Another catch-up Post

I had finished a post & hit the 'Publish' button only to see it show up several posts back on my queue list - - I'm guessing that's because I had started and saved it as a draft back at the beginning of the month. But no worries - at least it's THERE and can finally be read!

Still nothing but dire medical news from home these days - so I'm knitting and fretting and trying to find something useful to do that doesn't involve buckets of wine, slabs of chocolate, or else walking across the entire damn state in an attempt to give my worrying/fretting nogging a break. Luckily knitting at least distracts me a bit. I'm still working on R's hat and waiting for our Artyarns Royal Silk order to come in. Hopefully tomorrow - Saturday at the latest!

In the meantime, here is a very brief FO - a knitted purse that I made for my mother-in-law as a thank-you for coming to spend almost an entire week with the Munchkin while he was (happily) ill with rotovirus. Not only did that require her to change extremely disgusting diapers, but she also did some of her son's laundry - really more than anyone could have asked for - and all for free, to boot! So who am I to not make her some sort of thank-you present?

(and I should note that my sewing skills aren't fantastic, so while the 4-hour knitting of this was a breeze, I might have mumbled a few curses over the inexpertly-sewn in lining....so please be kind when you review that particular aspect of it!)

Knitted from a basic pattern I found in a knitting magazine whose name I currently can't remember. Not an Interweave - one I found in Barnes & Noble and fell upon in a knitting-magazine dry spell frenzy. It even has this purse on the cover - in bright blueberry blue. If anyone is really that curious I'll look it up for you - just ask.

She likes pink - luckily! I used one strand of something fairly chunky found at Michael's along with a strand of pinky shiny stuff (a Patons brand, if memory serves) along with at the same time. Happily enough she loved it - so all ended well in what will probably be my one and only purse-knitting attempt!

Woefully Behind

I am terribly terribly behind in my posts - I have been a virtual knitting MACHINE lately - - I'm on my third Shedir, and have started the Green Tea Raglan out of my plum-coloured bamboo (a yarn that is everything - and more! - that it was promised to be!!!!) Before I finished the 2nd Shedir I knocked out a knitted & lined purse for my mother-in-law and between finishing the 2nd Shedir and starting the third I also churned out a Shetland Triangle shawl for my grandmother in a mere two days.

I am on FIRE.

(whose knitting skills I am drawing on to do all this, I have no earthly c-l-u-e!)

Luckily, though, while I'm behind on posting I at least have pictures of everything and will try my absolute best to post as many descriptive and picture-laden posts as humanly possible this coming week. Happily enough I'm not planning on having a second bout of the stomach flu (what happened to me LAST Monday morning from 2-6:30 AM!!!) and so should not miss work and correspondingly be behind at work for an entire work as a consequence....and so should have loads of time to post & wrote & edit pictures.

But in the meantime I'll leave you all with a picture of the new yarn that lays immediately on my horizon - and the best part? I didn't even have to pay for it! (Of course, neither do I get to keep the finished product, but that's okay - I'm totally willing to sacrifice long-term gains for short-term greedy-animal gratification!)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...................I can hardly wait to get my hands on it!!!!!!

I Don't Believe I Just Did That

I'm totally jumping the gun here, as I have a post edited & 90% written, just waiting to be posted, and I finished a Knitted Object yesterday (started & finished!) and have pictures of that to show you too, but first I apparently must post about what I just did.

I got the new Interweave Knits mag (Spring) in the mail yesterday and looked through it last night between the hours of 12:30 and 4 AM during which I was up with my son as he played in our living room. (UGH!)

And today, while at work, I went online and bought yarn for two sweaters I saw in there yesterday. TWO.

I just hopped online, did some comparison shopping, and then hit "Add To Cart" and bought a grand total of 18 skeins of yarn.

Man. O Man. I never EVER do stuff like that!

(should I blame it on the lack of sleep and cold that is slowly but surely overtaking my body?)

I bought 5 skeins of SouthWest Trading Company's Bamboo in Plum - the most amazing colour that will just be so much fun to wear. Plus the yarn should be incredible - all of the raving reviews really sold me on this stuff - plus 5 skeins of it (and 5 is buying one too many, but better to have one extra than be one short, right?) at only $12/skein is MUCH better than buying the pattern-required Classic Elite Bam Boo - at $7.50/skein but having to buy a whopping THIRTEEN skeins! (Classic Elite comes at only 77 yds/skein, but SWT Bamboo comes at an amazing 250yds/skein!!!) A grand total savings of over $30.

The Bamboo in Plum is for the Green Tea Raglan by Cathy Payson that is on page 56 of IK.

Which I will present to you here & now:

I've been dying to knit (myself) a raglan for AGES now - and I adore adore adore the way that the designer contrasted the smooth knit of the sleeves with the seed stitch of the body - and the way that there is a teeny slight break between the body & the shaping stitch before you hit the sleeves.......well I could go on & on. Simple as anything yet stunning, I think - and while I know that someone of my hourglass-type shape needs to wear v-necks to help keep me even more shape-focused and defined I think this boat-ish neckline will still look nice on me - and the knitted belt (if indeed I decide to go ahead with it) will help to add definition to my waist even more.

So, that's sweater #1 - I can HARDLY wait to get cracking on it!!!

Sweater number two lept out at me almost as quickly. I sat and stared at the sleeves a bit until I suddenly realized that I could ignore the extra cable on the sleeve that was so distracting to me and that would make an already-incredible sweater all that much more incredible (although bearing in mind Emily's advice about designers throwing in extra stitches to compensate for the amazing way that cables pull in a knitted fabric I might need to swatch a bit and cut back on my number of sleeve stitches correspondingly!) and with that realization I was a goner again for a second time.

(Now just think about this - how many times have you seen a sweater in a magazine that you just loved and how many times have you gone out and bought the yarn for it RIGHT AWAY? I've never done it - never! - and today I did it not once but twice!!!

