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?

Silly Dancing for You and Yours

2006-01-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

I realized over the past year that one of my favorite things ever is silly dancing. It makes me almost unreasonably happy. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered this link over at Rachel's blog. You can read about the band OK Go here. I am an instant fan.

May 2006 bring as much silly dancing to you and yours as your hearts can hold.

2005 - A Whole Lotta Life, A Little Bit of Knitting

2005-12-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to see these 2005 knitting re-caps popping up on blogs, and so I sat down to do a little re-cap of my own. And honestly...I wasn't impressed.

Completed in 2005:

*Making Waves Socks

*Stashbuster Spirals Socks

*Primary Children's Hospital Afghan #2 (squares made by my knitting group, project started like three years ago...)

*Black Forest Naturwolle Scarf

*Snakey Socks

And that's it. Not very much. To make myself feel a little better about my output, I surveyed projects that are all literally on the brink of completion. They are:

*Rogue

*Fuzzy Pull-Off Lace Cowl

*Lovers Braid Pattern Lace-Edged Pillowcase

*Flower Basket Shawl

This is sad, really. Evidently I developed an aversion to finishing in 2005. Rogue needs only blocking, sewing on two sleeves, and sewing up the hems to the sleeves and bottom. The lace cowl needs only blocking and weaving in two yarn tails. The pillowcase lace may need up to one measly lace repeat, then all the tedious cutting and hemming and ironing of the pillowcase and the binding off and sewing the lace onto the pillowcase. And the FBS needs blocking and two ends woven in as well. Obviously, I need a finishing attitude adjustment.

My excuse for all this? Well, 2005 really did bring me a whole lotta life. I moved twice. I started two new positions at work, the last one a promotion. I traveled more than usual for my job, as faithful blog readers may remember. I sold a home. I lived in and occasionally helped out with a house being remodeled. I got engaged. I started to plan a wedding. I ended said engagement, and planned wedding turned into big family reunion. I completely blew out my knee, underwent major recontructive knee surgery, and spent many many hours in physical therapy for knee rehabilitation (which is still not totally complete). I also had a couple family members in poor health, including my grandma in the hospital a couple times, though she is doing much better now. And while knitting came along with me through many of these events, sometimes in a most comforting way, it also often got the shaft when, at times, my brain just couldn't contain it all.

My goal for 2006? Well, perhaps besides having quite so many major life changes all in one year? I was going to quote Elvis and say, "A little less conversation, a little more action," at least when it comes to my knitting. But that's not quite right, really. I don't want to stop talking and blogging about knitting, I just want to have a little bit more to show for myself when the next year of my life winds down. Because there's all that beautiful stash to be knit (in Kim's Stashalong!), and I can hear it calling my name.

And, yes, this is my second post in one day. What can have come over me?

The Tell-Tale Compression of Pages

2005-12-31T00:58:00.000-07:00

"[M]y readers...will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity." - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Tell-Tale Compression

Jane may have presaged an ending of perfect felicity in her tell-tale compression of pages, but a week ago, at about 3:00 PM on Christmas Eve, I realized that the tell-tale compression of KPPPM showed that the yarn and I were hastening together towards our unhappy doom.

Seven rows into what I had intended as my last ten-row full-pattern repeat, I thought to myself, "Self, this doesn't look so good. You know, the wise woman would have put in a life-line seven rows ago. The semi-wise woman might put one in now."

After carefully pulling a very long piece of dental floss through my very long row seven, the Voice of Reason kicked in, and admonished me, "There is NO WAY you are going to have enough yarn to complete this pattern repeat and the edging. NO WAY. Turn back now, daylight is burning!!" (Please, you don't need to point out to me that it wasn't a good sign to start hearing multiple voices at this point. Serious chocolate and coffee reserves were already required.)

This calls for emergency back-up

And so, I tinked seven incredibly long rows of lace, people. It took me hours and hours. I don't want to say how many; it was highly embarrassing. I tinked all evening at my parents' house, sitting near my grandma, for whom the shawl was intended. She'd seen me knitting on it months before, too. "What are you knitting, Andrea?" "Oh, just some lace..." "What kind of lace?" "Oh, just a little shawl..."

And so it was done. Well. Almost.

When everyone went home and went to bed, I came home and knit until around 3 AM. The knitting was complete, though I saved the binding off for the next morning - incidentally, binding off a shawl knit on size 7s using a size 11 needle worked marvelously. And so I bound the shawl off at about 10 AM on Christmas morning, and wrapped it up. So, sadly, I did not meet my goal and I had to give it to my grandma unblocked, and then take it back for blocking, which I will complete this weekend. But I think she liked the shawl, and hopefully she'll like it even more when it's really finished... I would have met my goal of being completely done, I think, were it not for my reckless disregard of the tell-tale compression of skein. So, let this be a lesson to you, my friends. LIFE LINES. I'm just sayin... At least when operating under such an ominous deadline. Ha ha -- a deadline calls for a life-line!! Now that's catchy (and cheesy).

Deadlines

2005-12-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago, I formed my own special theory about knitting in relation to gift-giving deadlines. It went something like this: I'm not going to do it anymore. I think I may have blown just about every knitted gift deadline I ever tried to impose on myself, with the exception of a few hats.

Oddly, I very often start knitted projects without any particular recipient in mind, and as I knit, I decide that it would be just perfect for so-and-so. And that actually works quite well - knit exactly what you want to knit, and if it happens to suit someone you love, then give it to them. So that was one of my first knitted gift theories, and it has proven fairly sound over time.

But back to this deadline thing. I think the first major project I decided to give as a gift was for my mom. I was working on a checkerboard pattern afghan, and because her college graduation was coming up, I decided it would be a great gift for that. And it was a great gift for that purpose -- it's just that it was also at least a month late. (She got back at me eventually for that one -- she decided it wasn't long enough and requested another row of blocks, which I added -- good thing it was checkerboard!) My parents have received the late anniversary gift of a hat for my dad and a scarf for my mom. I once gave my mom a hat and scarf set for her birthday with the scarf wrapped up still on the needles and finished who knows how much later. And probably the worst incidence of late gift knitting was the afghan that I made for my grandma for her 80th birthday. It wasn't a year late, but...well...it was close.

That was when I made the big decision -- you can knit for other people, in fact, it's a great idea, but just don't tell them (or anyone else) you're knitting them something for their birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day/whatever. No, instead, work on that project at your very own pace, because you know sometimes life will intervene. You may have a gift giving occasion in mind for your gift, but if nobody but you knows anything about it, and you blow the deadline, well, and here's the brilliant part -- you can just give it to them for the next major gift-giving occasion that comes up! (A sub-set of this theory involves the intended-recipient switcheroo -- didn't finish that baby blanket reasonably on time? That's okay -- another baby will come along!)

So what's this, you ask?

Well. I'm breaking my rule. This is a not-yet finished Flower Basket Shawl, made from a very springy colourway of KPPPM -- I think of it as the Easter Basket Shawl. I started this sucker back in August, on one of those famous business trips (actually, it is a sort of an infamous business trip, what with that pub crawl in Atlanta...) A lot has happened since mid-August, most of which seems to have directly interfered with any knitting time. But I've snuck a little knitting in here and there, and at some point, I decided this shawl would make a great gift for my grandma for Christmas. It's been a rough fall for us -- Grandma was in the hospital in September, and then again in October, and spent all of November and into December in a nursing home. There were times in there when everyone was afraid she wasn't going to make it. But she hung in there, and is doing much better, and about a week ago, she and my grandpa moved into an assisted living home and are doing pretty well. Still, this is a special Christmas to me, and this IS my grandma's Christmas gift -- I even broke the rule of knitting silence and announced it as such to others. And, uh...as you can sort of see in the photo above...it's not done. Panic regarding this fact struck me around last Monday.

And so, it is 6:50 AM on Saturday, December 24th. This shawl will be finished and washed and blocked and dry by tomorrow morning, at, say 10:00 AM at the latest. I'm not really sure how much I have left, as I am making the shawl bigger than the pattern, with three skeins of KPPPM, just adding pattern repeats until the yarn runs out. Less than one skein to go, though, I can say that with certainty. Take me to your Coffee...

Hilarious

2005-12-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

If you google "Andrea needs," my blog is now the number 2 google result out of like 1400 that you get. I find this very amusing. All thanks to that "Andrea needs" meme. As you may guess, I'm adding this entry to aim for number 1. Ha. Silliness.

Totally Gratuitous Picture of My Latest Haircut

2005-12-19T17:19:00.000-07:00

Ooh.

2005-12-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

Just got the latest issue of Interweave Knits in the mail today, and I am completely enamored of the Belted Wrap Jacket designed by Shirley Paden. (See it here.) I think I may need to add this to the very long to-be-knitted list. Which doesn't get a lot of airtime in my life lately, but I can dream...

Please try to contain your excitement.

2005-11-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

But, I bring you real, actual knitting content. And, more specifically:

Knitters in the Wild

Back in October, the Needlepoint Joint knitting regulars went on a lovely overnight retreat to a beautiful condo in Park City, Utah. There was knitting and laughter and fun and good food and margaritas and wine and soaking in a private hot tub and general good times. We were sad that our Kim couldn't be there with us, but we called her up and everyone got a chance to talk to her, so it was almost like having her there!

A few of our other knitters couldn't make it that day either, including Brooke, whose poor kitty had died earlier that day. We really missed her, and everyone was so sad to hear about her loss. :(

Hopefully for our next retreat, we can have everyone there, all happy and well and knitting their little hearts out. For a complete set of the pictures I took at the retreat, click here, and then select the slideshow to click through large versions of the pics.

Also, in a totally out-of-character move for me lately, I actually finished a project:

Ssssnakes!

The Snakey Socks, they are fini. I even wore them around town the next day, in all their ugly glory. They are very warm, and are the most comfortable, best-fitting socks I've made to date.

(Trying out a new photo host to me, and I think there are attendant growing pains. But my old one wasn't working this morning for some reason...)

"Andrea needs"

2005-11-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I had no intention of participating in this "X needs" meme, the one where you google "[your name here] needs" and share the results. Though I did the google search, of course. But then some of them were so funny that I couldn't help it:

"Andrea needs all her wits and all the help she can get from the company's attractive operations manager to find and stop the perpetrators."

"Andrea needs to get an agent"

"Andrea needs 3 days off and 3 bottles of French champage, don't you think?"

"Andrea needs to pull the giant stick out of her ass and absorb some real Christian ideas such as humility and outreach"

"Andrea needs to hook a brother up with some of her law school friends"

"the last thing Andrea needs is another person treating him oddly because of his lifestyle choice"

"Andrea needs to take her game to a new level"

"Andrea needs $$$"

"Andrea needs a top four placement to earn a trip to the 2000 US Nationals"

"Andrea needs to go into detox"

"Andrea needs to be promoted to Commodore"

"Andrea needs to subtract 203 from 299"

"andrea needs some help finding stalker songs"

"Andrea needs to use foundation on ruddy areas to even out her skin tone"

"Andrea needs some optimal sledding advice"

"Andrea needs treatment, not a death sentence"

"Andrea needs little introduction to US scandophiles"

"Andrea needs the ice algae alive"

"Andrea needs to make a buck as the big Hollywood producer"

"Andrea needs a cute boytoy"

"Andrea needs to keep the dead piece of tree that fell down with her"

"Andrea needs to step up and guerilla blog all of our 'brilliant' ideas that frothed over with bagels, quiche & beer in Brooklyn"

"Andrea needs some extra training in how to properly kiss her boss's feet"

"Andrea needs to develop some personality"

"Andrea needs to lighten up on both the tanning lotion and the make-up"

"Andrea needs to get a grip"

Sheesh. Everybody's a critic. Are weird google searches the new solitaire? This is hours of mindless entertainment. There are a lot of Andreas out there. They have a myriad of needs, it seems.

Of course, this Andrea needs to get off her couch and clean her house.

Gothic Knitting

2005-11-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

So, I have had my head in the sand blogwise for a while now and am WAY behind on absolutely everyone's blogs. I hope to remedy that now that I have internet access at home once again. But while I was out, has everyone but me already seen this? The Anticraft? Too cool. :)

Weird

2005-10-27T17:55:00.000-06:00

Dear Person Who Googled "submit to male coworkers" and found my blog:

Ew. Yer creepy. Go away.

love,
Andrea

You know you want to...

2005-10-27T17:51:00.000-06:00

...knit DNA!

Dig this crazy chair

2005-10-25T22:46:00.000-06:00

"She was allergic to inactivity".

Thank Paul yet again. He finds way better knitting links than I do. Like this one. Or all kinds of cool fibery things here.

Meep...

2005-10-14T09:03:00.000-06:00

I used to date this guy several years ago, and it seemed like, more often than not, when we were on cell phone calls, he'd be silent on the other end for unusually long stretches (in my opinion), perhaps thinking of something to say, or, more likely, doing something else while I was talking to him, so I would end up thinking that the call had been dropped. (Gee, what was the first clue that we weren't perfect for one another?) After enough times of my asking, "Are you still there?," he somehow came up with the bizarre idea to occasionally give a little "meep" periodically in such scenarios. Of course, it was a joke (well, mostly), and of course it was a ridiculous suggestion.

But, all the same, I thought I'd just drop in and say...

Meep.

My Jane Austen vacation was wonderful, though knitting time was minimal. I was so exhausted before I left that I almost decided to leave all knitting home, but I did take a sock and got a few rows in on it here and there.

I'm still trying to move and unpack, I'm also moving and trying to unpack at a new job where there is much to learn, and on top of that, my grandmother went into the hospital for the second time in two months this week. She's doing a little better, but it's all very stressful for everyone. I hope, however, that life will soon stabilize enough that I can return to the pleasure of knitblogging.

Meep.

Taking a Vacation

2005-10-04T17:41:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow I am taking a much-needed vacation.

In the space of three days from Saturday to Monday, I moved over half of my belongings into a new apartment (with a lot of help from some wonderful people), and I moved more than half of my work-related belongings to a new office at work. My life is in total chaos, and I feel like a woman without a country, so to speak. Nothing is unpacked, nothing is put away (and, yes, I moved all my yarn in the first round, of course!) I am completely exhausted.

So what to do? Why, fly away. Specifically to the Jane Austen Society of North America's Annual General Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. With any luck, this will mean that I will finally get some knitting in, and there may even be pictures, which could well lead to blogging. Stranger things have happened...

AWOL

2005-09-16T16:37:00.000-06:00

Yes, I have been conspicuously (or maybe not-so-conspicuously?) absent from blogland for a little while now, I know. Life intervened in a very big way - maybe a bit too big to really discuss here on this knitting blog. Or maybe I will later when all the dust settles.

But there has been knitting, squeezed in here and there. Rogue and my cowl are still in the state of being nearly done that they've been in for a while now. Oops. The afghan is totally stalled, but I think it will be revived again soon now that the weather is cooling off and my thoughts are turning to snuggly afghans. The pillowcase lace is nearly finished, the knitting at least. The dreaded finishing will perhaps be a bit delayed due to that life intervening business, but hey, at least with so many projects on the brink of completion, I can have a finishing frenzy and it will look like a lot all at once. Or something like that. Snakey sock #1 is totally done, and I've knit a good four inches or so of snakey sock #2. And, finally, I started yet another project, actually way back in August, and I think I just haven't mentioned it yet. I started a Flower Basket Shawl in a springy/eastery color of KPPPM -- I'm thinking of it as the Easter Basket Shawl. Wait, maybe I already mentioned it after all? Beats me, I'm losing my mind lately. (Or is that always?) Pictures of loads of stuff will follow one of these days, but I wanted to put together a little gasp of a post to let you know I'm still alive, in the event that you were wondering. :)

Katrina: How You Can Help

2005-09-03T18:27:00.000-06:00

Just in case you're even more out of touch with the blog world than I seem to be lately, and haven't seen this yet, please go check out Margene and Susan's Give a Little campaign to help raise money for the Red Cross, and help out if you can. Links are also on the sidebar of my blog. I am so saddened and horrified by the disaster and the mayhem that has followed it that I don't really know what to say, but I'm glad that there is a small way that I can help

Sad Mac

2005-08-25T15:44:00.000-06:00

Paul came through with yet another cool fiber link for me: Happy Mac/Sad Mac. Isn't that great?? Technology and crocheting collide. I love it!

Going to the Extreme

2005-08-15T21:23:00.000-06:00

My own version of Extreme Knitting

I'm not naming names, but let's just say that some undisclosed number among my five male co-workers seem to be a little bit obsessed with Hooters. Now, I've got no problem with hooters in general. Hey, if you've got em, go right ahead and flaunt em, I say. It's the bad fashion at Hooters that I really take exception to. These uniforms are like some sort of nightmare version of my junior high gym uniform. The shorts too short and an unbecomingly bright color... The big ol' white shoes with big ol' white socks over nylons, which can't help but conjure up the 80s in a bad way... (Not that I wore nylons in junior high gym class, but you get the idea.) What's wrong with being tastefully half-naked, I ask you?

Based on the co-worker obsession, I was not in the slightest bit surprised when, at the kick-off of our week-long business trip last week, very shortly after our flight landed in Atlanta and before our two-hour drive to our final destination, we pulled off the freeway and into the Hooters parking lot for my first Hooters visit ever! (But not my last...yes, there was another visit to a different Hooters on this trip, in which a quantity of alcohol was consumed by yours truly, and which heretofore shall not be further discussed thanks to said quantity of alcohol and its thoroughly unenjoyable after-effects.)

Our waitress was a cute airhead, though whether it was reality or an act, I know not. My co-workers seemed to derive a certain amount of male superiority from cracking a few minor jokes about her airheaded-ness, causing me to feel somewhat indignant on behalf of women and Hooters girls everywhere. (You guys read this? Well, your jokes about our waitresses "genius" behavior were annoying, so there. And get back to work!) The food wasn't very good, which I found inexcusable. And the biggest surprise (I am NOT making this up) was my discovery of an enormous vending machine in the bathroom, maybe five feet wide and three feet tall. What could they be selling in this machine, you may wonder? Feminine products in bulk? Extra large boxes of the birth control method of your choice? Cans of mace and blank restraining order legal forms? Copies of Jane Austen and Kierkegaard so that the Hooters girls can secretly work on their dissertations on their breaks? No, gentle reader, this machine contained "hosiery". Special Hooters girl nylons, $4 a pop, all in "suntan" of course, in various sizes, and, most oddly, I thought...footless. Guess they're more comfortable with the big ol' white shoes and big ol' white socks that way. So, not only do the Hooters girls "get to" hula hoop and turn cartwheels in gym shorts left over from 1982, but they get to spend their tip money buying extra nylons from a vending machine in the john because Hooters Inc. is too damn cheap to buy them for them as an employee benefit? Sheesh.

Ahem.

At any rate, my travel day was a good day for knitting, as you can see from the pic above. I knitted throughout the plane trip, while listening to a book on my iPod, and I knitted through the entire car ride. And, yes, I knitted at Hooters when I wasn't eating my mediocre food. The Hooters girls were kind enough to pose for a picture with me, and I think I'll submit it as an entry for Teri's Extreme Knitting Challenge. True, it's not knitting while rock climbing or snorkeling or flying a plane (I was most impressed by this entry into the Challenge), but people, I had knee surgery just three months ago, after my own extreme sports career had come to a very sudden, flailing, crumpled, snowy, ski-torn halt (albeit a temporary one). I won't be cleared for extreme sports by my doc for a few months, and so in the meantime, Hooters is all the thrill I've got. I wonder if it's one of those things where it will take increasingly great challenges to bring the same thrill? Pretty soon I'll be knitting in strip clubs, tucking stitch markers into g-strings. I'll try to sneak onto the sets of porn films to see if I can get away with knitting in the background of scenes without anyone noticing. Where will it end, I ask??

Erm. Maybe not.

Anyway, back to reality. I did notice in that picture above that, uh, how shall I put it? I am out-hooting the very Hooter girls. Unfortunately for me, I am also out-assing them, but that is as it should be, I suppose, because "God is fair." (I will send a small prize to the first person who can identify the movie reference there, title and actress. Hey, look, an accidental contest!)

And what am I knitting in that pic, you may wonder?

Still Life, with Pillowcase Lace, Patriotic Phonebook, and Hideous Hotel Bedspread

That would be the lace for the Lace-Edged Pillowcase. It's nearly finished by now (well, the knitting is nearly finished).

And just to show you how close to the edge I like to live, and please brace yourself, as some may find this shocking, this is how close I almost came to running out of yarn and therefore knitting on my trip from Utah to our final destination in Georgia:

A close shave

I'd finished up all the knitting on my first snakeskin sock on the plane (couldn't kitchener and weave in tails for fear that my needle would be confiscated as a dangerous weapon).

A lousy picture of Snakey #1, with hotel towel covering bedspread to protect your eyes...

But never fear. There was more yarn in the trunk of the car. Which is a story for another day, I think.

Wait, that's not knitting!

2005-08-07T14:45:00.000-06:00

Brandied Cherries

Lately, a few other activities have been taking up some of the time that I might ordinarily devote to knitting. Every year for the last three summers, around this general time, the madness kicks in, and I become convinced that canning is a good idea. I don't know what came over me two years ago, but I was suddenly compelled to learn to can food, and so I taught myself out of a book. The first year I made mango chutney, spicy tomato chutney, and strawberry jam. All in one day. One day in which I stayed up until 3 AM finishing, and ended up setting off the carbon monoxide detector because the gas stove had been going continuously for so long. I get kind of obsessive like that...

The mango chutney was the big hit of that round of canning, and I made another big batch last summer. (You can see pics here.) I also tried to invent my own peach/tomato salsa recipe, because I LOVE fresh peach/tomato salsa, but after reading many strict admonitions about how dangerous it was to invent your own recipe for canning, I grew paranoid and added a lot of extra lemon juice to ensure it was acidic enough, and it turned out rather boring and lemony. I did get a pressure cooker for my birthday last year, so now that I can preserve such things without having to worry about acidity levels, maybe I'll try again. Whenever I figure out how to use the pressure cooker, that is.

Anyway, this year I became utterly convinced that I needed to can stuff with cherries. Thus began a series of canning episodes, three so far. First off were brandied cherries, made from sweet Bing cherries -- and you don't know what a good time is until you've pitted six pounds of cherries by hand. That's the thing about canning. It's so labor intensive that you have to develop a bit of amnesia from the last time before you're willing to undertake it again. I can, at least, say that I am a lot faster about the whole business now. In the past, I've estimated how long it will take, and it inevitably took me three times longer than my estimation.

My second batch this year was a batch of spiced cherries -- a vinegar based concoction, kind of like chutney. And the third round resulted in cherry jam. Hooray for cherry jam! The last two batches were from a huge bucket of pitted sour cherries that I bought direct from the orchard where they were grown. The owners had a big pitting machine in their garage, and it was all on the honor system -- drive up, take your massive bucket of cherries from the freezer, deposit a check or cash in their lock box, and go along your merry way. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was that they had them in a sugar solution, but I suppose that was to maintain the color. However, despite being frozen and in a bucket, they really were pretty darn fresh, and the fact that they were already pitted was just brilliant -- I just washed the sugar off and threw the recipes together. Nice.

I will probably do some more canning this month, after I get back from my week long business trip, on which I leave tomorrow. I bought a couple more boxes of pectin, so I think I'll make a couple more batches of jam, at least. And I probably should do some more mango chutney -- that stuff is just the best. In fact, if you can, or want to take up canning, in addition to the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, which is an absolute must, I also recommend picking up a copy of Home Made, Best Made, which includes the mango chutney recipe and lots of other great stuff.

Oh, and don't take this blog entry, or any other informal, loosely-defined description of canning as direction or advice. Canning is serious business, and you should carefully read and follow all the USDA approved canning procedures, because a healthy dose of paranoia will keep you from, you know, killing yourself and all your friends with botulism or anything like that. But when you're careful and do it right, mmm, mmm...it's good stuff to open a jar of something you made in the summer in the dead of winter.

In case you have any interest, I did put together a little slide show of canning the brandied cherries, and you can find it here.

Meant for Each Other

2005-08-04T21:44:00.000-06:00

Who could possibly resist the lure...nay, the veritible gravitational pull of a big sale at their LYS? Particularly when that LYS is the Needlepoint Joint, where they seldom have sales? Not I. The last NPJ sale was over three years ago, and aptly named the Once in a Blue Moon Sale. It did not disappoint, and neither did this current sale, the Price Slasher Sale. For those of you who are local, the sale runs through Saturday, and they have some great stuff, so you should check it out. For those of us who are among the weekly "regulars," we received a special sneak preview of the sale last night, and I saw many a happy knitter making many a massive yarn haul.

I wouldn't say my haul was massive, but it was respectable:

Laceweight

Here are four skeins of Madil Merino Extrafine 2/48, two in cream and two in black. Each skein was only $4, and each has 1200 m of yarn! That's two large shawls or four small shawls for $16. The mind reels.

Why are there dogs on the packaging for a yarn made from pure virgin wool? Beats me. Anybody out there know?

Mosaic Sock Kit

Here's a real score: a Blackberry Ridge Mystical Mosaic Socks "Saint Edward" kit for $10. This is a great find because I very nearly bought this kit at the regular price of $20 a number of times. This also has the distinction of being the only mosaic knitting I've seen so far about which I thought, "I really want to make that."

Pile o' Mohair

This photo isn't very true to the color, but this is a pile of ten skeins of pale pinky-lavendar Cleckheaton Flowerdale Mohair 8 Ply. easily enough for a sweater. The damage: $30. Can you believe it? Ten balls of mohair for $30? You couldn't even buy a commercially made mohair sweater for $30, at least not a half-way decent one. Woo Hoo!

Jaeger Handknits Knitting Magazine Eight

I just couldn't believe it when I picked up this magazine full of classic, stylish sweaters I actually liked, only to see this on it:

Do my eyes deceive me??

Yes, this was in the two for $1 bin. I could scarcely believe it, and, as it turns out, it was mismarked, but they gave it to me for the price shown anyway. I only learned that it was mismarked after my sale was complete, when I commented, "I can't believe you guys were selling that Jaeger magazine for so cheap!," and the owner's daughter replied, "Wellll...it was actually mismarked, but we gave it to you for that anyway, because we like you!" It's not like they lose money on me, anyway, considering the alarming number of frequent buyer cards I've filled up in the past year...

As a matter of fact, karma evened things out right away when I bought this, which was definitely not on sale, not by any stretch of the imagination:

Price Slasher Sale Splurging

When I saw this beautiful Della Q bag from across the room, I basically thought to myself, "Oh, there's where I left my bag." I don't know about soulmates and love at first sight, but I do know a soulbag when I see it, and this bag and I were clearly meant to be together. I mean:

Who could argue with this?

On the Road Again

2005-08-02T20:20:00.000-06:00

After a few months' respite thanks to both my knee surgery and something of a summer lull, it's time for another round of business trips. Last Thursday found me on a rather brutal one-day trip to Phoenix, AZ -- brutal, meaning that we went for the day only and didn't stay the night, so I had to wake up at 4:30 AM to be to the airport for my 7:15 flight, and I didn't walk in the door of my house until around 11:45 PM that night. Well, and brutal also meaning that it was something like 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix that day, and frankly, that's just not right. Walking outside felt the way it feels to stick your arm in the oven to pull out some food. Oh, sure, it's a "dry heat," but it's also a heat in which you probably could literally fry an egg on the sidewalk.

