Susan's Pointy Sticks

retail therapy

2008-08-08T12:23:00.004-05:00

We had some fantastically good news this week - just yesterday in fact - the news that Peggers was selected as a teacher's aide for a special education program at our local high school, which is just wonderful. Unfortunately, though, I have also been (mentally) slammed with a ton of bad news this week as well.

And unfortunately, the bad column currently far far outweighs and outranks the good.

My paternal grandparents are having some major medical problems at the moment - my 91 year old grandmother is beginning the slow, painful descent into dementia. And as my 89 year old grandfather - her sole caregiver - is currently in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery, this is a difficult time for the family.

On my mom's side of things, my stepfather, who has finally recovered from cancer and appallingly painful and complicated gallbladder surgery just a few months back, found himself back again in the O.R. this week - a blocked bowel that had left him in severe pain & horridly emaciated. The surgery went well, overall, despite their having to remove over 2 feet of bowel, however this morning he has no feeling in his left arm from the elbow down- - a new - and obviously unwanted - concern.

Then, the final thing that absolutely sent me over to the retail therapy edge seeking some relief, was the news last night that one of the dearest, sweetest people in the world - a college friend who means the absolute world to me - is back from her life abroad in South East Asia due to health concerns. An ultrasound earlier in the week shows a large mass on her liver, and she's at the urologist today finding out what information she can - but thoughts of liver cancer are certainly at the forefront of everyone's mind.

So I ran to do a little buying/knitting therapy - thinking that I needed to create something for myself that is soothing and comforting - something I can wrap up in and hunker down with to ride out this latest wave of pain and fear that is heading our way. And so I have discarded my thrifty plans of recycling an old wool sweater into a custom dyed version of Linear. Instead I just purchased 8 skeins of this in a shade that only Brooklyntweed can properly do justice. Not the original colour I had in mind, but certainly a beautiful shade that I'll happily wear any day.

{In my defense of my original plan to pace myself (vis-a-vie my progress on the silk tank I'm knitting up for Gryphon, seen above) let me say that I finished the knitting & re-knitting on the body just last night. I'm casting on for the two silk/cashmere side-panel triangles tonight & will work on them like the devil.........only taking breaks to pet my new yarn (once it arrives!) every now and then.}

Nothing like the shiny-bright promise of a new project to get a girl moving along!

A promise - - Linear style

2008-08-04T14:43:00.000-05:00

Twist Collective goes live

2008-08-01T11:00:00.004-05:00

The Twist Collective is up!

I'm not too sure how thrilled I am at the idea of having to buy the patterns one by one*, but the alternative (buying a whole book just for one stinkin' decent pattern, as I'm currently considering doing with Norah Gaughan's Volume 3 just so that I can get my hands on the single pattern for 'Linear' ) is sure a lot worse!

*(plus, I really like the way that it fairly treats the designers, you know?)

Progress

2008-07-31T14:01:00.005-05:00

We're making progress in our little corner of the world - Peggers has had several job interviews, and the best interview that he's managed to score yet (where, I might add, he's the *only* candidate and pay - while appallingly low - nonetheless includes tuition remission for his future graduate classes & full benefits) is next week. We're both really excited about where our future seems to be going.

I've been hitting the gym with obsessive regularity (easy to stop worrying about how the bills are going to get paid or where our little family will be in the grand scheme of things 8 months from now when every single brain cell is totally needed to keep yourself from not mis-running a step on the treadmill, falling off, and breaking both your legs) and the results have been quite satisfactory. While I might be too tired to stay up nearly as late - knitting - as I used to, I've dropped about 2 clothing sizes and now do well over 150 crunches a day. Not bad for a girl who used to top out at 12 (weak) crunches total. Amazing for the stress levels - amazing.

I've been knitting some when I can - mostly on Gryphon's silk tank, which is about 90% finished, on a friend's birthday hat (happy belated birthday, Eric!), and I finally finished up my co-worker's lace shawl after casting on for it last October. Unfortunately, we lost our digital camera right around the time that the law office downsized and 'lost' their one & only paralegal - hah! - so not a lot of recently-taken pictures floating around here at the moment. However I've borrowed a digital camera for a few weeks from a department on campus, so that should keep me in pictures for a bit - and there are always the archives to peruse!

I realized today while online shopping for some Baby Surprise Jacket materials (I lent towards STR at first, until I read their 'orders processed in 5-10 days' statement, and as this is a last-minute request for a silent auction that is going to be held on the 17th, I switched gears & went with some Fleece Artist from the always-dependable, always-lovely The Loopy Ewe instead. An order, I might add - that shipped a mere 2 hours after I placed it!!!!!) that I never have displayed all of my wondrous gifts from my May Day Sock Swap pals. (I had my regular May Day Swap pal & then I had several other amazingly lovely women send me stuff as well - can you believe my luck????) And I figured - what else is a belated post for, if not to break the long silence with a proverbial bang? So, in no particular order - here you go - to keep things simple I'm going to figure that you guys can mostly figure out what is what - if a label isn't prominent, I'll label it for you, but otherwise.........who amongst us can't pick out a skein of STR at 20 paces?

(Every package from KT had these *lovely* little labels on them!)

Spinning fiber - soy, soy/cashmere, and something called inigo that I've never heard of before!

Koigu KPPPM

(the Undulating Rib pattern)

(from Marisol out in SanFrancisco - they smelt deliciously of lavender!)

(long ago eaten!)

(what FUN this will be!!!)

(the buttons are hand-made by a woman's co-op in Africa)

(a future cowl for me)

(ditto)

Well, such a long post from someone who has been silent so long! I'll re-surface yet again in a few weeks, I'm certain - with a few photos, some home-improvement details, and hopefully some new-job news as well!

2008-07-23T10:27:00.000-05:00

note to self

2008-07-14T08:30:00.006-05:00

When you finally start knitting interesting things again and your mojo has finally returned, and you get around to **finally** knitting that much-belated birthday (April!) hat out of Malabrigo for your brother - you know, the crazy one who is now officially certified to do this:

A self-portrait taken while on a paragliding solo flight. After 25 hours of lessons he's now a full-licensed lunatic who can go out on his own whenever he's got whopping amounts of cash to do so.

but who otherwise and more frequently looks like this:

Taken during a recent trip to the Bahamas where he was doing a catalog shoot. (He's a professional photographer.) Apparently he & his gf found a ruined airplane - you know how they're always just left lying around - and so he decided to climb in.) Do you know how incredibly annoying it is to have a younger brother this good looking? (6'6" - probably 210 pounds & all muscle!) Very much so! ;>

........don't forget that he apparently has a huge noggin. Tom said that his cowboy hat size (Cowboy hat size???? Sheesh, those folks who live in Wyoming are really the only ones who think in these terms! Well, folks in Wyoming and Lyle Lovett, that is.) is a 7 & 5/8 - - which in the knitting world translates to a head diameter of 24".

2008-07-01T14:02:00.002-05:00

Thunder. Lightening. Very very frightening!

2008-06-05T10:37:00.001-05:00

I thought that maybe last night I could set up my new nifty tripod and take some fiber & FO pictures, but alas, a major major thunderstorm came through town and instead wiped out a few roof tiles {groan, we *just* had a good dozen or so tiles replaced!}, downed many branches, flooded a few roadways, and in general sent all sensible creatures scurrying inside.

While putting the Munchkin to sleep, I heard the National Weather Service break in with the following warning:
"....the storm is moving south east and should be over [insert name of my county here] in the next 25 to 35 minutes. Hail, the size of nickels or quarters has been reported with this storm. All travelers should get off the road and everyone should seek shelter indoors immediately."

And normally, while I like a good thunderstorm, this one scared the living bejesus out of me, so rather than calmly take pictures, I instead sought comfort the best way I could that evening - with a disk of Foyle's War from the public library and I cast on for a very basic brioche ribbed hat for the Munchkin with some of my (badly done) handspun - Hello Yarn's BLF dyed up in her 'Insect Wings' colourway.

And so I knit on that while the worst of the storm passed & I could relax a bit.

So, alas, this morning I've got absolutely nothing to show you as far as fleece pictures or FO pictures go. Tonight is a bust as well for taking pictures, as happily enough we've been offered freebie babysitting from my mother-in-law who is in town to lend a hand with my niece and nephew while their private school is closed but the public-school-scheduled summer camps aren't yet open - so Peggers and I are hitting up the best Indian restaurant in town for some naan and sag panner (ummmm, maybe some chana masala as well!) and then retiring to Barnes & Noble for a slice of cheesecake (him) and cup of decaf (me) and some browsing of upper-eschelon-esque literature with lots of highbrow conversation. (You know what I mean - he'll check out the latest Star Wars novel, or the latest Batman trade paperback while I search in vain for a single spinning book in the whole store or a new book on knitting that I feel like splurging on - and then I'll grab a copy of People or some other trashy mag and will sit and talk about the crazy clothes that celebrities actually *pay* other people to tell them to wear.)

To keep this from being an almost completely pictureless post, I spent some valuable work time this morning putting together the following mosaic. It was LOADS of fun, actually. The associated Flickr group is called 'thegame' and here are the basic rules:

a.) type your answer to each of the following questions into Flickr's search box
b.) using only the first page, pick an answer
c.) copy & paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker

Questions:
1.) What is your first name?
2.) What is your favorite food?
3.) What high school did you go to?
4.) What is your favorite color?
5.) Who is your celebrity crush?
6.) Favorite drink?
7.) Dream vacation?
8.) Favorite dessert?
9.) What do you want to be when you grow up?
10.) What do you love most in life?
11.) One word to describe you
12.) Your flickr name

1. Susan, 2. coffee, 3. Oswego, 4. bluegreen, 5. Nathan Fillion, 6. red wine, 7. New Zealand, 8. gooseberry fool, 9. Beautiful old lady from Darap(Sikkim) village, 10. laughing, 11. awake, 12. pointy stick

p.s. many thanks to both Ava & Lola for alerting me to this fun meme. And A&L - in the spirit of nice paybacks, have you seen this recipe yet for home-baked sea-salt brownies?

R&R

2008-06-04T11:33:00.005-05:00

Ohhhhhhhhhhh but I've been gone a long time! I took last week off from work to give myself a bit of a break - and once I made the decision to do that, I really, really devoted myself to taking a break. I turned down several offers to spend vacation time with others (one offer involved a plane ride, one involved a bit of driving, the other was in town & involved lunch & small family members) and pretty much thoroughly resisted the urge to do any of the following while I was home resting:

* laundry
* grocery shopping
* dishes
* vaccuuming
* tidying of any sort, actually
* checking my work e-mail

So instead of doing these things what I instead devoted my time to was:

* spinning (a whole lot of spinning!)
* knitting up some of my handspun
* watching 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' on DVD from my public library
* gardening
* taking a single, luxurious, 2-hour nap
* cooking - the refreshing & fun kind, not the exhausting kind
* dyeing roving

While I most certainly could have survived a second (or even third!) week off from work and a bit more lazing about, the time that I got in was nonetheless lovely. I did much more spinning (and gardening) than I did knitting, but I did knit & finish one fun fast little hat - now I just need to pull out my new digital camera tripod and take a (non-blurry!) picture of it. Soon - I promise.

I actually need to take a ton of pictures. The few that I took while R&R'ing (a weeny little bump of a 2-phase dyeing experiment of mine, plus my little dye experiment standard colour references drying in the breeze, a few of the garden - aren't hollyhocks pretty?, my 'Red Velvet' handspun all wound up & ready for me to cast-on) are nice and all, but not nearly enough to show what I was up to for for a full week. The last picture in the mosaic shot is of our new fence - one that we dreamt up, designed, built, and then stained ourselves, with some very kind help from my brother in law & father in law. GOODNESS but that gave us more than a few splinters & stain splashes! Not to mention a minor dent in the ol' wallet. That was a multi multi-step project - and one that is now 97% finished. The last 3% should happen this weekend, I am very happy to report, as long as we don't get rained out for a second weekend in a row.

Once I have an empty morning when I can pull out the digital and my skeins of handspun and my incredible 'savior' gifts, plus my fun little knit I will show you properly what exactly I was doing all of those nicely-quiet moments.

Of course, I could also take a picture of my pillow & blanket & the inside of my eyelids as well, in case anyone was wondering how my R&R nap went...............

;)

Tell me True

2008-05-21T11:37:00.006-05:00

First there was fishing.

(Munch didn't get a hook on the end of his pole - no way no how! - instead he got a rubber worm {he calls it his "wormy"} which delighted him to no end.)

A friend from daycare came along to make the afternoon more enjoyable.

Then this weekend, before the 3+ hour graduation ceremony that I was required to attend for work, there was fiber dyeing. I tried the oven-roasting method this time around.

After everything dried, there was handpainted roving.

There was a peony. Big. Beautiful. Spicy smelling in the most delicious way. (Peonies are my favorite flower.)

'Hive' was finished and left as a single - 410 yards.

A scarf was started with the Hive singles. However, sadly, this scarf will soon be frogged, as the yarn & the pattern Are. Not. Working.

I am grieving over this, but I will survive.

Why will I survive, you ask? Hello Yarn rovings arrived in the mail yesterday.

'Honeybear' - 8 ounces in merino/mohair.

'How to Pick Carrots' - 8 ounces in Wenseydale.

Wenseydale is some HAIRY fiber, lemmie' tell you. It drafts about as easily as puffing a down feather through the air - the speed with which it slides apart is almost frightening - but this stuff? As hairy as Cousin It after a ride in a convertible!

I spun some up last night. Actually, that's not true - I spun up almost 4 full ounces last night. I'll spin the rest tonight and Thursday night and then will ply them together and thrill with the results.

My question to all of the spinners out there - look at the scarf that I started and see how just flat-out horrid it looks. Do you always get such pronounced striping when you knit up handspun? Is there anything I can do to prevent my knitting from striping so badly - some trick in the spinning or drafting or plying to make it less pronounced? Or is it just me and my spinning newness that is causing this? You can be honest with me - I can take it - I'm a big girl when it comes to my knitting and spinning.

I'm not a big striping fan - in fact I might end up dyeing and spinning up a whole new bundle of fiber to cast on again for the Ribbon Lace Scarf - as I really can just 'see' that scarf knitted up in a beautiful subtly-mottled yellow & gold handspun. Just not the stripy handspun that I've currently knitted it with...

To everything - turn, turn, turn

2008-05-14T13:48:00.009-05:00

Lately, I just can't get enough of my spinning wheel. I'm doing some knitting here and there, but man - the spinning? It's just recharging my batteries in such a way that I find it's about all I want to do in the evenings - so much so that I actually first contemplated then mourned the fact that our bathroom was too small for me to bring up my (admittedly compact) wheel so that I could get in just a few more minutes while I supervised the Munch in the tub.

(And don't anyone even *say* the words 'drop spindle' to me - they are evil & are never to defile my house again!) With apologies out there to everyone who loves their drop spindles more than their Addis. I know - I know - it's my issue, and my failing - but I'm going to keep blaming the equipment as long as I possibly can.

Last night while my two men slumbered the sleep of the just (and the totally exhausted) I watched a classic 80s movie and spun up the second half of my latest - and last - Hello Yarn fiber club offering.

Hello Yarn's April Fiber Club - 'Hive' 100% Falkland wool.

I'm very excited about this, as I actually have a plan for it. I'm going to take some of the undyed rovings that I [ahem] ordered from H.Y. yesterday and do a kettle dye of either a very pale yellow or else a very pale (bright) brownish orange and then hopefully spin that up as semi-finely as I did this. Then the two will be plied together into a more or less thick fingering weight and I'll knit the latest Veronik Avery offering - the Lace Ribbon Scarf from the resultant handspun. I'm absolutely tickled with the idea - so ducks, if there are any glaring problems with this little ol' plan of mine, send them my way nicely and softly, so that my bubble bursts slowly, 'kay?

Oh. My. Trouble.

I just went to Hello Yarn's shop to link to the two rovings above that I bought and, uh, Adrian appears to have snuck in a wee fiber update *just* as I was clicking in to get the appropriate links. And I appear to have bought 8 ounces of this and 8 ounces of that. Oh dearie me. How on earth did that happen?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? (n.b. 8 ounces of Wenseydale & 8 ounces of 70/30 merino/mohair. Oh. Oh oh oh oh oh. YES!)

{ahem} Moving right along, people. Nothing to see here. Move along, now.

So anyway, back to my handspun that I've been working on lately. I'll start off with the picture(s) of shame first - my butchering of the February Hello Yarn Fiber Club offering - 'Insect Wings'.

U. G. H.

Overspun. Overplied. Gnarly as all hell. Rescued in terms of touch only because I followed the advice of an article in Spin Out and beat the living hell out of this skein. I dropped it in just-boiled soapy water (!) and then pounded it with a pestle. Then I lifted it into a sink of cold water, squeezed it, and then dropped it back in the hot pot and pounded it again. Once more into the icy sink, and then spun out in the washer. Then whacked repeatedly against the floor, then hung to dry. It's obviously a bit felted now (hah!) but it is MUCH softer, and while it is still overspun and overplied, it is at least nicer to touch now, and should be better to knit into something. Now, let's just put that behind us and call it a (painful) learning experience, shall we?

Banish it from your thoughts, all.

Better. BETTER!!! Balanced. Squishy. Much more even. Happiness in yarn form!

A fat, happy skein of yarn.

Hello Yarn's March Fiber Club offering. 'Red Velvet'. I cannot remember the exact fiber, but it was lovely to spin up. BFL? Merino? I cannot remember. Shame on me and my horrid note-taking! This was majorly fun to spin up. Loads of fun to ply. The difference? I slowed waaaaay down in my overall spinning, pre-drafted until I was happy with the result, and tried a different hand position for the actual spinning/draft triangle action itself. I also decided that I'd rather be a slow, decent spinner rather than a fast, crappy spinner. I decided to embrace my learning curve, as it is, rather than try and deny it and shoot right on past all of the (obvious) learning that I need to do to ultimately be the kind of spinner that I'd like to be.

A final shot of the good & the bad. (No ugly. I don't & won't take pictures of those skeins!)

The two next to each other for a rough visual comparison. One fat and happy, the other twisted and miserable. Maybe the one on the right needs a little therapy to become more mellow and relaxed - hmmmmmmmm??? (if only it were that easy to fix a skein of arsed-up handspun!)

This is the result of some older singles that were on a bobbin and just hanging around the house - I spun up an equal amount on Monday and then plied two strands together until I ran out on one bobbin - then practiced doing a triple ply. I think the skein is halfway decent only because the first bobbin's worth was so old that the majority of my bad (over)spinning was calmed down due to the long resting time. Another lesson to be learned! I've left the bulk of this roving to be spun later, when I have a better sense of what I want to do with it. It's PRETTY, and spins wonderfully - a beautifl blend of merino & tencel that I bought off of FatCatKnits via Etsy several months back.

