I have been looking forward to this moment all week.

Knitting on Kris’s Olympic pullover while the smell of the peach muffins bake in the oven.

Peach and Pecan Muffins, adapted from The Vegan Table - makes 16-24 muffins

• 3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 1/4 t  nutmeg
• 1 T baking soda
• 1 t salt
• 3/4 c chopped raw pecans
• 1/2 c canola oil
• 6 oz. non-dairy yogurt or non-dairy sour cream
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 2 T distilled white vinegar
• 1/2 c granulated sugar (I used sucanat)
• 1 c brown sugar
• 2 1/2 c peaches, pitted, skinned, and diced
• Extra pecans for sprinkling on top

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly grease muffin tin or fill with cupcake liners.  In a large bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt,  and baking soda.  Add pecans and stir.   In a separate bowl, mix oil, yogurt / sour cream, vanilla, vinegar, granulated sugar, 3/4 c brown sugar (save rest for later) and the peaches.  Stir the peaches mixture into the flour mixture slowly until moist.  Spoon the mixture into the baking tin  and sprinkle the top of the muffins with the extra brown sugar and nuts.  Bake for 25 minutes or until the an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Cool for 10 minutes on wire rack and serve!

There are plans to can some of our garden veggies this weekend… but that may wait until tomorrow. I have every intention of working on this sweater and flipping through my library books and enjoying the stillness today.

After finishing mom’s cardigan last week, my attempts at working on a project (either Mimi’s cardi or Kris’s sweater) have proven short-lived…

This past week, I had to seize on the unique and truly extraordinary mood that struck me – one that comes about as rare as a blue moon – to clean, organize, and arrange my home.  Yes, yes.  I know.  I organize, categorize, and arrange for a living - but at home is a different story all together.

It was precipitated by a long-held hope for a new dining room set.  Before we were married (~2000), Kris and I were very fortunate to find a very nice (and affordable) used dining room set in the classified section.  We didn’t have a house yet (ahem, we were still in college) but we liked this enough to get it, and luckily, we were able to store it in Kris’s parents’ house until we bought our house in December 2001.  The set served us well for many years, and it was quite nice – but the time came when we (okay, I) wanted something smaller and simpler – easier to get around, and more suited to our style.

I believe that if you have the space, you will fill it with things that you don’t need and will never use.  So, I cut down my space – specifically in the china cabinet – and filled a dozen bags and boxes with “said” things and made the long overdue trip to the thrift store.  What catharsis! 

Capturing this moment on film proves that it happened – before the table is piled with books, knits, random paperwork.  Or can I attempt to keep it this way? 

The funny thing is, once you start organizing (at least, once I start) it is hard to stop.  Striking while the iron is hot, and all of that stuff.  So, I rolled with it.  Next on to the pantry! 

I buy lots of items in bulk – it just makes sense with our diet, and in theory, it is supposed to reduce the amount of paper and plastic waste.  That is, if you don’t let all the plastic bags that you used to transport your grains to you home take over your pantry… but now…

I maintained while I contained!  And look how pretty the lentils and wild rice are in these glass jars!  (They were at Target and were reasonably priced. They had three sizes available.)  And the real plus is that I asked the cashier at my market, and I can take these containers in to the market for refills – they will weigh them beforehand and I can fill it, and they will charge me the difference.  Saving plastic bags and the hassle!  Perfect!  Filling these containers with my grains, seeds, legumes, nuts, and dried fruit brought a great sense of contentment.  I gazed lovingly inside my pantry for a good 20 minutes after filling them up.  *sigh*

…and when you are on that train, you don’t get off…

Next up, my crafty bookshelf. Oy.  A mess indeed.  Major cleanup was necessary. 

