Backyard Bamboo Mitts

It is quite hot here so this week I'm planning to spend some serious time in this chair in the shade knitting up a storm.

Here are the fingerless mitts with a sore thumb gusset - they are the first of 4 patterns I'm doing for a booklet of stranded patterns in eco-friendly yarns due at the end of July .

These are knit in Crystal Palace's Panda Cotton which is a bamboo/cotton/nylon blend. I used 1 skein of black and periwinkle for these. I think this yarn might be fun to use for socks as well.

I hope to have the completed fingerless mitts from bamboo yarn to show you tomorrow. Next on the agenda is a pair of heart-themed mittens in Karaoke which is made from soy silk (tofu manufacturing leftovers I guess.) Also, this week I want to do a series of posts on how to create your own stranded knitting patterns - I just need to gather all the links.

Go check out these gorgeous mitten kits from Finland. All the yarns are naturally-dyed with plants and mushrooms. I'm really trying to resist by telling myself I already have 45 million pairs of stranded mittens and that it is currently the middle of June in the hot desert.

I have to get busy cooking. Every Sunday I work hard to use up the fruits and veggies from the previous week because on Mondays we get the next box of organic goodies from our CSA (community-supported agriculture). To find a CSA near you check out Local Harvest. Here's a photo of the contents of one of our recent boxes. Our wonderful CSA, Los Poblanos Organics, is a year-round CSA with items from regional organic farms. That yellow watermelon was seriously good.



And here is some more New Mexico sunset action for you.

Nature 1 Wallpaper

Wow! Panda Cotton really takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Can you believe I've ripped out this fingerless mitt 4 times so far? The yarn still looks great after all that abuse. The first time I ripped I decided to make the mitts longer. The second time was because I wanted to change one of the patterns. The third time I ripped to remove the doodads between the stars because it was messing up the gusset colorwork. The fourth time I ripped to change the gusset. Now that I've seen the photo I realize what I need to do to change the gusset again. Yes, that involves more ripping.



I really do like the bamboo in this yarn though. Can anyone recommend any other bamboo yarns I should try?

Bubbles the house rabbit and Jack the cat still don't like each other after five months. Occasionally I will see them coexisting peacefully but it mainly involves either Bubbles annoying Jack by sitting on his tail or Jack will hide behind a door and scare Bubbles when she enters the room. She then goes under a bed and thumps for a while.

At least they agree on what team is going to win the World Series this year.






Poor Jack looks demented in every single photo I take of him.

I'm working on a little booklet of 4 stranded knitting patterns using some of the new "green" fibers. Unfortunately Elann's Canapone hemp yarn is probably not going to make the cut. I love this yarn for its shininess but as you can see from the top swatch below, it is just too fine. That swatch was knit using size 0 dpns and the colorwork is still too loose.



The bottom swatch uses Crystal Palace Panda Cotton which is a bamboo/cotton/nylon blend. I was originally planning some summer gloves with lacy cuffs but this yarn is very prone to splitting. For some reason splitty yarns don't bother me in colorwork but they drive me insane in lace knitting. I think this swatch may become some fingerless mitts instead.

We planted a vegetable garden with a unique solution for our many gophers, cottontails, squirrels and other plant-munching creatures. DH made containers of chicken wire with a double wire bottom. He dug the holes, inserted the wire container and some dirt, and then the plant. I have been gardening disastrously long enough in New Mexico that I still think this method has only a 10% chance of success.

In the photo above you see some tomatoes planted right next to our trombe wall. A trombe wall is a passive-solar design element; basically it collects heat due to the windows right next to an earthen wall. There are vents that shoot heat into the house through the trombe wall in winter. Supposedly the angle of the sun is supposed to keep the trombe wall from heating up in summer but ours is always quite warm to the touch so I'm not sure there are any energy savings when you add in the extra cooling costs. Anyway, we thought the tomatoes might like the extra heat there.