Sweater number two calls for 8 skeins of Gems Worsted at $14.50 a skein - a grand total of $116. NO WAY. I know it's a cheap hobby when you break it down by time spent and total cost per minute/hour/etc. but still. I couldn't bring myself to do that. So instead I went looking for worsted weight substitutes and remembering a favorite blogger's passion for elann I went looking there and found myself just drooling over their Peruvian Pure Alpaca - but what colour? The price was certainly VERY right - and I needed 13 skeins due to slightly shorter yardage per ball but still - at $3.98 per ball you do the math and realize how much I was saving on this sweater by again switching yarns! I looked at all of the colours and then looked at the top of the page where they had some already-knit items and saw this picture below which is apparently the 'Lift & Separate Cardigan' from Amy Singer's Big Girl Knits. Also knit in Peruvian Pure Alpaca and the colour just LEPT out at me........

But which colour was it? Was it in a now-discontinued colour, or was it in a currently available colour and due to monitor differences I just couldn't really tell which colour it was? I thought I knew - but a look at the colour card that Elann offers made me doubt myself. So I spent about 45 minutes looking all around all over trying to find out WHAT colour this sweater was knit in and then simply decided "oh the hell with it!" and went ahead and bought myself enough yarn in their 'Celery' dyelot and figured that probably no matter what I'd be happy with any shade between what seems to be the two that I keep finding in my searches.

But which sweater is it ultimately for, you ask?

Why, the Cable-Down Raglan by Stefanie Japel, of course!

The part that I don't like on the sleeve is the simpler of the two cables - the ones that appear to be on the 'sides' of the arm - both front and back. Makes it far too busy to my eye and really detracts from that most incredible cable that runs down over the to of the shoulder straight down to the back of the wearer's wrist. So I'll take those cables out and it will - I think - make the sweater look all that much more incredible because of it. And the way that the simple cables on the back of the sweater pull it in like a corset? For a curvy girl like me that's how you spell love love love in wool!!!

So - that's what I did and that's how I spent the last four hours..............between answering reference questions and putting more paper in the printer, of course!

;>

Twisted Stitches and Peacocks

(Editorial Note: This is a Catch-Up Post that I had started but not posted from about, oh, 3 weeks ago!)

I tried to take some pretty pictures of my past Shedir-in-progress hat - - as after all one of my New Year's resolutions was to do a better job on the photo front in '07. Now granted, I'll never be as good as Mr. Brooklyntweed (nor will I ever be able to purchase a camera as expensive as the one he apparently owns and uses!) but still, I could most certainly improve from my more-typical "stuck wherever it happens to fall" type shot of the past. So I set up my 3/4 finished Shedir and started snapping away........and you know of course what immediately happened, don't you?

(You can see his little feet at the top of this particular pic. To say that he was a wee bit annoyed because I was taking pictures of something/someone other than HIM is a serious understatement! He kept putting his head in front of/behind my knitted object and saying !!!!CHEESE!!! while squinching his eyes completely shut and baring all of his teeth. His classic 'photogenic' smile of the moment............)

So anyway, this is the Shedir That Was. This particular hat is now long finished, washed, blocked, and gifted - and my friend said that her sister (34 years old, 3 weeks past brain surgery to remove a huge tumor plus one of her inner ears, currently residing in a nursing home where she will stay and recover for another 2-3 months) was thrilled with it. Didn't register what it was at first, but once S put it on her head for her and adjusted what little hair the surgeons left in a more normal style under/around the hat she said that she just BEAMED. And S, normally an extremely reticent sort of person, was actually so happy that she hugged me as thanks when she told me all of this. So most certainly worth ripping out several rows (several times, if truth be told!) to get the cables RIGHT.

I have moved on to my second Shedir - and am pleased to say that now that I totally 'get' the way that these cables work I no longer have to read the pattern - and as such the 5 main pattern repeats literally FLY by. I'm already to the decrease section after only 2-3 days of working on it.

Here is the one and only artsy shot of the second Shedir that came out barely decently enough to share - this one for a co-worker's mom who was diagnosed with liver cancer several months ago and is finishing up treatment and just now losing her hair...

I found out that 100% ktbl stitches is the only way to go on cables when it comes to my knitting - makes everything a zillion times more crisp & clean. Likewise I wish I had done the ktbl when I was doing the k1p1 ribbing - and I also wish (!) that I hadn't done the tubular cast on for it. While it looks LOVELY - and was a good thing to practice and learn how to do, it is a bit less stretchy than my normal Twisted German cast on and therefore isn't (I don't think) quite as good.

Happily enough my stepfather is going to benefit from all of these lessons - his hat is a Twisted German cast-on with 100% twisted stitches from the very get-go. Unhappily enough his first chemo treatment hasn't done what we had hoped & been told it would - and rather than significantly cutting the pain it has left him in even more pain with laryngitis and increased weight loss to boot - only 3 days after treatment. He goes in to see his doctors tomorrow and I'm hoping that they'll be able to admit him to the hospital to properly treat the pain - as the combined Vicodin and Morphene that he's currently on just isn't cutting it. Dark days indeed.

These socks were finished & gifted weeks ago - and the recipient (another Susan!) told me just last week that she is absolutely in love with them. Soft as soft can be (Emily's gift of Shaffer Anne didn't go to waste!) and warm warm warm - and with last week's temps of 8 and 10 degrees she needed warm feet! The pattern is one I made up myself - but please, I followed a basic sock pattern (64 sts) - did a feather & fan pattern down until they were anklet length - then did a basic eye of partridge heel flap, turned the heel, then picked up & decreased until I was back to 64 stitches. Then I did a.....oh, what is that called...............a toe where it decreases in a large spiral. I used the description from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks and followed it to the letter and just adored the way that it turned out.

A work in progress shot still on the needles...................

And a Finished Object! I adored the way that the decreases went when I decreased down from picking up stitches along the heel flap. Such a crisp clean diagonal edge!

