Chase the Chill Features Fissure

Back in June, I managed to corral the Professor, both twins, and Sadie the dog to go to Assiniboine Park for a few minutes on a Saturday afternoon.  I am usually spending time with my family and going to services on Saturdays when we can pull it off, but that day--It was a chance to support Knit In Public Day --which is hosted locally by Chase the Chill, a Winnipeg knitting charity which I think is fantastic.  Chase the Chill provides handknit scarves to Winnipeggers in need, once a year.  All  year long, people knit for Chase the Chill's annual event.  It happens in early December, when it is already plenty cold here.

It's simple.  The folks who run it go out with some helpers, and tie all those handknit scarves all over the trees in one downtown park with notes.  The notes say who knit the scarves, and invite people to take and wear the scarves to stay warm. 

Today I looked up Chase the Chill's twitter feed, because one of its organizers was the very first person to purchase Fissure.  Thank you, Val!  What I discovered on the twitter feed made me feel even more connected...

See this photo?  It topped the post for WorldWide Knit in Public Day 2018 for Chase the Chill in Winnipeg.  (See anything familiar?!)  Those are my hands, knitting the sample for Fissure.  Seconds before and after this shot, everyone was passing around the yarn label and fondling the yak. :)

Thanks for coming out to #wwkipday2018 !
“I can knit. I knit all year, day in, day out. It is my passion, and I rarely knit the same thing twice the same way.” ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann #chasethechillinwinnipeg#chasethechill #WWKIP2018 pic.twitter.com/jTNPCqvrGi

— Chase the Chill (@CTCwpg) June 9, 2018

Today, I discovered this on their twitter feed:

Fissure is a lovely new shawl pattern from local knitwear designer Joanne Seiff! What would you knit it with? https://t.co/iY8AOPkoYH

— Chase the Chill (@CTCwpg) July 15, 2018

Thanks so much to Chase the Chill for connecting with local designers--and featuring us!  I so appreciate it...and of course, I appreciate what you do all year as you knit for cold Winnipeggers, too.

Settling in--and a whole grain bread recipe

Well, we're settling in here for the long (LONG...did I say long?) winter season.  I think I'm still not over last year's winter, it was the worst in 118 years of recorded temperatures in Winnipeg.

 It was -11F (-23C) when I last looked at the temperature this morning, with a windchill of -25F (-31C).  Last night, as our professor was driving home through rush hour, we had a little snowfall.  Only around 2 cm, less than an inch, but enough to make driving home in the dark more of an adventure.

This morning as we got the boys out to the car for preschool, one of the dudes insisted on playing with snow with his mitts on.  I just instituted the "double mitts" one needs for this weather (one handknit mitt inside of another one, on each hand) and of course, they aren't used to getting them on and off.  Imagine wearing a coat with a liner--you put the whole thing on at once and do not peel off the liner each time...there, that's a double mitt!  Of course, said twin has not learned yet that snow play will make your hand colder, particularly if your mitt comes off. (insert kid screaming "PUT MY MITT BACK ON! Help me with my mitt! COLD! COLD!" for the third time, which means a parent has to take her mitt off to fix the problem again.) Sigh.  It's a learning process.

A while back I promised my bread machine whole grain bread recipe.  I'll offer it (with variation) below.  My whole thrust is to produce a healthy homemade bread without extraneous preservatives or other "stuff" in it--and have it be as time efficient as possible, so I can manage to make it consistently as our "house bread."  Making homemade bread tastes better, saves lots of money, and is probably better for you, but it does take time.  This new bread machine system takes all the joy of hand kneading and "making the bread" away, which I miss, but it reaches all the other goals, so for now, it's the machine..

