podcasts

Episode 43: Imperial Girl

June 27, 2014June 27, 2014 by Sara

This episode contains the following segments: The Back Porch, The Front Porch, Ever-expanding Skill Set, and Off the Shelf.

LISTEN:

The Back Porch

This week I completed Fireflies Rising, a beautiful crescent-shaped shawl designed by Helen Stewart, host of the Curious Handmade podcast. I found Helen’s pattern a dream to knit and I was also very pleased with my yarn choice and my decision to add beads to the shawl. My only disappointment is that the beautiful color of the shawl does not photograph well.

The Front Porch

The school year has finally come to a close and I’m looking forward to a summer on the porch. A summer of knitting, spinning, crocheting, and weaving. The porch at Yin Hoo is a beautiful place to watch the creek below and wait for a cooling breeze on a hot day. If I’m lucky, Samuel will appear with some iced coffee. Or I’ll wander into the kitchen and bring back some fruit to enjoy outside. I look forward to sharing photographs and updates on my projects. Christmas knitting has begun! Check out the details on my Ravelry page.

Ever-expanding Skill Set

June has been wild card month for the Bulk Bins Cook-along, and I’ve been experimenting with homemade pizza crust. I’ve had some success with a recipe from My Bread by Jim Lahey. He’s the guy who popularized the no-knead bread-making technique. So far, I’ve made decent pizza that doesn’t stick to the surface of my pizza stone. I would like to perfect the technique and create a pizza with a thin, crisp crust. Our pizza stone fits our Big Green Egg, a ceramic charcoal grill that is modeled after a Japanese-style kamado grill, which can heat to high temperatures without drying your food.

Next month, we’ll cook along with quinoa. It is the perfect canvas for a wide array of fruits, veggies and cheeses available at your local farm stand or farmer’s market — or event the food you’re growing in your own yard this summer. I look forward to seeing your photos and recipes on the Ravelry discussion board and Instagram. Use #bulkbinscal on social media.

Off the Shelf

This segment was suggested by Valerie, who saw how my yarn stash is tucked into my bookshelves and asked me to talk about some of my favorite titles. Thank you, Valerie, for that suggestion, and for mentioning in your letter that you add a “top 10” books of the year list in your holiday cards. What a great idea! In examining my books in preparation for this segment, I found that most of my collection is contained in four main categories: classic literature, contemporary literary fiction, memoirs by female authors, and poetry / books on writing. I pulled eleven books that have been powerful for me. Of course, there are so many other favorites. I look forward to learning about your summer reading on the discussion thread.

Persuasion by Jane Austen
What Happened to Anna K? by Irina Reyn
Remembering the Bone House by Nancy Mairs
Carolina Ghost Woods by Judy Jordan
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places by Naomi Shihab Nye
Good Woman by Lucille Clifton
The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher
Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink (anthology)

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo