KnitterPatter

How Funny

2009-02-24T07:09:00.002-07:00

My mostly dormant blog got all kinds of unusual activity this week, which is strange, but when I checked it out, I immediately figured out why: that "Andrea Needs" meme has been going around the web once again. Funny.

I was actually thinking about blogging lately, as a matter of fact, because in addition to knitting, I've been learning to sew! And so I've been sewing things like this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

Except usually when I think of blogging, it's time to get ready for work, or some other such nonsense. Just like now...

Spot the differences

2008-05-07T20:48:00.002-06:00

I wonder if you can spot any difference between these two photos:

(And if you say that I appear to have gained about 30 pounds, you would probably be correct, but c'mon, do you really want to hurt my feelings and allow a certain coldness to creep into our friendship thereby alienating us from one another? I didn't think so.)

Give up? Okay, I'll tell you. I finally finished the Fluffy Pull-Off Lace Cowl from "Weekend Knitting." Started in October 2004, mostly finished since pretty early in 2005, finally blocked and crocheted on the edging in April 2008. If you have Ravelry access, you can read all the gory details here.

Oh, yes, it's also possible that I may have grown, oh, about a foot of hair in the interim...

Maybe I'll post for a change

2008-02-29T09:18:00.002-07:00

So, I've actually been knitting quite a lot lately. Someone, or rather, come to think of it, a few someones in my knitting group have commented lately at how they are glad to see that I am a knitter again. What can I say? Knit happens.

No pictures this morning, as I am posting surreptitiously from work and don't have a cord for my camera here.

Let's see, I finished up Charlie's Christmas socks finally.

I finished the black and pink 80s scarf.

I wove in the ends on my black cashmere feather and fan scarf, but now I want to tack them down with some fabric-tak glue stuff (the yarn is so slippery, they'd never stay in!) and block it.

I'm going to rip out the Manos del Uruguay scarf and re-do it or re-purpose the yarn, alternating balls every row.

I ripped out the 75%-completed-but-too-small, green feather and fan sock I was making out of Apple Laine Apple Butter in the Army Surplus colorway and re-knit the whole sock. I've started on the second sock already. I had to go up not one but two needle sizes to size 3s to get gauge. Sheesh.

I've been updating ravelry like crazy, but mainly with getting stuff into there from years prior to 2005! I have a ways to go to catch up to the present. I have some photos from before I had a digital camera, because I was always a documentarian when it came to my knitting (along with many other areas of my life), but I need to get them out of storage and scan them in. I've also only barely touched the tip of the iceberg for getting photos of stash in there. I just need some good daylight and some free time.

Incidentally, I'm infiknits on Ravelry. Somebody took "knitterpatter" before I got an invite. Can you believe it? I had always wanted to use infiknits for my blog, but that was back when I was thinking of starting some sort of yarn-related business or do some designing or whatever, and there is actually already a company called Infiknit located in Canada so that was out. Plus then I never did any sort of fiber-y business (yet!)

Well, on that note, maybe I should get back to the business I'm currently in (acquisition management...) I leave you with this link: Thousand Dollar Dress. Possibly the coolest thing anyone ever did with their wedding dress after using it for their actual wedding. It's like those "trash the dress" photo shoots photographers like to do x 1,000. A warning: there are two photos on there that are possibly not safe for work inside the gallery. I mean, they're not terrible, I looked at them anyway, but then again, I have a bad attitude lately...

Even I Occasionally Finish Something

2008-02-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have not exactly been known for my project finishing lately. Er, for the last couple years. But I did knit Molly some socks for Christmas, and here they are:

These were made from Regia 4faedig Ringel Color, in color 5048, and they are truly happy socks, as you can see. The pattern is from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch, specifically from the Four-Stitch Ribbing Patterns section. I cast on 56 stitches on size 2 needles and did a double moss stitch pattern.

In other news, this is our weather today:

Aargh! Shovel is for scale, but I used the snow blower on most of the driveway. Thank god for the snowblower is all I have to say. My back is killing me anyway...

Wow.

2007-12-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

And, also, seriously, holy crap.

Okay, honestly, the next time I think I'm a pack rat, or I really should rein it in with the books, or the yarn, or the enormous Strawberry Shortcake collection (a story for another day...maybe when we move I'll post a photo to show what two separate crazy eBay frenzies led me to accumulate), I'll remember this and feel a little bit better.