Of caps & rotoviruses

The Munchkin is finally better. After looking at his symptoms we finally realized that he had come down with the rotovirus - which can be potentially quite nasty and hospital-stay requiring - - so on the grand scheme of things we actually got through with very little damage done. Things started to significantly clear up last Friday, and by Sunday he was back to his old self, and Monday happily saw him running into his daycare provider's house screeching out the names of his buddies at the top of his little thrilled lungs. Being at home with Mommy & Grandma for a full week is BORING compared to hanging and playing with like-aged friends all day, let me tell you!

I, on the other hand, simply sagged with relief at the QUIET once the door closed behindThe Munch and Peggers Monday morning - so much so that I ended up simply sitting with my borrowed laptop at the dining room table drinking coffee and catching up on library e-mail and work until roughly 2 PM, at which point I realized that no - I was not actually going in to work that day! I did get in some knitting while I caught up on e-mail and work (of course!) and was happy to report that Tuesday morning around 11 AM I slipped the very last stitch of my first Shedir off the needle. It is a beautiful beautiful pattern - and the end result is quite lovely, even if the colour wasn't necessarily one I would have chosen for myself. In my delight I - of course - cast on the second hat that same evening - but this time I took a nod from Brooklyntweed's post about starting his second Shedir and tried a tubular cast on for it. And while I love the tubular cast on's smoothness and...........unique tube-y look, I'm a bit worried that I'm not going to have enough yarn to finish (it was very very close last time around!) and that the tubular isn't a stretchy enough cast-on for a hat. However as I ripped out a good half of the first Shedir (not all at once - I'd knit about 15 rounds, rip back 3, knit 8 rounds, rip back 4, etc. ) before I really got the hang of it, I know that this particular type of Rowan is some Very Tough Yarn, and can take being cast-on, knitted, and ripped without any harm.

So while things were still a bit on edge (unhappily enough Peggers had picked up the Munch's viral unhappiness, so not everyone here at Chez Pointy Sticks is feeling well at the moment) things were at least peaceful.

Then the news came that a PET scan had just been ordered by the doctors, as they now suspect that the lymphoma is actually originating from an organ or bone - which would mean an automatic diagnosis at Stage IV and I was reeling again. So I went out and paced the streets around campus for an hour to get my brain to shut up, and then went back and was able to get some work done..........and came home hoping for a nice quiet night and a fire in the fireplace (as the forecast was for night-time temperatures of 18 degrees!) to calm me down and keep me just enough on the sane side of things to function........only to find a frigid domicile and a broken furnace.

These Are (Bad) Days. (To quote Natalie Murchant & her horde of Maniacs. )

I had chocolate and red wine for dinner after the Munch went to sleep.

So the emergency technician came after a frosty two hours of waiting (thank GOD for wood stoves!) and fixed it........and we woke up this morning to a thermostat registering 61 degrees but that was set to maintain a temperature of 67. So another call went in to the heating people & I ran to work, loaded up the laptop again with some new necessary software, grabbed my thrilling book on Copyright Law, and came back home to haul a ton of wood into the house to keep the stove stoked up on high all night if need be, cleaned out an entire half of the garage, moved an eighth of a cord of wood from outside storage to in-the-garage storage (despite being off the ground & covered by a tarp, our outside-stored wood was growing MUSHROOMS.............anyone want to guess why the wood was mostly smoking instead of burning? Hmmmmm???????????), emptied all the garbage cans in the house (7!) and did two loads of laundry. Then sat down at the dining room table again with my trusty laptop and created fairly boring web pages about Copyright Law and what that means for faculty and their classroom activities.

I let our lovely friendly technician in when he showed up, happily heard the heat kick on (by then I was FREEZING - for despite the wood stove's best efforts it was a chilly 57 degrees in the house!!!!) and somewhat-less happily heard him tell me that it was a stuck pressure valve...which they didn't have in stock, and would have to order, and which wouldn't be in until tomorrow. But 'sokay, as he showed me how to whack the faulty valve with the handle of a screwdriver if it decides to get shirty with me between now & then.

My kind of technician!!!!!

So now Peggers is home early and I have a whole 20 minutes to do another few rounds on my second Shedir before he and I toddle off together to get the Munchkin - and as it's his night to cook that means that I get to play play play with my little one while he figures out dinner (or takes us out on his dime - either one is fair play!) and then after dinner it'll be time for bath and then after bath it'll be time for bed and then after bed it'll be time for me to watch a movie (I checked out both Hedwig and the Angry Inch plus All About My Mother from work) while doing some more knitting.

So today is turning into a Much Better Day and much less of a Very Bad Day than it could have seemed this morning around 8 AM. For which I am very very grateful.

But I still have no pictures to show you - as I had my act together enough to load all of the software on the laptop, but not any knitted cap (or sock or vest) pictures!

Soon - I promise!

Some Time Out & Off

Much going on at the house these days, sadly not much of it good. A medical diagnosis of diffuse b-cell lymphoma has absolutely shaken my extended household to the core, and we're currently scrambling to find out as much as we can in as short a time as possible. On the more immediate homefront, Peggers put in his 3-weeks notice on Monday - as he is switching to a new job across the hall from his old one. We shall see how it goes - except for a select few Extra-Special people I have yet to meet a lawyer that deserves to have my husband as an employee. The Munchkin has been ill since Saturday, when he (the poor wee one!) got a nasty case of Sick Hiney (to keep things delicate, in case any of you are eating lunch while blog-surfing!) and it still is holding fast to him even today. Sick Hiney children are most certainly not allowed in daycare for general hygene / communicability issues which means that I stay home with him.........and sweat not being at work as my online teaching duties begun this past Wednesday ("only" 86 students this term!) and my physical teaching duties begin on Monday. Thank goodness my mother-in-law heeded our pleas for help and swooped in like a rescuing angel - not only did she hang with the Munch for two full days (cheerfully changing NASTY diapers!) but she also did laundry & dishes. I told her that at this rate she could easily be begged to stay until he hit 18, but alas her husband wants her back tomorrow morning.

And me? I have a kidney infection.

Add to that 2-year molar teething issues that result in nonstop PM nursing screaming fits from the little guy (either that or 2-4 hour periods of absolute wakefulness where he wants to go downstairs and "play car carriers, Mommy!") and you've got a very tired, stunned, mentally fatigued house.