And lastly, just because I can (tee-hee!) a picture of what I was looking at and who I was talking to when I was taking all of the other above pictures:

Kim. Staking Baptisia australis. Standing next to a species of allium that is nearly as tall as the Munchkin. Ducks, there is not a single thing that this woman cannot make grow and grow and grow!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy my little guy a kiddie fishing pole & make a picnic for the two of us to eat next to the lake tonight as a surprise treat while Daddy is away for the evening playing volleyball.

second verse, same as the first

2008-05-11T14:22:00.003-05:00

This morning, I made Nigella's Chocolate Mint cookies for my MIL while the Munch happily wore his Penguin sweater & played with his cars. I drank coffee & ate a muffin.

Not too shabby.

Sunday Update:

* Still no May Day Socks.

* Still no progress on the Chuck's. (I tried - really I did, but after knitting a round and then taking a closer look at it only to realize that I had arsed it up and had to tink back the W.H.O.L.E. R.O.U.N.D. I decided to quit. Plus my needles aren't pointy enough to make the cabling overly-easy. ) After that last upset, I'm thinking that the Chuck's might marinate for a bit - alone - in a ziploc bag - in the dark - until I decide what exactly would be best to do with them.

* I've started the second pattern repeat on my Twisted Flower socks. Still loving the yarn & adoring my new KnitPicks 'Harmony' needles - the pointy little tips are exactly what I need for these yo's and ssk's. Isn't it lovely when a project comes together like this? I just adore how such a lovely serendipitous lining up of events totally makes the project fly by, and the entire thing a joy from beginning to end.

* I'm currently 5 repeats done on the Primavera socks. As I'm making these for a sized 13-foot recipient, I'm tempted (as always) to limit the length of the leg so that I have enough yarn left over for the foot itself. For those of you who are wondering a size 13 man's foot is approximately 11.5" long. So that means that I'd need to knit the foot 10" long before decreasing for the toe. That is a HECK of a lot of knitting - especially considering that I was going to make the leg only 5" long and to do so it looks like I'll use approximately 2/3 of a skein of KnitPicks Risata. I might go for broke, though, and make the leg a full 7" long and see how much it uses - and if I need to buy an extra skein to make the pair, I'll simply buy an extra skein (ahem - or two). After all, it's not like I'm worried about dyelots matching, and it's not like the Risata costs a fortune per skein. And after all, doesn't a man who fetched me coffee and muffins this morning (when he loathes the smell of coffee) deserve a sock with a 7" long leg?

Blurry. This is because I had a good shot of the sock - a non-blurry shot - and unfortunately I accidentally deleted it. Yet when I looked in the Recycle Bin it 'tis empty of non-blurry Primavera sock shots. Don't ask, as I don't have an answer.

I'm still quite blurry around the edges myself from this virus (I woke up this morning feeling like a Charles Dickens character, so much was I hacking up diseased lung bits) so I'm taking off from work tomorrow to simply rest and nap and try and get some energy back. I was feeling better Friday, but I have a sneaking suspicion that working yesterday & today took off that tiny bit of new lustre.

I shall spin and knit tomorrow, and rest up and restore my energy levels. Should be good times - I mean, I'm certainly looking forward to it!

4 hours of work on a Saturday...

2008-05-10T14:27:00.006-05:00

...is a very boring thing.

Thank goodness there is [always] knitting to bring along!

3 pairs of socks (altho' I have to be honest & admit that the Chuck's Cabled pair didn't see any action today) kept me busy while I watched a handful of students freak themselves out over final exams & overdue papers.

First up - Chuck's Cabled Socks (by Eunny) - inspired by Mel:

Taken *with* a flash - no idea why this is so dark. The grey is actually correct in this picture.

Taken without a flash (at work, while bored) - the grey looks minty green.
The not-doing-it-for-me colours are even worse in this shot!

Blah. These socks are not working for me. No inspiration to keep knitting, despite the fact that I like the yarn(s) and I like cables. But I'm determined to keep on trying until I get to the 'colourwork' at the heel and then make up my mind on what I should ultimately do.

Second up to Bat: Primavera Socks via S(t)ockinette

Cast-on at 3 PM in KnitPicks Risata. My goal is to complete the ribbing (all 15 rounds of it) before falling asleep tonight.

Last up - Twisted Flower Socks (by Cookie A) in MamaBlue's Sea Merino sock yarn:

(her 'beekeeper' colourway)

These are fun. I love love love the yarn, and so far like the pattern, even though it's not at all intuitive and I frequently have to check the chart and can all-too-easily loose my place. But still. I'm contemplating ordering some Wooly Nylon to work in when I knit the heel, as this yarn & this pattern are both too precious to lose after only a few wearings.

And now, time for me to brag & do a little dance of joy!

I didn't screw it up royally! I didn't screw it up royally!!!!!!

Right smack off the niddy-noddy. Notice the overall lack of super-coiling and twisting? That is truly amazing for such an otherwise newbie & therefore over-spinning crap spinner like myself! I'm THRILLED with this!

Another, because I just couldn't help myself at that point. The yarn has since been soaked, spun, and dried. and is so soft and plush and squishy that I'm just giddy with delight. I brought it to work with me and have frequently - over the past four hours - pulled it out and petted it.

And certainly not least - a little snack item that I can't recommend highly enough (even if it is currently too-high in calories and overall fat grams, and therefore needs a bit of tweaking before I start serving it up on the weekly basis that I'd like to have it feature in at my house...)

A Friend To Knit With's un-named strawberry cake/cookie thing. Mine is actually a strawberry/raspberry/blackberry cake/cookie thing.

More to the point, mine is actually now a single slice hanging out by itself in the fridge.

(....I'll be back tomorrow with another fun-filled post - as I've a second four-hour shift to work on what will most certainly be a deadly-boring Sunday afternoon!)

MuzzyFuzzy

2008-05-09T13:19:00.006-05:00

My brain is too tired to think. Far far too tired to do actual real work. Too tired, even, to knit.

It started last week at work - things are CRAZY here at the moment with the semester ending (pack 6,000 insanely stressed students on a small campus and then run them one by one *screeching* through the library as they try and finish up all of their last-minute assignments) and evaluations were due last week, too. So stressed & freaking students - and stressed & freaking co-workers. Add in a tired & cranky 3-year old and a husband who eyes me askance as I suck down spoonfuls of almond butter straight from the jar all the while saying "No! I'm fine! Really! Fine! Just need a tiny shot of protein! That's all!" and you've got last week in a nutshell.

I did go to Sheep and Wool. I went to bed around 12:30 AM, bracing myself for the alarm to go off at 5:30 (up at 5:30, leave the house at 6:30, catch the bus at 7:30 and ride the bus up to S&W) - only to have the Munch wake up at 3 AM with a low grade fever and a nasty attitude. At first I decided that the trip & the festival was off - despite spending $100 on bus tickets for the two of us - but at 6:15 AM when he was perky and wired and showed no signs of flagging I figured 'screw it' and with fifteen minutes before I was scheduled to leave ran to the shower while Peggers got the Munch dressed, packed my three (!) bags, lunch, and knitting needs and threw everything into the car. We left at 6:35 AM and caught the 7:30 LYS bus with mere seconds to spare. The Munch finally fell asleep at 1 PM that afternoon right in the middle of the big vendor hall, just as I was buying three beautiful braided rovings from Cloverhill Farms.

100% merino. Their 'Autumn' colourway.

50/50 Merino/tussah. TUSSAH.
I can't remember the official colourway, I just remember snatching it up happily...

After we returned from Sheep and Wool I fell down hard with an icky, exhausting virus that has lasted - thankfully - only three days or so at its worst. While I still have headaches and a few tender joints, the painful throbbing aches of my knees, neck, hips, and spine are now passed - and the debilitating exhaustion has given way to just general mild fatigue. In this time I have knitted a grand total of 2 rounds on my Twisted Flower socks, and managed to screw up one of the cable crossings. I'm going to live with it. Instead I have been spinning - and spinning happily. While my skein of 'Insect Wings' from the Hello Yarn fiber club is overspun and overplied, it is still not thoroughly horrid. I mean........it's knittable. It was fun, and it was most certainly a start.

My current work-in-progress - my March bundle of 'Red Velvet' from the Hello Yarn fiber club is going better - it is soft on the bobbin even though it's spun very fine, and when I let it loop back on itself the resultant plied yarn is soft and squishy and pleases me greatly. I also wised up and split the fiber as soon as I pulled it out of the bag - half bundled with a bobbin and kept safely to the side while I started on my first bump on it's own separate bobbin - so that I can ply my two strands each from their own bobbins and not instead from both ends of a center-pull ball. (The center pull ball was what I was forced to try and ply from when I plied the ill-fated 'Insect Wings'. I got far too excited to start spinning and never actually thought through what I was doing - and that whole twisted nonsense of an experience is responsible for a great deal of the over-plied-ness of the final resultant skein.) I have only one last final strip of roving to spin before I get to ply them together tonight - going slowly, taking my time, and keeping things nice and easy and soft.

It has been breaking my heart to not do a good job with these rovings - I totally arsed up a lovely braid of roving that I got from Gryphon (see above pic) - the Insect Wings is (like I said) okay, but not fantastic, and the Red Velvet? Well, far too early to know. Luckily the Red Velvet is the least favorite so far of my Hello Yarn shipments - the colours really aren't very "me" - and so it at least only cracks my heart instead of truly breaking it. I'm getting better, though, and I know that the only way I can ever get better is to just keep diving on in and spinning the good stuff (because why learn with crap? Honestly! Life is just too short!) and learning from my mistakes.

I have high hopes for the 'Red Velvet' in terms of technique and improvement - I found a totally new way (for me) to hold the fiber and to draft, and it's made a nice difference in how even my singles are, and in my overall drafting speed in comparison to my treadling - and after that I'm going to dive right into the last Hello Yarn Fiber Club shipment (April - 'Hive' - a colourway that is totally up my alley!) and see what I can do with that. Once I'm done with the H.Y. shipments then I'll step back and assess and evaluate and ponder for a bit - and after that I'll start in with my Sheep & Wool purchases.

(No no no no - not these - I got these at S&W, but they're 'just' sock yarn.
Trekking & Koigu sock yarn, that is.....)

Why all this spinning, you ask? I have found while in the midst of this viral-induced exhaustion that knitting lately just takes far too much brain power. I only have one project currently underway that doesn't require me to either document carefully what I'm doing for pattern posterity's sake, or else to consult a chart every stitch/row. And that single project - Chuck's Cabled Socks - just is not doing it for me lately. I'm not going to frog them - I'm one cable crossing away from starting the heel work, and I'm going to wait and see if their appeal greatly increases once I have the heel stitching next to the cables - so they're not in danger of dying a froggy death anytime soon - at least, not without getting your feedback first. But I'm most certainly not feeling the love. And in the thirty or so minutes that I have to myself every night after I put the Munch to bed and before I pass out myself, I don't want to work on something that doesn't make me feel pleased - if not downright happy. So spinning it is.

On the other side of the knitting front, my May Day Sock Swap socks were happily received by my sock partner - Anita! Anita is very very cool - she lives out in Seattle with hubby & a whole armful of the most beautiful quits I've ever seen. She likes the socks, and they fit - so a win-win as far as I'm concerned! I still haven't received my own socks in the mail, but I have faith that they'll show up fairly soon - my sock swap partner left some very sweet comments to me on the blog, so I know she - and the socks -are safely out there, and that soon a pair of knitted-for-me socks will be headed my way!

I'm starting to fade - my energy levels are just stunningly low at the moment - so I'll leave you with a few photos that I took on Saturday at Sheep & Wool. Have a great weekend everyone - I work both Saturday and Sunday, so it won't be the best weekend for me ever, but it'll certainly be a LOT more restful than last Saturday!!!!!!!!
1. Clean legs, dirty sheep, 2. Munch feeding angora goats, 3. a S&W fairy princess, waiting to get her funnel cake, 4. crowds, 5. the dude in front of me to buy gyros, 6. a killer spinning wheel, 7. sheep, 8. Casey from Ravelry!, 9. Munch and more of those angora goats, 10. a pair of cute sheep , 11. angora goats, 12. this guy kept peeking at us!

A Brief Transgression

2008-05-01T14:13:00.002-05:00

...but I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion,

yes I'm always true to you, darling, in my way... (Cole Porter)

Dear G - -

It is true. I have been unfaithful. I tried to be true - promised you, even! - but alas the siren call of a second project was simply too strong for me, and in the end I was merely a weak-at-the-cast-on-edge knitter.

I tried, truly I did.

I fought it. I fought long. I fought hard.

I figured that if I queued it on Ravelry, then maybe I would be safe. I figured that if I simply wound the yarn up into a yarn cake and then tucked it, safely, back into my yarn armoire that the simple act would satisfy my craving and satiate my urges.

But alas, it was not so. The pull was too strong - and so with nary a gasp, in truth with only a faint sigh, I slipped into someone else's fibery pull and was briefly lost to you.

I have, however, emerged out the other side in almost record time. Relatively unscathed. A little of my shiny new varnish is gone - true - now I look a bit more worn, a bit more 'used', a girl who knows her way around the knitting block, so to speak. I have learned the error of my ways, and after spending many a day and night sad and repentant have vowed to never, ever let it happen again. {ahem}

So I am back on track now - the body of the silk chemise will be finished by the time you and I meet up this Saturday at Sheep & Wool - now granted, the back piece might not be blocked, but it will be finished. And really - isn't the absolute & final fact that I'll be finished with the body of the tank by Saturday more important than the fact that I briefly, luxuriously, wantonly strayed for a few mere hours?

(But oh my ducks, it was Oh. So. Fun. while it lasted. Thank goodness there are no photos to document my disgrace, it was over & done with so quickly! Details to follow eventually, but in the meantime, ssssssshhhhhh!!!!!! Zipped lips, people, zipped lips!)

WIP update

2008-04-16T15:01:00.005-05:00

I've been having a fantastic time working on a silk shell design for Gryphon - knitted up in her most luscious 100% heavy-ish weight 'Klee' yarn. (NB - she just dyed up a ton of this stuff - keep an eye out for when she updates her shop, and grab it before someone else does!!!)

Klee in the back - the heavier & darker shaded skeins -
while the pale blue-green bundle in front is Gaia
(55% silk/45% cashmere)

Working with this yarn is just lovely - I find myself stopping while knitting to say something or look up to see what the Munch is doing, and find myself petting the shell or stroking the skeins while doing so.

Neckline shaping.

The stuff is absolutely faboo. It does get a little.....furry at times, but a careful petting and/or stroke here or there quickly gets rid of that. And working with this yarn has *totally* blown my previous notions of silk being delicate and fragile.

Strong. Strong, strong, strong, strong. Like, "I-can't-break-this-with-my-bare-hands" strong. Don't try it - it hurts a LOT if you even attempt it. Take my word for it, learn from my mistake, and let me be the only one with stinging fingers. Use scissors.

Plus, there's the colour. How can you not see this and not want to just dive right in? When I've worked on this in public, folks have walked across a room to take a closer look at it - the colour hooks 'em, and then the luxury of the pure silk reels them all the rest of the way in.

{sigh}

The only bummer about this shell? It's totally not mine - standard design protocol, but heartbreaking nonetheless. It's also knitted a size smaller than I normally wear. Now, I'm designing it with some positive ease, as I don't want it at all to be too-tight and tartish, but positive ease withstanding, I still don't know if I could squeeze my 36C sized chest into it. I might be able to get away with it, as it's a split-neck top, but it might be a bit too tight for me to modestly wear out in public.

......but I sure as shit am going to try it on in the privacy of my own house before I send it off to Gryphon, you can bet your whole stash on that one!

:)

Silk Shell - 1: Socks - 3: Sleep - 0

2008-04-15T13:33:00.005-05:00

That should actually be more like "silk shell - 1/2" but I didn't think that the Blogger title would handle fractions very well.

I'm currently working on the back of the shell that I'm designing for Gryphon, am two cable turns away from starting the heel of my Chuck's Cabled Socks, am a mere 10 rounds from decreasing for the toe of my second May Day Sock Swap sock, and have knit several inches of the Twisted Flower sock out of my brand-spankin' new Beekeeper wool/seacell yarn from MamaBlue. I keep spending so much time knitting lately that I'm going to bed around 1:30 or 2 AM every night. Ugh. I really need to curtail this a bit, as I'm a bit groggy and fuzzy around the edges lately. More so than usual, that is.

(This picture grossly misrepresents the colours of this beautiful yarn. Damn overhead lights!)

What a day! It's been utter chaos here - we found out this morning via a very suprising e-mail that a colleague who has been working in the department for well over 30 years is leaving - and leaving in 3 weeks. All of a sudden there is major scrambling to get the soon-to-be-vacant hours covered, shifts dealt with, committee appointments changed, liaisons notified, etc. Major major major changes.

Luckily for me all of the shifting helped with one thing - I was able to change out my work day of Saturday, May 3rd for Saturday & Sunday May 10th & 11th. I'm certain that at first glance that doesn't seem at all a good switch - a single shift for two shifts? A single shift for two shifts on Mother's Day weekend????

A single shift that occurs smack during the middle of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival?

(There's the rub.)

I am now happily free from that single pesky shift, and the Munchkin and I are going to sign ourselves up for a bus ride to and from the festival, courtesy of a LYS - the same one that Kim and I took advantage of last year. We'll leave our place at the jaw-droppingly early hour of 6:30 AM (the Munch is such a lucky weasel - he'll get to sleep on the ride up!) and will leave the festival to come back home at 4 PM. All in all, it should be the perfect time - he can play with me and read books during the bus ride up to the fairgrounds, and can probably sleep on the bus ride home, which will provide him with just the perfect nap so that he's not a cranky monster that evening. Me? I'll just drink a boatload of coffee and will get by merely on caffeine and the contact high from being around all of those alpacas and sheep.

The real question this year is - what to buy? I think I'll skip the 45+ minute long wait for Socks that Rock this time around, and might instead look for some nifty spinning fiber rather than yarn. But then again, I might be utterly seduced by something completely different all together!

Suggestions?

Ideas?

Requests?

(I certainly take custom orders, if anyone is dying for something and can't make it themselves!!!)

A Light Bulb Finally Turns On

2008-04-11T14:14:00.008-05:00

I was working full-tilt on my May Day Sock Swap socks until I got slightly waylaid with a few other knitting projects. They are special socks to me - both because I really really am adoring my sock swap partner, and because I came up with the idea myself and they are the first pair of socks that I designed that actually WORK, if you know what I mean.