You should read my friend's novel!

2007-11-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

A long-time friend whom I've known for around half my life has just published her first novel! I'm very excited for her, and thought I'd promote her book here (and all over, so some of you have probably already received messages from me). Anyway, you can check out her website at:

http://www.kathrynmaughan.com

and the accompanying video sharing website at:

http://www.myunexpectedangel.com

The book is available to order from Amazon. So check it out!! Kathy is such a talented writer, and if you feel like you know someone who would also be interested in her book or her video sharing website, please pass the information along!

Random bits

2007-10-06T10:15:00.001-06:00

Okay, these are things seen on other people's blogs, so it's not like there's any original content here if you happen to read those blogs. But they are just some things that amused me or that I'd like to remember.

First up we have Daily Lit, found via A Dress a Day (who also writes the fabulous Dictionary Evangelist blog, and I wish I knew how I could be her when I grow up (a dictionary editor -- someone paid to geek out about linguistics!) I love the concept of Daily Lit -- for free, you can read daily bits of novels via RSS feed or via e-mail (and as Erin points out at A Dress a Day, you can read it in your e-mail at work and pretend your working -- what's not to love about that??)

Next, check out this exquisitely beautiful Fair Isle sweater called Autumn Rose, found via Claudia's Blog. I haven't seen too many Fair Isles that I would really contemplate knitting and wearing, but this one tempts me mightily...

Finally, found via JenLa, fairly insane knitted toys. Tres amusing...

So, I keep saying that I really have been knitting over the past year, and my knitting friends from the Needlepoint Joint Thursday Knitters group could attest to that, even though the knitting has not been prolific or all that steady. However, I finally got it together enough to show some photos of what I've been up to. And I even got myeslf going in Flickr rather than Photobucket, because I am a lemming, and I want to be ready when I get my Ravelry invite, which should be in about 11 days, I'd guess, at the rate they've been adding people lately... Actually, I already did have a Flickr account from an incident a while ago when photobucket wasn't working correctly, but I just downloaded some slick Flickr Uploadr software for my Mac that lets me drag and drop from iPhoto and then upload a whole batch of photos, and it's really quite slick. I highly recommend it if you're a Mac user.

Anyway. On to the photos!

Feather and Fan cashmere scarf

Here is a simple feather and fan scarf made from two skeins of Mountain Colors cashmere in the single color Raven, which apparently they don't make any more. This is the second of these scarves that I made -- I gave the first to my mother as a gift some time ago, but never photographed. Then I made one exactly the same for myself, which I finished ages ago, except for weaving in the tails. Yeah, I don't think I have woven in any tails for well over a year now. It's all slacker knitting, all the time lately for me -- the point being just to be physically knitting, rather than any actual finishing.

Scarf Detail

Stalled Feather and Fan Socks, a lousy photo

Next up are the stalled feather and fan socks of old out of Apple Laine Apple Pie yarn in Army Surplus. I suppose these are stalled until I admit the inevitable. They are too small and need to be ripped out. And the yarn and pattern are too lovely to abandon entirely, so I think I will re-do them.

Not a Wedding Shawl

Here's the shawl I got the insane notion to knit for my wedding. That was rapidly abandoned as life careened out of control with intense wedding planning and an even more intense new job. It's the Mediterranean Lace Shawl from A Gathering of Lace. I don't even know if I have enough of the yarn I chose to finish it, some sort of Madil if I remember right without looking. Now I'll just say I started knitting it on the occasion of my wedding.

Here's a little detail, though lace still looks like crap before it's blocked, that's for sure:

Next up is a scarf that I knit mostly on my honeymoon. I think this is another item that will likely be ripped out, because the two skeins of Manos del Uruguay that I used definitely do not match well, so it's a half and half scarf:

Probably a Do-Over

Finally, another scarf out of Manos-like yarn, though I can't remember the name for sure, and I'm too lazy to get up and find the ball band right now, which is around half finished. I love the 80s color scheme of electric pink and black:

80s Scarf!

So, basically, you can see a lot of desulatory knitting has gone on. I've also worked on my Greek Key Afghan a bit lately, and I started some Christmas socks for Molly on Thursday (good thing she can't read much and isn't very computer savvy yet!)

