Traveling!

I have returned from my travels! I actually got back a week ago, but now I am over my jet lag and fully back in the swing of studying. I didn't do a ton of knitting while I was on vacation, but I did some in the car on our road trip around the western states, some on planes, and some while I was visiting with my grandparents in Denmark. I love to talk about handwork with my grandmother - she and her mother were both very accomplished needle-workers, and she has many beautiful tablecloths and bedlinens made in a wide variety of crochet, embroidery, and lace types. My grandmother always asks about my knitting and other handwork, and if I'm lucky, she also tells me about things she made when she was a girl and a young woman - for example, from a very young age, her father purchased from her the handknit socks she made for all of the members of her family. She told me about one pair of socks she made, from yarn she got by ripping out a skirt she had previously knitted for herself and dyed bright red. She said the first time the socks were worn (and I unfortunately don't remember who she said she made them for), the wearer's feet and ankles turned bright red from the dye!

Before I flew to Europe, Robert and I stopped for a day in Yellowstone on our way to visit various people in our families. We saw a lot of really amazing things, including buffalo!
Here we are standing in front of one of the hot springs. It's not entirely clear in the picture, but the water was a bright clear turquoise color, the steam rising off of it was green and blue and red, and the whole thing was surrounded by great colonies of bright orange thermophilic bacteria!
And, I did make it to the Vatican, where I wore my Vatican skirt! Here I am in a courtyard in the Vatican museums:
We/I had a lovely trip, and I acquired a special new project that I will post about soon. I also have several new and newish other UFOs to add in the coming days.

A Skirt to wear to the Vatican

Many weeks ago, not long after I finished the two brown skirts, I started thinking about making a peasant skirt. I looked at a few web tutorials and decided to do just a simple elastic waist, and I figured I wouldn't need a pattern. I went and shopped a sale at JoAnn for the fabric, elastic for the waist, and a pretty lace trim to go around the bottom edge.

Since I wasn't using a pattern, I went a head and did a back of the envelope calculation, as they say on the Frontiers of Science (David Helfand would be so proud). Here is my schematic drawing showing the way the tiers would expand:
Fast forward a goodly number of weeks to last Monday night, and I've gotten all of the pieces cut out, the waist casing done, and all but the bottom two seams sewn. When I tried the skirt on, it didn't fit right. I'd pictured kind of a drop waist sort of first tier beginning with the waistband, but that put the first seam right at the widest part of my hips. It fit, but it wasn't at all flattering. Luckily, it was also clear that the skirt was a lot longer than I'd pictured. Where I had expected the hem to fall just a tad below my knees, it was on track to be mid-calf length. So I chopped off about four inches from the top, and resewed the casing.

Another problem appeared when I went to sew the hem. I had only bought 2 yards of lace trim, when it turned out that I needed 2 1/2 yards. So I had to put the skirt on hold until I could get back to JoAnn to buy new lace.
When I make this skirt again, I'll make it a little bit shorter - probably by making each of the lower three tiers an inch or an inch and a half shorter. As Robert said, this skirt makes me look like I'm trying to be modest. That's exactly the image I want to project when I visit the Vatican when I go to Rome in a few weeks, but my general style is for skirts that are closer to knee-length.

Chicken and pigeons

Robert and I have been in our new apartment just over a month now, and for the past two or three weeks, we've had a pair of pigeons attempting to nest in our juliette balcony. I say "attempting" because these two pigeons are extraordinarily bad parents. They built a nest, and the female laid two eggs (much to our dismay). Then all of the nesting material fell through the grate and/or off the side. Then one of the eggs apparently fell over the side. Then, last week, Robert noticed that the remaining egg is broken. But none of these misfortunes have prevented the pigeons from sitting on the egg, and the male(? - I'm not 100% sure which is which) pigeon keeps on trying to bring twigs to reconstitute the nest. This has been totally unsuccessful, because he's just a little too fat to comfortably fit between the bars of the balcony. He flies up with a twig in his beak, tries to come through the bars, flaps his wings a few times, drops the twig to the ground, and flies off for another one. Every time. It would be very amusing, except that the pigeons are kind of noisy and gross and generally annoying.

In other birdie news, my needle-felted chicken from a previous post is finally framed and hanging up in our kitchen:

Pink socks finished

Even though colloquium and CMS are on summer hiatus, I've been getting in some pretty good knitting time, and a few weeks ago I finished the pink socks. The pattern is from Cookie A's book Sock Innovation, and the yarn is from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns, purchased at Webs.
Two things I love about these socks:

1. The color. I don't really think either of the pictures captures the beautiful pink colors of the yarn. Pink is my favorite color.
2. The way the lace panel eats the ribs to arc across the top of the foot, as you can see in the first picture. Robert says this is "nifty," and I agree. Also, I really appreciate the symmetry of this element. The socks are mirror images of each other.
   

Bread Machine!

Many things have happened since the last time I posted. I will make an attempt to post them in the order in which they were done, but no guarantees.

First up, We received a breadmaker as a housewarming/"thanks Robert for dogsitting" gift. We have been enjoying it a great deal. The first loaf of bread Robert made in it was a simple white bread:

This loaf of bread was very delicious, and lasted less than 24 hours. We try to have a "special" breakfast on Saturday mornings, and the day after the first loaf of bread happened to be a Saturday, so I made vegan french toast. We devoured it with margarine and maple syrup.

Green Shawl Finished!

My green shawl is finally finished! I started it in the summer of 2008, when my family was on vacation in Flagstaff, AZ. We went on a day trip to Sedona, where we stopped in at the Red Rock Knit Shop. I fell in love with a gorgeous lace shawl displayed on the wall. The owner of the shop directed me to the online source for the pattern, and I bought the yarn right there and then (the yarn was Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace; this is not the yarn recommended in the pattern).

It has taken me nearly 3 years, but it is now finished. In the picture above, you can see it all pinned out for blocking. Here it is soaking in Eucalan wool wash first:
After removing it from the wash water, I squeezed it in a towel. It was so small!
Then I rolled it up in a bath towel and walked all over it before Robert helped me pin it out symmetrically. After it had dried, it was clear how much more orderly the stitches had become. The lace pattern became much more clear than it had been before.
Here, you can see the difference in size of the shawl before and after blocking. The first photo is before, and the second is after. For reference, the back of the couch folds down to make a full-sized bed.

Vegan Donuts

As I mentioned in a previous post, Robert and I have now made donuts twice. We use the Pioneer Woman's recipe, and veganize it by subbing flax "eggs" for the two eggs. The recipe makes about two dozen. For Robert's birthday brunch, we doubled it. This was kind of a mistake, since it produced 52 donuts and 62 donut holes, which took up just about every flat surface in my apartment until our friends ate almost half of them.

That said, they are DELICIOUS! Here you can see one frying. I recommend using crisco for frying instead of canola oil. The canola oil makes you cry when it heats up and starts to break down, but with crisco you're okay until you get too much residue in the bottom of the pot. It took 3 batches of oil to fry all of the birthday donuts.
After they're fried, the recipe says to glaze them with a powdered-sugar glaze. We did that the first time, but the second time we dredged about half of them in cinnamon sugar and glazed the rest. Both options were delicious, but we preferred the cinnamon sugar ones. Here you can see Robert glazing a donut hole:
I heartily recommend this recipe. It is kind of a big production, but it is not difficult. Just make sure you have lots of friends coming over to help you enjoy them!