it will & if it doesn't, at least the colors will be in two balanced halves.

Veggie box tonight: Skillet beans & orange salad

2009-07-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hello knitters,

Not much to report on the knitting front lately - I've been working on a new pair of midnight blue Reversai socks with just the second toe left to complete the pair. They are a thank you to our friends who put us up in June when we were out of our house for a week due to "work being done."

In honor of the Tour de Fleece, I've been trying to spin on days other than our montly Spin-In. I'm working on a 210 g bump of moorit Shetland with just 25 left to spin. I'm hoping to finish my Tour de Fleece with plying on Sunday.

Ok, that's it for fiber.. and now it's time to celebrate veggies.

I love my weekly veggie box from Two Small Farms. And I'm so very proud that we are winning the Veggie Box Game this week, for a change.

See, every week when the box arrives on Wednesday, I make an inventory of the existing veggies and then check in the new arrivals. The list goes on the front of the fridge for awareness. This week: 26 "veggie units". Units are things like 2 pints of strawberries. 3 torpedo onions. A 2 lb bag of red potatoes. Two small heads of cauliflower. In other words: a lot of veggies for two people to eat up!

The goal of the Veggie Box Game is to have fewer veggies after the next checkin than you have today. When life intervenes (theater tickets, weekend wedding in LA, band rehearsal night), we get bad marks.

To increase the success rate, I've hatched a new plan, tentatively called the Veggie Box Dinner Cooperative. We met for the second time Wednesday. The Cooperative will alternate dinners at the Fiber Fiend's house and mine, with Ms. Seltsame graciously joining us increase our odds in the Game. The hosting household does a main dish, the other participants brings a salad or side.

Last week at their house: Cauliflower & tomato sauce for pasta, greek salad & an amazing plum crisp made with plums from the yard. (Home: 3 veggie units, visitors 1)

This week at our house: Zucchini Ankara, sauted spinach, and a beet / walnut / egg / romaine salad. (Home: 5, visitors: 2)

Well if we can cook for 5 or 6 adults (and mind you, Randall definitely counts for two adults at dinner time) on a weeknight, whipping up dinner for two on Friday shouldn't be any trouble right?

Tonight: Cajun Skillet Beans from the Moosewood Cooks at Home and a fabulous red leaf lettuce and orange salad. Rack up 4 veggie units consumed & nibbles into the onions & celery. And it was one of the best meals I've eaten in months. So fresh, so delicious!

For those of you scoring along at home: 26 - 5 - 4 = just 17 veg units left to go for the week. Let's see... strawberries & waffles on Saturday, repeat tonight's salad for Sunday lunch... and then my secret victory plan... invite out of town colleagues for dinner Monday night!

I'm queuing up tandoori chicken (with red onions & cilantro), a salad of romaine / peaches & basil, rosemary potatoes and grilled baby bok choi. Plus a melon for dessert. That's SEVEN at one blow! In your *face*, delicious, healthy vegetables!

What I did on my vacation + Rosemary shortbread

2009-05-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

Hi Knitters!

I've been "away" lately. Managing my contractor work life @ Symantec has been a big learning curve for me since October and I don't expect that to change much now that they've hired me as a regular employee, starting May 18th. Church choir meeting on Wednesday nights this year means I'm missing all the Santa Clara Knitting Meetup nights and I even missed a knitting guild last week. Booo!

So what *have* I been doing? Well, May 9 thru May 17 spouse-man and I were on walkabout with our very good friends from Milkwaukee. We drove north to the far northeastern corner of California (no, there there really isn't anything there - it was great). From there, we headed into Oregon for a visit to the High Desert Museum and a weekend in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Phew! Our friends sent me a thank-you note that I am blatantly stealing from their note to tell you what we did:

... This was our longest vacation to date - it had everything, too: mountains, waterfalls, theater (second row!) duck (live and on plate), more theater, falafel, prairie falcons, jalapeno cheese curls, Sid's Water Hole's fried chicken and JoJo's, early morning birding, veggie box greens, moving furniture, high end shopping, business socks, modern architecture, badger petting, red naped sapsuckers, lava beds, petroglyphs, jazz piano + bass, Vietnamese food, lots of life birds, way too much cheese, late night discussions, Star Trek, wine flight, rainbows, microbreweries, sock knitting, Shakespeare, mosquitoes, kitties, Dr. Horrible, Ave Maria, fava bean puree, vast changes in climactic zones, post-theater discussion and, well, being with y'all!

