HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits do you have on today?

I'm wearing

Mosaic socks
Project details on Ravelry

and

Basket Stitch Cardigan
Project details on Ravelry

Fizzy fête

I had the pleasure of going to a last minute fizzy party where we all made bath bombs--you know, chunks of stuff that you throw into a bath to create a lovely scented effervescent experience. I'm not much of a bath person, but hey, I might be now.

Station 1

The photo was taken after all the mixing and measuring was over, so by then Station 1 was a bit trashed. There are recognizable boxes of baking soda and corn starch and there's also citric acid and Sherpa Pink Himalayan salt (what?!). Yeah, I know. We had a discussion about what that might mean.


Dry ingredients

Each of us measured and mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl and moved to the next step.


Ready for Station 2

Station 2

Would you look at this spread? I was blown away. Scentsational! Using avocado and/or jojoba as a base we added essential oils and emulsified the oils with water.


Essential oils

Cookie demonstrated the technique for mixing the wet with the dry... it involved listening to our bowls.


Mixing demo

Everything was pretty easy so far.

Station 3

Shaping the bath bombs was the most challenging step. Well, let me take that back. It was more challenging for some than others. Freecia was really good at it--one after another popped out of the mold without a break or a crack.


Shaping

Teenuh also had a technique that worked for her and she ended up making extras with everyone's leftovers.

I wasn't as good at making the bombs. More often than not mine would break in half when I tried to removed it from the mold. When I thought I found a technique that worked and tried it on the next one it would break. Again. It was kind of like golf for me--just when I thought I knew what I was doing, I didn't know what I was doing.

Eventually I was able to make 5 lovely bath bombs scented with lavender, vanilla, and ginger.


Fizzy bath bombs

Aren't they pretty?

At the end of the evening 7 of us made 38-40 scented bath bombs and my olfactory receptors were totally overloaded (in a good way).

Thanks for the great time Lisa, Freecia, Teenuh, Jen, and Eliza, and thank you so much for hosting and teaching us Cookie, it was fun!


Cheers!

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday!

The Laced-Up socks are making their debut on this lovely HKF. What hand knits are you wearing today?


Laced-Up socks
Project details on Ravelry

In print!

A package was delivered today--


It's here!

My heart rate was up as I looked at the sticker.


Nice touch

Oh my. I was nervous cutting into it... definitely didn't want to cut the contents. Success!


Superstar!

(Flipping pages rapidly)

Ahhh. There it is.


In print! My pattern is in print!


I'm on page 274


Laced-Up Socks


This has been a long time coming and I'm so thrilled to be finally holding this book in my hands. eBooks may be cool, but there's nothing like being in a physical book. You know, the kind that's printed on paper.

Stitch 'n Bitch Superstar Knitting: Go Beyond the Basics looks like it's full of great information. I'll have more to say when I get over the shock and can look at the rest of the book.

A marvelous design

My sister and I went to the October Spin-in last weekend and Spinnity introduced us to her book charkha. She purchased it at Stitches West 2009 and it was very interesting to see this marvelously designed spinning wheel.


Getting a tour of the book charkha

A Charkha is a spinning wheel that has a high spinning ratio which makes it great for spinning short staple fibers like cotton.

From Wikipedia:

The charkha (etymologically related to Chakra) was both a tool and a symbol of the Indian independence movement.

Mahatma Gandhi brought the charkha into larger use with his teachings. He hoped the charkha would assist the peoples of India achieve self-sufficiency and independence, and so used the charkha as a symbol of the Indian independence movement and included it on earlier versions of the Flag of India.

We were amazed at how everything fit into such a small and elegant package.

If you're interested in a book or upright charkha, visit this site: Charkhas for spinning.

Passing down traditions

I was talking about the napa cabbage shortage in Korea with my mom the other day. That's when I realized that in all these years I haven't learned how to make kimchi, a staple in Korean cuisine.

My mom was more than happy to show me and my sister the ins and outs of making the traditional variety of kimchi where seasoned ingredients are stuffed between leaves of napa cabbage.


Napa cabbage


Brining


The hot stuff


Ready to put it all together


Assembling


Pack tightly


Kimchi!

The sights and smells brought back a lot of childhood memories and now I'm equipped with the know-how to make it in my own house. It'll be ready to eat in a few days. I can't wait!

Thanks Mom!

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! (Bet you thought I forgot, huh?) What hand knits do you have on today?

I'm wearing Crayola socks.


Jawoll Broadripple socks
Project details on Ravelry

Don't Panic

Today is 10.10.10, an auspicious day.

101010 = 42. If you're a fan of Douglas Adamsthat number should be familiar.

42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

If you haven't read Douglas Adams' works, then search for 42 in Wikipedia and you'll see it's quite special in--

Mathematics

• The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.
  
• 42 is the expected number of throws of a (single) fair die until two sixes show up successively (for the first time).

Science

• The angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears.
  
• In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity's force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate.

Technology

• 42 is the result given by the web search engines Wolfram Alpha, Google and Microsoft's Bing when the query "the answer to life the universe and everything" is entered as a search.
  
• AMD's One off Overlocking CPU was named Phenom 42, with the number being partially from the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Popular Culture

• Level 42 is an English pop/rock band.
  
• "42" is one of the tracks on Coldplay's 2008 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.
  
• Fox Mulder lived in Apartment 42 at 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia.
  
• 42 is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real time lasting approximately 42 minutes.
  
• 42 is the name of Buzz Lightyear's space ship from Pixar's animated science fiction series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
  
• In Monty Python's film And Now for Something Completely Different, the famous "How Not to be Seen" sketch is presented as "H.M. Government Public Service film No. 42".
  
• In A Clockwork Orange Alex browses through records in a record store and we see a record of the band fictional band at that time, Level 42.
  
• In "Finding Nemo" the address of the dentist's office is recited many times by Dory is P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.

Those are just a few of the entries for 42 in Wikipedia.

42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Celebrate accordingly... and for extra credit, celebrate at 10:10:10 in the morning.

(Just Like) Starting Over

Remembering John Lennon.

(Just Like) Starting Over (2010 Remix), a free iTunes download.

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits do you have on today?

A pink shirt calls for pink socks--

Free Pattern

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits do you have on today?

It's been a week filled with Lisa Souza yarn, so it's fitting to bring out Lisa Souza socks for HKF--


Petroglyph Socks
Project details on Ravelry