Luckily I have a minor remedy for such a thing - when told of the lymphoma diagnosis I was just so upset that I can't help in the immediate span of things - so I did what any good knitter would do - I got out my needles and found a patter that worked & I plunked down my credit card to buy the Good Stuff. My four balls of Rowan Calmer arrived in the mail on Monday thanks to Elizabeth's speedy operations at the Knitting Garden and I am already onto the second pattern repeat of Knitty's/Jenna Wilson's Shedir hat. I am making one for my family member, for my friend's mother who is currently battling liver cancer, and for my co-worker's sister who just underwent brain surgery to have one of her inner ears and a huge twisted tumor removed from the very core of her noggin. Needless to say all three of these people need hats ASAP. I'm knitting just the one now, but after that one is finished I'm going to challenge my brains by casting on to do 2 hats on 2 circulars - much faster that way, I'm thinking!

The astute amongst yourselves will have done the math & realize that I said I ordered 4 balls of Calmer & have only listed 3 people that I'm knitting them for - happily enough the 4th hat (and because of this, last on my priority list) is for the brain-surgery woman's niece. Who is just fine - she just loved the hat pattern & the actual Calmer yarn-Calmer colour. *Yes, Rowan's yarn which is called Calmer also has a colour called Calmer - isn't that confusing? The other two Calmer yarn colours that I ordered were Slosh & Coffee Bean.

Pretty things - and this stuff knits up like a dream.

And thanks to Grumperina's brilliance (and her incredible generosity in sharing it!) the whole cabling thing is going like a breeze due to her cabling w/out a cable needle instructions.........

So anyway, I'm going to be off & away for a bit - until the little guy is better enough to go back to daycare - I'll have a wireless DSL connection, so I might pop in and out for a bit - expect pictures of knitted hats soon, that's for sure!

Two down, one to go

I finished the flap hat last night, which I've decided is certainly bound for the arts auction in town. This will be my second auction submission (a knitted Calorimetry out of some VERY itchy SWS is also up on the auction chopping block) and once I finish a knitted lining for another hat I will submit a grand total of three in to the Grand Auction Master sometime next week.

I knitted a yellow liner for it out of some label-less pale yellow cotton-blend-ish stuff that I bought way back when to do the intarsia work on Munchkin's rooster sweater. Which makes me think that it was Debbie Bliss, as pretty much the whole sweater was made from DB. Which is why it cost me $70 in yarn to make a baby sweater. Heh, what a sucker I am!



So I knitted (ripping back a few times as the gauge was totally different so I just had to fudge the stitch count as I went along) the liner, blocked it overnight, and then sewed it in last night as Peggers & I watched The Committments. I cut & twisted & tied the tassels this morning.



Overall I like it, and think that hopefully/probably someone will bid on it. But my question is - what should I price it? I'm supposed to assign it a price on the submission sheet - which is where I'm running into a snag. Description, no problem. Care? Easy to write down! But a PRICE????

Honestly for this if a friend wanted to buy it off of me I'd look at the price of the Patons SWS skein ($4.50) & figure maybe another fifty cents for the black wool of the wave pattern & the leftover yellow for the lining and charge maybe $5, $6 at the most. But I know that if I did that for the auction that ultimately the charity that the money goes towards would lose out.

Any suggestions?????????????????

To Instant Gratification & Back Again

Oh, but here's to instant gratification.

You see the pattern while looking during the day - you go and buy the yarn that night, and by the next morning you have cast on & knitted this much:


And the next day (only taking as long as the next day because you're really, really tired & can't stay up more than, oh 10 rows worth after 10:30 PM) you cast off. Only to find that due to your sheer animal greed & inability to wait more than five seconds your gauge is a wee bit off. And the thing is flippin' HUGE. HUGE. So what do you do - have your friend (R - she of the clapotis) try it on & rip back as much (or as little, she's got a LOT of hair!) as needed and fix it?

Heck no, what you do is put it on the back burner until the next time you see R (rather than go & actively seek her out for a head-fitting) and instead cast on for a second Calorimetry for yourself, instead out of this - Paton's SWS in I forget which colour:

But this one, instead of following the pattern (hey, I may be animalistic & greedy, but at least I'm not COMPLETELY witless!) and knitting the 16 rows or suchlike of all the same instead I knit until I thought the sucker was half big enough and then started the decrease section. And because I couldn't help myself and had wanted to try out the stitch for ages I did the entire middle swath of the hat/headband in Grumperina's Shifting Sands. And now I'm completely enamored of S.Sands and am dying to try it out in more of a....laceweight. But I'm wondering how much of the pattern beauty would be lost in something so thin.





So I like my new Calorimetry very very much, and am hoping to meet up with R in the next week or two for some coffee/tea/chatting and a hat-try-on-session. It's a bit itchy, though. I'd like to knit a liner - but it would have to be something VERY VERY thin (which means loads of stitches & tons of time to knit it - which means UGH in my book!), so I'm wondering if that's actually going to happen.

But moving on in the Instant Gratification thought mode, I also have this to show:


This is my brother’s hat* (Swell – pattern from Knitty) done in both Paton’s SWS (Natural Denim, if memory serves) and the black yarn is just plain ol’ Lions Brand felting wool. Hey - the SWS felts readily enough if you apparently look at it the wrong way, so why not add in a little more excitement to the mix?

*post-blocking pictures coming in a day or two.

I’m quite pleased with it – a bit bummed that I have so many annoying tendrils to weave in (anyone out there who knows how to take two knitted ear flaps & gracefully/perfectly cast on the appropriate number of stitches without screwing it royally up about a dozen times PLEASE tell me the secret to your magic!) but meh – after all they’ll be covered by up the knitted lining anyway (knitted out of a highly-contrasting L.Brand felting – it isn’t nearly as itchy as the Paton’s plus it’s solid which is what I want for the lining… I’m thinking the lining will be orange (burnt umber-ish) or green (acid kiwi-ish) but don’t know which. There was the whole question as to which my brother would prefer, but as this is no longer for my brother it is now a bit of a moot point.

