Teach Me How to Knit, Teach Me How to Knit

Neil was like, "Hey Meg, can you teach me how to dougie knit?" And I said, "Yeah, know why? Cuz all the stitchers love me!"

Well, maybe that is not how things really got going, but there may have been dancing at some point. Regardless of the origins, this weekend I had a fantastic Neil-Meg Saturday Extravaganza.  Neil is a wonderful friend of mine and we go waaaayyy back.  Not only is he an amazing friend, but he also volunteers his time to help me at Stories in the Garden, a monthly gardening/story reading event at my local community garden. So obviously I was more than thrilled to spend time teaching Neil how to knit.

Neil reading The Carrot Seed to
the little gardeners

For those of you who have been following the blog for a long time, you will recall that I have only tried to teach someone how to knit once, and that was a few years ago.  However, I was trying to teach 20ish 3rd graders so I anticipated that a one-on-one session with Neil would be slightly easier.  Neil really wants to knit hats and toys and lots of cool stuff but I told him a scarf would be the best project to start with.  He is a super creative person, spending his days working at Family Guy and he even has his own art blog. I have no doubt that he will be knitting up really cool stuff soon.

Cast On, Bind Off

After a beautiful morning in the garden, we needed some nourishment so our pre-lesson meal was at this amazing restaurant in my neighborhood.  Forage has scrumptious food from local farmers.  If you live in the area and haven't been there, you are missing out!

Bellies full, we were ready to walk home and get to knittin'.  Neil went through my bundles of yarn and picked out his colors.  He decided to go with yellow and grey.  I decided size 8 needles would be good...not too big, not too small, or, as Goldilocks puts it, just right!

First row done!!!!

First things first, casting on.  Do you remember how awkward casting on was when you first started to knit?  I do!  So we took it one step at a time, first with a slip knot and then the method recommended by Stitch N' Bitch that I learned.  After row one of casting on, it was time to learn the knit stitch.  Neil is a fantastic student and caught on pretty quickly.  We did get a little help with the knitting poem, "In through the front door, run around back, hop through the window, off jumps jack."  This was just the ticket to help the first row of knit stitches make their way onto Neil's knitting needles!

Cheers Neil!  Welcome to
the world of knitters!

Since Neil was such a fast learner, I showed him how to purl and add some ribbing to his scarf.  Before I knew it, our time was up, so we had a quick lesson on binding off.  Neil left with a yellow strip of knitting that could be the grown-up version of a friendship bracelet.  Tons of fun, great conversations, and a new skill learned!  I can't wait to get together again and have our own knitting party!

Thanks Neil!!!

kiss me, im irish

or at least as much as everyone else is on st. patrick's day. and for some reason, i looooooove st. patty's day. i honestly have no idea where it came from. love of guinness? preference for green? day drinking? who knows. but what i do know is that for the past couple of years, it has played a significant role in my life.

first attempt

my first "big" st patty's celebration was a couple years ago. and friend and i decided to drive to boston, stay in a hostel and celebrate with the locals. lessons learned that year? 1. there is no such thing as too much green. 2. cute welsh doctors like older women. (oh snap!) 3. breathalyzers in a bar are amazing, and said friend will be above the legal limit before she drinks half a beer. 4. when someone offers you use of their house in southern california DON'T LOSE THEIR EMAIL.
fast forward many years, and here i am. gearing up for another festive holiday. the list of rules has grown, but one thing remains the same. i'm still a fool for st. patrick's day.
so what is a girl to do without any green accessories and no money to head to the store? knit, of course!! it wasn't that hard to decide what to make- i HATE condensation on my hands from holding a cold beer and i HATE my hands getting cold from holding said beer. so beer coozies were on.
it took a bit of experimentation, holding the koozie to see if it needed to be longer, if the coozie was too loose etc., but after i made the first one i was hooked. for some reason, i thought yellow was a st patty's day color. i was quickly corrected. so after switching up my yarns, i was off. i made a couple versions with shamrocks and got a bit annoyed with knitting the shamrocks. so i decided to make one based on the flag of Ireland. This one was my favorite, the only thing i would change would be to add a bottom to the coozie.

I also learned a new binding off technique while working on the flag version. I finished knitting the coozie flat, but when i tried to sew it together, it was too short. i was annoyed. i didn't know what to do. i had previously learned to pick up stitches when i made something too short, so i decided that was what i had to do. i picked up stitches on each end of the flag and increased the amount that i decided was correct. for some reason the green side worked out perfectly, while the orange side has some weird twisting stitches thing going on. who knows. either way, when i finished adding rows, i was at a loss for how to sew the two edges together without taking a ton more time. my first option was to bind off each side and then sew them together. but in my head that would have added to much extra room and the coozie would have been too loose for the beer. so i turned to google. "how to knit two needles together." fail. "how to knit two ends together separate needles."  bingo. this magically lead me to find out that what i was actually looking for was a 3 needle bind off. which i must say is amazing. who knew this was out there? it was awesome! 