Whole Wheat/Whole Grain (mostly) bread in the bread machine (2 lb loaf)

Put the ingredients into the bread machine pan in this order:
1 2/3 cup water
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons honey
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups white flour
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour *** (see below for variation)
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

Use the whole wheat setting (#2 on my bread machine and it takes 3 hrs and 45 min)
Set it on Medium crust

NOTES: If you like a really crusty loaf, set it on Dark crust, and if that is not crusty enough, preheat your oven (Convection Oven, if you have it) at 425F.  When the bread comes out of the bread machine, pop it out onto a cookie sheet and put it in the oven for 15 minutes.

VARIATION FOR 3 YEAR OLDS! 
The above recipe was "too dark" and "too crusty" to be really popular among twins in our household, despite the white flour.  I was annoyed; the grown-ups liked it!  Here's the variation--still lots of whole grain, still good for you.
Whole Wheat/Whole Grain (mostly) bread in the bread machine (2 lb loaf)

Put the ingredients into the bread machine pan in this order:
1 2/3 cup water
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons honey
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour *** (note variation)
1/2 cup spelt flour***
1/4 cup quick oats***
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

Use the whole wheat setting (#2 on my bread machine and it takes 3 hrs and 45 min)
Set it on Medium crust (skip the oven step mentioned above)

---I'm still having some tummy problems, so I mostly eat spelt bread, which I make differently.  I will save that recipe for another time. 

Anyway, after having some fresh warm bread, I've been curling up to knit.  I started a new shawl-scarf thing for myself on Monday, and I'm finding the designing to be addictive.  Here's a taste with this night time photo...I knit before bed.  (I hope a new design will be coming soon.)

A little Sumpin Sumpin

I have finally found summer.  Here.  In Winnipeg.  A couple of days ago, we could even shut our tap off and it isn't dripping anymore.  (yes, frozen pipes were still a concern until after Canada Day.  Oy.)  Even though I am thrilled to see flowers, greenery, heat, all of it...we're still very covered up here.  You see, we've had torrential rains, massive flooding in the Province (but not in my basement, thank goodness...) and now--MOSQUITOES.  One of my 3 year old boys (the smaller twin, for those who know us in person) has a terrible allergic sensitivity to the bites, which is not surprising, given that the Professor and I are both allergy-prone.

Well, he has had three bad bites near his eyes since the beginning of June.  Yucko.  This requires lots of "loopy sleepy medicine"(kid Benadryl) as well as "sauce"(cortisone cream) in order to keep from having the yucky antibiotics, which he had the first time he got a bite.  Anyhow, the boys wear long pants, socks, shoes, button down long sleeved shirts sprayed heavily with bug spray, and Tilley sun hats, also perfumed with bug spray...and even so, they get bitten on their hands, their wrists, their faces...it's bad.  The city will start spraying tonight and to be honest, I am just grateful.  It is terrible when you can't play in the sandbox, enjoy a slide, or try out your new tricycle because of bugs.

Also, morning preschool ended...camp (mornings) doesn't start 'til Monday, and our mother's helper went away to visit her family.  So, we are having 10 days without any childcare.  In order to sell this to the boys as something fun and not an alarming sentence (which is what it sometimes seems to us--3 year old twins, without any help or breaks or anyone willing to watch both of them while they are awake but us...and oh, did I mention they still don't sleep through the night too often?!)...anyhow, I sold it as a "Holiday with Mommy."  Every day, we tried to do something fun together and I tried to tire them out.

Meanwhile, I relied heavily on precooked food from the freezer, the slow cooker, and deep calming breaths to get through all the potty breaks, accidents, tantrums, and random assaults on one's brother...

OK, on to the good stuff.  At night, when I should be sleeping, I was working on this.  As one of my brothers would say, with a sort of mischievous smirk, a little sumpin sumpin.  Here's a link to Sumpin, my latest knitting design.



It's an easy cellular lace pattern, only 4 rows long, and absolutely lightweight and airy in something like silk.  (This is Handmaiden Sea Silk, in Ivory)  It's meant to dress up a t-shirt, or, in my case, to cover up stains!  If I ever have to look nice again, I might want to wear/knit/own something like this.

