Restless needles

I have to have a project on my knitting needles at all times. If I don't, I feel at loose ends. I like the security of knowing I can be knitting on something if I'm watching television or riding in the car.

Here are a few of my March-April projects.

The owl, a rather odd-looking specimen, I admit, is from Purl Bee. I chose the pattern because I like the criss-cross design in the owl's body.

On Christmas Eve we were at our friends' home, and a very pregnant guest mentioned that her baby's room would be decorated with owls. My ears perked up. I love an excuse to knit baby things, so I made a mental note to  knit an owl for the baby's room.

Here's the completed cardigan for little Phoebe. It's a size 3-4. I wrote about my problems with this pattern in an earlier post. The finished cardigan came out OK. I still need to find just the right button for it. I'm thinking something large and bling-y is in order. The pattern is Sirdar's #1401; the yarn is Sirdar Snuggly DK.

My eight-year-old great niece, Violet, mentioned in February that she desperately needed a pair of fingerless gloves. I almost weakened and gave her a rather fancy pair I'd made for someone else. Then I decided to make her a pair of plain ones using leftover sock yarn. It's not that I think Violet isn't worthy of a pair of fancy fingerless gloves, but she's eight. Eight-year-olds lose things. I'd share the pattern if I could find it. It's no doubt from Ravelry, where I find tons of excellent, mostly free, patterns. I noticed Violet was wearing her new gloves as she left our home on Easter Sunday.

Violet's mother Rachel and I are going to have a craft fair at a strawberry festival at the end of June. I've been making several strawberry-themed  things for the fair, the next two items among them.

At left is a knitted and felted purse. It sports a strawberry design on the front and a lining of strawberry-strewn cotton.

The strawberry hat is knitted in garter stitch with strawberry leaves and stem attached.

It'll be interesting to see if any of our craft items actually sell. I learned long ago that pricing handmade items is tricky. Either the buyer is insulted by the price, or the seller is. Most buyers don't place much value on handmade items, so it's ridiculous to put an accurate price on, say, the handbag above. If I followed the rule of thumb of pricing for  the handbag, I'd charge twice the price of the yarn plus the value of my time. Let's say the yarn was $8, so that times two is $16. Let's say I spent four hours knitting the handbag, another hour machine-felting it, an hour adding the lining, two hours knitting and felting the embellishments….that's 8 hours of my time. Let's say I feel $10 per hour is fair pay. That's $80 for my time, $16 for my materials….$96. Absolutely no one attending the strawberry festival will be willing to pay $96 for a hand knitted, felted, and embellished (AND lined) strawberry handbag. I can almost guarantee you that. I'll probably put a price of $30 on it, and I'll probably be bringing it back home with me at the end of the craft fair!

I like to keep a sock project on my needles at all times. That way, when I finish a bigger project and am in that between-projects zone, I can always pick up the socks and work on them. My one and only sock pattern is by Yankee Knitter. It's a great sock pattern, very well written. I love Yankee Knitter knitting patterns.

I started these socks last August and worked on them here and there over the next several months. In fact, I got sick and tired of them. But now they're done. DONE, I tell you. They'll make a nice addition to my drawer of wool socks, and wool socks are my sock of choice in the winter. They are so much warmer than cotton socks!

So that's what my needles and I have been up to.

Dabbling in cold porcelain

Our eight-year-old great niece, Violet, came for a two-night sleepover earlier this week, so she and I  got right to work on a new project: making cold porcelain.

Cold porcelain isn't actually porcelain. It's made of corn starch, white glue, a dab of Vaseline, and some water. (I add a few drops of tea tree oil to prevent the items we made from developing a mold or fungus.)

I found several recipes for cold porcelain on Pinterest while I was looking for recipes for homemade polymer clay. The two might be one and the same; I'm not sure.

I got the white glue at Dollar Tree, two 4-ounce bottles for, you guessed it, $1. I used maybe 1/4 box of corn starch. In other words, the cost for making cold porcelain is minimal.

Cold porcelain creations on Pinterest are much more detailed and complicated than those that Violet and I undertook. We're novices, though, and some of the Pinterest cold porcelain creators are artists, from the looks of things.

Violet sculpted a cat, a bird, and, of course, a violet blossom.

I used cookie cutters to make what will eventually become gift tags.

The porcelain takes 3-4 days to dry, so I'm just now putting layers of ModPodge on mine. Next I'll spray them with an acrylic sealer.

Maybe I'll mix up another batch of cold porcelain and branch out a bit with my creations. It's fun stuff to work with, and I'm sure the possible creations are almost limitless.

Honoring

On Tuesday morning, April 1, Ken and I left here bright and early for the 45-minute drive to Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth.

We were there to attend a ceremony to honor eight of Ken's ancestors: George Osborn, Sr., and his seven sons, all of whom served our country at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. George, Sr., joined the military two days after the first shots were fired in Lexington, MA, on April 19, 1775.

George Osborn's seven sons followed suit, the youngest being only eleven years old when he was assigned to a ship in the Massachusetts Navy.

That's quite a remarkable military record for any family, and when Ken's second-cousin Stephen uncovered this family history, he made arrangements to have the eight Osborns honored at the April 1, 2014 ceremony.

The day could not have been more beautiful in front of Portland Head Light at Fort Williams Park. Nor could it have been colder. A brisk wind blew off the ocean the entire time we were there.