Oh yes, S&R, it was a fabulous week. Thank you so much for coming to California to make it all possible!

Honestly, it was a startlingly successful vacation for the amount of planning that went into it, AND we got to spend 10 days on the road with our friends, meeting up with AWiz & the Wiz knitter in Ashland to top it all off.

Meanwhile, the thing that finally drove me to post on the blog today was the crazy search I go through every time I want to make rosemary pine nut shortbread. Well, this time, I'm getting SMART. If I post the recipe here, then I won't be able to lose it anymore. Hah! I'll fix your wagon, Internet! Just try messing with me again! Hmm.. maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Anyway, here's the rosemary pine nut bars, a recipe we found in our Two Small Farms CSA newsletter in June 2008. Quick & easy - try it!

Tuscan Rosemary and Pine Nut Bars,
here is that old recipe from the L.A. Times Food Section 8/11/99—Julia
¼ cup pine nuts, roasted
½ Cup butter, cut in 10 pieces
½ cup powdered sugar
1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup flour
Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, rosemaryand pine nuts. Stir in flour to make dough; it will be stiff. Pat dough evenly into ungreased 8-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until golden and firm at edges, about 20
minutes. Cool pan on rack about 2 minutes, then use sharp knife to cut bars into 16 squares. Let cool in pan at least 10 minutes before removing with small spatula

ONE Tropical Mer-tini...

2009-04-03T13:55:00.001-07:00

ONE Tropical Mer-tini
Originally uploaded by spinnity

... is not a pair. Round 1 of the Sock Madness closed yesterday, and I've been so busy with work that I didn't even manage to knit the assigned pair of socks in two full weeks of life. I finished both up to the heels within the contest period, but work interfered with finishing the heels by 3 pm Thursday. Sad, sad, sad.

But they are still nice socks, so I am marching on to finish them. I wanted to share this photo of the first sock all finished, so I could show you the unusual heel flap.

In this sock, you knit the entire tube of the sock, close up the toe, and then come back to fill in the great big empty triangle where the heel goes. The last move is to take live stitches from the sole and live stitches from the heel and graft them together!

The pattern was fun to knit and creatively designed. It definitely fit the bill for sock madness, by making us excecute several unusual maneuvers (German twisted cast-on, the large chart, a modified toe, and the dreaded afterthought heel flap heel).

I think it could be refined by graphing the quilt pattern on knitter's graph pape to make the Drunkard's Path quilt blocks come out square instead of rectangular. I bet that would also soften the tendency of the purl sections to pooch out around the ankle a bit.

Anyway, that's it, I'm booted out of the Sock Madness and I'm liberated to go knit other things. Bill has an owl kit next on his knitting docket and I'm responsible for the wing parts. And I think I could maybe get my Early Spring socks finished to wear to Easter services. Green, the color of hope, right?

March 14 - 20: the week in photos

2009-03-21T17:40:00.001-07:00

First veggie box of the year!
By spinnity

It's really feeling like spring around here. And it's not just the weather -- so much is going on, it's like everyone's energy has woken up after the long winter sleep. These photos give you a flavor of the week.

First up: The veggie box is back! The Two Small Farms CSA made it's first delivery this week: flowers, fennel, kale, carrots, napa cabbage, parsnips, beets, spring mix, parsley and green garlic. The flowers were the most beautiful bouquet we've ever seen from the CSA and the fennel, orange and arugula salad was a fabulous first receipe on Wednesday night. On Friday, we munched up half a head of napa cabbage in Sesame Noodles with Napa Cabbage. Mmmm, peanutty.

And of course, as I mentioned last week, Spring means Madness: March Madness & Sock Madness.

Abandoned Mer-tini
By spinnity

The first Sock Madness pattern, called Tropical Mer-tini, came out very early Thursday morning.

The design is inspired by the Drunkard's Path quilt block and comes with a photo of a nice blue martini-style drink. I wanted to stick with the blue theme and I had some great yarn in stash to work with. Socks That Rock mediumweight, in a great color called Star Sapphire

I knit 4 inches of cuff using my first choice of yarn, and decided it was just not going to work. Too big, too floppy. Curses! And to rub salt in my wounds, Illinois lost their first round game to Western Kentucky. Grrrr!

