Author: Marie Haigh

I started knitting 15 years ago right around the time of my marriage and the birth of my niece.

Genealogy with Gran

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I spent yesterday with Gran (Dan’s maternal grandmother). After having brunch at a local diner, we went back to her house to sit and talk. Spurred on by the genetic testing (for breast cancer) I am getting done, I lassoed her help to fill in some of the missing blanks on Dan’s side of our family tree. We only ended up going back three generations, but she told me so many great stories.

After I got home, I spread out all the notes I took on our dining room table.

I quickly decided that the free forms I printed out weren’t going to cut it; there is no room to write in all the stories Gran told me. So, I plan to make up my own template on the computer and just print them out later.

Other news: I only have 7 more inches to knit on my Mohair Stole.

Casting on for Christmas

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Christmas has begun in my home!

I have already crossed 9 people off my Christmas list. Only 15 more left to shop/make for. Which doesn’t sound like a lot until you start accounting for all the birthdays that occur in November and December. Most of the people on my list have to bought for twice.

I have garnered permission from Dan (my husband) and encouragement from my neighbor to put up two Christmas trees this year. The plan is to trim the artificial Christmas tree before Thanksgiving. We’ll get a real one after Thanksgiving Day. Plus, I already won the argument last year about The Wise Men Day (January 6th). The tree has always had to stay up till Jan. 6th because I won’t let him take it down beforehand, but last year was the first year we actually swapped one small present on the day. I lobbied that we make it a tradition … and Dan agreed. So, I get almost a full 2 months of Christmas! I’m soooo giddy. I can’t wait for Halloween to come and go.

But enough about my crazy Christmas habits, the main reason I wrote up this post was to show you that I have finally cast on for the Christmas Tree Skirt.

My love of cables has kept the tie point from curling.

And after fighting with my mohair stole over the hand painted yarn getting stuck in a rut, I am relieved to be working with yarn that nicely flows from one color to the other.
Thank you, Brenda!

Updates and Cooking

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OK, I need your honest opinion. Does this Mohair Stole look splotchy to you?

I’m still following my cheater rule: swap skeins every 16 rows, rather than the traditional rule: swap skeins every 2 rows. I get bits of red here and there, but huge blobs of grey right smack dab in the middle of the stole. I think the yarn is doing it just to irritate me. It’s working!

Since I’m slightly frustrated with my tree skirt right now (it’s the tie point that is giving me trouble), I decided to go hog wild in the kitchen. Yesterday began my quest to find the perfect soup to serve with a Christmas Eve dinner. First up was Cream of Mushroom Soup. It tasted great (I’ll post a recipe of it later), but the texture was a bit off (a bit chewy/rubbery when biting into the mushroom chunks). And my reward from all that cooking, an hour of cleaning.

After Cleaning

Thanks to everybody who left me a comment on my Pumpkin adventure. I am reenergized and plan to tackle the other pumpkin this weekend. Although, this time around, I will be using Jane‘s advice and baking the pumpkin rather than steaming it. I’ve baked squash before and I must admit my “neck pumpkin” seemed more like a squash than a pumpkin. Although, it smelled like a pumpkin. And this time around I’ll be making the pumpkin up into a pie and a soup. I’ll let you know how it goes.

A Thank You from My Niece

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I received the sweetest voice mail from my niece Katie yesterday.

What she said:
“Because the quilt you made me is so special, I made you a Tigger card. On the front of the card, it says ‘Tigger, Tigger, Tigger’. On the back, it says ‘I love you very much, Aunt Re’.”

(I should mention why she chose to give me a Tigger card. When we were down in Disney World, I informed Katie on more than one occasion that Tigger was the best. She wasn’t swayed from loving Ariel any less, but it did make for interesting discussions).

I was so touched. I called down to my sister as soon as I got the message. My sister informed me that I was also getting a Tigger from Katie’s stuffed animal collection (mainly because she’s under orders to trim it down). We’re pretty sure it’s the same Tigger I bought Katie when she was first born, but I’m excited to receive it anyway.

I’m not sure that I ever posted a picture of Katie’s quilt, so here are two. It was gifted to her on Christmas 2006.
A close-up
Full view

You may notice that there is a book propped up against the bed. This book was gifted with the quilt. It explained why each of the fabrics were chosen, since the majority of them were leftovers from clothes or bedding that I made Katie when she was younger.

Homemade Pumpkin

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After spending at least an hour in traffic on Saturday driving to and fro the Exton Mall to purchase Christmas presents, I stopped on the way back at a Farmer’s Market. Now maybe it was the pent up frustration or the heat or the sheer joy from crossing two more people off my Christmas list, but it occurred to me that I could make my own pumpkin (for pies and muffins and such). After chatting with the farmer’s daughter about which pumpkins were best for this sort of thing, I walked away with 2 neck pumpkins.

Still excited over my purchase, I decided I would tackle one of the pumpkins straight away. After cutting up the entire pumpkin into bite-size chunks, I started to realize what an insane idea this was. There was no way all of this pumpkin was going to fit into my little 3-quart steamer.