There's Portland Head Light herself, looking stunning, as usual.

Five of George Osborn's descendants, including Ken, were presented with American flags as mementos of the Osborn family's service.

It was a beautiful ceremony and a humbling occasion. You can read more about it here.

Crying about it won't do any good

I could hardly wait to get started. The minute I saw the Sirdar 1401 long-sleeved baby cardigan on Knitting Paradise, I knew I had to make it. I promptly visited the Patternfish website, located the pattern, paid for it, downloaded it, and printed it. Now all I needed was the yarn.

On Sunday, as Ken and I were out and about, I casually suggested we might stop at Rosemary's Yarn Shop so I could purchase the necessary yarn.

That evening, with three skeins of Sirdar Snuggly DK yarn in my possession, I sat down to cast on.

I knitted and knitted. From Sunday night until Friday night I knitted. I saw the cardigan rapidly taking shape before my very eyes.

Then I came to a sentence that didn't make sense in the direction sheet. It told me to do something with my needles that would be totally impossible. My first thought was that the directions were wrong. My second thought was to tell the direction sheet to do something totally impossible with my needles. My third thought was that I'd made a mistake in my knitting.

I had, indeed, made a mistake, a huge mistake, way back at the near-beginning of the pattern. The photo above shows you where I am now, and I've been re-knitting like a woman possessed since Saturday morning, which was yesterday.

See the almost-rectangular section in the upper right? That's the only part I did NOT ravel. See the skein of yarn that has obviously been wound by hand? That's how much I still need to knit before I get back to where I was before discovering the ugly truth.

I'm convinced the cardigan will be adorable on little Phoebe, our friend's daughter, so I'm soldiering on.   I'll get it done, one way or another.

And speaking of knitting, here's a heart-warming story for you. It's about an obstetrician here in Maine  who knits for the babies he delivers.

Chicken cacciatore, anyone?

We love a big batch of chicken cacciatore every once in awhile, and this is the recipe I've used since 1981, according to the date written inside the cookbook.

It's quick; it's easy; it's delicious.

You'll love it, too. Just serve over al dente spaghetti and voila! Paradise.

The recipe calls for a 2 1/2-3 pound broiler-fryer, cut up, but I always use boneless chicken breasts cut into small pieces.

Put 1/2 cup flour, 1 t. salt, and 1/4 t. pepper in a plastic bag. Add the chicken pieces and shake until well-coated.

Heat 1/4 c. vegetable or olive oil in a pot (I always use my cast iron dutch oven). Cook chicken over medium heat until brown on all sides, about 15 minutes. Drain oil from pot.

Mix together 1-16 oz. can tomatoes; 1 8-oz can tomato sauce; 1 cup mushrooms, sliced; 1/4 c. water; 1/4 c. pitted ripe olives; 1 medium onion, chopped; 2 cloves garlic, crushed; 1 t. salt; 1 t. dried oregano leaves; 1/4 t. pepper; 1 bay leaf.

Pour over chicken. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until thickest pieces of chicken are done, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve over spaghetti.

Just reading the recipe makes my mouth water!

O.K. Enough's enough.

 Took these photos this morning while it was, of course, snowing. In the first photo you can spot just the top of my picket fence post to the left of center.

And in the second photo you see why the squirrels are enjoying the green bird feeder which, supposedly, has a baffle to prevent access by squirrels. All they need to do is stretch a little to climb above the baffle. And that's precisely what they've been doing.

Winter, where is thy end?

The Boston Marathon Scarf Project

I learned of this project a week ago and knew immediately that I wanted to join in.

Boston's Old South Church is collecting handknitted and hand crocheted blue and yellow scarves to give to this year's runners on April 20, the day before the Boston Marathon.

Providing runners with our handwork will be a powerful way to let them know we are thinking of them, thinking of the ones injured and killed in last year's marathon bombing, and giving them our love and support.

I'm knitting scarf #3 now and will probably finish it today. I think I'll also knit a fourth one, for good measure.

Details about the project can be found at the link above. (Just click on "this project" in the opening sentence.) Also, I have taken information from the official site and am sharing it below.

Scarves must be received by the Old South Church, Boston, no later than April 5, so if you'd like to join the project, get those needles clicking!

Also, there's a group for this project on Ravelry, should you like to join it and take a look at many scarves already completed.

As the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing approaches, members of Boston's Old South Church United Church of Christ have mixed feelings. Some are facing the anniversary with a spirit of defiance and determination, some feel a growing sense of unease and foreboding, and for others it is a time of grievous loss, said the church's pastor, the Rev. Nancy Taylor. But the church, located about 100 feet from the marathon's finish line, where the bombs went off on April 15, 2013, will choose to celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit through the Marathon Scarf Project, an effort to wrap each runner of this year's race in love, hope and prayer. "As we approach the first anniversary, feelings are complicated," said Taylor. "Every athlete competing in this year's Boston Marathon is facing down fear and defying it. These scarves, knitted with prayers of love and courage, will literally enfold the athletes, touching their skin and blessing them on their way." The Marathon Scarf Project is organized by members of the Old South Knitters, the church's group of about 30 knitters, crocheters and weavers. The group is collecting handmade scarves in the colors of royal blue and yellow, the official colors of the Boston Marathon, measuring approximately 4-6 inches wide and 60 inches long. (Organizers suggest using the official Boston Athletic Association colors Pantone 109C and Pantone 294C as a guide.)