I made it through my day with lots of caffeine and lots of knitting. Completely ignoring all four items on my WIP list, I decided that I needed a project that was both easy and small, so I cast on for a new sock. I started the sock the night before in anticipation of the trip and knit about three rows. Then, as soon as I settled in to wait for my plane at the airport, the fun began:

Sock-in-progress on the flight from Salt Lake to Phoenix

The yarn is Cervinia Calzeterria in color #901 (named "Milan") purchased from Smiley's Yarn Sale for super-cheap. (Looks like right now they're selling it for $2.50 a ball. I calculated that I might need three balls of it to make one pair of socks, but I suspect you could easily get a pair from two skeins.) I'm using a pattern from Classic Beginnings Socks for the Family by Michele Wyman, which is a great basic sock book, and I'm working these on size 2 Clover bamboo needles.

It turned out to be a great day for knitting. I knit while waiting for and throughout the first flight, then in the rental car on the way to our meetings. I was able to sneak in some knitting time on breaks, and also after the meetings during a rather long wait for our flight home and throughout the second flight, though I was nearly dropping from exhaustion by that point. Hence the wisdom of an easy knitting project to carry along.

As a reward for enduring the blistering heat (which no sock made of wool should have to endure), the sock and I snagged the rental car at lunch and headed for IKEA.

Socks love IKEA too

The Phoenix IKEA is just a few blocks away from where our meetings were held, and I actually needed to hustle over there to pick up part two of a baby shower gift that I'd previously purchased from them. I'd purchased the frog part of a cute frog ottoman on our last business trip to Phoenix, but stupidly didn't notice that there was an accompanying air element sold separately. Lucky me, they were in stock, and I was able to pick it up just two days before the baby shower for which it was intended! (Guess occasionally a little bit of good luck comes along to make up for the bad luck of, say, major skiing accidents and such...) Naturally, I bought a few other items (hey, I have more than one baby shower coming up!). The sock and I also enjoyed a rather tasty lunch in the IKEA cafeteria.

With all this quality knitting time, I made great progress. Here's a view of the sock, enjoying the company of my lightly salted peanuts and Bloody Mary mix with lemon on the plane ride home:

Sock kicking back

Nah, nothing stronger than the mix in that drink. I would've had to sleep in my car otherwise! As you can see, the colors combined and behaved in a rather strange way, one which reminds me pretty distinctly of snake skin. Here's something even stranger:

Anomaly

One section of the yarn has much longer stretches of the dark brown and cream than the rest of the yarn, so it doesn't pattern in the same way. I know that this would drive a large percentage of the perfectionistic knitblog world to distraction, but me, I just let the yarn do what it wants and be the way it wants to be. And I'm just pleased that I'm getting the gauge I set out to achieve, 8 stitches per inch, since I've often had more like 9 or 10 spi on socks in the past (which, remarkably, fit anyway...go figure).

As a reward for its suffering, I took the sock with me for a day of pampering on the following day (because I had very wisely scheduled the day off work). The sock and I enjoyed a pedicure, fake spray-on tan, haircut, and eyebrow wax, and believe me, we felt like new people/footwear afterwards. So much so that I bought some new clothes (none of which match the sock...don't tell it). And as an even greater reward, the sock came along to the baby shower on Saturday and enjoyed the lovely afternoon tea at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City:

Knitting in Fine Style with Brooke

Yes, I know how to show a sock a good time. Even when the irony of knitting wool socks in 110 degree Fahrenheit heat renders the activity almost ludicrous.

I leave you with this, one of the strangest signs I've ever seen. This was at the Phoenix airport, and I saw several of them.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And then make them wait in Terminal B for 3 hours.

My question is this: refuge from WHAT? Are there other areas in the airport in which people in wheelchairs are persecuted, and therefore they must seek refuge? I don't get it.

This site just made me late for work

2005-08-01T07:42:00.000-06:00

Check out some truly distressing knitwear here.

Bonne Marie linked to a part of this for her post this morning, but then I browsed around and found even weirder stuff. It's pretty PG-13, but all the same, I think this must be some specialty stuff for knitwear fetishists or something. I especially direct your attention to the balaklavas, catsuits, Wollsaecke (that would be wool bags...), and "Bodys". Oh my. It is even more entertaining if you read German, and if you're really curious you might try to run it through the Google translation engine.

Oops

2005-07-20T16:04:00.000-06:00

I think Paul (that's my boyfriend) felt slighted yesterday because I did not credit him with the discovery of those crazy knitting needles that count your stitches electronically. Once again, I fail to give credit where credit is due. It's surprising how many times fiber-related and specifically knitting-related things turn up in the online blogs and websites that Paul frequents, which would seem to have nothing to do with knitting. World domination continues apace.

Magical needles?

2005-07-19T11:14:00.000-06:00

Do you need smart needles?

Picture-rama

2005-07-16T13:12:00.000-06:00

No posting for a while means I have a TON of pictures to share now. Since I discussed most of them in the last post, I'll just proceed without a lot of further explanation.

Black Forest Naturwolle Scarf in Rosenholz Coulorway is Complete

I finished this double-moss stitch scarf somewhere in Idaho (driving in the car between Sun Valley, Idaho and Ennis, Montana on the 4th of July, in fact.) It was no cheapy, since I like a wide scarf, and it took three skeins of this pricey yarn. But I think I'll enjoy wearing it, and it's certainly very warm.

"Son of Charlotte" Stashbuster Spirals Finally Finished

So, I FINALLY finished these socks from the Six Sox Knitalong. It took me long enough. The knitting has been done since April, I just couldn't bear to weave in the million yarn tails, though it wasn't really that bad, of course, once I actually sat down and did it. These include leftover yarn from some Fortissima Colori Jacquard socks, some Lorna's Laces socks (the Fluted Bannister pattern for the same knitalong, actually), and then tons of leftovers of KPPPM from my Charlotte's Web shawl (hence their name).

Rogue Nearly Done!

Next up we have the current status of Rogue. The sleeves and body and hood are all complete. I grafted the hood with a reasonable amount of success, though I think it could look better. Hopefully blocking will smooth it out a little bit, because right now I don't think it looks completely seamless in that cable, at least not in the reverse stockinette part. But then, I was just sort of winging it, and it turned out well enough. Not being a knitting perfectionist is pretty freeing. I figure I learn from the things that I don't do perfectly, and I'll be better at it the next time around.

Hood Cables

Here's a closer view of the hood cables. Due to my squatty row gauge, I had to lengthen both the body and the hood. For the hood, I just picked an 8 row pattern repeat and added 16 rows, which was a smidge more than I technically would have needed to compensate. I kind of winged it with adjusting the increases and decreases as I went, and it worked out just fine. The body was easy to lengthen -- I added three repeats of the simple cable in the middle. I was a little worried about the body, because I did not lengthen it at all from the armhole shaping to the neck, though technically I should have. I considered it, but the math seemed tricky, and so I tried it out as written. (Sure, I majored in math, but laziness is always my first preference!) Luckily, it fits just fine that way. It's nice that knitting really is so forgiving.

Lace Project Revealed

Yeah, here's that mysterious lace project to which I've been alluding. It's the Lovers Braid Pattern Lace-Edged Pillowcase from Weekend Knitting (as I've said before, one of my favorite knitting books ever.) I previously made a Leaf Pattern Lace-Edged Pillowcase from the same book (which you can see here), and I had a ton of yarn left over, so I wanted to make another. I kind of liked the idea of having a set that doesn't actually match. The yarn I'm using is different than what the pattern calls for - it's Katia's Mississippi 3 in white. (BTW, anybody know anything about that yarndex site where I found a link for the Katia? I'd never seen it before, but it seems interesting.) The pattern calls for a 100% mercerized cotton, and this yarn is a cotton/acrylic blend, but it seemed to work out okay on the other pillowcase, and though the ball band says to hand wash, I recently sent the pillowcase through the washing machine (but not the dryer) for the first time, and it seemed to hold up just fine. The finishing on these is very tedious, but the result is nice.

Cold Nights Camping?

That's okay! You can just wear your scarf while you are knitting it! Just watch out for that velcro on the coat -- since velcro is the enemy of knitting, no doubt about it.

And, finally, this is for Kim:

Harry Potter Books, UK Special Collector's Edition

My friend who started me reading HP did so by sending me the special edition of the first book. I enjoyed it immensely, and of course I wanted a matching set, which led to me ordering these from Amazon.co.uk. Unfortunately, the collector's editions come out several months after the initial release, so I have the latest book on order, but it won't be published until October. So don't anybody tell me anything that happens!! I may just have to borrow somebody's copy before then.

Whew. And thus ends the picture fest. Happy weekend!

The Sound of Silence

2005-07-15T16:29:00.000-06:00

As is evident, I've been fairly quiet lately. A lot of fellow knitbloggers posted some very profound and sympathetic and moving things after the bombings in London last week, which I thought was a wonderful testament to the generally kind and supportive nature I usually find amongst knitters. Me, I wasn't ignoring it, I just didn't really know what to say. The world makes me sad and just plain tired sometimes. The outpouring of sympathy about the bombings in England does give me hope for the human race. But then again, a part of me must wonder, why aren't we this upset every single day, every time we hear about another group of innocent people killed by a bomb in Iraq? Is it because we somehow think it's not as bad to bomb "your own people" (however large the fallacies behind that notion)? Or is it because Iraq is considered a war zone, and we just expect that sort of thing there? Maybe it's because we think we can't draw the lines as clearly between good and evil in Iraq? Or is it just that familiarity and frequency breed numbness? I just don't know. Frankly, it all just makes me sad. And like I said, I am not sure what I really have to contribute to the dialogue, though I will add that hopefully no one thinks that I'm trying to diminish the horror of the bombings in London with what I've written here. It was a truly terrible thing, and my sympathy goes out to anyone affected.

But, certainly, as many others have noted, there is inherent value in continuing on with everyday things, however mundane they may seem in the face of human suffering and tragedy. And, so, on that note, I'm returning to what I came here for: the knitting.

--------------------------------------

I may have been unusually taciturn lately, but that doesn't mean there was no knitting. There has been knitting indeed. In fact, while I've been so quiet about my knitting, I've been on a sort of a finishing bender. It must have been finishing that afghan that tipped it off. I got a bit of a taste of how good it feels to finish an old, lingering project, and I wanted more. And so, somewhere in the middle of Idaho, I finished the Stashbuster Spiral "Son of Charlotte" socks. Then, in West Yellowstone, Montana I finished the Black Forest Naturwolle double moss stitch scarf. Now I'm getting dangerously close to finishing up Rogue - it just needs to be blocked, have the sleeves attached, and have the hems sewn up. There wasn't even all that much major swearing when I grafted the stitches of the hood together. Perhaps finishing Rogue will inspire me to block the cowl and crochet on the edging. And then what?? My WIP list will be so short, I won't know what to do with myself. Just the afghan and the small lace project I alluded to a while ago. Neither of which I really consider a "primary" project. Here I am, caught without a plan. Stay tuned.

Oh, as far as blog points of interest go, I guess I should point out that I added a button for the Rogue Knitalong in the sidebar. Yes, I joined the Rogue KAL back in the day, when it was actually an active knitalong. I'll confess that, now that Rogue is nearly done. I joined the Summer of Lace knitalong a while ago as well, and since I'm actually currently knitting lace, however coincidental, I figured I might as well fess up. Also, the Stashbusters KAL has morphed into a looser Stashbuster club, and so I decided to join them, since I don't think I have the fortitude to do any major KALs right now, but I have been doing a lot of stashbusting in my knitting lately. Obviously, the Stashbuster Spirals socks fit the bill. But in addition to that, the yarn for Rogue had been stashed for a while before I started that project. The Kidsilk Haze for the cowl marinated in the stash for some time, as well. The afghan yarn is my oldest stash yarn (call it "first in, first out inventory" if you like.) And the lace project yarn came out of the stash as well. So, clearly, this is the club for me.

I don't have my camera handy, or I would post some pictures. So you'll just have to trust me that they're on the way and tune back in soon to see all this stuff. And I'll even reveal this lace project, for which the excessive build-up of two cryptic references will no doubt leave you feeling that the unveiling is anticlimactic. (Lace! Unveiling? Bwah hahaha. Dorky knitter puns no extra charge.)

Getting Spammy

2005-07-09T11:26:00.000-06:00

Okay, I realize I'm getting a little bit spammy here, with no actual content of my own, but you have got to go check out the links in Bonne Marie's post today, for that art is way cool.

An actual update from, oh, say, ME, will happen one day soon...

I wouldn't want to tell you what to do, but...

2005-07-08T08:47:00.000-06:00

I'm going to do it anyway. If you don't already, you should be reading Crazy Aunt Purl. That Laurie is one funny chick. It's true, she doesn't seem to have much knitting content for a knitting blog, but you won't care, because she is the Southern Bridget Jones living in L.A. And she writes monthly "Hor-O-Scopes". And she has a cat named Chairman Meow. And did I mention the funny? You will heart her, I just know it.

Gone Fishin'

2005-07-01T10:51:00.000-06:00

Okay, well, not really. More like, "gone to southern Idaho to sit under a tree and knit and read while other people do fun stuff like mountain bike." Anyway, I won't be back until Wednesday evening, hooray!

Have a great weekend!

