Doing the Continental....

Gentle knitters, I'm kinda sorta having a needlecraft crisis.  A repetitive motion disorder (aka traumatic chronic tenosynovitis) is afflicting my dominant (right) hand and I've been ordered to back way off. Ergo I decided to learn Continental style knitting (see mangled mess in above photograph), hoping it will allow me to stay on the road to Knitsville. Continental style is more ergonomic (fewer gestures necessary to make a stitch) and the work happens more in the left hand than the right. Perhaps this will be my salvation.

Continental knitting videos are available gratis on Youtube and knittinghelp.com.  I found the latter more concise than those on Youtube, many of which are Kommandant-style by disciplinarians with a sketchy command of English. (Although they're often unintentionally amusing, especially after a couple of drinks.) I also purchased a Knitting Daily download, Continental Knitting with Biggan Ryd-Dups, which seems, likely, the best of the bunch. Report to follow, sometime....

Perhaps because my own hand is misbehaving, I decided on the best use for the Buddha's Hand fruit that has been growing on my little Buddha's Hand tree, purchased a couple of years ago from Logee's Greenhouses in Danielson, CT.  It was very, very ripe.

Buddha's hand has no pulp; it's all rind. A type of citron, its culinary value is in the rind, which has a bright lemon-orange scent. I couldn't bear to mutilate this extraordinary fruit by skinning it, so the natural and best use seemed to be as the principal and only flavoring in a vodka infusion.

It takes a few days for the magic to work. Could this be the cure...?

https://youtu.be/uh5u5dmeABI

Fat needles

Dreary weather has a way of fomenting impatience, and I have become extremely impatient for warmer weather. Hence yesterday I convinced H to drive us (and Lola) to Logee's Greenhouse in Danielson, Connecticut so that we could imagine ourselves in the tropics.

This hothouse citrus tree, planted in the 1930s, has grafted branches of ten different fruits.

One of the many camellias in bloom.

By the time we left Logee's I was feeling warmer and craving hot colors--deep pink and orange. I am sure this yen began when I witnessed Orla and Quentin's nuptials on V-day, as they both wore impressively tropical hues. In fact, ever since donating the Hip-Hop yarn worn by Orla, I had been ruminating on the several skeins of it that take up quite a bit of space in my stash room.

Fortunately we had lunch in the nearby town of Putnam, Connecticut, and parked quite near Woolworks, Ltd. We ate at a forgettable restaurant while Lola waited in the car. Afterwards, H returned to the car to walk Lola, while I sashayed into Woolworks.

Like most of Putnam's downtown businesses, it's harbored in an oddly renovated building of limited architectural merit. Inside, however, is a different story. This place is radiant with positive fiber energy! I found a warm, very replete LYS, with a serious collection of spinning wheels and a spinner-in-residence. The staffers were really congenial and charming, and gave me a good sense of the shop's array of yarns and notions. Unlike many LYS which seem to have only two skeins of any given yarn in any given color, and maybe one of the color you really want, Woolworks' shelves were fully stocked with yarns ranging from Reynolds and Sirdar to Cascade, Malabrigo, and very interesting local (CT) yarns, such as Corriedale worsted from Brown Farm of Scotland, CT, and  Fibers 4 Ewe sock yarn of merino, nylon, and milk fiber.

Also, I was thrilled to find a set of #13 dpns--wooden, no less!--and purchased them and a skein of Fibers4Ewe sock yarn forthwith. Contrary to what you may suspect from this odd juxtaposition of merchandise, the large needles are for knitting a hat with the Berocco Hip Hop yarn so fashionably worn by Orla on Valentine's Day.

Especially as I have been focused on socks for the last few months--they have become something of an obsession, actually--and have been working with size one and two dpns--my fingers have been thinking about the other end of the spectrum, as they have a somewhat polarized mentality (likely the result of so many years of piano practice). Having just begun this hat with chunky yarn and clunky needles, I can say that while it does knit up extremely fast, it is also deeply clumsy to knit with such oversized tools... So the benefits and disadvantages cancel each other, IMHO. As for the hat...we shall see what we think when it's over and done with. Orla and Ted have promised to model it.