Also, I note that several of those pictures suck. I don't know if I'm just rusty with the camera, or if my camera is starting to give up the ghost after one too many dips in rivers and snow banks and oceans (I know it's all weather, and those dips were mostly in the carrying case, but that probably only gets you so far...)

There. Whew! Long blogging is exhausting!

Also a question

2007-09-24T11:56:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I've been gone a while. Have people stopped using Haloscan for their comments? If so, why? Just wondering if there's something I should know that I don't...

What's up with all this rampant Ravelry?

2007-09-24T11:23:00.001-06:00

Sheesh, you leave the blog world for, oh, a little year or so, and all kinds of crazy cool shit pops up! Like Ravelry. Wow, how cool is that? I feel so out of touch. Like I was living in a cave and the eight-track went extinct, and I emerged to ask just what the heck are these new-fangled fancy cassette tape thingies?? So, sign me up, baby! Oh, there's a wait you say? Well, that shouldn't take too long, right?

"You signed up on Today
You are #35631 on the list.
18273 people are ahead of you in line.
17 people are behind you in line.
48% of the list has been invited so far"

Ahem. Yeah. Right. I suppose now I'll also discover that if indeed I start blogging semi-regularly again, it will take me a couple years to get back into the kntiblog ring. Oh well. Maybe the knitblog ring won't matter any more with all this mad ravelry going on...

(The reason I had the time to stumble around the internets long enough to figure all this out is that this is my fifth sick day, and my third day off work. Takes an ugly cold to make me slow down, I guess. Gosh, maybe I'll go nuts and photograph a few of my recent knitting escapades. They are mostly of the completely dull scarf variety, but that's okay.)

Hey, anybody remember me?

2007-09-02T19:16:00.000-06:00

Probably not so much. I know, I know. I haven't blogged for almost a year. I have done a bit of knitting in that time, but it has been a miniscule bit, and not really all that interesting.

However, perhaps this is:

Charlie and I got married on June 9, 2007, at the Ogden Union Station. Ever have one of those moments in your life when everything was just perfect? Yeah, me too. :)

My amazingly beautiful photos are copyright of my incredibly talented photographer, Rebekah Westover. (And, yes, I actually do have as a part of my contract with her, a copyright release to post the photos on my own personal websites with appropriate credit. I'm a contract specialist, people. I'll bet it was a real blast for all of my wedding vendors to negotiate their contracts with me...)

Edited to add: You can view my photographer's slideshow of pics here. And I did mention how incredible she is, right?

Faint Sign of Life

2006-10-02T16:12:00.000-06:00

Life has been moving waaaay too fast lately. I haven't managed to post for too long now, though I have managed to do a wee bit of knitting. I've mainly been working on a black lace cashmere scarf for myself, just like the one I made for my mom a while back. Maybe I'll manage to take a picture of this one.

Also, yesterday some of the Needlepoint Joint knitters met up with some of the Salt Lake Stitch n Bitch knitters for an afternoon of knitting -- it was great fun, and it was really nice to meet you all! Hope to do that again soon!

Anyway, guess I'd better get back to that fast moving life. Maybe one of these days it will settle down enough to let me return to being a blogger again...

A bit belated...

2006-08-04T14:31:00.000-06:00

At the beginning of July I had a little over a week off work, which was a much-needed break. I didn't go out of town or anything, just spent time locally. Back then I took some photos that I meant to blog, and now I'm finally getting around to it!

But before that, here's a photo that I meant to post a while ago and didn't:

Knitter Michele and Handsome Baby Nate!

Here's a photo of Michele and her baby, Nate. The NPJ Knitters had a baby shower for Nate a few months ago, too, but for some reason I must not have had my camera with me. What a cutie!

