Adventures in Lace Knitting Part 2-1/2

Did it really take me this long (about 5 pattern repeats) into the Time Vortex section of the shawl to realize 1) it does indeed make logical sense and 2) it's worked sideways?  I think I need 1) more caffeine, 2) a remedial course in pattern recognition (or perhaps arithmetic), 3) a sabbatical.

Meanwhile, fire bad tree pretty?  Tree bad fire pretty?  Ooh, pretty!

Adventures in Lace Knitting Part 2: Casting on

Last Saturday one of the girls at knitgroup somehow convinced me to tackle lace.  By lace I mean the real deal, with teeny tiny spiderwebby yarn made of such forbidden pleasures as silk and baby alpaca, and intricate stitch charts so thickly plotted they're the stuff of complex migraines.  Before that could get going, though, I thought I'd warm up with something just slightly less daunting.  Enter...Bigger on the Inside?  Don't get me wrong, I've been a fan of knitty.com from the start, but seriously?  Must...make...TARDIS...shawl.

You might have thought I'd left the "Doctor Who" projects behind for good.  Not bloody likely.  In my possession: a pair of my trademark unnumbered extra-long bamboo dpns and 2 skeins of Simply Soft Light in Riviera.  OK, not quite the blue I was looking for, but as this is my first foray into lace charts, am I gonna frak up a custom laceweight?  Didn't think so.  Ten points to the BSG fans that just groaned.  And please forgive me to the Whovians who now know without a doubt that I in fact was never around to watch Four in action, and that my favorite Doctor is Eleven (you never forget your first, right?).

With that, it's time to begin.

It's been one hell of a...

There's a scene in the 5th season of Babylon 5 where Vir and Lennier are sitting at the bar and comparing whose day/year/5 years/life has been more troublesome.  My current rotation is kind of like that, and it's driven me to baking cookies.  That's right, cookies.  For an example, over the past 2 weeks, I have 1) cinched a diagnosis, 2) talked one of my interns through a lumbar puncture, 3) pushed Ativan, 4) seen various rooms on my floor get shut down due to hot water issues, 5) exchanged inappropriate jokes, 6) sent a med student to the ER, 7) received an origami star from a talented patient, 8) gained some gray hairs arranging a blood transfusion, 9) won a gift card.  I think that's a fair sampling.  So, to help the team that has seen all of this with me to celebrate or drown their sorrows, I got out the spatula and elbow grease and concocted...

(Not Yo') Grandmama's (Double) Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Ingredients: 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 2 sticks unsalted butter, 1 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar, 1/8 cup dark spiced rum, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 2 large eggs, 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips, 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.  In a separate bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth.  Beat in rum, vanilla extract, and eggs.  Add flour mixture 1/2 cup at a time to butter mixture and mix until dough forms.  Add chocolate chips and stir gently until evenly distributed.  Drop approx 1 tbsp sized dough balls 1-2 inches apart on cookie sheets and bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned on bottom.  Remove from oven, let cool, and remove from sheets.  Makes approx 2 dozen cookies.

 Notes on the recipe: this tends to make for a very cake-like cookie (almost like a muffin top), and despite the spiced rum it comes out very light due to the lack of brown sugar.  That being said, I have requests from the team to bake again next week.  Well, we shall see....

Blackberrying

No, I don't mean the portable electronic device.  Growing up in the vegetation-rich Georgia suburbs, this time of year my sister and I would sometimes go with my chemist mother to the industrial park where her "office" was and pick blackberries off the bushes out back.  Apparently I and my geographic quirks were not the only ones with a berry thicket past (my favorite is P---'s story from knitgroup about berrying among the discarded toilet bowls).  In any case, 'tis the season, and two of my latest pursuits have to some extent at least revolved around the titular fruit.

The first was an impromptu recreation of blackberry pie, with a standard 3-2-1 hand-shaped crust and a filling that involved--well, blackberries, of course--splashes of ginger ale and whipped cream vodka, flour for thickening, and just a tiny pinch of thyme to cut the syrupiness.  It comes out a bit tart to start off but mellows beautifully.  I'd offer you a taste, but, alas, technology hasn't advanced that far yet.

The second is the promised lace beret, pictured here:

It's a bit tricky to start the way I did it, but there aren't many top-down beret patterns, at least not that I've seen recently, so it might be worth testing out on the ol' double-points (or, *sigh,* circulars).  You cast on 5 stitches and increase in the round by knitting 1 into the front and back of each stitch (10 sts total, might actually help to start like you're doing an I-cord) to form the first row of the Arrowhead pattern.  Increase by a factor of 10 stitches every fourth row until you reach a desired diameter (for size 8s and worsted weight, knit into front and back of every stitch to double every 4th row until you reach 80 stitches, then knit into the front and back of every other stitch on your next iteration to make 40 stitches for a total of 120).  Repeat Arrowhead pattern approximately 4-6 times or until you get bored or start to run low on yarn, then decrease by a factor of 10 stitches every 4th row (k2tog to decrease) until you get to a reasonable head circumference (in my case, to 90 sts).  Finish Arrowhead repeat for that number of stitches, knit 1-2 rows, and bind off.  And there you have it: 1 piping hot totally cool blackberry beret.  Bon apetit!

Or perhaps you prefer the pie?