Looooove this recipe! Sultanas are a pale yellow raisin, which I've never laid eyes on. I use regular raisins. This is particularly marvelous when the pasta is homemade. Deeeelicious. Read more about Nigella Lawson and get more recipes.

Check Teddy out. And here's a site with a picture of Teddy with Bean (click on Teddy). If you're familiar with Teddy, you won't be able to resist. If you don't, it's still a very cute bear.

Learn to Knit is a marvelous resource for

• learning to knit,
• increasing,
• decreasing,
• learning cables,
• correcting errors,
• picking up stitches,
• assembling, and
• using circular and double point needles.

I rambled here somewhere about starting the toe-up socks with Emily Ocker's Circular Cast-On. This technique is illustrated in the back of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Almanac and eloquently explained by Judy Gibson in her Tidbits for Knitters.

This is my attempt to explain this technique in pictures (as well as practice making a table). :O)

These sock-related Mini Knitting Lessons have TERRIFIC pictures about how to knit right side out and kitchener stitch and picking up gusset/corner stitches . Really marvelous...

Knitting Hints and Tips contains (to name a very, very few):

• a guide to yarn types, packaging, conversions and yardage estimates
• finishing tips
• cabling without a cable needle
• double pointed needles with training wheels
• correcting mistakes
• kool-aid dyeing
• magic socks (not for the faint of heart: these are directions for "using double knitting to knit a sock inside a sock")
• joining yarn and dealing with ends
• as well as tips for unusual casting on's, binding off's, etc, etc...

This page may be a bit difficult to read in spots, but it is chock full of knitting gems from People With Experience.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know about the Wonderful Wallaby is here and here. I've made one already and Mom's mailing me enough Lamb's Pride Superwash for two more, one for each of the girls. Yea Mom!

Knitting Progress: Last night while watching High Fidelity (free for five days from the library, uh-huh, uh-huh) I got almost around to the left underarm of the Poetry In Stitches cardigan. I had gotten to the gusset increases of the 2nd toe-up sock and have lost the generic directions for Judy's You're Putting Me On Socks that I had all filled out! #$%$/£ ! I know I stuffed the pages (and the sock) into my purse when we were going somewhere....


I made a Chicken Curry knock-off from the Chinese restaurant at Metro Senter last night and told Mom I'd give her the general plan (does this qualify as a recipe?):

• boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• milk, flour, butter
• chicken broth (or bullion)
• whatever vegetables appeal to you
• rice

1. Make the sauce : Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan, add 2 tablespoons flour and heat for a few minutes, whisking it a bit. Add 1 or 2 cups of milk, or a mixture of milk and chicken broth, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add curry powder, as much as you like.
2. Cut the chicken up into bits and brown them until no longer pink inside.
3. Chop the vegetables and sautee. (I use brocolli, carrots, mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, onions, whatever's in the fridge).
4. Add the chicken and the veggies to the sauce and let the whole thing simmer until you're ready for it. And serve it over rice.
   

Nam. :o)

I've been thinking a bit about the whole knitting-connecting-me-to-the-past thing and remembered reading the following in Chapter 1 of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking...no, I haven't read the whole thing and yes, I plan to. Someday.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy...At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "hat you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

That last phrase has stuck in my head and comes to me when I'm thinking about connectedness. It's knitters all the way down...

Well, at least the floors are clean and the house smells of grønnsåpe which I think is a sort of Murphy's Oil Soap deal. The large pile of videos have been checked, labeled, and put in a more suitable place. The plastic tablecloth suitable for arts & crafts has been replaced with a pretty red, green and yellow plaid cloth one. And a large wicker basket from IKEA is sitting discreetly behind the table containing giant imported Zip-lock bags filled and neatly labeled with craft stuff (beads, yarn, fabric, glue, old magazines suitable for making collages with, etc). Feels good. Real good.

Just saw some games and I have to say, these are some of the most adorable things I've ever seen. Warning: don't even go there if you don't have some time on your hands. I do not have time on my hands, I do not! I'm going to go clean up the joint. Right This Minute.