On the 1st of July, Charlie and I went to a special "meet the team" event for the Real Salt Lake Major League Soccer Team, and as a part of our visit, we got to ride the tram to one of the mountain peaks at the Snowbird ski resort. Here was our view from the top:

View from Hidden Peak

11,000 Feet

I had my Greek Key Afghan along for the ride with me, though I didn't take it up to the mountain top. However, it did enjoy the view from the parking lot:

Greek Key Afghan

And here's a photo that shows what progress on the afghan looked like last month:

Greek Key Afghan Progress Shot

The afghan actually turned into quite a mountain climber that week. For the 4th of July, I went to Snow Basin ski resort with my family, where we rode a gondola to the top to hear some live music and eat lunch at their Needles Lodge. I got a little knitting in, even though it was sweltering:

Knitting at the Top

And here is the lovely view from the top:

View from the top at Snow Basin

The second half of my vacation days turned out to be less of a vacation and more of an unexpected recovery time - I woke up the morning of July 5th in extreme pain. My mom came over and took me to the emergency room, and after five or six hours there, replete with blood tests, x-rays, morphine, and CT scans, the doctor determined I'd probably had an ovarian cyst that ruptured. Which is seriously not fun, yo. Definitely some of the worst pain I've ever experienced, even compared to gall bladder attacks, severe food poisoning, and knee surgery. So I spent the rest of my time off mainly just recovering. I did receive these lovely get-well flowers from Charlie and his daughter, Molly, though they don't seem to have photographed very well:

Pretty flowers really do help you feel better

Molly and I did manage a visit to the zoo while I was recuperting, though:

Visiting the Butterflies

I guess that's it for now. I've still just been knitting on the afghan, whenever I manage to actually knit. I'm about half way through the fifth pattern repeat by now, and there will be 12 in the end. Also, Molly wanted to learn to knit, and so I got her some kid needles and pastel rainbow Red Heart. She picked it up really well for a five-year-old, I think!

I do still have some photos in my camera from Knitter Melissa T's baby shower, which I'll have to post in a little while. She gave birth to baby Emma one week ago.

Not very inspiring

2006-07-29T11:22:00.000-06:00

Hm, just thumbed through the latest Interweave Knits, which I received in the mail this week. I didn't find anything in there all that interesting or exciting. I mean, the patterns were for the most part fine, but nothing called out my name.

Also, does anyone else out there have the Knitting Pattern-a-Day 2006 Calendar? I actually got two of these for Christmas, and I have the one that I kept here on my desk at the office. Some of these patterns are shockingly bad! The knitted bathing suit that was for Thursday and Friday this last week should seriously be banned. There are definitely very few patterns amongst the 365 days that I would even consider making.

What I've been up to lately

2006-06-24T00:35:00.000-06:00

I know it's been a long time since I blogged anything of consequence. I've been busy with lots of things, and I have also had computer troubles. Well, I am still busy, but the computer troubles have subsided. I was thinking earlier that it might be fun to just have a photo montage that shows what I've been up to lately. And by lately, I mean in 2006, really, since I haven't blogged much of anything in my life since February. So, here's half of the year in photo review. Don't hate me because it's a lot of images. Hopefully you have cable internet, or can go get a cup of coffee while these upload or something. Otherwise, I guess you could always force your browser to shut down while cursing me. But if you're interested and not mad about me bogging down your computer, there's even some knitting buried in here somewhere.

Co-hosting a big bridal shower for Erika in March:

Attending Erika's bachelorette party in Las Vegas in March:

True, this picture is not all that flattering, but I had to show you my gorgeous jeans...

Attending Erika and Jack's Elvis wedding in Las Vegas in March:

Engaging in various fun with friends in March:

Going on a Catalina/Ensenada cruise with Kristi and Erika in March:

Attending fellow knitter Amber's bridal shower (tea at the Grand America Hotel in SLC) in April:

Where I was mysteriously inspired to photograph the feet of all the knitters present:

Amber

Laurie

Krista

Brooke

me

Angela and Karyn

Kristi, Amy, and Sally

Erika and Amber's friend, Jamila

I went on a wonderful first date with a very nice man named Charlie in April and received these beautiful flowers:

I went on a trip to California with my parents for a surprise birthday party in May, and there was ACTUAL KNITTING:

The Tree of Utah

Is that a pool cue in your jacket, or are you just happy to see me?

Attending knitter Nicole's bridal shower at the Needlepoint Joint in May:

Partying it up with knitter Kristi for her 30th birthday in Park City in June (her sister's birthday is the day before hers):

That sweet, flower-bearing Charlie is still around, and we went on a weekend trip to Torrey, Utah to check out Capitol Reef National Park a couple weeks ago:

And, Hooray! Kim came for a visit last week, and we enjoyed Thursday knitting at the NPJ just like old times:

Sally shows us "her book" -- penned by someone who shares her maiden name, several of her more internet-savvy students keep asking her if she wrote it. So we went ahead and bought her a copy.