However, I was toying with the idea of trying to get the design published in Knitty - but as soon as I decided to try and submit them for publication, I started to feel weighed down by the socks instead of lifted up. And so I put them aside and let them be while I worked on other things - my Dad's Grey (Boring) Engineer Socks, the shell design that I'm working on for Gryphon - things that didn't require me to chart and record every stitch for possible-pattern-posterity. (I should say here that while I am designing something for Gryphon that needs to be patterned and recorded, the main part of the design is nicely simple and lets me simply work away at it happily without having to be totally anal about every stitch, while the socks, due to the specific way in which I have knit them, requires me to be about as Type A about it as Type A can get - if I want to reproduce them exactly as they currently are, that is.)

But yesterday I rooted through my knitting basket and - as always - the skein of Sundara yarn ('Grape over Grey Violet') caught my eye and this time instead of feeling guilty and pushing right on past the guilt - and the almost-finished second sock - I instead pulled it out and really looked at it........

('tis purple)

....and I thought about my sock swap partner, and that if I am going to try and get this pattern published in Knitty that one of their rules is that the pattern can't be seen anywhere - before it is submitted/accepted/finally published - that is. Which wouldn't be for ages. And how that just didn't set right with me - it didn't feel like much fun for my swap partner to receive a pair of socks and have to keep quiet about them if she didn't wish to do so. And she's a fun person, who deserves fun socks - not socks with a ton of strings attached, if you'll avoid the pun. And how the socks that I was so thrilled about when I first dreamed them up had lost their thrill for me as soon as I tried to make deadlines, meet deadlines and in general turn the socks into something that they - and I - ultimately didn't seem to want them to be.

And with that I realized that I don't really need to get this pattern published somewhere - I just want my swap pal to like them. Because I like them. And if anyone else likes 'em and correspondingly wants the pattern, then maybe I finish writing it up and put it up for grabs here. Or maybe I won't. Or maybe I'll figure out something totally different all together. And then suddenly, I got all excited about the design and the socks and the swap all over again.

Which is really what the whole exercise was about in the first place - having fun.

{SIGH}

Why is it that life frequently requires us to be so extremely stupid before we can become just ever-so-slightly smart?

Socks socks & more socks

2008-04-09T08:56:00.014-05:00

I have a lotta' sock yarn. And unlike some people, adding in more (and more and more) sock yarn makes me happy. What does not make me happy in relation to my sock yarn is stashing it but ultimately not (ever) knitting it. That makes me unhappy. And unhappy, as we all know, isn't any knitter's preferred state of being.

So I figured that as I've just cast-on for my Chuck's Cabled Socks and am already about 2/3 of the way through the first leg (After hearing about all of the sizing issues with this sock, I try it on every 2-3 rounds to make sure that as it grows in length it'll still fit over my ankle!) that I should start looking ahead to my next sock. After all, one thing that I've learned for certain about myself is that I tend to work and knit in a forward-moving sort of way. While I always love what I've currently got on the needles, I always absolutely *adore* whatever it is that I'm planning to have next on the needles!

So with that in mind, I figured that I should cast an eagle eye over the sock skeins currently in my stash and devote some clear and concise thought to what yarn will ultimately get knitted into something else......

1. MamaBlue's 'Beekeeper', 2. Gryphon's Unique, 3. Knitpicks, 4. Knitpicks, 5. Claudia's Handpainted, 6. Fleece Artist - 'SeaStorm', 7. Gryphon's 'Wales', 8. Gryphon's 'Australia', 9. All Things Heather, 10. Socks That Rock - 'Red Rock Canyon', 11. Sundara's 'Cocoa', 12. Misty Mountain Farm Jubilee - 'Apple Rose'

Once I hauled out my stash of sock yarns, I found myself to be thrilled all over again - same as when I bought each individual skein. And then I started pondering what patterns should be knitted with which yarn. I knew what is on my 'Favorites' list in Ravelry, so that was where I started, looking at each pattern, then at the assorted skeins, trying to ferret out what should be transformed into what.

And then I realized that honestly, most of the time the yarn itself was telling me what to do in no uncertain terms.

So honestly, once I opened my eyes - and my ears - it really was a lot easier to decide what socks are going to grace my sock drawer than I thought it was. Now the only real question is:

who's first?

My heart tends to love the latest & newest - I'm shallow that way - and really the 'Beekeeper' skein is truly a thing of stunning beauty. And that Twisted Flower sock does look like it would be fun and so totally different to tackle after all of the cables that I'm currently working on.........

wee tiny followup

2008-04-05T11:39:00.004-05:00

My Wee Tiny swapper received her sock, and happily enough really liked it.

Felicia blogs over at Felicia Knits (and purls) where I have had a fun time reading through her old posts - including one where she talks about how quickly she used to type and how she's slowed down a bit now that she no longer has to do it all the time. I myself had a blast trying out the typing test - as I'm always mocked (at home) for my flying fingers......

92 words

Guess that typing class back in high school came in handy after all, Mom! (Don't you just hate it when they're right????)

Edited 4 hours later: I just finished my extremely boring reference desk shift, and see what trouble my web surfing just got me in? [drool, drool, drool, drool]

MamaBlue's Sea Merino (70% superwash merino wool, 30% seacell) fingering-weight yarn in her 'Beekeeper' colourway. [................sigh.................]

A Belated (& whispered) Messy Tuesday

2008-04-02T09:29:00.004-05:00

Whatever viral nastiness is going around, it has decided to temporarily house itself in my throat, and I've essentially lost my voice. This has proven interesting, as I've had to sit desk (i.e. work at the reference desk in the library, providing research assistance to any student or faculty member who needs help) for upwards of 8 hours so far this week. Since this has struck, by the end of each night, my husband has had some relief from my typical barrage of information, queries, and anecdotes that typically fly his way over dinner and after the Munch's bedtime!

I took some Messy Tuesday pictures but was a bit slack in getting them uploaded. So - in typical messy fashion, here they are on Friday! And I have to admit, I was a bit wary of posting these as-is, so what I've chosen to do is post my Messy Tuesday shots, but with a few in 'before' and 'after' format - both so that people can see that I actually can and do clean up my (sometimes) filthy house and also so that when I feel horrible and guilty and troubled over the slovenly state of my abode, I can take a look at these pictures and realize that things can and do improve with a little elbow grease and a whole lot of tidying and recycling.

Before

After

Before

After

There is no 'after' picture for my front porch - it is still in this state of total disrepair & chaos.

Mess? What mess? I see reading material & knitting supplies - no problems here!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone - mine will involve 4 hours of working desk on Saturday (UGH!), a baseball game on Sunday (sock knitting!!!), and a day at home w/ the Munch on Monday as daycare is closed. Here's hoping I can do some major frogging & re-knitting of one of my projects, plus a bit of finishing on two other projects in that given timeframe! I shall re-emerge from my home-cocoon on Tuesday with a Wee Tiny sock post (mine came yesterday, but hasn't had it's photo shoot yet) and maybe a few FO's to chat about as well.

Wish me luck!

A Wee Tiny Post

2008-03-31T11:30:00.007-05:00

I mailed my Wee Tiny package this morning, and despite the fact that my swap person **could** read this & by my use of her first name figure out what she's getting befo-re her package actually arrives, the chances of this are extremely slim. Mostly because there are upwards of 275 folks in this swap, and I seriously doubt that any swapper is rabid enough to go through each & every person's blog in the hopes of finding a clue as to who pulled their name.

You know?

So, here, in a hugely daring risk, is my Wee Tiny Sock Swap package of 2008!

I had loads of fun making up this little package - last year I simply went the 'overstuffed envelope' route, but this year I had the time and the energy (and the cabin fever - that comes after being home for several days with a no-long-sick-enough-to-hang-on-the-couch-all-day, but too-sick-to-go-back-to-daycare 3 year old) to gussy it up a bit. So tissue paper, pretty little tags, and a funky little box from our local (chain) craft shop to dress it all up a bit.

Yeah, it's a flip-flop. The closest thing to a sock I could find!

In the flip-flop box itself I tucked in a little wooden 'treat' as well. I saw it on one of the end-cap displays and couldn't resist.

And the sock itself?
How kind of you to ask!

Voila:

Pattern: Toe-up construction found here
Stitch Pattern: Divided Boxes ( Knit & Purl Harmony Guide)
Materials: Sundara Sock Yarn
Colour: 'Green Tea' colourway
Needles: US0/2.0mm KnitPicks circulars
Dimensions: leg - 2" heel to toe - 1.5"

This project was fantastic on a number of levels. Not only did I discover that I really liked the Divided Boxes stitch pattern, but I also realized during the wrapping and the packaging of said wee sock that my craft organization area - as tiny as it is - could use some serious help. So I thought back to all of those Martha Stewart organization tips I always read but never use, and did some tidying. I don't have a 'before' shot, but here is a greatly, greatly improved 'after' view:

The fact that this little area of mine is so neat and tidy is highly ironic, because in the craft/knitting armoire that is indeed mine & all mine, this area is the one that.......

Closes. Heck - it locks, even! It closes tightly shut so that nobody can see the extremely tidy & organized space inside. Which is totally unlike the rest of the armoire, which is wide open so that anyone and everyone can see the jumble and chaos inside and on top of and around it......

On top. My dye things and my spinning/winding equipment.

Piled next to the armoire: my loaned drum carder, my mill-end (machine oiled) tweed, and lots of fleece that needs to be carded & some pre-carded fleece that needs to be spun. And a periwinkle blue shirt that needs to be patched & mended.

And the worst offender - inside the main body of the armoire. A hanging sweater-holder with far too much jumble piled in there. Sturdy shelves would be much better - with much less wasted space! - but unfortunately the armoire walls are extremely thin veneer sort of things, that a thumbtack would easily pierce through, so screwing in shelves and whatnot isn't any sort of an option.

However I do remind myself whenever I get upset by this mess and jumble that what I'm really looking at here is a ton of potential. Tons of future projects, just waiting to be knitted. Sweaters waiting to emerge. Socks waiting to be fitted for length. Scarves poised to be wrapped around someone's neck. Gloves ready to warm someone's fingers.

I'll have you know that this sort of logic only works on such knitting/spinning/crafting type jumbles. The other normal household jumbles (the dirty/clean laundry pile, the piled papers and books, the tangle of dirty dishes in the sink, the discarded toys in the middle of the living room floor) - that's just mess.

Thank goodness, then, tomorrow is Messy Tuesday!

I'm such a liar

2008-03-27T14:31:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I left a post for Emily, commenting on her daughter Ellie's adorable booties. When I've done baby knitting, I've never ever been a booty knitter - sweaters, hats, bibs even - but never socks or booties. I always figured that those little suckers would slide or fall right off those little smooth baby feet - so why bother? Yet all it took was one picture of Ellie wearing her Saarjte booties and I was a goner. Of course, I swore up and down to Emily that I wouldn't cast on for a pair immediately. Because - you know - I'm currently quite full with WIPs, thankyouverymuch. Dad's socks (50%), my May Day Sock Swap socks (70%), Gryphon's tank top (40%), and swatching for my brother's Inga hat.

Ahem.

Yeah.......right. (Humming softly to herself: "Liar, liar, pants on fire......")

I've already cast on for a second - larger - pair as well. It's the perfect project for any knitter who is a bit stuck - not only does it use up such a tiny amount of yarn that you can't tell that your ball of leftover sock yarn has actually changed in size whatsoever, but they're quick, they're adorable when you're done, and you feel so damn clever once you take the flat construction and seam them into something so cute and rounded and twee. For my first pair I used size 1 needles and leftover basic sock yarn - some handspun that I bought via Gryphon at the farmer's market last summer - spun by a friend of hers and ultimately turned into a pair of Monkey socks for my mom - topped with some of the SockPal pink bamboo/wool that Jessi e custom dyed for me when I pulled Ava as my Sockpalooza 4 sock pal and with which I made her a pair of lusciously pink knee-highs.

It was really fun to work on these, too, as it gave me the perfect excuse to finally pull out my buttons.

And ducks, I have lots of buttons. I was gifted all of these - and honestly, not to brag or be at all snotty, but they're pretty much all vintage-ish - by a co-worker's wife who was an incredible sewer, but was both downsizing her crafting activities and switching full-time to weaving.

I have lots. And lots and lots and lots. Of course, I couldn't find four of the ones I first wanted for the booties, and so had to 'settle' for the pearl ones instead, but still. Not exactly a hardship, huh?

A ton of the buttons in the big cardboard shoebox are huge funky woven leather ones that would only be suitable for a jacket or a manly cardigan. But still, if I ever decide to make a good three dozen manly cardigans, I'll be totally set in terms of buttons.

My excuse for why it is more okay than not to work on the booties instead of my other official WIPs is that I'm home today and tomorrow with the Munchkin. He has fallen prey to a nasty virus that is hitting roughly half the town. He started running a fever in the middle of the night - restlessly rolling from side to side and moaning, while scalding hot to the touch all over his body - and today he's spent 90% of his time on the couch passively watching movies when he wasn't sleeping for a solid two hours. This is such an active child - for him to be this still, I truly know that he's sick. Not terribly - and not anything that so far needs a doctor's attention - the virus just needs to run its course - but for him to stay this still this long? Other than the first week of his life, this might be the most passive I've ever seen him. From what I've heard, the virus takes about 4 days to run it's full gamut - by Sunday he should be up a bit more, and by Monday all that should be left is a dry cough.

Now all I can do is hope that I don't catch it as well!

Once the second pair of booties are finished, the silk tank top is next. I swear. With Dad's sock and the May Day sock worked on between in spare moments and before bed. I want to get the front of the tank finished and get started on the lace panel insert by this weekend. Ook, that reminds me, I need to e-mail Gryphon about the designing contract that I'm supposed to sign. She trusted me with some very valuable silks - not to mention a skein of silk and cashmere! - I need to make sure that I do right by her - and the fibers as well...

Too Cute

2008-03-26T13:32:00.006-05:00

I found this today at the campus bookstore when I went to get a cup of much-needed caffeine.

I think it will fit perfectly in my May Sock Swap pal's package!

They had a penguin one as well, but only a full-sized one - and I figured that any knitter would prefer the smaller version for their WIP bag.......

p.s. I'm afraid that the video is a bit dark, and my - eh - performing skills with a ruler in one hand while filming with the other are hardly Oscar-worthy. But everyone gets the general idea, I'm sure.

Package, Package

2008-03-26T11:50:00.004-05:00

Who'll get the package?

...and now, off to the endodentist for a consultation on the chances of my needing a root canal or not...

Wee Tiny

2008-03-25T15:47:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again!

Emily is once again running the Wee Tiny Sock Swap - and this time it's open to everyone who'd like to participate!

I had a good time doing the W.T.S.S. last year - it really is a fantastic way to "break into" the swap world. One teeny weeny sock - and just one! - and an envelope and a regular ol' stamp. Can't get much easier than that!

In fact, I still have my official W.T.S. posted on my bulletin board next to my desk...

I'm afraid that I don't have any knitting to show you. I *have* been doing lots of knitting - I finished my dad's boring grey engineer sock and am casting-on for the second one tonight. I'm churning away at full speed on the silk tank top I'm designing for Gryphon - last night I pinned out the front piece & lightly spritzed it to block it so that I could get a better sense of where & when I want to start one of the larger design elements, and I'm starting on a Inga hat for my brother out of some Malabrigo that I've got. However I'm not too certain which colour of the Malabrigo should be the design and which should be the background, so I'm swatching a small hat with only two pattern repeats - one colour dominant on one side of the hat, and the other colour dominant on the other side of the hat. I'll finish a full chart repeat then pin, lightly block, and then photograph and get lots and lots of feedback from everyone to help me decide!

But of course, I have no pictures of any of this, so sadly I am a Very Very Bad Blogger so far this week. Can we blame it on a Crazy Monday & a slightly less Insane Tuesday?

;)

Proceed At Your Own Risk

2008-03-20T19:39:00.003-05:00

If anyone is interested in following the link for baked doughnuts that I posted yesterday? Well, at least now you've been warned.

I ate three this morning for breakfast. Shamelessly. Rapidly. Greedily. After first rolling them in butter then dredging them in cinnamon sugar.

Don't say I didn't come clean and confess my sins on this one, ducks.

I'd have knitting progress to show you, but I was too busy sitting on my hands to keep myself from eating another warm pillow of yeasty, sugary, buttered dough to dare free myself up to try and touch a knitting needle today...

48 Hours: Sunday

2008-03-19T09:50:00.005-05:00

A little mosaic to cover what happened on Sunday.

1. Heading to March Spin-In - - traffic jam!, 2. Heading to March Spin-In, 3. March Spin-In at Gryphon's - Adrianne, 4. March Spin-In, 5. March Spin-in at Gryphon's - Field Artillery, 6. March Spin-In at Gryphon's - Lauren & Jen, 7. March Spin-In. , 8. Gryphon's Massive Attack Coat, 9. Silk tank top materials, 10. Kate's silk/cashmere & Gryphon's silk, 11. My tank top design - after 1 night, 12. Silk tank top under construction

First a 45-minute traffic jam while I drove up Gryphon's way (thank goodness I had some Harry Potter CD's and a sock-in-progress to work on!) then loads of fun spinning and laughing at Gryphon's. I got to watch some extremely talented spinners make it look way easier than it actually can be (at least, easier than newbies like me think it is!) and got an eyeful of some beautiful fiber in Gryphon's shop. [Ahem] In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that a skein of one-off sock yarn might have fallen into my basket.

Deep blues and dark browns go so well together, don't they?

While at Gryphon's we also got to see her coat. Her (this is my name for it) Massive Attack coat. That thing weighs roughly a million pounds. It's truly a feat of knitting.

The last row of pictures is the luscious, gorgeous, and absolutely amazing Icelandic silk that Gryphon has given me to knit up a new design with. She supplemented her silk with a hand-dyed skein of Kate's cashmere/silk. I came home and jumped right on the knitting. I can hardly wait to see how these two fibers knit up together!

I'm home with the Munchkin for the rest of the week. Today our fun activity is to make some home-made baked doughnuts. Tomorrow our fun choice is home-made bagels. Jessie reminded me of how good fresh bagels are, and I'm going to bust out the recipe that my brother and I used to make when we lived in Botswana - with our non-traditional peanut butter addition and all!

48 hours: Saturday

2008-03-17T10:33:00.006-05:00

A ton of stuff was crammed in to the past 48 hours. I can mostly represent it with two separate posts to save the lines for those who still have dial up - as what I've got is mostly pictures and a few supplemental captions.