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

2005-06-29T16:45:00.000-06:00

I realized belatedly after my triumphant finished afghan post that I didn't adequately give credit to everyone that helped out with the two charity afghans. I think I mentioned a while ago that the afghans were a group project that my Stitch n Bitch group started *coughthreeyearsagocough*, but if you were only to read the most recent post, it sounds like I'm taking all the credit for the afghans, which I certainly do not mean to do! And so, I want to thank the following people for the squares that they contributed, in no particular order (well, actually just looking at the squares from the top to the bottom and counting them up):

Mindy: 16 squares! (Mindy crocheted so many of the squares in the second afghan that I finished that I kept thinking of it as the Mindy-ghan)
Kristi: 1 square
Rhonda: 4 squares
Erika: 5 squares
Bonnie: 1 square
Piper: 1 square
Sharla: 1 square
My co-worker Connie, her aging (and perhaps colorblind? *maysheneverdiscoverthisblog*) mother-in-law, and her sister-in-law: 16 squares, all in that crazy-ghan
Krystie: 5 squares

A second co-worker crocheted the border on the second afghan for me.

And me? I made five of the squares in the more sedate afghan, sewed 'em all together, taught myself to crochet enough to fill in all the gaps on the crazy-ghan (the co-worker and family took the 10"x10" square criteria I set up very...loosely, shall we say), crocheted the border on the wacky-ghan, and wove in a million bazillion yarn tails.

Incidentally, as I predicted, I did require a lot of wine to finally finish weaving in tails over the weekend. The large pitcher of sangria that I made (I hosted my Stitch n Bitch girls at my "new" pad for the first time!) did the trick quite nicely. Well, that and the splendid company!

Very soon, these blankets will be making their way to Salt Lake City to Primary Children's Medical Center to keep some sick kids company, and I couldn't be more pleased at the thought. I must confess that more than once when I was dragging my feet in finishing these blankets up, I probably put the "bitch" back in Stitch n Bitch, but I know many good vibes and thoughts went into the making of these afghans, and perhaps even a few of my "persistance over time and stubborn determination to finish these blankets even when it seems like I never will" vibes will be helpful to a kid facing more adversity than I have to endure. I hope?

At any rate, once again, a round of applause to the wonderful SnB peeps. You broads rock!

The End of an Era

2005-06-27T22:59:00.000-06:00

The charity afghan, she is done:

Afghan Number 2 Finally Complete

I sent it through the washer and the dryer yesterday, and it held up admirably. No blocking for this mostly acrylic blankie. And that was my stipulation, too, for the squares -- they had to be machine washable and dryable. I mean, the last thing that the family of a sick child needs is a blanket that must be hand washed and blocked. Because it just won't happen. The blanket came out of the dryer feeling very soft and wonderful, and so I am finally looking forward to donating it, along with it's friend:

Afghan Number 1

And, no, you don't need to point out that an afghan shouldn't really take an era. I'm just tickled to be able to take something off the WIP list.

Which is good, because I felt a strong impulse to cast on for a tiny lace project last night, and so I went with it. Oh, and when I finally lined my cedar chest with some wax paper as a temporary fix to protect my yarn from cedar oil discoloration yesterday, I discovered a swatch that I started for yet ANOTHER project. Does swatching count as a WIP? It doesn't seem like it should...

So, in summary, stay tuned for tales of my recent knitting escapades with my two knitting groups, my Rogue progress, imperceptible afghan and scarf progress, a new project, and a rediscovered project. Oh and a wee bit of stash enhancement. Something tells me I need to start posting a little more often here...

Woo Hoo, I'm in!

2005-06-24T16:32:00.000-06:00

Alright, how cool -- I got accepted to the esteemed ranks of the Knitting Blogs ring! So, if you surfed over here from there, welcome, and I swear, I actually do usually have more knitting content than, say, my last three entries might imply. At any rate thanks for dropping by!

Stalker, who are you?

2005-06-23T16:50:00.000-06:00

Alright, I can't take it anymore, the curiosity is killing me!

You may have noticed the site meter in the right hand column of my blog. It tells me all kinds of stuff, like how many people visit my blog, details about their service (if available), and the page from which they were referred (if available). The part that really delights me is the wacky hits I get from google and yahoo search engines. Looking up "Arizona Legasus CPM" or "Phoenix Anti-Embolism Stocking"? Yeah, it'll bring you here, thanks to all my tales of leg surgery.

But yesterday somebody searched google for my full name and Utah, and here's where they wound up. So I figure it's someone I know or used to know who was wondering where I am now. So, whoever you are, if you come back, send me an e-mail at aeberinger at gmail dot com, or leave a comment here. If you're wondering what I'm up to nowadays, chances are I'm probably wondering what you're up to as well. I'd love to hear from you, unless of course you still hate my guts after years and were just looking me up because you wish me ill. In which case, certainly you have the wrong person.

Separated at Birth?

2005-06-23T16:49:00.000-06:00

I have just discovered that I have a kindred spirit knitblogger out there. I discovered yesterday that Amelia, who lives in the UK, has a blog named Knitter Natter. And, hey, we both have short dark hair, and our names both begin and end with the letter A.

So, in honor of strange coincidences, we have decided to become Sister Blogs. You know, the way there are Sister Cities? Yep, that way. So take a moment to pop over to Knitter Natter. While you're there, you can admire the beautiful alphabet baby blanket that Amelia is working on.

Sometimes life just interferes

2005-06-22T20:57:00.000-06:00

It has been one of those weeks.

That is to say, the sort of week where everything in life conspires to prevent me from doing much knitting. Last weekend knitting took a back seat to recovering from illness and cleaning and family obligations and some escapist reading. And, since weekend seems to be my prime knitting time lately, that means that here it is, Wednesday, and I don't have much to say for myself. I did work a few rows on my Greek Key Afghan, but sadly, I must say that I don't even think it's worth a photograph, as I haven't even completed a full pattern repeat. I'm debating ripping it out, but I think I'll keep going for a while before I make that decision. I tend to be a tight knitter, so I went up a needle size automatically, and of course I didn't swatch because, um, afghan? Who does that have to fit? But I'm starting to suspect that the pattern may have been written by a tight knitter for a change, and I'm already having worries about running out of yarn before it reaches a respectable size. So we'll see.

Life just kept right on interfering so far this week. I've been going through a challenging time at work, and I finally made the decision to request a move. This is, of course, something that has required more than one discussion with more than one manager, and it gets exhausting. It's not over yet. I'm spending a few days "thinking about it some more." I still want to move, I just have to hold firm and go through some more hoops. But it's mentally taxing, and I haven't felt much like knitting. Which may be a good thing, since I was having irrational desires to abandon all WIPs and cast on for some new socks over the weekend... :)

Anyway, knitting will ensue soon, I just know it. For one thing, I have my weekly knitting night tomorrow at my LYS, and I'm hosting my Stitch n Bitch group on Saturday.

Anyway, since I am so generally dull, let me direct you to my non-knitting link of the week. My future brother-in-law is biking across the USA with two of his wild and crazy friends. They set out on Sunday, and appear to be having a great time so far. Check out their journal on the site for some spectacular Washington state scenery.

Just how sick do dogs get, anyway?

2005-06-16T00:55:00.000-06:00

I am home sick. Again. In addition to hobbling through life (at which I am notably improving), I seem to now be suffering my second illness in just over a week. Last week's malaise cleared up just in time for this week's hideous cold. I finally gave up and stayed home from work today, after sleeping through the alarm I'd set on my phone, waking up with a start at 8:00 when something mysteriously fell down somewhere in the house (never have figured out what), sitting in the chair for 45 minutes trying to convince myself that I was starting to feel better, eating some breakfast and drinking a cup of coffee in an attempt to do more convincing, and failing miserably in both attempts. Hello? Immune system? Are you listening? Buck up!!

This all got me wondering about the origin of the expression "sick as a dog." I mean, just how sick do dogs get, anyway? Is it really that much more sick than any other animal? Here is a bit on the origins of the phrase, though it doesn't really offer that much clarification, other than essentially to say that the dog is a poor maligned beast, and this is yet another example of it. The part that I found most amusing were the historical alternative phrases. Sick as a horse. Sick as a rat. Sick as a parrot (yes, you read right). And, my personal favorite, sick as a Cushion. I really think I should incorporate that one into my repetoire. Y'all, I am sick as a Cushion. Send chicken soup.

But thanks to the beauty of the laptop and wireless internet connetion, I can blog from bed. Just as a Cushion might. Aha! The aptness of the phrase is becoming clear to me now.

Well, what better time to provide a knitting update, right? I haven't accomplished much knitting this week, but last weekend was a great one. Imagine my delight at spending not one but TWO lovely afternoons knitting, one with each of my beloved knitting groups.

Saturday afternoon was the first time that I'd managed to hook up with my Stitch n Bitch group in ages. There was just a small group of four that got together - Piper, Erika, Brooke, and me - all at Piper's house, and it was wonderful to see each other and spend a couple hours working on our knitting projects. In keeping with my resolve, when I wasn't eating the wonderful food that Piper had on offer, I spent my time weaving in yarn tails on the second Primary Children's Hospital charity afghan. I got quite a few done (though admittedly there are probably 50 still to go.)

Sunday was a very special knit-together indeed. For over a year now, I've had the good luck to gather and knit on a weekly basis at my LYS with one of the most marvelous groups of people. Now, obviously, knitters tend to be a great bunch of people in general, but these folks have always far outstripped my expectations by invariably being cool, funny, smart, enthusiastic, irreverant, and supportive, just to throw a few of their many positive attributes around.

Some of The Regulars wish Kim farewell

On Sunday we all came together to bid farewell to one of our own. Kim will very soon be ~~abandoning us~~ moving to Colorado, and so as many of us that could be there came together on Sunday to wish her well and let her know how much we're going to miss having her around. Kim even graciously hosted her very own party! As always when there is a potluck involved with this group, the food was divine. Good food, good conversation, gifts to be opened, and of course much knitting -- I can't really think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Kim -- you are going to be missed! I'm very glad you started your blog so that we can follow along with whatever knit-a-thon you institute next. After the great Christmas sock-a-thon of 2004 and now the baby-blanket-a-thon of 2005, I'm dying to see how you'll manage to up the ante next time. Elaborate fair isle sweaters for every member of your extended family in 2006? Heirloom quality counterpanes knitted on size 0 needles to cover king-size beds in 2007? Whatever it is, I know it will not fail to impress.

Speaking of which, here is a photo of Kim on the last leg of the baby-blanket-a-thon:

It's looking great, Kim!

The complete set of photos from our lovely afternoon can be seen here. Ah, why can't every day be as nice?

Oh, and I spent much of my afternoon subtly convincing my fellow knitters that they all need to knit themselves a Rogue, employing top secret Jedi knitting mind tricks like the one seen here:

I see that your ~~Schwarz~~ hood is as big as mine

Note to self: the human head is bigger than you're thinking. When you pick up stitches for a hood, please don't delude yourself into thinking, "Hey, I'm almost done!" You most assuredly are not.

I leave you with a picture of the mountains near my home. They were looking so spectacularly beautiful as I drove home from Kim's house that I kept trying to take pictures of them while driving. Since I just kept pointing the camera in the general direction without looking through the viewfinder or anything, most of the pics failed miserably, but I thought this one conveyed a little bit of the sights I was enjoying. And I do solemnly swear that I will put the camera down and drive next time. But it was just so purty!

Above the Fruited Plains

Holy sexy, Batman!

2005-06-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

Okay, am I crazy to want to make this? I didn't think so...

Stupid Things I Do: A Docu-drama

2005-06-14T20:08:00.000-06:00

That does it. Today I have been faced with far too many examples of my own idiocy. I present to you a photograph of the most recent item:

Who could possibly need TWO?

Yes, that's right, I now have two copies of the August 2005 Knit 'N Style. I already question the wisdom of owning one copy, and now there are two. Though I am typically not fond of most of the "Style," I always seem to purchase the mag when it comes out, and therefore a while ago when I received a subscription offer in the mail, I said to myself "what the heck?," and I sent in the card. Then I proceeded to forget this entirely, and I purchased the latest issue. So naturally the mail brought me a reminder of my subscription this afternoon.

If you want it, it's yours to the first person to e-mail me your address at aeberinger at gmail dot com. In its defense, the majority of the patterns in this issue are NOT as horrid as the design on the cover (no offense if you actually like it, but, well, let's just say I don't love it), and there are even a few in there I would actually consider making, including some sock designs. It also features a little article on entrelac plus a few other random things.

Of course, this was nowhere near the first bit of stupidity that I discovered today. This morning I wanted to put on my brown suit jacket. When I couldn't find my brown suit, a dim recollection of taking that suit to the cleaners at some historic time started to dawn. A call to the cleaners uncovered the truth -- I'd dropped the suit off back in mid-April, and then forgotten it entirely.

True, I subsequently had two business trips, a house sold, a move, knee surgery, and more doctor and physical therapy visits than you can shake a stick at, but it does make me start to wonder how many other semi-important things have disappeared from my head entirely due to lack of short-term mental storage space. I remembered another one at lunchtime when I dropped off a car insurance payment for my mom and realized I have never cancelled my homeowner's insurance despite the fact that I no longer own a home. Now this magazine. Well, never a dull moment, I guess. It's like coming out of a coma, or slowly returning to yourself after suffering amnesia. I wonder what new things I'll remember tomorrow?

Our beautiful roof

2005-06-14T16:42:00.000-06:00

Dangerous beauty

This is one of the most oddly beautiful pictures I've seen in a long time, and ironically it is a picture of something that is very bad indeed.

This is our roof, with 3 to 5 inches of water standing on it. The water got high enough that it exceeded the level that is sealed against water, and therefore water was leaking into the living room around the fireplace. Not good. Tree debris had clogged some drains. Yes, as many of the other Utah knitbloggers have reported, we've had a LOT of rain around here lately. Luckily, the drains are now clear and impending doom has been averted. But I was so struck by this picture when Paul put it up on our computer that I decided to share it. At first glance, I thought it was a watercolor painting or something. And, oddly enough, I've been trying to figure out a way that I could take a photograph that would show just how gorgeous and enormous the sky seems around here. I think this one does a pretty good job.