What’s that?

No longer for my brother?

Yeppers. That’s right.

No no no – we didn’t have a sibling spat. No no no – he hasn’t suddenly gone all Chia-Pet on me & sprouted a thick head of hair rendering himself suddenly one of Those Who Don’t Need Hats - rather it's that I knitted it in a size M (who knows how big a M is for this hat, and who knows how big his noggin is?) only to find when I'd finished that indeed a size M in this hat is just about right for...............................me. And I know one thing for certain - there's no way that a guy who is 6'6" has the same-sized head as 5'7" me.

So now the hat is for someone else - hence my indecision on the lining colour.

...............but you know, today I actually **was** personally asked to donate something knitted to a silent auction by my local county arts council raising money for the basic art programs in the area.

What does everyone think - a snazzy knitted lining fit in there and some fun ties (Ooh! Maybe even a fun tassel????) - would that befit a silent auction? The theme is "Dinner with the Bard" (honors William Shakespeare) and they expect to host about 150 people. A ear-flapp'd hat with wavy swooshes on it isn't exactly Shakespeare-themed, that's for certain. And it would be painfully embarrassing to find out that my hat was the only thing not bid on.........

...........hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................I dunno' about this one................

Any suggestions/bright ideas?

Crazybusy but fun - how was yours?

Well, PHEW! Holidays are over! Ours were extremely busy & filled with my wonderfully wacky and delightful family members (two of my siblings are shown to the right kindly walking/corralling my little Munchkin down the boardwalk, thereby keeping him from getting run over by bicyclists!) but still - all that family & planning & keeping track of things makes you a bit tired & blurry around the edges by the end of the day, you know?

I only have one knitting disaster holiday-gift story to relate (and no pics, as it was - of course! - my SuperSecret project that I had been working on, and never photographed out of fear of it being discovered...) - and that would be - again, of course! - for my husband.

I was knitting him a vest.

Notice I said 'was'. I took an Interweave Knits cabled vest pattern, threw out the cables as they'd obviously take way too long (and don't forget that I started this in - what - September?) and substituted in some nice Paton's Tweed. With some lovely Paton's Merino in an acid green for a hem liner. I knit the whole thing in the round up to the armholes at which point I divided it and started to knit flat. Then came - oh - the third weekend or so in December when I figured "heck, I won't finish this in time unless I knit it in FRONT of him, so I might as well SHOW it to him!" so out of the knitting bag came the vest and out the window went my surprise.

Imagine, then my surprise - my ducks - when I managed to put it on him and realized that really unless my husband was to suddenly morph into the Hamburgler there was no flipping way this thing was EVER going to fit him. Huge does not begin to even cover it. Monsterously huge is closer to the truth. And I even checked gauge! I was soooooooo annoyed. I was on my 5th (6th?) or so skein of yarn and it looked good! Yeah, sure, it looked BIG, but so what - the guy is 6'4" and over 200 pounds - it SHOULD look big, you know what I mean?

Bugger, I was so, so, so annoyed.

Happily though I made up for it by ripping it ALL out and deciding to being again, this time knitted in the flat instead of in the round (circs just skew any normal sense of knitting proportion, which is already skewed in the first place!) and will most certainly size it on him over and over and over again until I get it right. This is probably better, as he was able to put in a few requests - like more visible acid green on the hems and armholes - and hmmmmm........I wonder if he'd want a zipper along the front instead of a pullover version?

I also made up for my disappointment by knitting myself a hat in record (3-day) time with some handspun hand-dyed fiber that Mom had Christmas gifted me with. I used the Droplet Hat pattern from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan that Peggers so kindly got me for Christmas. (Knitting stuff for me for Christmas??? Could there be a more perfect gift?????) The colour is a bit brighter than my typical taste, but I like it muchly nonetheless. It's a wee bit roomy around the forehead, and the yarn is likewise a wee bit itchy/scratchy, so I'm in the process of knitting a ribbed headband to sew inside to both soften it up a bit and to snug up the fit. For the headband I'm using some leftover Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch that the Harlot first posted about & I promptly fell in love with. This is from my first pair of socks ever, people, so you know the kind of love I'm talking about......













I took a few blog-possible pictures of myself wearing the hat, but I just looked so stupid and fake-ly pouty (I was trying for a model pout!) that I promptly deleted them from my digital & just went for straight 'product' shots instead!

So I've now got a thing with hats. I was looking around on the various blogs, catching up on stuff, when I saw two incredibly beautiful hats via She Shoots Sheep Shots' blog and my heart just about stopped. My brother is a professional ski instructor out in Wyoming (Jackson Hole) & also is breaking into the wildlife photography business at the same time - just had a 4-photo spread in Camping Life & spent several days shooting pics for a fairly prominent fishing supply catalog. (If he told me which supply folks it went right in one ear & out the other - you know, the same way that all of our talk to our non-knitting spouses/partners/friends does when we start to use words like gauge, double-circulars, dpns, etc......) So needless to say, the guy is outside lots. And he's not a hugely curly-headed guy - he goes in for the short & practical cut - so a hat is very, very important to him.

So a passion was immediately & irrationally born. And I'm off to Michael's tonight for some Paton's SWS to buy - both for the hats for my bro & for a Calorimetry for me! Let the Good Times Roll! (Oh, and that reminds me, I'm walking daily in my new jacket & my new sports bra & will give a full report sometime soon on both. I promise. Lots of good updates on that front!)

Not like I don't have enough already-promised knitting in my future! I washed the 2nd red knee-high and still need to rip & re-knit that (note to self - order extra skein of yarn from Knit Picks for knee-high sock.) Can you believe that I have to tell myself to go & order yarn?????? So I have that to rip out & re-knit. I finished my Dusk Socks (Sundara's masterful yarn) for myself, as you can clearly see, but still have one more feather & fan to knit for my friend S - I'm almost to the heel on that one. Then also my aunt, who was visiting over the holidays, was browsing through Gaughan's Knitting Nature and asked me if I'd knit her this. To say that I'm terrified is putting it lightly. This woman - my aunt - works as a professional interior designer for Architect of the Capitol. She's daily in the White House, in Senator's offices, chatting with Congressmen about this & that - she's a brilliant brilliant fashion & design person - and she wants me to knit her a sweater? And not just any sweater - a hard sweater to knit!!!

