Last Weekend Discussed This Weekend

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

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

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.

:)

Eat. Wash. Spin!

(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!

On a Lack of Willpower

Really, now, is anyone surprised?


I've done shockingly little work on Icarus. Why, you might ask? Indeed, as I had previously forecasted, my Sockpal yarn arrived Monday afternoon once I was home, and as soon as I ripped open the package from Jessie I was Completely And Totally S-U-N-K.

I stayed up Monday night until 2 AM fiddling with gauge swatches (washed & dried with the greatest of ease - came out even softer after than it did before!) trying to figure out how to make everything match up. For example, these were some of the facts on which I was cogitating:

* the pattern is for a 19.5" sock. I want to knit a 16" sock.

* the pattern starts out at the thigh with a 12" diameter. My Pal's calves are 16".

* if I up the number of beginning stitches accordingly, you all know that I have no idea how to decrease them properly so that it doesn't look like a dog's dinner in the end, right?


So what I decided was that - like Emily - I was not doing this sock toe up. While Wendy can do so with the Greatest of Ease I need to try out a toe-up on a very basic sock - not on something like this. Happily I know exactly what yarn I'm going to use for such a thing when I finally get the chance. So while I'm being a chicken, at least I'm only being a chicken temporarily which makes me feel a bit less ashamed to admit it publicly.

I also decided that rather than add in extra stitches, I'm going to try a technique I first heard mentioned on Cast-On - - while I got gauge with size 2 needles, I'm going to knit the first several inches of the sock on size 3s - automatically making the sock bigger than it is 'supposed' to be. Then after a few repeats of the lace panel I'll switch down to size 2 needles and will be back on track while not having to do any fudgy maths work. Apparently this is what someone did in a Knitty pattern and it was all the buzz for a bit. So far it is working swimmingly......................




Here you can see the lovely shade of the SockPal Pink that Jessie created for me and my Pal - even sprinkled amongst the peonies - for like I said earlier - it is a lovely sort of peony pink, isn't it??

Accordingly, I am three and a half lace panel repeats into the sock. I am only on Row 8 of the fourth chart for Icarus. I took a look at the chart and realize that not only was it 25 or so rows, but that as after that there were a good 5 or 6 written-out rows to knit PLUS the final cast-off - - and that I just wasn't going to make it. And that I could stress over it or I could just face facts and ease up considerably and keep enjoying my knitting and alternate Icarus with the SP socks. So now this is my deal - for every lace panel repeat I do, I have to do a full pattern row and a purl-ish back row on Icarus. That way everything stays balanced.

So I am content. I will doubtless not win the race between Sandy and myself, but I am content.

The Munchkin and I leave for Florida tomorrow AM at a disgustingly early hour (makes for a lovely arrival time of 11;30 AM, tho'!) and I will not be bringing my SP socks, as they take a bit of attention. Instead I will be bringing Icarus and Jay's screw-y socks - one knit that I have not yet posted much about. As the pair will almost certainly be finished once I'm back, I'll post about them then. Also I figure I'll be able to get a decent amount done on Icarus, as the Munch goes to bed around 9 PM every night and I'll be sitting w/ him in a studio apartment as he sleeps every night with nothing but quiet knitting time in front of me. I'm bringing my iPod with me loaded with a few new Librivox tales for company! While I will probably not post while gone, you'll most certainly see a few headless shots of various family members of mine posing on the beach once I return...

A lack of knitting progress (and of knitting photos)

I worked on Icarus Friday afternoon - but then real life intruded on my fantasy knitting world:

** Friday night was our 5th anniversary dinner night (anniversary was actually Thursday, but as [free] babysitting was available Friday, who were we to squabble?)

** Saturday & Sunday were totally (and I mean TOTALLY) dedicated to installing a mildly complex bit of L-shaped built-in bookshelves with in in-laws at the house for babysitting/toddler diverting and expert consultant purposes. To say that this weekend was as stressful as I've ever seen is putting it mildly - between absolutely stunning toddler temper tantrums, sibling spats, parental tension, a burned-out air compressor [BUGGER on that one - only 1/3 into installing the final trim pieces with the attached nail gun and we would have been completely finished!!!], and some pretty serious stress coming at Peggers from work via 4-5 phone calls every day over both days - not only was there no real knitting (well, I got in several rounds of a sock while we were at the baseball game Saturday night) but there was general exhaustion and mental fatigue everywhere you looked. So it's probably good that I didn't touch Icarus, as I would have just messed it up and had to have frogged back way to much to even think about!

However the bookshelf is done - missing trim on 3 of the 5 shelves, but still, it's done and books and bookends are in place. Pictures to come soon. Probably far too many pictures of it to come soon. ;) It looks - if I can say for our modest carpentry skills - absolutely fantastic. It is also, in a house filled with one philosophy major & one librarian and one budding 2-year old bibliophile - extremely needed.