I was right. It didn’t. It took 3 separate batches to steam all the pumpkin chunks. Once they were all steamed, into the fridge they went to cool off so I could touch them without burning myself.

Then, the fun process of cutting the rinds off all the chunks began. The rinds were donated to my compost pile and the pumpkin got thrown into my food processor. And out came a wet, mushy mess. Although none of my old-time cookbooks mentioned straining the pumpkin afterward, I did it anyway. I’m pleased with the results.

Total amount of pumpkin extracted from 1 neck pumpkin: 3 cups. I must admit I was slightly disappointed. After all the work I put into it, I expected to get a wee bit more: something close to a lifetime supply.

I have another neck pumpkin. Will I do it again? I don’t know. The pumpkin muffins did taste delicious this morning, but even dirt would taste pretty good after you added sugar, spices, and sour cream to it.

Borrowing my Husband’s Tie

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My husband came home from work yesterday and gave me the funniest look. I don’t know why. Don’t all women wear their husbands ties in the house when they’re not home?

No? Well, they ought to. Ties are great for inspiration. The one I wore yesterday helped me design the schematics for the Christmas Tree skirt. Here’s the proof.

What else did I do when I was supposed to be watching the Phillies playoff games? I was knitting more of the mohair stole, because watching the Phillies play the way they are is depressing. We can’t pitch to save our lives and our hitters are lost in la-la-land. Ung. But enough about that, I was telling you about my mohair stole. It is 40% completed!

Well, I am off to make a pot of chili. It’s still hot as heck here in Pennsylvania, but I’m doing my part to encourage the weather to get cooler. Stew = cold weather. Truly, it feels like we have been living in San Francisco these past 3 days. Every morning, we get a foggy, misty drizzle (I wouldn’t even call it rain) followed by 80+ degree F day. I guess it is better than no rain at all and if the heat would just go away – I’d be happy as a lark or a Jake. =)

Swatching for the Christmas Tree Skirt

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My white Wool from the Andes arrived on Friday from Knit Picks. It will be paired with the Christmas yarn to create a Christmas Tree Skirt.

I bought 11 skeins because I’ve learned that one can never have too much yarn. Just in the past year, I’ve run out of yarn twice. In the hopes that I never face that challenge again, I swung the pendulum to the opposite side and bought 300 more yards that I need. True, it’s a bit extreme, but the last yarn shortage is still fresh (and painful) in my mind.

Of course, the first thing I did with the yarn was knit up a swatch of plain stocking stitch. Sitting next to the Christmas yarn, it is perfect. It is plain and ordinary, letting the hand-dyed yarn take the spotlight.

Because I refuse to knit an entire garment in stocking stitch (I simply must sneak in some cables or yarn overs), I have been tinkering over the past few days with a pine tree cable. What do you think?

I took the pics at night, so they’re not the best.

Now starts the fun part: drawing the schematics and calculating the stitches. My goal is to cast on later this month.

I Couldn’t Knit on Sunday

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Who could knit during such an amazing game as that? I was terrified to pinch myself yesterday, thinking it could all be just a dream. But when I woke up this morning, the Phillies were still the sole National East division winners. WOO!

Rollins was amazing. He stole 2nd base and then 3rd base. Then, he came home on an RBI sac fly to start the game off right: 1-0. Later in the game, he got his 20th triple of the year, making him only 1 of 4 players to get the quad (20 stolen bases, 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 homeruns). Surely, he deserves the MVP title.

Of course the game didn’t last all day, but I still couldn’t find time to knit. I was too busy reorganizing my sewing room.

Before pic:


After pic:


Thanks to my cousin, I have a “real” desk now. My (grey) sewing table can be used strictly for sewing. Which means every time I want to sew, I don’t have to clear it off first. Oh, the simply joys of life.

What you don’t see is all the fabric and knitting UFOs that I organized. I finally got them all stashed into my 6-drawer storage bin. And a good thing too, they were starting to take over the room! Poor hubby, he gets less and less of our shared office/sewing room each year. Of course, the basement is all his, so I don’t feel that bad.

Fighting with my Mohair Stole

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The rule of thumb when knitting (or crocheting) with hand painted yarns is to alternate between skeins every two rows so that the colors are spread out evenly in the garment. The unused skein is simply put the side of the garment for two rows and then gently, pulled into place. When knitting a sweater or a hat, this technique is easily hid on the wrong side. When knitting a reversible object, like a stole, it is best to cut the yarn and rejoin it in. Any loose ends will be woven into the object upon completion.

But, cutting the yarn every 2 rows and weaving in the loose ends is tedious and obnoxious. However, going to the other extreme and not altering the skeins causes splotches of color on the garment.

So, what’s a knitter to do? Bite the bullet and compromise.
I have opted to swap skeins at the end of every repeat (16 rows in my pattern). The stole is still a bit splotchy, but I’m going to thumb my nose and swear that I designed it to look like that.