HELP!

I'm already wondering if I can talk her into doing a Grumperina special - I mean, the sweater is nice as-is, but it's Oh-So-Much-Nicer done via Kathy's Special Treatment....

On a totally different (aka FOOD) topic can I just say that I love love love technology when it actually helps us out & saves us time instead of wastes time?

Dinner last night was:

Chili w/ my brand-spanking new adobo chili powder - made in my lovely super-duper Crock Pot. (Oh, but walking in the door after a very long day to smell that lovely smell is just **wonderful**, isn't it????)


We also had a super-cheesy carb fest that is a family favorite - Georgian (as in Eastern Europe, not as in Georgia Peach) Katchapuri. I think I have the spelling close to correct. Basically a ton of grated cheese (meunster & monterey jack) mixed w/ some beaten eggs, minced parsley, cilantro, and scallion, salt, and pepper and then mound of cheese mixture is placed in the middle of a round of luscious bread-dough (made w/ yummy stuff like milk & honey) and then sealed - and then baked until all is melted & mixed and slightly browned and just too delicious for mere words to describe. And I did the dough in our bread machine & when I came home all we had to do was mix up the cheese filling, roll out, stuff, let rise, and then bake. For non-cooking types that might sound like a lot of work, but trust me - it wasn't, and it was totally worth it.


Kind of like the apricot-amaretti ice-cream that we made earlier in the week, in our new ice-cream maker.

Here's to not only surviving the holidays but also enjoying the heck out of them as well!

......Merry Christmas to ME......

A scenic shot taken - from the end of our street - over Thanksgiving.

This will annoy my husband to no end (I know this for certain, as I *just* got off the phone with him where he told me in no uncertain terms that it annoyed him to no end) but this afternoon I bought myself a new jacket (in plum). Let's all sing together now "Merry Christmas to youuuuu, Merry Christmas to youuuuuu, Merrrryyyy Chrissssssssttttmaaaaassss Dear Suuuuuuuusan.........Meeeeeeery Chriiiiiiiiiistmasssss toooooooo youuuuuuuuuuuu..........."

After I had the Munch I did major, major breastfeeding time that took my pregnancy poundage right off - with absolutely no effort on my part - with not a little amount of chocolate, brie, pasta, and other yummy carbs being shoveled into my mouth - with no harmful effects. However since the little guy is almost completely weaned, my metabolism is finally returning to it's normal sluggish-at-best state, and while my weight briefly creeped up a few pounds this semester, it's now back to where it was pre-pregnancy. Which is approximately 10-15 pounds above where I'd like it to be. Which is where the lovely Health Magazine article on amping up your basic metabolism comes into play. While I had swam through my pregnancy & afterwards, my enthusiasm for it is seriously waning these days - something about the walk to the pool, the changing, the dampness of it all, the cold, the showering, the changing back into my work clothes - it's just something I have no interest in. But now walking - I never get tired of walking. In a bad mood? Go for a walk and amazingly enough I come back feeling better. Anxious? Depressed? Sad? A walk will clear my head like literally nothing else. Angry or frustrated? Walking just mellows me out better than a glass (or two!) of wine.

So when the Heath article tells me to amp up my resting metabolism (and in a nutshell, amp up your resting metabolism & you simply burn a ton more calories by sitting & existing than you otherwise do) by walking four times a week (twice for 30 minutes, twice for 45 minutes) and lifting some weights twice a week to pack on some calorie-burning muscle I realized that this is something I can totally do. So my walking shoes are already at work, and I know where I can go around campus to walk for just the right amount of time. However that first day that I happily went outside for a walk I came back knowing that some things would most certainly have to change so that the whole walking experience could be the lovely, lovely thing that I know for certain it can be for me.

(oh how FRUSTRATING - bear with me - this is the 2nd time I'm writing up this list, as Blogger lost it the first time around!)

Here is my list (so far) of what I need to have from here on out:

1.) A new jacket. As you already know, this has been recently purchased. In plum. It doesn't get brutally cold here, not really. Not like it does in Vermont or in Wyoming or anything. But still because of our bizarre humidity it gets wet & cold in such a way that a decent warm, padded, closely fitted jacket that keeps the coldly-freezingly wet wind off of your more tender tissues a serious necessity. And even better, the jacket unzips to be three jackets - a single outer layer, a single inner layer, and a single+outer together for the Ultimate Experience. Well worth the cashola, I'd say - staying warm while still being un-bulky enough to fit behind the wheel of a Jeep Wrangler & still easily haul the Munch in & out of his carseat? Yep yep yep - worth the price!

2. A decent wear-to-work-sportsbra. For the love of Pete, why are bras so HORRIBLE so often? The stupid strap-holding bits slide down to where they're roughly 3 feet long and before you know it you're losing - seriously losing - to gravity. A look that - correct me here if I'm wrong - we typically try our best to AVOID. Add that to a brisk 30 or 45 minute walk & add in chafing, scratching back hooks, dripping sweat as there is NO wicking ability in a basic bra - and you've got a very annoyed walker. Find a typical sports bra and you've suddenly got one huge monobreast that spans the entire width of your chest and makes you look like you've been drawn through the eyeball of a cyclops who can't focus on two things at once. I wanted & needed something that I could wear to work and keep me separate & lifted & comfy yet could also handle a sweaty walk in the middle of the day. Leave it to the folks at Title Nine to know exactly what it was that I needed. I ordered one yesterday in black - if I like it a second one will most certainly be purchased in white in a few months.