I have to say that I really do love the way that the knitting community supports these amazingly talented people within our ranks, and that there is such a market for great patterns that can be downloaded immediately after purchase as a PDF.  It is beautifully convenient.  The not-so-convenient part is the hole in the technology though… I don’t like to print off this pattern and  use more energy and paper – but it is also not too convenient (or comfortable) to knit in front of my computer so that I can look at a pattern.  I guess a laptop is the best way to solve this problem… does anyone else deal with this? 

So, what all of this means is that I have a lot of paper patterns that I have printed off the computer over the years – ideally, I would love to hole punch them and stick them in binders – and maybe that is the next step.  In the meantime, I just arranged them with all of my books and magazines.  The bookshelf allowed enough space for my books that are taller than 9-inches, and enough room for my back issues of Interweave Knits (+ Knitscene), and Vogue Knitting (+ Knit.1 and KnitSimple) and the yarn company pamphlet books from Berroco, Patons, Jo Sharp, Dale of Norway, Classic Elite, Rowan, and Lopi. 

This exercise in organizing my knitting and craft books made me realize that I never need to buy another book or magazine or pattern in my life. I have *plenty* of inspiration from these sources to keep me busy for the rest of my time on this earth… but then I saw Bonne Marie’s new Mondo Cable Cardi… hence the (futile?) attempts in my title to this post.  Yeah, fall is the hardest time for me – and I suspect for many of you too.  These designers sure know how to up the ante for the fall collections – they get me every year.

Of course, there is more to be done – much more!  and I am planning to do so soon - but it sure does feel nice to have some parts cleaned up and out. Simplified and minimized, at least for the time being. 

Admit it:  You have been there…

Watching a movie or a television program, and you are all into the story and the inner machinations of the characters and all of their dramas and struggles and tensions and feelings, and then suddenly, your eyes wander towards a knitted item on the screen…

<< Inner monologue >>

Wow, that is really amazing/unique/beautiful knit…

How did they do that?

Hmm… wonder if I could find a pattern like this…  could I design this?

<< stream of consciousness  – insert names of yarns, patterns, designers >>

By the time you snap back, you have missed a few minutes of plotlines and a major development … Thank goodness for digital video recorders – they have helped me many a time.

“Oooh, rewind that – pause it.  Look at that sweater!”

I can almost hear Kris roll his eyes when I do this… it happens that often.

The most recent film knit inspiration came from the 2002 Masterpiece Theatre miniseries Doctor Zhivago … nothing like a Bolshevik Revolution and a frozen wasteland to get that knitting inspiration on, eh?

As Yury escapes from his Red Army captors, he must cross the frozen Ural mountains – he is starving, half-mad, fighting frostbite and desperately yearning to see his beloved Lara again…

…but oh my…

Look at his pullover!

It was hard to find a full frontal (heh) of this pullover in the online screen captures, but I found enough of the shots to show the details of the sweater, as highlighted above.  I searched around on Ravelry and came across a few patterns that look close enough… in my mind, I thought that there was a Rowan pattern that was very similar to it, but an initial search didn’t pull anything up… it does seem simple enough to just cast on and see where it goes from there…

I even have some gray Lopi that looks like a great match for it…

Lara (played by Keira Knightly in this rendition) also sports a traditional Russian hat that I was also quite distracted by… of course, I don’t want to use real fur or even a “fun fur” type of yarn.  Perhaps a chenille would work?  Hmmm…

Or would this just look plain silly?  Maryland barely got snow last winter…

Of course, nearly every Harry Potter film has had some eye-catching knit item in it (there are whole groups inspired by the Harry Potter knits) and the mittens that Bella wore in the movie Twilight (for about 5 minutes of screen time – no more) inspired a massive knitalong on Ravelry with 1400+ active projects (heck, I even queued them up!)

It seems to be the cold-weather period pieces that most inspire me – Scandanavian subtitles, British historical miniseries, and the occasional documentary about ill-fated Antarctic explorations…

Oh Mr. Shackleton, what a fetching basketweave turtleneck sweater you are wearing…

Even when marooned on icebergs,  Mr. Shackleton sported this snappy seed stitch number…

Of course, there have been plenty of other film knits that have inspired over my (nearly) six years of knitting.  I haven’t yet made any of these knits, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen!