I have lots of knitting news and pictures, which I will share very soon, but I wanted to show this photo in the meantime.

I should have knee surgery more often

2005-06-06T18:45:00.000-06:00

Okay, well, maybe not. But I must say, if people keep bringing me yarn like this, I won't complain!!

Yes, that's right, I got STILL MORE new yarn, and once again, it was not at all my fault.

100% alpaca, baby!

One of Paul's best friends, Matt, was in town over the past few days, because he is a tax consultant for many of the people attending a national alpaca conference that was held in Salt Lake City. Networking, and all that.

Too bad I didn't really know about the conference in advance, because it would have been muy tempting to hobble my way around the convention center, giggling at how funny and cute alpacas are and groping yarn. But, lucky me, Paul conspired a bit with Matt, and when Matt came to visit us and mountain bike with Paul all weekend, I got the luscious stuff that you see above. Yippee!! Two 4 oz, 210 yard skeins of 100% huacaya alpaca in a natural, undyed color, from the New Era Fiber Processing Company in Dawsonville, Georgia. Such incredibly soft, gorgeous stuff. Probably not actually worth having knee surgery for, but a definite consolation whilst recovering.

In other news, today was my first day back at work. I went in for not quite a full day, as I had a physical therapy appointment in the morning. However, the great team of people that I work with bought me this ice cream cake, which we shared after lunch:

Feel the Love

Don't worry, I wasn't offended. In fact, this cake gave me a good laugh, which I sorely needed today. It's based on a couple of inside jokes, one of which is a reference to the movie Waiting for Guffman,which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it. Though I honestly think the cake is pretty funny without any knowledge of the inside jokes whatsoever. In good news, I am weightbearing on my operative leg as of today, though still using at least one crutch to get around. In bad news, due to a "misunderstanding" with my doctor, I should have been putting weight on my leg for like the last week and a half. I would swear on a stack of Bibles that he told me to keep weight off it for three to four weeks, but today he insisted that, no, I need to put weight on it, I should have been doing so already, it helps the ACL to heal, but he doesn't think I've done myself any harm by not putting weight on it. This was insanely frustrating to me, as I could have been spending the last week and a half (when I was NOT at work) getting stronger, getting around much more easily, and generally having a better life. Oh well. At least there was the timely application of cake. And tonight there will be knitting.

Dirty Little Secrets

2005-06-05T16:08:00.000-06:00

I feel like I need to confess a few dirty little knitting secrets. I decided to put together a listing of works in progress for my sidebar, and that's when I realized that I have about three projects that really ought to have been finished long ago. Considering the very small amount of finishing left to do on each of them, it's pretty ridiculous that I haven't gotten them out of the way long ago.

Exhibit #1:

The seedy underbelly of the Son of Charlotte socks

The knitting itself on these Stashbuster Spiral socks was completed quite some time ago. But weaving in the tails. Oy. Still hanging over my head.

Exhibit #2:

Cowl Interrupted

I can't even really remember when I finished the knitting on my lace cowl. It's been a while. Now all that remains to do is weave in two ends, block it, and crochet the edging on. So of course I haven't touched it in ages. This is my "swatch" for the matching camisole, as well, so as soon as it's blocked, I can determine how I'd like to proceed with the camisole. If I can even remember what size needles I used at that point. Heh.

And, finally, the most embarrassing UFO of all,
Exhibit #3:

Long-term charity afghan project

About three years ago, I had the brilliant idea that my Stitch n Bitch group should make some charity afghans to donate to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. It would be so easy! Everyone could make 10" x 10" squares, and we would sew them up, and voila!

We had tons of participation at first. The squares poured in, and we had enough to make two afghans. Some were, um, gaudier than others, and some were, well, not 10" x 10" by any stretch of the imagination, so we ended up with one crazy-ghan and one more sedate. Unfortunately, she who initiates the charity project gets stuck with the finishing work, and between that and waiting for a few straggler squares (because I wanted everyone to have a chance to contribute), these afghans have taken an embarrassingly long time to complete. After teaching myself to crochet in order to fill in the gaps, much sewing of squares, weaving in a nauseating number of yarn tails, and crocheting a border, the wacky-ghan was completed about a year ago (scroll down on that link to see it). But somehow, though all the remaining squares for the second afghan came in, and though I managed to sew it all together and start to weave in the tails, I have not yet had the fortitude to finally finish the damn thing. A friend from work took it for a while, volunteering to crochet on a border and weave in all the tails. She had the afghan for quite some time, and though she did crochet the border, she didn't manage to do the tails, and then started having some health problems, so I collected the afghan a month or two ago and now it's hanging over my head once again.

Perhaps now that I have confessed, I will be able to overcome my laziness and finally finish these projects up! Then again, maybe all that tail-weaving should just wait until I've stopped taking all narcotic pain killers for my knee, because, really, weaving that many tails should only be undertaken with a glass (or perhaps a whole bottle) of wine.

No, wait, I've figured it out. I have new resolve, at least for the afghan. I haven't managed to get together with my wonderful Stitch n Bitch gals for quite some time now, but I hope that life will be settling down somewhat and that I will be able to start meeting with them a little bit more regularly soon. So I decree that every time I get together to Stitch n Bitch from now until it is finished, I will ONLY work on the Primary Children's Hospital afghan.

Well, at least it's a start at clearing my conscience...

Mergers and Acquisitions

2005-06-03T21:16:00.000-06:00

Hooray, a Rogue milestone has been reached!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have shoulder seams

Yes, I finished the front and back of Rogue and seamed the shoulders together with a mattress stitch. I think the seams turned out well enough, despite my lack of proficiency in the finishing arena. I have just had so little practice at seaming that it still feels awkward to me, but I feel like I am improving slowly, and I'm much less intimidated by it now.

Next up: the hood! It is starting to feel like I'm in the home-stretch on this sweater, since the hood is the last thing I have to knit. I knit the sleeves first (and long ago), so I just have to do the hood, graft it together, and attach the sleeves, and then I'll be done. Hooray!

In addition to knitting progress, I thought I'd show off a few recent acquisitions. Here they are as an overview. You would doubtless be amused if you could see the precarious position I got myself into to take the picture. As I spend a lot of time hanging out on a bed, usually strapped that fun Continuous Passive Motion machine that bends my knee for me, that's where I've been doing a lot of knitting and blogging lately. Anyway, I wanted to photograph this stuff from above, so in order to do so, I ended up kneeling on my right knee with my left leg, which is immobilized into a straight position and which is not supposed to bear my weight, stuck out precariously to the left, forming a sort of rickety triangle with my right leg. All that, and I ended up with this rather badly-lit photo:

New stuffsies, poorly lit

Now, I realize that the more yarn I acquire, the more I risk running into SABLE (stash accumulation beyond life expectancy), especially considering how much lovely yarn for excellent projects I already have, but it couldn't be helped. In the first instance, it wasn't even my fault:

Kool-Aid dying, here I come

This is the Knit Picks Color Your Own merino sock yarn that I got from Kim as a get-well present, along with directions for Kool-Aid dying that she printed off for me from Knitty. I can't wait to try it out!

Noro Goodness

The other yarn IS my fault, however. I decided to stop in at KnitCraft in Ogden yesterday when I was on the way home from my physical therapy in order to indulge in a little retail therapy, and I came away with three lovely skeins of Noro Kureyon in the #88 colourway, with which I plan to make a Booga Bag. I have never felted a single thing in the entire course of my life before, not even accidentally, and I finally decided that it is time. Does that justify the purchase? Probably not. But maybe the lovely purple, gold, greens, and browns in the yarn do...

I succumbed to Socks, Socks, Socks

Finally, to round out the retail therapy, I purchased a copy of Socks, Socks, Socks. There are so many great sock patterns in here that I am a little surprised I didn't buy a copy of this book sooner. However, I think it was probably the less-than-appealing cover photo that deterred me. What is this woman wearing?? Yes, I can appreciate the cool funkiness and interesting technique of her socks, though I must say I think the color choice doesn't do the pattern justice, but really, c'mon, who would wear that outfit in that manner?? Ah, well, to each her own, I guess.

Hiding under the new book is a copy of Knit 'n Style that I picked up at the grocery store a few days ago. I really have no idea why I persist in buying this magazine, but I always do. In fact, it seems that I am powerless to resist purchasing any knitting magazine, even if I think that the patterns are all hideous (as I most often do when reading Knit 'n Style). I guess I just like to keep up on the articles, techniques, and even the advertisements. I like to know what kind of new yarns are out there, and one of the major ways they seem to be promoted is through patterns. And I like to think that, even if I might not ever make the patterns that I find so ugly, perhaps I might learn from them and be able to take elements from their design in the future if I ever decide to start designing my own clothes, as I'd like to.

Happy weekend, everyone!

The Consolations of Knitting

2005-06-02T22:38:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking a lot over the past few days about how comforting knitting is, and on how many different levels it is comforting. The act of knitting just soothes the spirit, like a form of meditation or even therapy. It reassures, it distracts, it even lends a sense of control and accomplishment in a world in which those things sometimes seem hard to come by.

But of course, it isn't only the process of knitting that is comforting. Far from it -- the products of knitting can become some of the most comforting objects in our lives. So far in my knitting career, the two types of items that get the most frequent use, and which are the most comforting and beloved (by me and others) are socks and afghans. It seems that many knitters shy away from knitting afghans and throws, perhaps because they are so large. For me, afghans are the ultimate in comfort knitting, and several that I've knit for myself and for relatives receive almost daily use. As I've been largely stuck at home recovering from my knee surgery over the past couple weeks, I have been enjoying the comfort provided by some of my hand-knit items:

Socks and a throw to see me through

I currently have three pairs of Cozy Armchair Socks (from Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick, which is one of my all-time favorite knitting books), and I wear one or the other of them on an almost-daily basis when my feet are cold around the house. Knit on size 6 and 7 DPNs out of worsted weight yarn, they make great comfort knitting too, when you just want something easy, mindless and quick to work on. They are also great beginner socks for those who want to delve into the sock world. I've made them out of a Tahki Tweed yarn, Cascade 220, and out of the Artful Yarns Jazz called for by the pattern. I have to say, the Jazz is the winner -- a lovely alpaca/wool blend. True, they are handwash, which is a drawback, but I think they are worth it.

The throw in that picture is made of good ol' Lion Brand Thick n Quick chenille, using a throw pattern from the Lion Brand website. True, the yarn isn't much fun to knit with, and it STILL sheds little fibers around the house, but this throw has been much used and much loved (not to mention the fact that it perfectly matches my sofa). Not only that, but the throw itself was definitely comfort knitting -- I dubbed it "The Break-Up Throw" when I was knitting it about three years ago, because working on that throw, while watching the Pride and Prejudice mini-series repeatedly, was one of the best things that helped me get over a relationship that ended very badly.

Hm. I wonder if I'm starting to see some sort of correlation here? Many of the items that have been most comforting to knit have also turned out to me the most comforting to use on a daily basis. I'll have to pay more attention in the future to see if the correlation holds up.

I've come to the conclusion that my posts are getting too long because they are too infrequent. I have more things to say and show today, but I think I'll hold it in reserve in favor of posting more frequently. So check back in the next couple days for more.

I'll leave you with a pic of my Rogue progress as of two days ago:

Rogue-ing it

Oh, and let me not forget, I made myself some dorky little buttons for KnitterPatter. They're over there on the sidebar, so please feel free to use one if you'd like to link to me on your blog. But do please save me bandwidth by copying the button to your own photo host rather than linking to my picture. Not that bandwidth is much of a consideration for me at the moment, considering how few readers I have, but it's just good blog etiquette to practice in general, or so I hear.

Check this out

2005-05-31T13:04:00.000-06:00

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the latest KnitCast. It's an interview with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, and it's a great listen. She's every bit as entertaining in audio form as in writing. Also, even though it's a podcast, you don't have to have an iPod to listen to it -- just download it and have a listen on your computer. Enjoy!

A Cautionary Word

2005-05-29T13:49:00.000-06:00

After I posted the picture of my stash in its new home in my cedar chest, I received a cautionary comment from Elizabeth H from Culpeper, VA, who wrote:

I, too, put my stash in a cedar chest, only to discover several years later, that cedar oil from the chest itself had seeped into and DISCOLORED the yarn touching the sides and bottom of the chest. Be warned - you really need to put something between the chest and your yarn ASAP. The stain from the cedar WILL NOT WASH OUT!

I thought this was a great warning, and I figured I shouldn't keep it to myself lest anybody else had the idea to store their stash in a cedar chest. I don't know if this is a problem with all cedar chests, but it's worth being aware of. I've never had a problem with discoloration of the clothing that I've stored in the chest in the past, but I'm not going to take any chances, so I will be lining the chest with wax paper or something as soon as I feel motivated enough to hobble down to the basement to do so. (I can actually go up and down the stairs just fine on my crutches, but haven't yet felt like dragging a chair from one room to another to the chest to deal with it. Activities certainly become re-prioritized when one's leg is immobilized and unable to bear weight, and both hands are busy while "walking".)

In addition, the little bit of research that I did on my cedar chest as a result of Elizabeth's comment turned up some more useful information. It seems that all Lane cedar chests manufactured before 1994, or something like that, have a recall on them beceause of their locks. Apparently the chests click shut even when you aren't actually locking them, and can't be opened from the inside when they're not locked, so children have become stuck in them and died. If you have a Lane cedar chest, do a Google search on them, and you can find a phone number to get a replacement lock.