3. Sunglasses. Man but it's bright out there! I go out & squint which means eyestrain which means headaches & problems. And as someone who is already legally blind without her glasses/contacts lenses (but I have 20/15 vision with my contacts in!) more eyestrain is simply not allowed. Preferably with truly decent UV protection & maybe even polarized to kill the glare.

4. Chapstick. Needing it & not having it is seriously, seriously annoying. A tube that will never, ever leave my new & nifty jacket.

5. Gloves. My hands do lots of swinging when I walk - which means that they get very very cold. I'm not a hands-in-pockets kind of girl or walker, I guess. Plus I need gloves for my drive into work - I had a lovely lined leather pair last year but the dog ate them. Bad dog! Bad dog! Which is why when I saw these for the eye-bulging price of $49 I was seriously reluctant to order them - after all, that's an expensive dog toy in my book! (Plus - honestly - who could choose - brown or black?) I'm guessing that I'm instead going to go with these in (again) plum to match my jacket when they're back in stock.

6. A hat. I was browsing through the hats online at LL Bean & Title Nine & Athleta when suddenly I smacked myself on the head and thought "ohmygod are you KIDDING ME? You're thinking of BUYING a hat when what you obviously need to do - you stupid braindead woman - is make one for yourself????" Now the question is not what hat to buy but rather what hat to make. As I've had my eye on this one and this and this other one for quite some time now. Huh - although I just saw this in the new Knitty issue..... (A note to folks - in order to find the above links I had to search through Knitty's revamped archive/pattern pages about a million times - now instead of one master archive page divided by category - socks, hats, cardigans, etc. - you have to click on then search through each issue one at a time. A very, very bad reorganization decision on their part!!!)

So that is what I have been doing, thinking about, and working on all day today. And not working on the book intro like I'm supposed to have been doing. Ah well - tomorrow is yet another day!


And just so that this blog isn't completely picture-less I just put in a pic up at the very top - we live near a large cemetery in town and at the back of the cemetery there is a large & lovely pond. That was the view across the pond back in November.

The picture above is of *the* most incredible banana bread that I've had in a long long time. Clotilde's flamed-banana bread made with Emily's pecans that she sent me in my care package. YUM YUM YUM. Must make more very very soon! The only thing I'd do different is to coarsely chop the pecans after I was done praline-ing them, as - as you can see - they were a bit big in the end product.

Surfacing

The past several weeks have felt like I've been submerged, under very very thick & choppy water which in reality was too much work & stress at work, a young son who has been waking up much MUCH too early (4:50 AM, anyone?), a violent allergic reaction due to a mold infestation in the building, and just general insanity & traveling & holiday cheer-lessness.

This afternoon - after a good 15 minutes of watching home video clips of said young son, I finally feel as if I'm emerging and surfacing from my pool of stress and general malaise.

So here - finally - are pictures of some mega-finished-objects. Two single socks, one partially finished sock that will finish up the pair, and some shots of finished Red Knee-Highs on Mr. Peggers himself. Now, unfortunately, remember that one of those knee-highs will be ripped back so that I can knit the toe longer than it currently is. I don't think that I'll be able to salvage the yarn enough to re-use it, so an extra skein of KnitPicks will need to be purchased. Which, as I'm hoping to buy a bunch of KnitPicks after the holidays to knit myself Amelia's Jemima - which I am totally and thoroughly in love with and have high high hopes for (especially after my J. Crew chocolate brown cashmere sweater went missing over a year ago) isn't really any sort of a tragedy by any means!

First, after such a long wait - Red Knee Highs, modeled by Mr. You-Know-Who himself!








This first picture cracks me up, as just behind Peggers you can see The Munchkin come running into the kitchen to see what Mommy & Daddy have the audacity to be doing without him!

Calf shaping. If you squint, you can *almost* see it!

Next some socks. I'm almost done with both of my Dusk socks (selfish selfish me!) and just two days ago finished the first sock for my friend S. She was owed socks from ages ago when she decided to start knitting them on her own....so we both ordered sock yarn and some really nice Addi circs to get started. Then she decided that knitting tiny yarn on tiny needles just wasn't at all her thing, so she gave them ALL TO ME. All of them - the Addis, the yarn - all of it! So I promised her a pair of socks in return.

So - the blue socks are for yours truly, while the single green one is for her. The yarn I used for S's sock is actually an incredible, incredible gift from Emily. For which I have never - horridly - thanked her. But will certainly & properly do so very soon.


The cuff is a basic k/p with twisted knitting stitches, and then plain for the leg. I did a Sherman heel (love love love those!!!!!) and the toe I did a-la Mean Girl Jen & did it in twisted ribbing to match the cuff. Like that ribbed toe, I do I do!

One green, one blue.

Stunningly enough, I actually took truly properly detailed notes on this sock! The cuff is done on 72 sts and done in a basic feather/fan pattern. 9 repeats & then in one round decrease to 64 sts for the rest of the sock. I did the heel in a heel flap - eye of partridge. (I figured w/ these peacock-y colours, that keeping to a bird motif would be appropriate - oui?) After I did the flap & picked up for the gusset I just did the basic decrease until I was down to 64 sts again I knit until it was time to do the toe, then I decreased for that in a star decrease like the directions for the Embossed Leaves sock told me to do. Then when I had 4 sts left I ran the yarn through, and wove in my 2 ends. Easy as can be! I double-checked it with S and it fits perfectly - so I cast on for the pair yesterday & will join and begin knitting on it again tonight.

The yarn is Schaefer in the superwash-blend "Anne" that (again) Emily gave to me. Isn't it STUNNING?????? The woman obviously has very very good taste!

So in a brief yet picture-heavy nutshell, that is what I've been doing with myself for the past - oh - 4 or 5 weeks!

I'm still working on my Super-Secret Project - and will update you on that as soon as possible. Gee, could it possibly be Christmas knitting???????????

:)

I Lied

I have done no knitting this week. NONE. It's been another icky busy week at work, full of running around during the day and collapsing in a heap at night. To add to the ickyness my building has become infested with mold in the ventilation system - a substance that while I typically adore in cheese and other foodstuffs, I am violently allergic to when it's floating around in the air. This has meant me shuffling around from building to building, trying to bum a wireless-capable laptop and trying to find a wireless-capable spot to park my bum and get necessary work done.