Saturday (aka: visit to the organic farm & a KnitPicks order arrives)

First, the farm.
Our good friend, Farmer Jay, runs an organic farm close to our house - and is the Head Honcho for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that we were founding members of. We're currently taken a wee hiatus from the CSA as the Munch is on a major vegetable strike, and we can't quite keep up with both him and the volume of veggies that the CSA delivers on a weekly basis, but we hope to return to the fold before too long. Jay recently had some repair work done on his shoulder, and has been stuck at home unable to do even a tenth of what he normally does, and so I thought that maybe he'd like to see the Munchkin as a little pick-me-up. Plus I figured that the Munch would love to run around the farm and muck about in the dirt on such a fine, fine spring day.

We got to pick spinach & baby carrots from Jay's passive greenhouse, we checked his shiitake logs for any mushrooms that we could steal, wandered around his weathered and stuffed-full barn, marveled over his 1960s era tractor, and poked around happily in his worm bin.

Oh yeah, and the Munch played 'King of the Compost Pile' several times over.

Knit Picks:
After we got home from the farm, exhausted, filthy (the Munchkin, not me - he even had dirt deep in the toes of his frog boots!) and bearing a bag of freshly-sheared baby spinach from the greenhouse, I found that my KnitPicks order had finally arrived. Don't get me wrong, it didn't take too terribly long from the time I placed the order to the time the box arrived - it was more that it took me over two months to place the order, because every time I went to order the needle organizer that I finally had decided that I wanted, they were always Temporarily Out Of Stock.

Super-pointy size 0 (2.00mm) circs.

6 skeins of Risata - in their 'Cocoa' colourway for socks. Socks for Peggers & a pair of Chuck's Cabled Socks for me. I think I'm going to mix Ash (grey) & Cocoa for the cabled socks pretty much exactly like Mel did...

Size 1 (2.25mm) circs in the KnitPicks composite wood needle variety.

Extra organization pockets for my new needle organizer.
(Which I forgot to take a picture of. It's a zippered black rectangle. Use your imagination.)

After all of this arrived I promptly fondled & sniffed the sock yarn then tucked it safely away. Then I got out a million little labels and got down to gleefully labeling every pocket and stowing away my needles in their new little proper homes.

We Type A's do love our organizational tools.

I should be doing a million other things

2008-03-12T18:57:00.002-05:00

like laundry (washing the Munch's wet training pants - the potty training is *not* going very well - he's far too stubborn to be bribed to sit on the potty with mere jellybeans as his reward!)
like dishes
like straightening all the clutter in the living room
like washing my factory-closeout tweed in prep for the twisted yolk henley that I want to cast on for asap
like knitting (!) on all my UFOs
like putting away clean (gasp!) laundry
like dusting
- like a million other things that I could easily find to do if I only looked around

................but instead, all I can do is look at pictures like THIS.

Oh Em! She's just so beautiful, she actually makes me cry*!

*just that little tiny bit. out of sheer happiness.

Apparently I'm not too tired today.......

2008-03-10T15:32:00.006-05:00

......to waste a good 20 minutes goofing off with Flickr toys.

(A sort of 2007 retrospective. Sort of.)

1. Snicket Socks, 2. May Day Sock yarn, 3. Majacraft Rose Spinning , 4. Serpentine Mitts for Oma, 5. My new Majacraft Rose, 6. A Piece of Vermont handspun, by moi, 7. Baby D's Baby Surprise Jacket, 8. Munch's Penguin sweater, 9. A few more repeats on Sockpalooza socks, 10. Nametag tape & stamp, 11. Patagonia cotton gauge swatch, 12. Shetland Triangle shawl, 13. Rooster sweater

Cellphones in the bathroom

2008-03-10T13:17:00.004-05:00

We have crossed an all new line of personal communication. These college students, they sure are crazy for their cell phones, that's for sure. Last week in the gym I watched a student walk in a bathroom stall with her cell phone up to her ear. She must have *just* been checking her voicemail, because I never did hear her say anything over the phone. But this morning in a student union bathroom I heard not one but two students come in while talking on their cell phones and go right into a stall and start unzipping..............

Now, c'mon people - is that really necessary? Can't some things - you know - wait?

Some days I feel old, and some days I feel ancient. Today is most certainly one of the latter.

It might be the time change, or it might have been the multiple-child-filled weekend, but whatever it is, I am totally wiped out.

Utterly exhausted. Like, first-trimester-of-pregnancy tired. (I AM NOT PREGNANT. I'M JUST TIRED LIKE A PREGNANT WOMAN. IT'S A METAPHOR ONLY.)

I'm on my second cup of industrial-strength coffee so far today and it hasn't yet started to kick in - all I do is yawn and press the wrong buttons on the keyboard over & over & over again. I'd go and get more in the hopes of waking up a wee bit, but all of the caffeine is starting to make my stomach do ucky things, so I'll settle instead for a cup of herbal tea while I sit and chat with Kim before going home this afternoon. Then I'm making a nice, basic dinner (spaghetti w/ a beef & mushroom & cream sauce - thanks to a Real Simple magazine recipe from last winter that I'm just now getting around to making!) then bath for the Munchkin then story then bedtime for the both of us.

Seriously. Bedtime at 8:30? I can hardly wait.

I'd work on my dad's brioche sock, but that takes too much concentration at the moment. I tried last night to work on a hat and do a round of eyelets, but I couldn't keep the [k2tog, yo, k] repeat going correctly.

.................and that, my ducks, is just too sad and too tired for words.

Birthdays

2008-03-07T15:24:00.005-05:00

While Sunday is the actual birthday for Mr. Munchkin (his 3rd - how on earth did I ever let him live to be that old???) we are celebrating it with other very very small and overly-excited children on Saturday. That would be tomorrow.

Which is why the following things have been made, arranged, and/or prepped around my house lately. Not to mention the over-the-top cleaning that I have been trying to accomplish as well.

Kim was over last night and she and I did some major party-prep sugaring:

Our first batch of caramel corn.

This particular type of caramel corn is made in a paper bag in the microwave. Angry Chicken first turned me on to the concept. This poor, butter and sugar-soaked bag had seen two batches of caramel corn work their way through it. Kim and I almost ate the bag itself, the stuff was so good.

Four batches - FOUR BATCHES! - of caramel corn, bagged and ready to go. The last batch I deviated from the original recipe a bit and added in 2 tsp. of vanilla to the caramel. I bagged that in clear cellophane bags - they're the "adult" batch, if you will.

Slab O' Rice Krispy.

Elmo getting stuffed.

(I'm sorry, there's probably too much that I could say about that last sentence & picture, but I'll leave it to you to supply your own details.)

After all of the sugaring was done, Kim and I did the tiniest bit of fiber-ing. We had hoped to mess with our February Fiber Club haul, but alas, Hello Yarn's February shipment is a bit delayed this month and so we'll have to wait until next time to give it a whirl.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to run and pick up some half-and-half and a coffee cake from the store for tomorrow's pre-party breakfast gathering, then go home and continue cleaning so that the house is nice and tidy when all of the little kids come over to trash it.

Wish us luck!

Indeed

2008-03-04T16:27:00.003-05:00

Sometimes it's just an SSK kind of world, isn't it?

(Bumper sticker courtesy of Oma - the Munchkin's maternal grandmother, also known as My Mommy.)

I'm off now to get the Munch from daycare & then pick up the dog from the groomers. Last time they cut off a whopping 5 full pounds of fur from our 4-legged beast. We'll see how much they got off of him this time around.

Snicket Socks

2008-02-26T11:23:00.003-05:00

Welcome!

I took advantage of the morning light to try and take several pictures of my Snicket Socks.

Ironically enough, I had started off the day wearing commercial, boring brown socks, but after pulling these on to take the pictures and feeling how warm and squishy and wonderful they were on my February-chilled feet, I decided to wear them the whole day!

I rarely wear these shoes - they rub blisters something fierce - but I adore how handknit socks are shown off to their full potential by the shoe design and wee details! This is the picture where I'd say the sock yarn colour is the most accurate.

Pattern: Snicket Socks, designed by Sabine Riefler
Source: Magknits - September 2006
Materials: Sundara Sock Yarn in the 'Green Tea' colourway
Needles: 24" - US size 2/3.0 mm Addi Natura Circulars
Size: Woman's Medium - fits my size 9 foot like a dream

I did my own version of the heel. Many folks have done this, as the short-row
heel that the designer called for seems to be a love-it/hate-it sort of detail.

More of the same.
It was amazingly hard for me to take pictures of my own feet today!

That's about it from me today, I'm afraid. I finished my first May Day swap sock - but I've been pondering trying to get it published somewhere online (Knitty, Magknits, etc.) and one of the things that Knitty specifically requires is that the sock doesn't see the online light of day until after it's been shown in their published format - which totally nixes any chance of showing it to you guys! B-U-T...............Knitty's next deadline is - uh, Saturday, which means that I will most certainly not get the second sock knitted, get the pattern typed & formatted, and proper exciting, naturally-lit, feature-enhancing photos taken of the socks before then.

So that rules out Knitty, I guess. I checked Magknits, but their 'Submission' page unfortunately takes me right to their 'Advertising' page content - the web links seem to be all mixed up & the page content is snafu'd - so I'm not too sure when their next deadline is, either. I've sent a message to their editor - I'll see if I hear anything back.

Hmph. That's it for me. Back to work, I guess. My real job, that is - not knitting - more the pity.

Hey, like - WOW

2008-02-24T12:31:00.002-05:00

I'm published!

And it only took my turtle-slow backside - what - 8 + months to do it?

Susan's Screwy Sock pattern - now available via The Sanguine Gryphon Fiber Arts.

(Heck - why am I insulting turtles by comparing myself to them???????)

Funny to think that today - the day the pattern is up - I'm here at work with a handwritten, newly-designed sock pattern to type up. I guess they're like potato chips - once you start with just one..............

Rain, rain, go away!

2008-02-22T14:44:00.006-05:00

It would actually be more accurate to say "cold and sleeting weather, go go go go go away!"

A week and a half ago it was so warm that we turned the heat off, opened the house up, and stayed that way for a full 24 hours. Since then we've had snow, rain, sleet, and temps in the 50s and teens. My little corner of the state is so temperamental!

As I really don't have any knitting progress to show you (I got all the way down the leg, turned the heel, and was decreasing for the gusset with my May Sock Swap sock, when I decided that I didn't like a design feature I had done waaaaaayyyy up towards the top and so ripped it out All The Way Back to the cuff. Gah!) Hopefully progress - and pictures - to come in a few days. As I was cold and chilled and tired of feeling that way, I bundled up in all the hand-knits I had in my office, trekked across the frozen campus, and went into the warmest place I could think of with my camera in tow.

Ta-Da! Presenting Kim's Greenhouse!

Streptocarpus before it is sheared & potted up in a hanging basket.

Once there I unwound and un-bundled myself, and played "Hide The Handknit." Now, granted, this isn't even a mild challenge for anyone looking at these pictures - but it was so lovely and warm in there, and so nice to be surrounded by GREEN that I did it anyway and enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Kim and her co-workers have a billion things tucked inside the campus greenhouse - seedlings, largeish trees, tender tropicals that are weathering the cold in pots during the winter - you name it. For someone with a deep and abiding love of Things That Grow, a visit to the greenhouse is always a very very good time.

Of course, every visit to the greenhouse makes me start thinking about how I could build my own greenhouse off the side of the house or the back of the garage. Hmph. Maybe a greenhouse off the back of the house & a fiber room off the back of the garage..........

So - one pair of Fetching fingerless gloves, one hat of my own pattern out of Gryphon's 'Traveller' yarn, and a Clapotis out of Noro's Silk Garden - all hanging out in the lovely humid heat. Just taking pictures in bright natural light was fun - such a change from the normal grey of these February days!

I'm home today with the Munchkin while our daycare provider takes a personal day - Munch is currently on the couch watching Elmo's World, a chicken is simmering on the stove waiting to be turned into soup, half a loaf of some raisin and currant-studded Irish Soda Bread is thawing on the counter from its original baking last month, and Peggers is on his way home early from work - probably sick with the flu. So it looks like I'll have a second man soon sprawled out on the couch - but I seriously doubt this one will be as thrilled with Elmo as the younger one is!

At least the soup will find a welcome home when it hits the dining room table later tonight.

(Edit: I just glanced over at the Munch. In the time it took me to type & upload the above, things have changed. He's not hanging on the couch watching Elmo, he's asleep on the couch not watching Elmo. Even better! N-A-P T-I-M-E!!!!!

Which means more knitting time for me! [Cackles evilly as she scurries off to snatch up her needles & knitting notes & burrow down with coffee and Harry Potter book on CD...]

2nd Edit: 2/3 of a lace repeat, and a pot of chicken vegetable soup later.....

Knitting Knitting Knitting Knitting Knitting

2008-02-18T11:04:00.006-05:00

It's been busy over here! Quiet, I know - but busy.

I finished my Snicket socks. Hopefully maybe possibly I'll get a proper F.O. photo shoot in sometime soon - because they are simply too beautiful & lovely to let this over-exposed, badly-angled shot be their only representation.

I changed up the heel to suit myself.

I started a new pair of socks - a very soft (both in shade & texture) pewter grey Baby Ull superwash in a brioche rib for my dad, whose feet are always painfully cold. Hopefully some handknit socks in a nice squishy brioche'd wool will help to fix that.

My new Sundara yarn came in for my May Sock Swap & it is lovely. I wound it up right away and it now sits in a large, satisfying yarn cake in my knitting bag. Again - apologies for the excessive flash - tough to take naturally-lit pictures at 9 PM, you know?

The tiny yarn tail off to the right is probably the most accurate colour representation.

On the May Sock Swap front, I have been working on getting the ribbing right for the new socks. I thought I had it, and happily cast on with the above yarn and had 2 " of ribbing done and the first few rows of the lace panel insert, but then found out that I was wrong. Luckily, knitting with the Sundara yarn is so fun, I don't even mind ripping it out and starting again!

And in fun & exciting 'design news' - I'm working on a design for Gryphon with of her amazingly beautifully heavy Icelandic silk. A lovely, losely-spun single in the most gorgeous shades of fiery red and orange and even pink.

Here is a wee snippet of my swatch blocking over the weekend:

That's all for now folks! Life has been exceedingly hectic, and my work ethic has been - shall we say - not exactly up to par lately - so I'm trying to make up for that this week. So less posts from me for the next few days, but never fear - loads of knitting will continue on at home behind the scenes to be revealed at a later date.

May Sock Swap

2008-02-09T11:32:00.001-05:00

I was invited, by Emily, to participate in a May Sock Swap. As you can guess by my last post, my previous experience with a sock swap was such an overwhelmingly positive experience that I decided immediately to go ahead and jump right in.

I was paired up with my swap partner on Friday, and having visited her blog, am absolutely thrilled at my match-up luck. She's AMAZING - and will be so very much fun to knit for! She (hopefully this doesn't give anything away!) is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. She just adores colour, too, which makes my job all that much more fun! (2/18/08 - Editors note: After I looked at Emily's May Sock Swap blog and saw that there are only a handful of folks participating, I realized that even my tiny little 'hint' up above would totally give the identify of my sock swap partner away - so I went back and censored myself to keep up the suspense!)

While the Munchkin watched some episodes this morning from Season 2 of the Muppet Show, I browsed through my half dozen or so stitch dictionaries until a certain "lovely 19th century pattern" featured in B. Walker's Second Treasury caught my eye. Then once I knew what pattern I was going to make, it was on to pick the yarn!

The pattern is a lace insert panel, so I didn't want a sock yarn too wildly coloured to distract from the detailed stitches - so I went straight to my tried & tested "semi-solid" source and snapped up a skein of Sundara's 'Grape over Grey Violet' - which should be PERFECT for the socks. I almost got the 'Toasted Orange over Pistachio' instead, but with some input from Peggers felt in the end that I should err on the more-purple and less-orangey-yellow side of things. So now I just get to swatch with some leftover Sundara to get the layout right, and then once the skein arrives I'll get right to work!

Unlike my usual all-knit, all-the-time inclination, I'm thinking of working the main body of the sock in reverse stockinette to make the lace insert panel pop out that much more. Dunno. Just a thought. We'll see how it looks in the trial runs.

Of course, all comments and thoughts from everyone out there will certainly be welcome!

Now I'm off to walk the Munchkin to the public library to get some new DVDs for his weekend viewing pleasure (he's only allowed to watch TV on Saturdays & Sundays - a good way for us to keep our sanity!) and return my books and get some more for me as well. Plus maybe a new book on CD for me to listen to while I finishing knitting a pair of standard socks for our family vet, the Snicket Socks for myself, and swatch for my May Swap Socks.

........and then I get to finish cleaning a few last bits around the house and make a batch of pate brisee cheddar-cheese laced pastry to chill for a few hours in the fridge in prep for the apple pie & home-made meatball and spaghetti dinner that we're having tonight for Peggers' boss and his boss' mom. You know. Just your regular Saturday chores!

What a Pal What a Pal What a Pal

2008-02-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

Munchkin in earlier, non cold-season days.

January & February so far seem to belong in 2007. Now, I have high hopes for the improvements that will begin in 2008. Now I just have to wait for 2008 to actually *start* for us - you know?

One of the Troubles (I feel so Irish to say it like that!) involves my husband and his insane vituperous work environment - so the less said about that and the sooner it is behind us the better. So far it is - probably - approximately 3/4 behind us and hopefully will fade to a vaguely disturbing memory in a few months.

The second current Trouble involves the Munchkin. Unfortunately the little guy's respiratory system never quite cleared up after his battle with bronchitis/pneumonia a few weeks ago. Tuesday night he started coughing and wheezing and panting - and was up for most of the night in misery (despite the prescription cough syrup with codeine that we had given him!) - so Wednesday the doc squeezed him in and gave him a through checking-over once more. The upshot is that the middle lobe of his right lung probably never cleared up completely from last time - so he's on some whacking meds for a few days plus (and this is the true kicker) a nebulizer twice a day for two weeks then once a day until sometime in March/April when winter is really and truly over and cold/flu season is past us. No permanent damage to his lungs yet, but the doc wanted to be over-cautious and kick the living crap out of this and make sure that every single thing that could cause his lungs to close up could be dealt with before it even became a problem - all to prevent him from having problems into adulthood. Fairly scary to hear! At least the chest x-ray was clear. The first nebulizer treatment went very very well last night and the little guy slept like a champ all night. This morning's treatment went well also - amazing how bribing him with an old Disney cartoon will get a 2-year old to sit still for 10 minutes! - and so that's a great relief for everyone.

Through all of this - with the help of the first season of Medium from my public library - I've been knitting. I have also been knitting with the help from my wonderful, lovely, and talented Sockpalooza Pal - Ava. Just LOOK at what she sent me a few weeks back!

My very own little WIP bag! I absolutely ADORE it - I love the fabric, I love the size, I love the length of the drawstring - I love everything about it! And handy? This sucker is handy. It perfectly holds a skein of sock yarn, two sets of size 2 circs, and your single finished sock.