So. If I had blogged much in the past four months, that is the sort of stuff I might have showed you. Actual knitting has been occuring this month, as well as yarn and book buying. As I recently said, I feel a wave of domesticity coming over me. Yippee!

What could be better than this?

2006-06-09T11:07:00.000-06:00

Okay, again, it's not knitting content, but I don't see how I could love this any more than I do. Ah, the beautiful, beautiful kitsch...

Oh, hooray!

2006-06-02T09:54:00.000-06:00

Okay, y'all know how silly dancing makes me inexplicably happy, right? If it does the same for you, then you must check out this.

I know this hasn't been much of a knitblog for a while now. I do actually have some recent knitting pics, but my computer has been misbehaving for a couple weeks, so it will be a while yet before I can get them posted, I fear.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the silly dancing. :)

Also:

2006-04-25T06:58:00.000-06:00

I totally missed my blogiversary - April 17. See how I am?

Oops

2006-04-25T06:56:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged for so long that I've been kicked out of the knitblog ring. So, sorry y'all, if there are any readers left out there. I'll reform. I'll try to blog soon. Heck, I'll try to knit soon. :)

Also, another Meme

2006-02-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's a Monday two-fer. Two posts, to make up fer not posting for the last couple weeks...

I know I probably have a few readers (hello, family members!) who are thinking "What the heck is a meme?" It's just a little blog game where you answer questions about yourself. It's called a meme, because it's all about ME ME ME! :) They usually go by a little game of tag -- some blogger who reads your blog and who knows you also read their blog answers the meme, and then they tag you to answer next. So. I got tagged for this one by Kim.

Instructions: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.

Woman Obsessed
strange little mama
Chef Messy
Knitter in Progress
Knitter Patter

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Living in Munich, Germany, in the Studentenstadt (Student City), in a dorm called Egon-Weber Haus (I think that's what it was called - we always called it EWH), adjacent to the English Garden. I lived on the fourth floor with a view out to the Gardens, and my dorm actually had a student-run disco in the basement that was open two nights a week. Cool, no? I was on a one-year study abroad program offered annually by my college, Lewis & Clark College, and it was the best thing I did in my entire college career. I studied German and math and drank lots of beer and ate chocolate and at great bakeries and made fantastic friends and generally had a wonderful time. In fact, as I looked through the program web page just now, I got positively homesick for it.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
One year ago I had just gotten engaged (which I no longer am). I had also barely started a new position at work, in a Supplier Relationship Management office (which I have since left when I got promoted to my latest job last October). I also had just barely put my house on the market for sale by owner, and was officially starting to move (which I sold, and then moved yet again in October). I was also running and lifting weights regularly, and was in the best shape of my adult life (which I no longer am, thanks to my knee injury). A lot can change in a year, eh? Wonder where I'll be next year...

What were you doing 1 hour ago?
Blogging.

List five creative things you want to achieve this year:
1. Five sounds like a lot at this point in my life... Finish Rogue finally (yes, Kim, I know...)
2. Finish my cowl.
3. Finish the pillowcase lace.
4. Cook something, anything, for a change.
5. Write more.

List five snacks you enjoy:
1. Rolos
2. Cheese
3. Chocolate chip cookies
4. All-Bran bars (they really are good!)
5. hummus and crackers

List five things you would do if money were no object:
1. Quit my job.
2. Take my dad to every neurological specialist I could until we figured out what causes his chronic pain and how to deal with it.
3. Full-time housekeeper.
4. Travel the world.
5. Hire a chef and personal trainer to get me back into the best shape of my adult life.

List five bad habits:
1. Not cleaning at all.
2. Staying up way too late for no good reason.
3. Chronically eating out, spending way too much money and eating way too much junk.
4. Interrupting people - I'm working on improving it.
5. Being just a little bit late.

List five things you like doing:
1. Knitting (duh)
2. Running (sometimes)
3. Spending time with friends and family
4. Reading
5. Lately, watching escapist TV -- it's probably sad, but true...

List five favorite gadgets:
1. Sidekick II (cell phone, e-mail, PDA, etc, all rolled into one)
2. DVR
3. computer
4. digital camera
5. LCD TV

Name one thing you like about yourself:

my brain

Tagged: Shannon, coz I haven't heard from you in a long time, and Moiraeknits, coz she has a new blog. Of course, feel free to ignore the tagging, if you are so inclined. :) Anybody else wanna be tagged?