And knitting on Icarus with Kim is on tap for this afternoon. So Sandy?

LET'S RACE!

And even better, Jessie said that she sent my Sockpal yarn on Thursday (sigh - a good omen, as that was my anniversary!) so it should hopefully be here.........this afternoon or tomorrow. Which means that I'll have to have a serious conversation with myself over swatching w/ the yarn versus working on Icarus!

I have a feeling that I'm going to lose that argument.

End of the Week Update

Exciting news! Lots of exciting news!

Icarus: I am half a row away from finishing Chart #3 on Icarus - and baby, I'm roaring towards Chart #4! Unfortunately said chart is a whopping 25 rows (doesn't sound like much, I know, but I'm somewhere around 450 or 500 stitches at this point, I think, so it's actually a LOOONNNNG row every row, every time!) Still - I'm getting closer! My deadline is Memorial Day Weekend, and I'm having serious doubts that I'll make it, but still - I'll see my dearest Grams that weekend regardless and will certainly bring my knitting with me, so at least she'll see what will be coming to her sometime in the month of June......... My friend Sandy is also knitting Icarus, and is a chart or so behind me with a similar deadline. I feel like dropping her a virtual challenge to RACE! and see who can get done first. What do you think, Sandy, are you up for a little friendly competition among knitting librarians???? ;)

Sockpalooza socks: after several lovely e-mail discussions with Jessie she and I settled on a set of colours for my sockpal socks, and today I got the glorious news that the yarn was dyed and dried and ready to be shipped out. Here it is in all it's pink glory:

It's PINK, isn't it? It's beautiful - reminds me of the shades that a really lovely peony flower petal go through on their way from tip to center....................and as peonies are my Absolute Favorite Flower I think that's a very very cool thing indeed. I love how there are little tiny subtle bits of the lighter pink that show through every here and there - I think it's going to give the socks that lovely little edge that they'll need to go from being Nice Socks to Super Special Socks.



You can bet that as soon as I got her message in my inbox I ran RIGHT out and wrote/mailed the check to her ASAP!!!!!

Also in related Sockpal news, I'm a fairly regular reader of Wendy's blog - she is Queen of the Socks, let me tell you! - and was really interested when I saw her post the other day about toe-up socks done with a gusset and heel flap. Cuz you know that I want these Sockpalooza socks to be HIGH socks - and what better way than to do that toe-up? Plus that totally eliminates all the worries of staring the socks 1/3 of the way into the pattern and then adjusting for the heel accordingly - - and gives me a good sense of how much to increase the socks to make sure that they fit my SockPal's legs by the time they reach their final tip-top measurement! Jessie did the above skein in a full 7 ounces of fiber - which comes out to a staggering 760 yards (bargain-conscious folks take note of this : a veritable TON of custom-dyed merino/bamboo/tencel sockyarn and all for just $30 including extra-speedy shipping!!!!!!) - so I should have plenty to make the socks nice & long - but doing toe-up just seems to make sense, you know?

But how exactly do you DO that - translate a cuff-down into a toe-up? I'd wondered about it before, but never had the courage to try it - so when today I read Wendy's latest post about doing just that - a cuff-down pattern knit toe-up I screwed up all my lurker courage and actually posted that question to her on her blog. And do you know a mere hour or so later I had a message in my inbox from Wendy herself giving me the basic specs and advice on how to do it?????

WOW!

So between her two original toe-up gusset sock patterns (for both fingeringweight & sportweight yarns - is she good or WHAT?) and her personal advice to me I'm totally committed to giving this a try. I'll probably sneak the yarn into work and use a Very Accurate scale in the biology department to make sure that I divide the 7 oz. into two even balls, but in the future for this exact sort of thing I might see about getting my own scale a-la Grumperina.................

To round out this post I take great pride in showing how last weekend went - not only did I get my Panera breakfast fix twice in one weekend (ahhhh....I splurged and had a chocolate croissant Sunday for breakfast!) but I was also gifted with THE most adorable pair of pj's ever. Peggers chose as my Mama's Day gift not only a pair of pj's for me (via a setup called 'pajama-gram') but also went whole-hog and ordered a matching set for Munchkin. Here we are looking like total dorks, posing as Peggers told us to:

I always always always forget to even explain or address this, but in case anyone caught sight of this pic & was wondered - my BRIGHT RED right arm is due to a stunningly large birthmark - specifically a port wine stain that made my life a living HELL in the elementary school years but around high school turned into a Very Cool sort of thing to have and in college became a total non-issue........ I actually remember a few years ago reading out loud one of those absurd Cosmo or other girlie magazine quizzes to Peggers about compatibility or something - and the quiz asked "if you were to put just your right hand out with a hundred other peoples right hand, could your husband/boyfriend figure out which one was yours and why?" and just SNORTED in response. ;)

....and here is a lovely little picture of the Munchkin and I snuggling in our matching pj's on his Big Boy Bed, which currently is made up with some very sporting monkey sheets.........




