Cat paparazzi

From this last weekend:

Kev got bored watching the Liberal leadership election and decided to play cat paparazzi. Poor Spike just went down for a cat nap and next thing you know, a large monkey-being corners him with a bright, flashing light.

Yesterday was one another cold, rusty weather day. Here’s what we had for lunch to combat the cold and damp.

A good-old fashion noodle soup with the leftover moose sausage and cabbage. I used Chinese shrimp noodles (haw jee mein). I was raise on these noodles. In fact, when the coroner cuts into me, he’ll find that my right leg is composed of shrimp noodles in the place of muscle and bone. They cook up super-fast and aren’t deep-fried like ramen. It was a basic dump everything into a pot of water and season with some of my Thai It Up seasoning. Don’t bother cutting the noodles. Half the fun is slurping the never ending tail of noodles. You have to eat this piping hot. I have a feeling we’re going to be having many more bowls of noodle soup in the coming months.

Last night, we were invited over to Karin & Dave's, for dinner. Karin made a wonderful Thai dinner with coconut-lemongrass soup with chicken and mushrooms and a star anise spiced pork and rice noodles. They picked up the pork from Shady Mile's freezer. They get much of their meats from farmers in that area. With a local white wine and an local apple and sour cherry version of the same pastry I made of the weekend, it was a fine feed. Thanks guys!

Most of yesterday was spent dreaming and scheming a design for my mum-in-law’s sweater. Over the weekend, she handed over a bouquet of Noro Silk Garden yarn for me to work with. Sigh. I’m in heaven.

The photo doesn’t do the yarn justice. With Noro yarns the colours flow nicely from one to the next. The colours also don’t change with as much frequency as other multi-coloured yarns. This allows for some very interesting design potentials and colourways. I used Noro for the kimono-shrug-wrap.

One could knit a basic sweater in stockinette with this yarn and it’ll look fine. IMHO, if I wanted a sweater like everyone else’s, I’d buy one at the mall & I do have a stack of generic mall sweaters. But if I’m going to create something, then it warrants intention and mindful energy. To make it not just to get it over and done with but to produce something with awareness of the yarn, as well as awareness of who is going to be wearing it. This is especially so when you get to play with lovely Noro yarn and have the opportunity to make something for someone that you love.

This is not to say that I never do things in stockinette. Some yarns look best as in stockinette and take on the appearance of a rich fabric. Some yarns are so blinged out with eyelashes and intrusions and bobbles that stockinette and garter are probably all you want to do with it.

Making a simple stockinette sweater would also have me bored to tears. I don’t know how other knitters do it. Some even do it on circular needles so it’s like a gzillion knit stitches over and over and over and over again. I’d be in a comatose state before I’d finish. I haven’t quite embraced the throne of simplicity to that extent.

The thing with a yarn like Noro is that you don’t want a pattern that is too overwhelming. I’ve been playing around with ideas on how to bring out the uniqueness of this yarn. I even picked up a couple of pattern and motif books by Kathleen Kinder and Barbara G. Walker from the library. I spent a couple of hours simply browsing through the books daydreaming of all the historical knitwear examples (including the knitted vest that Charles I supposedly was executed in) and different patterns before hunkering down and doodling through some ideas.

I know, the obvious thing would be to pick up a Noro pattern book. That would be way to logical for me ;)

I swatched a couple of aran designs and even did a stockinette swatch to get an idea of my gauge. I’m evening considering doing some fair isle work. So far, the yarn hasn’t been too warm to any of my ideas. Maybe today, it’ll be a more responsive.

Enjoy!

Jen