Sock Madness 3, Round 1
By spinnity

Friday, a full 36 hours after the pattern came out, I cast on again - this time with a thinner yarn and size 0 needles in another lovely blue - "Pacific" Artisan Sock yarn from Hazel Knits. I knit through the evening basketball games - two squeakers featuring Big Ten teams (Go Wisconsin!) and I've caught up to my first sock. Sigh.

I'm way behind the fastest knitters in my division at this point. But this is the weight of yarn and the size 0's are the right choice and the new yarn is beautiful. You can look to see whether I make it into the top 40 knitters in my division here on the Division 2 - Great Knitspectations - scoreboard.

Rock Star gets a new keyboard
By spinnity

The last update on the week - the Roger Steen Band, featuring our very own Janice and my multi-talented spouse-man, Bill Walker are playing TONIGHT at the Quarter Note bar in Santa Clara, just off Lawrence Expressway near Central, at 9 pm. To get ready for tonight's show, Bill sorta casually "picked up" a brand new Nord Stage EX to extend the range of available keyboard sounds.

[EDITED TO ADD... ]Whoops - I nearly forgot spin-in last Saturday! We had 4 wheel spinners, 2 spindle spinners, 2 knitters, and 2 onlookers at the spin-in, which was a great turnout on what had looked like a slow day. I had met a needleloca from Sunnyvale at Stitches & invited her to join us - and she brought delicious artichoke fritata to keep us energized all afternoon, mmmm! Around 5:30, we had a real treat when Seltsame & her fiance M. stopped by. M. tried a little bit of spinning - with terrible fiber I offered him.

Emy plies!
By spinnity

And just *look* at Emy's plied yarn, in perfect Emy purple! Spindle spun, spindle plied and look how happy it makes her. Way to go, Emy.

There you have it. A busy week of veggies, knitting, basketball, music and spinning. Oh, and work. And not enough sleep!

Jeni was here!

2009-03-21T16:55:00.001-07:00

Can you spot the crazy one?
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Here are a few photos from the March 5th Bobaknit - The Return of Jeni. Anyone who has knit much with Noro will recognize the crazy gleam in her eye caused by the kinks building up in the yarn while making a 450 st crochet chain. Talk about fun!

It sure was nice to see Jeni and the Bobas, who I don't get out to see often enough. And I wasn't the only long-lost boba to show up:

Time for the Madness

2009-03-12T10:26:00.001-07:00

Oh March, how I love you.

In one week, on March 19, both the NCAA mens's college basketball tournament and the annual Sock Madness competition will begin. And there I'll be: watching basketball, knitting, possibly even drinking a beer.

Not familiar? Let me explain.

NCAA tournament: college basketball teams, including my beloved Illinois, travel to distant venues to compete in a field of 65 teams to become national champions. The tournament takes three weekend to go from the first game to the championship. On the first two days, 64 teams play 32 single elimination games, then over the weekend, they play 16 more games. Dudes, that's a lot of basketball on TV. A.k.a., knitting time!

Sock Madness: A friendly competition in a field of 200 knitters to see who can knit their socks the fastest. Signups closed a week ago and the divisions were posted yesterday. I'm in Division 2. Last year, I made 3 great pairs of socks during Sock Madness, but I was out in Round 3 and sat on the sidelines while the remaining knitters battled it out. In May, MKSmiles eventually won the contest in Round 7. The patterns were really fun last year -- I'd still like to go back & knit some of those socks from last year's contest.

But now it's 2009 and time for Sock Madness 3 and a whole new set of patterns. My plan is that the combination of basketball on TV and the goad of the competition will result in 3 new pairs of socks this spring. Because in spring, a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of socks. Wish me luck!

Check it.

2009-02-27T00:24:00.001-08:00

Stitches 2009 : The Thursday night haul
by spinnity

Look! A lot of unplanned purchases obtained Thursday night at Stitches West. Best items: Felted owl kit selected by Bill for us to knit together and Malabrigo sock yarn in multiple colors -- for testing knitting a Janice design.

Here's a closer photo of the garter ribbed mitts I'm working on -- bought the yarn at 7:30 and by 8;30 I was knitting away at dinner with my knitting pals, Jo, her mom Joyce, she-who-is-not-named, Ms Mel, and Bill the knitting spouse.

Village Spinners & Weavers - quick mitts>

Getting up early tomorrow for Cotton Spinning

Honk if you love Stitches!