By the way, Elizabeth is also a brand new blogger -- she's just getting her site started over at http://www.Lizardknits.com. She has a free pattern for a baby bib on there, so go check it out if you get a chance.

Lately Haloscan hasn't been very good about e-mailing me all of my comments. I usually like to just reply by e-mail to those who comment, but if they aren't e-mailed to me, this is pretty hard - sometimes I don't even find them for a few days. Anybody else ever had this problem with Haloscan? I think it might be related to the e-mail address I'm using for the comments, which is on my Sidekick (handheld cell phone/e-mail/internet/planner/device/thingy), but I'm not sure. Any advice would be appreciated.

In light of that, I thought I'd just reply to a few comments on here:

Susan wrote:

When are you grrls going to Knit Craft? I'm sure the SLC gang would love to head north to meet you.

I apologize for not hooking you up with Miriam, Kim, and Kim in time for their KnitCraft trip. I didn't discover your comment until it was too late, and unfortunately had to miss the trip myself, as I spent that Saturday at home in a dim haze of pain and Percoset. :) Hopefully we can all get together another time. In fact, maybe a Utah knitblogger meet-up is in order? "Heck", at this rate, we're going to need a Utah Knit Blog Ring! Also, Susan, do keep me posted on whether there is an IKEA opening in Utah!

Michele remarked:

I'm really wanting some KOIGU, just not sure which color since the only place I'm going to be able to buy it is online.

I would totally recommend ordering Koigu from Matt and Rob at Threadbear. They carry a great selection of Koigu, and more importantly, they will no doubt be happy to give you color recommendations based on your general tastes. Matt is the color-meister in my opinion - he's the one who put together the kit for my Charlotte's Web shawl, and I love the result. And Matt and Rob are really so nice -- as I mentioned before, it was a delight to meet them in person, and made me feel even better about buying yarn from them. I tell ya, good, friendly customer service and an inviting atmosphere will get my loyalty every time. Actually, you live in Ohio, right? I think you'd just better take a road trip to Lansing!

Finally, to everyone who commented to wish me luck and to wish me a speedy recovery from my surgery, thank you so much for your kind words! Things are going well enough with my recovery -- it's going to take longer than I expected, but then it always does, right? I haven't had too many problems since those first few days, with the exception of a little scare on Friday that resulted in an impromptu trip to the emergency room. I was having symptoms of a blood clot in my calf, but lucky for me, it was a false alarm.

Amazingly, with my strangely busy schedule of exercises, physical therapy appointments, doctor's appointments, and four hours a day on the "Legasus CPM" (that's the leg-bendy machine's actual name), not to mention my various pain-medicine-induced naps and the ridiculous amount of time it takes me to complete mundane tasks such as carry a glass of water from the sink to the couch (it's all about having intermediate surfaces on which to sit the glass at regular intervals), I have had remarkably little time to knit in the past week.

Happily, this has remedied itself in the past couple days, and I have started making good headway on Rogue once again, especially after I discovered that I can quite easily knit while lying on my back having my leg repeatedly bent to a 105 degree angle. Yesterday I finished up the back, and switched over to finishing the remainder of the front. I'm a few rows into the chart for the cabling around the neck, and I'm definitely feeling the Rogue love again.

I am a little bit nervous about the sweater in general, because my gauge is a bit off. I'm getting 4.5 stitches to the inch, as I should, but instead of 6 rows/inch, I've been getting more like 7. I have made some design changes on the fly to compensate for this, so I hope that it will all work out. There is a simple cable repeat in the body that called for three repeats, and I repeated it six times instead to make up for some of the difference. I'm also a bit nervous because, in my zeal to start knitting, though I did knit a gauge swatch in the flat (and not one in the round, which is how I ended up off on the row gauge, I guess), I did not wash and block my swatch, so now I'm a bit worried that the sweater will grow unacceptably when it gets blocked. Hopefully it will all work out. The sleeves, which have been done for some time, seem to be about the right length for now, and I tried on the body when I switched from circular to flat knitting. It fit over a shirt, but it wasn't very loose, which I think is a good thing -- hopefully if it does grow in blocking, it won't grow too much, and it will still fit alright.

Though this is not my very first sweater, it is actually the first one I've made with sleeves. Since there is actual knitting progress to show, naturally I do not have my digital camera available. It's currently on a canoe trip, floating somewhere on the San Rafael River. This qualifies me as a pretty good girlfriend, eh? So, progress photos will appear after the camera gets home Monday.

Oh, and to those who inquired, luckily my knitting gauge doesn't seem to be much affected by Percoset. This was a huge relief to me, as I had a bad gauge experience when I was still on Valium immediately after my laser eye surgery last December. I even took the time to swatch before casting on a for a sock, but a couple days later, after doing some additional non-Valium knitting on the same sock, I realized it was going to be waaay too small and had to rip the whole thing out. It took me a while to realize, hello, you were on a muscle relaxant, what did you expect?

Which brings us to the end of yet another verbose post. Another thank you and a shoutout to Kim, who just stopped by to visit me for a while, and who brought me the most wonderfully soft Color Your Own sock yarn from Knit Picks, along with some directions for Kool-Aid dying. I can't wait to try it out! We're sure gonna be sad to have to tell you "Aloha" when you move to Denver next month, Kim! But, hey, I need more excuses for road trips, and I've never been to any yarn stores in Colorado....

Aargh

2005-05-27T20:45:00.000-06:00

I just lost a long post. I am completely bummed and don't have the willpower to re-create it. Stupid Blogger -- who knew that you have to hit "back" from the preview window. I thought I was in a pop-up. This probably makes no sense to anyone.

Anyway. I will try again tomorrow.

We Were on a Break

2005-05-22T21:45:00.000-06:00

Rogue and I? Well, let's just say we were on a break. But we're back together now, and our relationship is going quite well. I've reached the point where the side cables end and you switch to flat knitting.

Too bad I haven't been knitting for a few days, thanks to this:

Oops, there I go again, over-shrinking my photos...

Knee surgery ain't for wimps, yo.

That is me on my first day home, leg elevated, electric powered cooler for water-flow ice pack thingy attached to my knee, pain pump in place (delivering regular doses of something like novacaine), and not very happy.

And here's a shot of my view:

*Warning: lengthy post-operative tale devolving into occasional ranting follows. Feel free to just scan ahead and look at the pictures if you're not up for that sort of thing*

I've got a full-leg brace, locked into the straight position, which I wear at all times except when I'm doing my battery of exercises. Stitches, bandages, crutches -- check. Percoset, an elaborate series of pillows and blankets for propping, and even a anti-embolism circulation stocking for my good leg - check.

Surgery was on Thursday the 19th, and it's been non-stop fun since then, as you can imagine. I seriously had no idea that this was going to be so painful and challenging. I hadn't even realized that I'd be on crutches after the surgery. But I'm hanging in there, and my condition has improved steadily.

Thanks to several snafus and side-effects, the day of surgery and the following day turned into a bit of a comedy of errors, through which I soldiered in a haze of pain. I'm pretty sure I was not very pleasant to be around, and so for that, I thank those that were around me anyway.

Both of my hands are bruised, because after I told the nurse I had a history of difficulty in receiving an IV, she proceeded to try twice before getting a second nurse who was better at it. The surgery itself went well, as far as I know, though I vaguely remember someone telling me that it took longer than usual because they had to share equipment with a second operating room, or something bizarre like that. ACL and miniscus repair, and luckily not the more serious LCL repair that I'd feared the doctor might decide to do.

I had a much more difficult time coming out of the anasthesia than I have had in the past. I woke up shuddering and nauseated. As a result, I couldn't even manage to successfully eat a cracker all day, and they kept waiting to give me my pain medication. Finally, the nurse wanted to give it to me anyway, since she wanted to go home, and when I asked what she was giving me and learned that it was Lortab, I pointed out that I had told them I was allergic to Lortab, which was on both my chart and my wristband.

By this point (no surprise) the doctor was gone for the day, and his office couldn't get me a Percocet prescription, because it is a narcotic and can't be "called in" to a pharmacy. Instead, they shot me up with some demerol and called in some weaker pain medicine, which we picked up on the way home. Along with the crutches that I didn't have in the first place because nobody at the doctor's office told me I would need them.

I'm pretty much disappointed in the amount of preparatory information I was given, and I plan to make some recommendations to my doctor -- it seems like it would be very easy to give patients a sheet of information and precautions before surgery, so that they can fully understand what they'll need to have ready and what they'll need to do. Explaining it to a combination of a drugged, confused patient and her family members who may or may not catch all the precautions and instructions does not cut it. A checklist might be handy -- get crutches, plan to pick up pain medicine prescription, have lots of ice on hand, make physical therapy and follow-up appointments in advance. Sure, they asked me if I had any questions, but how was I supposed to know? I guess I should have researched more on the internet.

Anyway, I may be on a narcotic-induced rant, but that's mainly because the day immediately following my surgery turned into a bit of a nightmare. Why? Well, the water-flow ice pack system seemed to have leaked in the morning, and my bandages were all wet, so the doctor's office told me I needed to come in to have the dressings changed. Then they told me I needed to drive to the surgical center to get a new ice-water pack. (It turns out that the problem was probably just condensation, and I should have been periodically removing the water pack and drying it, but nobody told us this, at least not that I remembered.) Of course, I wasn't the one driving. So, we headed to the doctor's office, and of course had to WAIT, which sucked, but I got dry dressings and a Percocet prescription.

I was also told that I needed to go to physical therapy THAT DAY, so I went down the hall to try to get in to my physical therapist. Oh, I'm sorry. He's not in, there is nobody in who could see you. Er. But my doctor insisted I should go today, so what should I do? Go to this other clinic at 1:00 PM, it's located by such-and-such a grocery store, near Hollywood video. So we proceeded to drive all over hell and back, first to pick up the ice water pack, then to get some lunch to kill some time, and then to the physical therapists. Which we couldn't find. And which we coudn't contact by phone for a while. Turns out in my haze, I'd thought of the wrong such-and-such a grocery store, which is indeed also by a Hollywood Video. So we had to drive clear across to the other side of town yet again. By the time I got to my appointment, I was completely at the end of my rope. When the physical therapist asked me what I was doing there so soon after my surgery, had to change my dressings again because all the running around had caused me to start bleeding around my pain pump, and told me that I shouldn't be out at all and needed to just go home and take a pain pill and rest, I pretty much lost it. She was just so sensible and helpful, I really wanted to kiss her. She helped me adjust my crutches correctly, gave me more information than anybody else had, and made an appointment for me to come back on Tuesday.

So I'd been running myself ragged in pain on crutches from like 9:45 AM to 2:00 PM, during all of which time I was supposed to be at home, with my leg elevated and iced. Aargh. Let's just say Cheryl the physical therapist and Percocet both saved me from complete and total nervous breakdown.

Yesterday was a better day, though still difficult. A nurse came to my house and removed my pain pump, though my leg is still numb today in one spot, the way your face feels if you've been to the dentist and had too much novocaine. So hopefully that will go away soon, and if it's not gone by tomorrow, I'll have to call the doctor yet again.

Anyway, when I'm not engaged in my most taxing and strenuous activity of the day (i.e. getting up and going to the bathroom -- it's crazy when something you never even think of becomes one of the biggest challenges in your daily life), I'm pretty much supposed to be spending my time elevating, icing, and most of all, performing very simple exercises, such rolling my ankles, straightening my leg and flexing my foot and quad, stretching my hamstrings, propping my leg up as straight as it will go,and lifting my straightened leg a measly six inches. Some of which I have at times been unable to do (especially lifting the leg).

Oh, yeah, and let's not forget, I get to spend four to six hours per day in this contraption:

This ~~torture device~~ exercise machine helps me to regain my range of motion by bending and straightening my leg for me. I need to get up to 90 degrees of motion as soon as possible. This morning I went up to 75 degrees, so I'm getting close.

So what does one do when strapped into a machine for four to six hours per day (besides sleep)? Why catch up on knitting blogs, of course:

At least I got some lovely flowers out of the deal, from my kind friends, Bonnie and Rhonda.

Still Life with Crutches

I'm off work for the next week at least, and since I'm starting to feel a bit better, here's hoping much Rogue knitting will ensue, if I can squeeze it in between physical therapy.

Distractions

2005-05-15T09:14:00.000-06:00

In an attempt to distract you from the fact that I haven't been accomplishing very much in the way of knitting lately, and hence to prevent this from being the most boring knitting blog in the short history of knitting blogs, I present a whole whack of pictures (with a salute to the Yarn Harlot for the word "whack," which I enjoy immensely.)

First of all, there is actual knitting progress, in the form of my Naturwolle scarf, which is coming right along thanks to those plane rides:

Incidentally, I think I was a bit confusing in yesterday's post. I'm not actually travelling at the moment. I was in Phoenix for about two days last week, but I'm back home now, and won't be going anywhere for a while -- this coming week I will work for the first three days of the week, and then I'm finally going to have my knee surgery on Thursday. I'm not very excited about that, but I guess it's best to get it over with so that I can begin the process of real recovery, as opposed to the "pre-habilitation" that I've been undergoing since my knee injury six weeks ago.

Oh, and incidentally, part 2: I went in my first IKEA in Phoenix, and I'm in love. There are no pictures, but why, oh why, do we not have an IKEA in Utah? I feel confident that they would do a huge amount of business.

But back to the knitting, here is a close-up shot of the scarf, just to give a better idea of the colors. There really is a stitch-pattern in there (a double-moss stitch, I believe it's called), which doesn't show up all that well, but which I think gives some interest to the scarf nonetheless).