I'm not paying attention to the pattern for Snicket anymore, as I've got it memorized, but if I needed that paper tucked in there, my trusty T.B.S. - W.I.P. bag would hold it!

A also sent some other goodies. Like this adorable blank notebook with the funniest cover ever. I adore this woman. I'd love to be this woman in this life - so svelte. So adored. So obviously intelligent and self-contained. So able to properly apply makeup. However I'm not really that sort of woman in this life - so I'm instead content to think that maybe possibly I was that sort of woman in a past life.

A also sent me this in my Goodie Package. When I opened it first thing to a totally random page this is the quote that I read:

"Learning a new craft will make you chatter on incessantly about the art form. Be careful not to bore your less artsy friends." - the Clue of the Leaning Chimney.

How is that not absolutely perfect for every single obsessed knitter/crafter currently out there????????????

I have absolutely no idea what this is

2008-01-30T12:56:00.001-05:00

I mean, it's a clock. Set to EST. But other than that....................????????????

But, it seems to fit my mood right now - so I figured why not?

Snow!

2008-01-25T14:24:00.000-05:00

Those of you in colder spots have to understand, we get snow here once every - oh, 3 months? - during winter.

So to get even a tiny bit of snow is a true Media Event.

I saw these footprints this morning while coming in to work, and just had to take a picture.

The Wonders of Modern Medicine

2008-01-22T14:29:00.000-05:00

First off, many many thanks to everyone who wrote and wished the Munchkin a speedy recovery. Thanks to modern medicine (lord, but whoever figured out that cough syrup with codeine would make a child SLEEP through the night and not wake up coughing every 5 minutes truly deserves sainthood!) the Little One recovered almost immediately. In fact the syrup + steroid combo that the doctor prescribed so wired him up that we almost (*almost!*) wished that he was just the wee-est bit sicker than he was - at least enough to keep him sitting on the couch nice and quiet instead of running around, sliding into the doorways, climbing up the couches, and dancing around the living room like a maniac.

In decent weather this wouldn't have been that bad - bundle the little guy up and take him outside and just let him RUN - you know? But it was snowing, damp, and just miserably ucky out there - not weather that we were willing to expose him to with dicey lungs. So brave it all out indoors we did.

Luckily for me, a little diversion showed up first thing Monday morning.

I cracked up today when the pics downloaded to my computer and I saw the sippy cup hanging in the lower left corner. Seriously - I never even noticed it in the frame when I took the original shot!

Apparently every Rose is signed by the artist who made it. Owen Poad is the co-owner of Majacraft, along with his wife Glynis. How cool is that?

I flew through this bunch of roving from Gryphon.
Spun the whole 4 ounces in one day, which for me is quite fast!

Even though this picture probably just shows what a horrid newbie spinner I am
(all that excess twist!) I just couldn't help but put it in regardless,
as I love the colours and the squiggles so much.

Hanging - straight - to dry.

I came out with approximately 150 yards of singles - my goal was to make something along the lines of an obviously-handspun, thick/thin, lose-twist Manos or Malabrigo-type yarn that I will then knit into a My So Called Scarf for myself. I don't think I quite managed it - I need about twice the yardage I've currently got to knit a pattern-sized scarf, but still - I can cast on for a slightly more narrow scarf that will still be - I think - quite lovely. I can hardly wait to see how these colours knit up!

And if it seems to small, I can always check to see if Gryphon has got a second braid in this colourway available................. :)
The Woolery did a fantastic job of getting all of my ordered wheel items to me in an incredibly timely manner - and everything came in fantastic shape, with nary a bump or scratch occurring in shipping. The wheel was also a breeze to put together - with a bit of help from Peggers I was able to have it completely assembled in under an hour and was spinning mere minutes after that with nary a hitch.

Knitting as Stress Relief

2008-01-18T20:27:00.000-05:00

At first I figured this was going to be a 4-day weekend that just dragged on. No spinning wheel (more on that later), no 'Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook' via ILL despite the fact that it shipped 3 days ago, no super-warm running pants (a snafu on their end apparently deleted my order back in December & now the pants are sold out as the customer service rep on the other end of the line told me - "So, sorry! No more available!") - and my husband away up the road for a boys weekend out.

However last night changed all of that - as we were up with the Munchkin for hours and hours and hours as he struggled to breathe, wheezed, and coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed (around 4 AM his body apparently had enough of that malarkey & rebelled against all the coughing by vomiting square into his pajama'd lap, much to his abject misery.) This morning we called the pediatrician and got in right away - a diagnosis of a sinus infection was the lesser problem - the bronchitis with maybe a tiny touch of pneumonia was the real nasty culprit. So he's on a huge slew of antibiotics now plus a steroid-laced syrup to help his lungs relax & expand so that he can do more than pant & can actually have a shot at coughing all of that infected matter up and OUT of his lungs - - not to mention the big bottle of cough syrup + codeine that we've got now on our shelf. He missed his nap today (the steroid syrup wires him up, unfortunately - but currently a necessary evil) and so he's out COLD at the moment - we dosed him with the codeine syrup as he sat curled up in my arms at the dinner table and figure that he'll sleep most - if not all - of the night due to that particularly potent 1-2 punch. And just like that my weekend plans totally changed. Now I've got loads to do & think about this weekend (plus extra laundry to do now that I've got soiled pj's, sheets, blankets, and couch cushions - yeah, it happened again just minutes after lunch this afternoon, too, just as he had been released from the table to go and sit on the couch - to wash up.) Plus a husband to keep me company while I fret and fuss around the house.

So now I'm left awake (after waking with him around 4 AM - and having gone to bed with him around 1 AM in the first place - I fortified myself with a cup of strong coffee at 5 this evening when I seriously started to flag and now thanks to that jolt of energy I'm not sleeping anytime soon) with no little wee one to sit and cuddle with or talk to - so what's a knitter to do?

Thank god we knitters are resourceful folks, right? Resourceful folks, that is, who never quail at casting on for another project when we've already got 2 or 3 already on the needles. So other than check on my sleeping cherub every half hour or so, I'm going to finish ripping out the purple raglan that I knitted last year (was it really just last year?) made with some SWTC bamboo, and start swatching with it for a Green Gable. Kim and I stumbled across this pattern last night while browsing Ravelry - it's a godsend if you have yarn in your stash that you just do NOT know what to do with! - and as a sort of keep-myself-busy tactic this afternoon I went online and bought the pdf of the pattern while the Munch watched the public library DVD "John Deere Part 2" for the third time in a row. I'd blame his video choice on the illness, but I'd be a total liar - the kid LOVES the John Deere DVD series. LOVES. He has the narration memorized in most cases, which is actually quite frightening.

I have high hopes for the Green Gable - because it's seamless it eliminates a lot of the problems that I had with the raglan - bamboo (at least this bamboo yarn) just does not seam together well - it's too droopy and saggy. And as this is knit in a tighter gauge than the raglan was, I'm also hoping that the structure of it retains a bit more integrity than the raglan did, and doesn't migrate from my bellybutton to my knees over the course of a normal workday. Just to be on the safe side, though, I'm knitting this in my 'proper' size of a Medium when normally I tend to err on the side of baggy caution and knit things for myself in a Large.

And my spinning wheel? It currently sits a mere 2 hours drive away from me. 2 hours drive away, but with a delivery date of Monday.

2 hours but 3 days.

Ah well, there's always laundry to fold, right?

Collective Nouns

2008-01-16T13:44:00.000-05:00

.................a sleuth of bears, a murder of crows, a flange of baboons, a smack of jellyfish, and.........

a colony, creche, huddle, parcel, &/or rookery of penguins!

(isn't English just too funky & funny?)

One finished Wonderful Wallaby sweater for the Munchkin. Complete with over-exposed shade of green wool from my camera being too close to the photography subject when the flash went off!

Taking pictures of this particular FO was neigh impossible. He just would *not* hold still that morning - no matter how I asked, threatened, or bribed. So alas, these horrid pictures are the best that I can do.

He seriously digs the 'roo pocket in the front. Not only can he fit both of his hands in there (and Look! Mommy! My hands touch!!!!) but he can also fit a small blue toy motorcycle in there along with the motorcycle's rider - a yellow plastic figure of Dr. Fate. Life Is Good.

The first sweater that I made the Munch was a intarsia rooster sweater knit with Debbie Bliss yarn that cost upwards of $70 and took me at least 8 months to knit. This one I knit with three skeins of a wool/acrylic blend that I scored on absolute clearance for $0.85 each and took me a grand total of 12 days to knit. Penguin included. Luckily I chose the right size when I knitted it - I knitted my 2 year and 10-month old son a size 6T sweater. And see how well it fits him with nary a too-baggy hood or too-long hem anywhere to be seen? Thank goodness I went the less expensive route this time - what a 6T-sized sweater - with hood - knit out of D.Bliss would cost these days isn't even worth contemplating!

p.s. I called The Woolery yesterday to see when my wheel would ship out. I was - stupidly - hoping that if I called and asked about it again that I'd somehow (magically) get a different answer. But no - the very friendly woman who answered said that typically they ship out in just a few days, but they're currently so backlogged from Christmas that they're days and days behind - so hopefully maybe they'll make it in the mail to me by the end of the week, and if not then next Monday or Tuesday. Of course as I was greedily hoping to have the wheel arrive, like, today, hearing this for a second time was just as disappointing as the first. So I am knitting my sorrows away - a snicket sock, a green tea raglan (GTR take two! This time out of alpaca instead of droopy bamboo), and a pair of plain-knit socks. Not very thrilling, but at least it keeps my hands busy while I peer out of the window waiting for the UPS man to *not* stop at my house anytime soon....................

To keep the Munchkin and myself busy this weekend while Peggers is up the road for an All Boys Weekend, I thought we'd make a batch of these. Don't they look just too yummy? Perfect for that weeny little snack when you need to either eat a nibble yourself (or in my case, satisfy someone else's desire for a weeny little nibble) without ruining your dinner!

Check.

2008-01-14T22:38:00.000-05:00

Extra drive band? Check.

Orifice hook? Check.

Jumbo plying flyer & bobbin? Check

Majacraft Rose? Check.

Shipping from NC by the end of the week - "hopefully" - she said over the phone with a noticeable twang in her voice. Shipping from NC to MD should only take 2-3 days, once it is in UPS hands.......

And so the countdown begins!

One of my 2008 Knitting Goals

2008-01-09T16:16:00.001-05:00

It actually has nothing to do with knitting, but more with blogging.

Just to blog more frequently. No biggie - I'm always thinking in 'blog post' terms anyway - now all I need to do is actually type it up here instead of just letting it moulder away in my head.

Wednesday Updates:

Despite this picture
of my Snicket Socks mocking me in their barest beginnings, I actually was able to finish casting-on for them a few days ago and thanks to the Munchkin's bizarre desire to be awake from 3:30-7 AM Tuesday morning (g-r-o-a-n!) I've finished almost 5" of the leg already! I love the pattern - it is beautiful and looks tough, but is really easy as hell. Seriously now - isn't that the way all knitting patterns should be? And the yarn from Sundara is just too stunningly beautiful and complex (colour-wise) for words. To say that I'm thrilled with these little suckers so far is putting it very very very mildly.

My Snickets mocked me because dinner that night totally flummoxed and threw me. Normally my time in the kitchen is fun and easy and relaxing - and in a Very Unfortunate Turn of Events (hah! get it? Snickets? Unfortunate Events? Ahhh - nevermind!) a straightforward recipe threw me for an absolute loop and I ended up with a struggle and a disappointing outcome.

My fridge looked like this after the debacle was all over
On the shelf above the eggs are two muffin tins full of meatloaf muffins. A very easy (and very tasty!) recipe from Rachel Ray that I snagged via the Food Network website. The recipe went awry because I put in about a quarter pound too much ground beef and not enough extra breadcrumbs or egg to compensate - so rather than eat meatloaf 'muffins' we ate meatloaf, ehrm.........paste. Once dinner was over and we were done scraping at our plates with our spoons (groans at the memory) I put both of the tins into the fridge in an effort to chill & firm these little puppies up. It worked - a bit - so that I could at least get them out of the tins and into some storage containers for better, proper, longer-term storage. But 'twas very frustrating - especially as how it was supposed to be such a straightforward dinner, leaving me loads of time to knit on the socks while everything baked away happily & quietly in the oven. Instead there was chaos, mania, billowing smoke from the oven vents, me beating my head aginst the wall, smoke alarms pealing all over the house........you get the picture!

And last but not least, a postcard that the Munchkin got from my inlaws while they were on a cruise to New Zealand and Australia over Christmas.

Awwwwwwwww.........

I tried to get them to bring me back a Majacraft Rose, but they said no-go - apparently it was a bit too big to fit in the overhead compartment or under the airplane seat in front of them or some such malarky like that....... :)

Happy Happy Joy Joy

2008-01-07T15:53:00.000-05:00

Don't look Mom, or you'll see your (late) Christmas present below!

Look very very carefully at this picture, and then fast-forward 3 more hours of knitting. Do you know what that means?

A finished pair of fingerless mitts (my last Gift Knit of '07!) with only the ends to weave in before gifting means that finally (finally!!!!) I can start in with this:

Sundara sock yarn in 'Green Tea' - destined to become a pair of Snicket Socks for yours truly. Cast on, like, today. In mere minutes from the time I hit 'post' on this bad boy.......

YIPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spring

2008-01-05T15:26:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I know - it's still winter! Yet to me there is something SO promising about a New Year that I automatically start thinking 'spring' come January 1st even though there are weeks - nay, months! - of cold and dreary weather left in front of us.

It also could be that I'm currently pulling 3-5 gardening/seed catalogs out of my mailbox every day that has the whole growing/birthing concept weighing in the front of my mind.

Kim gave me a Nigella Lawson salt pig for Christmas.
It is one of the coolest things ever. Ever.

It also could be that there is a plethora of babies currently underway - has anyone else noticed that? A friend of ours delivered her second daughter just before Thanksgiving (silly me, I though her due date was in February, so I hadn't even yet plotted or planned any knitted item!), Anna from My Fashionable Life had a beautiful little boy right a few weeks before Christmas, Lola from Two Black Sheep is due to go in for a c-section to deliver her second son in just a week or so (hang in there, L!!!!!), Emily from Yarn Miracle is expecting her Mini Miracle in 8 or so weeks, and Cara from January One is due in.........March-ish, if my math is correct based on the belly pics she put up on her birthday.

Christmas loot for the Munch consisted mostly of Thomas the Train bits & pieces.
He adores them, but I have to say, they really do hurt if you step on any of those little f'ers in your bare feet!

(But, I must say here in very bold letters - there are no new babies expected here at Chez P'Sticks. Nosirree nohow! So Oma, keep knitting sweaters for Miss E and the others - no new baby knits needed this side of the Chesapeake anytime soon - not at least until I can wrangle the Munchkin into a shirt and/or pants in the morning without it sounding like I'm doing something as violent as peeling the very skin off his body - full, screaming hysterics for upwards of 20 minutes every time we try to extract this kid from his pj's - and he is potty trained. I might be head-over-heels in love with my little one, but LORDY he is a handful and I have not the strength or patience for two handfuls, much less two handfuls in diapers!)

Knitting loot! The best kind!

So between the seed catalogs and the babies springing up everywhere, it feels like spring to me. All that birth & rebirth & burgeoning life and suchlike - it just makes me happy. Plus, in all brutal honesty, I hated 2007. It was a horrid, painful, depressing year that started off with the news that an immediate family member had an extremely aggressive form of cancer and went downhill from there, if you can believe that. I'm hopeful and excited to turn away from that car wreck of the past 365 days and instead fill my noggin with hopeful, filled-with-promise, new-life-ish thoughts instead.

We had a quick family visit for a few days after Christmas, which is
always fun for the little guy. This is Munch with my dad.

Which brings me to my more pressing question:

Other than the most amazingly beautiful baby blanket that Ava knit for her soon-to-be-nephew (because not only do I refuse to knit baby blankets as they take way too long and get far too monotonous but also I'm not as insane as A - and nor do I want to be. Because after knitting a blanket of that magnitude & cable-lisciousness, I'd be totally and completely bonkers.) what is the best knitted item you can give a new mom or a soon-to-be new mom?

I personally didn't use knitted hats much when the Munchkin first came out, and I didn't do knitted booties ever. But that was just me. He is a March baby, so I did use a few knitted lightweight sweaters - especially the kind that were particularly easy to fit over his wobbly huge head (and huge cab-door-like ears!) - but mostly I didn't bust out the knitted items until he hit his first proper cold snap. So that means that this current crop of babies could receive items in the 6-9 month range of sizes (perfect! 6-9 months of procrastinating knitting!) - which I not only personally prefer but I also find more practical and useful in the long run.

So I'm asking everyone out there - what is the best thing that you could give or receive? I keep leaning towards the peapod sacque that Parikha knitted, but that's just me........... Plus that's more of a new-baby item, which violates my above preference and rules (but rules are made to be broken, right?) - but again, that's just me.

What does everyone else think?

Happy 2008 Everyone!

Dangerous Words

2007-12-21T13:10:00.000-05:00

Here I was, sitting calmly and carefully at my desk, working away the last day of work before the holiday break like a very good little busy beaver - when I saw the most incredibly dangerous e-mail flash across my computer screen:

Webs Year End Blowout Sale!

What is it that the Harlot likes to say? That she had an accident, and slipped, and accidentally swiped her Visa card on the way down?

I have two words for you, my ducks. Well, actually four words.

Highland Tweed.

Three Pounds.

Order total: $27

When they say 'blowout' - they mean blowout.

( I feel a bit feverish.)

Thank God For Leftovers

2007-12-20T15:11:00.000-05:00

It's just been that kind of day. You know the kind that starts off really really well - and you're enthusiastic about where and how the day is going to go - and then with a BAM! - one thing after another starts to happen and domino right the fuck downhill?

Yeah - that kind of day.

So I was late leaving the vet's office (they had an emergency cat come in that needed help ASAP - the psychotic thing had attacked its own tail and had actually split the tail in half - urgh) and so was late back to work - and came back to the office absolutely starving because I had correspondingly missed lunch. But at least there were holiday party leftovers for me to eat in the upstairs fridge. I didn't even mind that the meatballs were burned - at least, I didn't mind much. It was better than the ryekrisp cracker that was otherwise going to be my total meal. Thank God For Leftovers.

I'm still buried under order cards - even bringing them home to work on a few nights this week - but yesterday after skipping the leftover-producing holiday party I threw myself on the Dean's mercies and got permission to take these puppies home with me over the Christmas/New Years break and finish filling them out later. Phew! So given that lovely bit of holiday grace - not to mention the lap-full of work-related histrionics that was dumped my way this morning - I've been slacking shamelessly ever since.