after knitting the coozies, i realized that my buffalo sabres st. patty's day shirt would not be enough to wear out. i decided i needed something orange to complete my ensemble. did you know that icords are an actual thing?? and that its not crocheted? because that's what i thought it was. and i don't crochet, so i thought i couldn't do it. but i was wrong. after about 45 minutes, i had this super cute headband all ready to go. boy i love knitting! (yes. i know. you can make fun of me.) after i finished up my last minute knitting, i headed downtown with my coozie for a st. patty's day bar crawl. below are some action shots of the koozies being used in action. so while i sit here and knit some more coozies, i hope you all have a great st. patrick's day!!! so raise your glass...

"Saint Patrick was a gentleman,
Who through strategy and stealth,
Drove all the snakes from Ireland,
Here’s a toasting to his health.
But not too many toastings
Lest you lose yourself and then
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see all those snakes again."

btw. is it cooizie or kooize???

knitting maps, for friends

outer banks

one of the blogs i follow, Maps For Friends, is written by a good friend who, obviously, loves all things map related.  so it was no surprise when he requested some knitting that was also map related. after much contemplation, i settled on making a pot holder. in my head i was thinking this would be another "quick knit" to break up the monotony of the scarf i've been working on. i need to stop thinking i can "quick knit" anything.
my first issue was creating a pattern. a quick google search brought up tons of images of world maps, but as you might know, world maps are not perfect squares. so i found a picture that i thought would work, threw it into Knit Pro 2.0 and voila.

row of condemned, beachfront houses

then i had another problem. if i was just going to throw this together as a favor, i wasn't really going to take the time to drive all the way to the knitting store for new yarn, so i had planned on just using some of my stash. but when making a pot holder, can one use acrylic yarn or will it melt?? i googled some more, and couldn't find a consensus, so i opted to not try it. luckily i had some cotton yarn left over from my pathetic attempt at making a shirt.
so onwards and upwards. i decided how many stitches i wanted to cast on (45) and went over to ravelry to look for some hints. boy was i surprised. apparently there is this thing called double knitting that is used to make potholders which makes the project thicker and knits the design on both sides. well. after watching plenty of YouTube videos, i decided that was not for me. the plan was to knit one square with the pattern, and then knit a plain square and sew the two together.

5 balls of yarn at work!

the adventure began and it was taking forever. so when i was asked to head to the outer banks for a  weekend, i couldn't resist. finishing a travel related project on a weekend trip sounded perfect! well, that didn't happen. the weather was beautiful and i spent most of my time either walking on the beach or hanging out with the locals in a bar.
so it was back to dc to finish. once i actually settled in to work on it, the work didn't actually take that long. and once the front was done, the back only took a couple of hours, although i assume it takes much less time for a more polished knitter.  so here is the final product....

all done!

the colors seem a bit off, probably because it was taken at 1am when i finally finished it. to sew it together, i put the right sides together and started in one corner. once three sides were sewn, i flipped it right side out and stitched the two sides together in the middle, about every inch or so. my only concern when i decided to make 2 separate pieces was that they would be too floppy once put together. hopefully my stitches will stay together and keep the pot holder sturdier.

i tried to take a better picture with natural light to give a better sense of the true colors, but it was too bright for my camera w the shades open. it kind of shows a difference, although not as much as i would have hoped.
so all in all, pot holder success. if i make anymore of these, i will probably use a bigger needle and bulkier yarn, just to make the process go a bit faster. i imagine most knitters could whip this baby out in less than an hour. oh well. at least my work isn't pulling as much when i use two colors!!!

cuddle buddies

now time for an update. you may remember the post by meg about the Nikolas pillow i made and how he was scared to go near it. well, the tides have turned. Nikolas and pillow Nikolas have now bonded. and my work here is complete.

And the Award Goes To...

NJP is steering clear from his counterpart

J.Howe!  For yet another stellar creation.  I came home today to find a surprise in my mailbox...a little pillow with a photo of Nikolas James Pumpkinhead on it!  He's not quite so sure about his twin floating around on the couch but I love it.  I think I am going to move it every once in a while, to a new spot, so he can mimic the real live NJP. 

We Can Also...

...Jump on a bandwagon!

Generally I try to steer clear of things that popular culture tells me to do or like.  I think it was all those books I read as a child that told me women should be independent and fierce...god bless the Little Women.  I swore I would never get a cell phone...and broke down after graduating college.  I swore I would never join Facebook (one boring summer in LA changed that...) and Twitter (enter my hopes for owning a bookstore.)  And most recently I got my first ever TV.  Ugh.