One of the reasons I haven't managed to do much knitting lately is that I have moved recently, and I've been attempting to organize all my stuff into a smaller amount of space than the space from which it came. Here is the solution I came up with for my yarn stash:

My only question is this - why in the world didn't I think of this before? I've owned this cedar chest for years, thanks to my Grandma who gave it to me as a college graduation gift (you didn't think I'd buy something with a couple of interlocking hearts on the front of it for myself, did you?) So why is it that I never thought of storing my yarn in there? I'd even had little sachets of cedar chips in with my stash in the plastic totes where it used to live. I can only conclude that I'm an idiot. But at any rate, I had the brilliant idea to transfer it into the chest, and I'm very pleased that it's there now. On the plus side, my entire yarn stash fits in one chest (well, except for that basket of yarn that's in the living room and the yarn for my current projects and...) On the downside, my yarn stash fills an entire cedar chest, and I disappointingly haven't had time to knit it all. But, oh, the possibilities!

A few comments about what's visible in there. Charlotte's Web is hanging out on top, because it seemed like a good place to store her. On the far right is a funky retro straight needle case that I picked up on the cheap at Knit Craft in Ogden. Gotta love that place. Little leftovers reside in the tray, and sock blockers are kickin' it on top. You can also see the sleeves to my as-yet unfinished Rogue, and also my Fuzzy Pull-off Lace Cowl from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting, which still needs some blocking and crocheted edging one of these days. (You can see additional pictures of the Rogue and cowl in my Knitting Gallery, linked on the sidebar.)

And on the far left is this:

Three lovely, relatively new skeins of Koigu's KPPPM that I bought recently when I was having a very bad day (which turned into a better day, as it's the day I sold my house). Not sure what I'll make with them, though I was considering getting a lace fix, as knitting lace from Koigu is sheer joy. Any recommendations?

Also, here's a gratuitous close-up of the Koigu:

Oooh, ahhh.

Finally, here are a couple of the reasons I didn't get any knitting done yesterday. I headed down to Salt Lake with my mom to run various errands, but I did come home with this:

I won't be joining the Gathering of Lace knitalong, since I'm not very good at knitalongs lately, but it's a book I've been wanting for a while, and I had a leftover Christmas gift certificate to the Wool Cabin (which seems to have no web page, but check this page for a listing of some of the yarn shops in Utah, though it does not encompass all of them). The copy is quite a bit more shop-worn than I liked, but it's the only thing in the store that I really wanted at that moment, so home it came.

And in completely non-knitting-related purchases, behold the beauty of my new, 14-inch cast-iron wok (oh, hooray!), and my wedding invitations and RSVP cards.

There. Distracting enough? :) One of these days I'll have some substantial knitting time again. Perhaps that will be one of the few upsides of recovering from surgery...

More of the Same

2005-05-14T08:21:00.000-06:00

I'm beginning to feel like a broken record. Hey, everybody! I was knitting on a plane!

I had about one hectic week after returning home from Dayton before I was off on another business trip. I managed to do absolutely no knitting in that time, so I was happy to step onto the plane to Phoenix with my knitting in tow.

Yarn swift? We don't need no stinking yarn swift! Yep, that's me, winding some more Naturwolle before putting in some more work on my scarf. I am still in love with this yarn.

For as much my own amusement as yours, I asked a total stranger to take my picture on the plane. "That's a new one," he said. This is me knitting somewhere over Utah:

There have been many more flattering pictures of me in my lifetime than this one, but oh well. I am happy to report that our plane did NOT crash upon landing, despite one really sketchy moment at the end, when the plane teetered frighteningly as we were just about to touch down and it seemed certain that the wing was going to be the first thing to hit the runway instead of tires. However, the pilots recovered and we were just fine. Apparently Phoenix is a notoriously turbulent place to fly in to. I'm not fond of turbulent flights, and I found myself most irrationally thinking during our final approach, "As long as I keep knitting, we'll land just fine." Perhaps the calming vibes of knitting make their way up into the cockpit of the plane and guide the pilots. Yeah, that's it.

As a parting shot, here's what I look like knitting over the Grand Canyon:

Also not the most flattering picture ever, and another turbulent ride. The iPod is actually self-defense in this case. My co-worker is the one who took this picture, and two rows in front of us on this tiny 12-row plane was a man who actually turned around and talked to the poor people behind him in an annoyingly loud voice for the majority of the hour-and-a-half flight in about the most inane and uninteresting things. It was driving me to contemplate how effective my knitting needle might be as a weapon on a flight (don't tell the FAA). I turned to my co-worker, held the needle out to him, and said, "You know what needs to be done." Which gave us a good laugh, and I retracted the offer of the needle, because, after all, I wouldn't want to ruin good plane-knitting for knitters everywhere.

Whoa

2005-05-13T21:07:00.000-06:00

This Rogue just made me gasp.

Really freaking cool. Other knitters are so much cooler than I am. Man.

Proof

2005-05-13T20:07:00.000-06:00

And here's a little proof that the socks went to work with me. Gotta love casual Friday, when you can bust out the hiking boots and khaki pants. Well, that and the fact that my khaki pants are some of the only casual pants I own that fit over my knee brace. Less than one week now until my surgery. Wonder what kind of a SuperBrace I'll be sporting then?

Making Waves Out and About

2005-05-13T12:09:00.000-06:00

Since our weather has reverted and it is fairly cool, my Making Waves socks are making their debut at the office today. They are rather too warm, which is a wee bit unexpected, since they are cotton socks. Then again, it's an office inferno today, so it's hard to blame the socks. Otherwise, their maiden voyage is going well enough, though I wish I'd made the cuffs with one size smaller needle. Chalk that up to yet another lesson learned.

This is not exactly knitting news, I guess, but there will be knitting news very soon. Things got a bit overwhelming recently, but hopefully there will be a return to some degree of normalcy (and therefore some degree of knitting) very soon as well.

Yet another new Knit Cast!

2005-05-04T21:29:00.000-06:00

There is yet another new edition of KnitCast available, so go check it out! I haven't listened to this one yet, but lucky me, it is ready right in time for (you guessed it) -- another business trip! (I acknowledge that there is a lot of punctuation going on in that last sentence. Sometimes a girl needs a lot of punctuation. See Emily Dickinson poem on sidebar for illustration of this point. Not that my prior sentence has anything to do with Emily Dickinson, nor is it of Dickinsonian quality.)

But who am I fooling, really? All the rambling in the world won't cover up the fact that there is NO knitting to show you in this post. I have not accomplished a lick of knitting since my flight home last Friday. Oh, sure, I at least partially managed to unpack from last week's trip, I finished moving my worldly possessions, I cleaned and sold my house, I worked three full days, I went to the physical therapist and the doctor and the dentist, and I managed to cook as many as four nutritional dinners in there, but did I knit? No. Sadly, I did not.

For those who didn't see Paul's reply to my last post, he wants everyone to know that he did not eat any fast food at all to make it through those ten days, so you may now be duly impressed.

Home...ahhhh

2005-04-30T09:27:00.000-06:00

I am finally home. Yippee!

I had to get up at 4:00 AM (which is 2:00 AM MST, to which I am now attempting to adjust again) in order to catch the first of my two flights. I had a whopping 30 minute flight from Dayton to Cincinnati, followed by about an hour and a half of hanging out in the airport, followed by an approximately 4 hour flight from Cincinnati to Salt Lake City. The flights were fine - just a wee bit turbulent at times - but I was both nervous and overcaffeinated, which resulted in this:

Wait a minute, so you're telling me you think nervous and overcaffeinated might somehow be related? Hm, we could be onto something here. Anyway, that's the obligatory lap shot on the plane, and it's also what an entire skein of Naturwolle looks like when knitted up into a scarf. No pattern there, just cast on 28 stitches, knit 4 rows garter stitch, and knit in a double moss stitch pattern with a 2-stitch-wide garter stitch border on either side. The stitch pattern doesn't show very well, but it does lend some texture that the garter stitch alone didn't have. I started out with just 20 stitches, but I like a wide scarf, so I started again. The yarn is incredibly beautiful - it's single ply, and in places it's practically roving still, which did make for occasional difficulties with splitting.

Anyway, I "wailed away" on it for a few hours as Bonne-Marie would say, and knit my way through the entire first skein before the plane ride was over. Talk about instant gratification after working on so many socks!

This is one of the things that greeted me at home:

Paul was conducting his own experiment in eating himself out of house and home. The answer to the question, "how long can one person go without going to the grocery store?" Well, at least ten days.

Where is Andrea knitting now?

2005-04-28T20:01:00.000-06:00

By this time tomorrow, the answer to that question will be a blissful, most welcome "home."

Yes, I'm heading home. I usually don't mind being away from home, but for some reason, this trip has been most exhausting, and I'll be glad when it's over. Perhaps it was the long meetings, or perhaps it was the fact that our team had just a little bit too much togetherness (together all day for work, and then most of the evening for dinner most nights), leaving very little personal down time. Or maybe it was the fact that I've had to limp ever so slightly through it all on an injured knee. I tore my ACL and miniscus, and sprained my MCL and LCL in a skiing mishap on April 1st, and lucky me, I'll be having surgery in the next couple weeks! (Never heard of all this knee anatomy? Click here).) It's not painful most of the time, and I can get around quite well, even though I must wear a most annoying brace all the time. However, I am certainly not 100%, and that is irritating and hindering.

But where was I? Oh, yes. Going home. In order to facilitate getting myself and all my new yarn home, I found tonight that I was in need of a new bag of some sort. So I hit the TJ Maxx, and lo, I am going home with this:

I am trying very hard right now to convince myself that this was not a ridiculous purchase. I am not particularly suceeding, but I'm not taking it back to the store either. Even the finished Son of Charlotte socks seem to enjoy the association with this suitcase. This is a Lauren Ralph Lauren suitcase with, as you can see, classic styling, red leather accents, the whole deal, purchased for about 40% off the original retail price. In all fairness, my suitcase of this size is broken and I was contemplating replacing it. I probably wouldn't have gone for this one, but, well...behold the interior:

So red! So irresistable! Just look what the purchase of new yarn has driven me to! What's the name of that effect? The one where you paint your kitchen, and suddenly you find you have to replace the countertops, which leads you to need a new dining room table, and so on forever? Ah well.

The astute among you will have immediately picked up on the fact that the socks are actually finished! The second Stashbuster Spiral sock came off the needles this afternoon. If you like the look of these socks and would like to try the pattern yourself, you can get it by joining the Six Sox Knitalong (click on the button on the side of my page for a link.) They are, however, not technically finished, as there are more ends to weave in than I like to consider. So I am, in fact, not considering them at all. Tomorrow on the plane, I intend to cast on a nice simple scarf on some 9-inch size 10 bamboo needles for some highly no-brainer knitting. If I'm able to stay awake, that is. I have to leave for the airport by about 4:45 AM. Whee!

Better get packing that new bag. Oh, and by the way, thanks for stopping by my blog, and thanks to everyone who has been commenting!

Schlaraffenland

2005-04-25T21:54:00.000-06:00

In Germany, Schlaraffenland is "an imaginary land of great luxury and ease."* I don't remember all the details of the wonderful luxury and ease one was to be able to expect in Schlaraffenland, but it was the sort of a place where you could just lay about being lazy all day, and Bier and Wurst would practically float into your mouth. No beautiful spirtual enlightenment of nirvana this -- oh no, Schlaraffenland is all about wild indulgence, streets flowing with milk and honey, culinary pleasures and delights beyond your wildest dreams.

I have been to Yarn Schlaraffenland, and it is good. True, all the blissful, tactile pleasure that is to be had there is not free, but I can report that yarn virtually floats off the shelves and into your waiting arms, the aisles burst with untold beauties that lead you round and round in a seemingly uneneding maze of skein upon skein, and the comfortable couches and tables invite hours of abandonment into the throes of yarn lust and gluttony. Oh, and the coffee and donuts were actually free, come to think of it.

In the face of an unusual winter storm warning for Michigan, I decided to thumb my nose at danger and heed the siren call of a lot of good fiber, and I drove up to Lansing, Michigan from Dayton, Ohio for the weekend. (I am still in Dayton on the same loooong business trip. Can I go home yet?? I mean, c'mon -- I came, I saw, I bought yarn. What more can there be left to accomplish?)

Threadbear did not disappoint. I've been knitting for about three and a half years now, and I always make it a point to try to visit at least one yarn store each time I travel, so I've been in many a fine yarn store all over the country. And through all my travels, I have never found a yarn store that I thought could hold a candle to my beloved LYS, The Needlepoint Joint. But I must confess -- Threadbear wins hands-down when it comes to sheer, unadulterated, good old-fashioned yarn porn. Unending and towering displays of fibery goodness surround you on all sides, and the majority of their yarn stock is on display, practically spilling out of the shelves. It is dazzling and disorienting, and it is impossible not to spend more money than you really ought to. (For the record, in my opinion, The Needlepoint Joint is still queen of all the yarn shops I've seen when it comes to its incredible selection of books, its beautiful and warm atmosphere, and its dedication to offering excellent supplies and support for even "archaic" things like tatting and bobbin lace. And it really does have a kick-ass yarn assortment too.)

It's hard to imagine what awaits you inside as you approach the unassuming storefront in a small row of shops, and I knew it would be impossible to photograph the magnitude of what was inside, but Matt and Rob have really outdone themselves -- I mean, take a gander at the listing of yarns that they carry. It just goes on and on!

Then, as if all that yarn weren't enough, when I proceeded to check out with my purchases and met Matt and Rob at the front desk, they were both so friendly and gracious that they really made my road trip complete. I mean, it's not like I expected them to chase me out of the store with sticks or anything, but they were both so welcoming that it was truly a delight to be there. They were even quite genuinely enthusiastic about my Charlotte's Web shawl that I'd brought in to show them, since I bought the yarn to make it from them last year -- but of course I really have Matt's eye for color selection to thank for the beautiful outcome.