: : d a n g e r o u s c h u n k y : : mentioned Bagatell on her site today! I'm tickled pink! :O) Hun snakker norsk, altså! (You can tell I'm excited when I end every sentence with a !)

Kim has this wonderful resource for knitters including

• yarn reviews,
• international knitting terms glossary, and
• patterns.

(I'm helpin' out with the Norwegian terms!)

Flor has a incredible hints and tips page that includes

• first steps,
• intarsia,
• making toes in toe up socks
• figuring out how much yarn you need,
• kitchener stitch,
• knitting on two circular needles,
• Norwegian steeking techniques, and
• much, much more!

Knitting with Borealis Sweaterscapes has

• learn to knit intarsia,
• knitting socks,
• duplicate stitch,
• invisible seams,
• I-cord,
• short row shaping,
• shoulder seams,
• converting pullovers to cardigans,
• picking up stitches, and
• storing/ washing wool sweaters.

Take the Which Breakfast Food Are You? Quiz.

Pate Conaway knitting giant mittens at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. Scroll down the page a bit and click on View Pate Conaway's Progress. AND HE FROGS! (Mom and you other non-knitters: that means he rips out his knitting... get it? rip it rip it = frogs.)

The snow fell and fell... Amalie (she's 8) and Theresa (12 and pronounces her name differently) went out yesterday afternoon and within moments had huge snowballs build, which we piled up and made the largest snowman I've ever been involved with. Actually, she's more of a 6-foot snow sculpture. And under the maple tree, next to the swing, are two snow chairs and a snow fireplace that glowed beautifully with a half dozen tea lights lit inside. Cold faces and the smell of wet woolen mittens....

Today we all went out walking in the city to get a little bit of the sun that was shining. There were three strange creatures swimming in the rather mucky water along the quay at Aker Brygge. Swan sized, goose-like creatures but white with brown patches. A previously unknown species? Oh, and after that we ran into Gloria (the lady I met at summer school) and Finn Dag and some friends of Gloria’s visiting from Germany and stopped for coffee. I feel like it’s a project I’m working on called Making Friends. Today we made progress.

This shawl... I worked on it a bit last night and again tonight. Sloooow going. Here's what I've done so far with a closeup. I'm consoling myself with the fact that it's 4 less stitches each row. I am not enjoying purling back over 350 stitches but it'll turn into garter stitch when I get as much lace edging done as I can tolerate doing.

I've added some links and a comment feature to this site. I'm an absolute beginner with all this... Theresa (who is so good at this web stuff that it's scary) has been offering to do it for me, but I'm muddling through. I'll be making some entries from the knitting web sites with some descriptions of the fabulous information they contain. Like the one below...

Very Helpful Stuff from Judy Gibson with

• Handouts including a
  
  
  
  • knitted lace symbols chart,
    
  • printable knitter's graph paper,
    
  • lace charting worksheet,
    
  • needle size conversion chart and
    
  
  
• Tips and Tricks including
  
  
  
  • circular needle trick (for when you don't have quite enough stitches to go all the way around),
    
  • prevent the color jog in circular stripes,
    
  • Emily Ocker's circular cast-on (starting a circle in the center),
    
  • correcting a miscrossed cable and
    
  • how to block lace.

I could spend hours in this place and frequently did when I lived in Asheville, N.C. I bought the ball of yarn I knitted my first stitch with here...

Eek! It's snowing...

I've started reading Kabal Mysteriet by Jostein Gaarder. He is extraordinary. This one is meant for youths...("yeut, what's a yeut?") so it's about right for my language level, even though I'm not very far in, I'm definitely hooked. I got hooked on Sophie's World when I read it in English.
It's a nice little story, really.... Sigurd and I were driving through Oslo and suddenly and without warning, next to City Hall (the buildings that look like two large brown cheeses) there were people dressed in chainmail and flame-throwers on stilts. And lots of very well dressed people. Well, who wouldn’t investigate? (This is not an everyday occurence in Norway.) So we park the car, walk up towards the City Hall and join the crowd. And suddenly there’s this guy handing us tickets. Well, who wouldn't accept tickets? (He did look at us a little funny since we didn't really fit in with the crowd.) So we walk into the park, where there's a a big brass band, people everywhere and jugglers on stilts! And they're waving us around the building and into Smuget, a trendy bar across the street. And there's free drinks! Who wouldn't accept free drinks? But by this time we're a bit suspicious that we might be crashing something... quite unknowingly, of course. So we investigate the tickets and it's the world premiere of Sofie's Verden, the film. And After the Garden Party, We will Continue with Punch and Samba at Smuget. We had a marvelous time and it's a marvelous memory. I still haven't seen the movie, but I can definitely recommend the book.


