Apologies for the terrible photos — I realized this morning that I could really use an extra arm to help hold up the vest AND take pictures. (Cleaning the mirror wouldn’t be a bad idea either.) In these pictures, the vest looks super short, but that’s because I happen to be wearing a long shirt with pockets today. In real life, this seems to hit at the top of my hips, right around the waistband of my jeans, and I think that’s what I want.

Unrelated but adorable:

If you’re not going to read that, paws off.

If anyone wants pouting lessons, I’m sure this guy has all the proper certifications necessary to teach beginner and advanced classes.

I uploaded photos from my camera this morning and noticed a theme.

From the top: an impromptu lunch of slaw tartare with red cabbage from the farm, safety pins to keep my favorite jeans modest enough to wear out of the house, and the very pink beginnings of the second bobbin of the Winter Storage colorway I’m working on (my first project with my wheel’s fast flyer).

This rooster needs another cup of coffee!

This is what happens whenever I (a) put on socks or shoes or (b) put on another layer. It gets pretty cold in my apartment in the middle of the day, which means that I’m often adding layers without planning to go outside. Boh has developed a two-pronged strategy: (a) sit directly in front of the door and (b) sit up very tall, almost as if to say “See? I’m being SO good.”

I managed another inch or so on my bracken vest this morning, and I’m optimistic about my productivity for the day: laundry is in the dryer, granola is in the oven, and it is time to dig into the work pile. Happy Monday!

“The creosote and tar smell of the railroad tracks woke him from the dreaming. The cinders made hollow crunching noises under his boots. He had come a long way with them; but it was his own two feet that got him there.” — Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1976) (My version is Penguin, 2006, p. 236.)

Do you ever read something that just takes everything out of you? I didn’t intend to just stop posting, but I read Ceremony this week and it stirred up a lot of things that I’ve been processing. Powerful books can be almost incapacitating. (This is good. Also, hard.)

Boh started to worry about the knitting pile. He told me so.

As you can see, I’m making progress on Bracken. (You can also see that this Jo Sharp Classic DK wool seems to attract Boh hair.)

I made myself a plate of very messy dumplings last night — the only wrappers I could find this week were enormous! I overfilled a few, and they ruptured in the cooking process…but they were still incredibly delicious.

(A few pictures from 2007 seemed appropriate, given Ceremony’s mostly southwestern setting.)

“People say my hair looks like a rooster” is one of the Google searches that led someone to my blog yesterday.

Kind sir or lady with the rooster hair, you’re certainly welcome here, though I’m not sure my knitting is exactly what you’re looking for. (Although I did knit several hats last month…)

I managed to knit a few rows on Bracken yesterday, and I’ve finished the waistband ribbing.

Happy Wednesday, folks.

I wake up when the light starts poking through my windows, so this whole daylight savings thing really works to my advantage. Don’t get me wrong, I hate that it is dark before I leave campus in the afternoons, but in terms of rooster productivity levels, 6:30 am as the new 7:30 am makes it seem like I have lots of time to get things done. So yesterday I baked myself a pie for breakfast — pear pie, to be precise.

Boh is guarding the kitchen. Or waiting for pie.

I may have also eaten pie for lunch.

Never a dull moment with this dog around.

Ummm, have you guys heard about Vestvember? Yep, that’s right: VESTvember. Well, I’ve had the yarn and pattern for a vest sitting here for months, so I decided that since I’m a joiner (which is not necessarily the same as being a finisher…) I would at least cast on my vest project this month and enjoy all of the vesty inspiration occurring over on ravelry. This is Bracken, a button-up vest that I’ve been admiring for quite awhile now. I’m knitting it out of some Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool in a deep brownish purple. I got st gauge on size 6s, but my row gauge is a little bit off. It looks like the pattern includes lengths (inches/cm) in most places instead of number of rows to knit, though, so I should be okay.

You should totally cast on for a vest this month. (Everybody’s doing it.)

I tucked the remaining pie into the oven to warm when I poured my coffee, and delicious pear-y aromas are wafting towards the computer…time for breakfast!

Several treats have arrived here at chez Rooster over the last few weeks, and I am overwhelmed. (I’ll have another to share once I’ve settled on the best way to display it!)

A dear friend found herself at the Common Ground Fair in Maine in September, and picked up six ounces of gorgeous wool/merino blend fiber dyed in lovely blues and greens from Friends’ Folly Farm. It arrived over the weekend, and I can’t wait to get this on the wheel.