(Emy -- that's your shirt under the haul. Call me! Or tell me where to find you Friday.)

Expedition plan for Stitches

2009-02-25T16:12:00.000-08:00

Following Janice's lead, as I do in so many things, I'm mapping out a plan for my four days at Stitches West. You've heard of Stitches, right? The big knitting conference? Starts tomorrow, right here in my home town? Yeah, I thought so.

Of course we've been preparing for months now -- we signed up for classes in October, bought our homework supplies and did our swatches (you *are* done, right?). We printed the marketplace map & circled our favorites. And of course the local knitting guild hand-crafted Sheepy Shirts just for the occasion. Mine's pink!

And now we are Down To It! Just 24 hours left until the excitement begins. My Stitches West 2009 plan includes:

Thursday night: Market Preview! Starts at 5, but I'll be late, coming straight from work. I'm excited that my newly minted knitting husband and our out-of-town guest, Ms Mel of Stick Chick Knits, will also be perusing the market with me. We're headed to late dinner at Tomatina when the market closes at 8.

Friday: Classes! My first is an all-day event: "Spinning Cotton for Knitting" with Eileen Hallman - something I've never tried! I wonder if they sell used charkhas at Stitches? In the evening, I'm supporting the Husband Hobby by eating delicious Cajun food and knitting through his jazz gig at the Gumbo Jumbo in San Jose. (I am *not* responsible for their tragic web site. Food's good,though!) Music starts at 9 pm.

Saturday: Being helpful! I'm working in the the Fiber Fiend booth #832 all morning. In the afternoon, I'm off to "Beyond Basic Buttons (and other excuses for playing with yarn)" with Christine Bylsma.

Sunday: Creativity! My classes wrap up Sunday morning with "Designing Embroiedery on Knitting" with the prolific creative genius of embellishment, Nicky Epstein. In the afternoon I get to see my beloved sis-in-law, who has been extra busy with family caregiving this last month and deserves some yarn therapy to restore the soul. We'll be in the market from 11:30 until close.

My class list is lighter than usual, and I'm feeling sort of unsettled, like I'm missing something. I'm especially wondering why I didn't sign up for that Danish Skrå-trøjer class. Two whole days of Beth! What was I thinking, turning that down??

I guess I'll have to fill the void with extra shopping! It's all about the smaller vendors and getting to touch that beautiful yarn in person. Mmmmm, yarn. I tried to find vendors I wanted to see that weren't on Janice's list... but she's pretty much got it covered (plus links to the maps, the $2 off coupon, really, a whole Stitches Survival Guide. go have a look!).

Hope to see you at the show!

omg, omg, he made me a hat

2009-02-18T00:44:00.001-08:00

He made me a hat
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Knitters, look! My spouse-man made me a hat for Valentine's Day!

Here's the story. In November, Bill asked me to teach him how to knit. So I found a random yarn from the stash with a sort of manly look and figured out how many stitches it might take to make a hat in man size. i showed him how to cast on and how to knit and got him started knitting in the round.

I love a hat with a rolled edge and I think this type of project is a perfect beginner knitter. There's a long cast on, longer than a scarf, which gives them a fighting chance of remembering the motion later, and a good long section of Nothing But Knit. Ok, there's a bit of trauma at the end, but the finished product makes up for the drama.

By the time the hat was done, Bill had practiced

long-tail cast on
knitting in the round
changing colors (when we figured out that the yarn would run out before the hat did)
slip-slip-knit decreases
using double pointed needles
threading a needle with yarn (HINT: fold the yarn over the eye of the needle & pinch it tight. Slip the needle out and you have a nicely folded sharp edge which should go through the eye easy as pie.)
and weaving in ends

The only kvetching came in the last 6 rounds when we had to switch to DPNs. Yes, it's true, I made my husband knit on DPNs for his first knitting project. Not only that, but I concealed the looming inevitability of DPNs from him for, lo, five full inches of knitted hat. He was a bit honked off about those size 9 sticks, and let's face it, they are awkward at that size, but he pushed through and made perfect decreases.

Somewhere around the stripe we figured out that the hat would not turn out man sized, after all. Like everyone else in this family, Bill turns out to be a tight knitter... at least for now. He says when I handed the needles back to him after fixing something, it always felt much looser. Anyway, tight gauge means a smaller hat, which means I win!

