Christmas in Krakow

I got back from Krakow on Thursday afternoon and while I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of Krakow itself we cooked a lot and, thus, that is what I took pictures of.

Most of that is from Christmas Eve dinner. The menu was:

• Green Salad
• Potato Salad
• Beet Salad
• Fried Carp (breaded and un-breaded)
• Deviled Eggs
• Bread
• White Wine
• Mulled Wine
• Warm Beer
• Crepes (with a number of topics

Apparently in Poland and The Czech Republic fried carp is a Christmas tradition. We weren't quite sure whether or not they make it breaded or not so - we did it both ways, un-breaded was my my favorite.

The next morning Aurora and I got up early to make breakfast for Annie and Sarah (who is visiting me in 6 and a half hours!). Of course we didn't take any pictures of it but it included:

• Orange Juice
• Potato Hash (made from the leftover potato salad)
• Crepes
• Apple Sauce (homemade by yours truly)
• Scrambled Eggs
• French Toast (made with repurposed crepe batter with some flour, sugar, and cinnamon added)

Then for dinner on Christmas day we had Borscht, Salad, and these fried sandwiches (soaked in the excess french toast batter - who would have known crepe batter could be turned into so many things) that had cheese (though mine were cheeseless), sauted mushrooms and eggplant, and mustard on them.

Now for New Years Eve, the menu so far is, empanadas (with the recipe that Sarah got from an 80 year old Argentine woman), salad, maybe schnitzel (because ya know - schnitzel and empanadas go together so well...) and...we'll see what else.
There endeth the cooking segment for the day :)

and i'm back - the lost post

So currently I don't have internet - the people at my dorm are changing over services or something like that and I've been without it for 3 or 4 days now. That being said, I got new goodies from Loop on etsy this week!



I was trying to hold out because I don't have very much roving at the moment and, clearly, I love spinning but I ended up spinning up some of it.

100% bamboo

i LOVE navajo plying

The semester is coming to a close which means - more spinning time for me! Well except first I have to write a paper and study for three finals. That being said I did some preemptive spinning last night.

I turned this

Into this

A closer look

Its corriedale in about a sport weight. If I had a ruler I would tell you how many wraps per inch but sadly I only have a tape measure. Its the most even I've ever spun anything to this point which makes me pretty happy (though that picture doesn't really give it justice as far as the evenness goes. I really love the color though and am probably going to buy some of it in merino after new years. I also should be getting the bats I bought from loop on etsy this week! Also I think I'll finally be able to make it to the Wednesday knitting group this week, I could come for the past two weeks because I was either sick or writing papers.

learning

This week I decided that I would teach myself how to Navajo ply mainly because I want to be able to spin self striping yarn that is plied. I also haven't made any three ply yarn yet soo, I figured this was a good chance. I spun up 70 or so grams of this neon orange corriedale that I got in a sample pack when I bought my spindle in October and went about learning how to Navajo ply - this is what I got.

Its much, much brighter in person

up close

Turns out, I LOVE Navajo plying, love it.I like the motions and I like what comes out and I like that I don't have to worry about the yardage of bobbins being more or less the same. Oh, and for whatever reason, its really easy for me.

idea part two

So it has recently come to my attention that in my ideal world, a rough outline of my [working] life after college would look like this.

I. Work at an LYS
A. Teach classes at said LYS
II. Eventually find a partner
III. Stop working at LYS, start hand dying yarn and roving, and sell said yarn/fiber on the internet and, if I'm lucky, whole sale. - Note the partner would continue working at their job
A. Spin and knit in my "spare time"

All that being said, I think I might experiment with dying roving this summer and possibly selling it on etsy.com because really, I don't have much to loose. If it doesn't sell I can give it to people (Gail I'm looking at you) and keep some, and if it does sell then, I'll get money off of it (maybe not profit but I'll gain experience).