Exhaustion

2006-02-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Exhaustion is the main thing that has been keeping me from both knitting and blogging lately. It's a very busy time for me at work, and so things have gotten a bit grim, with long hours and lots of stress. This all seems to have culminated in a nasty cold, which set in last Tuesday night. However, work has just been too busy to take any full days off with sick leave, so I managed half days Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was my bi-weekly day off (I have switched to an extended schedule the rest of the days in order to have one day off per pay period), but I went in to the office for a few hours anyway. And today is a federal holiday, but I think I'll probably go in for a few hours this afternoon as well. Whee! My ray of hope in all this is that the extreme busy-ness should slow down once my several major projects wrap up, with luck by the end of this month. They REALLY need to be done by the end of the month, in fact. (My job is to negotiate, award, and administer multi-million dollar sole-source contracts...no pressure...)

Anyhoo, what all this means for knitting is that Kim's Stashalong has been really easy for me lately -- it's not hard to refrain from buying yarn when you haven't even been doing much knitting or going near yarn shops very often. In fact, I had to leave town to get much knitting in. I was on a business trip to Fort Worth, Texas from January 30th through February 3rd, and you know what that means:

Airplane Knitting!

It's the classic airplane trinity -- knitting, lovely coffee beverage, and iPod Shuffle. I started a pair of Feather and Fan socks from Socks, Socks, Socks out of some gorgeous Apple Laine Apple Butter sock yarn that I had in my stash, which I bought direct from them on their website before they went to selling wholesale only (though I can't seem to find any retailers on the internet from whom you can now buy the yarn). The yarn is quite beautiful, and so I'm happy to have four skeins of it - this one in greens with sort of blues and purplish-browns, which I think is called something like camouflage. No, I just double-checked, and it's called "Army Surplus". It's 60% wool, 25% mohair, and 15% nylon. I also got a skein in a purple variegated colorway, another in a solid chocolate brown, and a fourth in a dark burgundy. It's quite nice to knit with.

Here's another shot, this one also from the plane ride home:

Now with a heel

Oh, yeah, I had The Da Vinci Code on the iPod, which I had never read before, and which makes a pretty good audiobook, I thought. I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks, but I may be converted when it comes to accompaniment for knitting.

Here's a sad sight

My parents gave me some gorgeous china for Christmas, and I purchased accent plates, a teapot, a creamer jug, and a sugar bowl to go along with it. They're all white with platinum accents, except for the accent plates, which are chocolate brown as well. As you can see, two of the accent plates, which were NOT packaged well, arrived in this very sad state. Two replacements are on order, but it was a rather sickening sight to open the box to this. However, I really do love the pattern, here's a closer view that shows it a little better:

This one nearly made it

In other non-knitting news, I did manage to get out for a snowshoeing excursion with some friends at the beginning of the month after I got back from Texas - we hiked up to a frozen waterfall. It really is incredible to have such fantastic access to the mountains literally in our back yards. Here's the only picture of me in which I didn't look completely awful:

I really do have hair, I promise

My friends, on the other hand, looked great:

Rhonda and Francis, with Rhonda's former co-worker whose name I have totally forgotten in the background

And, finally, I leave you with evidence of further knitting - I have been putting in a (very little) bit of work on my Greek Key Afghan, which is made from the oldest yarn in my stash. It looks awfully small here, but it is quite squished on the needles:

There really is a pattern in there somewhere...

Stashalong Update

2006-01-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Also, meant to add to my last, I have been doing some Stashalong knitting. Is it possible to stash a whole project? That's pretty much what I did with the Greek Key Afghan (which is noted in my sidebar), but I have been working on that a little bit lately. It's also a little FIFO knitting (that's first-in, first-out, for people who weren't forced to get an MBA...) -- I believe the yarn I'm using to make it is my oldest stash yarn, which I always intended to be this afghan. See...I don't really have a stash! Just a very long queue...

Random Assortment

2006-01-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have no theme to hold an entire post together today, so instead I will present a random assortment of stuff.