Since it was clear by now that the hat was for me, what better plan than to finish it up for Valentine's Day? Bill ran the finishing yarn through the last stitches on Saturday after the monthly gathering of spinners. After conquering the final decreases on DPNs, he threaded his needle & wove in the ends. Ta-dah!

The hat is a tad small on me, but I love it, of course. After all, the yarn came from *my* stash, right? And who doesn't love a hat knit by the spouse??

Bill and I did the calculations for a mirror image hat - orange with a thin blue stripe - in his size on Saturday, but he hasn't started yet. Next time you see him, ask him how his own hat is coming along!

Big smoochies, dahlinks, thank you for the hat!

The January That Was

2009-02-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

Hi knitters,

It's time for one of those summary posts where I jot down notes about what happened over the last month, since I didn't blog each event as it happened. Don't worry -- it's a summary, so it won't take long!

Jan 4: Saw The Arabian Nights at Berkeley Rep on a double date with my brother & sis-in-law. Fabulous stories, inventively, dancingly staged, with a bleak reminder of how many of those stories took place in Baghdad. It slew me.

Jan 6 and 7: Had a birthday and decided to ditch choir rehearsal so I could attend the first Knitting Meetup of the year and lots of new members showed up, like these two:

Jan 8: Saw Beowlf: 1,000 Years of Baggage on its final Bay Area performance. Loved the dancing girls, the Dragon and poor unaware Beowulf. The on-stage orchestra was fabulous, though I thought the sound mix was not quite right. Wish everyone in our group had liked it as much as I did.

Jan 10: Had our first spin-in of 2009 and ate our fair share of Appleflappen to placate the Alpine goddess Perchta, who comes in the dark of the year to inspect your spindle, to make sure all your flax has been spun off. Took some photos to represent our 2008 spinning output, in case Perchta needs extra proof. Love you, spinners!

Jan 8- 13: Worked on a larger sized version of The Fiber Fiend's Corsica sweater - I've posted a lot of notes at ravelry, if you are curious. Here's a sleeve -- and I think even the photo showing how soft & snuggly this sweater in Rowan Cocoon will be:

Jan 19: You already know about the Sheepy Shirts we made for Knitspiration knitting guild, from my previous post. I finally finished painting the extra shirts about two weeks after the guild night. Here are the four shirts I painted - one for me, one for my mom, and two are surprise gifts:

(Don't worry, Lisa... I don't have a photo of your shirt, but it *is* black.)

After that, I think work must have intervened. I can't remember any cool events to report on, so I'll close with a sneak peak at February....

Feb 1: While the rest of the nation ate nachos and watched the Steelers win their sixth Superbowl... I was here:

(see those white sheep waaaay in the background?) looking at this:

That's a pretty good month, eh?

Sheepy shirts!

2009-01-21T00:15:00.001-08:00

Stencil sheep
By spinnity

Oh, hi there... is it 2009 already? A month past my last blog entry? Two weeks past my birthday? Inauguration day already (Can I get a witness!?!)?

Wow, time flies. There are so many serious, funny and relevant things I could have blogged about, but instead: "Look, sheepy shirts! Awww!"

These two shirts, and seven more I might be able to find on the 'net, are the output of our 8 knitting guild participants stencilling their hearts out Monday night. Our goal was to create shirts we can wear at Stitches West next month to represent the Knitspiration knitting guild of Silicon Valley.

It was our first guild meeting of the new year and our very creative Amy / spinalcat gave us all instruction in how to make contact paper stencils. We stencilled the sheep design onto shirts - old shirts from home and new $2 t-shirts from Michael's. I don't think any of us except Amy had ever stencilled before, so this was a fun and easy stretch beyond knitting for us.

If you are interested in stencilling a one-off shirt, Amy has a nice tutorial on her blog about how to make your own design into a stencil. The supplies for this project cost about $2 (for a new t-shirt) plus $1.50 per paint color plus the price of an Xacto knife and some grubbing around in the recycle paper box for cardboard. You can save the $2 by using an old shirt in your collection.

Knitspiration Guild a-stencilling
By spinnity

Besides the shirts, there was another big payoff for me and my musical spouse-o. We cleaned up the garage so the knitters would have space to mess with paint. You do *not* know how amazing this is. It has been 4 solid years since we last parked a car in this garage.

All it took was a bunch of trash removal, some stuff dropped off at Computer Recycling, and a Goodwill run, Bill can now reach the Hammond organ stored in the garage. It might be time for an actual garage band experience here at Chez Spinnity.