Ideas

Last night I finally decided that it was time to actually knit with my merino/silk blend that I spun.

Its like a yarn apple

Wound on my faux nostepinne - aka an empty vitamin tablet bottle

I also am cursing myself for only having one stitch dictionary that just happens to be on cables (its how I learned how to cable - I asked one of the owners of an LYS in NYC last year if she could recommend a book and she replied that it would serve me better to just by a book of cable patterns - she was right). I wanted to make a scarf with a fun stitch design but didn't want to come up with this myself as I just don't have the time (or at the moment, creativity) so I settled for knitting the Multi-directional Diagonal Scarf. Its a surprisingly relaxing pattern, maybe because for most of it I don't have to pay attention, to anything - I also think it would show of yarns with color changes well.

I also have a new idea. I want roving, but its fairly difficult to get roving here (compared to in the US, I really just want more options than corriedale and merino) and there is one shop in Vienna where I can buy it from and, to my knowledge, they only sell roving by the kilo (minus the merino which they sell by the half kilo which equals 500g). Now my idea is, since I can get 1 kilo of corriedale for 29 euros, why don't I just buy a kilo and spin enough to make a sweater. I realize this is in no way a new idea - but it is for me, seeing as me and sweaters don't happen very often as far as knitting is concerned. This isn't so much of a "oh how nice it would be to spin and knit my own sweater" thing for me, its more of a "how can I increase my skills" exercise. I figure, I have four regular sized bobbins, I can devote two of them to the sweater yarn and have the other two open for anything else I want (and I very well may end up buying more because Ledrum bobbins aren't that expensive).
Thoughts?

What I've Been Up To

I inadvertently decided that I was going to take a on week break from blogging - or something to that effect, but I'm back!

I've been doing a ton of spinning lately (no surprise there) and this is what I have to show of it.

The last of the nice roving

Got spun and plied to make this

I also finally got a hang of using the fast flier and I'm having a lot of fun with it. It seems like its a lot easier for me to spin even singles on the fast flier than on the regular one - which is weird.
I also really need a spinning book. For whatever reason I neglected to buy one when I bought my wheel. My mom is sending me my winter jacket soon (because its colder in Krakow than it is here) so maybe I'll ask her to pick one up for me and send it, along with some red vines (red licorice that I've only been able to find in the western part of the US) as they are my favorite candy of all time.

~115 yards of two ply lace weight

I finished sock one of Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks this morning. It still has a life line in the toe because I'm not positive that I'll have enough for the other sock and I want the toes to match. I'm knitting it in the Tausendschön that I bought a while ago. At first I didn't think the darker colors were saturated enough for me (you can see bits of white in the dark blues and greens) but I actually really like it. Its a really nice yarn to knit with and its not very expensive for hand dyed.

The color reminds me of Neuroknitter's holiday socks :)

Oh and Avast is sitting near my stash as I avoid seaming it because I really hate seaming. It actually got blocked on Wednesday/Thursday. I think I'm going to try to finish seaming most of it today though. Still no pictures.

Obsession

I plied around 100g of the silk/merino blend tonight. I'm pretty happy with it. Its amazingly soft and its a mix between worsted and sport weight. Oh and none of it is over spun! (and none of it is under spun to the point of falling apart/weakness) I think my goal right now is to spin something of any weight (except for bulky because I don't actually like bulky yarns for the most part) that is really even. Thats the goal. Oh and I also want a book or two about spinning because I still haven't actually read anything out of a book (hell I haven't read a whole lot online either, I'm apparently big on the trial and error method - it seems to be working well). My Christmas list this year is comprised of two things: roving and a book on spinning. I probably won't get them though, not for Christmas.

I also finished the main knitting portion of Avast today! It needs to be blocked, seamed, and the zipper sewn in and then it'll be done. No new pictures yet, but after its blocked and seamed I'll attempt to take a picture it'll be interesting because I've never taken a picture of any knitted item that large.