Last night, Boh and I headed over to see our favorite greyhound and his people. Popcorn was popped, NPR was switched on, and  I started my third seaman’s cap. This one is out of the dark green polwarth from Southern Cross Fibres that I spun a few weeks ago.

Yesterday morning I pulled on my stripes! sweater, thinking that maybe it was getting cold enough that I’d need the warmth as I sipped my coffee. I was too warm after only a few minutes…but soon!

A bunch of folks from my department went out for Korean food this week, and I ate some incredibly yummy (and spicy) kimchi. My farm share included Chinese cabbage, and while I had initially been envisioning a hearty stir-fry, kimchi thoughts took over when I opened my fridge to make lunch on Friday. I got out The Joy of Pickling (I can’t recommend this book enough), and there were a handful of kimchi recipes to choose from. I started with the basic recipe, soaked my cabbage in brine from 12 hours, and then yesterday, added the scallions, garlic, ginger, pepper, and sugar. (Go get a pickling book for ratios and instructions!) I didn’t realize that kimchi only needs to ferment for 3-6 days, which means that I’ll get to taste-test this week!

Yesterday afternoon, I realized I was pouting, so I decided to be proactive about it. Applesauce makes everything better, so I dashed up to the orchards and picked out a peck of Golden Delicious and a peck of Cortland apples. Fifteen minutes later, I was chopping apples in the kitchen, and soon the apples were simmering away on the stove. I made two batches. I leave the skins on, and then I pour the whole pot-full through the food mill to smooth out the sauce. Yum.

Also, look! My plain and simple pullover is growing! I decided that it might be a good idea to try it on, and I am quite happy with the fit. This is going to be the perfect drapey short-sleeved sweater to pull on over a long-sleeve tee. Also, this marks the end of the first ball of yarn — 665 yards (8 oz) of local fingering-weight undyed alpaca.

Time for yarn-winding! Also, how did it get to be November? (For the record, I did not knit a single sock this October. I’m nothing if not consistent…)

It was a quiet Friday, spent trying to catch up with the week: lots of list-making and stock-taking, but also a longer walk to the reservoir with Boh to clear my head and stretch his (okay, our) legs.

It was a proper eve of Halloween — the sky was grey, the wind, howling, and the familiar scent of leaves settling and decomposing whirled about us. The seasons are starting to turn again, but there are some leaves, branches, whole trees, even, that seem to resist. These solitary bursts of yellow made me smile, and I found myself looking for pockets of color in the muted beauty of these woods.

Everything always seems more manageable after a walk along this path.

The oven helps, too. A friend of mine from college has this gorgeous cupcake website that you should all check out, and yesterday she posted a recipe for savory cheddar and scallion cupcakes. Moments after reading this, I was in the kitchen melting butter and measuring out flour. Yum.

I also finished the first bobbin of Winter Storage, and I’m hoping to start the next one this afternoon — but only if I can get some writing done today.

I’ll leave you with a bit of Boh humor. I caught Boh admiring himself in the mirror yesterday. He was so engrossed in his own reflection that I was able to snap a few pictures before he starting looking at me in the mirror. Silly, silly dog.

Thank you for all of your happy thoughts about Tuesday’s lecture! I finally was able to do a bit of knitting and spinning last night in order to recover from all of the week’s stress and extra adrenaline, and I decided to reward myself by spinning a special treat: a gorgeous batt from Amondale Farms that Lisa Knithound sent my way as a Rhinebeck souvenir. (I was going to try to crack a Halloween joke or two about batts/bats…but I won’t.)

I know, Boh does not look pleased. But these are his colors! Lisa said that this batt reminded her of the southwest, and I agree: these colors make me think of the gorgeous sunrises I witnessed almost every morning when I lived there.  I did a little bit of reading about spinning batts, divided the 1.5 oz. batt into two equal chunks by unrolling the rectangle and splitting it down the middle, and sat down at the wheel.

I mostly used the long draw technique to spin this, but I did a lot of smoothing of the single before I let it wind on to the bobbin, so it certainly wasn’t a “true” long draw. I let the singles rest an hour, and then plied them together!

Here’s the plied batt on my niddy noddy…

And here is my finished skein: 51 yards of lofty 2-ply that runs a bit thick and thin, from dk to worsted.

I’m already thinking about turning this into a calorimetry for me!

Spinning and plying this batt last night just made me want to get something else going on the wheel. It was so much fun to try something new — this is my first batt! — that I decided to take my fast flyer out of it’s plastic wrap and put it on my wheel.

This is Finn, from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, in the Winter Storage colorway. I’m aiming for a 2-ply light-fingering/laceweight.

Happy Friday!