Vegan Knitting...and then some

FO: Stripy Soy Socks

Pattern:  Basic Toe-up Ribbed Socks (personal)

Yarn: Knit 1 Crochet 2 Wick (yes, I had a little bit more in my stash)

Needles: Size 4 Knitpicks Options - used one long one for magic loop

Notes:  I made these recently for my friend Michelle, to keep her toes warm up in Vancouver, BC.  They're a Women's size 8.5, and I used one ball of the green/blue, and about 3/4 of a ball of the solid blue.  Notice how despite careful planning, the striping is different at the beginning of the feet, even though it ends up matching perfectly.

FO and Yarn Review: K1C2 Wick

I just posted this on the Vegan Sock Knitalong blog:

I recently completed two pairs of socks using Knit One Crochet Two's Wick, a worsted weight yarn made of 53% soy and 47% polypropylene, which supposedly creates a fabric that wicks, pulling the moisture away from your body as you sweat. I picked up a couple of balls a few years ago on sale, but just got around to using them this summer.

I used the same pattern for both pairs, Red Dwarf, one in a solid blue, and one in the "Beach" colorway of orange and blue. This sock pattern was written for Wick and features two marine-inspired stitch patterns, fish scale on the instep, and fish tail on the back of the leg.

The blue was made for my husband, who wears a size 10.5 shoe. I used 2.5 balls to create a sock with a leg of about 5 inches. He says they fit him perfectly and are very comfortable.

The orange/blue was made for me, and I wear a size 9.5 shoe. I used two balls exactly to create an ankle-length sock.

This yarn requires a very smooth needle due to the polyproplyene content. I used a size 4 Knit Picks Options 24" circular for the magic loop technique. The nickle needles worked very well with the yarn. It also requires slower and careful knitting to prevent puffs and pull-outs. The construction of this yarn involves a puffy synthetic core with very thin but strong threads wrapped around it. This means that unfortunately it's pretty easy to catch some of the puffy part with your needle and pull it out. When this happens, you can't work it back into the yarn.

This yarn is thicker than typical sock yarn, but a size 4 needle created a nice fabric with it. The socks are nice and stretchy, and quite comfortable. I have a couple more balls I'm using to make another pair but after this, I'm not sure if I'm going to make any more due for me to the snagging issues. My husband really seems to like them, though, so I might make another pair for him.

FO: Bamboozle Bed Socks

I recently completed two pairs of bed socks with yarn generously donated by my favorite sock yarn company, Crystal Palace Yarns!  I reviewed them on the Vegan Sock Knitalong blog here.  Here's a copy of the review:

Crystal Palace Yarns generously donated a few skeins of Bamboozle yarn for me to test earlier this year. I'm slightly embarassed that it took me this long to make them, but I recently finished two pairs of socks with this yarn. (Second pair featured in next post.)

Bamboozle is made from 55% bamboo, 24% cotton, and 21% elastic nylon. It's fairly stretchy but not as stretchy as Cascade Fixation. This makes it much easier to work with than Fixation. The percentage of bamboo to cotton make for an extremely soft yarn, both on your hands, and on your feet! At an Aran (10 ply) weight, with 90 yds per 50 gm ball, Bamboozle is clearly much thicker than your average sock yarn. However, for the purposes of socks, it's possible to use a much smaller needle than the suggested 8-10 (US) and create a firm, soft, fabric good for cozy winter or boot socks.

Initially I had planned to make a single pair of socks using both colors but when the colors that arrived were slightly different than the ones I thought I was getting, I decided to use them separately and make a pair of cozy house socks for both me and my mother. I was also curious to see how much sock could be made from a single pair of skeins, especially given our larger shoe sizes (9.5 and 11). Based on other people's projects on Ravelry, I chose to use a size 4 US needle. I used a Knit Picks nickle Options with a 24" cable for Magic Loop. Both socks were knit toe-up for maximum trying-on-as-I-went with different stitch patterns.

This pair is made with the colorway Herb Garden, using a basketweave stitch pattern on the foot and leg, followed by a 1x1 ribbing for the last 7 or so rows. I used Judy's Magic Cast On for the toe, and a simple short-row heel. I cast off with a K2tog TBL to make the edge stretchy and easy to get on and off. As you can see, they reached ankle-length on my size 9.5 feet, and would be longer if you have smaller feet. I can see that with three balls, they would reach the length I normally knit the legs of my socks.

Overall, I am very happy with these socks. I wore them the other chilly day in the house and they were very cozy. Then I kept them on to meet up with my local knitting group and they were very comfy and not at all sweaty in my shoes. My only frustration was how splitty this yarn can be, since it is composed of many strands of yarn, all of which are 2-ply themselves. Once one of the individual plies was pulled up by mistake, it was nearly impossible to get it to lie flat within the yarn again. This makes me a little wary of wearing them on any wood floors that might have little splinters. However, once the yarn is knit up, it is very firm and not at all fuzzy. I look forward to making several similar pairs for myself for this upcoming cold winter.

Thank you so much, Dr. Laura at Crystal Palace Yarns!

A Good Sunday

Started with Sweetpea Baking Company (check the sidebar for weekly brunch updates)

Continued at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge

and ended with an evening of babysitting a really sweet boy, after which I did some test knitting for Krafti-Kit an exciting new company two friends of mine have started, opening it's e-commerce doors on October 15th!

Berry Good Times

I got a bit of a late start on the berrying compared to last year but I've now been blueberry picking twice and blackberry picking once in the neighborhood.  Through the circle of moms I nanny for, I found out about this wonderful little berry farm up near Brush Prairie, WA, and when I went picking on Thursday, organic blueberries the size of your head were $5 a pail, which holds about 6 lbs! As you can see, I went to town! And this was just one trip.