Special thanks to Jasmine, Pam, Amy & Janice for helping cut out extra stencils for members who could not attend. Janice couldn't make Monday's meeting, so she came over tonight to paint her shirt -- I love how it came out and I'm sure she'll have photos soon.

Squeeeeee! I'm in knitty!

2008-12-10T10:34:00.001-08:00

Ardea twined mitts
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Oh knitters, I'm wagging my tail like crazy today. My first published pattern appears in the Winter 2008 Issue of knitty: Larus and Ardea fingerless mitts in twined knitting.

This turns out to be another thing I'm grateful to the Knitspiration knitting guild for... if I hadn't taught the lesson twined knitting this summer, I wouldn't have developed this original pattern and Janice wouldn't have nudged me to submit it to knitty.

So thanks, guild members, thanks Janice. Thanks, of course, to Bill who shot all the photos. And thanks to knitty for publishing it! Working with the technical editor to get the pattern ship-shape was really helpful. I can't wait to see if anyone knits these and whether it's a challenge to learn twined knitting from the online resources available.

If you'd like to see all the photos of the mitts in one place, I've posted a photo set at Flickr

Squeeeee!

All thanks to knitting guild

2008-12-04T23:46:00.001-08:00

Spiral Cable Chemo Cap
Originally uploaded by spinnity

About 10 days before Thanksgiving, Margit Sage, the Fiber Fiend, came to teach our Knitspiration knitting guild how to move cables across the surface of a fabric, using her latest design, the Spiral Cabled Chemo Cap.

Yesterday, I noticed that spinalcat had posted a photo of her finished hat (she picked the one with bobbles) and it reminded me to post mine, too. And here it is - the Morfar hat.

I am just thrilled with the way this pattern looks with my own super bright green yarn. The yarn was dyed at the Fiber Fiend studio during our October guild meeting. Two guild months, two cool new experiences.

In fact... I learned a lot in 2008 and pushed myself to do new things because of the guild. Our calendar of topics definitely influenced my knitting, so I'm taking a moment today to be thankful for the guild.

Because of my local knitting guild, I tried out some new slip stitch patterns, practiced several new lace cast-ons, and dyed my own very bright colorways. (Next time, I should sign up for "Add sophistication to your color choices").

I also taught two of the lessons - one on twined knitting and one on slip stitch patterns used to combine different weights & types of yarn into interesting and subtle fabric.

This was my third year in the guild and my third year as an officer. In November, we elected new officers and I am not one of them. This is a bit hard for me, since I was really enjoying organizing things, but I'm really excited to have energetic new officers taking over. I'm really looking forward to our next two topics -

December 15 - Will your Dream Sweater Fit? Will it flatter?
January 19 - Make your own stencils

I can't make it to Fit Night, which is too bad. Sweater fit is a real issue for me. I'm hoping Lori will give me private lessons as I work my way through Corsica over the coming month. But I'm really keen on the stencils and another year of guildiness.

Trip report: Olema knitting retreat with BBR

2008-12-01T18:45:00.001-08:00

Scottish Gloves

Two weeks ago, Bill and I spent a long weekend in Olema at the Olema Inn, from November 12-16. I was lured to the Inn by their knitting retreat -- a series of classes with Beth Brown-Reinsel. Bill spent the days out in beautiful Marin county fall landscapes, taking photos of birds. At night we dined together with the rest of the knitters on organic, free-range, and delicious comestibles at the Inn. Can you say, "perfect vacation"? I sure can.

Wednesday and Thursday, Beth taught a two-day class on Scottish Sanquhar gloves to seven knitters, all engaging and capable companions. Friday we had a day off for sight-seeing (well... birding, if the truth be told) in the Pt. Reyes area. Saturday the knitting was back on with Norwegian mittens and Sunday we learned techniques for designing and executing Seamless Arans.

Between the knitting, we were served breakfast, morning snack, lunch, an afternoon coffee break, and dinner by the Olema Inn. That was a *bunch* of delicious calories. I will call special attention to the green leaf salad with duck breast, the breakfast selection of fruits and cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery, and the grilled cheese of gruyere on brioche.

I've got a bunch of photos to show you, but first I have to spend a moment going goo-goo eyed over Beth Brown-Reinsel, who taught all 4 days of the retreat.