Our 2007 Christmas Tree. This has nothing - nothing - to do with this post, but I've got sneak it in here nonetheless somehow! This will be a trend for the rest of the photos in the post - so just get used to it now.

Eating white-chocolate peppermint candies given to me by a co-worker was how all the slacking started. (Ugh - too many white-chocolate peppermint candies can make you feel SICK!) But I've taken my slacking to much higher levels than just candy-eating -- surfing Ravelry to check out the various types of yarn that domesticat's Drunken Bees socks were knitted in (that lovely pattern is way up in my personal queue!) - and then after seeing novamade's amazingly beautiful version, ordering the pattern for a Wonderful Wallaby to knit for none other than the Munchkin. I have at least ten or so skeins of that ol' workhorse, Lion Brand Wool Ease, in a medium-dark olive green (scored at $0.85 each on clearance!) that will be perfectly soft & utterly practical for such a knit. And with a wee little 'guin snuck in on the pocket, I think it will also be a major hit for my little Munch.

I've also been eyeing a new-ish sweater to knit for my Big Guy - one that would not call for 10+ skeins if Rowan tweed yarn (at a cost well over $75 for the sweater!) like the amazing knit Jarrett does - but something a bit more practical and therefore possible. But I dunno. It's just currently a glimmer of an idea.

Paperwhite bulbs, my knitting basket, and a sippy cup. I was going to move the sippy cup before taking the photo, but then I figured with a shrug - why lie? Sippy cups are everywhere in my house, currently - so hey - tell it like it is, right?

I've also spent some time today slacking by browsing Ravelry photos and online photos of Snicket Socks, as I think these will be the next pair that I knit for myself (- after I finish my design socks that I'm working on with Gryphon's yarn, that is). I purchased THE most beautiful skein of 'Green Tea' Sundara sock yarn as a birthday treat to myself - and so far during our conversations Ms. G. Tea has implied that she wouldn't mind being transformed into snicket socks. As I happen to have a deep, deep hankering for snicket socks, I was thrilled to hear her say so.

My spinning basket. This basket currently contains: some superwash/tencel that needs to be spun; a bobbin of this tencel blend that I've spun up so far; my first skein of handspun (superwash) merino dyed by Jessie; a bobbin of some extra superwash merino; and a loose tiny skein of Real Vermont merino/alpaca/& something else that I can't remember singles.

Luckily for me, my unpleasant day is almost over, and my evening promises to go much much better. We are having a lovely Cooks Illustrated dinner tonight (skillet lasagna - the best EVER lasagna that I've probably ever had - and the fact that it takes only 30 or so minutes from start to finish to make and uses only one pan is even better) and the wonderful & fabulous Kim is coming over to hang with us. We will eat, we will knit, and I will have a single, luscious glass of merlot. And all will be well.

The longer I have this Christmas ornament, the cooler & more appropriate I think it is that I own it.

Buried

2007-12-18T16:59:00.000-05:00

I'm almost literally buried in work at the moment - I've got thousands and thousands of books to order before vacation kicks on at COB on Friday, and nary a spare second between now and then to rest (or blog). Add to that a near constant headache from squinting at order cards all day, holiday stresses, and a very very cranky toddler and you get...............................desperation knitting and late-night spinning-wheel distributor online surfing on my part!

:)

I'd post pictures of our luverly Christmas tree and my most recent yarn purchase (a birthday present to myself from Sundara!) plus my hubby's birthday gift to me, but alas our camera is currently engaged in more honorable pursuits - it's at the law office being used for Real Work Purposes and not documenting my knitting as usual.

Once the camera comes back, I'll take some quickie pictures and post what my world currently looks like.........and spill all about my exciting upcoming combination birthday/Christmas present - - a new spinning wheel! (Which I'm currently in the process of deliberating, debating, picking & choosing. But I'm leaning - this week, at least - towards a Majacraft Rose.)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.....

2007-12-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

.........over here at Chez Sticks. Decorations are slowly but surely starting to go up.....................

Our lovely mantle. Stockings to show up soon. Not handknit, however, but handmade nonetheless.

The annual lighting of the stairs.

Some quiet time is being found here & there for stress-relieving spinning.

'Mars' colourway - superwash merino & tencel blend. Spun as thin as humanly possible - by this human, that is - as I'm going to try and navajo-ply this for socks. Purchased as retail therapy after a bad day at work from a very nice woman via Etsy.

And even better (for stress relief, that is) - finished handknit gifts are starting to pile up...

Fingerless gloves for T - the wonderful woman who serves me a robust mug of life-giving coffee every morning. (Do these look strangely avian to you too?)

'Driving' gloves for A (a One Skein pattern), who also works at the coffee shop and who is wonderfully cheerful to me every morning when I'm still trying to figure out how to properly open both eyelids at the same time, before I drink my morning cup of eye-opening joe....

Virtually 90% of all Christmas shopping has been done (I'm a firm believer in easy shopping & purchasing streamlined gifts as a general rule - so don't hate me for this - - join me!!!!), and only one handknit item remains to be knitted. Even better, it's a weeny & fast handknit item, and is intended for someone who has been extremely gracious about receiving late gifts in the past - so if it doesn't appear under the Christmas tree this year she not only will not be upset, she probably won't even be surprised.

I actually have been knitting!

2007-11-29T13:57:00.001-05:00

I have, I have, I have!

And I have proof!

Two pairs of fingerless gloves (Fetchings, for those of you who wonder) made with some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.

Yarn purchased by T, gloves knitted for T and her younger sister. I also received from T as thanks for the glove knitting a $10 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. I quickly and greedily spent my gift cashola on this. We're eating meals from my new purchase every single night this entire week. YUM. Tonight is either N. burgers & N. fries or else her recipe for chicken breasts with bacon and white wine served alongside gnocchi. Double-yum.

This is the beginning of my new take on the Green-Tea Raglan.

(Remember what a saggy, stretchy miserable nightmare that was?) This is knitted in some greygreen alpaca that is nicely soft. I had originally bought the alpaca for a different sweater (the cable-down raglan from S. Japel) , however given alpaca's drape/weight/reluctance to work with cabled patterns, I have decided to switch it from that to this one instead. I'm going to modify the neckline considerably into a combo deep v-neck that flares into a boatneck style. Stay tuned for progress reports/shots.

This is some 'Venezuela' Traveller yarn that I bought from Gryphon when Kim and I were up several weekends ago for the spin-in.

It had been intended for a hat for a co-worker of mine, but was deemed to feminine a colourway (my husband was the single vote on that one, in case you were wondering) and that was all the encouragement I needed. Now it's on it's way to be a hat for ME ME ME ME! My co-worker will get a hat in a darker green/more unified colourway after the holidays have passed us by. In a move that I like to think of as minor genius, I'm knitting the hat as a huge version of the sock that I'm designing for Gryphon. I've been struggling with the transition between ribbing and leg pattern - made even more difficult by tiny yarn and tiny needles - so upping the entire process to nice fat needles and nicely fatter yarn has made my quandaries flash right on by - and now things are just zooming along at a perfect speed. When I'm finished with the hat I'll be adding on a knitted i-cord border for extra stability. And because I've never done that before and this seems a perfectly manageable project for trying it. As things are starting to chill down here, a nice squooshy hat couldn't come along at a better time.

In the interest of keeping my sock design a surprise a wee bit longer, I'm only showing you the inside of the hat/sock so that you can ignore the design bits while still luxuriating in the beautiful colours that Gryphon managed on this one. Sorry it's so dark - I took the pictures in the evening, which was the only time I was able to lay hand to camera. Of course these days 'evening' means anytime after 4 PM........

Last but not least, I'm leaving you with the package that our turkey arrived in this year. We decided to try a local restaurant's deep fried version - having heard such rave reviews about the deliciousness of said preparation - but not wanting to risk burning our house down by trying it ourselves. We agreed that the turkey was okay - about the same as what we could make at home ourselves - only we could roast a traditional style turkey in the oven for about $35 less. I only realized how the tin was labeled after I went to put all of the leftovers away. I love it. Love it love it love it. My little neck of the woods can sometimes be such a FUN place to live.

Examples of this - primarily through pictures of the cemetery that is across the street from me - to come soon.

p.s. for some reason when I went to adjust my primary 'frame' where my text and pictures are displayed to a wider version than what I previously had, I somehow bumped all of my side-bars that you can usually read on the right of the page to waaaaaaay down at the bottom of everything. I'm attempting - slowly but surely - to fix this. But it will probably take quite a bit of time.

Last Weekend Discussed This Weekend

2007-11-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday Kim and I kicked off our pre-holiday weekend starting with a Little Gingerbread Endeavor.

(And for those of you who are wondering, the answer is yes, red wine does in fact make gingerbread-house construction that much easier & more enjoyable.)

The gingerbread house (complete with a string of mini Christmas lights stuffed in the back to make the butterscotch-candy-pane windows glow becomingly) will reside in the library for the next few weeks.

Sunday we went to Gryphon's house for a spin-in. It was - in a word - glorious. Not only did we walk away with a lovely amount of fiberish booty from Gryphon's in-house shop, but I also walked away with a borrowed wheel for the next few weeks.

Booty.

Wheel.

(An Ashford Traveller double-treadle, for anyone who is wondering.)

Using this lovely little beauty I finished spinning both the dark purple & pale purple superwash bundles that I bought from Jessie a few weeks back. I was so excited by my progress that I went ahead and plied them together last night with amateurish yet exciting results for yours truly - and the resultant lovely huge skein is currently lightly weighted and drying in the kitchen. I will show you probably far far too many pictures of it when it is dry.

Dark purple superwash singles in all their wee loveliness.

It might not sound it, but I have in fact been knitting in addition to all of this spinning and gingerbreading - - and once I get the camera back in action and pictures taken, all of my recent FO's and two newly-cast-on WIP's will be shamelessly paraded in front of everyone.

Shamelessly. :)

A little regrouping down time

2007-11-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

I love my job. Sometimes though, I love even more the fact that I get to take vacation from my job.

Like next week.

I looked at the calendar and realized that I am already 'given ' Wednesday - Friday off as paid vacation - and that by spending a mere two of my vacation days (which I have several of saved up so far this year) I could get a whole week off of work.......two days of which would be just me, the DVD player, and my knitting/spinning.

So send in my vacation notice I did, and take the time off I will.

Even better, this vacation time will be following what promises to be a FANTASTIC weekend - tomorrow Kim and I will spend the day making a wonderfully ornate gingerbread house, and Sunday Kim and I are driving up to Gryphon's house for a 4+ hour Spin-In. (Our first.) We're not only excited by the opportunity to get in some more spinning, but also by the opportunity to get some tips and tricks from the other spinners there while also trying out some different wheels than the Ashford Traditional that we currently practice with. (Gryphon owns a grand total of 7? 8? wheels, dontcha' know. Including a great wheel that I most certainly will NOT be brave enough to test out!!!!)

And then, to think that the day after such a wonderful weekend I'll get to spend two full days home alone with only myself and the pets for company, with all sorts of knitting and swatching and spinning and plying to occupy myself...........not to mention just a wee bit of hand-carding.

Remember this bundle of grubby fleece?

Fun fun fun fun fun.

Thank goodness I gave in and did a wee bit of retail fiber therapy yesterday during the middle of a Very Very Very Bad Day At Work - as the following beautiful bundle of superwash merino/tencel is now making it's way towards my house:

FatCatKnits handpainted merino/tencel superwash - 4.3 oz. In her 'Mars' colourway.

A girl has got to keep herself properly occupied, you know.

A Loaner is Loaned

2007-11-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

Kim came over on Sunday and we had ourselves quite the fiber-filled day amongst the other norms of your basic family weekend. (Grocery shopping, lunch w/ a 2-year old, dinner, laundry, etc.)

We knitted.

(No pictures. Use your imagination on this one. Socks & a Fetching were worked on.)

We spun.

(Kim's first handspun! Real Vermonter wool/mohair/alpaca
blend in Jessie's 'Berry Picking' colourway.)

We photographed.

Elizabeth Zimmerman's BSJ in some Paton's SWS for a good friend's new son.

I love these buttons.

They were found in a huge 'button box' that was given to me by the wife of a co-worker who was retiring & moving across the country to Oregon. Cool buttons. Cool wife & ex-co-worker!

We un-plied and then re-plied with amazing results.................

(my s-spun yarn that I accidentally s-plied) (same yarn after un- then re-plying)

We photographed again because we were just too-happy with our results.

Singles, and 2-ply. My first ever handspun. (!)

Then last - but not least - we did some more knitting (Kim - Monkeys out of some Claudia handpainted in the 'Butter Pecan' colourway) and some unraveling of a thrift sweater (Me - 100% merino wool in a pearl-ish grey shade that I'm going to turn into a cardigan along the lines of this.)

We had a very good day.

At the end of the evening (with both boys fast asleep, I might add - that time change sure tuckers out even the grownups!) I persuaded Kim to take home the loaner spinning wheel for the week so that she can keep working on the Berry Picking. It's looking LOVELY and she's really liking the spinning - as am I!

I can quickly see where we're going to need a 2nd loaner wheel sooner rather than later. Either that, or she's simply going to need to move in to the guest bedroom upstairs.

:)

Gaff

2007-11-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

As anyone who has recently peeked in my general direction lately has undoubtedly noticed, I have started trying my hand at spinning.

I'm absolutely thrilled to pieces with my new obsession but am not terribly good at it. However happily for me this seems to be a very common deal amongst new & intermediate spinners, so I have lots of cheerful company & lots and lots of blog posts to read on the topic.

So today, being almost physically unable to do any real work (this week has been a bit of a train wreck between crazy students in the library & a crazy waking-at-6-AM, temper-tantrum-throwing-toddler) I decided to catch way way up on my blog reading. And so I started reading some of my new favorites (Enchanting Juno) and some of my old favorites (Claudia's Blog) that I haven't read in several weeks with an eye towards any mention of spinning. {N.b. - as far as blogs go, I have favorites and then I have favorites. You know - the ones that you like to read yet let go unread for weeks, and then the ones that you like to read and somehow make/find time to read anytime/everytime you see that there is a new post....}

And I did some back reading in Claudia's blog and first came across this post where she shows her "fiber room" which totally made me drool like a Saint Bernard with a can of Alpo waved under his nose. Just LOOK at that bookcase stuffed with yarn and fiber and knitterly books and mags. Doesn't it make you drool too? Then I looked back even further and came across this post which talks all about plying. Something that I had just tried, in fact, and was pretty disappointed with my results.

I thought I had shown just the tiniest bit of improvement in the whole spinning thing, and so was very sad when I saw the over-spun, over-plied, hard, tight mess of yarn (and I use that term loosely - it's so hard and dense that there is no soft springy goodness left in it - it feels more like cheap rope that you need a hacksaw to cut through) that I was left with after I had tried to ply it.

Handspun singles that are still totally identifiable as a new spinner's work. But still, not as glaringly horrible as the very very first bobbin of work that I produced. Progress was made - however slight - and I was happy.

Overspun, overplied 2-ply yarn. Horrible. Uneven. Plied way too tight. Plied way too loose. Horrible.

And after I read Claudia's lovely advice/direction on how to ply, it hit me. I had plied the above yarn incorrectly. WAY incorrectly. Apparently you are suppose to spin the yarn in one direction (a non-spinner would consider this to be, say, counterclockwise, while a spinner would say that it had been given 'S' twist) and then you ply it in the opposite (i.e. clockwise or 'Z' ) direction.

I spun in the same direction as eventually I plied. Overspinning adding to overplying all in the same overly-tight direction. Hence why I could barely fit the horrid mangled mess through the orifice of the wheel, why it sprung into what looked like a skein'd Koosh ball when I was done tying off the skein, and why it looks so appalling in the above picture.

So what to do now?

I think I might bite the bullet and un-ply the yarn and either re-spin the singles again if they seem to need it or else just ply in the correct direction with the singles as they are. I hot-water soaked the yarn to set the twist after I plied it the first time, so I don't know if this is actually a total loss or not and if I'd be much better just chalking this up to inexperience and exhaustion (I was so excited to be done spinning my first true bobbin-full of fiber that even though it was 11 PM and I could barely see anything due to absolute exhaustion, I went ahead and plied the entire thing anyway.) or can actually salvage this pretty cotton-candy coloured stuff with a re-spin, re-ply attempt.

Any advice, from absolutely anyone who knows about this sort of thing, would be greatly greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, I've got new bumps of Piece of Vermont fiber to be eyeballed and fondled, and as soon as Gryphon's package arrives with my new hand-carders and baskets (today? today? let it be today!) I've got a full pound of washed fleece to start carding out. I also have 1/8th of a shrug back and a full sleeve to finish on Belle (not to mention the super-cool edging around the neck) plus the leg of a sock to finish designing, plus a 2nd embossed leaves sock to finish up for the daughter of a friend plus a shawl for a co-worker's retirement (thank GOD she retires in August of '08!)

In case anyone was curious, above is a picture of one of the (3? 4?) baskets that I have ordered from Gryphon. Locally handmade and collapses almost completely flat. Isn't that just too amazing for words???

Plus about a million pairs of Fetching that I have either agreed to or planned to knit in the past 24 hours. I knit myself a pair (FO pics coming soon) in 2 sweet evenings worth of knitting and so decided that they are my Christmas gift to hand out to many this year. I also have a finished EZ BSJ to post about - now that I have finally (!) sewn on the required buttons. However taking proper pictures requires not only sunlight (and my free time these days has lately only appeared after 9:15 PM) but also the ability to focus my eyes - something that I"m lately also lacking.

Which reminds me, I need to pick up my boxes of replacement disposable contacts this weekend. Must away to call the eye doc and make sure they're in before driving dangerously close to the fabric store to pick them up. No need to risk temptation if the desired object isn't yet on the shelf!

Eat. Wash. Spin!

2007-10-30T13:44:00.000-05:00

(Just not necessarily in that order.)

Porcini-mushroom roast chicken

Parker house (wheat) rolls & mushroom gravy

Fresh green bean & shiitake mushroom casserole. Not to be missed.
Taken from the Nov. 2007 issue of Saveur Magazine. Page 42.

After all the work I did this weekend, I was very very hungry.

But OH, I had such a good time working up that appetite!!!!

First on Saturday I re-read the relevant section in Alden Amos' Big Book of Handspinning (despite the fact that I keep messing up poor A.A.'s name - I keep calling him Amos Alden - this book is still SO on my Christmas/birthday list!!!!) and then I pulled out one of the two (TWO!) fleece that Oma sent me a few weeks ago and decided that I was going to wash it.