Any big or small screen knits that have inspired you lately?

I don’t like to deliver late on my promises… luckily, mom did not seem to mind that her birthday cardigan was (ahem) four months late.

Sienna Jacket

Pattern: Interweave Knits, Fall 2006
Yarn: Classic Elite Classic Silk
Needles: Size US 7 and 8

This knit, like so many, has some stories attached to it.  I told my mother back in the early spring that I wanted to make a garment for her for her birthday in April.  We talked about patterns quite a bit and I showed her several that I thought she might like.  From the very beginning, however, she told me what color she wanted:  periwinkle.  So, I kept my eye out for a lightweight periwinkle yarn – preferably a blend adequate for at least three seasons of wear.  I had a little trouble finding the exact color, but once I found it… I knew it was it.  Actually, it was dear Jenna who spotted this yarn… it was during our yarn crawl in Seattle back in March.  This particular yarn was spotted at Weaving Works, and Kris whipped out his cell phone and did the math for me for the substitution.  Right then and there, I made up my mind to use this yarn.

Initially, mom wanted the Smocked Jacket from Classic Elite – a truly lovely pattern, but after a few good inches, I realized that the yarn was not really a good suit for the pattern.  Plus, the lace chart was a little too much for me to  handle… so, I went back to the drawing board.  I remembered the sweet and understated Sienna Cardigan and thought that mom would really like that.  I was right.  So, I set off  – by this time, it was already past mom’s birthday, and I deluded myself in to thinking that I could finish by Mother’s Day.  That deadline came and went, and with it came some of the summertime malaise that sets in (not so much of a malaise, actually… it is just that I have been reading like a fiend, so something got moved to the backburner… unfortunately it was mom’s cardigan that had that fate for a few weeks!)  When I pulled the cardigan out again in July, I was resolved to finish.  It was a lovely pattern and I really enjoyed working with this lovely cotton/silk blend.

I modified the pattern after consulting with mom; she didn’t like the hemline ribbing, so I thought about making an a-line/trapeze style coat with a very small flare.  I used a simple garter border, casting on for the larger size, and then decreasing slowly into the waist shaping, matching up with the intended size.  I also worked the body in the round up to the armholes to avoid seaming.  It worked out very well, and I think it gives the garment a nice tailored look.

The collar was probably my favorite thing to work – I liked the small picot edges of the bind offs, along with the shape.   This was mom’s favorite feature also.  The small lace detail along the button band was also fun to work as it incorporated a small fagot lace with a cable.  It was simple and classy.  Finished off with some lovely square mother-of-pearl buttons that I bought in Berkeley, California last summer (coincidentally with Nova, who also made this cardigan) it was the perfect package.

Mom was a bit camera shy today, so the photos are from my backyard photo shoot.  I liked the look of the bright periwinkle against the weathered fence.

Happy Birthday – Happy Mother’s Day – Happy I Love You day, Momma.  I hope you enjoy your new cardigan!

After two counts – I wanted to be accurate after such an amazing outpouring by you all! – I have found the final yardage for the scraptacular yarny ball!

1973.3 yards ( +/- 1″)

So, that means that the winners of this contest are:

• Mary at Tactless Wonder with her guess of 1974

• Nadine at Balkan Style with her guess of 1975

Thank you so much for playing and for leaving so many wonderful and heartfelt comments!  You all are amazing   I really liked ever green knits suggestion about a little retrospective of posts from previous years… I am compiling a list now.  As an archivist, you can imagine that I like doing such things.

…and because no post can go photo-less on my blog, here is my recently compiled mosaic of favorite photos from this past week on Flickr.  I really enjoy making these and they are a real point of inspiration for me. (Click on the photo for details about the photos!)