The Professor shot these photos of me outdoors one evening after the twins were finally asleep.  It is light here until 10 or 11 pm this time of year and our twilight lasts a long time.  However, the mosquitoes were also thinking that this scarf was "sumpin" and our photo shoot was actually very fast.

This shot of me with my face all crinkled up and laughing was really like "Get on with it!  Hurry up!  Do you want to be eaten alive?!"

If you're curious about how I could possibly be designing or knitting now, well, I wonder that too.  I shot a photo of a chair in my bedroom...stacked with my knitting bag, a copy of Knit Green so I could answer somebody's question, and this last project, this silk scarf.  Knitting gets done in the tiny windows of space when I'm a passenger in a car, when the boys are drinking their milk before bed, and in the few minutes during naptime or before bed when I am trying to calm down and stealing sleep time to do it.

It is a time that is hazy around the edges, just like these shots...but a few minutes of knitting (or spinning) a day really keeps me feeling just a little bit sane when trying to sell 10 days without childcare or playdates or any local family or even any babysitting while someone is awake as...umm, a holiday with Mommy. :) 

and the winner is...

Shari, congratulations! You've won a subscription to Living Crafts Magazine! I'll be emailing you as soon as I finish this post. Other contenders might wonder how I choose these things. I used to print out all the comments, cut them up so each comment was on a different scrap of paper, fold those up and put them into a large bowl. Then I made the professor choose the winner.

That was a lot of paper to waste, and I don't always have the professor around to do the drawing, so I now use one of the random number generators on the web instead. I put in 1-15 as my numbers, since one of the commenters didn't want a magazine. (even folks who weren't from North America were eligible for the prize) Then it popped up 14 and starting from the first comment and counting down--skipping those who didn't want a subscription--that's how I got our winner. Truly random. :)

Less random was the contest I had a couple of weeks ago to figure out a name for The Winnipegger scarf. I have now posted it on Ravelry for sale. Even if you're not on Ravelry, you can purchase it here. The winners have all been sent their free pattern already! It will also likely be available on my website sometime, too, but for now, Ravelry's the place to go shopping for a downloadable pdf if you're interested. (I hope you're interested!)

In other news, weaving has been going slowly, so no new warp for April as of yet. I did several roving rugs and I'm using the last of this warp on some curtain fabric. I'm thinking of making curtains for my kitchen with this.

Although you can't tell from the photo, I'm making a striped fabric. One stripe of weft is a cream colored wool yarn I got from the Scrap Exchange in Durham, North Carolina. (the warp is from there, too) Since I lived in Durham from 1998 to 2002, this stuff has been marinating in my stash a long time! The same stripe has bits of a nylon white ribbon from Sweden as an accent. I got this at a yarn swap in Winnipeg last summer. The other stripe uses the same cream colored nubby cotton as the warp. I'm hoping this stripe works as a more "see through" option so that hopefully some sunlight will shine through. If you've noticed--I haven't bought a thing yet that was particularly for weaving. It's all from my stash!

In the same vein, I went to the Artsjunktion in Winnipeg's Exchange district for the first time last week. This is a nonprofit venture much like the Scrap Exchange--its goal is to keep useful stuff out of the landfill! It's a great resource for artists, teachers, and crafters. I could not believe my luck. I found cotton yarn (a future warp?), colored cotton thread, several lengths of lovely wool fabric--great for weaving into rugs or sewing into something else, some spools of ribbon, some binding tape, and and....a brand new yellow summer dress in my size. Now, yellow doesn't look good on me, but I am not letting that get in the way.

Free is free...might as well make into something I'll use. One yellow empire waist dress went for a swim in a dye bath last Friday. I meant to shoot a photo, but it's already hanging in my closet!

I did pay for parking and donated some old records and $5 towards the rent of the warehouse space. That said, I felt a bit guilty taking away all this loot. One man's trash is most definitely another woman's treasure!

Is there a reuse depot for industrial and crafting discards in your area? How about a yarn swap in your guild/knitting group? I'm curious...please feel free to let me know or comment on something else below...