To try this the first time, I went with what looked like the more amusing fleece - the crazily-curly 1st place winner - which was a Lincoln/Shropshire mix - from the Northwestern Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Association Field Day.

Here my pound of curly locks sit, in their plastic bag with Mr. Frog happily watching over them.

Following Alden's directions, I filled the tub with HOT water, added a large capful of appropriate detergent, and then carefully let the fleece sink down and slowly slowly slowly patted it along in the water from one end of the tub to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. He said to do this as if you were herding a bunch of kindergarten younglings down a very narrow museum hallway. This is what the tub & fleece looked like after a few trips were made up & down.

UCK. See that kind of scummy film on the water? Double-uck! This is just about where I stopped thinking that magically Oma had gotten me a fleece that was naturally part white and part brown, and realized that the "part brown" locks on the fleece were in fact part green, and were most likely green from sheep feces.

Triple uck.

I drained the tub, and shuddered.

Then I filled the tub again with hot water (with the fleece resting & draining safely above), added in only half the amount of soap this time, and repeated my sinking, patting, and herding. This time around the water was much cleaner, and the tub refuse was much less disgusting.

Then the third time I filled the tub only with hot water as a last-step rinse.

And while I have no doubt that the slightly yellowish cast of some of the curlier tips on the fleece means that I have not gotten out all of the grit and muck, I think I have gotten as much out as I currently feel safe removing. (Being new at this, and having NO idea of what I'm doing, I'm quite worried that I'm going to felt this entire thing in my enthusiasm to get it really, super clean. I will - however - wash it at least once more after it is spun and plied just to be on the safe side.) I laid the fleece out to try on the guest bed, turned on multiple fans, and walked away.

I had expected it to take a full three days to dry - as A.A. says it should in his tome, but apparently A.A. never reckoned on the drying power that a 93-pound dog has on a pound of spread-out damp fleece. If said dog spends the night on the drying bed, your fleece will be bone dry the very next morning, and won't seem even the slightest worse for wear. AMAZING. Please note that I would only recommend this for dog owners. Certain insane-cat owners {coughcoughjessiecoughcough} should probably avoid such things at all possible costs.

I think that some carding will bring this curly mass of white loveliness around lickety-split. I have borrowed a drum carder from the art department of campus, and spent a good hour or so this past weekend cleaning it as best as I could, but the thing is just SO disgusting and dirty (I wore gloves to clean the drum carder, but not to wash out all that green sheep shit - what does that tell you about how filthy & nasty the drum carder was?) that despite it being cleaned I still don't feel safe using it. Isn't it lucky for me, then, that Gryphon is an Ashford dealer (I chuckled when I said that to Kim feeling like someone who was doing something illegal - "Woooo hooooo!!!! We've got a dealer in the neighborhood!") and can easily send me a pair of basic but oh-so-useful-and-necessary Ashford hand carders! Plus - you know - a few locally-made yarn storage baskets that she now has for sale. Just two. Or three.

I also was lucky enough this past Friday to find my missing spinning-wheel piece when I went and re-poked around the storage building where it had spent the past year or so. With some help from Peggers I found a necessary (and totally missing) correctly-sized nut lying around our workbench that was needed to keep the treadle leg in place, grabbed some light machine oil, and got the piece in good working order. I then promptly dropped everything and tried to spin, and butchered some of the deep red fiber that Gryphon sent my way over the summer along with a loaner drop spindle. I loathed the drop spindle (so much so that I simply put it down & felt no compunction to keep trying with it whatsoever!) but loved the fiber. The result is the overly-spun little unbalanced skein below. {SIGH} My first ever baby handspun!

After messing around with the red, I tried my hand at some hand-dyed roving that I purchased at a county fair over the summer. Despite the butchering that happened while I played around with it, I had the most WONDERFUL time with both it and the red roving, and after watching a few video clips on the Joy of Handspinning website have picked up a few tips about what I am doing wrong (drafting over too short a distance, mainly, I'm also going to try and pull 'up' on the fiber to draft it instead of pulling 'down' as I have been doing. I'm also going to try to pre-draft my commercially prepared bump and see if that helps) and am going to take another crack at the rest of the fiber I have left either tonight or tomorrow night.

This is what I produced after sitting down a few times Saturday & Sunday with the county-fair roving that I purchased. Reminds me of cotton-candy colours! Still exponentially overspun, but at least a bit more even in thickness (at least in lengthier spots!) and a bit better overall. Once I'm finished with this bump of fiber, I'm going to 2-ply it and see what fun end result I get.

I only have a single drive at the moment, and so am wondering if maybe a double-drive would help some. I am consciously trying to treadle v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y - - so much so that my wheel will sometimes stop, I'm going so slow. This is why I'm wondering if the double-drive will help........or will that just speed me up and increase my horrid overspinning? Ah well - 'tis so much fun that I don't at all mind that I'm making wool versions of DNA every time I let the tension go on the yarn & it doubles back on itself!

In fact, I'm having SO much fun that I went right out and ordered several bundles of dyed fleece from Jessie - one in the most amazing chartreuse/purple/midnight blue blend - I can hardly wait to see what that turns into when I get my hands on it!

I also, after reading her two part posts on plying experiments, bought a double-bump set of hers in a super-bright/deep purple and a nicely-pale lavender complimentary colourway.

See why I couldn't resist the temptation to try some plying experiments of my own?

Fun fun fun fun fun!

My Christmas/birthday wish list is just growing by leaps and bounds every day now!

Still raining

2007-10-25T15:29:00.000-05:00

It's still raining here (woe that I could send some of this steady, soaking rain over California's way!), I'm still missing crucial pieces from the loaner spinning wheel, and I'm still adrift in a sea of stockinette.

Blah.

My shrug is getting closer and closer to being finished in that the huge swath that spans my back is probably only 2 inches away from completion. I'd show you the picture that I bribed my husband to take showing this miraculous progress, but it unfortunately makes me look like a chunky linebacker after a huge pasta dinner, so I'll refrain from showing such amazingly unflattering pictures of myself in public.

The worst part of getting this close to finishing the shrug is that once I actually make the back section long enough I'll have to truly acknowledge the fact that the pattern is almost certainly and truly LOST back in the Outer Banks. I have searched for it high and low, but alas - still for naught. I don't know what to do. Wing it, based on the other half I've already knitted? Plead with the designer to send me the basics for the ruffle along the front (the only info I really & truly need) - plead with a fellow Belle Shrug knitter that I met via Ravelry to take pity on me and send me the missing specs and instructions?

My hemp paper bag is coming along well - my previous attempt at a increase/decrease - slipped stitch - decrease/increase technique was successful but simply too messy with this stiff hemp twine, so I have changed techniques entirely and am now working in single sections in a slightly nontraditional way - with much happier results. Hopefully an almost-finished shot to come soon.

I am also back to working on my design-a-sock project for Gryphon and Knitty with so far happy results - but alas in my enthusiasm to get started on it the unthinkable happened:

Can't see what happened? Look down at the bottom of the bag - just below where the bamboo needle crosses the "M" in PREMIUM. Keep going down. Keep going..........keep going.................

............see how there's NOTHING ATTACHED at the bottom of that bamboo needle?

*snap*! It made such a sad little sound when it just broke right off in my hand. I kind of caught my breath in a little sob, and then looked up in bewilderment like a small child does when the unthinkable happens to them.

I still have the original packaging, and I seem to remember somewhere that Addis come with a lifetime guarantee if you have the original packaging. Does anyone else seem to remember this hope-inspiring bit of information as well?

I was able to switch over to dpns with nary a problem - and it turned out to be a blessing in the end as the pattern stitch I'm using has a "traveling" sort of tendency where every so many rows you have to move a stitch from one needle to the previous or vice-versa - - very annoying to do when using two circular needles but easy as anything to do with dpns. So if I can get the circular needle replaced with a minimum of fuss then all will be well in the end, I feel fairly safe in saying.

Tonight Kim is coming over for dinner (and then bath & story with the Munchkin) and then after he's safely in bed she and I get to sit and knit and chat - and I get to wrap my head around a little challenge that Laura (of Fiber Dreams) sent my way! She's currently knitting a beautiful blue pair of socks that have a slightly little tricky two-cable-needle cable in there - and she and I got talking about cable needles and cabling without cable needles. So she sent me the cable specs and I'm going to mess around tonight and see if I can't figure out how to do this particular 5-stitch cable, 2-cable-needle cable without even one cable needle - and post appropriate pictures here for anyone who is interested to see.

If nothing else, the pictures that Kim will be able to take of me struggling along making a huge tangled mess should be good for at least a laugh or two!

cleaned

2007-10-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

The wheel got a nice Murphy's bath last night, followed by the first of many bathings in lemon oil.

It's a wee bit happier now:

Now that I had a good chance to look the wheel over, I find that it's missing a few pieces. Most importantly, I'm missing the conrod that connects the wheel to the treadle. I'm also missing the tension knob, a fourth bobbin, and the base to the Lazy Kate. Obviously I can live without the base to the Lazy Kate (more honestly, I can make my own) and I can obviously totally live without a fourth bobbin for now - and I can probably figure out how to jury-rig a makeshift tension knob for the time being. But I cannot do without the conrod.

I'm going to go back to the storage spot and do some more poking around the next time it's open to see if I can't find these missing pieces - and if not............?

..................check around to see if I can order the conrod & tension knob from an Ashford dealer on line?

What else would the spinners out there recommend that I also get? A decent drive band? The wheel now has nothing fancier than a knotted cotton string - but I've read on the Ashford site that they now offer a 'polycord' version that doesn't slip and makes pedaling much much nicer. And anything that makes spinning much easier/nicer sounds great to me. Also, the flyer is only a single drive - would those of you in the know out there recommend that I get a three whorl flyer, or maybe even a lace flyer? (Ooooohhhhhhhhhh..........spinning lace. It boggles the mind to think that maybe possibly someday I could learn to do that...............)

Spinners? Serious education is needed here, por favor.

dirty, dusty, grimy

2007-10-18T13:15:00.002-05:00

.....it might not be a beauty queen at the moment, but for the time being, it's mine and I'm going to have tons of fun playing around on it! The drum carder (poor abused thing that it so obviously is) is for the two half-fleeces (an Icelandic & a......something else that's fun & curly that I forget this very second) that Oma sent my way - I need to do some washing and carding before I can do any spinning, and when I saw the carder just sitting there in the dust and grime and dirt and it was offered to me along w/ the wheel I certainly didn't turn it down!

The wheel (an Ashford) could maybe possibly end up mine forever, but the carder is only a temporary figure passing through my life. 'Sokay. I can live with that. I'd prefer the wheel over the carder in the end anyway!

Verklempt

2007-10-11T13:41:00.001-05:00

I'm going all Linda Richman on you.

Look. Just look at what was in my Ravelry inbox when I peeked today......

**************
From: franklin
To: Susan B

re: I know I don't actually KNOW you....

Sent at 5:59 PM October 9, 2007

Well, that's one of the best things about Ravelry for me...now I have a chance to get to know you.

So consider yourself friended. ;-)

***********

Franklin. THE Franklin. Of Panopticon. You know. Insane lace knitter. Long-suffering roommate of Dolores, the world's only (hopefully) chain-smoking sheep. Majorly proud uncle of one of the cuter babies to grace the knit-world in quite some time.

Why is he writing to me, you might ask? To ME?

Easy.

I groveled shamelessly and sent him the following 'Friend' invite on Ravelry...

***********

To: franklin

From: SusanB

I know I don't actually KNOW you....

Sent at 11:02 AM October 9, 2007

....but seeing as how you're so incredibly kind to let all of us in your virtual living room (so to speak) you truly feel like a friend nonetheless.

(Plus if 160 others can eagerly claim you as their friend, I can surely muster up the courage to do so as well, dammit!)

Susan

***********

...........and now that I've done so, and now that he's responded, I'm absolutely charmed by how sweet he was, thrilled down to my toes by the fact that his little cartoon picture is now listed in amongst my 18 Ravelry friends, and absolutely horrified at my impertinence. I have the urge to dust off my zafu, pull out my finest pair of lace-knitting circs, and start chanting to Elizabeth Zimmerman and Sharon Miller as a sort of knitter's penance.

(~ say it with me now, my ducks~)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm..........................

Vacation Swag

2007-10-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

I was able to pick up a few fun things while on vacation - sadly there was nary a single yarn shop on the entire Outer Banks that I could find. I had done some pre-vacation poking around online first to try and find the name/location/phone number of any LYS, but kept coming up empty. So once I was actually on-island I did the next best thing - I asked at my LCS (Local Coffee Shop.)

"Nope," they said. "Not a single one. You'll have to go off-island for something like that."

As off-island in this case meant a full hour & a half drive, I was quite unwilling to go through that just to potentially end up with some novelty yarn at the other end. So instead I contented myself with puttering around all of the beautiful places that we had already planned to go - and on the island of Ocracoke I hit the jackpot in a knitting-related way. (Note to any future vacationers - the island is a 45 minute ferry ride away - BRING KNITTING!)

View from the Ocracoke ferry. Happily, I had brought along my entire vacay knitting posse, so I had a plethora of projects to choose from during the watery wait! Plus, we saw dolphins.

In Ocracoke there are several little fun shops - if you want home-made fudge or hand-made candies there are several nice options (heh - ask my newly-gained 2 pounds how I know this!), but even better if you would like books or clothes there are two wonderful options. The first is called Books To Be Red/Red Drum Pottery an incredibly cool place that has just about everything you could ever want in there - fantastic wooden children's toys, fantastic books (local authors, Oprah authors, you name it!), wonderful cards, postcards, lotions, earrings, locally-made pottery, beautiful woven items like napkins and placemats, and just fun tchotchke items like what I found below.

Oops, that's right! I can't show you what I actually bought, because it is intended for someone who reads this blog, and I don't want to spoil the surprise.... And while I certainly did think about posting a picture of the actual swag behind a link or suchlike, I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure that I credit her with being able to resist the temptation & clicking on the link and peeking ahead of time.

;>

But after she gets her package, I'll share the picture.

So what I show you instead is the package that I will mail out to her tomorrow. Aren't the labels FANTASTIC? They are courtesy of Elli at Elliphantom Knits and I just luuurrrve them. If you visit her blog you can download them yourself for free too! In fact I lurve them so much that I went ahead and used them also on my Book Mooch package - even though the book I'm mailing has not a single thing to do with knitting.

Address blocked to prevent the poor recipient from getting lots of unwelcome attention from a bunch of rabid knitters! I will have you know, though, that the above address is blocked with a new purchase from Books To Be Red - my new little nifty goes-everywhere-with-me notebook where I have everything important written down - how to kitchner, the corresponding inches for men and women's shoe sizes, a list of things to do ("send thank-you note for tomato knife"), and the contact number of the garage where my car is still being worked on. (Three weeks now, folks, three whole flippin' weeks. My advice to everyone out there? Call up your car insurance now and make sure that you have a rental car replacement in your policy. Costs almost nothing to add it in. The cost of a rental car for three weeks? Probably absolutely staggering. I have no clue as to the exact amount because I wasn't even willing to shell out close to that much cash, nor was I willing to risk partial reimbursement from my rental car company who is currently taking the other driver to court...)

Book Mooch, for those of you who do not know, is extremely cool. Pile up books you own but no longer wish to keep around, list them in Book Mooch & send them off to folks when asked. Earn points for doing so. You search the database for books that you want to own, and other folks will happily send them your way when you correspondingly ask. One book = one point. Build up points, use up points. Except for the cost of shipping (and if you use book rate, it's very cheap) it's all free. So far I've sent off a good half dozen or so and we've requested maybe 4 or 5 - and have been thrilled with both sides of the transaction. Laura of Fiber Dreams was the one who turned me on to this - a brilliant idea! When I came home from vacation I found that my most recent request - The God of Small Things - was there waiting for me. Oh, what a lovely occurrence! Brilliant book - brilliant system!

The other really cool shop on Ocracoke that I visited and scored some knitting 'stuff' was a hemp-clothing shop where I found (what else?) some hemp twine. I snatched up two balls of it (400 yards each) and have already started messing around with a design to knit myself a hemp version of a standard brown-paper bag. I know that there is a felted version of this on Knitty, but I don't want a felted version - nosiree - I want a hemp version that I can toss in the washer/dryer and know it won't shrink or get funky. I want something that gets softer and softer with use but won't ever ever EVER wear out. I wanted hemp, and hemp I got. Pictures will come soon after my knitting progress looks like more than a small tan twine rectangle.

No real other knitting news to report - one more embossed leaves sock to finish - size 11 women's, so no small task, that. 1/3 of a Screw-y II sock to finish for Peggers. (God,but size 13 feet are looooong!) Hours and hours and hours left of Seraphim to finish before the really pretty lace parts at the end kick in. Miles of stockingknit to accomplish on Belle before I get to join it back in the round for the other sleeve. (Think I'm exaggerating? Not quite - I have 10" of the back finished - I need only 20" more. U.G.H.) Lots and lots of knitting slogging here at Chez Pointysticks. I do think, however that excitement is on the horizon. Once my current socks are done I'm thinking long & hard about starting a pair of Chuck's Cabled Socks after seeing Mel's latest pair and developing some major knitted-object lust. And once my Belle shrug is finished I'm thinking that it's most certainly the time for me to finally (!) start on my Cable-Down Raglan that I have all that luscious alpaca stashed away for............

Ummmmmm............sooooooofffffffftttttttt. And waaaarrrrmmmmm!!!!!

My only other minorly exciting news to report is that I purchased a new chair for the Munchkin yesterday, as he's outgrown his current highchair and both Peggers and I have grown tired with the constant squirming and feet-on-the-table behavior that a too-small chair causes.

Ducks, meet the Stokke Tripp Trapp chair.

Funky, a bit expensive, European, and I think about to become one of our smarter child purchases ever.

OBX

2007-10-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

Sour Cherry Upside Down Cake

The view 50 feet from our vacation house

Kite flying

Vacay knitting - Belle shrug on the Ocracoke ferry

The North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island

Our last sunrise on the beach

Halfway There

2007-09-29T20:53:00.000-05:00

We are halfway to our vacation spot - currently we're spending the night in Virginia, with a final destination of Hatteras, North Carolina, where we'll be relaxing and lounging for a full week.

I have brought with me (in addition to the norm of contact case, toothbrush, shampoo, children's books, beach toys, sippy cups, etc.):

1.) Embossed Leaves Socks - one is currently down to just decreasing the toe. One left to go.

2.) Screw-y Socks - first one is knitted, second one has yet to be cast-on for

3.) Belle shrug - I'm on the first sleeve, currently an inch and a half or so past the crook of my elbow

4.) Seraphim - I'm up to 100 or so stitches on the plain stockingknit part - I get to start following a chart when I get up to 250 or so stitches.

