Quantum Tea

My dining room windowsill is the catwalk for knitted objects. Just outside the window is a line of conifers, then a forsythia bush being eaten by a honeysuckle, like a slow-motion cage match. The forsythia is not winning the fight. This is my pair of finished Immigrant socks, and one Maizy Monkey sock in a rare (for this week anyway) sunny moment.

Pattern: An American in China from Knitty's Spring 08 edition.
Yarn: Urban GypZ Twisted in Curry with Raisins.
Duration: 12th to 24th April.

I dropped the stitch count to 50st for the foot, and 48st for the cuff, it's a guy-sized pattern and I have small feet, even for a girl. The linen stitch sole feels like there's a piece of leather sewn on the bottom of the sock. It is dense and solid with little stretch to it. I think I like them, but I wouldn't do this in fingering weight. Haven't worn them much, they're for slouching around the house.

The Urban GypZ yarn is NOT superwash, so I'll have to be careful about washing them, and there was some pooling on the cuffs I didn't like. On the first pair, the cast on end felted from being sat inside the sock, which makes me wary of the yarn, plus the pilling on the back of the heel. I didn't let the cast on end sit like that for the second pair. Got the yarn from The Loopy Ewe, but they don't sell it anymore.

The solitary sock is a Maizy Monkey, started April 28th. One is complete and the feel is ... different. Maizy is a yarn made from corn fibre. Doesn't feel anything like cotton or wool, it feels soft and dry, like thirsty paper on dry hands, almost velvety. I like how it feels on my foot. The yarn is a certifiable split-monster, but I'm OK with that because of the finished product. I think this will be a good spring or autumn pair. There's a picot hemmed top, a panel of Monkey lace down the front and back, and a half-linen stitch heel flap. I wasn't going to mess with grafting this so there's a three needle cast off for the toe.

Maizy is one of the several new Crystal Palace yarns. They're coming out with a bamboo/soy yarn in the autumn that I want to try, called Panda Soy. It looks to have the same construction as Panda Cotton and Maizy, both of which I would get again. I think they're an acquired taste to knit with but the end product is worth it.

Both of these are in my yarn reviews, along with a whole pile of other yarns. Each new yarn I use gets reviewed, there are 47 reviews so far.

I love food that's easy to cook. This doesn't take a lot of fuss to make and it's really tasty.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion
• 1 bell pepper
• handful of raisins
• handful of almonds
• 3 tablespoons of mild curry powder
• 1 packet of chicken (about 1.5 pounds, cut into small cubes)
• 300ml of chicken stock
• 200ml pot of Greek yoghurt
• 1 cup of uncooked plain white rice

Sauté the onion and pepper. Add the curry powder and cubed chicken, stir fry for 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock, raisins, and almonds, and start cooking the rice. Simmer for about 20 minutes to reduce the liquid. Make sure the chicken is cooked all through. Right before serving, remove from heat and stir in the Greek yoghurt. Serve with the rice, makes four servings.

Penzey's sweet curry powder would work for this, I used Sharwoods mild curry powder from our international store and made the stock from a chicken Oxo cube. Mine also had carrots in. Greek yoghurt is healthier than using cream and tastes great in curry.

Thanks for the commiserations on not making it to MD Sheep and Wool. My best friend Rox, who I was really hoping to spend time with, sent me a festival care package:

4oz of long staple Pima Cotton from Little Barn, and 2oz of Icelandic roving from Dott-E. Thank you Rox! I've been thinking about trying Icelandic roving, and this cotton is very pettable. I miss you.

I didn't get to Maryland on Friday. Didn't get to see Rox and Eric, didn't go to the Sheep and Wool. My direct flight was cancelled, and the replacement flight through Chicago was delayed until there was no way to make the connecting flight. My luggage was sent on a different flight, so it had a tour of Baltimore airport on its own. I'm really disappointed, I've been looking forward to this for months.

Hubby took me to a movie (Iron Man), and out for dinner, and we collected my travelling suitcase on Saturday.

On Tuesday 5th May 1998, Hubby and I arrived in St Louis from London Gatwick. Most of our belongings had been sold or given away, some were in our oversized suitcases, the rest were sat on a dock in New York racking up fees because they'd arrived a lot sooner than we'd been told to expect. We moved into our first apartment about three weeks after we arrived. By then, Hubby was hard at work at his new job, and I had the task of figuring out how this country worked. Everything was different here, even the milk in the grocery stores.

Ten years later, we've bought a house, and we're looking at starting the US citizenship process (yes, we are legal aliens with the paperwork to prove it). Not bad for the first decade in your new country!