I'm planning another post featuring some of the foods I've made from the berries and my garden this year but for now, here are some blueberry pancakes using the gluten-free Buckwheat Pancake recipe from Vegan Brunch.  Served with homemade blueberry maple syrup and Lightlife sausage links.  The sausages were so-so at best, but these pancakes are really good.  We've made them 4 times so far and my husband has asked for them, which is unusual.  Yesterday I made a double batch with silver-dollar size, and this morning I had them for breakfast as little sandwiches with almond butter and homemade blueberry jam.

ETA: Blackberry Muffin used the Strawberry Love Muffins from My Sweet Vegan

Pesto Pasta

Simple, yet delicious.  Poor Man's Pesto from Vegan Mediterranean Kitchen, along with cherry tomatoes, little red potatoes, kalamata olives, cauliflower, and pesto made with basil from my garden.  Make it with whole wheat pasta for a really healthy meal.  We had this pasta already, so I just used it.  This pesto recipe is my favorite and is easily made with a variety of seeds.  Tonight I used pine nuts from Trader Joe's but I've used toasted pumpkinseeds and almonds successfully, and I'm sure you could easily use walnuts or cashews as well.

Hello exercise!

Those who know me well will be shocked to hear that I've started jogging.  Moving to Portland has resulted in a different amount of exercise and food, and my waistline has increased while my stamina has decreased.  Yoga is great but I felt I needed to start doing some aerobic exercise to help with the waistline and stamina issues.

So last week I started the Couch to 5K program, which takes you from being a non-runner to a 5K runner in about 9 weeks.  As an asthmatic, this slow increase is really good to build up my body's response to exercise, and I will probably increase the program length to about 12-15 weeks so that I can adjust to the longer runs a little more slowly than in the plan.  For example, Week 5 has you going from 5 minutes of running with walking breaks on day 1, to 20 minutes of running with no breaks on day 3.  That's not going to happen.  But if I take 3 weeks to do week 5, then I can break up the increases a bit more.

This morning I did day 1 of Week 2, and while I am jogging pretty slowly for now, I really love it! I don't see myself joining any marathons any time soon, but I like the feeling of moving, and of seeing how much longer I'm able to go in the same time this week compared to last week.  I like how about halfway through, I start to feel like I can't do any more, and then once I push past that for another minute or two, I feel like I can keep going even once the program is done.

I'm using a weekly Podcast called PodRunner, which breaks up the sections of the run by music with different BPMs and gives a tone when it's time to switch between jogging and walking.  The music isn't my favorite but it is way easier than having to look at a watch every 90 seconds.

I am trying to do my runs in the morning before 11, when the temperature starts to rise.  I eat a light breakfast (toast with almond butter and jam), bring a big bottle of water, and then have a smoothie when I get back to fill up and cool down.

Today's smoothie looks awful but was really tasty.

• frozen blueberries and strawberries (picked with my friend Kim)
• Soy yogurt
• almond milk
• kale from my garden
• hemp powder for some extra protein

With the berries, you don't taste the kale at all, and with such tender leaves fresh picked, there's no texture issue either.  The hemp powder is a little bit gritty but I like the omega fatty acids in it, and there's already enough soy in the smoothie from the yogurt.

From the garden: pasta with kale

This evening I picked a huge bunch of kale.  It's very tender and sweet, and there wasn't a single bug on it!

I sauteed 2 sliced leeks in olive oil until semi-soft, then added the chopped kale.  I seasoned with some veggie boullion, red chili flakes, chopped garlic, and black pepper.  While it was cooking, I boiled some pasta.  Here it is served with some chickpeas.  It turned out perfectly!

Inspiring Summer: veggie gardens

The most important thing I did this summer outside the house was to create vegetable gardens.  I made two beds in the backyard and one in the side yard.  The fact that this area used to be riverbeds makes prepping very difficult.  There were many many stones to remove, and the earth is mostly sand, requiring a lot of compost.  Also, these weeds in the "before" photo had bulb-based roots, and I had to sift through the topsoil to remove all of them as they had dried by the time I removed the plants.

Our plan is to add raised beds with cedar boxes in the back and also along another part of the side yard that gets a lot of morning sun.  It's too late for this year but we'll have them in place by next year to start planting in March or April, rather than July!

Here is the garden area before before: grass, weeds, and lillies.

And here it is now: heirloom tomatoes, red peppers, kale, lemon cucumber, and chard, with lettuce, collards, and marigolds just coming up.

This is a small area next to a large oak tree in our side yard, that had been populated by weeds and bluebells.

Here it has been transformed into the second bed: a variety of herbs surrounded by Red Romaine lettuce and Shiraz Beets.  These were initially planted in the back yard but were doing very poorly.  They are much happier in the sun here, with lots of compost and worm castings.

Inspiring Summer: in the kitchen

This summer, my husband and I have had several sets of house guests.  This has been great for us because each time we have visitors, we "finish" the house a little more, get another piece of furniture that we need, work on the garden, and generally make our home that much homier.

The next few posts will feature projects that we have worked on this summer.

Boring old Mr. Empty ironing board cupboard turns into

Mr. Dream spice cabinet!

Editing to add:  This cabinet was accomplished with the use of maybe $10 of materials - 3" cedar board, pine 1/4 round, our neighbor's punch nail gun, and some Miller paint.  We could have done it right after moving in here.  Don't procrastinate on these sorts of things! They make life so much easier and really spiff up the kitchen.