They even graciously posed for pictures with me (and my Charlotte, of course):

After wandering and filling my basket with what some might call restraint (well, okay, those "some" including, perhaps, the very wealthy and The Yarn Harlot), I grabbed a cup of coffee and a donut, kicked back in a comfy chair, and knitted for a couple of hours. As is normal in most every yarn shop I've ever been to (with a few very notable and unpleasant exceptions), I had a number of relaxed and enjoyable conversations with people of unusually varied backgrounds. And I knit, of course. Yes, it doesn't get much better than that, really. Oh, okay, it gets a little better, when closing time is coming, and you decide to buy a few last items. Well, really, it would be a crying shame to clock about 500 cumulative total miles of driving on a rental car and not come away with some serious yarn spoils, no?

"So, what did she buy," you are no doubt asking yourselves with baited breath.

Here is the yarn, lying in repose on the bed at the Sheraton in Lansing, in the state of comfort and dignity that such a haul undoubtedly deserves. (Lest at this point you begin to wonder if I'm a millionaire in disguise, remember that I'm forced to be in this neck of the woods on a business trip and therefore have a per diem allowance for hotel and food - so I just had to kick in a bit extra and got myself a nice room as a treat. And, no, don't worry -- I got a personal rental car, and your tax dollars didn't pay for any yarn. Well, technically they paid for all the yarn, inasmuch as your tax dollars pay my salary, but only in a truly perfect world would travel per diem include a yarn budget, and alas, we do not live in that world...)

This next pic is a bit closer. The pile here includes some lovely 100% wool Diakeito Diamusee from Japan (at the front bottom) in subtle shades of browns, pinks, burgundy, and even cream and an almost blue-ish grey. I think I'll probably use it to make one of those Multidirectional Diagonal Scarves that everyone was making on the knitblogs last year (including Theresa).

Clockwise from the Diakeito is some 100% new wool hand spun Naturwolle from the Black Forest in the Rosenholz colourway, which is full of browns and creams and pinks -- I was really quite taken with it the moment I saw it. I think it is destined to become a scarf and hat set as well.

At the top of the picture you can see three skeins of Rio de la Plata -- hand-spun, kettle dyed 100% pure new wool from Uruguay -- and just look at that irresistable 80s combination of black and fuschia! This may also be a scarf and hat, but I'm not sure.

Incidentally, it is a testament to the beauty of all this yarn that I am thinking of making scarves and hats, because I've been sort of "off" scarves and hats for a while now, having grown sick of them, but this stuff is making me feel inspired again.

Finally, on the right-hand side of the picture you can see a monster pile of Bouton d'Or Dandy. It's 70% wool/30% silk, and the color is Nocturne, a navy blue. This yarn has that lovely sheen that silk provides, and I'm hoping to make a sweater of some sort out of it.

The pile does contain a few other goodies, but I'm not going to reveal them, as they may become gifts.

So, in summary, it is fully worth a 4.5 hour drive to Lansing to visit Threadbear. The winter storm warning luckily brought only a manageable amount of snow, and I made it back to Dayton without mishap despite some snow, sleet, rain, and wind. I can now heartily recommend the Sheraton -- the bed was seriously more comfortable than my bed at home. And I even came away with yarn from three continents - none of them my own. Yes, it was a good weekend indeed.

Oh, and there was actual knitting. Here's my Son of Charlotte sock, preparing to get a good night's sleep on the Sweet Sleeper bed (TM, no doubt) at the hotel. I'm a good bit further along than this by now, but I'm too tired to take another picture.

*with thanks to LEO, which is an online free German-English dictionary from the Technische Universitaet in Munich, and Merriam-Webster online dictionary for the definition of the English equivalent word - Cockaigne. I had never heard of Cockaigne, but there you have it.

Soon...

2005-04-25T17:24:00.000-06:00

My Threadbear Odyssey update really is coming, hopefully later this evening.

Gosh-darned business trip interfering with my internet time....

*grumble, grumble, grumble*

What are you doing with those toothpicks?

2005-04-21T21:53:00.000-06:00

Though I am currently on a very long business trip, last week brought a very short one. I went to Phoenix for a mere day and a half trip, and I had not one but two amusing experiences whilst knitting on the plane.

As always, I was sitting in an aisle seat, next to a particularly chatty gentleman. Well, I'm not always next to a particularly chatty gentleman, but this time I was. This didn't really bother me, as he was amiable enough, and as knitting generally renders idle, unsought chatter more or less palatable. After a few minutes, Mr. Chatty leaned across me a bit and said to the guy across the aisle from me something like, "Hey, aren't you Craig?" It was indeed Craig (or some other monosyllabic name of that ilk). At first I thought that perhaps they knew one another, but it soon became clear that Mr. Monosyllabic Name didn't know Mr. Chatty at all, but was just being polite in discussing whatever sports-related thing they were talking about (something to do with coaches transferring, maybe).

Monosyllabic returned to his graham crackers and beverage, and I eventually asked Mr. Chatty who he was. Evidently he used to be a local sportscaster, perhaps went to work for ESPN for a while, and was returning to Utah to become the new voice of the Utah Jazz to replace a retiring Hotrod Hundley. (Hey, it turns out this is more or less an accurate version of things, as I just read here. Evidently, he worked for CBS too.)

At any rate, obviously I don't follow sports, as I didn't know this guy from Adam, though now that I've researched it, I have a dim recollection of hearing his name, no doubt when he was still on the local news years ago.

So, the funny thing is that a little while later this well-known sports play-by-play announcer noticed I was knitting, and leaned over and started asking me questions about it. What was I knitting? Oh, socks! That's so cool! His mother knits, but he's never seen her knitting socks. How does it work? I explained and handed him the finished sock I had with me. He turned it over in his hands, making comments about how great they were, how durable and long-wearing they must be, etc, showing it to his wife as well.

With that, our conversation ended, and I was more than a little bit amused to realize that, in an unexpected role reversal, I'd been completely oblivious to and ignoring a celebrity, who in turn started paying attention to me and asking me questions, effectively pestering me on a plane ride.

Yes, my friends, knitting in public is a little bit like being a rock star.

That interaction took place on the flight to Phoenix. The return flight was slightly amusing too. As the flight attendant stopped at my seat during the drink service, she said to me, "What are you doing there?" I'm very much used to this question when I'm working on socks, as it seems that few people can immediately identify them on the needles. "It's a sock," I replied, flipping the work in such a direction as to make it appear more sock-like. (This seems to be my standard "it's a sock" illustration method.) "No, what is it that you're doing? I said to my co-worker, 'Did you see that woman with all those toothpicks?,' but we didn't know what you were doing." A light dawned, and I replied, "Oh. I'm knitting. This is knitting." Confusion between knitting and crocheting is an everyday occurance in my life, and probably that of just about every other knitter out there. But the complete bewilderment of someone with seemingly no frame of reference within which to place your activity was unexpected.

I guess I should have told her it was toothpick voodoo -- you know, the FAA-friendly version.

Tales from the Road

2005-04-20T22:26:00.000-06:00

Here's where I am at this very moment, my hotel room in Fairborn, OH, a suburb of Dayton. It doesn't look very exciting, and it's not, but it is a very nice room compared to hotels I might normally stay in for work. That's not to imply that we would normally stay in squalor or anything, but the woman in my office who arranged for rooms for all the travelers did a very nice job of getting us highly upgraded.

Today was a travel day. I woke up at 5:00 AM, and left the house at 6:00 in a bit of a blizzard. Fortunately, I live half-way up a mountainside, and by the time I was at the bottom, the blizzard had devolved into rain. I made it to the airport in plenty of time for my 8:25 AM flight, and after several hours and one plane transfer, I found myself in Dayton.

Luckily for me, plane time meant knitting time. Check out this fine knitting technique:

That's right, that's a venti (as in LARGE) nonfat no-whip mocha valencia (I can hear the choruses of "Die, yuppie scum!" in my head as I type out those words...), held firmly between my knees, because I'm not yet allowed to use my tray table. On my lap rest the three baggies containing all of the working yarn for my current Stashbuster Spiral sock, along with my kacha kacha counter. And let me tell you, plane knitting is made complete by the introduction of the iPod shuffle into the mix. Today's flight brought me the 5th edition of KnitCast, followed by several editions of the radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You can never go wrong with the HHGTTG on any trip.

KnitCast involved an interview with Lily Chin this time. I'll spare you a lot of commentary on it, mainly because there is little worthy of comment, in my opinion. Suffice to say that she sings, and she should likely be prevented from singing ever again, particularly if it's a bastardization of "My Girl" turned into an anthem to crochet. However, the hostess of KnitCast did comment that there were technical difficulties with the recording, so perhaps the horrifying singing can be charitably attributed to that. I was interested to learn that Ms. Chin had designed a knit Wonder Woman suit - now that's the kind of knitting that I can get behind. I guess in the end analysis, I'll say that Lily Chin is obviously a talented woman -- many of her designs are quite nice, she certainly works with the high fashion world more often than most knitwear designers, and she is indisputably one helluva fast crocheter. However. Being talented in these arenas does not make her a talented writer, nor does it qualify her as humorous, though she obviously tries. The writing in her Urban Knitter book, for example, was very substandard -- I was left wondering why her editor didn't do a better job.

Hm, I'd had no intention of going off on a Lily Chin diatribe. I did find the interview interesting, and I always like to keep up with everything I can in the world of knitting, whether I think it's good or bad. (This also explains my penchant for purchasing Knit n Style even when the majority of the designs featured there make me a bit queasy.) I guess I'm just a researcher at heart.

Oh, for the record, if you ever want to feel very foolish, feel free to take a picture of your own lap on a flight. I felt like it was such odd behavior that I was quite surprised to see I'd stirred little or no attention when I glanced around sheepishly after the fact.

I just remembered an amusing travel-knitting anecdote from last week's business trip, but as I really should be sleeping in preparation for Big Meetings tomorrow, it will have to wait until tomorrow night.

Making some serious sockgress

2005-04-19T19:43:00.000-06:00

I thought I'd post a couple pictures of my recent knitting instead of just nattering on. I've been a little bit, shall we say, behind on the Six Sox Knitalong, and lately I've been playing catch up.

Things started out well enough on the August/September sock, the Making Waves sock. I finished the first sock within a reasonable amount of time, but then September was my busiest month at the office (as it always is), and the second sock languished. Though I loved the result, the knitting itself was admittedly not all that riveting for some reason, so that contributed to the delay. However, I pulled them out again to take with me on a two-night ski trip to a yurt in Logan Canyon in February (or was it March? No need to discuss my early senility this soon in the blog...) Between that trip and multiple car trips to Altamont, Utah (which is where I'll be getting married in September - perhaps a story for another time), the navy blue Making Waves were finally finished.

These socks were knit out of navy blue Elann Esprit Sock it to Me! yarn (which is cotton with a little bit of nylon, much like Cascade Fixation) on size 3 bamboo needles.

Next up is my Stashbuster Spiral sock progress. These are so great, since I am actually maintaining the spirit of stashbusting and using up all of my leftover sock yarn. Well. Okay. Maybe not ALL of it, but a good chunk. I think of them as the Son of Charlotte socks, since their primary yarn content is all the leftover KPPPM from my Charlotte's Web shawl. There are five different kinds of KPPPM, some leftover Fortissima Colori, and some Lorna's Laces. Anyway, I anticipate finishing them by the end of my upcoming business trip, which will be from tomorrow through April 29th. I'll be bringing the laptop and the camera along, so hopefully there will be some blogging from the road!

New KnitCast!

2005-04-18T16:19:00.000-06:00

I just received a notification from KnitCast that there is a new KnitCast available. Apparently it's an interview with Lily Chin. Should be worth a listen, if only to see if she is as annoying in interview format as she comes across in her book The Urban Knitter and the articles I've read about her.

I you haven't yet checked out KnitCast, you definitely should. To my knowledge, it's the only podcast available on the subject of knitting, and I found the first four episodes a thoroughly enjoyable accompaniment to my recent business trip. Looks like the latest KnitCast is going to be available just in time to go with me on my upcoming business trip, for which I leave Wednesday morning. My only complaint is that it doesn't come out more frequently! It's great to be able to put a voice with internet presences like Wendy Johnson of http://www.wendyknits.net and Stefanie Japel of http://www.glampyre.com.

I'm schlepping my laptop and digital camera along on this nine-day extravaganza business trip to Ohio, so hopefully I will be able to do some blogging while I'm on the road. Maybe that can be the theme of this blog -- where is Andrea knitting now? My knitting has certainly made many journeys, from business trips to canoe trips. The most exciting knitting portion of my upcoming trip is bound to be my weekend road trip to Threadbear Fiber Arts Studio in Lansing, MI. Okay, so it's five hours of driving each way -- what's a little time in the car to an obsessive knitter? Too bad I'll be the one driving...

Coming soon: check this spot for actual knitting content. I have been doing some knitting lately, particularly on socks. I've been working on finishing up a couple pairs of socks from the Six Sox Knitalong, which is going to end up being the Four Sox Knitalong for me.

Meager blog features

2005-04-17T22:05:00.000-06:00

Since there isn't yet much to this blog, allow me to direct you to the links on the right-hand side of the page. I've been keeping a non-blog photo album of my knitting progress for some time now. You can access it from the Knitting Gallery link on the sidebar. The other two links are to galleries of photos from the two knitting groups in which I participate. One meets weekly at The Needlepoint Joint, located in downtown Ogden, Utah, and the other is the Stitch n Bitch group that my friends and I started in February 2002.

Beginnings

2005-04-17T10:55:00.000-06:00

After an excessively long contemplation of whether or not I should do so, I'm starting my own knitting blog. So here it is. Post number one, existing mainly to try out the format. Less boring content to follow (with any luck).