Moving country changes your perspective on accumulated stuff somewhat. Everything we owned was evaluated. Can we easily replace this? Do we really want to keep this? Do we want this enough to ship it given that we can only ship so much? If we want to ship it and we'll be without it for 3 months, do we really need it anyway? We spent several days sleeping on the floor in an empty apartment after we sold the bed and shipped the good duvet. Most of our belongings were either given away or sold. We kept things that were irreplaceable, like the wedding pictures, and the computer, and the three volume complete Shakespeare dated 1926 in the front covers. And now we've been in our own house for five years, and the stuff does pile up... Books mostly, though there's a lot of CDs and DVDs. Moving and shipping stuff is a trial even when it's only essentials, so I want to keep the stuff limited. We're not moving yet, but it will happen.

In Richard Foster's book "Celebration of Discipline" one of the disciplines is simplicity. I've blogged about this before and he has a lot of good things to say. These are some of his suggestions from that chapter of the book:

Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.
Like that coveted skein of Wollmeise for instance? There's been a feeding frenzy each time this yarn went up on the Loopy Ewe site, and for days before. Sure it's colourful, probably nice to knit with and wear, but is it worth staying up all night hitting F5 to refresh the browser in the hopes of getting some? There is other yarn.

Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
Spending the grocery money on yarn is a problem, and most people don't get that far, but addictive behaviour is easy to fall into. Compulsively checking email, buying yarn just because it's there and not because you want it or need it, it's not good.

Obey Jesus' instructions about plain, honest speech.
"Do I really need this?" Sometimes the answer is "No." Sometimes it's "No, but if you really want it, it's OK." Anything that comes with a label saying "This yarn will change your life!" is probably exaggerating.

Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.
Knitting, spinning, your job, or any other time consuming activity, shouldn't eat your life whole. Everyone needs some downtime.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have a stash of yarn or fibre or whatever else. The bad thing would be addictive behaviour, and hoarding stuff just because you can. Who is in control, and why do you do what you do? Just a thought.

A friend asked me "do knitters have a stash?" I laughed. She is a former quilter who gave away her sewing machine and fabric stash when she was all quilted out. Ravelry lets you browse what people have in their yarn stash. The biggest stash on Ravelry lately was 1475 items, which is a lot of yarn. It got me thinking.

I keep a pretty limited stash compared to that. The whole thing is documented but not individually photographed. It's mostly sock yarn. I like knitting socks and I know how much yarn it takes. I can't buy yarn without a project in mind, I did a bit of random yarn buying and destashed most of it. There's some space in my yarn box now, and this is the yarn I have left:

A little escaped the box, like the Cascade 220 for Eris and the leftovers I'm keeping for a blanket, but this is probably 95% of the yarn in the house. Handspun is on the far right.

I have a fibre stash too, also documented. This lives in a smaller box in a different room and I really need an extra box, especially after that trip to the alpaca farm. I'm planning to get some more wool to spin at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but no fleeces. If I had a fleece in the house, the cats would try to groom it. Tangle already tries to groom our hair and it's not a pleasant experience for either party. Apparently I have a thing for undyed fibres:

Some people call it a collection, some relate it to an artists paint, or a carpenter's wood. I have a bead collection and some stamping equipment. Hubby collects bits of paper with useful information on. When I went to university, my dad made me a jewellery box from rimu, a New Zealand hardwood he picked up when we lived there in the 1970s and carried around from house to house. Everyone has the magpie instinct to some extent. (Magpies are birds renowned for stealing shiny or sparkly things and putting them in their nests.)

Part two tomorrow, I'm still thinking.

Picked up a couple of balls of Crystal Palace Maizy because I was curious. It is 82% corn fibre and 18% elastic nylon. The label says you can machine wash the socks without turning them into popcorn, but I will test this for you. All part of the service!

Maizy is made like Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, it has eight loosely plied strands, so it's a bit splitty. It does need a bit of attention to make sure you catch all the plies and it squeaks on my metal needles. Just a little squeak once in a while. The sock feels light and airy, I'm hoping these will be fun spring/autumn socks (you don't wear socks in St Louis in the summer). The pattern is a modified version of Monkey, which I've made before.

The sock is resting on my new knitting bag from Knittiotherapy, an Etsy seller in London. I wanted something that would remind me of spring and Sue was kind enough to do a custom order for me. This is one of the few knitting bags I found that has an interior pocket and will hold a pattern folded in half. Shipping from England only took 5 days and she sent some Maltesers (like Whoppers but nicer) with it. I love Malteasers.