"Hey Girl, I would love to pour a glass of wine and cast on
some dpns with you..."  (Mr. Crawley)

But still, there are main stream things that don't generally interest me and the inner Jo March in me is proud.  Then I started hearing about this show...Downton Abbey.  And I thought...yeah, whatever.  Then Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, and a bunch of other literary geeks like me, started promoting a literary Super Bowl.  Their goal was to try and get more people to watch Downton Abbey than the big game where grown ass men hurl themselves at each other.  I started to get a little more interested.

And then finally, after an email from a friend and a girl's weekend away, I was convinced.  My Downton Abbey Marathon was my last day of this past President's Day weekend.  I totally got swept up in the first season (WAHOO for Netflix watch instant on my fancy new TV!) and stayed up way too late watching it.  (And knitting a toy robot for a good friend...) AND THEN I found out that the second season is available on PBS's website FOR FREE!  Good lord, the nerd in me just about flipped my shit.

Hey Girl, you can jump on my bandwagon...

I've had a lot of work to catch up on since my marathon but I am happy to be on this bandwagon.  Hopefully I will get some time this weekend to watch the exciting second season, in which war comes to the Abbey.

Inspired by something "popular" actually being "cool" I decided to see what else is out there.  Yesterday, my math teaching partner and I decided it was time to teach our kids about fractions and probability.  March Madness also happens to be around the corner.  I knew March Madness had something to do with basketball...and brackets...but that is about it.  So my partner schooled me on all the ins and outs and the inner geek in me cried for joy!  My Jeopardy-loving side beamed at all the trivia...my puzzle-loving-brain gushed at the probabilities, stats, and facts.  Could it be?  Something else the cool kids like is fun??!!  So, we are on!  This year I will be filling out my first ever bracket. (Along with 100 students.) GASP!  I know!


Then I heard about this guy Jeremy Lin...don't even get me started on LinSanity...

how this girl eats vegan

so I'm trying to eat vegan. don't get me wrong, i love a good steak and when placed in front of me i will not say no. but i try to stay away from any meat/dairy during normal meals. my biggest issue with this is that i'm not a creative cook, nor do i like cooking. i've found some really great meals in the Skinny Bitch Cookbook, but sometimes i just want something simple with very few ingredients.
enter The Vegan Stoner. i was introduced to The Vegan Stoner at christmas, when mom got meg and i a copy and continued the howe girls food themed christmas presents. it was love at first sight. all of their recipes are simple and contain less ingredients than any other vegan cookbook i have seen. "so easy a stoner could make it!"
so when i walked out of the gym and into the gorgeous, sunny, non-winter weather, i turned to the Vegan Stoner for my lunch options. (Big props to their site design, which pulls up fast/easily on my droid!)
as i swiped through their recipes, one ingredient stood out to me: vegan sour cream. i had recently bought said ingredient thinking it could top my fajitas, only to realize it wasn't close enough to the real thing to make it worth the calories.  but strawberry soup!! perfect match! so without further ado, here is my strawberry soup....

my only non-vegan ingredient is honey, which i used instead of agave. i'm ok with this as this honey is brought to you by my daddio, and i love my honey bear jar.  

i hope you are enjoying your gorgeous presidents day!!

knitting for friends...

So i have some of the greatest friends ever. not just because they're legit good friends, but because they don't make fun of me for knitting. or for bringing my knitting with me everywhere i go. all the time. when you invite jess, you invite the knitting. which is why it was no surprise when they wanted a piece of the knitting goodness. at the time, i was carting fingerless owl mitts everywhere, so a couple of them asked for a pair. but then i was thrown a monkey wrench. one of the girls asked for a pair of fingerless mitts WITH A CONVERTIBLE FLIP TOP. whoa. challenge accepted.

Matchy, matchy green.

Matchy green!

so first things first, i made the owl mitts that i could probably make in my sleep. picking the colors was kind of a pain, because i couldn't really find any yarn that was bright enough for my liking. but a greens a greens a green (???). anyway. i still have to add the label and weave in all the ends, but they're basically done and i just need to hand them off to my lovely ladies.
so my next task was to make the convertible fingerless mitts. my original idea was to just make another set of owls and add the top. but after really looking at the design, i figured it wouldn't work as well as i wanted and the flap would cover the owl, so that work wasn't necessary. the mitts i choose are kind of loose and scrunchy looking, but plain, so the flap will work perfectly while still being comfy.

the best part about these gloves was that they were super quick to knit up. the only issue was the flap, because i didn't have a pattern for them that matched the glove pattern. but i was able to finagle something to fit, albeit a tad bit too big. my fav part was being able to go through moms button stash and find some really cool brown buttons.
So now i just need to finish the second glove. which should be easier since i already have the patterns. my to-do list keeps getting smaller, and then keeps getting bigger! so right now I'm working on this glove, a scarf that was a Christmas present, a blanket, and a boob hat (Karen's grandbaby cant go boobless!!!). thank goodness the bf got me these cute espresso cups so i can have my daily fix!!

just sip and pretend you're in Rome!