What I love most about Beth is her ability to turn any form of ethnic knitting into a set of building blocks (Legos?) so we lesser mortals can assemble edgings, motifs, knitting techniques, and color choices that are within a related ethnic context. If anyone has read her wonderful book Knitting Ganseys, you know that book is exactly like a toolkit for designing your own gansey through a series of lessons on a mini-sweater. That's her genius: breaking a knitting tradition down into learnable bits.

Of course, once you learn the techniques, you can assemble them however you want, but knowing what makes an Aran an Aran, or what makes a Norwegian mitten Norwegian, and not Latvian is hugely useful.

The handout for the two-day Sanquhar gloves class, for instance, tells how to knit a swatch on 3 needle sizes, cut it open, measure the gauge and determine your cast-on (divisible by 4, since the multiple ribbing options are all 4 st repeats). That was our homework. In class, we learned that most gloves have a salt & pepper band separating the rib from the hand, where you can insert initials or a date. Then we chose two pattern motifs from three sizes of boxes based on gauge and hand size. We learned the traditional counts of boxes for each row of the hand and how to make the cutest possible gusset for the thumb. By the end of the second day, we were knitting our three-sided fingers. (Or casting on the second mitt, for the one knitter who elected to make mitts instead of gloves. See the cute edging she added to finish off her maroon & grey Kauni mitt? Gorgeous!)

The point is: having gone through this class, I could make any number of gloves, or mitts or mittens, all different, all in the right sizes, all very traditional-looking... or I could use the same techniques one or two at a time to spice up an entirely different mitten. This is the kind of class I love - a toolbox completely focused on one aspect of knitting which can be unpacked and reused elsewhere. The handouts, the preparation, the way she led us down the path... these are the reasons I love taking classes with Beth Brown-Reinsel.

I hope any of you locals here in Santa Clara who get the chance will take some of Beth's classes at Stitches West (Feb 26 - March 1, 2009) where she will be teaching Norwegian Purl, Fair Isle Tams and 12 full hours on the Danish Skrå-trøjer.

And now... the rest of the photos. Except I can't find the Norwegian mitten.

Sanquhar glove in progress - check out the cute gusset for the thumb and the little pyramids for the finger tips. I'm itching to finish the last two fingers and wear these for real:

Seamless Aran mini sweater - a sampler of Aran stitches and seamless assembly techniques.

Door prize! I forgot to mention the door prizes - we all got to choose from a smorgasbord of prizes. I elected to play the role of yarn ho and grabbed this basket of hand-dyed yarn from the Coastal Artisans shop in Bolinas.

And here's a question for the audience. What *is* this? This weird carving was on all three pieces of the bedroom set at the Olema Inn. I have given this shape a name... I'd love to know in the comments what you would name this, if you found it over your head at night.

The only thing that would have made the weekend better was knowing one of my knitting companions. I'm really hoping somebody from the south bay knitting contingent will come with me next year to the 2009 retreat. Pleeeease?

A hard week and then it was over.

2008-11-18T01:14:00.001-08:00

Arlie at the vet
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters,

There are many stories I wanted to tell you over the last few months... some I even took the photos for and started writing in my head, but putting them into a useful narrative always got confusing. I'm interrupting my blog procrastination in honor of Arlie, my very favorite kitty, who died last week on November 8th.

Bill and I are really having a sad time with the loss of Miss Arlie. We've been so insulated from death in our lives - our parents & granny are still with us. Arlie is the first of our cats to ever get sick, let alone die. And we feel terrible about her last week, which involved a lot of intervention and attempts to jumpstart her digestive system. Poor kitty. She really told us at the end that she was D.O.N.E. *sniff*

Arlie Barley Pudding and Pie Parker was about 15 months old when she came to us in November 1995, so she was 14 years old. We wrote these Ten Good Things About Arlie to remember her best attributes.

1. Arlie had an M between her eyes, bull's eyes on her flanks, and a short, bent tail that tapered to the end. She had soft, thick fur and a tawny undercoat. She had four black paws.

2. Arlie always came to visit anyone sitting quietly, especially if the bathroom door was open.

3. Arlie liked to meet new kitties, like Peanut and Benny, Squeaky and her adopted siblings Jasper and Sierra. She was hopeful and positive that each new kitty would be her friend.