I finished the Red Knee-Highs on Sunday - and of course knitted the second foot too small. {SIGH} Would have helped tremendously if I would have actually taken notes on what I was doing the first time around, huh???????

I'm hoping knitting will happen before the month is out!

Still Here...

...just buried under tons of grading, final exam insanity, and the particular hellishness of three candidates visiting campus this week. Next week promises to be better.

Happily enough, though, I *have* been knitting. What I have not been doing is photographing that knitting. That will be next week.




I do, however, have a photo for Eye Candy Friday.

It's been very, very foggy here lately. 'Tis quite cool.

My Life My Blog

Concept courtesy of January One's website......

...self portrait with Takezo, the wonder puppy...

More Sock & More Monks

I'm just not too sure about this sock. I think the monks are fantastic, and they're totally sending me good vibes & karma & everything...................but this picot edge just isn't doing it for me. Neither, I have to say, is the size. I did a test swatch and EVERYTHING and measured my calf......just like the YH tells you to in her 'sock' chapter, but somehow it just seemed way too big. 10.5" around my calf, at 7 sts/inch comes out to 75 stitches, that's a no-brainer, but the more I knit it, the bigger it looked until finally this afternoon I totally chickened out and decreased every five stitches down to a grand total of 60. Now I'm thinking I'm totally s.o.l. and that I need to un-stitch down the picot edge and un-ravel everything and re-cast on again for the sucker. Which might mean that I totally skip the picot edge this time around and instead go for a k2p2 ribbing, where I knit into the back of each knit stitch - a look that gives me total hand cramp but I like nonetheless.

(Okay, I just tried it on and I am **so** not in love with this sock. It totally has to go. As I can only find 4 of my size 1 dpns I was knitting on three - and I'm just not good enough to knit on three without having ladders appear at the needle junctions. Knitting with five needles is NO problem, but knitting with a grand total of four is just beyond my ability. So a picot edge that I don't like PLUS ladders? Bye-bye sock! This yarn is just too amazingly beautiful to not do it right. It was actually a gift from R in exchange for knitting her clapotis - isn't that just the best gift in the world???)

Anyway, on to the monks!


The Munchkin's daycare is closed today, so my mother-in-law has graciously come up for the day to babysit the little guy. This morning (before nap!) she brought him over to work to visit the monks - also so that she could see them herself. I took a few pictures that I thought you might like to see...........




(Okay, this non-fuzzy one above I didn't take - my office mate walked over w/ his wife to take a look themselves & this is one of the pics that he sent around the office...)

Do you notice that this is not at ALL the mandala that I thought it was yesterday? I've searched the Drepung Loseling website & can't find out which one it is. I'll have to go back & visit in just a few minutes to see if I can't find out!

Knitting with the Monks

The Drepung Loseling monks are here - and will be creating a sand mandala over the next few days. I was able to watch the opening ceremony yesterday afternoon, and I went over today for about 45 minutes and sat and watched them work on the mandala while I knit on my picot-edged Sundara socks. I'm having a wee bit of trouble with the socks in that I wasn't at ALL able to do Wendy's "knit the cast-on edge together with the current row of stitches" like she said to - in fact I tried a few stitches and then had to give up and just knit instead - I'm going to go back this afternoon and sew down the cast-on edge instead to create my picot top. I think this is because I did a twisted German cast-on instead of the long-tail cast-on that she says to - and as such my cast-on row is way too tight (and twisted?) to work the knit together step. I'll do a long-tail cast on for the second sock and see if I have any better luck.

But I have to tell you, running into a knitting snag while watching three monks create the most incredibly intricate thing in total harmony and peace and unity is a GOOD thing, actually - as you just stay as mellow about it as can be. Any other time and this would have been frustrating - today as I realized that I had run into a snag I just mentally shrugged and kept on knitting, happy as a clam.

Here's my progress so far - when I first sat down this afternoon to watch the monks I was maybe two rows past the yo/k2tog row.......................

..............you've just got to love those monks & their very mellow and productive knitting atmosphere!

As far as I can tell, this is the mandala that the monks are currently working on. I plan on going back several times in the next few days to watch them work - and will most certainly attend the closing ceremony on Sunday at 2 PM. That is when they will sweep all of the sand together into a large pile (dispersing half to the ceremony attendees!) and then take it to our local city park & river where the sand is put into the water "to disperse the healing energies of the mandala throughout the world."


While I have contributed in the past to the Dulaan project, and wholeheartedly encourage my fellow knitters to likewise lend a hand (and totally adore Franklin's Dulaan Knit Along that he threw last week!) , I wanted to start doing something a little bit more...............direct in addition to my other endeavors. To that end I picked up a flyer for the Drepung Loseling Educational Fund and decided that once again in honor of my most incredible maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Jane, that I would once again start to sponsor a monk. I did this the last time that the monks were here - Grams was taken out of school when she was in high school and never allowed to return for financial reasons - and as such she is absolutely passionate about education for absolutely anyone and everyone. So the last time the monks were here (always in the fall) I sponsored one in honor of her and her birthday (she's a November girl, dontcha' know) which I have decided to do again this year. You get to look at all of the monks that are "available" for sponsorship and this guy simply called out to me - he reminds me very very much of my mom's now-deceased best friend's son, Gerald. There was something about his grin (and ears!) that made me reach right out for his picture. I really like this for a number of reasons - not only can I feel like I'm helping directly (food, medicine, and education!) but also there is an address in Karnataka, India where I can write to him..............or more importantly, where I can send him hats, scarves, and maybe some socks to keep him warm in the cold clime where he's currently living and studying.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you!

Lobsang Dhaphel was born in Denma (a place that I haven't yet had any luck looking up) on January 10th, 1980. He entered the monastery in 2004.

Now if only they had the foresight to tell me his shoe size.

Here's hoping that the man isn't allergic to wool!