Monthly Archives: July 2011

I love a little WTF, and I can’t think of a better day to check out some truly confounding things than in the middle of the week.

This week’s WTF is all about cars. Which is actually really strange for me, since I detest driving and all things related. I don’t even have my bloody licence.

But that doesn’t meant I can’t appreciate this: a life-sized knitted Ferrari, made by artist Lauren Porter:

Flashy red sports cars  pretty much top my list of Things I Hate About Driving and Everything Related to Driving, but when taken out of context like this suddenly I love them. Here’s a video interview with the artist, which also includes a fast motion clip of the car’s assembly:

And in keeping with the car theme, our wine WTF is this:

"Hey hun, watch the leather - daddy will kill me if it gets scuffed."

William and Kate’s wedding car, which was powered by biofuel made from leftover (British) wine. (Which some would say is the only thing British wine is good for, HA!)

The car actually belongs to Prince Charles (am I the only one who finds it funny that William borrowed his dad’s car to cruise around with his girl?), who had it converted to run on wine-derived biofuel back in 2008. Actually, this is a pretty great use of wine that would normally be dumped into the Thames, and with any luck it will catch on. (Though admittedly it is really expensive to retrofit your car like this. Still, if anyone can afford to do it, it’s the royal family.)

Now someone just needs to make a wine-powered knitted car, and I might actually be motivated to buy it and get on the road myself.

This is a very nice little sparkling wine that sells for around 15 bucks:

NV Zonin Special Cuvée Prosecco

It tastes like apples and pears. This is good.

And this is a very nice sock that  I finished knitting while drinking the aforementioned prosecco:

It looks like flowers and hours of work. This is good.

Actually, I was a bit surprised by how well I was able to manage the colourwork. I have dabbled in fair isle before, but hadn’t tackled anything major. I recently discovered the wondrous beauty that is Norwegian folk knitting, however, and couldn’t resist trying a traditional-type pattern.

There were some hiccups, of course – I’m not sure if Nordic women have extremely narrow feet or what, but the pattern called for a crazy amount of decreasing for the gusset and foot. Which is all the more amusing, given that I initially cast on for the medium size but the cuff was turning out way big, so I started over on the small – which has an even narrower foot.

So these socks are essentially the smallest size for the leg, and the largest size for the foot. Clearly mine are not Nordic feet.

Now I just need to remember all these changes when I knit its mate.

Knitting is nothing more than using two sticks to make a bunch of loops in string. Over and over and over again.

Despite how difficult, convoluted, and just plain incomprehensible the act of knitting may seem to the uninitiated (and indeed, even to the veteran knitter on a bad day), at its core knitting is always just a bunch of loops.

I shouldn’t be surprised, then, to see something like this come along: arm knitting and finger knitting, which replaces those sticks with your own arms/fingers.

I’ve had a similar thought in passing, while playing one of those “deserted island” games where you pick what you would absolutely and totally have to bring with you if you were stranded on a deserted island. My choices usually oscillate between boxes of wine and boxes of fibre. (I could settle for a 50/50 mix, probably.)

Interestingly, though I would certainly love to chuck in a set of Addi Turbo lace tip interchangeable needles, if I had to choose between those and a good stash of wool, I would invariably pick the wool. I figured that I could always just whittle some twigs into dpn’s, or even use my own fingers if things got really desperate.

Well, turns out that knitting with your fingers is no new thing – apparently it’s often taught to kids to teach them the basics of knitting. Click here for a great tutorial on finger knitting, or on the video below:

Australian fibre artist Teresa Dair has taken finger knitting one step further. In addition to creating some seriously cool and funky knit stuff that she sells in her shop, back in May 2011 she had an exhibit at the Craft and Quilt Fair in Perth where she demonstrated arm knitting.

It’s pretty cool, though obviously you end up with a seriously large garment. Good for funky scarves; not so good for socks. I’ll have to try this out sometime and report back.

When I moved into my new house last August I noticed a tall shrub in the backyard that had a couple red berries on it. Upon further inspection I guessed it was some kind of wild cherry, but the fruit wasn’t growing in drooping clusters like typical choke cherry.

I knew I would have to wait a season and examine the tree in full bloom to confirm its identity.

After watching it explode in a riot of pale pink flowers in May (sorry, no pictures – it was really pretty though!), and then seeing those flowers develop into little red berries all along the branches, I think I have it: Nanking Cherry.

The cherries are very sour, but quite tasty. Hopefully they’ll sweeten up a bit when they ripen fully.

I’ve read these make good jelly, and wine. Perhaps someone has found other good uses for them?

…after you’ve had too many pints and realized that a two-inch cuff of BLACK RIBBING is not compatible with knitting in the dark.

But dudes, I only made one mistake. And I was able to disguise it with duplicate stitch. My pride is unbounded.

(And yes, I knit in bars. All the time. Every time. I’d just be sitting there drinking, anyway – only the scenery differentiates it from a typical night at Chez CellarDoor.)

Hello everyone. I’m back! Shocking, I know, but I finally managed to drag myself out of blog hibernation.

Anyone who stopped here over the past two months will know that CellarDoor has been on a bit of a hiatus. It was unplanned. It just kind of happened. Sorry ‘bout that.

Truth be told, I became a little weary of blogging, and simply needed a break; this weariness was directly correlated to a change in my drinking habits. (Funny enough, when I don’t drink booze, I’m not that motivated to write about it either.)

For some time now I’ve toyed with the idea of hijacking this self-styled wine blog and turning it into a part wine, part knitting blog.

Yes, you read that correctly: knitting. I am a knitter. I am intensely proud of this fact, and it has come to occupy an as intrinsic a part of my life and identity as wine has.

I realize that on the surface, wine and knitting don’t seem to go together. (To the non-knitters, that is – my fellow knitters are derisively spit-taking into their drinks right now.) However, I figure if there’s a wine and yarn bar out there in the world, there can damn well be a wine and yarn blog too.

So, I hereby declare that henceforth this blog shall be a venue for both of my life’s non-human passions. If anything, you’ll get to see a parade of finely crafted objects and tasty beverages.

let the knitterly parade begin!

Oh, and I’m not changing the name. Cellars aren’t just for storing wine, you know – any manner of wonderful things can be kept down there. Like pickles. And old Christmas decorations. And a magnificent stash of yarn.

(In the interest of full disclosure, way back when I first started this blog I did a couple knitting posts before I decided a should streamline it into a full-time booze blog. You can read those articles here and here, if you like.)