Pumpkinspun’s Musings

I have a couple of thank yous to put out…

Friday I received the most gorgeous skein of hand dyed green sock yarn from Dawn, a new friend I met first on Ravelry, and later in person when she visited our town. Ann and I had coffee and chatted and knit together at a local cafe a few weeks back, and I later gave her a quick tour around town. Dawn, thank you SO much for this lovely lovely yarn! I’m going to have so much fun knitting it up!

Also on Friday I received a little surpise in my work email, of all places! A postcard appeared in my inbox, addressed to me, and from a woman named Joan, in Scotland, who had visited my town, and then recently saw our listing for World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIP). Just because.. she saw the listing and had visited Bennington.

As for WWKIP day for us locally, it was underwhelming. Way too hot and sticky. Thank you to Kristen and Fronia and Julie who came and knitted with me on the front porch at Hawkins House. Next year I’ll try and find a place with AC or lots more shade!

Ann promised folks at our recent knitting weekend that she’d share her famous granola recipe, and since I try and post family recipes on this blog anyway, I had her dictate the recipe to me this evening:

Ann’s Yummy Crunchy Vermont Granola

8 cups Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1/2 cup oil (canola is good)
1/2 cup honey and/or maple syrup
2 cups assorted seeds and nuts*

*sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts, sesame seed, all raw, of course!

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Get out 3 or 4 cookie sheets
In oversized bowl pour in grains, nuts and seeds. In 1 cup measure, fill halfway with oil, fill rest of way with honey. Pour over nuts and grains. Mix thoroughly. (Note from Ann: this is the longest part of the job.) Ann starts mixing with a spoon and ends up blending with her very washed hands.

When well mixed, spread out thinly onto ungreased cookie sheets. Place in oven, after about 10 minutes when granola starts to color, take out, mix granola up in pans and rotate position of pans in oven. Bake for about half the time again (another 5 minutes) until light golden brown.
Cool in pans, when completely cool store in airtight container. When cool you can add dried fruit to your pleasure. (wild berry mix dried fruit, raisins, cranberries, whatever)

Makes about 3 quarts of granola.

Yes, the faux blogger returns, she who posts maybe once or twice a year… but I hadn’t forgotten about the sweater for Stretch. On Ravelry I was reading some posts in the Pointed Knits group (you know.. Pointed as in Seal POINT, Blue POINT, Meezers, rabbits, etc.) and posted about the shawl situation last October. Turns out others have thought of this idea, and even shared patterns. Yes, there are a few cats that apparently will wear sweaters, and yes, there are thousands more that are merely humiliated when their owners play dress up with them (see the Ravelry group “Knitted Furmiliation“).

Stretch was genuinely cold. He liked the shawl. So this past January I picked my favorite of the Cat sweater patterns I found, an adapted Chihuahua doggie sweater pattern - Felis Felix Mandarin Cat Sweater by Hilary Smith Callis . I knit the sweater for him using the same yarn as the “shawl”, which was a frogged thrifted woolen sweater, a tweedy deep red, and used some white alpaca for the faux Mandarin trim. It knit quickly.. and it, well, “sort of” fit him.

The biggest problem with the fit, is that Siamese cats, and most cats, probably, are built in such a way that they need a very wide armscye, so their entire shoulders can move when they walk. In the sweater as knit, he ended up being very restricted, and while he liked the sweater, every time he’d attempt to stand up with it on, he’d flop over onto one side, with this shoulders being so restricted. It was a little amusing for the humans, but not very comfortable for the Stretch-man.

I’ll rip out the sleeves and widen the armscye by at least 2 1/2 times this fall, when it gets chilly again. The sleeves really aren’t necessary for him, I suspect. You can see all the pictures I took with this sweater in my Ravelry projects. Maybe this fall I’ll also revisit finishing the “shawl” with a button or two, and the finishing the edges.

Oh and that post I was supposed to do on Rhinebeck…. feh… it’s been written about oodles of times by now. Let’s just say I was very good on the yarn acquisition and only bought one skein of Icelandic sheep sock yarn, and not so controlled with the fiber and well… came home with a few pounds of unspun wool, mohair, bamboo, merino/silk…