Happy belated Mama's Day, and Happy Weekend to Everyone as well! Here's to springtime knitting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Running Around

Today is a Running Around kind of day. This morning after dropping off my son at daycare I picked up our cleaning woman & we went back home to clean the house for an hour & a half. Sounds very la-di-da, doesn't it? What if I tell you that our official Cleaning Woman is 15 years old, the oldest daughter of our home-daycare provider & that she did the vaccuuming and dusting while I did the bathroom cleaning, the floor washing, the sweeping & the taking-out-the-garbage -ing?

Yeah, not so glamorous. But damn, my ducks, if my house isn't CLEAN - and as we've arranged to try this out every Friday for a month or two it's going to stay that way for at least a little bit. What a lovely thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning after a hard week's work!

Once at work I worked for 2 hours on the desk, then went for a 45 minute walk in 81 degree heat (ah, thank you back-up deodorant stashed in my desk!) , then drove home to get the dog, then to the vet's, then back home to drop off the dog, then back to work. (It takes 1 hour do do this, unfortunately.) And now I'm here at work for all of 45 minutes before I go to meet Kim for our twice-weekly knitting meeting.

Yes, indeed, you all SHOULD feel sorry for me! LOL.

Happily my weekend will be much calmer - tomorrow AM I'm springing for breakfast at our favorite place - Panera Bread Company - after which we are going to load up our trailer with two loads of compost (one for friends who are trailer-less and one for me) and then I head off to work (ahem, to KNIT) for 4 hours in a peaceful, air-conditioned library. After that, who knows? Fun and revelry with The Munchkin and Peggers. Sunday - on Momma's Day - I'm going to ask for yet another Panera breakfast (hey, a girl has her preferences!) and then we spread out the compost on the garden & cut some oak plywood for the built-in bookshelves we're going to install the weekend after next. All Glamor All The Time - that's the motto here at Chez Pointy Sticks!!!

I have been having some absolutely FANTASTIC e-mail exchanges lately that I just have to clue you in on. First, from my To:Sockpal (i.e. the one that I am mailing socks TO) - she is a sassy & hysterical thing, and I adore reading her blog and we've had these e-mails exchanges that just crack me up. I can't say too much about her for fear that I'll totally give it away, but she's also in the field of education which is fun, and has the mouth of a sailor, which I totally adore as well. She loves the colour pink and does NOT like any shades of yellow, which totally threw me for a bit, as I'm definitely NOT a pink sort of girl, but I did some scouting and looking and have come up with some majorly beautiful options for her socks (and again, I'm knitting these in a slightly shorter version, in case you don't remember...).....................which leads me to my second set of e-mails that I've been loving lately.

Jessie (as in Jessie from 'What Housework?') was a top choice of mine all along to do the hand-dying for this yarn, as I've already scored - what - about 5 or 6 skeins of Gryphon's sockyarn and while I just LOVE it I figured I really should branch out & not be a greedy pig and take all of her stash. (Altho' reading her most recent post it appears that as she has a whopping 25 pounds of un-dyed sock yarn there might actually be more than enough for everyone to get some at the moment!) So I shot Jessie a heads-up e-mail some time back to see if this prospect would be okay with her, and sure enough - she was up for the challenge. Of course, with such an amazingly beautiful yarn studio just opening up for her to work in, I don't blame her at being interested in an excuse to play around in there!!!! So yesterday Jessie and I had this huge e-mail exchange about colour and fiber and suchlike - and the upshot of it was that I finally settled on this luxurious sounding merino/bamboo/nylon blend that she just got in (sooo soft and perfect for spoiling my sock pal!) in a host of subtle pinks. These are the pictures that I e-mailed Jessie to give her the gist of what I was talking about/thinking of:

(The beaded Tilli Thomas skein is probably my favorite, but the coiled Pink Posies is also lovely, and the Handmaiden Rose is beautiful too, and I also love the shocking silkiness of the hot pink T. Thomas as well.....all beautiful shades!)

Despite the fact that I'm not a pink girl I'm seriously getting wired-ly excited about these. There's something about the ultra-feminine shades that I think we're going to end up with here, with just that tiny wee bit of sassy sexiness mixed in (not to mention the fishnet-stocking-seam invoking lace windows that go right up the back of the leg!) plus the soft and silky yarn that is - hopefully - going to make these socks true winners. I figure heck, anyone who works in the educational field (and people, let me tell you without going into surprise-revealing-detail that this woman isn't just an educator, she's an Educator!) needs some pure luxury every now and then......