4. Arlie spent a lot of time with shy or quiet people. She made sure they had someone to interact with in large groups.

5. Arlie could find a rubber band anywhere in the house. Nom, nom, rubber bands, mmmmm. She was persistent.

6. Arlie was good company for sick people and took especially good care of Mary after surgery.

7. Arlie's stubby little tail was very active and expressive, waving around to indicate interest or vexation. "Who am I?" Nan asked us once, wiggling her thumb above her closed fist. "Arlie!"

8. Arlie asked people to play with her by bringing a toy (mrrrow, mrrrow!) late at night or sitting near the toy she wanted to play with and looking Very Intently at the people. But she never nagged or made a scene. Just hoped.

9. Arlie picked her own scratching post - the wooden X frame of the laundry hamper. She used it vigorously and covered the floor with splinters.

10. Arlie liked to sleep in her special chosen spots: the back of the purple chair in the sun, on the settle in her kitty hat, on the bed on top of the purple blanket.

Our very good, very empathetic, very socialble kitty is now buried in the back yard and we miss her so so much. We are grateful to everyone who reached out to mourn with us. Even though Arlie was just a kitty, she was a big part of our lives. Good kitty. Good-bye.

[See some of Bill's photos of Arlie the love bug over here.]

How I spent my equinox

2008-09-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 22, was the autumnal equinox, that half-light, half-dark day which marks the beginning of fall. Did you celebrate? Maybe swap from your summertime door decoration to a harvest theme? Cast on a lovely fall sweater?

Well I spent the autumnal equinox doing one of my competitive birdwatching events - a birding "big day" in San Mateo County. That was Monday and today is Thursday. I think I've almost recovered.

I've mentioned these odd pursuits before - a birding "big day" is an attempt to see as many birds as possible in a single 24-hour period, usually in a specific county. Many birding big day competitions are fundraisers for environmental organizations. Ours was part of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory's California Fall Challenge - so if you want to donate anything to support bird conservation science in the SF Bay, just click on over.

To run a big day, you get a team of people (me, the spouse-o, our friend Bob) and a location (San Mateo County) and a date (September 22). You plan a route through the county which maximizes the different types of birds you will run into. Our route had about 14 different stops from the "sea watch" at Pigeon Point lighthouse to a manky little pond behind the Nob Hill market in Redwood Shores. Once you have your route, you have to scout the area you want to bird so you know what to expect at each location -- which is why you didn't see me online Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday before the equinox. I was "in the field". Scouting also helps in planning your snack and bathroom options carefully, so you never have to stop birding on the big day.

It's traditional to name your big day team. Ours is called "MBB Overdrive", for our initials (Mary, Bill and Bob). This gives us license to make an iPod playlist of 70's classic rock schnulzers to play on the road between stops. We favor songs that reflect the urgency, craziness and time-compressed nature of our adventure. Think of BTO's "Takin' care of business", Steve Miller's "Fly like an eagle", Boston's "More than a feeling". Of course our playlist begins at our rendezvous point with the Chariots of Fire theme, to get us fired up for our big race. (Playlist suggestions always welcome!)

Then the planning is done and it's time to run the big day. On Monday, we get up at 2:30 in the morning, drove down to Pescadero and went out listening for owls in the dark on cold country roads (4 species heard in and near Butano State Park. And no rangers!). We then spent every hour of daylight (7:15 to 7:15... the equinox, remember?) looking for more birds, hitting our fourteen locations and keeping an eye on the clock. We had fabulous weather - clear skies, very light wind and a high at the coast around 72. This may have helped with the seabirds, but may have hurt with little dickeybird migrants.

No one monitors our results - big day sighting are on the honor system - so you'll just have to believe me when I say our total for September 22 was 129 different bird species, which is 48.134% of the 268 species recognized as occurring in SM. You can read the rest our trip report at birdWalker.

This result is "good" but not "great". Winning teams in the California Fall Challenge big day contest usually get over 50% of the county total for the county they are birding, so no prizes for us this year. Looking at the birding mailing lists after we got home, we found that other birders saw an additional 7 species in locations we were at, but didn't walk far enough into. Didn't walk far enough?? Dammit dammit dammit! This only makes us eager for next fall and our next chance to run this route.

On Tuesday, when I was released from birding duties, I spent a couple hours finishing up some unfinished projects from the Black Sheep Gathering and my recent trip to the TKGA Fall Knit & Crochet Show in Portland. Look for more knitting and less birding content in the next installment of spinnity knits.