The shawl decided to be Norwegian. I cast on 391 stitches, marked the middle one and knit three rows in garter stitch. Then started on a Pearl-Barred Scallop Pattern from Barbara Walker's Treasury and double decreases at the beginning, single decreases in the middle and end of the rows. Which is based on Knitting in the Nordic Tradition. I'll keep you posted.


Oh, and we watched Mary Poppins dubbed in Norwegian tonight. Skikkelig rart. They even changed Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Why?? But then changing "tuppence" to "two pence" cleared something up for me, so I guess it was worth it. :O)

The girls and I went to the local library and they are now the proud owners of brand-spanking-new library cards. The number of books you're allowed to loan is unlimited so we've come home with 10 or more on things such as myths, feelings, fun things to do with paint, clothes through the ages, and knitting for dolls. I've decided just to serve dinner on any available horizontal surface since we're covered up with pearls, yarn, hot glue guns, paper, colored pencils, knitting needles and the aforementioned books, not to mention the everpresent hockey game (Sigurd and I are fanatics.) It's winter holiday this week and we're keeping entertained.

Sigurd called us out to the front porch this morning to see two "rådyr" picking their way through the patches of snow and grazing in the field next to the woods. These are smaller than the deer I'm used to seeing in North Carolina. Exquisite creatures. And welcome to whatever vegetation they can find as long as it's not my tulips come spring. Like last year.

I cast on for a shawl tonight... which is in addition to the second of a pair of socks, the second of a pair of gloves (what is it about that second of a pair that defeats me?) and the Poetry in Stitches sweater slumbering in the knitting basket. At the moment the shawl is thinking of being Faroese, with lace insertions around the edge, but earlier tonight it was thinking of being Shetland. We'll see.

Elizabeth Zimmerman wrote that while knitting her first Aran she had "a strong feeling that my fingers knew quite well what they were about, and welcomed the chance to be about it again after a long lapse of time......I can only think that centuries of genes have given fingers inherited skills of which we wot not." I know very little about my great-grandmother, but now I can very clearly see her hands in my hands when I knit.

I was thinking while I was outside slippin' and slidin' on the icy trails (the downside of the sun coming out, while the temperature stays the same) about a conversation with my Dad on Saturday afternoon. He saw my Projects page and, while lovingly accusing me of being self-promoting, mentioned that he "remembered Granny Conley knitting socks." He also remembers helping card wool for her to spin her own yarn. The eventual fate of her spinning wheels is unfortunately (though unfortunately doesn’t cover it) lost to memory. I suggested that he put all that time watching New Yankee Workshop and equipment he’s collecting to good use and make me one, and he’s considering it. Now I just need to learn to spin...

Well, here I am.

I'm not entirely sure where I'll be going with this space, but I'm fairly certain it will involve knitting and random bits of information that are of interest to me and perhaps to the people who know me.


I've been spending some (!) time the last few days having a kid in the candy store experience with a permanent internet connection, finding Knitter's Review forum which led me to such delightful places as d a n g e r o u s c h u n k y, , mybluehouse, get crafty, and full circlesque to the beautiful clara's window which is the blog of the publiser of Knitter's Review.

The sun has shown itself today here in southern Norway, skimming the tops of the trees in it's travels across the southern sky, melting the snow on the rooftops and making the great outdoors appear deceptively warm.

And encouraging me to get out and attempt to expose my retinas to it and stimulate the ol' pineal gland to secrete some melatonin while it lasts...