Even better is the fact that I've started Chart #2 on my Icarus, which means that the end is officially Within Sight, so despite the fact that the rows just keep getting looooonger and loooonger every time, I'm excited and having a lot of fun with that particular knit. Plus knowing that some huge bundles (I asked Jessie to make about 700 yards of this for me, as my Pal has muscular calves & I'm making these almost-knee high & lord knows I don't want to run out!!!) of pink and silky goodness are making their way towards me in the next few weeks gives me extra incentive to finish the shawl ASAP!

And now - finally - my final e-mail happiness lately. Have you seen in the comments section the messages from my From:Sockpal? (I.e. the one who is making me [!!!] a pair of socks?) I had guessed this at an earlier comment of hers, but with her last post she cinched it - she's Foreign!

Do you guys know how much I **adore** foreign??? I have briefly lived in New Zealand, and I lived for a longer time in Botswana, Africa, and I used to live very close to the US/Canadian border and as such have a total love of All Things Canadian - so my suspicion that my From:Sockpal is from Canada (she mentions crossing the border with studied casualness - ooh! aahhh!!!) is just absolutely making my day. Nay - making my week! Not only is she foreign (ah - another person who sticks a "U" in the word 'colour'!) but she's also working really hard to produce a pair of sock that I'll like - how could she not be my new Bestest Pal as a result? Plus she's also in the educational field - what are the odds that both of my pals and myself all do the same thing, huh??????

That's it for me for now - off to meet with Kim to knit Icarus myself and to peek at her Gryphon Traveler sock (it's a thing of beauty!!!) and drink coffee. I will leave you with one last picture - I'm not nearly good enough to do an Eye Candy Friday every week, but this picture was taken 2 weeks ago with that end in mind, so here it finally is - a tree peony blossom from my back yard. Tree peonies typically take 5 years to bloom once they're planted, and the blooms are very ephemeral, but oh! Aren't they worth the wait and their limited delight??????

A Hookup Needed

I kept thinking about this idea all weekend, and mused to myself that I sounded like a druggie......

"I need the good stuff!"

"I need a hookup."

"Hey man, do you have any of the primo stuff that I can score?"

(Gryphon's hand-dyed silk in 'Foxtrot')

...however in my case what I need is 450-500 yards of worsted-weight yarn in a subtly variegated shade suitable for a leaf-themed scarf.


You see, sitting at home 2 weekends ago I was feeding the Munchkin bites of mushroom & cheese omelette (he out-ate me by about 2 helpings!) and listening to Sunday Edition on NPR when I heard a news story about a local-ish woman whose son had been killed over in Iraq...........and how the first anniversary of his death was coming up on Mother's Day. Sitting there listening to her talk about her loss, and her struggle to not only come to terms with such a impossible thing but to also how she tried to console her remaining two children as they tried to figure out how to live with such a loss absolutely crushed me. Sitting there with my little guy eagerly eating mushrooms and proudly showing me how he could fork up a mouthful with only a little bit of spillage (cutlery skills are high-up on his list of Things I'm Proud Of at the moment!) I sat and listened and just cried. Particularly on hearing how this mom found out the news of her son when some Marines walked up to her while she was gardening outside on a lovely spring day.............and thought how that all too easily could have been me. How maybe possibly if the Munch decides to go against most of what I believe in (being raised a Quaker and therefore quietly and vehemently anti-fighting) and what his father would undoubtedly council - how it could even actually be me someday.



So I tried to think of what to do. I just couldn't get that image out of my mind - that of a woman working in her garden, surrounded by the warm smell of dirt and seeing little fat seedlings pushing out of her garden, having these strange men walk up to her - and having her probably know immediately what it meant the second she saw them.

So - lacking anything else to do - I thought I'd knit her something. I figured that anyone who was working in her garden in May was probably a basic nature-ish person - and so something nature-ish based would be appreciated and possibly even worn. Which made me think of leaves and trees and shoots - - which made me think of the Backyard Leaves scarf by Annie Modsitt in Interweave's Scarf Style book. I looked through my stash, and didn't see anything that would fit - as this is an Important Knitting Project and none of my acrylic-ish beginning knitter yarn that I have steadfasted refused to throw out and so still remains in my stash even came close to being nice & important enough.

(Another hand-dyed silk of Gryphon's - this one her 'Flamenco' colourway)

So what I am doing is asking for any and all recommendations & potential yarn 'hookups' that I can get. I know what they recommend for the scarf, but I think that the Karabella Aurora 8 is only ho-hum when placed against what I **could** knit the scarf out of. See Gryphon's examples for what I mean.......altho' there are loads of folks out there (Jessie, Sundara, Handpainted Yarn, etc.) who could also serve as excellent examples of the kind of truly primo yarn that I'm talking about. (I'm just guessing that Gryphon won't sue me for pirating her images to use in this post without first asking for permission, hence why I went and shamelessly stole images from her Etsy shop!)

;>