For Scale

To give a better idea of how large it turned out, here is a picture of the Flower Basket Shawl post-blocking on my couch. I still haven't managed to get a picture of it in action with my grandma yet. I also gave my mom her birthday scarf (black Mountain Colors 100% cashmere, feather and fan pattern, yes, knit from stash yarn) without even taking a picture of it (oops), so I have yet to get a picture of that as well. I also have two skeins of that same cashmere (also in black) to make myself a scarf with, though I don't know when I'll do so. It is beautiful and unimaginably soft, but I don't know if I feel like making the same scarf twice in a row!

Amber's Knitted Babe

A few of the Needlepoint Joint knitting crew are enamored with those Knitted Babes. This is a picture of Amber's version. I love the purple hair.

My New Dining Room Set

It took months, but last weekend I finally received the last piece of my new dining room set. Shortly after I moved into my new apartment, I got the dining room table, six chairs, and china cabinet (which is actually two pieces stacked). The hutch of the china cabinet and one of the chairs were both damaged, and after more than two months, a new shipment arrived at the store and they switched out the damaged pieces. Well, first they delivered me two more damaged pieces, but returned with undamaged ones later in the day. Third time is the charm?

Sideboard

The sideboard (or buffet, or whatever you'd like to call it) was a special order piece that the store didn't normally stock, and it was a special ordeal piece as well. When I ordered it, along with the rest of the furniture, I was told to pay a certain percentage of the purchase price as a downpayment before they would special order it. Which I did, along with my cash-in-full payment for the rest of the furniture. It was to take four to six weeks to arrive. I called periodically to check on it. Finally, after more like 8 to 12 weeks, I learned that my downpayment was supposed to have been on the total purchase price plus tax (which no one had told me when I paid), and because the downpayment was $8 short, the buyer had never placed the order, and also never informed me or my sales associate that the order was not placed. And for some reason (incompetence?), my sales associate never figured this out either. I was fairly livid considering the HUGE amount of cash I'd given them for all this furniture - I don't care if you are the Utah Furniture Giant, there is no excuse for such poor customer service. A visit to the store manager resulted in my special order being placed while I waited, and finally all the furniture is here.

The hassle was all worth it in the end, though. It is probably unreasonable, and possibly immoral, to love furniture as much as I love this stuff. I want to polish it with a soft cloth and sit quietly staring at it...

Just a shot to show the rich cherry color and the inlay. It's not quite this red in person, at least looking at my computer monitor/TV at home. Also, there appears to be a flaw in the inlay in this picture, but that's just a trick of the flash.

Finally, I was tagged by Kim for this meme, so here it is:

4 Jobs You Have Had in Your Life
**contract specialist (current job)
**cost/price analyst
**retirement benefits accountant
**math tutor
(Sigh. I am such a bureaucrat!)

4 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
**Love Actually
**Pride & Prejudice (the A&E mini-series, AKA Wet T-shirt Mr. Darcy version)
**Persuasion (1995 Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds BBC version -- best adaptation of Jane Austen that I've seen)
**Enchanted April
**Dirty Dancing (I know, this is five. But if I ever turn the TV on anywhere and this is on, I am powerless to resist. I once stayed up until 2AM on a business trip watching this silly movie, even though I'd seen it 20 times before. Those were some fun meetings the next day.)

4 Places You Have Lived
**Utah (Plain City, Roy, Salt Lake, Pleasant View, Ogden...)
**Oregon (Portland)
**Germany (Munich)
**California (Santa Barbara)

4 TV Shows You Love to Watch
**Lost
**The Office
**Dancing With the Stars
**In Justice

4 Places You Have Been on Vacation
**Italy
**England
**France
**The Netherlands
(Wish I were at any of these places now...)

4 Websites You Visit Daily
**CNN
**Bloglines
**http://gofugyourself.typepad.com
**gmail

4 of Your Favorite Foods
**sushi
**cake
**cheese
**ham

4 Places You Would Rather Be Right Now
**on a six-month European vacation
**Caribbean
**Hawaii
**visiting friends in the Pacific Northwest

4 Bloggers You Are Tagging
Homie don't play that. If you'd like to be tagged, knock yourself out.

Needlepoint Joint Christmas Party

2006-01-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here are a few belated photos of the Needlepoint Joint Thursday Knitters' Christmas party, which we held during our regular Thursday night knit-together before Christmas. The couple hours that we get together on Thursdays are always some of the best hours of my week (everyone else in my life has come to accept them as sacred, not-to-be-supplanted hours), so of course you can imagine that a Christmas party with this bunch would be a good one. And indeed it was.