I have high, high hopes.

(And not just because of the 4 hours left to drive in front of me tomorrow morning or the full six hour drive home that we'll do a week from tomorrow.)

There Is Such a Thing As a Free Lunch

2007-09-20T09:11:00.000-05:00

....not necessarily an actual lunch, though.

Much, much better.

A FREE SPINNING WHEEL.

Now, this delight is not mine to keep (at least not yet!) but it is mine to use for the next several months and play with and decide if I like to spin, or if I loathe it because I suck at it as truly and terribly as I suck at drop spindling.

Apparently my university used to teach both spinning and weaving way back in the dark ages (or the 70's depending on how you regard that particular decade) and the wheels and looms have been all but languishing in forgotten disregard ever since then. This past summer when the art department ran out of storage space they combed through their vaults and decided that the wheels and looms would be the first to go to free up additional space for more recently-used and therefore more-relevant items. However (and luckily for me!) one brave ceramics prof spoke up and promised storage space in her non-profit studio downtown..............so the looms and wheels were spared for at least a few months more.

Fast forward to last Friday, when I was meeting Kim (the Horticultural wonder) for our twice-weekly knitting meeting and she mentions to me how one of her student workers picked up some extra cash this summer helping the art department move out things from storage....and how some of those things were both wheels and looms.

The greedy gears in my head started a-clicking, and Tuesday I was in the art office chatting up the department secretary putting on my best face and offering to very kindly "rent" the wheel from them for a semester - putting it to good use and cleaning it up, etc. - hoping all the while that she would say that I could surely just borrow it and that no fees would be necessary. The very next day I received a confirmation call saying that I could certainly borrow the wheel - as long as I could bring myself to wait until next Monday at the earliest, as the ceramics prof was headed out of town and I wouldn't be able to arrange a pickup time with her until then.

Perfect!

In the meantime I've solicited a few suggestions as to what books I should be looking into first, have put roughly two dozen books on spinning on request to be sent to me here at work (I've already gotten 4, and read my way through part of a wonderful work last night - The Complete Spinning Book, by Candace Crockett) and am just as excited as anything to get started.

My hope is that in a few weeks if I'm really really nice I can find out about snagging a second wheel so that Kim (the Horticultural wonder) can have one at her house too and that she and I don't have to both practice on the same one - because as she's the one who had this incredible piece of knowledge in the first place and was kind enough to share it with me - she totally needs to get in on this fantastic piece of luck as well!

Dudes! A free spinning wheel!

Wouldn't it be fantastic if the wheel turns out to totally not suck, and they let us keep them for ever and ever and ever?

Of Things 2 & 6 Legged

2007-09-12T10:39:00.001-05:00

Well, I might have been a wee bit presumptious when I said that September was going to be My Month. I had figured that after all the bad karma of August I was more than due my share of coasting & good news, but alas' last week showed me that it 'twas not to yet be.

Last Thursday, after what had been a fairly good week so far, I got the news that a relative's two children had been found to have a particularly raging case of head lice - and of course our luck being what it had been, this was the same relative who had taken in the Munc
hkin for two weekends in a row while Peggers and I were busy painting our New Green House.

See where 6-legged things come into play?

So of course I ran to the phone and called daycare to alert her to the possible invasion, and then sat and waited for her return call with bated breath......................

................."Okay," she said. "Come and get him - he's got at least one little critter in his hair!"

So there went the end of the week in a blur of nasty, chemical-laden shampoos, screaming fits while I combed out his hair with the tiniest comb you've ever seen, and more than 20 loads of laundry to wash (hot water) and dry (hot dry) every single thing in our house that could be logically crammed into a washing machine or tossed in the dryer. Plus all the vaccuuming, the spraying (think mattresses, carseats, couches, etc.) and the general rounding up of stuffed animals and suchlike that couldn't be washed or dried - all of which needed to be stuffed in black plastic garbage bags, tied tightly shut, and then stuck in the attic for a good 2 months to bake in the early September heat and kill anything that crawled, jumped, or sucked blood from a scalp.

So that, combined with the news that the other driver involved in my car accident has the worst possible insurance on the face of the earth, and as such we still don't know if a rental car can be covered by her insurance or not for the two weeks (!) that they say it will take to repair my car (to the tune of $4,500!) made last week Not Very Great. If the other insurance won't pay for the car rental, we're pretty sure that what we'll do instead of paying the $800 or so rental car bill out of our own pocket is give my bike a nice once-over fix up and attach our little pull-behind child wagon to my bicycle, and that I'll get to & from work and to & from daycare by the power of my own two feet.

See where 2-legged things come into play as well?

Happily enough, though, this week is looking much better.

I haven't been doing much knitting at ALL lately - a sort of existence that is very very bizzare to me. I've been doing lots of reading lately at night instead, and have also been going to bed early in a state of near-constant-exhaustion - - but I'm hoping now that things have slowed down I'll get a chance to resume my knitting and keep on churning out a nice parade of FO's. The one big thing that I did over the last two weeks was receive & then immediately mail-out my Dish Rag Tag box - something that was absolutely loads of fun, irregardless of the fact that we did not place for a medal in the race itself.

My new Dish Rag Tag washrag in it's proper new home. See how the sponge has been relegated to a second place now, way in the back????

I knitted a two-tone Ball Band Washrag for my recipient - and because of my general inability to decide on the colour format I simply switched strands halfway through to give her a sort of Half Moon Cookie sort of washrag, if you will.....

This makes me think of gingerbread slices with whipped cream on top, for some reason.

She was just lovely and accepted my low-colour washrag with very kind words. Everyone else's washcloth has been made out of nicely bright, cheerful colours, so I felt more than a little bad that I was giving her one that was so.....................natural looking. I'm going to make it up to her, however, by knitting her an absolutely eye-popping bright one and sending it along later, Just Because. Along with the washcloth I included in the Team Box a bag of the always-popular Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans, a cute little set of Brittany cable needles (I got the idea from Emily, who gave me a set of them way back when, and thought it was just a perfect knitting/gifting idea!) and two skeins of kitchen cotton.

When I opened the box in the first place, though, needles poised to cast-on for my washcloth, oh my look at what was waiting for me.....

Yeah - this was eaten in, like, 5 seconds.

Along with the super-huge ball of blue I also got a super-huge ball of the flecked cream that you see I used to actually knit the above washrag, and then when I greedily searched the box look at what my wondering eyes (and fingertips!) encountered.......

This has got to be THE coolest pair of scissors in the entire universe. Bar none. Forget the ones with the animal or bird-shaped handles. THESE are the perfect zen knitter's scissors. I'm totally in love - as is the Munchkin. He clamours for them almost daily, and I once had to forcibly wrench them out of his little chubby toddler hands when he made a death-defying leap and snagged them off the dining room table. Obviously I need to find and immediately own about a million more.

Despite the fact that our team didn't place for a medal, we all still (I hope!) had a really good time in the playing - and if Emily ever decides that she's brave and crazy enough to try this again, I'm certain I'll join right up.

I just loved our battered box that was sent from team-member to team-member all around the States.......

YEAH TEAM!!!!!!

August Is A Cruel Month

2007-08-30T14:00:00.001-05:00

Seriously.

They read our bill wrong last month - so this actually represents a month and a half worth of electricity. It also represents in my mind a small fortune. Or a lot of yarn. Depending on how you look at it.

The painting inspector, while quite impressed by our paint job on 2 sides of the house, told me that NO, actually, that wasn't good enough. So the painting and scraping continued on for another 3 weeks past his initial visit, and was (hopefully in his eyes) finished this past weekend in a marathon burst of extreme Hard Work and Extreme Heat. Not to mention a hydraulic lift that dangled me 30 feet in the air for hours on end.

Hello! I am Bactrim. I am an antibiotic. Quite useful if you have - for example - an extremely painful bladder infection caused by (probably) too much
stress & overexertion in extreme heat (see above comment).......

I am Vigamox. I am antibiotic eyedrops. Used for those of you who have searingly painful corneal ulcers in their right eyeball. Remember now, don't wear your contacts! Wear those lovely coke-bottle-thick glasses of yours that give you a pressure headache on either side of your temple after only 20 or so minutes of wearing, and which so cut off your vision that you cannot drive with them and so have to put your contacts back in against the eye doctor's orders!

And then yesterday it got Even Worse.

I am a dented car. This is what happens when an 18 year old with a sassy attitude and a total lack of respect for a stop sign and a blinking red light decides to exceed safe speed limits and crash right into the side of you. And then change her story and tell the police officer that she came to a full and complete stop at said stop sign and that in fact you (yes, you!) were the one who ran the red light. Luckily all evidence is quite clearly on the side of my version of things. But still. No fun.

Seriously, this has most definitely **not** been my month.

I think that this Slate Magazine guy has got the right idea and we should just skip August in entirety from now on out..........

- Signed, Sealed, Delivered -

2007-08-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

Today so far is a Very Good Day.

I woke up and almost immediately my ears were filled with the sound of massive giggles coming from my son as he and Peggers tickled each other on the bed and were generally Quite Silly. That's a stunningly good thing to wake up to.

Then I had a slice of the farmhouse oatmeal bread that I made on Tuesday smothered in creamy peanut-butter and a mug of ginger-peach black tea with a splash of milk for breakfast while I read the ending of Greenwitch. It wasn't bad. Not as good as The Dark Is Rising, but still not bad. The series is shaping up to be a decent way to work your way down from the crushing disappointment after finishing HP#7, if I do say so myself......

Then I came into work and packed my Sockpalooza package:

She hates yellow, and I've been teasing her for ages now that I was knitting her a pair of Tweedy-Bird yellow socks, so I couldn't resist covering up everything with this yellow tissue paper...

Absolutely anything and everything looks better packed in a nice basket, don't you think?

We have starting at the top and going counter-clockwise: finished sockpal socks (!), Tarantulas Gummies, a mini skein of sockpal pink yarn for darns or whathaveyou, a lavender sachet, some Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans, and a greeting card with a little note from me plus a printout of my blog page from the day I posted about signing up for Sockpalooza 4 in the first place. Dead center (hidden somewhat by the insanely-pink ribbon) is a lavender aromatherapy candle. Also scattered in the basket are some salt-water taffies from a local candy shop.

And last but not least, the all-important Care & Washing tag to let my Pal
know how to care for her pink lovelies.

Everything was carefully packaged up, sealed, addressed, and then stamped via Priority mail - and finally entrusted to Carl, my lovely local postmaster. As she's only over in PA I'm wondering how quickly this will in fact make it's way to her. I'd like to think Saturday, but I'm guessing in fact next Monday. Now all I can do is hope that the box doesn't get lost in transit and when the socks arrive and she pulls them out her face doesn't immediately fall with disappointment!!!!!

I showed the basket and contents to my two new co-workers and they both ooh'd and aah'd over the goodies and the socks - and the two of them were BOTH wearing pink shirts today - so there was no need to ask if they liked the colours! - so I took that as a good sign.

There is no new painting news to report, as I took a break this morning to not only eat breakfast but to also do the dishes and tidy up the house a bit - something that hasn't been done in nearly two weeks (the tidying, that is - dishes have been dutifully washed while painting was going on!) I also worked a bit more on my EZ Baby Surprise Jacket.

Pattern: BSJ from EZ's Opinionated Knitter
Yarn: Gedifra 'Dandy' in this insane yellow/green/purple colourway
Needles: Addi Naturas - size 7 - 4.5mm
Finished Size: 3Tish or thereabouts
Mods so Far: like many others, I've done a provisional cast-on so that I can add length to the sleeves as necessary once everything else is finished...

I started this Tuesday night and managed to get a good amount done yesterday evening while eating cheese fries out of a plastic baseball helmet, watching our local minor league baseball team play - and lose - over 7 innings. Good times. Tonight is the bi-monthly Boys Night In - where Peggers and his mates all congregate in our dining room until late in the evening - and while I shut the french doors between the dining room and living room and happily curl up on the couch and knit and watch DVDs or listen to books on CD. No idea what I'll be watching or listening to tonight, as we've no new Netflix DVDs to watch and I've seen all of the ones we already own, and I've listened and re-listened to every book on CD that we likewise own. Hmph. A visit to the public library might be necessary before I go home tonight. Oh shoot. They close at 5 PM tonight. Damn budgetary cutbacks! Looks like I'll be hitting the Redbox $1 DVD setup in the grocery store instead this time! (hmmmmmm........maybe I can get that monster bag of peanut M&M's that I've been craving ever since I read Franklin's comment about how peanut M&M's are his favorite movie food......)

Speaking of Franklin I was thrilled to see that there is a Dolores Devotees group in Ravelry - you can betcher' bottom skein that I ran right on over & joined that particular group as soon as I found out! Isn't the banner for it just fantastic???

.....and my day just keeps getting better & better! See what I found waiting this afternoon when I got back to my desk? It took the journals folks almost 10 weeks to have these sent off to the bindery, bound, and returned to me - but for less than $20 I now have four full years of Interweave Knits in sturdy, bound form safely at the ready for my reaching hand whenever I need them. Hooray to no longer hunting down that one last elusive issue, or finding that an issue was wrinkled and squashed underneath a pile of comic books, a pile of cooking magazines, or a large Tonka dumptruck!

Happy Weekend everyone - I'm home with the Munchkin starting tomorrow until Friday the 10th, so don't expect more than one post from me - if any - in that interim time. I'll be too busy painting the house, taking the little guy to the beach, and hitting the zoo to once again check out the Stinky Buffaloes!

All good things must come to an end...

2007-07-31T19:03:00.000-05:00

...and others must begin.

Work continues on the painting front. Many thanks for your kind words - both as to our efforts so far and as to our colour choices. Green is apparently not a traditional or popular house painting shade - and we've gotten many a raised-eyebrow because of it. We, however, like it very very much.

Tomorrow is August 1st. Tomorrow is also for a group of some knitters Get Your Sockpalooza Pal Package Prepped & Ready To Go Day, as the official send-out day is August 2nd.

I have ready to go in my package:

One finished pair of bright pink knee-high sockpal socks. (check!)
One mini skein of bright pink sock pal pink sock yarn for darns (check!)
One package of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans (check!)
One lavender-scented candle (check!)
One package tarantula gummy candy (check!)
A large handful of locally-made saltwater taffy (check!)
One tongue-in-cheek greeting card (check!)

Hopefully the gummy candies and candle will suitably distract her in case the socks don't fit or are too short or too slouchy or just..................not to her Sockpal taste. So that package will get prettily wrapped up and packaged up tomorrow and then first thing on Thursday I'll walk it to the post office and send it off 2-day priority mail. As the package only has to go about 2 states over I'm guessing she'll get it by Saturday. I should say, I'm hoping she'll get it by Saturday.

So that is ending. But what fun it's been!

And tomorrow (yes tomorrow!) the official Dish Rag Tag begins! I'm one of the 200 or so folks that joined up to play in Emily's fun race - and I'm on the Cotton Commandos Team. We've been discussing and plotting and chatting for the past several weeks, and we've got a loose strategy in place and know where we're mailing things and how - so all I now get to do is keep one eye on the team's forum page and keep the other on my mailbox!

Also today at work I got a lovely message in my inbox:

Dear Susan ______

A loan that you had requested:
Loan Title: The opinionated knitter : Elizabeth Zimmermann newsletters 1958-1968 /
is now available for checkout.

So what fun, too! That means that a BSJ is soon to be working it's way on my needles. The first of (probably) many. This particular BSJ will be worked up in an eye-blazing yellow/orange/green/purple yarn that I have absolutely tons of - and the jacket will be (of course) for The Munchkin.

I can hardly wait - even though the first few lines of the pattern look like gibberish at the moment. However I've always found that with the yarn and needles in hand most patterns tend to make sense after a bit of head-scratching and squinting.

Progress on all fronts will certainly show up here - including the Belle Shrug! I picked a cuff pattern and cast on yesterday and am up to the crook of my elbow as of this afternoon.......

E. X. H. A. U. S. T. E. D.

2007-07-30T14:08:00.000-05:00

Man o man, but it's amazing how much scraping and painting almost two full sides of a house can really knock the stuffing out of you! Honestly. I'm more tired & sore now than I was after delivering a baby.

Much more so!

We made very good progress last Tuesday, and then amazing progress on Saturday. We made only so-so progress yesterday due to massive & stunning thunderstorms that rained sideways.

Before:

After 3 solid days of work:

You can unfortunately now all-too-clearly see how the paint that I carelessly slopped on the front porch screens two years ago really shows up like never before. That is all of the white bits around the dark brown trim on the porch. You can also see how the white railings inside the screened-in porch now glow in their stark-white-paintly way. Once everything is said and done we'll bit by bit pull off the dark brown porch trim, carefully pull out each staple holding the screening in place, and then paint the backside of the porch moldings and railings - and then when dry and topcoated properly put the screens back up and then nail the trim pieces back in place. That should help a lot. I'll also work on carefully scrubbing that old white latex paint off of the screen so that it looks tidier in general. We'll also paint dark brown the pieces of (currently white) lattice that we installed on either side of the screen door. The lattice was installed to put a stop to the catfights that would happen between our two housecats and the neighborhood outdoor cats.

I still have to finish up some last bits of trim work on the 2nd floor windows and soffit - but once that is done the front of the house will be finished. Then we can turn to the work still left to complete on the cemetery side of the house. (Ahem - so called because we live next to a cemetery - in case you were wondering................)

The bottom half is single-coated green. That is why it's so blazingly bright & streaky. The top half is not. The left half of the top is scraped but not primed. The right half of the top is scraped & primed.

The boys needed the good 26 foot extension ladder to reach the absolute tip-top of the house, so you can see how high I could & couldn't reach when I was priming the window and side trim using just the basic stepladder to climb up and down.....

....and you can also see where the huge thunder storm literally washed my 2nd topcoat down the side of the house taking away the nice deep green even-ness that I had created and putting back a neon green streaky mess in it's place......

Bugger.........................

In the midst of all of this I have still been knitting. I have cast on for a pair of screw-y socks for Peggers in some Gryphon Traveller yarn. She custom-dyed a new colourway just for him - it is called Wales and it is stunningly beautiful.

I have come up with an idea for my Belle shrug - a way to do the cuff that is slightly different than the Laura Chau pattern calls for. I'm excited about that, and hope to start it this afternoon when Kim and I sit down to knit in approximately............oh...........4 minutes.

I finished Peggers' vest and have only to seam it and knit up button bands or zipper bands for it.

I am frogging my Mystery Stole 3 and instead will eventually purchase a different stole pattern from Pink Lemon Twist and will knit that instead.

I also knitted the Cinchy Hat from the latest Knitscene - but alas have no pictures of any of these things.

Just pictures of a green house.

:)