Progress

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!

A Light Bulb Finally Turns On

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?

Rain, rain, go away!

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

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

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!