At last, purple is the new black!
Karyn, Hilary, Angela, & Amber

This is a group in which you know if you say the word "potluck," everyone is going to bring something fabulous and delicious and your only regret will be that you don't have an extra stomach to enjoy it all even more, rather than those dreaded potlucks where you know you may somehow end up with three bags of dinner rolls, four bags of chips, and seven two-liter bottles of Diet Cherry Coke. So, naturally, there was fabulous food and drink.

Yes, there were presents

The group also had a Christmas party last year, but this year we improved upon it by taking Krista's most excellent suggestion of instituting a white elephant gift exchange. However, in keeping with the usual style and grace of our bunch, the premise of the gift exchange was not that of your standard white elephant exchange - rather, everyone was to bring a gift up to a certain dollar value, and it was to be something that you would actually like to receive yourself. So the ensuing gift stealing wasn't to rid oneself of unwanted nosehair clippers and Pez dispensers, but rather to try to get some of the good stuff! I can honestly say that all of the gifts were "the good stuff," and I would have been happy to receive any one of them! Which I think is the mark of a really great group of people, because I don't know if I've ever seen the equivalent at any other Christmas party. I ended up stealing in order to get a bottle of wine, a box of locally hand-dipped chocolates, and a Lush bath bomb (all of which Kristi had brought) -- fantastic! The wine and chocolates are long gone, and the bath bomb will be perfect in the big garden tub in my new apartment.

For a slideshow of all of the pictures I took that evening, click here. Well, all but one of the pictures, since my webpage limits the number I can upload per album page to a mysterious 48. I left out one that was very similar to one of the others, but in which y'all were making some very funny faces. Warning to those of you on dial-up: this WILL take a long time to load - it's 48 pictures after all. Go get yourself a cup of coffee or something and then come back.

As you can see, things got a little wild

What a great evening, done just right. I can say without hesitation that it was one of the best Christmas parties I've ever had the pleasure of attending. I feel truly blessed to have such amazing knitters and friends in my life.

FBS Woman

2006-01-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

Anybody remember the horrid jingle from those old FDS ads? I tell you, you don't know a good time until you spend a good 30 or 45 minutes crawling around on your office floor, wielding well over 100 T-pins, singing to yourself, "What a woman....FBS Woman....FBS woman...so clean and confident!" Marketing! It is insidious! Do you have any idea how much of my brain must be occupied by old advertising jingles from childhood? To which I can still sing all the words? It freaks me out.

Flower Basket Shawl a'blocking

Okay, I finally blocked the Easter Basket Shawl. Never mind that I said I was going to block it back on *mumblemumble*...ahem. I really was going to block it sooner, but I couldn't find my T-pins, so now I am the owner of many, many T-pins, whenever the old ones turn up to join the new that I purchased this week.

You want detail? I'm getting my detail on right here, pally:

Come Closer...

Yup. They are twee little flower baskets. See?

No, I Said Closer...

Fan Club of One

2006-01-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

That Makes One of You

A while ago, I received this iCard from someone I've never met before. I host my knitting gallery on my mac.com homepage, and if you visit there and go through a slideshow, there is an option to send me an e-mail message that will make one of my own photos into an e-card to me, like the one you see above.

I think I'll save a lot of commentary here, except to say that I would probably have picked this as one of the worst pictures of my feet in socks, but perhaps my judgment is clouded by the rememberance of taking that picture, so I know that I was wearing ratty old pajama bottoms because I was home from work, feeling very sick indeed.

Also, this raised my curiosity, since I love knitting socks, so I flipped through the gallery and blog and, well, there are a LOT of pictures of my socked feet (maybe 15?) Which would seem to open up a new and unexpected readership demographic. So, uh, hello socked feet fetishists. Thanks for stopping by, but I'd prefer it if you remain respectful lurkers. (And to everyone who got here via a google search for "Hooter's Girls" or "Extreme Hooters" or "Hooter's girls in nylons" or whatever else floats your boat, I direct you to the August 2005 archive, but you will be sadly disappointed, as it's just me knitting amidst a couple of not-very-well-endowed Hooter's girls...)

So, knitters, ask yourselves this: how many pictures of your socked feet are in your blogs and online photo albums?